Butfor Marian in the midst of her hungry, grimy little flock the incident was far from closed. Indeed, it was only begun.
When their food was all gone but the can of tomatoes and a part of the crackers, she made up her mind that nothing but accidental help could be looked for. No one, not even her parents, knew anything about Smugglers’ Island, and probably they were thought to have perished in the storm. Perhaps Mr. Pearson had been swamped and drowned. In the course of time some one would come into San Moros for something,—Indians hunting turtles maybe,—but it might be long months before they saw a human being besides themselves. There was no one to rely upon but themselves; whatever was done they must do themselves.
Looking at the cluster oftousledheads, Marian set her teeth together and clenched her hands tightly. The fierce protective spirit ofmotherhood swept over her. They were hers, these little ones; come what would, they should not perish, they should be fed, sheltered, cared for. They should have their child’s rights of tender love and happiness. Esther, running up just then, was caught in a close embrace and kissed fervently.
The Cave afforded the best shelter for night that they could find. As soon as things were dried up a little from the storm, Marian set about improving it somewhat. For tools she had only the hatchet, Esther’s spade, the dig-spoon, and Delbert’s knife and lariat.
With the hatchet she cut sticks and brush and with the lariat dragged them up to the Cave, where she and Delbert made them as best they could into a sort of roof for the space between the Cave and the big rock in front. It was crude work, of course, but it gave shade and to some extent served as a wind-break, at least. It was just high enough to stand up under.
A place to cook over was soon made of a few rocks, and then Marian turned her attention to the securing of food other than crabs and clams. First there was the banana-patch. Not findingany good way of reaching up to the bunch they found there, they cut the stalk it was on, first looking carefully to see that there was no other bunch on the same stalk. Later on they learned that each stalk bears but a single bunch anyway.
Unquestionably those were the worst bananas that Marian had ever seen in her life. Not only was the fruit small and dwarfed, but about half of each banana was a dry, brown pith, while what remained was very far from being good. But they were food, and Marian conveyed that bunch of bananas to the Cave with the greatest of care.
Then with the hatchet and knife they cut down a great many other stalks and dragged them out of the way, so that they could get about in the patch and see what was there. It was not the pleasantest work in the world, for they had to keep a sharp lookout for ugly, crawling things. They found, however, several other sickly-looking bunches and quite a number of birds’ nests. These last Marian was careful to leave undisturbed.
Delbert was anxious to fly a signal flag, andas Marian was wearing an extra petticoat, she decided to dedicate it to that purpose.
But it was a question where was the best place to fly it. There were no very tall trees, and no place where it did not seem to her that a flag would blend with the background. She had really very little hope of its doing any good, but she did not suggest that to the children.
At last they picked out a tree and, after considerable discussion as to ways and means and several ineffectual attempts, finally succeeded in attaching the white skirt to one of the higher branches, where Delbert was sure it would be seen if any one chanced into San Moros.
Delbert was continually mourning that they had no fishhooks and lines. He and Bobbie had been famous fishers,—in their own estimations, at least,—and he was quite sure that if he only had a hook and line he would be able to haul out innumerable fish from the quiet water about the little rock pier. Marian searched through their belongings and not a hook could she find, and all her thread was rather fine. But though crabs and clams were good, it took a great many of them to satisfy five people three times a day, and ittook more time to prepare them than Marian wanted to spend. She declared that she would not open the can of tomatoes till they were actually starving and could not get anything else, and she put them on an allowance of one cracker apiece each meal. Davie often howled for more, but Marian resolutely put them where he could not get them for himself, and his lusty wails availed him nothing.
A few quail occasionally wandered into Delbert’s traps and from there into Marian’s kettle, but Marian was not content, and one day she braided her hair in two braids down her back and tried her hand at making fishhooks out of her wire hairpins. She had not brought her shears with her, but in her bag was a pair of little buttonhole scissors that could be made to serve as plyers, perhaps, and her pretty pearl-handled penknife had a nail-file on one blade. She could not put barbs on her hooks, but she could sharpen them with the file. As one hairpin by itself was not strong enough, she straightened out three and bound them tightly together with embroidery silk.
