CHAPTER VIII
THE BUILDING OF THE WICKIUP
Delbert came laughing to his breakfast one morning. “I’ve found the ideal spot for a house,” he said.
“Good for you!” said Marian, as she carefully raked out from the embers the red snapper which had been stuffed with green peppers, wrapped in green banana leaves, and buried in the hot coals and ashes overnight. “All right, tell us about it as we eat.”
“It can’t be told. It will have to be seen to be appreciated,” he said.
“In that case we will go and see right after breakfast.”
Which they did, and he led them to the highest, rockiest point of that end of the Island, facing the long, sandy point where the watermelons were and where one could see both the bay and the harbor.
“Now,” said he, seating himself on a big boulder, “you observe the lovely view we have. Nowhere on the whole Island can you get a better one. With a little clearing there is a fair chance of a path down to the pier. We are not so very far from the Cave either. And then, too, you see, this nice high cliff would save our making more than three sides to the house, and those big rocks there would be handy to brace against.”
“Where would be our floor?” asked Jennie. “It’s all rocks here.”
But Marian was looking. The cliff, as Delbert called it, would save making one side of the house, and several of the big rocks Jennie was so scornful of were in a direct line for working into the walls, while the others could be moved by means of crude levers that they could work. The floor could then be leveled by building up with rocks from the lower side. It would be impossible to dig holes to set posts in, but, if one were not too particular about having the house symmetrical, there were several fissures in the rocks where posts could be put, and braced solid with other stones packed in about them. The face of the big rock, or cliff, back of them was very irregular, and there were several good places to set roof-timbers in.
The ground sloped rather steeply down to the sandy point and was covered with brush, but a path, as Delbert said, could be cleared down to the pier, and it would be a better one really than the one they were using, too. Also a little tossing of the rocks to one side would clear the way back to the Cave, where they could use the old path to the beach. The heavy task would be bringing all the material up the hill, but that would have to be done in any case; only, of course, if they built at the Cave, for instance, they would not have to carry things so far.
“Delbert,” she said, “what we are going to need, and need badly, is lime.”
“Lime? What for?”
“To mix with sand and fresh water to make mortar to pack around the roof-timbers, where we set them into the cliff there, and around the posts, where we put them into this crevice below. Good mortar would set and keep them solid.”
“They dig lime out of the ground, don’t they?”
“No; they dig a certain kind of rock out and burn it, and it turns into lime; and they burn shells, and that makes lime too.”
“Shells? Well, we can get plenty of shells.”
“Yes, but I don’t know how to burn lime,—how long it takes or how it ought to look when it is right,—and I don’t know exactly how to work it afterwards either.”
“Can’t we experiment and find out? Burn just a few at first and see how they work?”
“I guess we’d better, for I don’t want this house falling down on us in a storm, and if I can get the frame of it absolutely solid, I’ll risk but what we can manage the rest of it all right.”
“What will you make the roof of?” asked Jennie.
“Thatch,” promptly responded Marian. “Don’t you remember all that tall thatch grass out beyond the lagoon? The Mexicans at the Port sometimes make their whole houses of it. And, Delbert, there is another big job ahead of us. We are going to need every pole that is in the corral fence; we must build a good brush fence to hold in the burros, so that we can have every stick and pole there, every piece of driftwood. I guess we’d better clear that patch of brush beyond the garden. It will be nicer cleared away, and we can pile it all on to the fence.”
They gathered a lot of shells that day, and, after a few experiments in their cooking-fire, made a little pile of alternate shells and wood and started it burning. Marian thought the shells ought probably to burn slowly; her idea was to rake out a few every now and then and see how things were going. Her only safe way was to mix a little mortar and see if it set hard.
Between times they worked on the brush fence. They had not progressed very far before they wished they had got at it at least two years sooner, for in the midst of the tangled growth of bushes, choked and stunted but still struggling to keep alive, they found a goodly number of cotton plants.
