GAY’S YEAR
ON SUNSET ISLAND
_By_
MARGUERITE ASPINWALL
[Illustration: _The_
GOLDSMITH
_Publishing Co._
CLEVELAND OHIO]
MADE IN U.S.A.
Copyright, 1926
by
Marguerite Aspinwall
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--A SURPRISE 3
II.--OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND! 20
III.--PLANTER’S HOUSE 37
IV.--ROSEMARY’S DIARY 50
V.--AN EXPLORING PARTY 65
VI.--A NIGHT IN THE CAVES 76
VII.--WE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE 91
VIII.--SIR HENRY MORGAN’S MAP 103
IX.--THE MAP IS STOLEN 121
X.--THE _Myra_ BRINGS VISITORS 131
XI.--A SWIM IN THE LAGOON 146
XII.--“DEAD MEN’S INLET” 163
XIII.--ALONG MORGAN’S TRAIL 180
XIV.--THE TREASURE HOLE 195
XV.--CAPTAIN RAWSON RETURNS 211
XVI.--THE LOST TREASURE 226
Gay’s Year on Sunset Island
CHAPTER I
A SURPRISE
If you have lived all your life in a sleepy little New England
village like Braeburn, you get so you just don’t expect exciting,
story-book sort of things to happen. I know that I, Gay Annersley,
fifteen years old and an orphan, but living with the nicest aunt,
uncle and cousins in the world--isn’t that the proper way to begin an
autobiography?--certainly never expected anything like Sunset Island to
happen to me.
Perhaps now, having written that much, I’d better go back and explain
how it all came about, only I somehow simply had to put Sunset Island
into the first paragraph.
Ever since I was a baby I’ve lived with Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles,
because my own mother, who was Aunt Mollie’s twin sister, died when
I wasn’t quite a week old, and of course my father, being just a man,
couldn’t be expected to know how to bring up all by himself a daughter
as young as that. Besides, Aunt Mollie had a baby of her own then,
Dan, who was two, and she declared she had plenty of room in her big
old-fashioned Braeburn house, and still more in her heart, for another,
especially when that poor red, crying, motherless mite that was Gay
Annersley in those days, was her twin sister’s only child.
So that’s how I came to be one of Aunt Mollie’s flock, and for quite
a long time I didn’t even know she wasn’t my own mother. For she has
never once in all those years made any difference in the love she gives
us, between Andrée, who is her real daughter, and me.
She never made any difference, either, between another adopted child
she found room for later in her big family and her still bigger heart.
This was Sydney Ross, just my age, and the son of Uncle Charles’ old
business partner. Syd’s mother and father had died in a dreadful
typhoid epidemic when the little fellow wasn’t more than five or six,
and Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie had taken him in promptly, as they
had me.
Andrée’s the one girl cousin I possess, but there’s still another
boy besides Dan and Sydney--the baby of the family, named Joe for a
sea-captain uncle of ours, but because of the color of his hair, never
called anything except Reddy. Reddy’s a darling, and just ten; not a
bit spoiled, either, in spite of being the youngest.
I wish I could say the same thing for my cousin Andrée, but I can’t.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that she and I, being the only girls, would
be chums and like the same things, and the same people. Well, we’re
not, and we don’t.
Andrée liked dolls, and silly, girly sort of books, and tea
parties--that kind of thing, and I loathed them. I always wanted to
play ball with Dan and Sydney, when they’d let me tag round after them,
and climb trees, and swim in the lake, and go on cross-country hikes.
When I was ten I could beat both the boys at sprinting, though they
could tire me on long distance runs.
I still like tramping better than parties and dancing, which Andrée
is crazy over. But then Andrée’s pretty, in a really lovely pink and
cream and golden fashion, and sure to be popular wherever she goes,
and I’m not. I’m little and skinny, and have half a million freckles,
and a turn-up nose, though I have nice eyes--hazel, with long lashes.
I can say that without being vain, because Aunt Mollie says I’ve got
my mother’s eyes, and everyone admits _she_ was a beauty. I’m like my
daddy, and what can be all right in a man, you know, can be quite plain
in a little girl.
However, I’ve never cared much about it one way or the other. I’ve been
too busy, I guess. And I remember my father a little--he died when I
was six--but I know how wonderful he was, and I’d rather look like him
than be pretty like Andrée. Honestly I would. Because Daddy was the
bravest and finest man I’ve ever heard of, even counting in the famous
heroes in books and histories.
He was a sea captain, just as Uncle Joe is, and lost his life in a
dreadful storm at sea, saving one of his sailors who had been washed
overboard. Daddy dove right into that raging sea, Uncle Joe wrote Aunt
Mollie--Uncle Joe was his first mate at the time--and reached the man,
and held him up safely till a boat could be lowered away. But a heavy
crate that had been washed overboard, too, struck Daddy’s head just as
he was being lifted into the lifeboat. He never recovered consciousness
again, and died the next morning, and they had to bury him at sea.