After working faithfully all her spare time,one day she finished a hook that she and Delbert were both sure would work. Then came the question of a line.
“Delbert,” she said, “quite a while ago wasn’t Bobbie’s Uncle Jim teaching you boys how to braid round whiplashes? Yes? Well, do you remember now how he did it?”
“I guess I do,” said the boy slowly; “but you haven’t got near enough thread to make a line strong enough to amount to shucks. That colored silk would be all right, but you’ve got only a teenty bit of that.”
Marian smiled. “Why is your rope better than a common one?” she asked him.
“’Cause it’s hair and it won’t rot and wear out like the fiber ones.”
Marian was unbraiding one of the long braids that hung over her shoulder and with the scissors she snipped out here and there, where it would not show, quite a number of tresses.
“Here,” she said, “you get busy now and let’s see if you know how to braid a nice, smooth, round line, and then you can show me how, too.”
“O Marian, your pretty, pretty hair!”
“Yes, I know; it has been my pretty hair allmy life, and it’s high time it was useful as well as ornamental.”
But it took a long time to braid the line, and food had to be secured meantime. Food!—that was the main topic of conversation,—to find clams, to get big crabs, to make traps and set and watch them afterwards. Never a fish was sighted but they wondered if it was good to eat; never a bird flew over but they discussed whether or not it would cook up tender. Delbert used to go twice a day, at least, to look over his traps. Simple things they were, made of sticks fastened together with strips of rag torn from the towel that had been wrapped around the bread, and afterwards of the fibrous stems of the banana leaves. Every day he saw rabbits, and one day he threw a stone that hit one on the head and stunned it, and he despatched it with his knife. He did not seem to mind killing the things that got into his traps, and Marian was glad he did not, since it had to be done.
It was after the rabbit incident that the little boy came in one day from making the round of the traps, holding by the tail a good-sized rattlesnake.
“Mercy!” cried Marian, “how did you kill that?”
“With sticks and stones,” he answered. “He was right there in the path by my last trap, and I settled his hash in a jiffy. Say, Marian, he looks nice and fat. Bobbie’s Uncle Jim says they are as good eating as eel.”
Marian gasped, “Snakes!” But the clams were getting scarce in the immediate vicinity, and she had even begun to imagine that the crabs were not quite so plentiful on the little sand-beaches.
“The history says,” continued Delbert, “that when the Spaniards were conquering this country and South America, sometimes when parties were sent out to go to places and got lost and wandered around, they had to eat roots and snakes and toads.”
Marian was thinking she had certainly heard of people eating rattlesnakes and—well—“All right,” she said, turning away to the construction of the fishline, “you skin it, Delbert, and I’ll cook it.”
The filtered water in the demijohn did not last very long, of course, and when it was gone Marian marshaled all hands to clean out thespring. She usually marshaled all hands when there was anything to be done, because somehow she could not bear to have any of the children out of her sight for any length of time. When they were with her she knew they were safe. True, there seemed to be little danger of any kind, save that they were surrounded with plenty of water to drown in, and there was no knowing how many more rattlesnakes the Island might possibly contain.
She had hoped that when she got the stones cleared away the spring would reveal itself as something extra good in the way of water-supply, but it did not. Indeed, she was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that it was no spring at all, only a shallow little well.
In the rainy season the water falling on these islands sinks into the sand and stays there. One could find fresh water any time by digging at a little distance back from the beach, where the sand lay in hills and hollows, and Marian concluded that the only reason why the water came to the surface in that particular spot was because it was situated in a decided depression of the ground.
So she dug and scooped till she had a hole with about a foot of water in it, and then she smoothed the sides and laid rocks so the sandy soil should not cave in. From the tracks abounding in the vicinity she concluded that the deer and burros both were accustomed to drink there, and while she was willing that they should continue to do so, she did not want them poking their noses into the very pool that she must dip from for her little flock; so she made a cover with some sticks and pieces of driftwood and some stones to keep them in place, and then, to be still surer, she hollowed out another place for her four-footed neighbors. The old dig-spoon and the little spade were her chief tools in these labors.
