OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!
Uncle Charles proved willing enough to go on the cruise, when the plan
was explained to him. He’d hated the idea of a sanitarium all along,
and declared that he felt better already at the thought of the sea
voyage and the warmth and peacefulness of Uncle Joe’s tropic island. He
certainly looked brighter, just talking of the change, and the brighter
and more hopeful he seemed, the more Aunt Mollie threw off care, and
bustled about packing and planning with her old light-hearted smile
that we’d seen so seldom since Uncle Charles’ illness.
As for the boys--even Reddy--they were absolutely mad with excitement,
and there was mighty little talked about in the Jennings household
until the day for sailing came, that wasn’t in one way or another
connected with the voyage and Sunset Island.
At first even a week seemed ages to our impatience, but after we got
fairly into the midst of our preparations, the time flew so fast that
Friday, the day we were to leave for New York, arrived long before it
seemed possible.
Uncle Joe had decided that we were all to take the noon train from
Braeburn for New York, and spend that night at a quiet little hotel he
knew of downtown. In this way we could make an early start Saturday
morning for the schooner, which was tied up at a wharf in the East
River. Uncle Joe wanted to sail about eleven on account of the tide.
I had never been in New York before, and never on a ship, to remember
it, that is. I’d been told that once, when Daddy’s ship came into
Boston harbor, Aunt Mollie took me down to see her and we had our lunch
on board, but I was so small at the time I don’t--very much to my
regret, as you may believe--remember one single little thing about it.
Ordinarily, then, I’d have been crazy to see all I could of New York,
but as matters stood I was saving all my curiosity for the _Myra_,
and our trip to Uncle Joe’s pirate island. The boys and I had taken
to calling it a pirate island because of that story about Morgan’s
treasure being buried there; and oh, didn’t we make plans for finding
golden ducats and pieces of eight after we reached it. It was all
so gorgeously thrilling, it simply didn’t seem possible it could be
actually happening to us.
Somehow, being a sea captain’s daughter, I felt as if I ought to know
about ships by instinct, but of course I didn’t, and was just as
mortifyingly ignorant as Andrée herself, about everything on board,
when we went up the gangway and stood at last on the _Myra’s_ beautiful
spick-and-span deck.
The _Myra_ was a sailing schooner, with an auxiliary engine for calms,
or for coming into port. She had three masts, which Uncle Joe explained
were called fore, main and mizzen. The fore-mast is the one up nearest
the bow--which is what they call the front of a ship. The main-mast is
the big one in the middle, and the mizzen-mast is the one behind--aft
is the proper sea word.
I felt quite proud of myself when I’d picked up a few real nautical
terms and decided I was going to listen and watch all I could on the
trip south and see how much I could remember.
It was a beautiful morning when we cast off our mooring lines (I’m not
_quite_ sure that’s the right way to say it, but I’ll let it stand till
I can ask Uncle Joe some day, privately). We used the engine for going
down the bay, but we hoisted some of the sails, too--one on each mast I
think.
So much that was exciting happened in the weeks following our departure
from New York, that I’m not as certain of my memory for details of the
voyage itself as I’d like to be. Anyhow, I know the sails shone very
white and beautiful against the blue sky and the blue water of the
bay, and I can still hear how the wind made a pleasant little humming
sound in the canvas, and among the sheets (that’s sea-talk for ropes; I
learned that the first day, too).
Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie sat in steamer chairs up on deck, on
the sunny side, all wrapped up in rugs because it was cold, even for
late October. But of course the boys and I scorned the very idea of
deck chairs when there was so much to do and see; and even Andrée, for
once, preferred being with us, and trailed along at our heels, as much
interested as the rest of us in learning all she could about the _Myra_.
If there wasn’t such a lot to tell about what happened after we reached
the Island, I might take the time to describe the week we spent at
sea, on the way there. But as it was all quite peaceful, and calm and
lovely, with no storms and nothing out-of-the-way from start to finish
of the voyage, I’ll just say no one was seasick; that Uncle Charles
improved simply miraculously, and that we all grew red and brown with
sunburn and salt winds, and were hungrier and happier and thankfuller
for Uncle Joe’s _scr-umptious_ idea every day of the trip.
