ILLUSTRATIONS
| The Children, Jenny Lind, and Jim Crow | [ Frontispiece] |
| “Jim Crow,” a privileged visitor, adding an occasional low croak to the conversation | [ 24] |
| As they drew near an odor arose that was the best kind of po’try in itself | [ 37] |
| Lesley could plainly see his small figure in the Gateway | [ 49] |
| He danced gayly about the room, tossing his crown before him like a ball | [ 85] |
Drawn by Elinor M. Goodridge
CHILDREN OF THE
LIGHTHOUSE
∵
CHAPTER I
THE ISLAND
“Will-ery you-ery come-ery with-ery me-ery and-ery play-ery?” shouted Ronald from the little patch of green in front of the Lighthouse.
“Yes-ery, I-ery will-ery!” answered Lesley, jumping up from the sand and tucking her book in a cleft of the rocks. Scrambling up the cliff like a sturdy little mountain goat, she reached Ronald laughing and rosy and panting out breathlessly, “What-ery shall-ery we-ery play-ery?”
“I hadn’t thought,” said Ronald, descending from their “secret language” to plain English. “Maybe we’ll get Jenny Lind and bring up some kelp to put on our gardens.”
“I don’t call that play,” objected Lesley; “that’s good hard work!”
“Oh, nothing isn’t work,” said Ronald, sensibly, if ungrammatically, “if you do it for play.”
“You are the funniest boy, Ronnie, I ever knew in all my life!” exclaimed Lesley.
“Sure I am!” laughed Ronald. “I must be, for I’m the only boy you ever did know!”—and here they both broke into a hearty peal of merriment that brought their mother, smiling, to the window.
It was true enough. Lesley and Ronald, eleven and eight years old, were the only children on the island and the only ones who had ever been there, but they were not by any means the only young things. There was a score of light-footed, dancing kids, there was a comfortable number of chickens, a rushing, scampering horde of rabbits, “Jim,” the pet crow, and uncounted half-grown sea-birds in the shelters of the cliffs.
As for grown-ups, there were the children’s father and mother, Malcolm and Margaret McLean, and the old Mexican sailor, Pancho Lopez, commonly known as “Stumpy.” Then there was the donkey, Jenny Lind, so called for the power and melody of her voice, and of course the parents of all the kids, chickens, rabbits, and sea-birds. In the pools of the rocks and on the beach there were jellyfish, great and small, starfish, crabs and sea-anemones, but these, although they added to the population of the island, could not be said to increase its gayety.
Gayety, though, as everybody knows, never comes from outside; it is just something that bubbles up from within, and Lesley and Ronald McLean each had a boiling spring of it in their own hearts.
The springs had not ceased to bubble after what the children considered Ronald’s first-class joke, when the sound of clattering hoofs and the roll of wheels announced the approach of that Jenny Lind whom they had intended to use as a playmate.
“Run, Ronnie, quick!” cried Lesley, “and see if father’s going down to the beach. Maybe we can go with him.”
“Hi! Father! Father!” called Ronald. “Wait for us!” running at top speed toward the cliff.
The donkey was pulled in at once, turning her head toward the children intelligently as they scrambled down the rocks to the car and starting on her way the moment she felt their weight and knew they were on board.
The children’s island, one of those in San Francisco Bay, is not a large one—perhaps three miles around—but it looks as if it were three times three miles deep in rocks. There are tall gray peaks shining like spear-heads above the water—peaks where the sea-birds build; great stretches of gray stone like castle walls, with towers and battlements; scattered fragments of granite heaped up like crumbs from a giants’ banquet, and ten trillion, two hundred and forty-one billion, five hundred and ninety-seven million, six hundred and nineteen thousand, four hundred and three stones and pebbles of various sizes along the shore.
Oh, no, there is no beach; just a rocky island with rocky edges and old Ocean singing and sighing and laughing and crying all around and about. No two-legged, or four-legged, or ever-so-many-legged creature could draw loads from the shore to the Lighthouse over such a roadway, even if it had been on level ground, and so Malcolm McLean, with the help of old “Stumpy” and a man brought from the mainland for a week, had laid down rails the entire distance and prevailed upon the Government to send him a little car which Jenny Lind pulled with ease over her private track.
“Going down to the storehouse for oil,” called Father, looking around at the youngsters from his perch in front. “You can stay down there with Stumpy for a while, if you like, or go back with me.”