“Dear me! Delbert,” she said playfully, “why didn’t we have sense enough to bring a hoe and shovel with us?”
“Huh!” he retorted gloomily, “if we had had any sense we’d have stayed at home.”
“There may be something in that too,” she answered.
“I know what I could do if you had brought your shears,” spoke up Jennie.
“What, dear?”
“I’d cut a thing from this,” holding up the piece of tin cut from the end of one of the cans of corn, “that Delbert could spear fish with.”
Delbert stared at her a minute, and then with one of his nervously quick movements possessed himself of the ragged bit of tin.
Marian had opened the can with his knife. He looked at it a moment and spoke excitedly. “We could! It wouldn’t be like a regular spear-head, but we could catch ’em. I know just how the Indians throw them. Bobbie has one, but he’s never caught anything yet.”
The idea was certainly worth trying. Marian would not ruin her precious buttonhole scissors cutting tin with them, but she scratched the pattern in the bit of tin and then went over it with the tip of the butcher-knife, denting it; and the dents, made deeper and deeper, finally became holes, and then soon there was her spear-head, such as it was, needing only to be smoothed up a little and filed and bound on the end of a smooth, slender stick that Delbert had been preparing.
Marian split the end of the stick a little andslipped in the bit of tin and bound the stick with thread that she had doubled and twisted till it was strong enough to suit her, then tied the lariat rope to the other end of the stick.
Delbert spent the next day in exercising the new tool. His patience was certainly marvelous. Hour after hour went by with no success, but he was sure he would be successful some other time.
“I’ll get on to it after a while,” he said, as they ate their supper of hot clam soup. “Those Indians at the Port catch them right along.”
“The thread will soon rot out,” said Marian. “I ought to have wire to wrap the end with; copper wire would be best. There are two hairpins left, but they are so short I can’t fix them, I’m afraid.”
It was fully a week afterwards before it dawned upon her that she had in the edge of her hat-brim a nice piece of copper wire that just filled the bill, and though its removal left the brim rather droopy, that was a small matter.
Their supper they always ate at the Cave, as the light of their fire could be seen far out from there; but breakfasts and dinners were usuallyeaten down on the beach to save the trouble of carrying food and water up the hill. Marian had built a second place for cooking down in the shadow of the big rocks where they had eaten their first dinner on the Island, and the children had dug a well in a hollow of the sand not far off, which they used, although the water did not seem to be so good as that on the other side of the Island, having more of a salty flavor.
As Marian was carefully dipping water from the beach well one morning, Jennie and Esther came running to her in great excitement.
“O Marian, come quick! The High-Tide Pool is full of fish, and Delbert is going to spear them all!”
This was interesting, certainly. The High-Tide Pool was down quite a way from where they had the well and the cooking-place. It was beyond the sandy beach, where the rocks ran down into the water. When the tide was high it had considerable depth, and ran back into a little cave among the rocks, but at low tide the water was only two or three feet deep in its deepest part, which was in the cave.
Sometimes they had seen a few little fish in itbefore, but that morning the little girls had gone down and found it well stocked.
Probably just as the tide was going out, a great number had taken refuge there. Perhaps some enemy was lurking outside and they dared not leave the safe retreat, and now they could not leave it till high tide came again.
Delbert was spearing industriously when Marian got there. He had actually caught one, and it flapped feebly on the rocks beside him.
As his sister came up, he triumphantly called her attention to it.
“See that? Told you I could spear fish! But they all want to hide back there in the cave. I tell you, Marian, I’ll go in there and drive them out, and you can stand here and spear them. We’ll just keep spearing and spearing till the tide comes in and the rest get away. I bet we can get enough for several days. We can dry ’em as the Mexicans do.”
He handed her the spear and began hastily to disrobe. Delbert’s movements were always hasty.
