So the Arrow made in shoreward. The four boys reefed her jib and her topsail and stood ready to reef the main sheet. When everything had been attended to on board the sloop and the anchor had been cast, all piled into a big dory trailing astern.
“‘Pull for the shore, boys, pull for the shore!’” sang Norton in a rollicking voice. And they did. Soon they were preparing supper on the beach.
“There’s squalls breedin’ out yonder,” remarked the captain after supper while lighting his corncob pipe. “After dark I’d ruther have these keys atween ’em and us. But perhaps they’ll blow over. Yon can’t never tell for sure, at this time o’ year.”
Unpromising as the weather seemed, the evening passed without anything happening to cause discomfort. The storm clouds drifted past, giving way to a host of brilliant stars that took possession of the heavens, and to a steady westerly breeze that bid fair to continue all night. The captain and the Seminole guide, wrapping themselves in blankets which had been brought ashore in the dory, dozed beside the driftwood fire. The four boys and Roy Norton, however, enjoyed a swim in the lagoon before they sought their own blankets and “turned in” for a good night’s rest. Their bunks were snug hollows scooped out of the sand, warm and dry, a few feet away from the glowing embers.
At sunrise the breeze freshened a little, but the weather was balmy. The first rays of the rising sun woke the voyagers, and the boys would have been sorry had they missed seeing the gorgeous semi-tropical dawn burst upon the world. The sky was one vast, rosy glow, and the ocean glittered with opalescent hues. Low islands, overgrown with close, green, stunted vegetation, were on every side. They stretched like golden bars across the lagoons, showing the broad sound on one side and on the other the dark blue of the Gulf Stream, far out where the Florida Straits widened toward the distant Bahamas.
When the sun was an hour high, they breakfasted on fruit, fish, toast, and coffee. That simple repast over, they gathered up their belongings and prepared to return to the sloop. Quite unexpectedly, an idea crept into Dave’s sluggish mind:
“Good moon last night, much white beach, turtle come out and lay eggs,” he remarked slowly. “P’raps we find eggs. Might try.”
He rose and strolled lazily along the beach, accompanied by the four young scouts.
“Maybe bear will walk beach after eggs,” he added presently. “Young master run back, get rifle.”
“Wait for me, then,” said Alec, and he ran back to the camping place. Returning in a few minutes, he handed the rifle to Dave. “If we meet a bear, you can shoot him,” he said. “I don’t want to, even if I could.”