CHAPTER XII
DISASTER AND A NEW TASK
The storm was fully as severe as the one that had welcomed the children to the Island, though they did not realize what they were in for till midnight. When it began to blow so strong that they were really sure a storm was coming, Delbert took their best ropes and securely moored the logs of the Muggywah to the tree, thinking it barely possible that the waves might reach up to them if the wind kept on increasing. And such a terrible wind as it threatened to be!
They turned the little burros loose with their mothers,—there were four of them that year,—and the one little pig that they happened to have in the pen was also turned out to seek its shelter where it chose. The little girls tried to get it into the wickiup, but it was wild and escaped them, and Marian told them to let it go, that it would take care of itself.
They gathered in the best of the melons, for there was no knowing if there would be one left by morning, the sandy point was so low; and they piled up a great stack of wood and pitalla by the fireplace; and then it was too dark to do any more.
The wind howled and the waves broke on the beach like mighty thunders. The thatch of their roof struggled to be gone, and the water poured down the wall in a steady sheet. Fortunately, it could soak through the sand and rocks of the floor and run off down the hill as fast as it came in; otherwise they would have been flooded. The window and the storm doors were tied as tightly as possible, and Marian watched them closely and thanked her stars that she had insisted on taking such endless pains to have everything about the house solid and sure.
Of course, they were protected somewhat by the cliff, and the girl shuddered to think what would have happened had they not been. She imagined how it would seem to go crawling through the fury of the storm, holding to one another’s hands, beaten to the ground and half drowned, and finally reaching the old Cave, the only possible other shelter, and crawling in, soaked and chilled, to lie, packed like sardines in a box, till morning.
It was not a pleasant picture; she was glad to come back to the reality,—the interior of the wickiup, somewhat disorderly with so much wood and everything piled away from the rock wall, but warm and dry and safe; Delbert stretched out by the fireplace, a great strong boy, his eyes, steady and straightforward, regarding the flames as they spluttered in protest against the water that found its way down the chimney; Davie sprawling at her feet, sleeping in utter carelessness of the storm, well knowing that whatever happened he would be taken care of; the two girls on a blanket beyond him, awake, and Jennie a little nervous but Esther calmly confident that everything would turn out all right,—that they were, and would continue to be, safe.
Marian’s throat swelled a little as she watched them. How dear they were, every one, and so big and strong now, even Davie! Surely now, when this storm was over and the Muggywah repaired, they might start back to the Port. The first few miles outside the shelter of the bay would be the worst. The waves were always very big and high out there, but after that,—well, they might not make very good time, but what mattered it if they were a week on the way, so they got there at last? They could take food and water with them, though for that matter they could go hungry and thirsty if need be; what mattered it so they got home?
All that night the wind tore at them; all the next day it screamed about their ears, and the breakers on the beach were like great guns of a battle. The next night it calmed down, and the next morning they sallied forth to take account of the damage done.
They found a considerable amount of damage,—the felling of many banana plants, half the patch in fact, the complete disappearance of every melon vine on the point, every plant in the garden beaten into the ground, the little pig gone, and their carefully gathered woodpile scattered to the four winds. But all this sank into insignificance beside the fact that not one log of the Muggywah was left to them. The tree had been uprooted and washed away bodily, and all search up and down the beaches revealed no trace of it. The great storm had cast many treasures at their feet, but they were so dispirited over their losses that they could not be very joyful over the gains.
Mechanically they lugged the wood up out of reach of the waves, which were still pounding angrily, gathered in a number of new bottles, and took note of the great masses of seaweed that would make fresh carpet when it was dry. But with all the wood there was no log like those of the lost Muggywah, and with all their gazing to sea they could not see anything that might of a bare possibility be an uprooted tree.
They fashioned a poor sort of a raft out of the best pieces of the driftwood, and with its aid explored the outer reefs and esteros and even as far as the egg islands. The raft was clumsy and slow and generally unmanageable, and Delbert said that it made him sick just to look at it, but they wanted to go longer distances than they could swim, and the float was made to serve.
At the end of about two weeks, however, Delbert said: “It’s no use, Marian. We are only wasting time. The Muggywah simply did not lodge anywhere near us. Maybe it didn’t lodge at all; it may be going yet, in three different directions, and our best ropes with it.”
“Yes, more’s the pity, Delbert. I hate losing your hair rope about as bad as losing the Muggywah herself.”
