Ross had dropped her off while it was still dark and the tide was partly out. She had watched the terns wake, and spent the day making notes, photographs and sketches. The tide had come up, gone down, and was now coming up again. Now, it was getting dark and she was watching the terns go to sleep for the night.
Soon, Ross would be arriving to pick her up and take her out to eat. Earlier, she’d eaten a breakfast turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes and a similar lunch turkey sandwich and two apples. And taken lots of tern notes. Finally.
Earlier in the week, Dana had started to wonder if she would ever get any research done, but now she'd done the equivalent of three days of work in a single day. Thinking about it irritated her slightly. It was not her preferred method of working. She would rather have had a leisurely breakfast, spend 3-4 hours taking notes, come back to camp for a swim and some reading time, and start over the next day. But she might have come at the same time every day and not noticed the differences in behavior with dawn and dusk. So she had to be grateful to Ross for suggesting the idea. Ross, after all, she reminded herself, had more experience at this than she did.
It was too dark to see the terns now, but still desperately hot. She stripped down and waded into the cold water. She had just resurfaced when she saw an approaching light. She ran in, pulled her clothes crookedly onto her damp body and stood with her day pack full of gear at the docking cove waiting for Ross, but when the boat came closer, she saw in the faint bow light that it was not Ross at the helm.
Part 40
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