CHAPTER V

AN EXPLORING PARTY

It was soon after the excitement of our finding Rosemary’s old diary, and our unsuccessful hunt for the map it described, that Uncle Joe decided the time had come for us to explore the Island.

At first his idea had been for just Dan, Sydney and himself to go, but the rest of us set up such a howl of dismay, he had to revise his plans.

Even Aunt Mollie and Andrée declared they weren’t going to be left out of the fun, and promised they wouldn’t mind hard walking, or getting tired, or anything. While as for Uncle Charles, he insisted that sleeping out of doors in that warm balmy air was exactly what he needed to entirely complete his cure. Dan and he had done such steady work on the path-weeding lately that Uncle Charles said his muscles had grown nearly as hard as when he was a track-man at college, and offered to bet us he’d come pretty close to tiring any of us out at tramping over rough ground.

So, in the end, the entire party started out one morning just before sunrise, in order to cover as much distance as possible before the heat of the day set in. We each had a small pack strapped over our shoulders except Aunt Mollie, who wasn’t allowed to carry anything but a heavy stick to help her in walking, and a small canvas bag on her arm, which she jokingly called “Mother Robinson’s bag” after the famous one in “The Swiss Family Robinson” that contained such a marvelous assortment of necessary articles.

Aunt Mollie wouldn’t tell us what was in her bag, but it looked quite fat, though it didn’t weigh much when I lifted it once. She informed us mysteriously we’d find out, all in good time.

Mr. Jean Carreau had told Uncle Joe the Island was about five miles long by three wide, and, as we wanted to make the circuit of it on the beach first, before striking inland at the hilly end, we figured we had about a sixteen-mile walk ahead of us.

By taking things easily, on account of the heat and Uncle Charles, Aunt Mollie and little Reddy, we’d probably average about five miles, or possibly six, a day, which meant three nights, at least, out in the open.

I had always longed to sleep out-of-doors--right under the sky, you know, without even a tent to shut me in, and I guess probably I was the most excited member of the party when we started.

Dan and Syd had camped out in the woods for a week every summer, back home, and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had done it often when they were first married, while Uncle Joe was as used to sleeping without a roof over him as with one.

Andrée seemed a little doubtful, I thought, as to just how much she was going to enjoy the new experience, but she was very sweet about wanting to do her full share of carrying our camp stuff, and made no fuss over snakes or the other crawling creatures she was afraid of meeting.

Perhaps one reason for that was that we kept to the beach, and there wasn’t much chance of running into anything alive there, unless it were a turtle or some kind of stranded jelly-fish left by the tide.

It was beautiful, walking along the water’s edge, on the firm, wet sand in the coolness of early morning. On account of the barrier reef that went all the way round the Island there wasn’t any surf on the beach, just a pleasant gentle little lapping sound of ripples curling against the shelving sand.

The sky was all lit up with the glory of the sunrise--pink and gold and purple and flaming red-orange along the clouds, and then quite suddenly the big red ball of the sun poked its edge over one monstrous, darker cloud to look at us.

We walked south along the beach, steadily, until the sun grew too warm for comfort, which was about ten o’clock. By that time we had rounded the little promontory which up to then had cut off our view of the beach beyond it, from our landing place.

The trees grew closer to the water at this point, and seemed freer of underbrush, so Uncle Joe picked it as a good place to camp until afternoon. Dan and he took their machetes and went ahead of us to clear a space big enough for us to spread our blankets in, in the shade. Also, to relieve Andy’s fears of snakes, they made a thorough search of the thicket around the little clearing and pronounced it free from dangerous inhabitants.

At first we were all glad just to sprawl out on the blankets and rest, but after our backs and legs had stopped aching (walking on sand is terribly hard on the muscles, till you’re used to it), we youngsters began to get restless. We hadn’t been idle as long as that since we left the _Myra_, and we couldn’t seem to settle down to waiting, with nothing to do, for four or five hours till it was time to go on to our next camping place for the night.

But Aunt Mollie didn’t let us fidget long. She picked up the little canvas bag we’d been so curious about, and opening it, took out a whole bunch of neatly sharpened pencils and a large pad of yellow paper, sheets of which she passed around to everybody.

“You’ll have to contrive something hard to write on,” she said. “A flat piece of driftwood, or your packs--whatever you like. But we’re going to hold a sort of outdoor gypsy school. Your Uncle Joe and I have been talking it over, and we decided that there ought to be a few lessons--even on Sunset Island--and one of the courses we elected for you is astronomy. Uncle Joe, who knows the stars like old friends, from his ship’s bridge, is hereby appointed teacher, and it seemed to us that tonight, when we’re all going to sleep without anything between us and the planets and constellations, would be a very good time to begin learning to know them all by name. What do you think of the plan?”

As this sounded quite a different thing from ordinary stuffy school rooms and exercise books, we were enthusiastic about trying it, and Uncle Joe, with our help, cleared a patch of sandy soil about three feet square, smoothing it out all flat and hard.

Then we sat about in a circle, and with a sharp-pointed twig he began to draw little crosses in the sand, each of which represented a star, or planetary system, and we copied them off, in exactly their positions and relations to each other, on our yellow sheet writing after each cross the name of the star as he told it to us.

After we’d studied them for a few minutes, he made us reverse the papers, then he’d quiz us in turn on the names, jumping here and there over the three-foot sky map.

