Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

by Clarissa A. Kneeland

She made big baskets to carry wood and clams in; she made little ones to hang up in the wickiup to drop little pieces of moss and seashells into. She loved the little ones best. She made them in patterns. She colored some of her material a dull red with juice from the cactus fruit and some of it brown with Marian’s ink. She used some kinds of seaweed, and she made one basket with a row of starfish around the edge and over the handle, and she made some with lids. When Marian’s hat wore out, Jennie made her a new one, weaving it as she did her baskets and trimming it with sprays of seaweed and shells.

The ordinary rains did not inconvenience them, but when they were very severe the wickiup leaked a little down the rock wall. They had not been able to make the roof perfectly tight there, and the water, when the wind blew hard, would find its way down; then they would have to remove whatever was hanging or leaning against that side, and Marian would turn back the seaweed carpet so that it should not get wet, and the water would run down the wall and soak into the sand and rocks of the floor. They enjoyed the big rains, though. They could always keep warm and dry, and the wickiup was big enough to allow each one to move about a little and follow whatever occupation he or she chose.

It was on a rainy day that Marian conceived the idea of weaving up the old rags that had been their clothes into new cloth, though the task was not finished on that one day by any means, nor in two. She had used up everything she had on hand in the way of thread; so she made the warp out of new hair clipped from her own and the children’s heads with the buttonhole scissors; and with the same sharp little instrument she cut the old rags into strips, as narrow as she could and have them hold together at all, and wove them in as rag carpets are woven; and lo! she had new towels, and they needed new towels very much.

So time passed, rainy season and cold weather and rainy season again. Often at night they built brush fires out on the rocks where they could be seen a long way off. Their signal flag had been blown down one stormy night and lost altogether.

Sometimes, far out, they saw canoes and started out in the Muggywah to intercept them, but the canoes always went on their way too fast and too far to be overtaken.

IT SEEMED AS IF THEY MUST SURELY HAVE SEEN OR HEARD HER

Once, when the children were gone in the Muggywah after eggs, Marian sighted a canoe and started to swim out to it with only a piece of driftwood to help keep her afloat. She got so close to them that it seemed as if they must surely have seen or heard her, but they put up their sail, and, despairing, she had to see them depart. Giving up the chase, she rested a little before battling her way slowly back, but she arrived so tired that she could scarcely drag herself out of the water and across the beach, to find the children returned and hunting desperately for her.

Then one day they hauled the Muggywah up on the beach for repairs. Two of the sticks driven through the burnt holes had broken, and they were going to put in new ones. They took it apart and rolled the logs up beyond the soft sand into the shade of a mesquite tree that grew at the foot of the hill.

The next day they found the material they had got was not so good as they had thought it was, and so they spent the day hunting for something better. And that night came the second big storm.