These must have been, along with the palms and the bananas, a part of the smugglers’ garden. There were three straggling rows, and most of the bushes had a few sickly-looking cotton bolls on them. They are never very large on that particular variety of plant, but none of these were larger than a small hen’s egg; indeed, most of them more closely resembled marbles. But they contained actual cotton, and with care and some cultivation the plants would produce more and larger bolls. They gathered them—what few there were—and put them with the cotton-tree pods.
“As soon as the house is done, I shall have to see about a spinning-wheel and loom,” said Marian, “and oh! if we had only found them before!”
They cut out the brush systematically, clearing out, as thoroughly as they could, each bush as they came to it. Delbert and the little girls would take sticks and bend back the bushes, so that Marian could get at them to chop them off near the ground with the hatchet; then with ropes they would drag them to the corral and pile them on the fence. They were trying to make it very solid and compact, also a little larger than before.
In this way they managed to release every pole that had been in the fence, and they piled them at one side to await the time when they should be ready for them at the new house.
They were not so very successful with the lime. They burned a good many shells before they produced what was at all satisfactory.
They found that there were not enough shells near by, but off across the bay, at the mouth of one of the esteros, was a bank that had seemed to be composed almost entirely of shells; so they took the Muggywah and made several trips there, coming back loaded down with all the shells they could carry. These shells were very old and broken, but Marian thought they would probably make as good lime as fresh ones would. There were other places, too, where shells were more plentiful than near home, and they made trips after them.
While they were gathering the shells they cut a good many pitalla poles, peeled the green bark off them, and left them to dry before taking them home. Delbert used his stone hatchet for that work; he had made a handle for it, as Marian said probably the first owner had, by splitting a stick down and tying it above and below where the hatchet was inserted, and while he could not, of course, chop wood with it, the soft green pitalla bark yielded to it very well. To be sure, it was no better, even for this purpose, than the other hatchet, but think how much more romantic it is to work with an ancient stone hatchet than with an ordinary little modern steel one!
Delbert thought so much of that hatchet that Marian said he had better give it a name, and told him about King Arthur’s sword Excalibur; but when Delbert asked her if she thought that would be a good name for the hatchet, she said she thought they had better modify it a little and call it the “Exscalper” instead, because, though it might once have been used to scalp with, it was not in that business now.
These pitalla poles are hollow, but durable and comparatively straight, and are much used in building the humbler homes of western Mexico.
The poor little overworked hatchet had to be sharpened many, many times. There was no need now to put the whetstone beyond Davie’s reach. He was too sensible to want to hide it, realizing as well as any of them that what the whole community needs should not be selfishly regarded as private property.
Delbert’s jack-knife had been worked and overworked till it was about used up. One blade was broken, and the other leaned backward in a most heartrending fashion. He did not use it much, but always had the butcher-knife tucked into his belt beside the Exscalper.
The two case-knives had been sharpened, and the two little girls carried them. Davie never felt at home without the dig-spoon. With much use its edge had become as sharp as a knife, and he used it for that right along. And he, like all the others, except Marian, always had his bow and arrows slung at his back.
They did not take much time off the work till the season for “duck” eggs came again; then they dropped everything and sailed for the little white islands. It took only a part of a day to make the trip, and they could get eggs enough for several days. They almost lived on them through the season, and when it was over dropped back to their vegetarian diet, varied only by an occasional meal of fish from a night’s spearing.
When, after much time and labor expended, and many, many experiments, Marian decided that there was enough lime to make the mortar to set the posts and roof-timbers, they began the task of getting their timbers up the hill.
They had thought that they could utilize Jackie for that, but he soon undeceived them. He was not averse to carrying small loads of wood, but when it came to pulling anything really heavy, Jackie called a halt, and, moreover, remained halted till the load was removed.
They found no means of coaxing or persuasion that availed in the least. It made not an iota of difference to Jackie whether those poles remained at the top or the bottom of the hill, and if the children wanted them at the top, why, let them take them there, that was all. In the end they had to drag them up themselves. They tied ropes to them and used main force. It was not a very long job when they once got over trying to make Jackie do it for them. As for him, he skipped along beside them, gay and carefree.
