BONANZA COVE
It was about the time that the corral was finished that they came to
realize that they had lost count of the days and really did not know
how long they had been on the Island. They had even lost track of the
day of the week, and Marion did not know when she had ever done that
in her life before. She and Delbert sat down and figured and figured,
trying to count back and remember what had been done on each day; but
it was no use, it had been too long. Jennie, however, was quite sure
that it was Wednesday then, though she could not tell why,--she just
thought it was, that was all,--and so, assuming that she was correct in
her belief, Marian easily figured up what day of the month it was then,
for of course she knew the day and date upon which they had left home.
“Now,” she said, “we will not trust to our memories any more. Every day
I will put a notch in a stick,”--which she faithfully did, using for
the purpose a smooth stick that Delbert picked up on the beach one day.
As a matter of fact, Jennie had been mistaken and they were two days
ahead of time, but they did not know that till afterwards.
The days were filled pretty full. Marian thought that the busier they
were, the less would they be a prey to loneliness and homesickness.
They tumbled out of the Cave mornings, milked the burro, got breakfast,
and then worked awhile at something till it was time for a big sea bath.
When they first began their life on the Island, Delbert was the only
one who could swim to amount to anything. Clarence had taught him, and
he had been a very apt pupil; but the others knew so little of the
useful art that Marian herself dared not venture beyond her depth,
while the little girls declined water that was more than knee-deep and
Davie preferred it even less than that. But already there was a vast
improvement among them all. As the way to learn to walk is to get up
and walk, so the way to learn to swim is to strike out and swim, and
they were following that method.
After dinner there were walks to take, little coves to examine, or
ropes to braid. Marian watched over the children with eyes of a most
jealous, brooding love. Never had they seemed so dear to her, never so
sweet and precious. She was constantly thinking up things to amuse as
well as benefit them. Of course, she could not perform impossibilities,
and there were some doleful days. There was one perfectly awful day
when she found Jennie huddled down behind a rock, crying for her
mother. And Delbert would sit for an hour at a time on Lookout Rock,
gazing out over the water, so wistful and disconsolate that it made
Marian’s throat choke up just to see him, and she would rack her brain
for some interesting thing to set him at to keep him busy.
But it is only fair to say that the doleful spots came far less often
than one would have supposed they would. Marian was always steadfast in
her assurance that some one would find them some day. They would take
good care of each other and be as happy as they could till some one
should come and take them back to the Port. And she herself always kept
a cheerful face. Her loving voice and sunny smile, her merry little
ways, inspired confidence. As much as possible she made it appear that
a desert-island experience was a very desirable thing to have happen
to one. She twisted things till they looked like a joke, and in the
process often found herself growing as light-hearted as she wanted the
children to be.
The bill of fare was limited, to be sure, but they brought to it
appetites sharpened by the constant exercise they were taking in the
sea air and the sunshine.
One day up in the pasture they ran across a _panal_.[3] This is the
nest of a kind of wild bee and is made of the same material that our
hornets use in constructing their homes, but the bee itself is not so
large as a hornet. Marian saw the nest first and pointed it out to the
other children merely as a matter of curiosity, but Delbert straightway
became excited.
[3] Pronounced _pah-nahlʹ_; plural, _pah-nahʹ-layss_. It is the
regular Spanish word for honeycomb.
There was honey in that bees’ nest; he knew it; splendid honey. Hadn’t
Clarence bought some once of an Indian and given him a lot? And
Clarence had told him all about _panales_. You take all the outside
honey and comb away and leave the core, and they will build on again,
just as tame bees will.
Marian was a little dubious. Honey was all very well, but stings were
not at all desirable. How were they to proceed to get the sweet store?
“We have no bee-smoker,” she reminded him, “and if we had, there are no
rags to be burned in it.”
“Huh!” declared Delbert scornfully, “do you s’pose the Indians have
smokers?--or rags either? No, sirree! they just build a fire of trash
they gather up. Besides, the stings of these little bees don’t amount
to shucks!”
It was not in Marian’s policy to discourage him from doing anything not
actually dangerous to life and limb, and she was glad he was willing
to dare the stings; so she said they would go back to the Cave for the
little dishpan and some coals to start a smudge with, and see what they
could do.
The younger children were to keep back out of the danger zone,--which
they were very willing to do, for they did not share Delbert’s
optimism about the trifling nature of wild-bee stings,--and she and
Delbert swathed their hands and faces as well as they could and still
be able to work handily. They built three little fires about the bush
the nest was in, and gathered trash and piled it on till they were all
smoking finely. With a forked pole Marian raked one of them as nearly
under the nest as she could, and then, holding her skirts carefully so
that they should not swing into the fire, she began the task of robbing
the little bees.
