Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

CHAPTER II
FOR SHELTER IN A STORM

Delbert stared with wide eyes for a moment; then he snatched the note from Marian’s hand to read for himself. He was not much accustomed to reading writing, but this was very plainly written with a purple indelible pencil on a leaf torn from a pocket memorandum-book.

Delbert looked up again into his sister’s face; then, dropping the note, he sped across the sand and up the hillside to where he could get a good view of the Gulf beyond the bay.

Marian picked up the note, and still stood looking at it.

“How we get home?” inquired Esther.

That was precisely the question that was racing round in Marian’s brain.

“I don’t know—yet,” she said.

Slowly she took off the blanket that was thrown over the things. The other blanket was there, too, and all of their things, also the five-gallon demijohn of filtered water and a tin box of crackers, nearly full, three cans of corn, and a quart can of tomatoes. She remembered Mr. Cunningham had said there were some eatables in the locker.

A big crab came slowly up and regarded them. Marian returned his look gravely. “Yes,” she said, “I see you are there, and we may thank our stars you are there, too, you and your relations.”

“W-won’t Mr. Pearson come back?” faltered Jennie.

“I am afraid not,” answered Marian.

“But—but what shall we do?”

Marian reached down into her boots, where her heart had sunk, and pulled up a smile by main force and put it on her lips. A connoisseur in smiles would have known at a glance that it never grew there of its own accord, but Jennie was only eight and was not versed in artificial smiles.

“Well, my dear,” said the big sister, “we can’t walk back and we can’t swim back, so I guess we shall just have to Robinson Crusoe it here till some one comes after us. When they find we don’t come home, they will hunt for us, of course. See here,” she added, briskly, pulling out the big pail Mr. Cunningham had lent them for clams, “you children take this pail and get some crabs. I will build a fire, and we will have dinner right away before anything else awful happens to us.”

The children, reassured by her tone and smile, took the pail and trotted off down the beach. They had caught crabs on the little beaches of the Rosalies and understood the business. Even Davie got a stick and landed a few.

Marian gathered some sticks and built a fire in the shade of a big rock. She had it well started when Delbert came back to her.

“I can see something black away out in the Gulf; probably it is him,” he said.

“Probably,” she answered.

They brought the things up to the fire and began to unpack the basket.

“I don’t see why he did it!” finally burst forth Delbert with clouded face and quivering lips.

“Well,” said Marian quietly, “he evidently was a different kind of man from what we supposed. There are a few such people in the world.”

“But, Marian, no one knows where we are. They wouldn’t know where to look for us if they were hunting for us.”

“No, but I have been thinking, probably Mr. Pearson doesn’t know that. What did you say to him last night?”

“Nothing. Mr. Cunningham did the talking. He just called and asked him if he could go out with a party in the launch to-day, and he said yes and came over and asked who was going, and when Mr. Cunningham told him, he asked what time we should want him. It was this morning he asked me if I knew the way, because he had never been out to any of the islands, he said.”

“Did you tell Mr. Cunningham where we were going?”

Delbert thought a moment. “No; I just asked could we have the launch for all day.”

“And you didn’t tell Bobbie or any of the other children?”

“No; I didn’t see any of them last night, and not to talk to this morning. When I went for the milk, I just said we were going in the launch. But Bobbie’s mother knew we were going; she brought out the cape to you.”

“Yes, but she didn’t know where. I never thought to mention it to any one. When you came back with Jennie’s cape, you told Mr. Faston we were going to Smugglers’ Island, but unless some of them remember hearing Clarence tell of it they won’t know where Smugglers’ Island is.”

Delbert shook his head. “Clarence didn’t tell about it to any one but his folks and us. We had it for a secret. Why, Marian, they won’t know at all where to look for us!”

“No,” replied Marian steadily; “it was an awfully mean trick for Mr. Pearson to serve us, even without counting the stealing of the launch, but you see, Delbert, Mr. Pearson supposes every one knows where Smugglers’ Island is. He heard what you said to Mr. Faston, and, besides that, I’ve been thinking, and there was not a single thing said on the way out this morning that would have led him to suppose we were the only ones that knew about the place. We talked about my never having been here before, but not a word but what other people knew. He supposes of course everybody knows, and that when we do not come home to-night they will come straight here in the morning.”