Then they debated long and earnestly as to just which crotched timber should be placed in this place and which pole in that. They tried each one in all the places to see where it would fit best, and everybody expressed his opinion. They planned where to put the doors and the window, and where was the best place for the fireplace.
When they had these momentous questions settled, Marian mixed her mortar. Each upright was made solid by being packed tightly with big rocks and all set in mortar; each roof-pole was set in the same way where it rested on the cliff. At the same time Marian tried not to be too prodigal with her mortar, for she wanted to have enough left to lay up the chimney, at least where it would come above the roof and be exposed to the wind and weather. And her supply of lime was not at all large, for it took so long to gather up the shells, and often they had not got them well burned after they were gathered.
After her timbers and poles were well set, she began on the fireplace. For this they brought up the bricks and the blackened stones from the smugglers’ old house; for some kinds of stones will crack and split with heat, or even go so far as to pop into little pieces which fly in all directions, and Marian wanted that fireplace built of tested stones that would be up to no mischief. The stones she had cooked over at the Cave were brought, and two nice, smooth, large ones from the cooking-place at the beach. She used clay from the pasture as mortar for the fireplace and the lower part of the chimney.
Once, on a trip up an estero that wound past a little hill, they had noticed a big flat rock that Delbert thought would make a fine hearthstone. They could find other flat rocks, of course, but this one had especially appealed to the boy, because it was much larger and smoother than any other they had seen, and he thought it would be nice to have the hearth of one big stone. Marian thought so, too, but was afraid it was too big for them to manage. However, she finally consented to try it. If they could get it on board the Muggywah at all, they could find some way of getting it off again and up the hill and into place.
After all, thought Marian, if her flock learned to achieve things, to overcome difficulties, to persist in spite of obstacles, was that not of itself a fair education? And to bring that great rock home would certainly be a lesson in achievement.
So they went after it. They took plenty of ropes along and several round pieces of driftwood to serve as rollers under the stone. They found it readily. One side was so flat and smooth that it seemed as if it must some time have been worked upon by human hands; the other was rough and irregular, being much thicker at one end than at the other. It was all Marian and Delbert could do to lift it alone, and even with Jennie’s and Esther’s help it was none too easy. Fortunately it was not far from the water’s edge. They got it on their two largest rollers, and, by smoothing the way and prying the rollers along, they got it down to the Muggywah.
Then it developed that it would be more easily got aboard at low than at high tide. At low tide the Muggywah could be placed under a bank and the big stone swung off on to her; at high tide it would have to be lifted up to get it aboard.
So they made their preparations. They tied the Muggywah fore and aft, and rigged up a tripod to assist in swinging the hearthstone over on to her just where they wanted it. They pushed and pried the rollers, and tugged and twisted till they had the big stone in position on the edge of the bank, and then retired to the shade of a scrubby mesquite to eat their lunch of turnips and carrots and drink Island water from the bottles, while they waited for the tide to go out.
And when the lunch was finished, they sallied forth and hunted for panales, clams, oysters, and, incidentally, arrowheads and more hatchets.
When the Muggywah dropped below the bank, they rallied again to the task in hand. The tripod was a big help; they had the hair rope for that. Carefully they worked. It was not merely the getting of the big stone that Marian had in mind; she wanted to be quite sure no one was going to get hurt in the process.
“Delbert, don’t lift on that till you really strain yourself,” she said. “Davie, you stand by that pole and see that it doesn’t lift up; I don’t want your little fingers mashed under this. Esther, poke that stick under there where Jennie’s fingers are. There, that’s right; that holds it instead. Now, Jennie, you stand there where Delbert is. Delbert, you and I will have to swing round below here now. Davie, hold that pole down tight.”
Davie held valiantly with all his might. There was no danger of that particular pole budging, but Marian wanted him out of the way, and knew that the only way to be sure he would not slip in at the wrong minute, and maybe get a finger jammed before she could help him, was to keep him busy elsewhere.