Delbert held the pan, and she cut off layer after layer of the
paper-like comb filled with the clear sweet liquid, but she was careful
to leave a goodly portion at the center for the bees to begin on anew.
Then they retreated with their booty, threw a towel over it, and gave
it to Jennie and Esther to carry off, while they raked back and stamped
out the fires and threw dirt over the ashes, so that they could not
start up again.
During the whole performance both of them had received stings, but, as
Delbert said, they did not amount to much, and certainly honey never
tasted sweeter.
[Illustration: THE TASK OF ROBBING THE LITTLE BEES]
From then on the children’s eyes were always open for _panales_. They
found two small nests that they decided to let alone till they were
larger, and about a week later they found one down near the shore that
yielded even more honey than the first. They got several stings, too,
and Marian smiled grimly as she reflected how necessity was teaching
them hardihood.
That was the day they discovered the riches of Bonanza Cove.
They had never gone down into it before, having always skirted it quite
a way up on the hill, for there was no sand at that part, only ragged
rocks with broken shells and barnacles, interspersed with occasional
clumps of mango bushes,--certainly not easy ground for little feet to
run over. But this day, as they were returning home with the little
dishpan of luscious sweetness, Esther had declared, “I see a bottle”;
and on the strength of that declaration they climbed down into the
cove, for a bottle would be a very valuable thing to have. And, once
there, they found so many valuable things that they gathered up a load
and carried it home and went back in the afternoon for more.
The bottle proved to be a quart beer-bottle that some one had doubtless
tossed, corked but empty, over some steamer’s side, and careful search
revealed six others, besides the remains of several that had been
broken. Marian hailed them with delight. Now they could carry water in
bottles when they went exploring, and leave her precious glass jar safe
at the Cave. She had always been afraid it would get broken on some of
those trips. Five of the seven bottles were only pints, but were none
the less eagerly welcomed and treasured.
Also there was discovered in a clump of mango bushes, half buried in
the mud, an old broken five-gallon demijohn. The basketwork enclosing
it was nearly intact, and Marian thought they might use it for
something some time.
The wreck of an old barrel was also rescued from the mud. Only three of
its staves were gone. Who knew what might not some time be done with
what remained? Several rusty tin cans were acquired. Marian could mend
them by drawing a tiny rag through the holes in them; and Esther came
up with a piece of scrap iron that might be made into a spear-head if
a body only knew how; Delbert knew Clarence could have done it all
right. They found three little boards, too, and an old shoe whose top
was not yet stiff. Besides all this, there were innumerable armloads
of driftwood. They gathered it up into piles beyond the reach of high
tides.
But the most exciting discovery of all was the remains of an old canoe.
One side and a goodly portion of the bottom were gone, but it was
undeniably a canoe. It had been tossed up on the rocks by some storm
and had lain bleaching in the sun ever since. Nothing would do but
Delbert must get that old fragment into the water. They all caught his
enthusiasm and worked with a will.
The canoe was of native manufacture, having been hollowed out from
one big log, and what was left of it seemed to be quite solid. After
they had it floating they hunted up poles and practiced the art of
navigation for a while. It was a clumsy thing, and of course everybody
connected with it got wet, but already Delbert had visions of what it
might lead to.
“Marian,” he said, “let’s pile a lot of that wood on this and take it
around that way. It will be a lot easier than carrying it over.”
“The waves are too high,” she objected, “and we should have to tie the
wood on good and solid, for the way this thing dips and tips and turns
it would all be off before we were out of the cove.”
“The waves are high,” he conceded, “and, of course, we should have to
tie the wood on. This thing won’t stay anywhere. What’s left of it
knows it used to be the side and it doesn’t understand that it is the
bottom now.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said; “let’s wait till to-morrow. Maybe the wind
will not pile the waves quite so high then, and we can tie your rope
to it. See there is the hole in the prow they made to moor it by, and
we can tow it round, if you like. That is splendid wood and it will
certainly be easier getting it home that way than carrying it up over
the hill.”
But Delbert was not quite satisfied.
“I’ll tell you,” he said; “if we can get it around the point there, we
can take it the other way, in back of the Island. It’s a lot longer
way, but there are no breakers in there.”
“I guess we could do it that way all right. So let’s go back now and
braid palm-leaf ropes the rest of to-day, so as to have plenty to tie
the wood with, and hunt up some nice poles and paddles; and to-morrow
early we will come and take this gallant bark round into harbor.”