“But they won’t,” said the boy. “When we don’t come home they will think we are camping over. They won’t know till Mr. Cunningham gets back that we were coming home to-night, and he is not coming back for two days.”

“Oh, they will all know I wouldn’t have taken you children out camping with only Mr. Pearson along; besides Bobbie’s mother knows we didn’t take any bedding along, and even if she didn’t, she would know that if we had intended to be gone overnight you would have asked Bobbie to take care of the chickens.”

“Well, anyway, what if they do know we meant to be back? They don’t know where we are. Hunting the Rosalie Group over won’t find us.” Then he smiled a little grimly. “Do you know, Marian, it will be the chickens that will tell them about it? They won’t worry about us to-night; they will s’pose, of course, we will get in all right; but in the morning all our chickens and old Peter Duck and Madam Waddle and the whole brood of ’em will simply swoop down when Bobbie goes to feed his chickens. Then they will begin to investigate. That’s all the good it will do them; they won’t find us,” he concluded moodily.

“Marian,” he burst forth presently, unable in his nervous state to put up with his sister’s silence,—“Marian, what do you think?”

“Delbert,” she answered, pausing in her work and looking up at him, “the biggest thing in my mind just now is that bunch of bananas we saw over on the other side.”

Delbert’s eyes roved over the provisions before him. “How long will this last us?” he inquired.

“Well, I planned it for perhaps two meals for six people; as it happens, there are only five to eat it, and we have Mr. Cunningham’s eatables as well, you remember,”—she gave a little laugh. “You remember he said we were welcome to them, if we didn’t have enough of ours.”

“Huh! I should think so. You bet Mr. Cunningham would never do a dirty trick like that. We—we can starve here for all Pearson knows or cares.”

Marian put down the kettle and went to her brother, with his flushed face and flashing eyes winking back the tears. She drew the slender little form into her arms close and tipped up the handsome, quivering little face.

“Delbert boy, darling,” she said softly, “we are not going to starve. The children might if you and I were not here, but we are here; there are clams and crabs for the gathering, and I know a boy who, with his jack-knife, can make a trap that will catch quail, and I once knew him to kill a rabbit with a bow and arrow.”

“Yes, and you scolded me for it, too,” he said.

“I did. We didn’t need that bunny rabbit at all, but these babies are going to need feeding, and we shall have to feed them with whatever we can get, rabbits or what. And we can take care of them, Delbert, you and I, till somebody comes. We will do it in spite of Mr. Pearson.”

“Pearson!” said the boy fiercely; “he can just go to—to blazes.”

Marian leaned down and kissed him. “No, dear,” she said lightly, “but he may go to some other port and let the police catch him and send him and the launch back to Mr. Cunningham.”

The boy laughed chokily and, twining his arms about his sister’s waist, held her closely while she stroked his hair.

“No, darling,” she said presently, “we will not worry. You and I can do a lot of things; you will see. Now, here come the girls with the crabs. We mustn’t let them be frightened.”

Delbert straightened up. “How many did you get?” he called, and Marian smiled at the easy cheerfulness of his tone.

“Oh, you will do,” she said approvingly, “you will do.”

While she cooked and prepared the crabs, she sent the children off after clams. Under Clarence’s tuition Delbert had become quite an expert at finding clams, and fortunately they were plentiful. Marian, poor child, wondered how long one could live on an exclusive diet of crabs and clams before getting utterly sick and tired of them.

She decided to put everybody on a rather short allowance of bread, so as to make it last longer and explained it to them when she called them up to eat. They did not mind; they preferred crabs anyway.

“Marian,” said Delbert, “I can’t think of a thing between Mr. Pearson and Mr. Cunningham, except that Mr. Cunningham didn’t like his work when he first came and discharged him from the shop. But he has been working somewhere else ever since; that needn’t have made him mad.”

“Probably there is something that we don’t know about,” she said.

“Well,” he persisted, “I bet Mr. Cunningham didn’t know about it either. He wouldn’t have sent him out with us if he hadn’t thought he was all right. There was a fishline and hooks, too, in the locker,” he continued. “Did you see anything of them, Marian?”

She shook her head. “He only left us the crackers and canned stuff—oh, and a box of matches, and I had another one in our basket.”

“How many fires can we build with them?” he asked.

