“The thread will soon rot out,” said Marian. “I ought to have wire to wrap the end with; copper wire would be best. There are two hairpins left, but they are so short I can’t fix them, I’m afraid.”
It was fully a week afterwards before it dawned upon her that she had in the edge of her hat-brim a nice piece of copper wire that just filled the bill, and though its removal left the brim rather droopy, that was a small matter.
Their supper they always ate at the Cave, as the light of their fire could be seen far out from there; but breakfasts and dinners were usually eaten down on the beach to save the trouble of carrying food and water up the hill. Marian had built a second place for cooking down in the shadow of the big rocks where they had eaten their first dinner on the Island, and the children had dug a well in a hollow of the sand not far off, which they used, although the water did not seem to be so good as that on the other side of the Island, having more of a salty flavor.
As Marian was carefully dipping water from the beach well one morning, Jennie and Esther came running to her in great excitement.
“O Marian, come quick! The High-Tide Pool is full of fish, and Delbert is going to spear them all!”
This was interesting, certainly. The High-Tide Pool was down quite a way from where they had the well and the cooking-place. It was beyond the sandy beach, where the rocks ran down into the water. When the tide was high it had considerable depth, and ran back into a little cave among the rocks, but at low tide the water was only two or three feet deep in its deepest part, which was in the cave.
Sometimes they had seen a few little fish in it before, but that morning the little girls had gone down and found it well stocked.
Probably just as the tide was going out, a great number had taken refuge there. Perhaps some enemy was lurking outside and they dared not leave the safe retreat, and now they could not leave it till high tide came again.
Delbert was spearing industriously when Marian got there. He had actually caught one, and it flapped feebly on the rocks beside him.
As his sister came up, he triumphantly called her attention to it.