So they beached it again, and piled stones in it so it could not get
away, and then went back to the home end of the Island.
Mexicans make a very good rope of twisted palm-leaves, but our
islanders had not learned how yet, and so braided them instead, for
even the children could do that. For a large rope they simply took
three of the small ones and braided them together. The finished
articles were very knobby, uneven affairs, of course, and could not be
used to lasso with, but they were flexible and strong and served to tie
things. They had quite a number of these ropes of home manufacture.
In the morning, after attending to the burro and eating a breakfast of
fish baked in the hot coals, they filled the two big bottles and three
of the little ones with water, tied stout little palm-leaf strings to
them, so that each person could easily carry one, and started out with
their ropes and poles.
Marian had Mr. Cunningham’s pail with more fish for their dinner, and
the hatchet also, and Davie as usual flourished the dig-spoon. He soon
got tired of carrying his bottle of water and passed it over to Marian,
who put it into the pail.
At the cove they put the pail and their bottles into a clump of mango
bushes and began to gather up the best and biggest of the wood. Marian
made compact bundles of it and lashed them as best she could to what
remained of the old canoe. Alone it would not stay in any position
that made it navigable, but reinforced by the bundles of wood on what
Delbert called the “absent” side of the craft, it floated as any
other mass of wooden wreckage would have floated and maintained an
equilibrium which allowed the children to perch on top in safety.
Delbert scratched his head.
“This isn’t a canoe and it isn’t a raft. What in creation is it,
anyway, Marian?”
“I reckon it’s a float,” she answered.
So, after the pail had been placed on the safest spot, where it would
not get water splashed into it, and after Jennie had received explicit
instructions to watch over it, the voyage began. They had taken the
precaution to put on their bathing-suits and expected to do as much
wading and swimming as anything else.
Marian knew a good deal about rowing and sailing a boat, but this was a
different matter. To begin with, they had only one really good pole.
The other was too short, besides being crooked, and their craft swung
round and twisted and did its best to wobble its way back to the beach.
At last, however, they got out quite a way, beyond the depth of the
shortest pole, but when they came to round the point there was trouble
again. Finally Marian jumped off and, half swimming, half wading to
shore with the lariat, towed them round the point; and then, because
they made better progress that way, accomplished most of the rest of
the journey so.
[Illustration: THE VOYAGE BEGAN]
Davie also preferred to do most of his traveling on his own feet, and
Marian did not blame him, for the float did not even look like a safe
craft, and the way it wobbled and bobbed might well have made an older
passenger than Davie uneasy. So he trudged on, mostly in the edge of
the water, now and then whimpering when he hurt his bare toes and again
laughing gleefully at some treasure of the sea which the fates cast at
his feet.
[Illustration: MARIAN TOWED THEM ROUND THE POINT]
At some places it was not convenient to tow the float, and then they
resorted to poling altogether. At one or two points Delbert took the
rope and swam across to a better place for pulling. And several times
the bundles of wood became loosened, and all hands had to retire to
shore till Marian could get them satisfactorily retied.
Altogether, their progress was so slow that the day was nearly done
before they moored their gallant craft to the little rock pier behind
the Island.
Next day they tried it another way. They took all the wood off and
allowed the old fragment to turn turtle. That did a great deal better
in some ways, but it was a little difficult to get aboard of it. Once
they were aboard, however, it sustained the weight of them all well
enough, though, of course, there was no freeboard at all, and, while it
was willing to remain in that position, the ends of the canoe, being
well under water, offered considerable resistance and made it more
difficult to pole than a boat or raft would have been.
Jennie thought Marian had better cut off those ragged ends and leave
only the smooth side, but Marian was not anxious to attempt such a
task as that with only a dull hatchet and a few knives to work with.
Besides, she was not sure at all but she would some day want those ends
right where they were. She could not think of any way of improving it,
and even as it was it enlarged the horizon of their daily lives.
The prow being under water, they could not very well use the hole
in it to tie the rope to, but at one place in the bottom there was
a knothole, and Marian firmly wedged a stick into that. With a rope
fastened to this stick they could tie the canoe where it would float
out quite a little distance from shore, and then they could swim out to
it. She soon found her little flock were improving in their swimming
lessons. With the old canoe at hand it did not matter so much if one
did get beyond one’s depth a little; it gave one security.
Then pretty soon, when they began to get the knack of making the old
thing move along in the water where they wanted it to, they would go
out to the little sandbars and reefs that had before been beyond their
reach.