“Oh, Stumpy, Stumpy!” cried Ronnie. “Maybe he’ll tell us a story.”
“Maybe he will,” said Father, dryly, nodding his head; “he’d rather tell stories than work any day.”
“Perhaps,” said Ronald, thoughtfully, “it might be just the same as work if you had to make up the stories.”
“But he doesn’t have to,” came quickly from Lesley; “they all happened to him.”
“No, not all,” eagerly, from Ronald; “not ‘The White Slipper’—I’m going to ask him for that to-day.”
“No, not ‘The White Slipper,’” agreed Lesley. “But I wish he’d tell us po’try, like what mother reads sometimes. I made up some myself last night about Jenny Lind.”
“About Jenny Lind? You couldn’t make po’try about a donkey!”
“You just listen now and see if I couldn’t,” cried Lesley.
“To shaggy Jenny Lind
There came an awful wind
And blew her over the cliff—
Over the cliff ... over the cliff—” slowly—“What was the last line?”
“Which made her puff and piff,” laughed Ronald.
“No such word as ‘piff,’” objected Lesley.
“It’s just as good as ‘puff,’” answered the youthful rhymester. “Isn’t it, Father?”
Father merely gave an absent-minded murmur, which might have meant either that it was, or that it wasn’t, and touched Jenny Lind lightly with the loop of the reins.
Up flew Jenny’s hind legs, bounce went the children, flat on the floor of the car, and all question of po’try was dropped as they drew up to the storehouse.
CHAPTER II
STUMPY AND THE STOREHOUSE
Stumpy stood in the doorway, waving a greeting to the children, his wooden leg, topped by a crutch-handle, strapped to his side and his black eyes glowing with pleasure.
He limped down the steps to hitch the donkey for the Lightkeeper, patting the children’s heads meantime, as they tumbled about him like frolicsome puppies.
“We’ve-ery come-ery to-ery see-ery you-ery!” cried Lesley, who was accustomed to use the “secret language” with Stumpy.
“Yes, I see you come all right,” smiled Stumpy, “but I no speak your tongue. You go in my house; I be there pretty soon.... Aye, aye, sir, coming!”—this to McLean, who waited for him by the barrels of oil.
The children needed no further invitation to Stumpy’s dwelling, for it was a museum of curiosities in their eyes, and Ronald gravely wondered how it could be safe to leave such priceless things within reach of the passers-by. True, there were no passers-by, except those with wings or fins, or traveling on four feet, but at any moment—why not?—a boat might draw up on the strand and a pirate, with a red sash and a knife in his teeth, leap to land and snatch the treasures.
“Stump-ery true,
I love you!”
crooned Lesley, as she sat down by a little table in the corner.
“Stump-ery’s a sailor,
Sure as I’m a tailor!”
sang Ronnie, climbing on a chair from which height he could see more easily the wonderful little ship on the mantelpiece.
“But you’re not a tailor, and you do make silly po’try!”
“Neither isn’t Stumpy a sailor, now, and maybe I’ll be a tailor, some time.... Oh, Lesley, isn’t this ship the most be-you-tiful thing you’ve ever seen since you lived in this country?”
Indeed it was a beautiful thing, the pride of Stumpy’s heart and the light of his eyes. He had bought it long ago in Mexico from the furnishings of a Spanish ship wrecked at sea and hauled into port by a passing barque. Whoever originally owned it had prized it dearly, for it stood under a glass case that rested on an ebony stand bordered with scarlet velvet. It was carved from creamy ivory—every mast, every spar, every sail in place, a miniature steersman at the helm and the Spanish ensign bravely floating at the peak. It sailed upon a painted sea sprinkled with tiny crystals of sand that sparkled like the blue waters around the island, and it was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful things that anybody had ever seen, no matter in what country he or she had lived.
Ronald, though a daring and adventurous child, continually watched by sister, mother, or father lest he rush into danger, was yet careful in his own way, and Stumpy knew that he might trust him with his treasures and that the boy would admire “La Golondrina” (The Swallow) without ever thinking of lifting the glass cover that enshrined the tiny treasure.
While his silent worship was going on, Lesley was lifting with careful fingers the feather pictures on the table and admiring the birds, the flowers, the trees, the little landscapes, all made of tiny feathers beautifully colored and pasted into place. These were done by Indians, Stumpy had told her, and the black-eyed squaws with their shawl-wrapped heads sold them on market-days in the streets of the City of Mexico.
