Dave gave a low chuckle. “Oh, guess we won’t find bear till night,” he said. “We just go look for signs now.”
Signs proved to be fairly plentiful; so it was decided, to the unseaworthy Indian’s great satisfaction, to remain there that day, hunt at night and set sail early on the morrow. The day passed pleasantly, though uneventfully, and, after supper, Captain Vinton went aboard the Arrow. Dave sat up while the others took “forty winks” before being roused for the night hunt. At the rising of the moon, they all set forth in single file, and crossed the little island by an old trail through the chaparral to the ocean side. There they found a firm, wide, sandy strip of shore on which a low surf was murmuring its continuous song. The moon sailed higher and higher, the night was delightfully warm and calm, and there was an excellent prospect of finding game.
Telling Norton, Chester and Hugh to hide in the scrubby growth that fringed a sand dune, Dave took Alec and Billy along the beach for about fifty yards. In the full moonlight they could see quite plainly the curious wobbly trail, rough and broad, of a large turtle, leading to and from the water. Dave followed it for a few paces, then stopped abruptly and began to prod the sand with a stick which he had picked up for that purpose.
“Got ’em! Got eggs!” he announced presently. “Big nest heap full.”
“All right,” said Alec. “Now we’d better go back to where the others are, and wait for the hungry old——”
“By and by moon go down,” interposed the guide, with an unusual degree of interest. “Then bear may come out for walk,—get his supper, huh? Come.”
They went back to the place of ambush, and waited quietly. How long they waited not one of them could tell exactly. It seemed hours. At last their patience was rewarded. A clumsy black form emerged from the thick vegetation on the dunes, stood motionless for several minutes sniffing the air, and then ambled slowly and cautiously toward the water, pausing now and then to nose the warm sand.
“It’s a bear, and he smells our tracks,” whispered Hugh.
“Will he find the nest?” Billy asked, nudging Dave with his elbow.
“Sure, he find it all right,” was the whispered reply of the Indian. “When turtle make nest, lay eggs, scent is stronger than what we leave. Watch him. You can—huh, look!”