“But I shall come back,” said Hawk-Eye. “You’ll see.”
Limberleg knew it was useless to say any more, and the very next day she and the Twins helped him load his boat with deer-meat and wild plums and acorns, and then Hawk-Eye put in his spear and his stone axe and hooks and line, and got in himself.
The three of them stood on the beach and watched him push off from their island and start across the channel toward the main land. They watched him until the boat was a mere black speck in the distance. Then they trudged slowly back to their lonely cave.
There followed many anxious days and nights. Limberleg went back to hunting again. She took the Twins with her, and began to teach them to hunt like men.
“If anything should happen to me, you could take care of yourselves if you knew how to hunt and trap as well as fish,” she said.
Beside getting food for their daily needs, they began to store it for the winter. They gathered nuts by the bushel and piled them in heaps in the corner of the cave. Whenever they were not sleeping or doing anything else, they were always gathering wood for the fire.
In this way four long weeks went by. At last came a day when the wind was sharp, and it seemed as if summer were nearly over.
Limberleg and the Twins had gone down to the cave behind their bluff to get clams for supper. They had one of Limberleg’s baskets with them, and had nearly filled it with clams. They were out some distance from the beach-line, for the tide was low.
Suddenly the water began to rise. The returning tide came in such a flood that they had to run as fast as their legs could carry them to get safely ashore. They had reached the bank and were just beginning to climb slowly up the bluff, when they heard a shout behind them. Limberleg was so startled that her knees gave way under her and she sat right down in the basket of clams!