Itwas about the time that the corral was finished that they came to realize that they had lost count of the days and really did not know how long they had been on the Island. They had even lost track of the day of the week, and Marion did not know when she had ever done that in her life before. She and Delbert sat down and figured and figured, trying to count back and remember what had been done on each day; but it was no use, it had been too long. Jennie, however, was quite sure that it was Wednesday then, though she could not tell why,—she just thought it was, that was all,—and so, assuming that she was correct in her belief, Marian easily figured up what day of the month it was then, for of course she knew the day and date upon which they had left home.
“Now,” she said, “we will not trust to our memories any more. Every day I will put a notch in a stick,”—which she faithfully did,using for the purpose a smooth stick that Delbert picked up on the beach one day. As a matter of fact, Jennie had been mistaken and they were two days ahead of time, but they did not know that till afterwards.
The days were filled pretty full. Marian thought that the busier they were, the less would they be a prey to loneliness and homesickness. They tumbled out of the Cave mornings, milked the burro, got breakfast, and then worked awhile at something till it was time for a big sea bath.
When they first began their life on the Island, Delbert was the only one who could swim to amount to anything. Clarence had taught him, and he had been a very apt pupil; but the others knew so little of the useful art that Marian herself dared not venture beyond her depth, while the little girls declined water that was more than knee-deep and Davie preferred it even less than that. But already there was a vast improvement among them all. As the way to learn to walk is to get up and walk, so the way to learn to swim is to strike out and swim, and they were following that method.
After dinner there were walks to take, little coves to examine, or ropes to braid. Marian watched over the children with eyes of a most jealous, brooding love. Never had they seemed so dear to her, never so sweet and precious. She was constantly thinking up things to amuse as well as benefit them. Of course, she could not perform impossibilities, and there were some doleful days. There was one perfectly awful day when she found Jennie huddled down behind a rock, crying for her mother. And Delbert would sit for an hour at a time on Lookout Rock, gazing out over the water, so wistful and disconsolate that it made Marian’s throat choke up just to see him, and she would rack her brain for some interesting thing to set him at to keep him busy.
But it is only fair to say that the doleful spots came far less often than one would have supposed they would. Marian was always steadfast in her assurance that some one would find them some day. They would take good care of each other and be as happy as they could till some one should come and take them back to the Port. And she herself always kept a cheerfulface. Her loving voice and sunny smile, her merry little ways, inspired confidence. As much as possible she made it appear that a desert-island experience was a very desirable thing to have happen to one. She twisted things till they looked like a joke, and in the process often found herself growing as light-hearted as she wanted the children to be.
The bill of fare was limited, to be sure, but they brought to it appetites sharpened by the constant exercise they were taking in the sea air and the sunshine.
One day up in the pasture they ran across apanal.[3]This is the nest of a kind of wild bee and is made of the same material that our hornets use in constructing their homes, but the bee itself is not so large as a hornet. Marian saw the nest first and pointed it out to the other children merely as a matter of curiosity, but Delbert straightway became excited.
[3]Pronouncedpah-nahlʹ; plural,pah-nahʹ-layss. It is the regular Spanish word for honeycomb.
[3]Pronouncedpah-nahlʹ; plural,pah-nahʹ-layss. It is the regular Spanish word for honeycomb.
There was honey in that bees’ nest; he knew it; splendid honey. Hadn’t Clarence bought some once of an Indian and given him a lot?And Clarence had told him all aboutpanales. You take all the outside honey and comb away and leave the core, and they will build on again, just as tame bees will.
Marian was a little dubious. Honey was all very well, but stings were not at all desirable. How were they to proceed to get the sweet store?
“We have no bee-smoker,” she reminded him, “and if we had, there are no rags to be burned in it.”
“Huh!” declared Delbert scornfully, “do you s’pose the Indians have smokers?—or rags either? No, sirree! they just build a fire of trash they gather up. Besides, the stings of these little bees don’t amount to shucks!”
It was not in Marian’s policy to discourage him from doing anything not actually dangerous to life and limb, and she was glad he was willing to dare the stings; so she said they would go back to the Cave for the little dishpan and some coals to start a smudge with, and see what they could do.
The younger children were to keep back out of the danger zone,—which they were very willing to do, for they did not share Delbert’soptimism about the trifling nature of wild-bee stings,—and she and Delbert swathed their hands and faces as well as they could and still be able to work handily. They built three little fires about the bush the nest was in, and gathered trash and piled it on till they were all smoking finely. With a forked pole Marian raked one of them as nearly under the nest as she could, and then, holding her skirts carefully so that they should not swing into the fire, she began the task of robbing the little bees.
