CHAPTER XXV.
THE FLOATING HATCH.
The castaways lost no time in rejoicing over their good fortune. The Captain hastily kindled a fire while Chris, with his sheath knife, proceeded to butcher the smallest of the two turtles. Much experience had made the little negro expert at the work and in a few minutes he had severed the two shells and cut off several thick steaks from one of the hind flippers. Then, squatting before the fire, each impaled a steak on the end of a pointed stick and toasted it over the coals.
How good the steaming juicy meat tasted to the two hungry ones. Steak after steak was broiled and eaten before their ravenous appetites were satisfied and they could eat no more.
"Midnight is a sorter unusual hour for a feed," Captain Westfield observed, "but, I reckon, we will sleep none the worse for it. I 'low, we ain't got to lay awake none worryin' about food now. Thar's meat enough to last us for two weeks at least."
"An' maybe, Ole Mister Gale will blow hisself out," said Chris, hopefully, as, yawning sleepily he stretched himself again on his couch.
It was broad day when the castaways awoke from the heavy slumber which had followed their hearty midnight supper. They found the gale still blowing with undiminished violence and the sky still brightly blue. One thing, however, gave them great satisfaction, the water had ceased to encroach upon their little knoll. It had evidently reached its height.
After a hearty breakfast of turtle steaks, the two proceeded at once to dress and cure the turtles, for they well knew that under the sun's heat the fresh meat would soon spoil.
They had neither salt nor smoke house with which to cure it, but they went at the task with sure confidence in the result. The meat was first cut away from the shells and skinned, care being taken to remove every particle of the greenish-colored fat. Then, cutting across the grain, the meat was divided into thin strips and spread upon leaves to dry in the hot sun. It only remained for them to protect it from the dews of night and chance rains and a few days would see it thoroughly cured and capable of keeping sweet and good so long as it was kept dry.
With some hazy idea that they might be of some future use, the captain cleaned and washed out the two, great, trough-like, upper shells of the turtles.
"Dat looks like a lump of wreckage out dar by de reef, Massa Cap," Chris observed as he straightened up from his task of spreading out the meat. "Pears like de tide is settin' hit in dis way."