“No,” said Delbert. “I remember when we camped here it was awful quiet at night, and I asked Clarence if he s’posed there were any panthers here, and he said no, he hadn’t seen a sign of any such thing here, and he guessed if there ever had been, the smugglers had killed them all off.”
“That is not unlikely,” said Marian; “but the burros and pigs must have come from what they had; perhaps the deer, too,—they might have had some for pets. But, come, if we have our breath now, children, we’d better go down; for see, Mr. Pearson has the launch unloaded already, and there is dinner to get when we get back.”
So they followed the twisting trail downward. It was very faint, in some places entirely obliterated, yet taken as a whole was distinct.
Between the Island and the mainland lay a strait that was deep enough for even large steamers, though there was little of San Moros that a big steamer could have ridden safely over. A little rough rock pier had been built here. “And Clarence said the fellow that built it understood his business, too,” declared Delbert, emphatically. “He said it was a good job; but come and look at the bananas,” he continued, leading the way.
The Island, which elsewhere presented such rough, not to say precipitous, sides, here was level or nearly so. A house had once stood there. The mound of its ruins was unmistakable. In one place a forked timber stuck up; on one side was a pile of other timbers overgrown with weeds and shrubbery. There was a spring, too, that had had some sort of masonry cover, broken now, but with a tiny pool of water at the bottom of the rocks. There were the remains of an old stone wall that had once surrounded a garden, of which only a thick, matted banana-patch was left.
A banana plant grows to maturity, produces one bunch of bananas, and then dies. During the time it is doing this a number of young plants spring up about the parent stalk, and each of these produces its one bunch of fruit and group of little ones, which in turn go through the same process. It will be readily seen, therefore, that, with no one to trim out the old stalks and superfluous young ones, a banana-patch would in the course of time become a very crowded place, indeed.
This was just what had happened to the Smugglers’ Island patch. How long it had been left uncared-for no one could tell, but it was now an impenetrable jungle.
Marian and the children walked all round it, looking for bananas, but except for several bunches from which the birds had eaten the fruit, leaving the blackened skins dangling, they saw only one, and that was too high up for them to reach. It did not look very tempting, anyway. A little beyond were a few fan palms, but this kind of palm bears no fruit.
Marian sat near the site of the old house, while the children rummaged about and explored. This was certainly an ideal place in which to hide from the world, a sunny little spot, sheltered and secluded, for the hill hid the place from the seaward view, and across the narrow strait lay only the rocky, thorny tangle of the uninhabited hill of the mainland, with not even an Indian ranch for miles and miles, Clarence had said. Marian wondered what chance or incident had caused the abandonment of the place.
Presently she rose.