There were Indian water-jars in the room, too, gayly decorated in colors, an Indian bow with its arrows, gourds made into dippers and painted in scarlet and black, and on the wall a tattered Mexican flag with its warlike eagle grasping a rattlesnake and standing on a cactus plant. “Viva México!” (Hurrah for Mexico!) Stumpy used to cry as he saluted it in the morning, and the children had learned to salute it, too, the moment they crossed the threshold.
The room had been partitioned off from the storehouse where the oil for the Light was kept and had only a rough floor and whitewashed walls, but Stumpy kept it beautifully clean, and on his small stove he cooked wonderful red beans in Mexican style and made chocolate for the children with foam on the cups an inch high.
His was a lonely life on the edge of the restless ocean, guarding the stores for the Lighthouse, and he was as glad to have a visit from Ronald and Lesley as they were glad to come. They were still admiring his treasures when clatter, clatter, went Jenny Lind’s hoofs again, and away rolled the car with its barrels of oil for the Light.
Another moment, and “Viva México!” sounded in the doorway and Stumpy appeared with an armful of driftwood for the evening fire.
“Stump-ery, bump-ery,
Give him a thump-ery!”
shouted Ronald, running to meet him.
“I’m not going to thump him, I’m going to hug him,” cried Lesley and she did it, to the old sailor’s great delight.
“Now a story, Stumpy, a story!” cried both children, together, and Ronald added quickly, “The ‘White Slipper.’”
“‘White Slipper’? No, that too long. Your father say come home one hour. Mother have dinner ready.”
“Oh! oh!” with dismal groans. “We thought you’d ask us to dinner.”
“I would ask, sure I would, but your father boss, you know. He my boss, your boss—Good sailor mind his boss, you bet.”
“Well, then, what will you tell us?” asked Ronald, climbing on his knee. “I haven’t hardly heard a story since I lived in this country.”
Stumpy looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Since you lived in this country, hey? But that not very long, you know. Well, I tell you a sea-story, one I know, me, one I see myself—one about a cat.”
“A cat!” exclaimed Lesley. “I thought they didn’t like water!”
“It is true,” said Stumpy; “if they did, there would be no story.”
“Tell-ery, tell-ery,
Stump-ery, tell-ery!”
cried Ronald, impatiently.
“Well, it must be twenty year ago,” said Stumpy, reflectively, “I ship on cargo steamer to Scotland, your father’s and mother’s country, you hear them tell.”
“‘Bonnie Scotland!’ we know,” said Lesley, drawing nearer.
“We have good voyage Scotland, nothing much happen, all same every day. We land cargo place called Newhaven, all right, get new cargo take back—you not care about that—and when everything ready for leave, Captain say we go ashore, have good time. Some men they stay on board keep watch, but ten go ashore, and messroom boy—he funny fellow, I think he not right in head” (tapping his forehead)—“he say he take ship’s cat, give her good time, too; maybe catch Scotch mouse.
“We all laugh at him. I tell you he funny fellow, and we go uptown and leave him on beach with cat. Some men go get good dinner; some men get drunk, like always; I find other sailor like me, been all over world and we ‘swap yarn,’ you know.”
“We know,” nodding heads wisely, for old sailors often came to the island.
“We have orders get back twelve o’clock night,” continued Stumpy; “we know, anyway, got do that, and we all start along ’bout eleven, pretty dark, big wind, storm coming all right.
“We get to beach—some, they smoke, some whistle, some walk pretty crooked, and Johnny, that’s what mess-boy call himself, sing out to us, ‘Come on, boys, big storm ahead, cat get wet.’
“We all laugh some more and make fun, but we don’t see anything till we get to boat and there be Johnny with the cat—she was white one, thanks to God!”
“Why do you thank God because she was white?” asked Ronnie, curiously.
“Wait a moment, little son, and you will know,” answered Stumpy gravely. “We all get in boat, push off, and begin to row hard as we can, but the farther we get from land the blacker get the dark and the big wave come splash, crash, lift us ’way up, sink us ’way down, keep us tossing like ball in air. Every man do his best; I pray to saints, but no can see ship’s lights, no can see other men’s face, not know where we go. Of a sudden, maybe pretty near ship—we can’t tell—come wave like big mountain, knock every man flat, turn boat over, upside down, no light, no help anywhere.”
“Oh, poor Stumpy,” sighed Lesley, patting his sleeve, “how dreadful!”