“A good many, but we don’t need to use them; we can keep live coals over from one time to another, as papa does in the fireplace winters. That is what we’ll do and use the matches only when we really have to. On a sunshiny day I could light a fire with the crystal from my watch.”

They had never heard of such a thing, and Jennie and Esther wanted her to take it off and show them how at once.

That was an easy task. There was much driftwood along the beach, besides the sticks that could be gathered from the hillside; and the children enjoyed gathering it up, and Marian would have also if she had not been inwardly so perplexed and worried.

To add to her worries, the sky turned cloudy and the wind rose. Suppose it were to storm, and she with not even a tent to shelter these little ones!

“Delbert,” she asked, finally, “isn’t there a cave on this Island?”

“Sure,” he answered; “right down here a way. Let’s go see.”

Marian’s hopes rose, only to fall again when she viewed the cave. It stood barely above high tide, a dark hole, foul and ill-smelling from the myriads of bats that lived in it.

“Dear me!” she said, “we can’t sleep in this, Delbert. Besides, if a storm should come up, the water would wash right in.”

“It goes back a long way,” said Delbert. “Clarence and I went in with a torch, but the farther you go the smellier it gets. Phew! No, I should say we couldn’t sleep in it. If it’s a cave to sleep in that you want, I guess we shall have to hunt one up.”

So they climbed back up the hill and began an investigation of the big masses of rock which at that end of the Island looked as if some giant hand had tossed them up and they had since lain in the same wild confusion in which they fell.

It would be very strange, thought Marian, if some sort of shelter could not be found among these. But she had no luck. Several places she discovered that would have been ideal in pleasant weather, an overhanging rock to keep off the dew, or a thick, dry, mossy bed, but when wind and rain were to be considered—

Finally Delbert called to her from a point farther up than she had yet gone.

“O Marian, here is a sort of a crack; maybe it would do.”

She scrambled over the intervening rocks and surveyed the “crack,” and though it was far from being what she wanted, she saw at once that it was the best place they had yet found.

It might, perhaps, have been called a miniature cave. It was not high enough to stand up in, but extended back some ten or twelve feet, growing smaller and smaller, till at its extreme end it was not more than a foot in height. Its width was about the same as its depth. A few feet away from the opening rose another rock, a smooth-faced, gigantic mass that would keep the worst of the wind and rain away from the mouth of the cave, or crack, as Delbert called it.

“I believe it is the best we can do,” she said. “We could at least keep dry and warm in there. All the other places would be good only in good weather. We’ll get some sticks and poke around and see if there are any snakes or anything.”

Delbert promptly followed the suggestion. He crept in and punched and poked most industriously and raked and scraped with energy, but could start nothing, and he declared there did not seem to be any cracks leading any farther back.

“That’s all right, then,” said Marian. “I didn’t want to dispute the right of way with any snakes or centipedes. Now we’d better go down to the bananas and get a lot of dried banana leaves to help out our bed.”

This they did, gathering an enormous bundle and tying it with the lariat rope. Then Marian slung it over her shoulder and so with a very little assistance conveyed it to the Cave.

By this time it was getting late in the afternoon. The sun had disappeared completely from the gray sky, and the wind had risen so that there was no doubt at all about the approach of a storm.

“We must bring everything up,” decided Marian. “Everything must come under shelter here right away. We must not leave even the dig-spoon down on the beach.” She was seized with a nervous dread of the water, which was already rolling in higher than usual.

The little feet got tired of going up and down the rocky hillside, but Marian and Delbert persevered till everything, even the wood they had gathered, was safe at the Cave. Then Marian arranged things as best she could for the night. She packed their belongings, so that they would be some shelter for the bed of banana leaves and blessed Bobbie’s mother for the big cape, which, with Jennie’s pinned to it, would serve as a third blanket. Then she built a fire back of the big rock that sheltered the mouth of their cave bedroom, and cooked the clams for their supper.

The children huddled together by the fire. They were enjoying the experience. Marian was big; she would take care of them; and it is fun to cuddle down behind a big rock and watch your supper cook over a dancing camp-fire.

After supper Marian carefully packed a solid chunk of wood in a bed of coals, covered these with ashes and dirt, and piled little rocks over them to protect them from the rain that she felt sure would come in abundantly before morning. She kept a fire going for light, as they had no lamp or lantern of any description.

