CHAPTER XIVA SAND TUNNEL
Life guards at the sea beaches are trained to act quickly in times of danger. Perched on their high bench, and ready with life lines, they are always on the alert to pull from the waves those who are likely to drown.
So it was that one of the guards saw Janet knocked down by a wave and saw her tumbling about in the surf. He knew there was a strong undertow, or sea puss, running. That is why the bathers had been ordered from the water. The tide had turned, and the sea puss became very strong after Ted and Janet left the water to play with the little dog.
“One side! I’ll get her out!” shouted the life guard, a jolly, red-haired, strong swimmer, Jerry Condon by name. “One side!” he yelled, as he leaped from his perch on the high bench and dashed down the sand and into the water.
So rapidly did the guard rush down that he had to push aside Ted, who was about to go into the water to splash about with Janet. Teddy was knocked down on the sand, and to one side. He was not hurt, though he was much surprised. The little Curlytop boy did not know about the sea puss until his sister called to him.
So quickly did Jerry Condon act that, almost before Janet had a chance to swallow any water and choke, the guard had her in his arms and was running up the beach with her.
An excited crowd gathered around, as always happens when a swimmer or bather is pulled from the surf, and Teddy joined them, not knowing just how it had all happened, so quickly did it take place.
“Janet! Janet! Are you all right?” he called.
“Yes, she’s all right,” answered another of the life guards. So quickly had the guard acted that Janet was little the worse from the accident, except that she was much frightened.
She had felt the strange and terrible grip of the undertow, or sea puss, on her legs and feet almost as soon as she entered the surf. She did not intend to go very far out, and she grasped the rope, as her mother had told her to do. But no sooner were her hands on it than it was torn from her grasp by the power of the under-sweeping current, running down the sloping hill of the sandy beach. Then Janet had screamed and the guard had come to her rescue.
“Are you all right now, my dear?” asked a lady in the crowd. She was holding Janet in her arms.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m all right, I guess,” Janet answered in a choking voice, for the salt water seemed to stick in her throat. “Is Teddy all right?” she wanted to know.
“Yes, Jan, I’m here,” he answered, and the crowd, hearing his voice, opened that he might pass the circle of curious ones and get to his sister.
“I’m glad you didn’t get in the sea puss,” said Janet, as she struggled to her feet. “It was terrible!”
“I was coming in right after you,” Teddy said, “but——”
“I guess I knocked you out of the way in my hurry,” said Jerry Condon. “Hope I didn’t hurt you,” he added.
“Oh, no, I’m all right,” Teddy answered.
As the surf and the undertow was getting too rough for even skillful swimmers to be out in it, the bathers came from the water, and, after a time, Teddy and Janet went back to their cottage. Their mother at once guessed from their faces that something had happened, and she was quite alarmed when the story was told.
“I think I won’t let you go down to the beach alone any more,” she decided.
“Oh, Mother! we’ll be real careful,” pleaded Janet. “Every time before I go in I’ll ask the life guard if it’s all right. And if he says there’s a bad sea puss I won’t go in.”
“I won’t, either,” promised Teddy.
“Well, we shall see about it,” remarked Mrs. Martin. “At any rate, don’t go in again to-day,” and the Curlytops didn’t.
There were enough other ways of having fun at Sunset Beach without going in the water to swim or bathe, and Janet and Teddy did not lack for amusements. Left to themselves, since Trouble was not well enough to come out and play, the brother and sister, after lunch, wandered about planning different things.
“I know what we can do,” said Teddy, after a while, during which time he had been tossing a ball about and Janet had put a new dress on one of her dolls.
“What can we do?” she asked.
“Go fishing,” Teddy answered.
“You mean out in the fish boat like you did and get a shark?” asked the little girl. “I don’t like sharks.”
“I don’t, either,” agreed the Curlytop boy. “But I didn’t mean go fishing that way. I meant stay on shore.”
“How can you fish on shore?” laughed his sister.
“You know what I mean!” retorted Teddy. “We’ll stay on shore and throw our hooks into the water. There’s a good place down by the inlet, and I saw a fellow catch some big eels there the other day.”
“I wouldn’t like to catch an eel,” objected Janet. “They wiggle too much!”
“That’s what makes it fun!” laughed Ted. “Come on! I’ll get the poles and dig some worms.”
“You needn’t dig me any worms,” declared Janet. “You know I don’t like ’em.”
“What you going to bait your hook with, then?”
“I’ll get a piece of meat from Norah, like I did before.”
“Pooh! Fish won’t bite on meat from the butcher shop.”
“Crabs bite on meat,” said Janet.
“Well, fish aren’t crabs,” was what Ted answered, as he went off to dig some worms. “But you aren’t afraid of clams, are you?” he called back to his sister.
“Course not! Who’s afraid of a clam?” she demanded.
“Well, then I’ll get you a clam and you can put him on your hook and you’ll catch a fish,” said Teddy.
Teddy dug some worms for himself back of the cottage, and then, having arranged the lines, poles and hooks, he and Janet went down to the inlet. This was a sort of shallow river where the sea came in and up through a low place in the sand dunes, and at certain times of the tide the fishing was good there.
Sea clams, which are different from hard clams or soft clams, could be dug in the sand, and Teddy soon had two or three for his sister. He cracked the shells on a stone and took out the firm meat of the clam from inside. This he put on Janet’s hook for her.
