Chapter XXII: The Odyssey of Tess and Dot

Children, after all, are usually fearless when they face material things. Danger does not often frighten them if there is no mystery or weirdness connected with it.

The fact that they were sailing upon an unmanageable boat, upon an unknown sea, and were quite helpless, did not disturb the slumbers of Tess and Dot Kenway. As Tess had thought, the motor-boat might bump into something; but staying awake on their part would not ward off that disaster.

The _Isobel_ blundered along as the night fell, and the children went to sleep supperless. Dot did not even complain about this lack of a meal. There was nobody to complain to, for she knew Tess could not aid her.

The motor-boat drew closer in to the shore of the first island. The tide and current sucked the hull of the helpless craft nearer and nearer. As it chanced, there was a point covered with palm trees around which the _Isobel_ drifted. She was then completely hidden from any part, even the highest part, of Palm Island.

When the sun arose the next morning, as far as the party back at the larger island knew, the motor-boat might have been sunk beneath the surface of the sea.

But that was not what had happened. The boat grounded, swung around with the tide, and when the sun got well above the sea its rays shone straight into the open cabin door and into Dot Kenway’s eyes.

“O-oo! Tess!” she squealed. “I guess we landed and didn’t know it. And the boat is pitching over. O-oo!”

It was a fact that the deck of the _Isobel_—more properly the floor of her cabin—lay at a steep angle. The boat was quite snugly run upon the sands. The tide had withdrawn and left her there.

The two wondering little girls climbed out of their berths and crept to the door and so out into the cockpit. They looked wonderingly over the rail to the shore.

“Why!” observed Dot in wonder, “isn’t this Plam Island?”

“Oh, dear! I wish you’d say _Palm_ Island—and it’s not Palm Island,” declared Tess.

“Then what’s the use of saying it if it isn’t?” grumbled Dot, who disliked being admonished about her faults of pronunciation. “But it looks like Plam Island, so now!”

“I guess all these islands look alike,” sighed Tess, giving up her admonitory attitude for the moment. “We had better go ashore.”

“What for?”

“Well! Aren’t you hungry?” Tess demanded. “And do you want to stay on this pitched-over boat?”

“I’m hungry all right,” agreed Dot. “But nothing more can happen to the boat now, can there? It’s wrecked, and that is all there is about it. It is a good place to sleep in.”

“Are we going to sleep here again, do you suppose?” Tess cried. “Why, of course Ruthie will send the boys for us! Of course she will!”

“She hasn’t yet,” said Dot pessimistically.

“Not in the night. It’s too dark to see then.”

“And she doesn’t know where we are, does she?” demanded Dot.

“Just the same, they will find us. I’m hungry,” Tess announced again.

“What shall we eat?” asked her sister.

But Tess was not nonplussed by that question. Little as she was, she was observant. Such fruits as had been good to eat on Palm Island she knew must be all right to eat here on this strange island.

Of course they had no fire and nothing to cook upon it if they had. The little girls did not know just how to go about finding turtles’ eggs, although they had seen Neale O’Neil uncover the first nestful of those delicacies. But they found two or three cocoanuts which they broke open with pieces of coral. And it was easy enough to pick a lapful of fruit.

Down they squatted on the sand, each with her dress-skirt heaped with fruit, and proceeded to enjoy a repast. Before they had finished, the active mind of Dot demanded to be informed on another point.

“If Neale and Luke come after us, Tess Kenway, how are they going to know we are on this island?”

“Won’t they see us here?” asked her sister.

“Not if we are behind the bushes. I don’t mean to stay out in the sun all the time. You know it is awfully hot at noon.”

“We-ell,” considered Tess, “I s’pose I’ll have to put up my skirt again. They won’t sail by that.”

“Oh, let’s!” exclaimed Dot. Then she looked up into the palm trees and again began to question.

“You can’t ever climb up one of those trees in the world, Tess Kenway.”

“I—I can try,” stammered her sister.

“You’ll break your neck. You’ll get hurt like Margy and Carrie Pendleton’s father got hurt,” declared Dot. “I wish Sammy Pinkney was here.”

“Well!” gasped Tess. “What for?”

“He could climb it. He’s a good climber. You know how he climbed the cherry tree in Mrs. Adams’ back yard,” said Dot earnestly.

“Yes,” rejoined Tess with scorn. “And how they had to call out the fire department to get him down. I remember.”

“Well,” said Dot grumpily, for she almost always stood up for Sammy, “I guess he would have got down by himself if they had left him alone. But Mrs. Adams got so nervous. Anyhow, Tess Kenway, you can’t climb one of these plam trees.”

“Did I say I could?” replied her sister, rather snappishly if the truth were told.

But Tess was a very persistent person when once she had made up her mind to a thing. She walked along the shore for a long way, staring up into the tops of the palms. The trunks were rough enough, but they offered no means of climbing, even had Tess dared the attempt. There were no branches.

“I never did see such silly trees,” she told herself. “I like the trees at home in Milton lots better. Even in winter there are branches sticking out so that you can climb into them if you need to. If—if a mad dog comes along, or anything like that. I wish we were back in Milton!”