Delbert held the pan, and she cut off layer after layer of the paper-like comb filled with the clear sweet liquid, but she was careful to leave a goodly portion at the center for the bees to begin on anew. Then they retreated with their booty, threw a towel over it, and gave it to Jennie and Esther to carry off, while they raked back and stamped out the fires and threw dirt over the ashes, so that they could not start up again.
During the whole performance both of them had received stings, but, as Delbert said, they did not amount to much, and certainly honey never tasted sweeter.
THE TASK OF ROBBING THE LITTLE BEES
THE TASK OF ROBBING THE LITTLE BEES
From then on the children’s eyes were always open forpanales. They found two small nests that they decided to let alone till they were larger, and about a week later they found one down near the shore that yielded even more honey than the first. They got several stings, too, and Marian smiled grimly as she reflected how necessity was teaching them hardihood.
That was the day they discovered the riches of Bonanza Cove.
They had never gone down into it before, having always skirted it quite a way up on the hill, for there was no sand at that part, only ragged rocks with broken shells and barnacles, interspersed with occasional clumps of mango bushes,—certainly not easy ground for little feet to run over. But this day, as they were returning home with the little dishpan of luscious sweetness, Esther had declared, “I see a bottle”; and on the strength of that declaration they climbed down into the cove, for a bottle would be a very valuable thing to have. And, once there, they found so many valuable things that they gathered up a load and carried it home and went back in the afternoon for more.
The bottle proved to be a quart beer-bottle that some one had doubtless tossed, corked but empty, over some steamer’s side, and careful search revealed six others, besides the remains of several that had been broken. Marian hailed them with delight. Now they could carry water in bottles when they went exploring, and leave her precious glass jar safe at the Cave. Shehad always been afraid it would get broken on some of those trips. Five of the seven bottles were only pints, but were none the less eagerly welcomed and treasured.
Also there was discovered in a clump of mango bushes, half buried in the mud, an old broken five-gallon demijohn. The basketwork enclosing it was nearly intact, and Marian thought they might use it for something some time.
The wreck of an old barrel was also rescued from the mud. Only three of its staves were gone. Who knew what might not some time be done with what remained? Several rusty tin cans were acquired. Marian could mend them by drawing a tiny rag through the holes in them; and Esther came up with a piece of scrap iron that might be made into a spear-head if a body only knew how; Delbert knew Clarence could have done it all right. They found three little boards, too, and an old shoe whose top was not yet stiff. Besides all this, there were innumerable armloads of driftwood. They gathered it up into piles beyond the reach of high tides.
But the most exciting discovery of all was the remains of an old canoe. One side and a goodlyportion of the bottom were gone, but it was undeniably a canoe. It had been tossed up on the rocks by some storm and had lain bleaching in the sun ever since. Nothing would do but Delbert must get that old fragment into the water. They all caught his enthusiasm and worked with a will.
The canoe was of native manufacture, having been hollowed out from one big log, and what was left of it seemed to be quite solid. After they had it floating they hunted up poles and practiced the art of navigation for a while. It was a clumsy thing, and of course everybody connected with it got wet, but already Delbert had visions of what it might lead to.
“Marian,” he said, “let’s pile a lot of that wood on this and take it around that way. It will be a lot easier than carrying it over.”
“The waves are too high,” she objected, “and we should have to tie the wood on good and solid, for the way this thing dips and tips and turns it would all be off before we were out of the cove.”
“The waves are high,” he conceded, “and, of course, we should have to tie the wood on.This thing won’t stay anywhere. What’s left of it knows it used to be the side and it doesn’t understand that it is the bottom now.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said; “let’s wait till to-morrow. Maybe the wind will not pile the waves quite so high then, and we can tie your rope to it. See there is the hole in the prow they made to moor it by, and we can tow it round, if you like. That is splendid wood and it will certainly be easier getting it home that way than carrying it up over the hill.”
But Delbert was not quite satisfied.
“I’ll tell you,” he said; “if we can get it around the point there, we can take it the other way, in back of the Island. It’s a lot longer way, but there are no breakers in there.”
“I guess we could do it that way all right. So let’s go back now and braid palm-leaf ropes the rest of to-day, so as to have plenty to tie the wood with, and hunt up some nice poles and paddles; and to-morrow early we will come and take this gallant bark round into harbor.”