It was very early in the morning--only a little after sunrise--when we
got our first glimpse of our Island. I was sound asleep, and dreaming I
was back in Braeburn, when someone knocked heavily on the door of the
tiny cubbyhole of a stateroom Andrée and I shared between us.
At first the sound mixed itself up with the rest of my dream, but when
it was repeated I sat up in bed in a hurry, feeling rather frightened.
“What is it?” I called. “Who’s there?”
“Martin, Miss,” came the answer. “The Captain says to come on deck,
please. We’ve lifted the Island.”
And of course, at that, I woke Andrée in a hurry, and we fell out of
our bunks and scrambled into our clothes faster than we’d ever made it
before.
“We’ll be right up, Martin,” I shrieked. “How near are we? Oh, Martin,
wait--what does the Island look like?”
But Martin had gone and we had to wait to satisfy our curiosity until
we’d followed him up on deck.
Martin, who was the youngest sailor on board, was only a year older
than Dan, but he’d been at sea for three years--two of them on the
_Myra_ with Uncle Joe and I guess it sort of amused and pleased him to
answer some of our million questions about the ship and his own sea
adventures.
We realized Uncle Joe would probably be much too busy that morning to
bother with us and our curiosity, but if we could keep near Martin we’d
know the meaning of everything that was happening. Martin’s patience
was endless, and besides, as I said, I think he liked the feeling of
importance our asking gave him.
He had called Dan and Sydney first, so we found the boys on deck
ahead of us, perched on the port rail, up near the bow, both of them
squinting horribly as they tried to look straight into the glare of the
sun which was pretty strong already, even if it was only a little way
above the horizon.
It took us all quite a while, squinting and straining our eyes, to pick
out the tiny, black speck, higher at one end than the other, that lay
directly across the sun’s path.
“It doesn’t look like an island,” Andrée said in a disappointed tone.
“It’s more like a ship with one tall mast in the stern.”
“Well, it’s not,” Dan said decidedly. “That’s Sunset Island. Uncle Joe
pointed it out to me himself. Here, take the glasses, Gay. The glare
doesn’t hurt so much through them.”
He passed them over, and I took a long, careful look to get my
bearings, but at first all I could see was pink and gold light on the
water, and deeper orange and red clouds all banded round the edges with
violet, that reached down to the sea. Then, quite suddenly, the glasses
caught it and showed up the place so plainly that I gave a gasp and
forgot to breathe again for several seconds.
It looked, through the glasses, like a hilly little island, perhaps
five miles, or less, long, with a ridge down the middle from end to end
that kept you from seeing across it. The ridge rose at the north end to
a small, but quite steep, mountain, pointed at the top like those hills
that are always called “Sugar Loaf.” We have several in different parts
of New England I’ve been in.
The whole island was thickly grown over with trees; I couldn’t make
out the kind from the ship, except along the beach where the trees,
growing down to the edge, were some sort of tall palms. I’d never seen
a palm before, except in books and travel movies, and now, actually
seeing them, rows upon rows of them, blowing in the lovely morning
breeze right before me, made the whole thing--island, pirate treasure
and all--seem actually _real_ for the first time since Uncle Joe had
spoken of his plans to us.
Somehow, deep down inside of me, I hadn’t quite believed in them
before. I think I’d gone about all those last ten days afraid I’d wake
up any minute and find it was nothing but a dream.
But now I stopped quite suddenly being afraid.
There was the Island, getting nearer and plainer and more _like_ an
island every minute. There was the same kind of sandy white beach I’d
read of in desert-island stories--oh, _ever_ so different from ordinary
seashore beaches at home! And there were the palms beckoning us to
hurry, hurry; and the curving line of surf a little distance off the
shore, appearing to go completely round the island like a long white
wall.
That must be the reef--all desert islands you read of have a reef round
them--and though I couldn’t see any break in it, even with the glasses,
I knew there must be one somewhere that would let us through to the
still water of the lagoon inside. It was too good to be true; only, it
_was_ true.