“Every man start to swim best he know how, but where he swim when he see nothing? We half-dead already when we hear that Johnny sing out, ‘Look at cat! Look at cat! See where she go!’ Thanks to blessed saints, who let a little light down ’bout then, we could just see white spot on top of wave and follow it. Cat see in dark, you know, children, and she not like water, want to get out soon as she can.
“In one moment, we see lights, we see ship, we shout and shout, and men come help us aboard, wet like sponge, cold as ice, and frightened ’way to inside of bones.”
“Were all the men saved?” quavered Lesley, round-eyed with excitement.
“Alas, no! little daughter; two of them never seen again!”
A sigh and a little silence followed, and then Lesley’s voice was heard again, “And the cat?”
“Ah, the cat, thanks to God, that Johnny grab her just as he get to ship’s side and carry her up ladder. She ’most as good as Captain all way back to California, best food, warmest place sleep, every man take off cap to her when he meet, say, ‘Good-day to you, Lady Cat!’”
“Good-day, Lady Cat!” mimicked Lesley, laughingly, bowing to an imaginary pussy on the rug. “I wish you a pleasant morning and a fat rat for your dinner!”
“Dinner! Dinner!” cried Stumpy, jumping up from his comfortable chair.
“What your father say, children? Run quick, like rabbits! Go short way up steps! Run quick!”
CHAPTER III
THE LIGHT AND THE LIGHTHOUSE
To reach the Lighthouse from Stumpy’s dwelling, you might either follow Jenny Lind’s car-track a long way around, or scramble up a rocky path, broken here and there by a flight of whitewashed steps, till you arrived at the top of the mighty heap of rocks that formed the island. Should a high wind be blowing, you crushed your hat far down on your head, gripped the handrail hard when you reached the steps, and often sat down flat until some sudden gust had passed by. As this was Margaret McLean’s only fashionable promenade, you can imagine that she seldom ventured on it, preferring to stroll about the patch of green in front of the Lighthouse, or to walk up and down between the scanty rows of vegetables behind. She and her husband, however, were well accustomed to seeing the children scramble over the rocks like their own goats and were never anxious about Ronald, if Lesley were with him, for alone he was apt to venture too far and attempt heights which he might reach, but never be able to descend.
He had been only a tiny tot of two or three years, running about the kitchen, when, sitting on the floor in front of the sink one day, he had amused himself by slipping the various cooking-pots over his head and laughing out at Lesley with a “Peep bo!” from beneath them. His mother, hearing the clatter, was hurrying from another room to inquire into its cause when a series of loud cries and calls for help were heard. She found the baby completely extinguished by a large kettle which Lesley was trying to pull off his head, while the more he struggled and screamed, the tighter grew the kettle.
Mrs. McLean pulled, Lesley pulled, Ronnie beat his hands and kicked and roared until the mother was thoroughly frightened. “Get your father, quick!” she cried to Lesley, and the child climbed, panting, to the tower where Malcolm was trimming the Light. She was too breathless to speak when she reached him, but he saw that something was wrong below and half-leaped, half-tumbled down the stairs to the kitchen. He took the baby in his arms and succeeded with his big sailor voice in reaching the ears under the kettle.
“Be quiet, Ronnie!” he ordered. “Stop crying at once! Father’s here. Father’ll help you.”
The screams stopped, the beating hands grew quiet, and the Lightkeeper walked to and fro patting the small shoulders till they grew still enough to allow him to lay the child in his mother’s arms. Then, while Lesley watched him with astonished eyes he seized a lump of lard from the shelf, greased the inside of the kettle and Ronnie’s head as far as his hand could reach, saying all the time, “Quiet, sonny, quiet, sonny; Father’s here!” This done, with one swift jerk the kettle came off and the small boy was restored to the world.
Oh, what a wonderful father, Lesley thought; there was nothing that he couldn’t do and nothing that he didn’t know, and I believe that everybody on the island, including Jenny Lind, the rabbits, and the sea-birds, thought much the same thing.
The wonderful father was waiting in the doorway to-day as the children’s feet were heard on the rocky pathway, and after a little washing of grimy paws and smoothing of rough locks they all sat down at table. Six times a year the Lighthouse tender called at the island with stores for its inhabitants, so tea and sugar and coffee, flour and meal, spices and cereals were always on hand, but for the rest they depended on goats’ milk, fresh fish, eggs, chickens, rabbits, and such vegetables as they could raise on their wind-swept height, three hundred feet above the sea.
