"She is delirious with pain," said Mollie, "and she is mixing the
Duke's Nose up with 'She sells sea-shells'."
However, it was not very long before they reached her side, and she was able to explain the situation. A few more excited coo-ees brought the boys back, and the question became: What to do next? The sun was getting perilously near the horizon, and once it dropped behind the sea, darkness would fall rapidly and the rocks be really unsafe, especially as the tide was now coming in.
"We must get up frightfully early in the morning," said Dick at last, "and come along before breakfast. Nobody is likely to find that treasure in the next ten hours or so."
With many backward looks they resumed their homeward trek. It was hard luck to have to leave the treasure when, perhaps, they had almost found it, but Mamma's word was law, and if they broke their promise about getting home, or at least meeting Papa, it was quite possible that to-morrow would be spent by the girls in doing French verbs and making buttonholes.
The children slept soundly all night in their funny little bunks. Early in the morning a small figure slipped into the boys' room and shook first one boy and then another by the shoulders. Dick and Jerry woke up after a few grunts; Hugh as usual was a sleepy-head.
"Leave him to us," Dick said confidently, "we'll get him up—you'll see."
"Tell him to come by Gobbler's Hollow," ordered Grizzel; "you'll find us there. Don't stop to wash."
When the boys were half-way across the sandhills, they saw a thin column of blue smoke rising from somewhere among the low scrubby trees, and a minute after a delicious smell greeted their unducal noses—a smell of wood-smoke and toast combined.
"It's the girls making grub," Hugh explained to the other two; "they're great on grub." He might have added that he was great on it himself, so far as eating it was concerned. Certainly Dick and Jerry were very pleased to know that they had not to wait until half-past eight for breakfast, for the fresh sea air had given them ravenous appetites. They found the girls in Gobbler's Hollow—appropriately so named by Hugh—bending over a gipsy fire. The inevitable billy-can hung from a tripod, and the steam from it mingled with the smoke of the fire. Mollie was toasting bread, which Prudence buttered with a lavish hand, and Grizzel was shelling hard-boiled eggs.
"I call this top-hole," Dick announced, as he squatted down on the sand and took his tin mug from Mollie, who had begged to be allowed to make the tea as she had seen Grizzel make it before. "It will buck us up no end and make us as sharp as needles."