Marian began casting the spear unsuccessfully, but when Delbert got into the pool hecreated such a commotion that several of the fish in their wild endeavor to escape, flopped clear out on the bare rocks and were easily captured. By that time a better idea had come to Marian.
MARIAN HAD BEEN CASTING THE SPEAR UNSUCCESSFULLY WHEN DELBERT GOT INTO THE POOL
MARIAN HAD BEEN CASTING THE SPEAR UNSUCCESSFULLY WHEN DELBERT GOT INTO THE POOL
“O Delbert,” she cried, “come out now, wipe up on my apron and get back into your clothes. We have enough for breakfast and dinner, too.”
“Oh, but we want all we can get,” he called back. “We can dry ’em, I tell you, and as soon as the tide is high again they will all get away.”
“That’s all right, but listen! I have a scheme for keeping them all. This is too good a thing to let the tide take away from us. Why, there must be fish enough in there to last us a week at least, maybe two. See, Delbert, we must build some kind of a fence across, so they can’t get away when high tide does come. Then we can come every day and get what we want till they are all gone.”
Delbert splashed right out without more remarks.
“We can do it with rocks and sticks and brush,” she continued. “It won’t be possible to drive stakes in the ground here, because it isn’t ground,—it is all rock,—but we can make them stand firm by piling rocks around them.”
She went to work systematically. She set the children to bringing rocks, while she and Delbert cut the stakes and brush up on the hillside and dragged them down with the rope. Then, selecting the place where she could accomplishher purpose with the least labor, she set a row of stakes a little way apart, piling rocks about each one till it was quite firm and solid, and then began weaving in brush.
It was a long task. Trip after trip she made up the hillside with the rope and hatchet, and her face and hands were scratched with the thorny brush. The children grew tired of helping, and Davie was crying because he was hungry, for Marian would not stop to prepare food. She dared not. In that little pool was food, food. If she could shut the way across before the tide came in, then she and her little ones were safe without question for some time to come; if not—“Why, Delbert,” she said, “we might live here for years before we should have such a chance again.”
Finally she sent him up to start a fire and clean the fish they had got before they began the fence, and when he had them in the kettle over the flames he returned to help her. Thereafter she would occasionally send up the little girls to put on more wood or to pour a little more water into the kettle, but she herself kept at the task.
Marian did thorough work; she dared not slight it in a single place; it must be strong enough to resist the force of the waves, and it must be so solid that no fish of any considerable size could get through, and she dared not stop, she dared not stop. The tide began creeping back over the rocks, and she sent the children back for more brush and sticks, and more still, and went herself again, and still again, and now the water was running over into the pool again, and still she worked. She knew how high up on the rocks it would be when the tide was at its full height, and she must get above that. She had done the work well so far, yet it would all be in vain if she did not get above high-water mark.
Finally she finished it with the water waist-deep around her, and as she dragged herself out, it seemed as if she had never been so tired in all her life before, but she was sure that her work was done well. Tired and hungry and smarting from scratches and the thorns she had not had time to remove, she was yet happy. For the first time since Pearson’s treachery had left them stranded there, she felt a firm foundation under her feet.
In spite of the little girls’ care the fire had gone out under the kettle and the fish were not done. They were not very trustworthy as cooks yet, but Marian started things going again and sent Jennie up to the Cave for a blanket and some safety-pins and a needle from her workbag.
When she came back, Marian removed her wet clothing and donned the blanket in its stead, pinning it in place with the safety-pins, and then proceeded to extract thorns with the needle. Delbert also required some of the same surgical attention. Then, as soon as the fish were done, they broke their fast, and afterwards she took Davie and lay down in the shadow of a rock to sleep, secure in the knowledge that there were fish enough in the kettle for one more meal and that there were plenty more where they came from.
The fencing-in of High-Tide Pool certainly marked a new period in the life on the Island. It was the first work of any size, and its completion gave assurance of food for many days to come without spending all their time in the securing of it.
