Hugh and Billy, lovers of surf-bathing, would fain have taken a dip into the breakers before going to sleep; but Alec sensibly counseled them against this.

“Wait till daylight If you shed your clothes now and go in, the mosquitoes will eat you alive before you’re dry again,” he warned them.  “Besides, it’s dangerous to go in around these shores in the darkness.  You might stumble into a hole or a sea-puss and be carried out to sea before you knew what had happened.  And Dave told me there are sharks that-----”

“Oh, forget it!” laughed Billy.  “We have no intention of furnishing supper to a shark.  Anyway, real, live, man-eating sharks are as scarce as hens’ teeth—–­almost.”

Nevertheless, being overruled by Hugh, who saw the wisdom of Alec’s advice, he promptly abandoned the desire for a plunge; and, as he soon learned, they did well to seek the protection of their smoke smudge, for the mosquitoes were truly formidable.  Even under the canopy of smoke, these noxious insects darted viciously to bite and torment the campers.  Time and time again, the boys were awakened from sleep by the attacks of these buzzing pests; but at last they grew more accustomed to such onslaughts, and pulling nets closely around their limbs and faces, they sank into deeper slumber.

* * * * * *

“The evening red, the morning gray
Sets the traveler on his way. 
The evening gray, the morning red
Brings showers down upon his head.”

Hugh whispered these words softly to himself when he awoke in the dim twilight hour just before dawn.  It was still too dark for him to distinguish objects clearly, and for a moment he felt that queer sensation of being lost, of not knowing just where he was—–­that feeling which sometimes comes to one even in the most familiar surroundings.  At once, however, it left him, and the little rhyme crept into his mind instead.

“Wonder why I waked up so suddenly?” was his silent query as he lay there blinking up at the sky, watching the few visible stars grow pale and paler.  “Thought I heard some noise like distant thunder, very far away, and then it changed into the sound of muffled oars, or the tchug-chug-tchug of a motor boat.  Then a voice said softly, ‘It’s a fine morn—–­’ Oh, pshaw!  Must have been dreaming.  Is anybody else awake?”

He sat up and peered through the dusk.  No, his companions were still asleep, prone on the sand.  The breeze had lessened and the nocturnal insects had begun to take flight into the shadowy undergrowth, retreating before the advance of day.  Across the dark stretch of water between this island and the mainland a flock of waterfowl flew noiselessly and vanished over the dunes.  The surf broke with monotonous, soothing rhythm, stirring the silence with little waves of sound.

“It must have been the surf I heard,” Hugh thought, still trying to decide what had roused him from sleep.