I heard Williams chuckling as he stooped over his engine. Thus,
chugging on merrily with the long oily roll of the sea under us, we
presently once more ran our surf, and this time had small difficulty
in winning through, for, once we felt the ground under us, we simply
sprang overboard and waded in, dragging the boat with us, waist-deep
sometimes in the flood, but on the whole quite safe.
My two pirate mates came down to the beach joyously, and helped us
unload. It seemed that they had made something of a hunt already, for
with much pride Jean now displayed to me certain birds, proof of his
own prowess with his shotgun.
"Some of 'em's good to eat," said he. "Regular greenheads, like we get
up North." I looked at the string of birds, and saw that they were
mallards and teals, a couple of dozen at least.
"Fie, fie!" said I. "I fear you've been shooting on the water."
"Sure I did! And here's four things that I don't suppose are good to
eat--they got kind of snaky heads, and red-colored, too. Ain't no
ducks good to eat that ain't got green heads."
"Each man to his taste," said I, "but if you like, you may have the
green heads, and I'll take these with the auburn locks."
"Pshaw! What are they?" answered he.
"Only canvasbacks," said I, "and good fat ones, too. What luck have
you, Jimmy, my son?"
"Well, I went along and helped carry things," said L'Olonnois.
"What's that you've got on a string?" I asked him.
"Oh, that," said he, flushing. "It ain't nothing but a little turtle.
It had funny marks on its back. I caught it in the grass over there
by the lake."
Something about Jimmy's little turtle interested me, and I picked it
up in my hands.
"For amateur sportsmen, gentlemen," said I, "you're doing pretty well.
Your funny little turtle, Jimmy, is nothing but a diamond-back
terrapin. There are perhaps more of them on this coast than anywhere
else in the world to-day. And Partial, here--that friend of ours now
leaping excitedly and joyously before them, barking at this little
turtle of Jimmy's--will perhaps be able to help you find some more of
them in the grass--the market hunters here hunt them with dogs, as
perhaps you did not know."
"We got some oysters, Sir," said Willy, coming forward shyly and
shamefacedly; and showed me the cockpit of the duck boat pretty well
filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm
which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down
below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs.
"Well," said I, "it looks as if we would fare pretty well for lunch.
John"--and I called my China boy--"again I find renewed cause for
felicitations on your rescue."