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A faint chorus of singing birds reached the ears from across the water, and flocks of gulls and plovers were drying plaintively over the swelling banks of the praia, where their eggs lay in nests made in little hollows of the sand. Tracks of stray turtles were visible on the smooth white surface of the praia.
Turtles rustled beside the brink and slid into the water, cows plashed in the shallows, fishes leaped from the placid depths, a squirrel sobbed and fretted on a neighboring stump, a katydid across the lake maintained its hard, dry croak, the crickets chirped pertinaciously, but with little fatigued pauses, as if glad that their work was almost done, the grasshoppers kept up their continual chant, which seemed thoroughly melted and amalgamated into the summer, as if it would go on indefinitely, though the body of the little creature were dried into dust.
Did you get off 'n' shoot a butsy at the stretch bend? "'If I has a match I would, says Sweeney. 'I kin smoke it easy, 'n' then back in ahead of them turtles. "I know then the colt's good enough fur the stakes, 'n' I writes Miss Goodloe to see if I can use the fourteen hundred he's won to make the first payments. She's game as a pebble, 'n' says to stake him the limit.
The girls thanked him and went on crying. Then a dealer in turtles came by, and they told him their tale. He gave them a turtle and said: "Put it in the water-barrel in the yard." And then a man came by who sold wooden clubs. He asked them why they were crying. And they told him the whole story. Then he gave them two wooden clubs and said: "Hang them up over the door to the street."
She gave her coral necklace for four unhappy kittens, which had been tormented by some heartless lads, and tended them for days as gently as a mother, dressing their wounds with cold cream, feeding them with a doll's spoon, and mourning over them when they died, till she was consoled by one of Demi's best turtles.
As sluggishly determinate as two black turtles trailing along a white sand beach, her great dark eyes in her little pale face seemed headed suddenly toward some Far-Away Idea. "Oh go right on reading, Mr. Barton," nodded little Eve Edgarton. "Three superfamilies of turtles," began Barton all over again.
In addition to the eggs, moreover, half-a-dozen large turtles lay upon their backs close by. The flesh of these Guapo intended to scoop out and fry down, so as to be carried away as a sort of stock of preserved meat; and a very excellent idea it was. He had caught them during his watch as they came out of the water.
It is true, the wives of the three were very handy and cleanly within doors; and having learnt the English ways of dressing and cooking from one of the other Englishmen, who, as I said, was a cook's mate on board the ship, they dressed their husbands' victuals very nicely; whereas the other could not be brought to understand it; but then the husband, who as I said, had been cook's mate, did it himself; but as for the husbands of the three wives, they loitered about, fetched turtles' eggs, and caught fish and birds; in a word, any thing but labour, and they fared accordingly.
There was no danger from the turtles, as Guapo assured everybody, but the fright had chased away sleep, and they all lay awake for some time listening to Guapo's account of these singular creatures, which we shall translate into our own phraseology.
All that they saw had been done that same night; and it gave them no very pleasant feeling to know that the jaguar had been at work so near them. This animal, as Guapo said, in attacking the turtles, first turns them over, so as to prevent their escape for the "carapas" are of those tortoises that once upon their backs on level ground cannot right themselves again.
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