------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER TEN THE BEACH PARTY It was four o’clock by the time Kitty came ashore on Palmetto Island at a landing spot a block behind her house. She sent Billy home with an armful of bundles to bring Jane down to help with the unloading. There was many a job to be done in the next hour, but Kitty had learned how to make every minute count. She put the groceries in the closet and the perishable food in the ice box, she planned the evening meal for her father and Billy, and had just put on her slacks when Vera drove up and honked the horn. It was nice to sit back, temporarily free of responsibility, and enjoy her ride across the island with the competent Vera at the wheel. In the basket at her feet were the ingredients for Chief Krome’s famous shrimp creole, all except the shrimp which the boys were at that moment catching. The drive to the beach carried them over a half dozen bridges, spanning marshy inlets. Finally they rolled off the pavement into a sand-rutted road, winding through a palmetto thicket. The station wagon turned off finally to the hard beach, and they rolled along within a few feet of the tumbling breakers. As Kitty looked across the blue-green water mottled with whitecaps, she found it difficult to believe that enemy subs might, at that very moment, be lurking in the cool depths. “Somebody sent down a boat off shore in the last twenty-four hours,” said Sally. “Look at that oily scum on the water, and the junk floating ashore.” The receding tide had left part of a water-soaked bunch of bananas right in their path, while crates, bottles, empty boxes and splintered timbers bobbed up and down on the tide. “We have just three hours to fix our chow, eat and get out of here,” said Vera, “or I’ll never get through that sandy road without lights.” “I suppose it is too close to the beach to use headlights in there,” said Judy. They all knew that no lights were permitted anywhere along the entire shore, and that the beach was even more carefully patrolled at night than in the day. “I don’t care to get stuck on a sandy road again,” said Vera. They were to meet the boys a mile downshore where an inlet cut through the beach to join the sea. The boys had already been shrimping a couple of hours in the shallows of this inlet. When the station wagon turned a sharp bend in the beach the girls saw a curl of smoke rising beyond a large sand dune that shielded the light of the campfire from possible watchers at sea. Vera had to keep the car to a narrow strip of beach between the rolling dry dunes and the breakers. When the boys saw them pull up behind the dune they came trotting over to help unload. “We’ve got the nicest mess of shrimp you ever saw,” boasted Ned Miller proudly. “How long have you been here?” asked Kitty. “Long enough to catch something more than shrimp,” retorted Jimmy.