“I’ll bait it the first time,” he told his sister. “But after that you’ve got to do it yourself.”
“All right,” she agreed. “But maybe if I catch one fish that will be enough and I won’t have to bait my hook again.”
“Maybe,” said Teddy, but he did not believe it. Often he had to bait his hook a number of times before he caught even one small fish.
The Curlytops sat on the edge of the bank at the inlet and began fishing. Teddy had baited his hook with a worm, and Janet was fishing with clam. This, in itself, was a good thing to do, for on some days fish will take one kind of bait, and the next day they will want something else. So when you go fishing, or rather, when two of you go, it is well to take different kinds of bait, for you never can tell what a fish will like.
The tide was coming in slowly, and Teddy said this was a good sign, as the fish came in from the sea with the tide to feed in the inlet.
“Captain Oleson told me so,” declared Teddy.
For some time the Curlytops did not appear to be going to have any luck. Again and again Teddy drew his hook, with its wiggling worm, up from the water, to see if it had been nibbled at. But there was no sign of a fish having been near it.
“Why don’t you pull up your hook and see if you’ve had a nibble,” Ted urged his sister, after a time.
“Oh, I don’t want to,” she answered. “I could tell if I had a bite ’cause my pole would jiggle.”
And just then, to her own great surprise and that of her brother, Janet’s pole gave a big “jiggle.”
“Oh, you’ve got a bite! Pull up! Pull up!” shouted Ted. “I’ll help you!”
He sprang to his feet, letting go his own pole, and started to run to where Janet sat.
“I can pull up my own fish!” she told him.
She gave her pole a hard yank, and something long and twisting was pulled from the water of the inlet. Over Janet’s head it sailed, flapping on the grass behind her.
“Oh, you’ve caught an eel! You’ve caught a big eel!” yelled Teddy.
“I don’t want an eel! I don’t like ’em! Take him off!” and Janet covered her eyes with her hands, for she really felt a little afraid of eels—they were so much like snakes, she said.
“He’s a good, big eel, and lots of folks like ’em to eat!” declared Ted, as he scrambled up the bank toward the place where Janet’s eel had fallen when she whipped it up in the air over her head.
But that particular eel was not destined to be fried. As Teddy reached the creature and made a dive to get hold of it, the eel squirmed off the hook.
“Look out! He’s going to get away!” shouted Teddy.
And the eel did get away. Over the grass it squirmed and wiggled until, reaching the edge of the bank, it flopped over, splashed down into the water and swam away. It had only been lightly hooked, and Janet had thrown it loose from the sharp point. So there was one happy eel, at any rate.
“Aw, he got off!” said Teddy, in disappointed tones. “Just like the turtle!”
“I’m glad he did,” Janet declared.
“You should have let me pull him in,” went on her brother. “I’d ’a’ got him, sure.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” went on Janet. “I want to catch a real fish. Is my bait gone?”
“Yes, the eel nibbled all the clam off,” Teddy answered. “But I’ll put another piece on for you,” and this he did, very kindly.
When Teddy went back to where he had thrown down his pole to run to try and catch the eel, the Curlytop boy found, to his delight, that he, too, had a bite.
“Oh, I’ve got one! I’ve got one!” he shouted.
And when he pulled up he did, really, have a fish. It was the kind called a lafayette, or sometimes, the spot, the latter name being given the fish because it has a small, round black spot on either side, just back of the head.
“Oh, I wish I could catch one of those,” Janet exclaimed, and a little later she had that luck.
From then on the Curlytops caught several lafayettes, and they had enough for a “mess,” as Norah called their catch. She cleaned and cooked the fish for supper, and very good they were.
“What you going to do now, Teddy?” asked Janet the next day, when she saw him starting off toward the beach with the wooden sand mill he had made.
“I’m going to have some fun,” was the answer. “I’m going to dig a tunnel and then I’m going to make a hill of sand and let the grains run off the hill down on my sand-mill paddles and turn it.”
“I’ll come and help you,” offered Janet.
“Well, don’t let Trouble come,” urged Ted. “He’ll only cave in the tunnel after I make it.”
“Trouble is too sick to come,” Janet said. “Mother has sent for the doctor.”
“Oh, is he as sick as that?” Teddy asked.
“Oh, Mother said she don’t guess he is very sick,” Janet replied. “But she wants to see if it’s measles or anything like that. I guess he’ll be all right.”
The Curlytops, with their sand pails and shovels, went down on the beach to play. They saw Mr. and Mrs. Keller just ahead of them.
“We’re going to have another look for the keys and the ring,” explained Mr. Keller to the children.
“We hope you find them,” said Teddy, politely.
“Thank you,” responded Mrs. Keller, but there was no look of hope on her face.
Teddy decided to dig a long, deep tunnel before he made the hill for his sand mill, and he at once set at this play. Janet decided she would dig a well in the sand, making it so deep that water would appear in the bottom, as she had often done before.
The Curlytops were digging a little way apart, and Janet had seen the first little trickle of water in her well when she heard Ted call:
“Look at me! Look at me!”
Janet looked. All she could see of her brother was his head. He had crawled down into the sand tunnel he had dug, and it was a large tunnel slanting down into the sand.
As Janet looked, something happened. The sand began to slip and slide, and a moment later it had covered Ted from sight.
The sand tunnel had caved in on him!