“There, now, you see, part of the weight comes on the tripod. Carefully now, Esther. Jennie can do that alone now; you jump down and be ready to help here.”
In the midst of it all she began to laugh. “Delbert, if it takes all this fuss to get it aboard, how in the world are we ever going to get it off again? We may have to dump it into the harbor yet.”
“Not much we don’t,” muttered Delbert between his teeth.
“Well, all steady now! Gently there, Jennie! That’s right! Now jump down and help Esther. There, there she is, neat as a whistle. Look how it pushes the Muggywah down, but it’s all right. Knock up that tripod pole there, Delbert. We’ll have the rope off. Where did you put your oysters, Jennie? Oh, I see. Well, drop ’em in here; we must be starting back. It will take us all day to-morrow to get this hearthstone off the deck, and two more to get it up the hill, as like as not.”
As a matter of fact, it took a great deal longer than that, but they did not work at it all the time. They rigged up another tripod to help them swing it off the Muggywah, and by aid of rollers got it to the foot of the hill safely. There they tied it to something to make sure it would not slip and roll down on them, and little by little, as they felt inclined, they pushed it up the hill. Sometimes a day or two would go by without its being touched, and then, some morning when they felt vigorous, they would get at it with levers and rollers and work it up the hill a little farther. Davie got quite expert in slipping the stones in back of it to block it up while they rested.
In the course of time it was taken into the frame of the new house and settled into place, being blocked with stones till it did not wiggle in the least; and as they stood back surveying it, they all felt that it was worth all the trouble it had been to get it. The fireplace itself was built up waist-high when the hearthstone was put in place.
Marian was planning a good handy place to cook over, and several of the scraps of iron were used with that idea. The old twisted, rusty oarlock, for instance, was converted into a hook to hang the kettle on at one side, and there were various little places made, to put things on to keep hot or to go on slowly cooking. At the proper height a mantel-shelf was put in, too, a smooth piece of driftwood. It had once been a board about a foot wide by three or three and a half long, but it had been tossed and beaten till the edges were thin and ragged. Marian fitted it across and surveyed it with pride.
It seemed as if the longest and most tiresome part of the work was the building of the chimney. Massive was the word for it. It was continued up pretty high. Marian climbed up on the roof-timbers and had the children hand her the stones and mortar.
They got well tired of the job before it was finished. At the last, Marian herself would help gather a pile of stones, and then, after mixing the mortar, would climb up on the roof and work away, and Delbert would hand up the rocks one by one and the mortar in the little wooden pail. She used the dig-spoon and the little spade for trowels, assisted by a piece of old board she had whittled into shape.
Yet, after all, considering how tiresome it must have been, the children were pretty good about it. Delbert never complained of the monotony, and though the little girls were quite sure Marian was building that chimney higher and thicker than was at all necessary, they did their work cheerfully.
They stopped when their good lime gave out, but Marian was sure that she had it high enough to draw well at all times, and so big and solid that it would not blow over in a storm, even if it had not been protected to some extent by the high rock, or cliff, back of it.
She would have been glad of more lime, but it was such a task to gather and burn the shells that she decided to finish the house without it. They gathered up their pitalla poles now, clean, creamy-white poles, which they fastened in place by tightly lashing with small ropes. Where they needed them in the walls they packed the end that rested on the ground with rocks and mud and tied the upper ends. The house began to take shape rapidly. The pitalla poles were easily split when smaller, finer pieces were needed.
Finally they were ready for the thatch. It would take a great many trips to get that. They knew of but one place where it grew, and that was away up by the lagoon. They would go and cut grass, or rather dig it out by the roots, till they had enough for a bundle for each one. These bundles were graduated in size, of course, but Marian allowed no shirking. Nobody really tried to shirk but Davie. He didn’t like to carry thatch-grass down to the estero, and he tried all kinds of excuses to get out of it, but Marian was firm.
“Every little helps,” she said. “It is work that you can do, and you must.”
