Towards sunset the Indians awakened us, and gave us another meal of coffee and tortillas, with chile—an uncommonly hot little green pepper. The night promised to be fine, and the Indians predicted a good catch of turtles, as the egg-laying season was nearing its close. So, after an hour or two of chatting, we went down to the edge of the beach, and hid ourselves among the tall salt grasses that lined the shore above high-water mark, where we lay quietly watching the moon rising in its mysterious way out of the sea. Not a sound was heard, save the soft murmuring of the waves as they washed over the reef about half a mile away. We were as still as mice, as the Indians had cautioned us against talking, for the turtles were shy, and very quick to take alarm. After a long wait one of the men touched my arm, and pointed to some dark objects that were slowly crawling out of the water, which was as quiet as a mill-pond. Those dark objects were five big turtles that had come ashore to lay their eggs, which are from two to three inches in length, and sometimes as many as two hundred in number.
WATCHING THE TURTLES COMING OUT OF THE WATER.
This turtle has a small squat head covered with plates of shell, and has a jaw like the beak of a hawk. It has four limbs, or flippers—the hindermost being quite long and winglike—which are armed with a couple of strong nails, with which it digs holes in the sand when it comes ashore to lay its eggs, and it is very fierce at such times if disturbed. When the eggs are laid and carefully covered, Mrs. Turtle waddles off to the water, and gives no further thought of her two hundred or more children which she has left behind.
In the course of time the hot sun hatches out the little chelonians, who burst their shells, and digging their way out of the sand, toddle town the beach to the sea to begin their careers.
Their food consists of sea-weed, crabs, and fishes, and when they grow to be about two hundred pounds in weight, and their shells become valuable, it behooves them to keep their "weather eyes" open for dark-skinned men when their maternal instincts prompt them to ramble on shelving beaches by the light of the moon.
When the turtles were well up on the shore, the natives rushed out with stout poles, and after a sharp tussle succeeded in turning them over on their backs—no easy task, as they were nearly four feet long, and weighed several hundred pounds.
Once on their backs they were helpless, as they were unable to regain their natural position. Long after midnight we added another to our catch, and then went to rest, leaving the turtles on the beach.
In the morning the natives rolled them over, and after fastening their flippers to stakes driven into the beach, built a light fire on their backs, which caused the plates to curl at the edges, under which a knife was passed and the plates removed, leaving underneath a solid body of bony substance, which is the real protecting shield.
The fire seemed to cause the turtles much pain, as they moaned in quite a human way, but the work was soon over, and on being released, the poor things crawled down the beach and disappeared into the sea. The natives are very careful not to fatally injure them, as they are not very numerous in these waters, and would soon be exterminated if indiscriminately slaughtered, and this is the only variety—the hawksbill, Erectmochelys imbricata, the zoologists call them—that yields the tortoise-shell of commerce. I was told that a second shell soon formed, but it grew as one solid mass, and had no commercial value.