Margaret McLean boasted, when she could find any one to hear her boast, that she could prepare rabbit in fifteen different ways, but which one of the fifteen she followed that day will probably never be known. At all events, it seemed to please the children who jumped down from the table when grace had been said, quite refreshed and ready to dry the dishes and help to set the room in order.
The apartment in question—a large one, fortunately—might have been called one of general utility, for it was kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, and study, according to the time of day. There was a grand parlor on the other side of the passage, into which the Lighthouse Inspector was ushered when he made his semi-annual calls, but the children never entered it except on cleaning-days when they were allowed to dust the haircloth sofa, the straight-backed chairs, and the round center-table with its big Bible and tall lamp, hung with tinkling glass prisms.
The bedrooms and the playroom were on the next story, and above that ran the flight of narrow steps that led to the tower, and then above them again the corkscrew stairs that wound about and about till they reached the Light.
In solitary splendor, like the Prince of Coolavin, lived the Light, and Father waited upon it like a slave, filling it with oil, trimming its wicks and polishing and re-polishing and re-re-polishing the speckless glass that sheltered it and through which its beams streamed far, far across the waters.
Every night, as they sang the “Mariner’s Hymn” together in the whitewashed sitting-room, with the ceaseless roar and dash of the breakers as their accompaniment, the children thought of the friendly Light in the tower and the gladness of the sailors when they saw it shine.
“Eternal Father! strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave;
Who bidst the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep:
O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea!”
So ran the words of the “Mariner’s Hymn,” and Ronald, who always wanted to know the reason of things, said thoughtfully one night when they had finished singing: “Why do we cry to God to help those in peril on the sea, Daddy? It’s the Light that helps them, isn’t it?”
“Hush! Ronnie, you’re not thinking,” cried his mother. “Who made the sea and the sailors? Who gave his brains to the man who thought of the Light and set it here? The Light is but a senseless thing and needs some one to tend it, as well you know your father does both night and day.”
“Oh—h!” murmured Ronald, “I see!”
“You’re a funny boy!” commented Lesley, as usual.
“Sleep-ery, head-ery,
Better go to bed-ery!”
“Oh-ery, no-ery,
Don’t want to go-ery,”
cried Ronald, at which his father lifted his head from the “Lighthouse Journal,” saying, “‘Gude bairnies cuddle doon at nicht’—you know the poetry your mother tells you.”
The children were often allowed to climb the corkscrew stairs with their parents to see the Light and even to open the little door in the masonry and go out on the iron-railed gallery that ran around the tower, holding tight to Father’s or Mother’s hand while they gazed at the blue waters of the Pacific and counted the white sails on the horizon.
The Light was not of the first order, although it seemed so wonderful to the children and required more attention than the newer and more expensive ones. It was lighted at dusk, filled again at midnight, and put out at dawn, Margaret McLean always taking the last duty and then hurrying down to kindle the kitchen fire, set the porridge on to heat, and milk the goats.
She was a busy wife and mother; so busy that she had the less time to be lonely, for not only did she wash and iron, sew and knit, scrub and cook, milk the goats, feed the hens, and weed the garden, but she gave the children their daily lessons, making these so pleasant that both could already read with ease and had some knowledge of figures, while Lesley could write a very respectable letter to Grandmother in “Bonnie Scotland.”
Mr. and Mrs. McLean knew very well that the children would never be likely to have any playmates, save each other, while they were growing up, for the work on the island was not more than enough for one man, with Stumpy’s assistance, and so there could be no other families in residence. They had done everything they could, therefore, to provide amusement and occupation for them, indoors as well as out. Outdoors was very simple, with Jenny Lind, “Jim Crow,” and a host of young animals as playmates, the beloved Stumpy as story-teller-in-chief and fishing, hunting sea-birds’ eggs, playing on the shore and gathering seaweed and shells as their games of never-ending delight.
Indoors a playroom had been fitted up the previous year, which was a continual source of pleasure and a blessing, too, to Mrs. McLean, who could always feel that her bairns were safe and happy when they were in “Humpty Dumpty Land,” as Lesley had christened it.
It was nothing more or less than the large attic which ran the whole length of the Lighthouse. It was not finished off, but the slanting sides and floor had been stained a pretty green, and numerous shelves had been fitted between the uprights for all the many collections—birds’ eggs, seashells, sea-moss, shining pebbles, bright beads, buttons, and those other treasures dear to children, which would have been greatly in the way downstairs.