Some of these had mango bushes where a certain variety of small oyster
attached themselves to the stems and rocks, where they could be easily
gathered at low tide. One had an outcropping of rock in one place which
had several basin-like depressions, which Marian cleaned out and made
use of. She would boil down sea-water in her kettle, till it was about
a saturated solution, and then put it into the demijohn, and when
that was full would take it over and empty it into those shallow rock
basins, where the sun evaporated it till nothing was left but the salt.
Close on the heels of the food problem had come that of clothing.
Marian thanked her stars that the soil of the Island was sandy and
brushed off easily, but even with that in their favor they had not been
on the Island so very long before their clothing sadly needed washing.
She put her whole flock into their bathing-suits and washed everything
else. But that made such inroads on her lone cake of soap that she
decided things must do without soap in the future, and what dirt would
not come out with water and sunshine would have to stay in. That went
sorely against the grain, for Mrs. Hadley was a notoriously neat and
clean woman and had trained her daughter in her own spick-and-span
ways; but it could not be helped.
Before long it became plain that the question of washing was not
all there was to it either. Clothes constantly worn will in time
wear out, and Marian’s little flock soon became shabby as well as
dingy. She staved off the evil day for a while by decreeing that the
bathing-suits must be worn all the time, and so the other clothes were
folded away up at the Cave, to await the blest day when some one should
wander into San Moros and take them all back to the Port.
The children were willing enough. It did away with the need of dressing
and undressing, for they had so little bedding that Marian let them
sleep in their suits too. Davie could not see any use in clothes
anyway, except when he was cold. Before long he rebelled against even
the little bathing-suit, and as there was no one to see and criticize,
his sister let him run from morning till night absolutely naked. He was
so fat and dimpled and sweet that the other children liked him best
that way, and his little body became so tanned that Marian called him a
little Indian, and because he strutted about in such a lordly way she
dubbed him Hiawatha. That tickled Delbert, who then tied his little
brother’s hair in tufts and stuck them full of feathers.
Delbert himself began to need the barber’s services, but when Jennie
told him so one day he declared he was not going to have his hair cut,
he was going to let it grow long and make fishlines of it.
“You’ll look fine,” said she, scornfully; “a boy with pigtails; you’d
better cut it, Marian.”
But Marian, with a mental vision of how fine he would look after she
had barbered him with the buttonhole scissors, decided in favor of
pigtails.
So Delbert tied a string about his forehead, stuck feathers in it, and
demanded an Indian name. Marian named him Chingachgook. Of course the
little girls wanted Indian names too, so she told Jennie she could be
Wahtawah and Esther Pocahontas.
They were very much pleased and went straightway to hunt up some
feathers, though Delbert declared that squaws never wore them.
“Never mind,” said Marian soothingly, “these squaws can do anything
they have a mind to.”
She herself did not adopt a name, but Delbert used to call her the
great squaw chief.
As for shelter, they never found on the Island a better place than that
which they had fortunately secured the first night. The bat cave near
the water’s edge was the only other cave of any considerable size, and
nothing else would have afforded any security whatever from a storm.
Whenever it was convenient, Marian reinforced the brush shade in front
of the Cave. She had it good and thick now, but of course it would
not have turned a rain. The nights were getting cooler, and she cast
about for ways and means of getting more bedding. She pounded sticks
and dried banana leaves into the Cave where it ran back and became
too narrow for their feet. She blocked up the sides with rocks and
pieces of driftwood and filled in the chinks with little wads of banana
leaves, so that the wind was shut out better. She saved the feathers
from the birds they killed, and tied them up in the little girls’
petticoats for pillows, and she saved every rabbit-skin and stretched
it out so that it dried smoothly, scraping it as clean as she could,
and when it was almost dry, rubbed and worked it till it was soft and
pliable. This, of course, was not the same as having them tanned, but
she did not know how to tan leather, much as she wished she did.
After she had learned how to keep herself supplied with salt, she used
to rub that on the fresh skins when she stretched them out to dry,
believing that was one good step toward preserving them. When she had
quite a number all finished up in this manner, she trimmed the edges a
little and sewed them together. In the course of time she would have a
robe large enough to cover them all, and as long as she could keep it
dry it would not spoil.
Delbert was interested in bows and arrows. His first efforts at making
bows were not startling successes, by any means, and he soon turned
them over to Wahtawah and Pocahontas and tried for better ones for
himself. At first he used any and every kind of a straight smooth
stick he ran across, and it seemed almost impossible to find any that
combined the necessary straightness and strength, but when he finally
caught the idea of making them of palm-leaf stems, which are very tough
and strong, he evolved one that would actually shoot quite effectively.
