Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/242

  milksop!' and at that moment there came from up the beach a musical bay which tolled out like a church-bell and died lingeringly away, to be drowned in the crash of the breakers; again this mournful note welled forth, rising like the voice of a bell-buoy above the roar of the surf, and this time it ended in a series of short, excited barks—such a bark as a hound gives when he has 'treed.'

"Claud sprang to his feet. 'He's found something!' he cried, and began to run down the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon we came upon Dixie, whovwas very carefully uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle's eggs.

"Deshay was for eating his fill then and there, but this I would not permit, so we gathered them up and carried them back to the others, where we proceeded to divide them.

" 'Give Dixie his share,' said I to Deshay, who had undertaken the division.

" 'Give Dixie nothin',' he snarled back at me. And then he added: 'Why, you Dutch [ 226 ]