May twentieth is my birthday, and Mother had made me a whole pirate
outfit—pantaloon trousers, red sash, calico head scarf, a machete, rope
soled shoes, and a ragged shirt.
Everybody met at Uncle Will’s cabin just before dinner, and then to the
pounding of a big drum we all marched down to the dining saloon,
everybody dressed in full pirate costumes, with wild looking wigs and
knives and cutlasses of every description.
I got two knives, a jar of jam, a box of sweet crackers, a cocoanut, a
fine piece of old Chiriqui Indian Pottery, and a peach of a collecting
bag. “Lumpy,” the baker, made me a huge birthday cake.
Then after dinner Shorty took a flashlight picture of the gang against
the shrouds down on the hatch deck. We really looked like a pirate crew
too, with everyone in costume and apparently on a sailing ship. The
steep rocky island near the north point of Chatham Bay showed in the
background, and made it seem even more real.
The night of the birthday party Don Dickerman wore his “Marooned man”
costume. It is entirely rags and tatters and mended with bits of old
string and leather. With a wig of tangled hair all knotted and a
bandanna and a cutlass he looks pretty awful. John Tee Van had torn
trousers, bare body, a frightful long black wig and he painted on a
terrible scar across his face, and slashes of blood on his insteps.
Some of the others had fine clothes of velvet with old lace, the rich
pirates or those who had stolen booty from some recent captive. And the
girls looked like pirates’ wives or sweethearts, except Mother who came
as a wild woman, my captive, all bound up with ropes and being dragged
along.
About the grandest birthday present one could get was given me by Don.
It was his favorite sword, a real old time cutlass which perhaps was
used by pirates. He called it “Fury” and got up an awfully funny card
to go with it.
And Dwight Franklin made me a lovely drawing of the beach at Cocos back
in the old days, with a regular pirate landing on it from his ship.
That picture is used at the end of my book.
Cocos Island is really a wonderful place for a pirate party anyway, for
real pirates were there many times, and maybe men were marooned there,
or left there, and mutinies occurred. Treasure was buried there. Along
the beach where ships came for fresh water, there are carvings on the
rocks, ship’s names and dates, many of them old and back as far as
1813. There were names of famous whaling ships, and one, The Shrew, was
a real pirate ship but the date was not given with that one, probably
on purpose.
There is a fine tunnel right through the rock in one place, going fully
a hundred yards through a point of land to another bay quite round the
corner. Don went through it in his little dugout canoe which he bought
in Panama and Tamms, the third mate, went in his motor skiff with the
Johnson engine.
In one little bay beyond the settlement we found a hole twenty feet
deep where Captain Gissler or someone else had dug for treasure. Don
and Dwight went down it on a rope and only found a board and a piece of
rope there.