Uncle Joe had the man at the wheel lay a course to pass around the
southern tip of the island--the end that didn’t have the little sugar
loaf mountain--and as soon as the _Myra_ had rounded this, we could all
see there was an opening in the reef, just as we’d known there must be.
It looked pretty narrow for a ship as big as the _Myra_ to pass
through, and the water was pounding and fairly boiling over the reef on
both sides of the break, so that the idea of missing the entrance by
some miscalculation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.
But Uncle Joe had no fear on the subject apparently. There was a steady
wind blowing, and the _Myra_ raced through the water like a wild thing
running for the sheer joy of it.
It was awfully pretty, and sort of thrilling, but I’ll confess I would
have enjoyed it more if the _Myra’s_ nose hadn’t been pointed so
squarely at a particularly boiling patch of white water to the left of
the entrance. She looked as though her first and main object in the
race was to climb right over the reef at that special spot, but when
we seemed right on the point of doing it, the man at the wheel put it
over hard, and the next moment we were through the break in the white
wall, with the water thundering and breaking in clouds of spray on
either side of us.
Inside the little lagoon there was hardly a ripple, and the _Myra_
stopped like a big gull lighting, her white sails folding exactly like
wings. The water was the blue of a lovely aquamarine ring I once saw
at a jeweler’s in Boston, and so clear you could look away-way down to
a bottom of clean white sand like that on the beach. And across it,
from the island itself, there came to us the spiciest, most delicious
smell that was like nothing I’d ever smelled or imagined up to that
moment--orange blossoms, and new grass, and just a tang of salt air,
and wet seaweed, and hot sand, and lots of other things I hadn’t any
names for, all mixed up together. I put up my snub nose the way an
inquisitive puppy will, and sniffed and _sniffed_.
Uncle Joe came along at that moment, and how he did laugh at me. But I
was so excited. I was past caring about that.
“How soon can we go ashore?” I begged.
He laughed again and shook his head at me.
“Nobody goes ashore from my ship without breakfast,” he told me.
“Depends on you and Andy, here, how soon that’s eaten.”
Usually, as I knew perfectly well, Andrée hated his nickname for her
of Andy, but that morning she didn’t notice it. She slipped her hand
through my arm.
“Hurry up, Gay, and let’s eat quick, then,” she said, and of course I
didn’t need any urging when I found that was the condition on which our
going ashore depended.
Half an hour later everybody, including Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles
and Reddy, were on deck, to find the long boat already in the water,
with Martin and another sailor waiting at the oars. It was only a
little bit of a row from the schooner to the beach, and we all went,
even Uncle Charles, who insisted he felt like his old self, and
couldn’t be tired by anything that morning.
The first thing Syd said when he stepped ashore was, “Do you suppose it
was here the pirates landed?”
The boys weren’t interested in anything but buried treasure. I don’t
believe they’d so much as noticed that lovely fragrance, or the
blueness of the lagoon, and how beautiful the palms looked blowing
against the blue up above, and the dazzling white sand in what I’ve
heard artists call the foreground of the picture.
Still, I suppose boys are made like that, and there’s no use expecting
them to be different. Now with me, even if there proved never to be any
treasure, Sunset Island was romantic and exciting enough for me just as
it was that morning.
Martin answered Sydney’s question quite seriously.
“If they ever came here at all--which ain’t sure, you know--I guess
they came same way we did, unless they owned wings ’stead of boats.
There ain’t but one entrance through the reef, the Captain says.”
So that was that.
Well, it wasn’t so silly of the boys after all. It certainly added to
the thrill to know that _maybe_ Morgan and his men, carrying their
heavy treasure chests, had come across the same sandy beach we were
standing on, once upon a time.
The Island hadn’t been inhabited for nearly five years, according to
Uncle Joe, and five years in the tropics make lots of changes. The
jungle grows quickly when it isn’t fought and kept out and trimmed.
Martin was the one who first found traces of what had been the old
road from the beach to the French planter’s house. It was pretty nearly
hidden with vines and underbrush now, but it wasn’t quite so dense as
the rest of the thicket.
“Martin and I’ll go first and cut a way,” Uncle Joe said. They had
brought curious looking axes with them in the boat, that Martin told
us were called _machetes_, and were specially useful in clearing wild
undergrowth.