Afterwards Marian bent her energies on thefishline to the exclusion of everything else till it was finished. It took the two extra hairpins to fasten the hook and line together satisfactorily, but Marian did not grudge hairpins nor time nor labor when she saw how eager the fish of High-Tide Pool seemed to be to attach themselves to that amateurish-looking implement. She thought the fence she had built probably served, to some extent, to screen out the smaller fish that would otherwise have provided breakfasts and luncheons for those she had imprisoned. At any rate, their appetites seemed to be excellent, anything was acceptable as bait, and Delbert was now and then successful in spearing one.
They worked another day on the banana-patch, thinning it out and letting in the sunlight, and another in dragging more brush up to the Cave to shade and shelter it, and in carrying up more dried banana leaves for their bed.
Then Marian said she was ready to go on an exploring expedition.
So far they had gone no great way from the end of the Island where they had landed, but now she decided the time had come to learn more of their locality. Some of the bananas wereripe; that is, they were soft and could be eaten. They could take them along for lunch.
Delbert was a little afraid some one might come while they were gone, but Marian had a lead-pencil in her workbag and with it she wrote on a smooth piece of driftwood a brief account of their predicament which she left in a prominent position near the tree their signal flag flapped on. To make assurance doubly sure, they put another signal flag by the side of the notice.
Not being sure they could find water on all parts of the Island, Marian thought it would be safest to carry some with them, but the only thing she had to carry it in was the two-quart Mason jar that had held Davie’s milk. They would take Mr. Cunningham’s pail, too, and the spear and lariat and hatchet. It seemed to Marian that that was all they would need, but Davie was very sure the dig-spoon would be indispensable, so he carried that also.
They went along on top of the hill where Delbert had set his traps. It was very rocky at first, but became more even and level, with fewer rocks, and more open and grassy. There was an abundance of thorny brush, but no trees of anysize worth mentioning. This portion of the Island they used afterwards to refer to as the pasture. Beyond it the thorny tangle became thicker again, and here were more rocks. Indeed, the farther end of the Island fell quite precipitously to the water without any sandy beaches, but they could make their way down well enough, and most of the way could follow the shoreline without wading.
The Island was fairly uniform in shape, and it looked to Marian as if it had been broken as a whole from the mainland ages back, the sides there being very steep and precipitous, as was the shore of the mainland opposite. The little harbor did not seem to extend very far, and no vessel of any size could have picked her way through behind the Island.
The seaward side contained various little bays and coves, very fascinating to explore, but only one of these was of any size. This lay in such a relation to the tides and currents that it gathered more of the flotsam and jetsam of the sea than any or all of the others, and when its treasure possibilities were realized it was named Bonanza Cove.
These details were not all learned in one day’s exploration, but little by little as day after day they searched and learned.
Always supreme above all other motives was the search for food.
Every plant or root or berry that they knew to be edible they eagerly seized upon, and Marian was constantly warning them lest they grow careless in their selection and suffer thereby.
One day they found the burros all down by the water-hole on the landlocked side of the Island. They had seen them before, about a dozen in number, but had not paid much attention to them. They were grazing peacefully on the outskirts of the banana-patch, and the children were quick to notice that the herd had been increased by one in the last day or two, a silky-looking little fellow with that peculiarly fascinating quality that only a baby burro has.
In glee they ran toward them, but though the burros seemed to be not at all wild, they plainly did not mean to permit any actual handling and skillfully evaded all attempts in that direction. After several ineffective attempts to round up the woolly baby, the children stopped to restand regain their breath, and the four-legged infant sidled up to his mother and proceeded to lunch.
Suddenly Marian turned to her brother. “Delbert,” she said, “can you lasso that old burro as she stands there?”
“Reckon I could if I tried. What do you want of her?”
“See that baby there fairly guzzling down the milk, and look at our baby here without a spoonful all these days. Don’t you suppose that old mother burro has more than that little fellow really needs in his business? Anyway, if he had to go a little short he could make it up on grass.”
“O—oh!” ejaculated the boy, “burro’s milk? Why, Marian, it wouldn’t be good.”
“Indeed, my dear child, burro’s milk is a regular article of commerce in some places, just as cow’s and goat’s milk is in others.”