It was great fun, when we began tripping each other up and asking questions about what lay beyond the limits of our map, and from that we got Uncle Joe reminiscing about sea days, when he first learned to know the stars.

Before we knew it, it was time for our noon meal; then we all felt hot and sleepy and took cat-naps for an hour, after which we were ready to pack up and continue our exploring tour.

That night we camped on the warm sand beyond the high water-line, and slept as cosily, wrapped in our blankets, under the eyes of our new friends, the stars, as if we’d been in our beds at Planter’s House, now more than six miles behind us.

The second day of our walking trip was much like the first, except that the beach we found on the opposite side of the Island was much richer in beautiful and unusual shells than our side.

We could hardly go on walking at times, we kept finding so many lovely things to hold us at every step, and we had to throw simply pounds and _bushels_ of shells away from time to time, because we accumulated so many more than we could possibly carry.

That night we slept on the beach again, and Uncle Joe held a class on shells and the queer sea animals that live in them, before he went to sleep.

All the morning after we made a game of this; so many counts to anybody who knew the name of a shell he or she picked up; of course allowing more credits for the rarer shells, or the more brilliantly colored ones.

Andrée, to everybody’s surprise--including her own--came out with the most credits, but she took her honors so modestly and prettily that we couldn’t begrudge her the prize of a tiny carved silver conch shell Uncle Joe had bought years before in India, and which he always wore on his watch chain.

We had often admired the lovely, delicate fluting on the shell, and Andy was tickled to pieces, now, as you may imagine, actually to own it. Aunt Mollie found her a length of narrow black watch ribbon in her Mother Robinson bag, and Andy promptly hung the shell around her neck for a good luck piece.

That third day we made such progress, having by that time got our muscles hardened up a bit, that Uncle Joe told us if we kept on an extra hour or two after our usual camping time, we’d be able to sleep in Planter’s House instead of outdoors that night.

But somehow, we all wanted one more camp, and voted to stop walking earlier and find a specially good place. Then we could start for home about sunrise next morning, and be in the house before the heat commenced.

All the way, after our noon rest, we searched the jungle growth along the beach, each of us hoping to be the one to discover the ideal camp site for the end of our hike.

Of course we realized that maybe nobody would find it, and we’d have to be content with the beach for the third time, but since we’d sort of formed a habit of making a game of everything we did on this trip, we made a game of “Find-the-Camp-Site” too.

And sure enough, we did find it, or rather Reddy did--quite unintentionally.

We were at the hilly end of the Island, where the slope, instead of being a gradual one, went up pretty steeply almost from the edge of the beach, in a series of bush-grown cliffs.

The boys, including Reddy, had been amusing themselves for half an hour or so, by climbing up the sides of these cliffs a little way, and jumping down on the soft sand below, daring each other every time to go higher and higher.

All at once there was a frightened scream from Reddy, and he disappeared backward into the low brush, exactly as if the earth had opened suddenly and swallowed him up.

Everybody exclaimed and scrambled up the cliff, catching at vines and bushes to help them go faster. But when we got to where Reddy had been, there was no one to be seen--only a big black hole in the side of the hill, with some loose sandy earth sliding down the sides of it.

But if we couldn’t see Reddy, we could hear him howling vigorously, so we knew he was alive, and not far away.

Syd got there before anyone else, and flung himself flat on the ground, with his head thrust into the hole through which the smallest member of our expedition has disappeared.

“Reddy!” he shouted. “It’s all right; we’re coming. How far down do I drop? Stop bawling, kid. You’re not hurt really.”

We heard a sound like sniffing, and guessed, with huge relief, that Reddy was more frightened than hurt after all.

By the time we were near enough to look into the hole, Syd had let himself down, feet first, into the darkness inside, holding with both hands to a particularly tough vine that hung over one of the edges. Then he, too, had disappeared, but the next moment his voice came up to us excitedly:

“_Sa-ay_, there’s a huge big cave in here, folks! Uncle Joe, reach me down your pocket torch, please, I want to look the place over before any more of you come down.”

Uncle Joe complied, and crowding close about the opening, we could see the flicker of the flashlight moving about like a giant firefly, as Syd and Reddy circled the cave.

Then Syd called to us again:

“Come on in, everybody, the water’s fine! We’ve got our camp site all right! There’s a big cave here, as dry and nice as you’d want, with a sandy floor. Be careful to hold on to that vine coming down, and it’s not much of a drop.”

One by one, beginning with Gay Annersley, and ending with Uncle Joe, who had stayed behind to steady the rest of us down the steep slope, we climbed carefully down to the level of the cave floor.

As soon as our eyes became accustomed a bit to the dimness inside, we could see that it was indeed, as Syd had said, a huge cave.

The floor was soft sand, cool and clean when you touched it, and as smooth as if it had lain there undisturbed through centuries of time. The roof was so far above our heads we couldn’t see it.

“Why, you could camp a whole ship’s company in here,” Uncle Joe said in a surprised tone. And added thoughtfully, “You’d never in the wide world find them either, unless they meant you to.”

A sudden thought made my heart beat so violently it seemed to jump right up into my throat.

“_What_ ship’s company?” I stammered eagerly. “Not--oh, Uncle Joe, you don’t suppose it could have been--_Morgan’s_?”