“Well,”—and the boy’s jaw set solid and square,—“there’s not a bit more use crying over a lost boat than there is in crying over spilt milk. We can’t find it, and we haven’t got a stick of timber fit to put into a new one either. We can’t walk back to the Port; it would be hundreds of miles to follow the coast line, and we should be sure to get lost if we tried any short cuts. If Davie was a couple of years older, I’d say to risk it. But we aren’t going to wait two more years. I want to see mother.” His voice broke a little, but he conquered it and went on. “There is only one thing to do; it has been in my head kind of hazy for some time, but now I’ve got it clear; we must fix the old canoe, Marian.”
“How?” asked Marian quietly, for she had never been able to think of any way to do that.
“Well, we must put a framework in the side that is gone, the hole, you know. I’m not sure yet just what is the best material, but I think palm-leaf stems would be,—we can burn holes through the canoe to fasten to,—a solid framework, that will not break and give way at any little tap, and as near the shape of the other side as we can make it. Then we’ll weave in basketwork, strong as we can, and, as we go, pack all the cracks full of fiber and pitalla tar. I’ve got it all studied out, Marian. We’ll weave the basketwork double with a space between, and in that space we can put stones, just enough to make that side of the canoe as heavy as the other. We’ll mix the fiber and tar together and pound it down as we go along, and when it’s all finished, if there come any cracks, we can fill them in with cotton and tar, and if we can’t jam it in tight enough so but what it still leaks some, why, one of us can bail all the time.”
“Do you know how to make pitalla tar?”
Delbert threw up his head.
“Yes, I do! That is one thing I saw made that I paid enough attention to to know how it was done. Bobbie’s Uncle Jim used to try it out. Don’t you remember? He had a place fixed down by the old blacksmith shop, and we kids were always fooling around there, and he showed and explained all about it to us.”
“And for a wonder you listened?” asked Jennie.
“For a wonder I listened,” he answered, smiling grimly.
“Good boy!” said Marian. “From now on we bend our energies to the canoe. When it is done, we won’t wait for anything more,—once we can sail it,—we won’t wait for anything more except a still day. The first still day we’ll start for home.”
Delbert had a great time making a retort to extract his tar. He found a place near High-Tide Pool where there was a hole in the rock which he could utilize, and he built it up with stones and earth till it suited him.
Then they began gathering the pitalla. They had gathered everything near them for the fireplace, but they knew where there was plenty more to be had, so they went after it,—up the estero, past the tide-flats toward the lagoon. There they could gather it, pile it high on the clumsy raft, and float it home as they had brought the thatch-grass. It was slow work, but there was no other way. It was not so easy to get down to the estero as the grass had been, for the pitalla is thorny indeed, but they managed it somehow, because they had to. They could gather a good deal on the shores nearer home, but nowhere was there such an abundance as beyond that particular estero.
They decided, however, never to leave the home Island alone. They had seen several canoes since the storm, and they hoped one might come into San Moros and near enough to be signaled. Delbert and the girls were perfectly capable of gathering the pitalla and bringing it home; so Marian and Davie stayed at home to do the work there and watch the bay for canoes.
Marian put in a little garden, for they could not tell how long it might take them to finish the canoe, and she planted part of the melon-patch over again, thinking that what they did not reap perhaps some one else would. She straightened up the bananas and mended the fence where they had dragged the old canoe out of it.
As soon as they had got quite a little pile of pitalla, they began to burn it in the retort, and some one had to watch that and attend to it. Delbert was sure that he lost a great deal of tar because his retort was so crude. He was sure Bobbie’s Uncle Jim got much more out of a pile of pitalla than he did, but he had to manage as best he could. And the tar did come; it trickled down into the little dishpan slowly but surely, and Delbert, impatient though he was, would set his face toward the estero and bring more pitalla.
Every morning the three were in such a hurry to get off that they did not stop for a hot breakfast, and they took only a light lunch with them for noon, but Marian always had a good hot meal ready for them upon their return. The destruction of the garden was a drawback, for the little new one was not of service yet. Still, not all the plants had been destroyed by the storm; some had been rescued, straightened up, washed, and tied to stakes, and were pursuing the even tenor of their way again, and, of course, the turnips and carrots that had already attained their growth were as good as ever, and the newly planted seeds would soon be making quite a showing.