So, in spite of his grumblings and groanings, Davie carried his little bundle as well as the rest. They would make several trips, stacking the grass in a pile at the pier; then they would stop and carry it all to the top of the hill to the new house, and Marian and Delbert would put it on the roof. Jackie helped them there. He did not mind carrying quite a bundle of grass up the hill, for it was light and did not tax his strength. It was pulling that Jackie objected to.
They put the grass on very thick, tying each little bunch very firm and tight to the split pitalla prepared for it. Here again the little girls felt very sure that Marian was doing a much better job than was at all necessary. They were quite sure that much less grass would do just as well. But Marian, remembering the fury of that first storm on the Island, was not going to run any risks, and Delbert backed her up in her determination. So for weeks they worked at it, digging and tugging at the grass up by the lagoon, often cutting their fingers on the sharp edges, toiling down through the hot sun to the estero with their bundles, tying them on the Muggywah, and then paddling back home. Then, when Marian and Delbert climbed up on the roof, the little girls handed up bunch after bunch of the rank, heavy grass to the two above, who tied them with the stout little cords that they sometimes took a day off to make. And finally the whole roof was covered with a thick mat of the rustling grass, the long loose ends of each row hanging well down over the root ends of the row below. Several poles were fastened across to hold it down better and make it all the surer that the wind would not get in underneath and undo any of their labor.
Then there were the sides to come next. Marian had thought that they would maybe thatch them too, but the children were tired of going after grass. Indeed, they had gathered all the best of it; what was left was so much shorter and thinner that it would take much more time to get it. So she cast about for other material nearer home.
There were several big rocks in a line with the walls, two of which were immovable, but there were several others that they succeeded in prying up and swinging round into place. In between them Marian built up a wall even with their tops, using for her mortar the shells that had not been well burned, mixing them with clay brought from the pasture. It was very tiresome bringing it, but it did nicely after they got it there, for it dried hard and smooth and would stay so as long as it was kept dry at least.
One thing Marian was particular about was to use only the fresh water for her mortar. It was more trouble than it would have been to use salt, but she had heard some of the men at the Port once talking about some one who had made a failure of a kiln of bricks because he had used salt water in the making. She did not remember what they had said was the reason why the salt was bad in that particular place, nor just what effect it had had, but she intended to run no risks; so her mortar was all mixed with water from the well on the pier side of the Island.
But she could not build up the entire wall that way, and by the time she had it up as high as the big rocks there were no more loose stones near them and she had used up every bit of her burnt shells. All hands were very tired, too, of lugging earth from the pasture, and they could find no clay nearer home.
She turned to the banana-patch then, and they tore the big stalks into strips of uniform size and used these to weave in basket-fashion between the uprights and the split pitallas. It did very well except that, as with everything else, Marian insisted upon its being done so well that it seemed to take forever to do it. They also used the dried leaves, weaving them in and out and pounding them down so as to have a good thick wall. Some kinds of brush they used, too, fine branches that had no thorns, or at least no large ones, but the fibrous strips of the banana stalks were the main material used.
This part of the task was something they could all work at. Even Davie learned quickly how to weave in brush and banana stalk and work and pound them down. Up under the eaves they were not quite so particular to have it thick and firm.
Finally it was all done. There remained now but the floor, the doors, and the windows.
The floor must be leveled and made as smooth as possible. It was so rocky and rough that it seemed the only way would be to build up from the lower side with stones. There were plenty of stones, but they had to be brought from some little distance now, as everything loose in the neighborhood had been pretty well cleaned up. Marian packed stones in as well as she could, and when it was comparatively level, filled in the chinks with pebbles and wads of banana leaves, and then they lugged up pailful after pailful of sand from the beach.
Jackie helped here too. They made a pair of sacks by folding a blanket over once and sewing up the ends. This could be thrown over Jackie’s back. They put in as much sand as they thought he would stand, and then, when the rest of them had their loads ready, they would all go up the hill together. Some one had to watch pretty closely to see that the load did not slip off over Jackie’s tail on the steep parts of the path, but he carried so much more than any of them cared to that it paid to use him. Of course, if they had really put much of a load on him, he would probably have balked as was his habit, but they were careful not to do that. Marian thought that he would gradually get used to carrying loads and be a great help to them some time in the future.