“An’ keep your eyes peeled for snakes,” Martin added, never dreaming
what a bomb that single word “snakes” was going to cast into the party
behind him.
Aunt Mollie looked startled and gathered her skirts about her, as if
she were going wading, but she’s a good little sport, Aunt Mollie, if
there ever was one, and she didn’t _peep_, just started pluckily after
Martin, holding on to Uncle Charles’ arm.
Andrée, however, isn’t made of hero-stuff. She repeated the word
“snakes” in a gaspy sort of voice, and sat down on the sand, drawing
her legs up under her dress.
“Why didn’t you tell me there were snakes before?” she asked and hugged
her knees tighter with both arms, rocking back and forth. “I won’t go
into that place. I won’t--I tell you I _never_ will! I want to go back
to the ship.” And she began to cry. I’d have _died_ before I’d have
done that, no matter how scared I might be.
“Spoil sport!” Syd jeered at her. “Cry-baby! All right, go back to the
ship. But you can’t go till we come back for you. Sit there on the sand
alone, if you want to. We’re going on.”
But of course she wouldn’t do that either, and it took us ten solid
minutes, all of us pleading and reasoning in turn and together,
before she decided she’d rather brave the snakes in our company in
the thicket, then have them come out and surprise her on the beach by
herself.
So we made a second start. But some of that first flame of excitement
we’d been feeling had been nicely drowned now by Andrée’s silly tears.
Uncle Charles can’t stand a scene since he’s been sick, and I could see
he was already beginning to feel nervous and upset and half sorry he’d
ever attempted the trip ashore. But we kept on walking.
There weren’t any more interruptions, and we found the road freer after
a while, and at the end of two hundred yards or so we came out of the
trees into a beautiful green clearing, in the center of which stood a
low, white house that looked from where we were, as though it were made
of stucco or concrete. It had a red tiled roof that had lost quite a
lot of the tiles in places, and some heavy vines with bright orange
flowers were climbing over the corners and dropping down the white
walls.
It was the loveliest place you can imagine and yet--in a way I can’t
describe--somehow it was the loneliest as well. A house shows so
plainly, you see, when there’s nobody living in it and loving it.
There was a wide tiled terrace in front of it, and a million weeds
were growing luxuriously out of the cracks between the tiles in every
direction. Most of the windows hadn’t any glass in them, and vines had
grown across the openings.
“Well, well,” Uncle Joe said cheerfully. “We’ll have to turn to and do
some quick repair work on our new house. It won’t be hard, folks, don’t
all look so discouraged. Wait till you see what Martin and I can do to
put things shipshape again!”
It was unfortunate that at that moment a huge land crab came scuttling
and clattering across the weedy terrace toward us, and seeing us,
turned with a funny sidewise jump and rattled off indignantly into the
bushes. I didn’t know then it was a land crab, still, he wasn’t a bit a
frightening looking creature to me--he was just _funny_.
But Andrée didn’t see any humor in the situation. She shrieked and
clung to Aunt Mollie.
“Let’s live on the ship while we’re here,” she sobbed. “I hate this
place!”
“But look here, Andy-girl,” Uncle Joe interposed gently. “We can’t live
on the _Myra_ because she’s bound for Montevideo with a cargo from New
York. She’ll call back for us in two months or so.”
Andrée faced him with the scaredest eyes I’ve ever seen.
“You--mean,” she demanded, “that we’ll be left stranded here on the
Island for _two_ months in--that _awful_ house? That we can’t leave
till the ship comes back? Suppose somebody gets sick--suppose--”
“_Andrée_,” Aunt Mollie said quickly, “don’t be a goose. Nothing’s
going to happen. Hush, my dear!”
I saw Uncle Charles’ forehead crease in that old troubled pucker we
had come to dread, and he looked, all of a sudden, so terribly worn it
frightened me.
“I think--I’m a little tired, Mollie,” he said slowly. “I’d better sit
down for a minute or two.”
And he had started out so full of beautiful enthusiasm and a belief
that he was _almost_ well!
I wanted to take Andrée by her shoulders and shake her till her silly
head wobbled. It would have done both of us good.