“JIM CROW,” A PRIVILEGED VISITOR, ADDING AN OCCASIONAL LOW CROAK TO THE CONVERSATION
In one corner was a sand-bin, with little tins and patty-pans for making cakes, and a dolls’ house occupied another corner where Lesley passed many hours. A rocking-horse, a stable, and a carpenters’ bench were Ronald’s possessions, and several small chairs and tables were among the other furnishings.
Tacked to the ceiling were a few gay Japanese parasols and lanterns, while straw mats, a contribution from Stumpy’s Indian collection, were scattered about the floor. Turkey-red curtains were at the windows, and altogether a more cheerful place could hardly be imagined, especially when both children were talking at once and “Jim Crow,” a privileged visitor, adding an occasional low croak to the conversation.
CHAPTER IV
HONEST JIM CROW
Jim Crow, the black, the glossy, the dapper, the wise, the solemn, was not a native of the Lighthouse island, which indeed was too barren a spot for birds fond of good things to eat. He was not a native, but an immigrant, for the Lighthouse Inspector had brought him to Lesley on one of his visits, saying that he had been found in the woods on the mainland—just a little bunch of fuzz with short dark feathers sticking out here and there—and that it was supposed that he had fallen out of the nest and been deserted by his parents.
The Inspector had cared for him until he was now a fine fellow with the glossiest of black feathers, and as he appeared to be of a good disposition and of winning ways there was no reason why he should not make an admirable pet. The children thought so, of course, and were never tired of watching his quaint actions and laughing at his solemn manner.
As soon as Jim Crow grew wonted to his new home, he began to choose his friends and seemed to love Lesley most of all. Next to her he appeared to fancy a large white hen, with a brood of nine little chicks, in a coop under the shade of a rock. Jim used to visit her many times a day, standing near the bars of her prison and talking with her in a low, croaking tone. Sometimes, between his stories, he would help himself to the food left by Mother Hen and her family; then begin croaking to her again, and Biddy would answer with an occasional cluck as if she understood all that he was telling her.
The old hen, while always watchful over her little ones, never seemed to fear that Jim would hurt any of them, and when the chicks became so large that they were let out of the coop and the family roamed about seeking for worms and insects, Jim still continued his association with them, following them about for hours each day. At nightfall, however, he always came back to his box, while Biddy and her family joined the other fowls in the hen-house.
Another of Jim’s chums was the tuneful Jenny Lind. For some portion of each day he used to follow her about, always keeping a few feet from her nose, as she grazed.
When he grew tired of walking, he would hop to her back, and, squatting upon her hips, where he could not be reached by the switching tail, he would keep up a constant croaking and chattering. This chattering was always in a low tone, but it went up and down just like the voice of a person who is telling some great secret, something not to be repeated to any one else, on any account.
Jim had his dislikes as well as his likes, and he evidently held but a poor opinion of Margaret McLean. She had often caught him snatching a morsel from the kitchen table or shelves and had on each occasion hastily swept him out with the broom. Nowadays he entered the kitchen with a wary eye fixed upon her, and if he did not go upstairs at once to Humpty Dumpty Land, would perch in some high place and scold and grumble to himself. You could always tell from the tone of his voice whether he was scolding or chattering, and Mrs. McLean said she really felt uncomfortable sometimes, when that low croaking voice went on and on behind her back, apparently saying, “Meanie! Meanie! Mean old thing! Drove me out! Drove me out! Wouldn’t give me any dinner! Meanie! Meanie!”
Jim’s chief interest in Humpty Dumpty Land lay in the children’s collections and particularly in their beads and buttons. Whenever he made a call upstairs, after flying to Lesley’s shoulder and caressing her with his beak, he betook himself to the green shelves and turned over the beads, the buttons, and the pebbles one by one, saying to himself, meanwhile: “Oh! pretty, pretty! Pretty, shiny things! Jim Crow like shiny things! Poor Jim Crow! Only have black feathers! Poor Jim Crow!”
If these were not his exact words, though Lesley contended that they were, they evidently embodied his meaning and the gleam of envy and desire of possession were so marked in his cunning black eye that on the day of the children’s visit to Stumpy, Ronald said as they played in Humpty Dumpty Land, “I wonder if Jim Crow knows anything about your necklace, Lesley!”
