David, under cover of his hand, winked at Tom, who pretended not to see him.
“Here’s another note,” Tuckerman continued. “‘Find the mahogany-hued man with the long, skinny legs and look in his breast pocket.’ That’s a saying my father handed down. What can it mean?”
“Mahogany-hued man with long, skinny legs,” echoed Ben.
“And a hooked nose and a scar across the left cheek,” chortled David. “Pirate stuff, of course. There’s always someone like that. I suppose he’s the fellow who hid the treasure on a dark, stormy night.”
Tuckerman gazed at the speaker with his big, owl-like eyes. “You may be right, although I rather thought of him as a faithful, old-fashioned serving-man, from whom Sir Peter had no secrets.”
David grinned; but how could anyone joke on a matter that Tuckerman took so seriously? “Have it your own way,” he said. “Probably you’re right. But hooked-nose pirate or faithful servant I don’t see how the mahogany one can be of much help to us here to-day.”
Tuckerman closed the notebook. “Suppose we go down to the southwestern point. At least we’ll get a good view of the sunset and freshen up for supper.”
When they came to that end of the island they found the ledges and neighboring sand covered with a vast array of sandpipers, all with their heads turned in the same direction, watching, as it were, a score or so of leaders, who stood out in front, closest to the water. Quietly though the four crept up, they were still a couple of dozen yards from the rear ranks when, with one accord and with as smooth a motion as though a sail were being drawn across the beach, the hundreds of little winged bodies rose in air and flew out across the waves.
“By Jove, that’s pretty!” said Tom. “They’re like ever so many bits of silver paper blowing about in the wind.”
So they were. Fascinated, the four watched the sandpipers. When the birds were tilted one way, on one tack, they could hardly be seen against the light, they actually disappeared. Then a tiny deflection, a dip and twist of the wings, and they were a network of silver, drawn this way, then that. They wheeled, they rose, they dropped; no human beings ever moved in such perfect precision; it was not as if they followed a leader, it was as if every single sandpiper of the hundreds knew instinctively what the bird just ahead of him would do. And at last they descended, like falling leaves, on a flat rock out in the water.