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.

“You’re not ahead of us,” Sally told them. “We saw rubbish washing up all along shore. A U-boat must have hit somebody out there.”

“We don’t claim we’ve located the U-boat,” admitted Ned, “but we did find an old bateau hidden under some mangroves.”

“At least five miles from any habitation,” added Jimmy.

“Oh, I thought they had something,” said Vera with a laugh. “If you had lived in this part of the country as long as I have, you’d be used to bateaux and old boats in all sorts of nooks.”

Kitty watched Brad’s face intently during this exchange, and finally their eyes met. His expression implied that he would tell her more later. There was no opportunity, however, in the next hour for them to talk privately. The boys were already preparing the shrimp for the pot, and Kitty quickly mixed the other ingredients.

The shrimp creole was soon cooking. In the meantime they sat on the sands around the campfire. Its warm glow was more than welcome in the biting salt air. Jimmy Barnes amused them with a hair-raising tale while they waited.

“The beach guard stopped to chat with us a few minutes ago,” Jimmy began.

The Coast Guard Station was several miles down the coast from the Marine Base. Kitty had seen very little of those men since she came to Palmetto Island.

“Jim asked the chap if he didn’t get lonesome down here,” put in Ned.

“‘Lonesome,’ said the guard, ‘why man, I’ve got a box seat at the livest show in America.’ Then he told us something that’ll make your eyes pop,” explained Jimmy. “About a week ago he said a sub was hit right in sight of Palmetto Island, and you’d never guess what they found aboard.”

“Cut out the suspense, Ned, and tell us what,” Vera ordered.

“Fresh bread wrapped in Bayshore Bakery paper.”

“No, not really!” exclaimed Kitty, recalling her interesting visit to the bakery, and the spicy little cakes each nutrition student had been given as a souvenir.

“Of course nobody can blame the Bayshore Bakery,” Jimmy hastened to say. “But it only goes to show that the U-boats are getting all sorts of supplies from our own towns. They say that bread was fresh—couldn’t have been more than a day old.”

“It’s hard to believe such things are going on,” said Lana Bright, her big brown eyes wide as she glanced anxiously toward the eastern horizon.

In the good old days there had always been steamers or small craft on the horizon, but now every ship that passed must be convoyed for protection against subs. Sally and Lana had been brought up on the southern coast and found it hard to realize that a death-dealing enemy could encroach on their childhood playground, as they had always considered the beach.

“And that’s still happening even after most people feel we’ve practically got the U-boat situation in hand,” commented Kitty.

“Yes, and when we take the complacent attitude that we’ve got any of this war business under control and sit down on the job there’s bound to be trouble,” stated Brad.

“That Coast Guard chap also told us about those oil tankers that were attacked right off this very shore last week,” continued Jimmy.

“I heard the firing!” exclaimed Kitty. “At first I thought it was thunder, but Dad said when he came home that a U-boat had been sunk out here.”

“And the guard saw the whole works,” Ned told them eagerly. “He said the tankers were going down-coast when the sub attacked them. In two minutes he had the Coast Guard Station over his walkie-talkie, and ten minutes later our planes were dropping depth bombs. And boy, they got that sub! I’d have given anything to be down here! Makes me wish I’d gone into the Coast Guard!”

After hearing all this Kitty felt still more uneasy about her experience earlier in the afternoon. Could it be possible that the man Billy had seen on the island was the same who owned that boat hidden in the mangroves? She had noticed no boat herself, but one certainly could have been hidden in the dense shrubbery that overhung the water.

Kitty was relieved when their supper was ready, and the hungry boys had been served. Vera poured the hot coffee, and Sally supplied them with fresh bread from the Bayshore Bakery.

“Makes you feel sort of funny, eating this bread and knowing the Germans have recently eaten bread out of the same kind of wrappers,” said Kitty, giving Brad a significant look as she handed him a high-piled plate.

“Let’s sit over on that palmetto log,” he suggested when she picked up her own plate.