The children were tired and willing to go to bed after they had eaten, and Marian herself was fully ready to lie down after she had got them all packed away. She slept, too, for a while, but when the storm came it wakened her, and there was no more sleep for her all that long, long night.

The roar of the sea was terrific; the big waves were sweeping in from the sea and breaking on the beach with thundering crashes. The flashes of the lightning were intense, and the thunder seemed to Marian to shake the very earth. She had thought they would be protected from the wind, but it seemed to sweep over them with perfect freedom. She shivered and shrank closer to the children. Davie was next to her. He seemed to be warm and comfortable and he slept peacefully in all that pandemonium. Poor little chap, he had been all worn out climbing up and down the hill and chasing crabs on the beach. The others woke, and Marian anxiously inquired if they were all warm. Delbert said his feet were cold, but aside from that all were fairly comfortable. Crowded in together as they were, they kept one another warm.

But they were frightened, and no wonder! The storm outside was a regular tempest, and they were cooped in that little hole, sheltered from the rain, indeed, but exposed to everything else.

They were afraid the rock roof would fall and crush them, that the lightning would strike them, and Jennie was afraid the water would wash up to where they were.

Marian knew there was no danger of the first and no probable danger of the second, and she knew they were far beyond the reach of anything less than an actual tidal wave that might engulf the whole Island.

She soothed and reassured them by every argument she could think of, and then she sang to them all the songs she could call up that might tend to reassure the shrinking human spirit at such a time, beginning with

and finishing with a rollicking glee with a rousing chorus that announced that

And indeed “she” was howling outside so furiously that it was only because Marian’s lips were so close to their ears that they could hear her songs at all.

Some time along toward morning the thunder and lightning ceased, and though the rain still came down in a steady pour, the wind still blew, and the waves still thundered on the beach, one by one the children dropped off to sleep. Marian did not. She lay there in a cramped, uncomfortable position, for to change it meant to get out from under the covering and expose the children to more of the cold wind. She wondered where Pearson was passing the night. How she longed for morning, yet when it came it brought little enough of relief. The worst fury of the storm seemed to be over, but the wind was still high and there was some rain.

Marian’s carefully banked fire was utterly drenched and washed away, and she had to light a new one with a precious match. She built it under shelter of the Cave, and then the smoke nearly drove them out into the storm.

There was some of the clam soup left from supper, and, reinforcing it with one of Mr. Cunningham’s cans of corn, she was able to fill them all up with a hot breakfast.

They could not see anything because of the big rock in front of the Cave, and to go out past the range of it meant to be drenched, or at least dampened, and every one but Davie could see that that would not do. The little girls could stand up in the wider part of the Cave, but when Delbert forgot himself and tried it he got such a bump that he fairly cried with the pain.

Marian smoothed up their bed and packed the food back into the basket, and then racked her brain for methods of amusement. There was not much that could be done, but they played a few simple little games that could be played while sitting still, and really, all things considered, got on marvelously well.

In the afternoon there was a cessation of wind and rain for a while, so that they did venture out a little, but Marian was so fearful of their getting their clothes damp that it was not much diversion, after all. Of course, every tree was loaded with drops of water that the slightest shake released, and the ground under foot was soaked and running in little rivulets.

The second night was only less miserable than the first. There was no storm to frighten them, and they slept more, but they were colder and more uncomfortable when they were awake, which was really a good deal of the time, after all. By morning the wind had died down and the sun was struggling to break through the remaining clouds.

When Bobbie went to feed his chickens on the evening of the day the launch party went out, his little round, freckled face wore an unusually sober expression. As he tossed out the handfuls of corn, he gazed out over the waters regretfully. The way of the transgressor is hard certainly, but only the last part of the way, the first part is most remarkably easy. He had been down on the pier that fateful morning with his mother’s full knowledge and consent,—nothing wrong in that,—and when the fishing-boat was ready, the men had said, “Come along, Bobbie,” and “Come, jump in if you want to, kid,” and there was no time to go and ask his mother; they would not have waited for him if he had; even his mother admitted that. There was no time to go and ask, so he had gone without asking, and see what he had had to suffer on account of it. One whole week already with no diversions besides school and errands, and another, dreary with monotony, stretching ahead of him.

To-day had been worst of all, with the Hadley house closed and silent, and Bobbie knew they would have asked him to go with them if it had not been for that ill-fated fishing-trip.

