Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

by Clarissa A. Kneeland

Marion felt much worse about it than he did. As long as he could walk and run and swim, what did he care if one leg was a trifle shorter than the other? He could roam the Island wilds with the rest of them now, and that was joy enough.

Marian hoped his experience would teach him wisdom, and she did her best to impress it upon his mind that when she was not there Delbert’s authority came next; that, as Delbert was the oldest, it was his duty to take care of the younger ones, and they must obey him.

Davie admitted that he had not really needed to look for panales, that he could plainly see he would have saved himself a great deal of pain and trouble if he had minded Delbert, and he even went so far as to say of his own accord that he wished he had. Also, at Marian’s request, he promised to be “more good” in the future.

This was all she could hope for in that direction, and she took pains to instruct Delbert, when the others were not present, that, while she fully intended to back up his authority, at the same time he must take care not to issue orders that were not really necessary. She did not worry about his having trouble with the girls, for Esther would think anything Delbert wanted was the thing to do, anyway, and Jennie was growing into such a sensible little woman that her judgment could be depended upon as well as Delbert’s own; but Delbert was to take care that he came pretty near letting Davie have his own way in the minor, unimportant things and only issue orders to him when there was some reason for it.

She also privately instructed the little girls to use their influence whenever they could to keep Davie within bounds and see that he gave Delbert as little trouble as possible. And there she had to leave the matter, trusting for the best, for she could not always go with them now, the spinning and weaving and the making of their clothes took up so much of her time. The children would go off of a morning and sometimes not be back till nearly noon, coming in laden with fish, or maybe clams, or with great armloads of wood.

While they were gone, Marian would clean up the wickiup and work a while among the great mass of poppies and nasturtiums she had growing about the house and paths; but the wheel and loom were the principal things. She spun her cotton and hair-combings as fine as she could, so as to make them go as far as possible, and then she was always looking for new material. She learned to work in a great deal of fiber without spinning, especially in the filling, and many and many a morning was spent in cleaning out banana fiber to be used in her cloth. Oh, there was always plenty to keep her busy till the children came back at noon. They would be hungry, and there would be dinner to eat, and then lessons, and afterwards they would help with whatever she had in hand.

And for the lessons she took up another labor, that of making books of rabbit-skins. She had Delbert bring her some new skins, and she used part of the old skin clothes, which had been promptly discarded as fast as she had made new ones. She would trim her pages to the desired size and sew them together with fiber or hair. She used her little buttonhole scissors for the cutting, and of course she had real needles, though she thought that she could have made shift with thorns if she had had to. Her ink was brown.

Her pens were made of quills, and she could not write very nicely with them. Fine lines and graceful curves were not easy to achieve with them, so she discarded script and “printed” her books, as little children do before they have learned to write.

I think in time she would have worked out a printing-press to print her books on. Indeed, she did take the first step; she began to make type. It began accidentally almost. A pen had gone bad, and in fixing it her knife slipped and spoiled it altogether. Then, her mind on something else, she began toying with it idly and presently cut it square across and, pressing it down on her wrist, noted the neat o it printed there. Then it struck her that if it were inked it would make a better o than she could with a pen. She tried it, and it worked.

A second quill cut across and a section taken out made a c. It gave her an idea. Why not make a lot of type? It could not all be made with quills, but it would be amusing to see what she could do. She whittled out from bits of wood a capital A, and a W, and a D. She needed an ink-pad, and made it by padding a chip with cotton and then covering it with one of her last scraps of lawn.