"There'll be heaps of flood-wood, as well as kelp, for us to gather to-morrow," said Perce. "Don't put any more on the fire, boys."
"Why not?" asked the twins.
"There's no use wasting it," answered Perce, adding, "We've fire enough. We'll roast our corn and go to bed, so as to be up early. It'll be high tide before five to-morrow."
"Then wake Nicodemus!" cried Moke in a gleeful tone.
And again the three boys raised the wild chorus of the old plantation song.
"Olly ought to be here!" said Perce. "He must have gone home by the coast; and that's the way we missed him."
Even then, but for the noise of the surf and the whistling of the wind, they might have heard Olly's last screams; and by straining their eyes they might have seen far out on the gloomy deep a dim object, now rising for a moment against the line of the evening sky, and now disappearing in a hollow of the waves.
With hay about their heads to shelter them from the wind, and the light of their camp-fire gleaming over them, the kelp-gatherers lay under their blankets, in the hollow of the dunes. They talked or sang until the flames died to a feeble glimmer, that served to bring out by contrast the surrounding gloom of sea and land and sky.
"Isn't it dark, though!" exclaimed Perce. "I had no idea it would cloud so. I believe it is going to rain. Then shan't we be in a fix?"