He heaved a sigh and flung out the last kernels, and then, as many of Delbert’s chickens were hungrily helping themselves and the launch was not yet in sight, he went over to the Hadley yard, climbed through the shed window, and measured out the amount of corn he knew Delbert always fed his flock. After he had given it to the eager biddies, he went back home, and a little later, when he ran out to shut up his own, he went over and closed Delbert’s coop also, first carefully counting the inmates, as he knew Delbert always did. When he found one was missing, he searched till he found the silly thing perched on a barrel in the yard, a tempting meal for coyotes, and, hustling the misguided fowl into the coop, closed the door securely. It was a service that he and Delbert performed for each other so often that he did not even mention the matter to his mother, and she, busy with her household tasks, gave the launch party scarcely a thought, and supposed, of course, it came home on time.

The storm was the worst the Port had known for years. Bobbie might have saved himself the trouble of closing the coops so carefully, for both were blown to pieces, and numbers of the chickens of each were drowned. People had no thought or time to spare for chickens and their coops. Roofs were sent flying, and many a wall had to be braced and watched through the wild night. While Bobbie’s mother hurried to and fro, moving things out from under the leaks in the roof, quieting her frightened children, and keeping general watch and ward, she thought of the Hadleys and spoke of them to her husband.

“Marian’s kitchen roof is probably leaking like a sieve,” she said, “but I guess the rest of the house is all right.”

“Yes,” he answered, “I was just thinking it was lucky Hadley fixed things up so well before he left. As it is, it is the safest house in town.”

“Dear me!” cried the lady suddenly, discovering a stream of water coming down in a corner hitherto considered safe and dry, “I only wish ours was. Half the things I have will be utterly ruined if this keeps up.”

“And it is going to keep up all right,” was the consoling reply of her husband.

In the gray morning, when the storm abated and men in waterproofs began to venture out and take stock of the damage done and compare notes, it was discovered that the launch had not come back; that while frailer shelters had gone crashing down, compelling their inmates to flee through the storm to other shelters, the “safest house in town” had stood untenanted and alone.

When Mr. and Mrs. Hadley, hurried back from Guaymas by the awful news, reached the Port, every foot of the Rosalie Group had been searched over. On one had been found a child’s handkerchief beaten into the sand. They gave it to Mrs. Hadley, and she looked at it a moment silently. Just a ragged, soiled little thing it was, with a faint trace of what had once been a picture printed in bright colors.

“It’s Esther’s,” said the mother, and she put it away, the most sacred of her treasures. As a matter of fact, it was not Esther’s at all,—Esther had hers with her at that moment,—but the grimy little rag was taken for evidence indisputable that the launch party had been on that particular island.

Over and over the boats went out and searched. All of the Rosalies, all of the esteros and marshy mud flats for many miles were gone carefully over, not, indeed, with any hope now of discovering the lost ones, but for some trace, some sign, something washed from the wreck.

When Mr. Cunningham returned, he declared himself completely mystified. He knew the launch was in perfect condition when it went out that morning, for he had examined it himself; and he knew Pearson was in every way competent to run it. There had been plenty of warning of the oncoming of the storm, plenty of time to have returned in safety.

But the launch did not return; it had gone out into the blue, and the blue had swallowed it entirely. The waves lapped, lapped on the rocks and little beaches, the seabirds swooped and called to one another, and in time even the gray-haired father gave up the search, and he and his quiet, sweet-faced wife packed up all their belongings and left the scene of their terrible sorrow.

Only one person had advanced any theory other than that the launch party had been in some way wrecked and lost in the storm. One man had suggested that perhaps Marian and Pearson had eloped,—an idea that caused more than a few smiles even at that time, for an eloping couple would have been so likely to take the lady’s four small brothers and sisters with them. Just how any accident could have occurred was a mystery, but that one had happened no one doubted.

Old Mr. Faston had, indeed, told of Delbert’s remark to him that they were going to Smugglers’ Island, but Bobbie and the other children told of playing pirate and smuggler on a sandbar of one of the Rosalies, and the childish game was, of course, thought to be the reason of Delbert’s statement.

So time passed. The Hadleys had gone from the Port, Delbert’s chickens were added to Bobbie’s flock, a Mexican family moved into “the safest house in town,” Mr. Cunningham bought a new launch, and, so far as the Port was concerned, the incident was closed.