So maybe you can understand why I’m proud of looking like him, and
always will be. A girl with a father like that has got something big to
live up to all the rest of her life. And I’m certainly going to do it
if I can.
Up to six months ago, we’d all been just about as happy in the
old-fashioned grey and white house on State Street, as any family could
ask to be. Uncle Charles wasn’t a rich man, but he was president of
the First National Bank in Braeburn, and his salary must have been a
pretty nice one, for we children had everything we wanted in the way of
clothes and toys, and Aunt Mollie had a car of her own. Andrée and I
went to Miss Porter’s private school on Elm Street, instead of to the
public school, and Dan was expecting to go to Andover that fall.
And then, the spring before, Uncle Charles had what the doctors called
a nervous break-down, and had to give up his position at the bank. Aunt
Mollie told me a little about it--you see, she’d gotten in the way of
treating me almost like an older person, and talking things over with
me that she never told Andrée.
It seems Uncle Charles had been working awfully hard at the bank, which
was going through some kind of crisis. I didn’t quite understand that
part, but I know it had something to do with someone’s bad judgment
in investments, and that, though the fault really wasn’t his, Uncle
Charles had insisted on giving up all his own fortune so the bank’s
depositors shouldn’t lose a penny. Aunt Mollie was so proud of him for
doing it that she never seemed to realize it meant we would have to
sell the old house on State Street we loved so much and be quite, quite
poor people.
But I guess Uncle Charles realized it all right, and probably he blamed
himself for not somehow knowing what the other man was doing. Anyhow,
there we were, all at once, with no money except a few hundred dollars
of Aunt Mollie’s in the savings bank, the house having to be sold just
as soon as we could find a buyer who would pay a fair price, and poor
Uncle Charles so ill and nervous and unlike his usual jolly self that
Dr. West began to talk about the possibility of his having to go to a
sanitarium.
Of course there was Syd’s little income that his own father had left
him, but neither Aunt Mollie nor Uncle Charles would touch a penny of
that, though Sydney begged and _begged_ them. Anyhow it wasn’t much,
just enough to send him to boarding school later, and college, with a
bit left over to start him in some good business afterwards.
Aunt Mollie put her arms around me the night after Dr. West first
hinted at the sanitarium, and for the first time in my life I saw her
give way and cry as if her heart were broken.
“Oh, Gay, darling, what are we going to do?” she asked in a trembly
sort of voice that made a big lump come in my own throat to hear. “I’d
do anything, _anything_ to make your uncle well. But where are we going
to find the money to pay for a sanitarium?”
“Maybe it won’t be necessary after all,” I said as cheerfully as I
could. “I thought he seemed a little better today, didn’t you?”
Aunt Mollie’s never been the kind to look on the dark side of things,
but though she tried to cheer up and smile, I could see she hadn’t much
heart in it.
“Wel-ll, perhaps so, dear,” she replied with a little sigh she tried to
smother. “But he’s been ill for over six months now. I can’t seem to
see any real improvement.”
“And perhaps a nice rich buyer will come along soon,” I hurried on,
“who’ll want this house so badly he’ll give a whacking big price for
it--oh, _lots_ more than we’re asking. Then we’d have money enough to
live on for the next few years, while Dan and Sydney and I are growing
up and learning to support the family.”
She kissed me then, and called me her blessed little comfort, and
blamed herself for being, as she put it, “cowardly and lacking in
faith.” And we didn’t talk about it again for several days. But I
thought and thought, trying to think up a way out, until my head felt
actually dizzy.
Only, when you’re just fifteen, and a girl, what can you possibly do
in a situation like that? It looked pretty hopeless, but I knew it
wouldn’t help matters any if I gave in and cried, too, so I set my
teeth hard, and Syd and Dan and I talked and talked and _talked_,
though none of it seemed to get us any nearer the edge of our Slough of
Despond.
And then, tumbling on each other’s heels, as you might say, right out
of a blue sky, two wonderful things happened. We found a buyer for the
house, at a fairly good price, though not quite what Aunt Mollie had
hoped for. And Uncle Joe’s ship, the _Myra_, came into New York after
five years up and down the South Seas and the Indian Ocean, and Uncle
Joe, without waiting to send a telegram, took the first train out to
Braeburn and walked in on us just as we were sitting down to supper.
I don’t think I would have remembered him, because I wasn’t quite ten
the last time I’d seen him, but of course the minute Aunt Mollie jumped
up from the table, crying, “Joe, Joe!” in that excited, breathless way,
I knew who our unexpected visitor was.
