Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/138

 face of the swelling waters, but nothing in the semblance of a yacht rewarded their search.

The three-mile walk covered, they reached the remarkable sand formations, the work of the winds, dunes to a height of thirty feet above the shore line. The boys climbed to the top of one of these hillocks, and, bracing themselves against the full sweep of the wind, gazed first inland upon sandswept groups of scrub pines, scraggy and wind-bitten, a scene stark in its desolation, and then, from their coign of vantage, turned their eyes upon the thrilling grandeur of the ocean in tumult.

While Jimmy was still looking at the sea, Cat's eager glance roved over the depression between their observatory and the next hill. It rested on a strange looking whitish spot in the valley and grabbing the glasses from his companion, he inspected the spot for a moment, handed them back, and without a word of explanation scrambled, shovel in hand, to the base of the sand dune.

"What's the matter with you, Cat?" yelled Jimmy. "Gone batty?"

Cat's only answer was a desperate fit of