“Well, nothing we could have done would have helped,” said Jack at last. “The storm would have wrecked her anyway — though if Bill had been here, and the boat was all right, he would have taken her round to splash Cove and we could have dragged her right up the beach, out of reach of the waves. It wasn’t our fault.”
They all felt sad and downcast as they left the little harbour and went back. The sun was going down now, and the evening was very peaceful and beautiful. There was hardly any wind at all.
“I can hear an aeroplane again!” said Lucy-Ann, her sharp ears picking up the distant throbbing before the others. “Hark!”
Far away a small speck showed low down in the blue sky. The boys clapped their glasses to their eyes. Jack gave an exclamation.
“It’s dropping something, look! Philip, what is it? — Is it a parachute?”
“It looks like a small parachute — with something underneath it, swinging to and fro,” said Philip, his eyes glued to his glasses. “Is it a man? No, it doesn’t look like a man. Then what in the world is it? And why is the plane dropping things here? Gosh, I wish Bill was here to see this. There is something queer going on. Something the enemy are doing. I shouldn’t be surprised if they get the wind up when they see our smoke and come along to search the island. Tomorrow one of us must always be on the look-out, on the cliff.”
Puzzled and anxious, the children went back to Sleepy Hollow. It was time for high tea, and Lucy-Ann and Dinah prepared it in silence. They were in the middle of an adventure again — and they couldn’t possibly get out of it.
Chapter 17
A BOAT, A BOAT!
“DO YOU think it’s worth while keeping the fire going, if the aeroplanes belong to the enemy?” asked Lucy-Ann at last.
“Well, if we’re ever to be rescued, we shall have to show some kind of signal,” said Jack. “We’ll have to risk the aeroplanes seeing it. Perhaps, when no messages come through from Bill, motor-boats will come looking for us. Then they will see our signal, and come to the island.”
“I hope they do,” said Dinah. “I don’t want to be here for months. And it would be awful in the winter.”
“Good gracious! Don’t talk about being here for the winter!” said Lucy-Ann, in alarm. “Why, it’s only May!”
“Dinah’s looking on the black side of things as usual,” said Philip.
Dinah flared up. “I’m not! I’m being sensible. You always call being sensible ‘looking on the black side of things.’ ”
“Oh, don’t quarrel just now, when we all ought to stick by each other,” begged Lucy-Ann. “And don’t put those rats near Dinah, Philip — don’t be mean just now!”
Philip snapped his fingers and the rats scurried back to his pockets. Kiki snorted.
“Three blind mice, see how they run, pop goes Kiki!”
“Arrrrr!” said Huffin, agreeing politely. It was really very comical the way he and Puffin seemed to talk to Kiki. They never said anything but “Arrrr,” but they said it in many different tones, and sounded quite conversational at times.
That night the children slept out in the open. It was a beautiful calm night, and the stars hung in the sky, big and bright. Lucy-Ann tried to keep awake to watch for shooting stars, which she loved, but she didn’t see any.
Her bed was very comfortable. The children had chosen thick heather to put their ground-sheets and rugs on, and had used their extra clothes for pillows. A tiny breeze blew against their cheeks and hair. It was lovely lying there with the stars shining peacefully above, and the sound of the sea in the distance.
“It’s like the wind in the trees,” thought Lucy-Ann sleepily. “And the wind in trees is like the sound of the sea. Oh dear, I’m getting muddled — muddled — mud — ”
The weather was still lovely the next day, and the spire of smoke from the signal fire went almost straight up in the air, there was so little wind. Jack and Philip took a good many bird-photographs, and Jack looked longingly over the steep bird-cliff, wishing he could climb down a little way and take some photographs of the birds there.
“Bill said not,” said Philip. “And I think we oughtn’t to. Suppose anything happened to us boys, what would the girls do? We’ve got heaps of fine photographs without bothering to take the eggs and birds on those ledges.”
“I wish the puffins had laid eggs,” said Jack. “I haven’t found a single puffin egg yet. It’s a bit too early, I suppose. How sweet baby puffins must look! I wish I could see some.”
“Well, you’re likely to, as things have turned out,” said Philip, with a half-comical groan. “We may be here for quite a long time.”
It was arranged that one or other of the children should always be on the look-out somewhere on the bird-cliff. From there it was possible to see nearly all round the island, and no enemy could approach without being seen when still far off. That would give plenty of time for the others to be warned, and for all of them to go into hiding.
“We’d really better hide all the tins and things that are under our ledge, down in that hole, hadn’t we?” said Lucy-Ann, when the plans were made. “They might easily be found.”
“We’ll stuff heather round them,” said Jack. “It would be an awful bore to have to keep going down into the hole to fetch all the food each time we wanted something to eat.”
So clumps of heather were most realistically tucked under the rocky ledge where Lucy-Ann kept the tins. Nobody would guess it wasn’t growing, it looked so natural there.
“We’d have plenty of time to chuck our clothes and things down into the hidey-hole, if we saw anyone coming,” said Jack. “I’ll take first watch. I shan’t be a bit bored because there are so many birds up there — and Kiki is such a clown with them, it’s as good as a pantomime to watch her.”
Two days went by without anything exciting happening at all. Once they heard another aeroplane, but didn’t see it. More wreckage was thrown up on the beach from the unfortunate Lucky Star. The children bathed and ate and slept, and took ft in turns to keep watch, but they saw nothing to worry them at all.
Kiki always kept watch with Jack. Huffin and Puffin kept watch with Philip. Once another puffin came too near Philip for Huffin’s liking, and the bird ran at it with his head down, growling arrrrrrrr like an infuriated dog. Their big beaks locked together, and Philip almost cried with laughter as he watched the curious battle.
“The battle of beaks,” he called it, when he described it to the others afterwards. “Talk about stags locking their antlers together and fighting — those two puffins were every bit as fierce with their huge beaks.”
“Who won?” asked Lucy-Ann, with great interest. “Huffin, I suppose?”
“Of course,” said Philip. “He not only won, he chased the other one right into its burrow, and they both came out again at another entrance, with Huffin winning the race. I’m surprised the other poor bird had any feathers left by the time Huffin had finished with him.”
On the afternoon of the third day, Jack was sitting up on the top of the bird-cliff. It was his turn to look out. He gazed lazily out to sea. There was just a little more breeze that day, and the waves had frills of white as they came in to shore.
Jack was thinking about Bill. Where was he? What had happened to him? Had he been able to escape, and if so, would he come quickly to rescue the four children? And what was Aunt Allie thinking? Had she heard that there was no word from Bill, and was she worried?
Jack thought deeply about all these things, listening to the different cries of the sea-birds about him, and watching their graceful flight over the sea. Then his eyes suddenly picked out something far off out on the water.
He stiffened like a dog that suddenly sees something unusual. He reached down for his field-glasses and put them to his eyes. He had soon got the something out there into focus — and he saw that it was a small motor-boat.
“Enemies,” he thought, and was about to leap to his feet when he remembered that whoever was in the boat might also have glasses, and might see him. So he wriggled away on his tummy, and not until he was well down into the little valley did he jump up and run to the others.
“Hi!” he called breathlessly, as he tore down to Sleepy Hollow, where the others were having a laze. “There’s a boat coming!”