“Anyway,” reflected Delbert, “if we didn’t tell him, Davie wouldn’t know but what it was all right. Milk is milk to him; he wouldn’t care.”
“Of course not,” said Marian briskly; “you older children might object to it, but it won’t make any difference to him whether he shareswith a baby burro or a baby calf. You just get a good loop over her head, and we’ll try this thing out.”
GETTING A LOOP OVER THE MOTHER’S HEAD WAS THE EASIEST PART OF THE BUSINESS
GETTING A LOOP OVER THE MOTHER’S HEAD WAS THE EASIEST PART OF THE BUSINESS
As a matter of fact, getting a loop over the mother’s head was the easiest part of the business. Delbert soon accomplished that, but Madam Burro had no intention whatever of standing still and being milked. Indeed, she developed quite surprising activity, and it was only after at least an hour of patient labor that Marian was able to secure a few spoonfuls of milk in the tin cup which the little girls brought down from the Cave.
“Now, then,” said Marian, “the thing we have got to do is to secure the baby. If we keephim tied here, his mother will stay around, and we can try her again in the morning. But if he is turned loose with her, we may not be able to get near them again.”
“But we have only one rope, and if I take it off her she will take him right away now,” said Delbert. “Let’s keep her tied up, I should say.”
“Well, tie her up till morning. Then we can think of some other way to do. It will not do to keep her tied all the time, for then we should have to feed her.”
As they ate supper they discussed ways and means. They could make palm-leaf ropes that would do very well to tie the little one with, but that did not seem to be as convenient as Marian wanted. Finally they decided to make a little corral to keep the baby in. Then he could nibble at weeds and grass and could not reach his mother except when Marian chose, and she could thus have a better chance to secure a ration for Davie. The corral would have to be pretty solid and secure, she thought, or the old burro might tear it down; still, it would not have to be quite as compact as the fence that had been built at High-Tide Pool.
JACKIE
JACKIE
They went to work at it the next morning. A little of the old stone wall was still solid enough to serve, but most of it was badly tumbled down, and they could not seem to do much at building it up again. The banana-patch could be used as one side,—it was so thick nothing would try to go through it,—and a couple of palms could be utilized as fence-posts. There were several nondescript bushes that could be worked in too. The banana stalks they had already cut down could be used as building-material, and more could be cut. They were soft and thornless, which was an advantage; also every stalk they cut out improved the patch by giving those remaining a better chance to grow and maturefruit. The hatchet was getting pretty dull, but Marian managed to hack off a number of slender stakes, which she set in the ground in pairs just far enough apart to lay a banana stalk in between; and these stalks all averaged about the same size and were piled one above the other to the top of the stakes, which were then tied together with banana-leaf stems.
The old pile of poles was overhauled. Part of them were so worm-eaten that they fell apart in Marian’s hands, but some were of a different kind of wood and were still solid. These were built into the fence as children build corncob houses, and Marian was only sorry there were so few of them. For part of it they used brush, but that was not so easily handled as the bananas or poles because of the thorns. The corral was not finished in one day nor in two, and when it was finished it showed half a dozen styles of fence-pattern and had no particular shape, but was, nevertheless, very satisfactory, as it would hold the little one in and keep the old one out.
The little burro was easily driven into it, and then the old one was turned loose. She grazed about during the day, and when milking-timecame Delbert could easily lasso her. Then, with much labor and great tying of legs and an abundance of help from the children in holding of the same, Marian would get Davie’s little portion of milk. Then the four-legged baby was allowed to have what remained, after which he was engineered back into the corral.
In the morning the same performance was gone through. During the day the mother and baby could rub noses through that part of the corral that had been made of poles, and in the course of time they both became so tame that the little one was a pet and a playmate for the children and the old one offered but little objection to sharing with Davie, who used to sit on the top rail of the fence and watch the milking with wide eyes that let no detail of the performance escape him.
He was very generous, too, considering the small amount of milk he received, and would offer to share with the others; they would all take a sip, even Marian, to encourage his unselfish impulses, and, as Delbert said, for politeness’ sake.