"Has anyone been poking around the reef lately?"
"We haven't," replied Rice. "Hugh stepped through the bottom of the boat about six weeks ago, and we haven't been able to find a plank that would fix it so far."
"That bottom had been promising to go for months!" Colby, ordinarily an extremely quiet and retiring youngster-he was the youngest of the five-came stoutly to his own defense. Nobody saw fit to dispute his statement.
"Anyway, we've got to go the long way around to the south shore now if we take a boat," added Rice. "There was a lollapalooza of a storm in December, and it shifted a brain coral bigger than the boat into the gate. Dad has been promising to dynamite it ever since for us, but he hasn't got around to it yet."
"Can't you persuade him to let us do it even yet?" asked Bob. "One stick would be enough, and we all know how to handle caps."
"Try to convince him of that. His only answer has been, 'When you're older' ever since I was old enough to pronounce the word."
"Well, how about the beach, then?" asked Bob. There were many beaches on the island, but the word had only one meaning to this group. "We could walk part of the south shore and grab a swim as we went around. I haven't been in salt water since I left last fall." The others agreed, and dispersed to collect the bicycles which were leaning against the school building.
The Hunter made good use of Bob's ears and eyes during the ride. He learned little from the conversation, but he did clarify considerably his mental picture of the island. Bob had not mentioned the small creek which wound down to the lagoon a couple of hundred yards from the school, and he had not noticed it himself on the trip to the boy's house; but this time the well-made wooden bridge which carried them over it caught his attention. Almost immediately after they passed the spot where Bob had stopped the jeep, then, three quarters of a mile from the school, the other boys stopped and waited while Bob pedaled up the drive to get his bathing suit. A quarter of a mile farther Rice did the same; then there was another small creek, this time carried under the road through a concrete culvert. The Hunter gathered.from several remarks made at this point that the boat to which Rice had referred was kept at the mouth of this watercourse.
Malmstrom and Colby in turn deposited their books and collected swimming trunks; and finally the group reached the Hay residence, at the end of the paved road and somewhat more than two miles from the school Here the bicycles were left, and the group headed westward on foot around the end of the ridgelike hill which formed the backbone of the island and on which all their houses were built.
Half a mile of traveling, partly along a trail through the jungle-thick growth of the ridge and partly through a relatively open grove of coconut palms, brought them to the beach; and the Hunter at last found a spot on earth that he recognized. The pool in which his shark had stranded was gone-storm and tide had done their usual work on the sandbanks-but the palm grove and the beach were the same. He had reached the spot where he had met Bob-the spot from which his search for the fugitive should have started had it not been for some incredibly bad luck; and the spot from which, without further argument, it would start.
Detectives and crime were far from the minds of the group of boys, however. They had wasted no time in getting into swimming costume, and Bob was already dashing toward the surf, ahead of the rest, his winter-bleached skin gleaming in odd contrast to the well-tanned hides of his young friends.
The beach, though largely composed of fine sand, contained many fragments of sharp coral, and in his haste the boy stepped hard on several of these before he could bring himself to a stop. The Hunter was doing his duty, so Bob saw no evidence of actual damage when he inspected the soles of his feet; he decided that he was simply oversensitive from several months in shoes, and resumed his dash for the water. Naturally he could not show that he had gone soft before his friends. The Hunter was pardonably annoyed-wasn't one lecture enough?-and administered the muscular twinges he had been accustomed to give his former host as a signal that he was going too far; but Bob was too tensed up to feel the signal and would not have known its meaning in any case. He churned into an incoming breaker, the others at his heels. The Hunter gave up his attempts at signaling, held the cuts closed, and seethed quietly. Granting that his host was young, he still should have better self-control, and should not throw the entire burden of maintaining his health on the Hunter. Something would have to be done.
The swim was short; as Bob had said, this was the only part of the island unprotected by the reef, and the surf was heavy. The boys decided in a few minutes that they had had enough. They emerged from the water, bundled their clothes into their shirts, and set off southward down the beach carrying the garments. Before they had gone very far the Hunter took advantage of Bob's gazing momentarily out to sea to advise him in strong terms to don his shoes. The boy allowed his common sense to override minor considerations of vanity and did so.
After the first few hundred yards the reef appeared again at the shore line and gradually drew farther away, so the amount of jetsam on the beach naturally decreased; but in spite of this they had one piece of good fortune-a twelve-foot plank, fourteen inches wide and perfectly sound, had somehow found its way through the barrier and been cast up on the sand (the boys carefully refrained from considering the possibility that it might have been washed around from the construction work on the other end of the island). With the damaged boat foremost in their minds they delightedly dragged the treasure above high-water mark, and Malmstrom wrote his name in the sand beside it. They left it there, to pick up on their return.
Aside from this the "south shore"-the nearly straight stretch of beach that extended for some three miles along the southwest side of the island's longer branch-yielded little of interest or value to any of the youthful beachcombers. Near the farthest point of their walk they encountered a stranded skate, and Bob, remembering how the Hunter had come ashore, examined it closely. He was joined by Hay; but neither got much for his trouble. The creature had evidently been there for some time, and the process of examination was not too pleasant.
"A good way to waste time, as far as we are concerned," the Hunter remarked as Bob straightened up. For once he had correctly guessed the boy's thoughts. Bob almost agreed aloud before he remembered that they were not alone.
Bob returned to his home late for supper. The plank had been borne, by their united efforts, to the mouth of the creek where the boat was kept, so the only concrete souvenir of the afternoon's activities that he brought home with him was the beginning glow of a very complete sunburn. Even the Hunter had failed to appreciate the danger or detect the symptoms early enough to get the boy back into his clothes before the damage had been done.
The alien, unlike Bob, was able to see one good point in the incident. It might be more effective than lectures in curing the boy's unfortunate increasing tendency to leave the care of his body to the Hunter. He said nothing this time, and let the sufferer do his own thinking as he lay awake that night trying to keep as much of himself as possible out of contact with the sheets. Bob was, as a matter of fact, decidedly annoyed with himself; he had not been so careless for years, and the only excuse he could find for himself was the fact that he had come home at such an odd time. Even he could see that this was not a very good one, which made it more annoying.