Twice since the storm Delbert had killed a deer, and the meat was not allowed to spoil. What could not be cooked immediately was salted and dried, some of it smoked, and all was watched carefully to thwart the flies. When the raft came back at night it would bring game of some kind,—a rabbit killed in the brush of the shore or a fish speared on the way down the estero. These would be put into the kettle and left simmering over the coals till morning, or wrapped in green banana leaves and buried in the hot coals, to be raked out hastily for breakfast; and of the remnants Marian would make a stew to have piping hot for supper, flanked by a dish of greens which she and Davie had picked.
As they ran across them, the children brought in other things that they needed,—tough sticks, or mescal plants to make ropes of,—and Davie was always waiting for them on the pier to see what the particular booty of the day was and to carry it up to the wickiup to show Marian. And Marian always had warm water ready for them, and when they had washed off the day’s accumulation of dirt and combed the tangled hair and braided it anew,—they did not stop for that in the morning,—they would sit down and eat; and they always ate all Marian had prepared for them, too, and then filled up on bananas and chattered and chattered like a flock of birds all the time. Then they would go down and unload the pitalla and carry it over to the retort, and by that time they were ready to settle down in the wickiup in front of the pitalla fire for a rest.
There would be a very short session of school then, a little reading from the rabbit-skin book, a review of the multiplication or division tables, and a spelling-lesson. It was not much; Marian had got them about as far as she could without books, and it did not seem as if it mattered so much, now that the home-going was, as you might say, in sight. They always sang in the evenings. Their mother had come of a musical family, and Marian had taught them all the songs she knew, and there was not one of them that could not sing sweet and clear and strong. Marian gloried in their voices and knew that her mother would too.
And she always had to tell them a story after lessons were over. They said that was Marian’s lesson. She had become quite expert at it. Usually it was a rehashing of some dimly remembered thing that she had read, but sometimes it was a pure product of her imagination. If it was an Indian story, why, so much the better, for the tribe never forgot that it was a tribe, though sometimes the Indian names and pretenses would be dropped for several weeks, only to be taken up with renewed vigor later.
When Marian thought that it was long enough since they had eaten, and about bedtime,—her watch had stopped the year before,—they would go down to the water and have their swim. Sometimes the water was pretty cold, but they were so used to it that they did not stop for that any more. Once in a while Davie was left asleep at the wickiup, but as a rule he went with them.
They would take the raft away out from shore and have oceans of fun plunging from it, diving, swimming races, floating, in short doing everything that could be done in the water.
A favorite game was “rescue.” One of them would fall overboard with a yell of “Oh, save me!” and then do as little as possible to help himself, while another one would dive in after him and those on the raft would paddle it off a little, so as to give the gallant rescuer scope for his or her endeavors. They got so that there was not one of them—except Davie—who could not take care of himself and one other in the water, and even Davie could make a very respectable stagger at it.
Delbert and Esther were the best swimmers; they could do the most difficult stunts. In a straight swim, though, Marian would outlast Esther, while Jennie fell considerably behind her.
Moonlight nights were best for this play. Marian, her paddle in hand, watched them with exultation in her heart, they were so strong and full of grace; and they were hers,—she had thought, studied, prayed, watched, and worked for them. Once she had read a novel whose hero had been described as being “straight and handsome as a young god.” That was the phrase that always came into her mind out there on the raft as she watched Delbert,—“straight and handsome as a young god,”—but she never said it aloud.
And Jennie,—puny, sickly little Jennie, always the least pretty of them all,—how slim and lovely she stood in the moonlight, her hair in two dripping braids, her eyes like shining stars! It fairly took Marian’s breath away sometimes to realize what a winsome beauty was growing to be Jennie’s. She had always expected Esther to be pretty, but that Jennie should blossom out like this!
Sometimes the water was full of phosphorescence. This was, of course, more noticeable on dark nights, and then every move they made was a pale blaze. That was better than moonlight; it was magic; it was a fairyland made real. Then they quit playing they were Indians and played they were mermaids and sea-goblins of the deep. The raft was a Spanish galleon wrecked in ages past and drifting still, filled with treasure. Just see how the jewels gleamed! Or it was a great sea turtle, ridden by sea nymphs, plunging and careering, unable to throw off its tormentors. Then it was foam of the waves, unsubstantial and formless, and the fish that came scurrying by in silver flashes were chased in glee.
It was always hard to coax them back to land on these nights, but sooner or later they had to go, and they would then huddle about the fire a little, drying their hair, before they lay down to sleep soundly till morning. Then early the three would be up and off, generally taking their breakfast with them to eat on the way up the estero, while Marian and Davie took up their daily tasks.