So they beached it again, and piled stones in it so it could not get away, and then went back to the home end of the Island.
Mexicans make a very good rope of twisted palm-leaves, but our islanders had not learned how yet, and so braided them instead, for even the children could do that. For a large rope they simply took three of the small ones and braided them together. The finished articles were very knobby, uneven affairs, of course, and could not be used to lasso with, but they were flexible and strong and served to tie things. They had quite a number of these ropes of home manufacture.
In the morning, after attending to the burro and eating a breakfast of fish baked in the hot coals, they filled the two big bottles and three of the little ones with water, tied stout little palm-leaf strings to them, so that each person could easily carry one, and started out with their ropes and poles.
Marian had Mr. Cunningham’s pail with more fish for their dinner, and the hatchet also, and Davie as usual flourished the dig-spoon. He soon got tired of carrying his bottle of water and passed it over to Marian, who put it into the pail.
At the cove they put the pail and their bottlesinto a clump of mango bushes and began to gather up the best and biggest of the wood. Marian made compact bundles of it and lashed them as best she could to what remained of the old canoe. Alone it would not stay in any position that made it navigable, but reinforced by the bundles of wood on what Delbert called the “absent” side of the craft, it floated as any other mass of wooden wreckage would have floated and maintained an equilibrium which allowed the children to perch on top in safety.
Delbert scratched his head.
“This isn’t a canoe and it isn’t a raft. What in creation is it, anyway, Marian?”
“I reckon it’s a float,” she answered.
So, after the pail had been placed on the safest spot, where it would not get water splashed into it, and after Jennie had received explicit instructions to watch over it, the voyage began. They had taken the precaution to put on their bathing-suits and expected to do as much wading and swimming as anything else.
Marian knew a good deal about rowing and sailing a boat, but this was a different matter. To begin with, they had only one really goodpole. The other was too short, besides being crooked, and their craft swung round and twisted and did its best to wobble its way back to the beach. At last, however, they got out quite a way, beyond the depth of the shortest pole, but when they came to round the point there was trouble again. Finally Marian jumped off and, half swimming, half wading to shore with the lariat, towed them round the point; and then, because they made better progress that way, accomplished most of the rest of the journey so.
THE VOYAGE BEGAN
THE VOYAGE BEGAN
Davie also preferred to do most of his traveling on his own feet, and Marian did not blame him, for the float did not even look like a safe craft, and the way it wobbled and bobbed mightwell have made an older passenger than Davie uneasy. So he trudged on, mostly in the edge of the water, now and then whimpering when he hurt his bare toes and again laughing gleefully at some treasure of the sea which the fates cast at his feet.
MARIAN TOWED THEM ROUND THE POINT
MARIAN TOWED THEM ROUND THE POINT
At some places it was not convenient to tow the float, and then they resorted to poling altogether. At one or two points Delbert took the rope and swam across to a better place for pulling. And several times the bundles of wood became loosened, and all hands had to retire to shore till Marian could get them satisfactorily retied.
Altogether, their progress was so slow thatthe day was nearly done before they moored their gallant craft to the little rock pier behind the Island.
Next day they tried it another way. They took all the wood off and allowed the old fragment to turn turtle. That did a great deal better in some ways, but it was a little difficult to get aboard of it. Once they were aboard, however, it sustained the weight of them all well enough, though, of course, there was no freeboard at all, and, while it was willing to remain in that position, the ends of the canoe, being well under water, offered considerable resistance and made it more difficult to pole than a boat or raft would have been.
Jennie thought Marian had better cut off those ragged ends and leave only the smooth side, but Marian was not anxious to attempt such a task as that with only a dull hatchet and a few knives to work with. Besides, she was not sure at all but she would some day want those ends right where they were. She could not think of any way of improving it, and even as it was it enlarged the horizon of their daily lives.
The prow being under water, they could not very well use the hole in it to tie the rope to, but at one place in the bottom there was a knothole, and Marian firmly wedged a stick into that. With a rope fastened to this stick they could tie the canoe where it would float out quite a little distance from shore, and then they could swim out to it. She soon found her little flock were improving in their swimming lessons. With the old canoe at hand it did not matter so much if one did get beyond one’s depth a little; it gave one security.
Then pretty soon, when they began to get the knack of making the old thing move along in the water where they wanted it to, they would go out to the little sandbars and reefs that had before been beyond their reach.