He was a big man, with broad shoulders, and a sort of squarish, red
face with a grey mustache, and the twinklingest, jolliest grey eyes
I’ve ever seen. I knew right off that I was going to like my Uncle Joe,
even before we’d had a chance to speak a word to each other.
Aunt Mollie was hanging on to his arm with both hands as if she never
meant to let him go again, and I guessed she was not far from tears,
too, though, as I said before, I’d never seen her cry but once in my
life. She kept repeating, softly, almost as if she were saying a prayer
in church, “Joe, I’ve needed you so! I’ve needed you so!” And he just
patted her shoulder and cleared his throat two or three times.
The boys and I hung back a little, at first--I don’t know exactly
why--probably shyness, for I could see by their expressions that Dan
and Syd were as excited as I was over his arrival. In fact I was so
excited that my knees suddenly felt so weak and shaky under me, I
couldn’t have moved if I’d tried. It was the queerest feeling.
You see, it came to me the minute I heard Aunt Mollie call him Joe, and
I looked up and saw him beaming at us all with that nice smile of his,
that he’d been the last person to see my daddy alive, and that he could
tell me, if he only would, so many things I’d always simply _ached_ to
know about the part of his life he’d spent at sea. I made up my mind
then and there that when we got to know each other better, I was going
to take Uncle Joe off alone somewhere and ask him about a thousand
questions.
But Andrée apparently wasn’t the least bit shy. She went up and kissed
him as calmly as if she’d known him all her life, and said, “Welcome
home, Uncle Joe! I’m your niece, Andrée. Don’t you remember me?”
Andrée can always be counted on to do the pretty, polite thing no
matter how surprised she is. I can’t seem to think fast enough.
Uncle Joe put one arm around her and kissed her, at the same time
holding out his other hand to me.
“Then this must be Gay,” he said in a nice, deep, _gruff-ish_ sort of
voice, and I was scooped up beside Andrée in a regular bear’s hug,
right off my tip-toes, too, because I’m little and Uncle Joe is simply
huge. When I say huge, I mean across and up-and-down, both. He’s one
of the biggest men I’ve ever seen, I think, but he carries himself so
straight, and moves so lightly and quickly, you don’t quite realize at
first just how enormous he is, he’s so perfectly proportioned.
Then he spoke to the boys, and made some funny sailor jokes that set
them grinning, but he kept one arm tight about my shoulders all the
time, and somehow I knew it was because of Daddy. Aunt Mollie had told
me he simply worshipped Daddy, and had refused to be made captain of
another ship, which he had a chance of being, because he preferred to
keep on sailing as mate with Daddy. They’d been at school together, and
college, and it was through Uncle Joe that Daddy first met my mother at
a Fraternity party in their freshman year.
Finally we somehow got settled down to supper once more, with Uncle Joe
between Aunt Mollie and me, and for a while everybody tried to talk at
once, and the bedlam was awful. Uncle Charles was upstairs asleep--he’d
been having one of his bad days--and when things grew too noisy, Aunt
Mollie hushed us for fear we’d wake him, and told us no one but Uncle
Joe was to open his lips, except for eating purposes, for the next
fifteen minutes.
“So now, Joe, you have a clear field,” she laughed. She suddenly looked
almost as pink-cheeked and young and unworried as Andrée. “Tell us all
about yourself, and how you happened to come home and surprise us this
way.”
Uncle Joe smiled that specially nice smile of his back at her.
“Well, I had two perfectly good reasons, Mollie,” he chuckled. Then his
eyes stopped laughing, and grew quite grave all at once, and he put his
hand on Aunt Mollie’s arm. “I somehow felt you might need the wanderer
back for a while, when I heard about Charles, my dear. And--number
two--” his eyes crinkled up at the corners again, “I’ve got a plan to
propose.”
Syd started to shout “Hoo-_ray_!” and stuffed a big piece of biscuit
into his mouth in a hurry, remembering we weren’t to speak for another
ten minutes or so yet.
“Well, well! Not a comment,” Uncle Joe laughed. “Mollie, you’ve got
them well trained. I suppose, then, since they can’t ask questions, I’d
better end the suspense at once, so here goes! I brought the _Myra_
back especially to take a certain family not far off at the moment, on
a cruise of three or four months down to the nice, hot tropics, away
from snow, ice and winter worries, to search for rest and health for my
brother-in-law, Charles Jennings, principally; and for the rest--” he
hesitated teasingly, and glanced deliberately about the table at each
of us in turn. He had to grin, then, at the expressions of our faces.
Syd and Dan looked as though they’d _explode_ in another second if Aunt
Mollie didn’t give in about talking, or Uncle Joe didn’t hurry and
finish what he’d started to say. Even Andrée’s blue eyes were shining,
and I know I felt excited the way Syd looked.