Davie found it a little lonesome with Delbert and the girls gone all day, but he was such a sunny-tempered little chap that he managed pretty well after all. There were his lessons, which went much faster and smoother than they had done at first, and then he helped Marian do everything, even cook. And he made little boats and sailed them, and he rode on Jackie, who was growing very steady and sedate this year, and he gathered in wood and crabs. Always he watched for little shells and other treasures of the sea, to bring to Marian for her inspection, as she sat weaving or writing in the rabbit-skin books. It was at this time that she wrote out “Thanatopsis,” all but six lines that she could not for the life of her remember.
She kept her subconscious mind on the retort and went out every so often to attend to it, for all things now were subordinate to the tarring of that canoe. When the little dishpan was full of pitalla tar and they had a nice big pile of pitalla on hand, they decided to begin on the work. So they dragged the canoe into the water at the pier and paddled it round to the other side of the Island and dragged it up high on the beach not far from the tar retort. Then they began the main task to which all these weeks had been preparatory.
Marian left the housework and cooking to the girls; they could spear the fish and gather the greens and cook them, they could boil down the salt water and take it out on the raft to the reef and bring back the dry salt, and they could watch the dry meat and gather the bananas. The older sister and Delbert devoted their time to the canoe. There were holes to be burned and the toughest and strongest of pegs to be whittled and driven in; there was much testing of materials, much discussion of ways and means, much sighting and squinting and balancing. This work must be done right.
Slowly the framework grew. The basket work would be made entirely of the split palm stems, or, if there were not enough of them, they would put the next best thing on the top.
They tipped the old canoe into the best position to work on and propped it up with stakes and stones. And when the framework was finished, they called in Jennie for her opinion on the next step. So she worked too, for none of them could weave so well—so neatly and tightly—as she. And as she wove, Marian and Delbert began packing in the tarred fiber. It took a lot of it, but Delbert thought that, if they ran out entirely, they could, perhaps, use some kinds of seaweed at the top where it would not matter so much.
Egging-time came and went. They stopped work long enough to go for eggs once, and then Davie and the girls went alone, or Davie and Esther, while the three older ones worked steadily on the canoe.
They had it about two-thirds done and were shifting it into a different position one day and propping it up, when Esther and Davie came running down the hill laughing. They had been off in the pasture. As soon as she got within calling distance Esther began to shout, “Davie’s found a panal! Davie’s found a panal!”
“Don’t believe it,” said Delbert shortly.
“Have,” declared Davie, coming up with a grin reaching from one ear round to the other. “Have, too. ’S whopper. Heap big chief me. Find whopper panal. All the tribe eat.”
Marian smiled indulgently. “Great brave, Hiawatha! Where did you find it? Where Pocahontas had just pointed it out to you?”
“No,” with great scorn; “I saw it myself. I pointed it out to her.”
“Is that so, Pocahontas?” asked Marian, still smiling.
“Yes, it is,” declared Esther; “and it is a big one, bigger than we ever had before, and we have been by it lots of times and none of us ever saw it before. Come on, Marian, let’s have it for supper. We haven’t had one for a year.”
“I guess we haven’t,” agreed Marian. “Somehow panales are not very plenty. What do you say, Delbert? Shall we knock off work and take in this newly discovered and most marvelously large panal?”
“All right,” said Delbert, throwing down his stake. “Let me fix the retort first.”
So they all trooped off and were soon en route to the pasture. It was a big panal, and it was so near to the path that it was a thousand wonders that they had never seen it before, with all those little workers flying back and forth. But then it was a long way from the wickiup, and they had been so busy with the canoe lately that they had not been much in the pasture; and probably it had grown pretty fast and a few weeks earlier would not have shown much.
At any rate, they took their toll of the little workers now, taking care to leave enough of the center for them to build on again and going off with their booty in the kettle and pail well covered. They had not gone far when they came upon the deer, and, of course, Delbert must try for a shot. He could have got one, a little fawn, but his heart forbade. It was such a dainty little darling that he wouldn’t have minded catching it alive, but as long as there was other food he would not kill it.
It was past noon as they wended their way back. Those who were not carrying honey gathered up wood. Davie was ahead. As they came out by the rock where the path wound smoothly down to the pier, Davie stopped suddenly and let his wood fall to his feet.
“Look!” he said excitedly. “What’s that? Is that a canoe by the pier?”
They all looked.
“Canoe!” said Delbert in a queer, quiet voice. “That’s the launch.”