This precious treasure, a chain of tiny gold beads sent from Grandmother in Scotland as a New Year’s present, had totally disappeared a few weeks after the holiday and not so much as a glint of it had ever since been seen. Lesley had wept bitter tears over the loss and had received many a scolding for her carelessness with the pretty gift, but indeed, indeed, she told her mother, she had never worn it out of the house and had always kept it at night in a box in her bedroom.
At Ronald’s query, Lesley gave a long look at her pet, who was doing hard labor trying to break a button in two, at the same time crooning to himself in a low tone, “Crows have no pretty buttons! Crows ought to have pretty buttons! Poor Jim Crow!”
“Oh, no, Ronnie,” cried Lesley; “Jim would never steal anything of mine; he loves me too well. Don’t you, Jimmy?”
“Croak!” answered Master Crow, but he evidently felt that the conversation was becoming too personal, for he left the room at once in his most dignified manner. He did not mention that he held a small red button in his beak, but, as he said afterwards, “What’s a button between friends?”
“I’m going right down to Father and see what he thinks,” cried Ronnie, running after Jim Crow.
“No, no, Ronnie! Don’t tell Father! I’m sure Jim never took my necklace!” called Lesley, in distress.
Ronald was already halfway downstairs and heard not a word his sister said in his haste to find Father, who was discovered at length in the doorway of Jenny Lind’s stable smoking his afternoon pipe.
“What’s the trouble, sonny?” he asked. “Haste makes waste, you know.”
“Oh, Father, I’ve just thought. Do you believe Jim might have taken Lesley’s necklace?”
“Jim?” questioned his father in a puzzled way. “Oh, you mean Jim Crow? Why, I don’t know. What makes you think so?”
“It’s too bad!” cried Lesley, appearing at this moment; “Ronnie hasn’t a bit of reason to say Jim took it.”
“Well,” said the boy, a little daunted by his sister’s indignation, “I only thought.... You know yourself how much he likes shiny things, and Mother has caught him stealing in the kitchen.”
A burst of tears was Lesley’s answer and her father shook his head at Ronald, saying in a kind voice: “Don’t cry about it, daughter. I mind now that there was an old raven in Scotland stole my grandfather’s spectacles once, but maybe he wasn’t well brought up.... I tell you what, children,” bringing his hand down with a thump on his knee, “Jim Crow has got a ‘hidy-hole’ up there on the cornice of the house. I’ve often watched him go there. I’ll get the long ladder and see what he keeps in it.”
“Oh, let me, Daddy,” cried Ronald. “I’ll climb up the water-pipe.”
“You will not, then,” said his father, decidedly; “it’s bad for the pipe and bad for your clothes, and you’re too heedless and reckless altogether with your climbing.”
By this time Mrs. McLean had joined the group and heard the tale, and she now laid a restraining hand on the boy’s shoulder, while Lesley’s tears were dried in the excitement of the moment.
The long ladder was brought, laid against the house, Father climbed slowly up, reached the spot in the cornice where he had so often seen Jim Crow, and crying out, “Well, if this doesn’t beat the Dutch!” burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
“Oh, what, Father? Oh, what?” cried the children, dancing with impatience.
“Let them come up the ladder, Mother,” called Malcolm. “I’ll hold them and they can see for themselves.”
The children were up before you could say Jack Robinson, and, looking into a sheltered place on the cornice, just behind the water-pipe, beheld Jim Crow’s hidy-hole with an astonishment not to be described.
It was a veritable robbers’ cave, for it held a number of bright feathers, some tinfoil, a variety of beads and buttons, one of mother’s thimbles, several pieces of colored glass and china, and, and—yes, it really did hold Lesley’s necklace.
“Oh, Father! Oh, Father!” cried Lesley, half-laughing and half-crying. “Don’t take everything away from poor Jim; do leave him something!”
“Nonsense, you silly child!” called her mother from the foot of the ladder; but her father said, dryly, “I suppose you don’t think it necessary to leave him the thimble and the necklace, do you?”
“No, oh, no,” whimpered Lesley. “I know that would be silly, but he will be disappointed to find them gone when he comes to look at his collection.”
“I’m ’fraid he will, poor old Jim,” sighed Ronnie, shaking his head.
“Oh, come down the ladder!” called Mother, impatiently. “I’m tired of holding it. If you don’t want to hurt Jim Crow’s feelings, make him another chain, but bring down my thimble, anyway.”