Some of these had mango bushes where a certain variety of small oyster attached themselves to the stems and rocks, where they could be easily gathered at low tide. One had an outcropping of rock in one place which had several basin-like depressions, which Marian cleaned out and made use of. She would boil down sea-water in her kettle, till it was about a saturatedsolution, and then put it into the demijohn, and when that was full would take it over and empty it into those shallow rock basins, where the sun evaporated it till nothing was left but the salt.
Close on the heels of the food problem had come that of clothing. Marian thanked her stars that the soil of the Island was sandy and brushed off easily, but even with that in their favor they had not been on the Island so very long before their clothing sadly needed washing. She put her whole flock into their bathing-suits and washed everything else. But that made such inroads on her lone cake of soap that she decided things must do without soap in the future, and what dirt would not come out with water and sunshine would have to stay in. That went sorely against the grain, for Mrs. Hadley was a notoriously neat and clean woman and had trained her daughter in her own spick-and-span ways; but it could not be helped.
Before long it became plain that the question of washing was not all there was to it either. Clothes constantly worn will in time wear out, and Marian’s little flock soon became shabby as well as dingy. She staved off the evil day for awhile by decreeing that the bathing-suits must be worn all the time, and so the other clothes were folded away up at the Cave, to await the blest day when some one should wander into San Moros and take them all back to the Port.
The children were willing enough. It did away with the need of dressing and undressing, for they had so little bedding that Marian let them sleep in their suits too. Davie could not see any use in clothes anyway, except when he was cold. Before long he rebelled against even the little bathing-suit, and as there was no one to see and criticize, his sister let him run from morning till night absolutely naked. He was so fat and dimpled and sweet that the other children liked him best that way, and his little body became so tanned that Marian called him a little Indian, and because he strutted about in such a lordly way she dubbed him Hiawatha. That tickled Delbert, who then tied his little brother’s hair in tufts and stuck them full of feathers.
Delbert himself began to need the barber’s services, but when Jennie told him so one day he declared he was not going to have his haircut, he was going to let it grow long and make fishlines of it.
“You’ll look fine,” said she, scornfully; “a boy with pigtails; you’d better cut it, Marian.”
But Marian, with a mental vision of how fine he would look after she had barbered him with the buttonhole scissors, decided in favor of pigtails.
So Delbert tied a string about his forehead, stuck feathers in it, and demanded an Indian name. Marian named him Chingachgook. Of course the little girls wanted Indian names too, so she told Jennie she could be Wahtawah and Esther Pocahontas.
They were very much pleased and went straightway to hunt up some feathers, though Delbert declared that squaws never wore them.
“Never mind,” said Marian soothingly, “these squaws can do anything they have a mind to.”
She herself did not adopt a name, but Delbert used to call her the great squaw chief.
As for shelter, they never found on the Island a better place than that which they had fortunately secured the first night. The bat cave near the water’s edge was the only other caveof any considerable size, and nothing else would have afforded any security whatever from a storm. Whenever it was convenient, Marian reinforced the brush shade in front of the Cave. She had it good and thick now, but of course it would not have turned a rain. The nights were getting cooler, and she cast about for ways and means of getting more bedding. She pounded sticks and dried banana leaves into the Cave where it ran back and became too narrow for their feet. She blocked up the sides with rocks and pieces of driftwood and filled in the chinks with little wads of banana leaves, so that the wind was shut out better. She saved the feathers from the birds they killed, and tied them up in the little girls’ petticoats for pillows, and she saved every rabbit-skin and stretched it out so that it dried smoothly, scraping it as clean as she could, and when it was almost dry, rubbed and worked it till it was soft and pliable. This, of course, was not the same as having them tanned, but she did not know how to tan leather, much as she wished she did.
After she had learned how to keep herself supplied with salt, she used to rub that on thefresh skins when she stretched them out to dry, believing that was one good step toward preserving them. When she had quite a number all finished up in this manner, she trimmed the edges a little and sewed them together. In the course of time she would have a robe large enough to cover them all, and as long as she could keep it dry it would not spoil.
Delbert was interested in bows and arrows. His first efforts at making bows were not startling successes, by any means, and he soon turned them over to Wahtawah and Pocahontas and tried for better ones for himself. At first he used any and every kind of a straight smooth stick he ran across, and it seemed almost impossible to find any that combined the necessary straightness and strength, but when he finally caught the idea of making them of palm-leaf stems, which are very tough and strong, he evolved one that would actually shoot quite effectively.