Then his sisters straightway clamored for good bows also, and he must
needs make for them too. He was at first a little scornful, but Marian
advised that he arm them as well as possible, for while the chances
of their bagging any game were slim in any case, there was simply no
chance at all with bows that were only toys. Bowstrings were made from
Marian’s hair, but arrow-points were a puzzling problem. The boys at
the Port had tipped their arrows with heavy wire, but wire was not an
Island commodity. Marian suggested bone, and a few were made of that
material, but it was so very hard to work, and the knives needed so
much whetting, that they were constantly on the lookout for something
easier. Finally they learned to make them of wood hardened in the fire.
The first bows made were now Davie’s property, and he was so reckless
with his shooting that Marian forbade points of any description being
put on his arrows. He did not seem to mind the omission,--he never hit
anything except by accident, and then it was usually one of the other
children, and they were all careful not to call his attention to the
fact that his arrows were all blunt.
Davie was the only one who was not at times more or less depressed by
their situation. He was so little, and had now been separated from
his mother so long, that he never fretted for her. Marian had always
taken the most of the care of him anyway, so as long as she was there
to do it he considered that conditions were normal. He found life
very interesting and satisfactory and felt no need of more extensive
society. His comical baby ways were closely watched and intensely
enjoyed by the other children, who loved him dearly, and they would
eagerly report to Marian everything funny he did when she was not
present. Even when he was naughty, which he occasionally was, they were
rather apt to overlook it and laugh at the funny spectacle he made of
himself. Delbert, though, would get provoked sometimes.
One trick the little fellow had when His Majesty was displeased was to
hide the whetstone. This was a stone which he himself had picked up
out on one of the salt reefs. It was a little different from any other
that they had found and was splendid to sharpen the knives and hatchet
with. Delbert used to make quite an ado over borrowing it from Davie,
because it pleased him so to have something apparently so valuable to
lend. Marian, too, was careful to say, “Please lend me your whetstone,
Davie,” before she rubbed her knife over it, and as a rule he would
beamingly give permission. That and the dig-spoon were about the only
things that were considered especially his, and as it was not often
that any one else used the dig-spoon, he did not bother much about it;
but when he felt naughty he would conceal the little stone and refuse
to reveal its whereabouts.
Sometimes Delbert would use some other stone then, or he would coolly
wait until Davie got over his pouts and brought forth the good one, or
else he would slyly hunt it up and use it without Davie’s knowledge,
carefully replacing it when he had finished.
But one day he could not find it, and Davie simply would not get it.
Marian herself wanted it too, but Davie resisted even her coaxing.
Delbert lost all patience, and Marian began to wonder on the second day
if some measure more strenuous than common might not be needed. She
began to think that perhaps the child himself did not know where it
was; it might possibly be that he had lost it instead of hiding it. He
was so little and his speech was so limited as yet that she did not
always feel sure that she understood him perfectly. Perhaps he simply
did not want to admit that he had not been bright enough to keep track
of the valuable thing himself. But then Esther saw him playing with the
stone off by himself. When she ran to tell Marian, however, he hid it
again and only smiled impishly at their requests.
No, he was simply being naughty, and, what was worse, was staying
naughty; so after a little Marian issued her verdict.
“I won’t punish him, though I could probably make him get it by
spanking him, but mother never did that to him, and I will not till I
really have to, but the next time any of you see that whetstone you may
take it from him and I will confiscate it and it won’t be his stone any
more.”
“But,” said Jennie dubiously, “it _is_ his stone; he found it, Marian.”
“That is true,” returned her sister, “and if it were some less
necessary thing I would say he had a right to do as he chose with it,
but a whetstone is something we all need. I need it to sharpen the
hatchet with; nothing else I can find does so well. Delbert needs it
right now to sharpen his knife, so he can work out that bone arrowhead.
It is to Davie’s interest as well as ours that the hatchet and knives
should be sharp, only he is so little he can’t realize it. Just because
he saw the stone first does not give him a right to hide it away and
refuse to let us use it, when we all need the use of it and there is
not another one like it that we know of.”
She explained this all as well as she could to Davie, but he remained
obdurate. They set themselves to work, therefore, to ferret out the
much-needed implement, and before long Delbert found it and brought it
in triumph to Marian, who took possession of it amid Davie’s loud wails.
His crying availed him nothing, however; the stone was put in a cleft
of the rock where only Marian and Delbert could reach it, and the
young would-be monopolist finally decided that it was not worth crying
for, and, smoothing out his face, trotted about his affairs as sweetly
important as ever.