They poured the sand on the floor, where it ran down into the cracks and little holes, till after two or three days of pretty steady work the cracks seemed to be all filled up and their floor was level and smooth.
Then they went to Bonanza Cove, where in the storms the seaweed had been pounded and churned and tossed far up on the beach; there it had dried and bleached in the suns of later days till now it could be peeled up in great white layers. They took this dried seaweed in as big flakes as they could carry without breaking it, and carpeted every bit of the floor, clear up to the hearthstone. But Marian was a little afraid this was too near the fire for safety; so they hunted till they found enough big flat stones to lay a row all around the hearth. Then, by wetting the seaweed, they could pack this row down to a level with the hearthstone, and finally, after filling with sand all the little corners where the stones did not just match, they felt pretty certain that no sparks would fly out far enough to set their carpet on fire.
Then they moved in. It was not so tremendous a task. There was no packing or unpacking to do, no bickering with drivers of moving-vans. They simply gathered up their bedding and bags of feathers and dumped them down in one corner on the floor, and then brought over the few utensils from the Cave. A very few more trips brought over all the odds and ends that had accumulated,—pretty shells and other small treasures such as children always collect.
The new home was very irregular in shape, for their material had been far from regular or uniform and they had had to place their posts and poles where the unyielding rocks would receive them best, but the room averaged about eight feet by fifteen, the eaves being about six feet lower than the side built against the cliff.
There were two narrow doors and one window, and for the doors Marian made a light frame of split pitalla tied together at the corners and then wove a sort of mat of palm-leaf across them. This was too light and thin to be trusted in a storm; so of stouter material, split pitalla, but heavier pieces, she made a pair of large, heavy frames and covered these with thatch-grass, for which they made another trip to the lagoon. Even then it was not quite enough, and she finished with palm-leaves, the old dried ones that were not strong enough for ropes, but could be used whole. Some of these, too, she tied on the outside of the house where the wattling seemed to be a little thin; they would help a little when the rains came.
The light doors she fastened on permanently with fiber ropes, but the heavy storm doors were left outside, where they were out of the way ordinarily, but could be quickly put into place and tied over the others when a storm came up. She did not bother to make a mat frame for the window, but contented herself with the one heavy thatch one, which was fastened across the top so that it could be swung out and up and be propped with a stick, thus making a shade over the opening like an awning; it could also be swung down and tied tight whenever desired.
Inside there were several shelves put up by swinging them from the roof, and their largest piece of driftwood, laid across two rocks, made a very good table. These and the mantel-shelf were enough to hold all their dishes and other valuables. The bedding, folded up neatly in a corner, did not take up much room. The fireplace did not smoke, and it was very convenient indeed for the cooking.
At night the children lay down where they chose on the clean, springy seaweed floor, and pulled a part of a blanket or a rabbit-skin robe or the big cape over them and slept the sleep of the healthy till morning.
They had no lamp or lantern, but the bark of the pitalla burned with a white light that made the inside of the little house very cheery and cozy of an evening, and was a good enough light for anything they might want to do.
They had begun the house at the end of one rainy season; they had it finished just as the next one was upon them. They went with the Muggywah and gathered up all the pitalla bark, now nicely dry, which had been stripped from their poles and which they had not already brought in, and stored it in the Cave to keep it dry, and when they had that full they piled another heap in another cave, where it would be partially protected from the wet.
They gathered, too, a big pile of driftwood near the house,—light stuff such as the waves were always tossing up, and as much heavy stuff as they could get for back-logs to bury at night, so as to have good embers in the mornings when it was cold, for a bed of hot embers was a comfort indeed to start in with.
The children had begun calling the new home a wigwam, but Marian said she was quite sure that a wigwam was always made of skins stretched over poles, but she believed—she was not quite sure, but she believed—that a wickiup was made of wattles with a thatch or dirt roof; so, of course, theirs was a wickiup.