Dot heard none of this, for she had settled herself down comfortably under a bush and proceeded to rearrange the Alice-doll’s clothes. That young person was certainly sadly in need of a fresh outfit, as Dot had herself stated some hours before. But who could keep one’s clothing fresh and tidy when cast away on an uninhabited island?

“It is too bad Sammy isn’t here—too bad for him,” Dot called to the anxious Tess, after a minute or two. “He’d so love to be wrecked, and in danger of drowning, and being eaten up by turkles, and all. He would be so excited.”

“He’d be a nuisance,” commented Tess, puzzling her brain over the matter of the signal of distress and nothing much else.

“Come on, Dot,” she finally said. “Let’s go up to the other end of the island—the end nearest Palm Island where Ruthie and the others are. Maybe we’ll find a tree there.”

“There are plenty of trees here. I don’t see why you can’t keep still, Tess Kenway. The sun’s getting hot.”

“Then we want to go right away before it gets any hotter,” and as Tess started off at once, Dot was forced to get up and follow. She did not wish to be left alone with the Alice-doll, although they had seen nothing on the island as yet to affright them.

There was no hill, or even a small mound, on this little island. Just the level crust of earth over the coral rocks crowded with low vegetation out of which the palms shot in some instances to a considerable height. But near the western end of the island some of these trees had been laid low—possibly in the hurricane which had driven the _Isobel_ and her crew to Palm Island. The condition of the tangled palms was as though they had writhed in agony and been uprooted at last by giant hands.

One tall tree—and Tess spied it long before she got to it—lay for fully forty feet almost along the ground at the edge of the jungle. But its top had been caught by a group of other palms. The trunk of the uprooted tree afforded a slanting walk right into the tops of the other palms!

“I can climb that!” declared Tess, quickly, and began to unfasten her skirt.

The palm trunk was rough and husky. Climbing it on hands and knees was a hard task, but not particularly dangerous. As she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her, Tess did not note particularly the height to which she climbed.

Once in the tops of the several palms she was easily able to fasten her plaid skirt out upon a frond which had a free sweep toward the water. This signal of distress was what the party on Palm Island had seen just before the raft set sail on its voyage of rescue.

Because Tess had climbed along the tree trunk and hung out her banner, she felt more brave. And even Dot looked at her sister in wide-eyed admiration.

“I guess Ruthie would have scolded you, Tess,” she said. “But you can climb almost as good as Sammy.”

“Oh, Sammy!” ejaculated Tess.

Having got into the wood, they went back afterward through the middle of the island. And in this way the two little girls came upon what to them seemed a very strange place indeed. The lianas and other vines made the walking difficult and Tess had just said they would have to go back to the shore when suddenly the two little girls stepped right out into an opening where there was a still blue lake as quiet and safe looking as a millpond.

There was only a narrow ribbon of shore bordering this circular pond of water. The jungle grew almost to the edge of the water and the palms shaded it completely, for it was not many yards across.

As the sun’s rays were now hot, the look of this pool was delightful. Dot got down on her hands and knees to drink. But in a moment she sat back again, sputtering and crying out:

“Oh! Isn’t that nasty mean, Tess Kenway? It’s salt like all the rest of the water down here.”

“Why, there is no place where the sea runs in that I can see,” Tess declared. She tasted the water gingerly, then shook her head. “I guess you are right, Dot. I don’t understand it. But it is pretty in here, and cool.”

The two little girls remained at this pool all day. Fruit was plentiful, fringing the open water. They saw fish jump, or swimming in the clear depths. Far below, among the coral formations, the delicate seaweeds waved to and fro. There was a submarine opening or openings into the sea, but Tess and Dot scarcely understood the nature or origin of this salt water basin in the center of the little island.

Occasionally Dot sighed and made dismal complaint that she wished Ruthie and the others would come for them. But the fact remained that being cast away on one island was just about the same as being cast away on another.

They were so far from the careened motor-boat that the sisters decided to remain where they were over night. Occasionally during the afternoon the two made a pilgrimage to the shore where they could see the _Isobel_; but they saw nothing else, and certainly did not catch sight of the raft with Mr. Howbridge and Luke and Neale upon it.

The fast falling evening caught the little girls by the edge of the pool in the middle of the island.

“I don’t care,” said Tess, when Dot began to sniffle a bit. “I don’t care if we do have to stay here. Here the sand is warm and there are none of those big turtles to crawl out and maybe bite us.”

“Oh! I wish you wouldn’t,” gasped Dot. “I had forgotten about those old turkles.”

The two sisters fell asleep as calmly as though they were in their own beds at the old Corner House. This was by no means the first night they had been lost and had slept in the open air. And nothing had ever really harmed them; though it is true that they were frightened at times.

This occasion was no exception. They could not have been sleeping two hours when first Tess and then Dot was aroused. It was not the splashing of the silvery water in the pool that aroused them, but some sound—a groan or sigh that actually seemed to have been uttered right in their ears!

Up sat the two little girls, wide awake and with wide-open eyes. They faced the pool. Out of this, rising slowly and ghostily, was a glistening gray body like a drowned giant that might have suddenly come up to breathe.

And the sigh he uttered! It made the flesh of Tess and Dot Kenway quiver to hear that sound and the blood seemed to freeze in their veins.

“O-o-o-o-o-o!” moaned the mysterious ghost, while the water poured in a gentle shower from his shoulders.