“Yes, I do! That is one thing I saw made that I paid enough attention to to know how it was done. Bobbie’s Uncle Jim used to try it out. Don’t you remember? He had a place fixed down by the old blacksmith shop, and we kids were always fooling around there, and he showed and explained all about it to us.”
“And for a wonder you listened?” asked Jennie.
“For a wonder I listened,” he answered, smiling grimly.
“Good boy!” said Marian. “From now on we bend our energies to the canoe. When it is done, we won’t wait for anything more,—once we can sail it,—we won’t wait for anything more except a still day. The first still day we’ll start for home.”
Delbert had a great time making a retort to extract his tar. He found a place near High-Tide Pool where there was a hole in the rock which he could utilize, and he built it up with stones and earth till it suited him.
Then they began gathering the pitalla. They had gathered everything near them for the fireplace, but they knew where there was plenty more to be had, so they went after it,—up the estero, past the tide-flats toward the lagoon. There they could gather it, pile it high on the clumsy raft, and float it home as they had brought the thatch-grass. It was slow work, but there was no other way. It was not so easy to get down to the estero as the grass had been, for the pitalla is thorny indeed, but they managed it somehow, because they had to. They could gather a good deal on the shores nearer home, but nowhere was there such an abundance as beyond that particular estero.
They decided, however, never to leave the home Island alone. They had seen several canoes since the storm, and they hoped one might come into San Moros and near enough to be signaled. Delbert and the girls were perfectly capable of gathering the pitalla and bringing it home; so Marian and Davie stayed at home to do the work there and watch the bay for canoes.
Marian put in a little garden, for they could not tell how long it might take them to finish the canoe, and she planted part of the melon-patch over again, thinking that what they did not reap perhaps some one else would. She straightened up the bananas and mended the fence where they had dragged the old canoe out of it.
As soon as they had got quite a little pile of pitalla, they began to burn it in the retort, and some one had to watch that and attend to it. Delbert was sure that he lost a great deal of tar because his retort was so crude. He was sure Bobbie’s Uncle Jim got much more out of a pile of pitalla than he did, but he had to manage as best he could. And the tar did come; it trickled down into the little dishpan slowly but surely, and Delbert, impatient though he was, would set his face toward the estero and bring more pitalla.
Every morning the three were in such a hurry to get off that they did not stop for a hot breakfast, and they took only a light lunch with them for noon, but Marian always had a good hot meal ready for them upon their return. The destruction of the garden was a drawback, for the little new one was not of service yet. Still, not all the plants had been destroyed by the storm; some had been rescued, straightened up, washed, and tied to stakes, and were pursuing the even tenor of their way again, and, of course, the turnips and carrots that had already attained their growth were as good as ever, and the newly planted seeds would soon be making quite a showing.