Rainy days had no terrors for them now, and no dreariness. They would do what was needful to make the little burros comfortable, gather into the wickiup what food and fuel was needed for the next day and night, close the storm door, on the side the wind and rain were coming from and open the other to let in plenty of light.
A very small fire would keep the room comfortable, and they could sit warm and dry, and do whatever amused them best,—weave baskets, or make little ropes, or sharpen knives or the hatchet. Rainy days were good times to crochet fiber into bags or clothing and to bore holes in wampum. Delbert made himself a beautiful wampum belt. It was woven of fiber about two inches wide, and he covered it with little shells sewed on through two little holes bored in each one. It was a great deal of work, but he was very much interested in it, and showed such ability in boring holes without breaking the shells, and in sewing them on so that they made a pretty pattern, that Marian was as proud of him for doing it as he was proud of the belt when it was done.
It was that summer that Marian took up the long-neglected task of the children’s education. She was handicapped certainly; her sole schoolroom equipments were half a lead-pencil, a piece of blue chalk half as big as her thumb, which chanced to be in her workbag, and a part of a newspaper that had lain in the bottom of their lunch-basket and had a dozen times only narrowly escaped being used up for something else. This paper consisted mainly of advertisements of real estate for sale, male and female help wanted, and a page of sporting news and market reports, with half a column of mineral discoveries. It was not an ideal primer, but it would do to teach Davie his letters from.
There was a place on the rock wall that was comparatively smooth, and Marian made it more so by rubbing it with flat stones small enough to be handled easily and as much like a grindstone in composition as she could find. She would rub and rub, throw on a little water, and rub again, and she kept that up till she had a space that would serve very well as a blackboard. Of course the blue chalk did not last long, but then they used bits of charcoal, and if bones were burnt just right they made a very good substitute for chalk. A bunch of mescal or banana fiber made a very good eraser.
There were several pieces of driftwood smooth enough to do for slates, and one or two bits of flat stones also. Clamshells were useful. They had quite a number of these, as big as saucers, that they had used as dishes. Marian took them now and made school readers of them. With the lead-pencil she wrote lessons on them, Mother Goose verses, bits of poetry that did not have too many big words in them, remembered proverbs, and little stories. When the three older children could read and spell all the words in them, she washed them out and wrote another lesson.
Arithmetic was taught by means of the blackboard and little shells, stones, and seeds. Delbert always did his figuring on the hearthstone. He would stretch out on his stomach and elbows, his chin in his hands, and his feet kicking at all angles.
The other children had to give him a wide berth or they got all kinds of cracks. Jennie complained that she could not think lying down, so she always used the blackboard. Esther used it too, not because her brain would not work horizontally, but because when Delbert had the hearth there was no room for any one else there, and he made his figures as big as all out-of-doors anyway. After all, mental arithmetic was more satisfactory, and Marian drilled them pretty well in that.
The paper-tree proved a treasure to them. It is, I think, in some respects a distant cousin of the birch. At any rate, its bark can be peeled off in the same way, only it is much thinner—of paperlike thickness, or thinness rather—and partially transparent. When she could get good pieces of this, Marian never failed to acquire them, and she made books of it, clumsy, of course, but serving a little better than the clamshells.
She was constantly experimenting for ink, testing every juice she came across that seemed at all likely. Pens she could make, as her ancestors had before her, of big quills. Her little penknife had never been much used except to whittle out toys for Christmas, and it was just the thing to make quill pens with.
Fortunately, Delbert and the girls were eager to learn. They did not want to be behind their mates when they got back to them, and as they were all three pretty bright, Marian’s task was much easier than it would otherwise have been.
But Davie was not over anxious to spend time on what seemed to him so useless. He was more backward than either of the others, too, and with him Marian had need of the most loving patience, also of ingenuity in thinking up ways to get him interested. Fortunately, she was patient, and, moreover, loved the little fellow so fervently that she would have developed patience even had she been naturally devoid of it.