The rifle shot which Ransom heard was fired by Frank at the great turtle, which, in spite of the hatchet in its skull and the boy on its back, was making for the sea, determined to escape. The hatchet, half buried in the thick bone, had no more apparent effect upon it than the dropping of an oyster shell on it would have had.
“Shoot him again, Frank!” shouted Arthur from his perch. “We’ve simply got to stop him.”
The boy took careful aim at the sinister black eye, the only vulnerable spot visible, and fired. With a heave that threw Arthur from his feet, the great creature made its last struggle for freedom, throwing the sand in showers and digging great holes in the coarse sand, then, folding its legs and tail beneath its roof-like shell, it died.
For a minute, the victor gazed at his victim, and then, wiping away an imaginary tear of regret, went to search for eggs. In a hollow near the spot where the hunters had found Mrs. Turtle, her eggs were unearthed—several dozen of them. The boys put them in a canvas bag which they carried, and went on to hunt for more shellbacks.
Before long they came again upon the tell-tale tracks in the sand, and found a turtle at the end of them; smaller, but one even more active than the other.
It was with great difficulty that they managed to get a long piece of driftwood under the shell, and by the aid of this leverage “end her over.” Frank and Arthur immediately rushed forward to end her misery, and received a shower of sand in their faces that nearly blinded them. They retired out of range in confusion, and dug the sand out of eyes, ears, and mouths. With powerful sweep-like strokes, the turtle clawed the beach in its efforts to right itself, and scooped the sand until it had dug holes for each of its four legs, so deep that the coarse grains were beyond its reach, and it lay helplessly sprawling.
With a single hatchet stroke, turtle number two was despatched, and the victors sat a minute beside their game to rest.
“Gracious! I’d like to have these turtles in Chicago,” remarked Frank, with speculative instinct. “Just think of the gallons of green turtle soup they would make; and it cost twenty-five cents a half-pint plateful! Holy smoke, we would be millionaires in no time.”
“But what are we going to do with them now?” Arthur had a way of coming down to realities with a sickening thud.
As if in answer to the question, the lighthouse keeper came towards them out of the fast brightening dawn, and showed them how to dismember the creatures.