Then his sisters straightway clamored for good bows also, and he must needs make for them too. He was at first a little scornful, but Marian advised that he arm them as well aspossible, for while the chances of their bagging any game were slim in any case, there was simply no chance at all with bows that were only toys. Bowstrings were made from Marian’s hair, but arrow-points were a puzzling problem. The boys at the Port had tipped their arrows with heavy wire, but wire was not an Island commodity. Marian suggested bone, and a few were made of that material, but it was so very hard to work, and the knives needed so much whetting, that they were constantly on the lookout for something easier. Finally they learned to make them of wood hardened in the fire.
The first bows made were now Davie’s property, and he was so reckless with his shooting that Marian forbade points of any description being put on his arrows. He did not seem to mind the omission,—he never hit anything except by accident, and then it was usually one of the other children, and they were all careful not to call his attention to the fact that his arrows were all blunt.
Davie was the only one who was not at times more or less depressed by their situation. He was so little, and had now been separated fromhis mother so long, that he never fretted for her. Marian had always taken the most of the care of him anyway, so as long as she was there to do it he considered that conditions were normal. He found life very interesting and satisfactory and felt no need of more extensive society. His comical baby ways were closely watched and intensely enjoyed by the other children, who loved him dearly, and they would eagerly report to Marian everything funny he did when she was not present. Even when he was naughty, which he occasionally was, they were rather apt to overlook it and laugh at the funny spectacle he made of himself. Delbert, though, would get provoked sometimes.
One trick the little fellow had when His Majesty was displeased was to hide the whetstone. This was a stone which he himself had picked up out on one of the salt reefs. It was a little different from any other that they had found and was splendid to sharpen the knives and hatchet with. Delbert used to make quite an ado over borrowing it from Davie, because it pleased him so to have something apparently so valuable to lend. Marian, too, was carefulto say, “Please lend me your whetstone, Davie,” before she rubbed her knife over it, and as a rule he would beamingly give permission. That and the dig-spoon were about the only things that were considered especially his, and as it was not often that any one else used the dig-spoon, he did not bother much about it; but when he felt naughty he would conceal the little stone and refuse to reveal its whereabouts.
Sometimes Delbert would use some other stone then, or he would coolly wait until Davie got over his pouts and brought forth the good one, or else he would slyly hunt it up and use it without Davie’s knowledge, carefully replacing it when he had finished.
But one day he could not find it, and Davie simply would not get it. Marian herself wanted it too, but Davie resisted even her coaxing. Delbert lost all patience, and Marian began to wonder on the second day if some measure more strenuous than common might not be needed. She began to think that perhaps the child himself did not know where it was; it might possibly be that he had lost it instead of hiding it. He was so little and his speech was so limited as yetthat she did not always feel sure that she understood him perfectly. Perhaps he simply did not want to admit that he had not been bright enough to keep track of the valuable thing himself. But then Esther saw him playing with the stone off by himself. When she ran to tell Marian, however, he hid it again and only smiled impishly at their requests.
No, he was simply being naughty, and, what was worse, was staying naughty; so after a little Marian issued her verdict.
“I won’t punish him, though I could probably make him get it by spanking him, but mother never did that to him, and I will not till I really have to, but the next time any of you see that whetstone you may take it from him and I will confiscate it and it won’t be his stone any more.”
“But,” said Jennie dubiously, “itishis stone; he found it, Marian.”
“That is true,” returned her sister, “and if it were some less necessary thing I would say he had a right to do as he chose with it, but a whetstone is something we all need. I need it to sharpen the hatchet with; nothing else I canfind does so well. Delbert needs it right now to sharpen his knife, so he can work out that bone arrowhead. It is to Davie’s interest as well as ours that the hatchet and knives should be sharp, only he is so little he can’t realize it. Just because he saw the stone first does not give him a right to hide it away and refuse to let us use it, when we all need the use of it and there is not another one like it that we know of.”
She explained this all as well as she could to Davie, but he remained obdurate. They set themselves to work, therefore, to ferret out the much-needed implement, and before long Delbert found it and brought it in triumph to Marian, who took possession of it amid Davie’s loud wails.
His crying availed him nothing, however; the stone was put in a cleft of the rock where only Marian and Delbert could reach it, and the young would-be monopolist finally decided that it was not worth crying for, and, smoothing out his face, trotted about his affairs as sweetly important as ever.