“Excuse me, that wasn’t quite fair of me,” Uncle Joe apologized, still
chuckling. “I was thinking we might head for the Caribbean, and make
our headquarters on Sunset Island.”
And then I simply couldn’t keep still another instant. I was so excited
that I was trembling again. “Sunset Island,” I burst out. “Oh, Uncle
Joe, it sounds like all the treasure-island stories I’ve ever read--and
even nicer! What is it?”
“Why, some people believe it is a treasure island,” Uncle Joe said
quickly. “But I can’t guarantee that. Still, there’ll be no harm
in having a hunt, of course. It’s a small island, not far from
Martinique----”
“Where your great-great-great-grandmother came from,” Syd interrupted
breathlessly in his turn. “The one Andrée’s named for, you know.”
“And who used to play with the Empress Josephine when they were
children, before she _was_ Empress of France,” I supplied eagerly. “I
always wished they’d named me for her instead of Andrée. She doesn’t
care.”
“I do, too,” Andrée said indignantly. “You always say that, Gay
Annersley, just because I don’t like to read stupid old history books
all day.” She pouted and her eyes filled. Crying makes me homelier than
ever, because I scowl and my eyes get red, but Andrée looks like a
pathetic, pink and white baby when she cries, and strangers think she
must be horribly abused and will do anything to cheer her up again.
Uncle Joe evidently reacted in the usual way, for he looked rather
alarmed and terribly sympathetic, and hurried on with his explanations
about the island before the tears should actually spill over.
“Yes, yes, that’s the place,” he assented. “Makes it all the more
appropriate for us to be going back there, doesn’t it? Of course Sunset
Island’s not really Martinique, but Martinique’s the nearest land. We
had to send there to have my deed to the island recorded.”
“You mean you _own_ this island, Uncle Joe?” Syd demanded, staring with
round, amazed eyes. (Of course, after being one of the family all these
years, he considered Uncle Joe his uncle too.)
“Yes, _sir_,” Uncle Joe said promptly. “Though I’ve never set foot on
my property. It’s not a long story,” he added, twinkling again. “A few
words will tell you how I became a landed proprietor, and then we’ll
get down to discussing plans and sailing dates. The former owner was a
Frenchman by the name of Jean Carreau, who had a fine old plantation
house, in the Spanish style, and an orange grove on the island, besides
growing some sugar-cane, too, I believe. The war ruined him financially
and he lost his only son at Mons, which seemed to take all the courage
out of him, poor fellow.
“It cost too much to operate his plantation, with the market and the
price of labor what they were after the war, so in the end, after
making a losing fight for a year, he just quietly pulled up stakes one
day, took his wife--who wasn’t strong, and had come to hate the island
and its loneliness--and they went abroad with what money they had left;
it was mighty little. There they wandered about from place to place,
getting poorer and more discouraged all the time, and two years ago I
met them in India, pretty much up against it, as I soon discovered.
I’d known them years before, when they spent a winter in the States,
and Mr. Carreau had done me a favor--a very great favor, but no matter
about that now.”
“Joe, I can finish your story,” Aunt Mollie said gently, shaking her
head at him. “You found your chance to repay that old favor, by buying
his island, house, plantation, orange grove and all the rest of it,
though you hadn’t the slightest use for any of them.”
Uncle Joe blushed fierily through his mahogany-colored tan.
“At a ridiculously cheap figure,” he said, then. “I couldn’t make the
honest old fellow take what I was sure the island ought to be worth.
And, Mollie, you’re wrong about not having a use for it. I’m going to
take you all down there to spend the winter hunting that old pirate
Morgan’s treasure which tradition says is buried somewhere on that very
island of mine. Don’t you see, it will give us all time to think things
out, and will do more for Charles than a hundred sanitariums. I never
did believe in sanitariums,” he finished, and blew his nose loudly,
because I think he was afraid Aunt Mollie was once more on the edge of
tears.
“Buck up, old girl,” he told her, and patted her hand as though she’d
been Reddy’s age and had bumped herself on something hard. “It may not
be too luxurious--the house has been deserted for years, you know--but
it’s a splendid climate, and we can live on the schooner if necessary
till we get things patched up shipshape ashore. Come now, say you’ll
go, Mollie! I can see these girls and boys aren’t going to put any
difficulties in the way.” And his jolly, rumbling little chuckle boomed
out so contagiously that we were all one broad grin around the table,
including Aunt Mollie who had forgotten she wanted to cry as suddenly
as she’d thought of it.
“Oh, Joe, it--it sounds like a little bit of heaven on earth after all
these long months of worry,” she said in a voice that shook. “I’ll say
yes, dear boy, of course, if--if Charles is willing.”