Mother’s suggestion was received with enthusiasm. The party descended to earth, but the ladder was left in place while stout thread and large needles were demanded. Lesley and Ronald sought their stores in Humpty Dumpty Land, and in the course of an hour put together a necklace which would have shamed all the jewels of the Princess Badroulboudour in the “Arabian Nights.”
Malcolm McLean, laughing at the pranks of his astonishing children, climbed the ladder and placed the ornament in Jim Crow’s hidy-hole and when next that honest bird went to examine his treasures, he is reported to have exclaimed, “My stars and garters! What do you think of that? Now that’s what I call a necklace!”
CHAPTER V
A PICNIC WITH STUMPY
It was but a short time after the adventure with that highway and byway robber, Master Crow, when it came time for Stumpy’s annual vacation, and he puffed gloriously away in the Lighthouse tender for his week in San Francisco. As his place was taken meantime by a dull seafaring gentleman having two legs, but no acquaintance with the art of story-telling, the children greatly missed their old friend and were wild with joy when, the day after his return, he begged their father to let them come down to the shore for a picnic.
It was Saturday; of course there were no lessons, of course there were fresh doughnuts, fresh bread, and goats’ milk cheese, so was not a picnic the simplest thing in the world? There was every probability, too, that Stumpy might make chowder in a kettle on the rocks and, oh, why did children have to be scrubbed and brushed within an inch of their lives when the sun shone and the waves called to the picnic?
Preparations at last being completed they set off, Ronnie carrying the basket and scampering like a rabbit down the rocky path.
“If it wasn’t for Lesley, I’d never trust him so long out of my sight,” sighed Mrs. McLean, watching them from the doorway.
“Well, there’s Stumpy, you know,” said her husband, drawing near, “and Ronald climbs like a cat.”
“That’s just what he does do,” agreed Margaret. “I never knew a cat but could climb up a tree, but there’s a many that don’t know how to get down.”
Malcolm laughed in his good-humored way. “It’s a fine thing you’ve got your children on an island,” he said. “If they were on the mainland, you’d be worrying about them night as well as day.”
Lesley meantime was composing a piece of po’try in the secret language, which was to be a sort of ode to Stumpy on his return from foreign parts.
“Stump-ery home-ery,
No longer roam-ery.
Children are glad-ery,
So is their dad-ery.”
AS THEY DREW NEAR AN ODOR AROSE THAT WAS THE BEST KIND OF PO’TRY IN ITSELF
These were the four opening lines and there were to be another four to be recited by Ronald, in which Stumpy was to be asked to recount the incidents of his visit. These were never composed, however, for just as the last line of the first verse was thought out, a turn in the path disclosed Stumpy and the chowder-kettle, and as they drew near an odor arose that was the best kind of po’try in itself. A large school of porpoises, far out at sea, had just smelled it distinctly and asked for a holiday to find out what it was, and Ronald exclaimed, as his nose wrinkled and wrinkled and sniffed and sniffed, “That’s the best smell I ever smelled since I lived in this country!”
“You bet good smell!” laughed the old sailor. “Everything good in that chowder, but how you children get along all last week without Stumpy, hey?”
“Stump-ery true-ery,
We love you-ery!”
cried Lesley, hugging him hard.
“Oh-ery, how-ery we-ery you-ery miss-ery!” shouted Ronald, in a burst of eloquence.
“Well,” said Stumpy, “I ask boss for time off some day and learn your language. Pretty hard learn, I guess. Maybe you better learn Spanish; then we all three have secret. Come now, you get plate and spoon, little son; we have dinner.”
If it wasn’t time for dinner by the clock, it was by the stomach, and no geese fattened for killing could have been rounder and shinier than the picnickers were when the meal was over. A walk to the cave where their father had once saved nine lives from a wreck had been promised the children, but rest on a smooth rock seemed better after such a feast, and after much coaxing Stumpy consented to tell a story, meantime.
It is better, perhaps, to tell it as Stumpy would have done could he have used his native tongue, for his English was faulty, and though it was clear enough to Lesley and Ronald it might not be so to the reader.
“It was two years ago, my children,” Stumpy began, his eyes looking far out to sea, “when I visited a cousin in Santa Barbara and went many times during my stay to service at the old Mission and talked with and learned to know the good Fathers there. Naturally I told them where I lived and that my work was on an island, and Father Francisco promised to tell me a strange island story some evening when he was not busy. The time came and this is the tale in his own words, as far as I can remember them.”