“In my coat pocket. Don’t you remember when Bobbie’s father sent off for seeds, and they were so long in coming, and the rats had got to ’em somewhere on the road and chewed holes in the papers, and the seeds were all spilling out? Well, I helped Bobbie carry them home from the office, and we put them in our coat pockets, some of them, and I’ll bet there are some of those seeds in my pockets yet.”
Straight they went to the Cave and turned every pocket wrong side out over a white cloth and with miserly care saved every tiny seed that fell. There was in all nearly a teaspoonful. Marian separated them, putting each kind in a clamshell by itself.
There were seven kinds. One was peas; there were just three of them. They were not sure of the others, though Jennie rather thought one kind was eggplant, and Marian was pretty sure another was onions.
Down in a corner by the bananas was the place chosen for this second planting. They built a fence around it, a rather frail affair, but specially designed to keep out rabbits, and they sprinkled the beds twice a day. All three of the peas sprouted, but something ate them up. What Marian had thought was onions never came up at all, but the remaining five kinds all sprouted and grew well, and though their ranks were diminished by various bugs and birds,—for Marian could not be on guard every minute of the time,—there were a few plants of each kind that survived all accidents.
Jennie’s eggplant turned out to be big sweet peppers; the other plants proved to be turnip, carrots, lettuce, and—poppies. Delbert could never understand about that last, for he was very sure Bobbie’s father had sent only for vegetable seeds, but Marian thought Bobbie’s mother had probably had something to do with the list of seeds ordered.
The melons did best of all. There were so few of the others that Marian vetoed all eating till the seeds could be gathered, but the melon-patch produced abundantly, so that they did not have to worry about seeds, but began eating as soon as the centers were pinkish, and only saved seeds from the best ones that came later.
But long before the melons were ripe, their scanty larder had been replenished from a totally different direction.
“Marian,” Delbert had said, “those little white-looking islands away down the bay are duck islands. Clarence told me so, and I can see the ducks going to them every day. Wish we could go there; duck eggs are good, I tell you.”
Away down San Moros they could see them, two little islands, mere trifles compared with Smugglers’, and so far away that ordinarily Marian would not have wasted a moment on thoughts of a journey there, but eggs, perhaps young ducks, and here were her hungry little crew gazing wistfully. “Ducks” the children called them, and it was not till long afterward that they learned that the birds were really cormorants. If they had known this at the time, they might not have been so hungry for the eggs, but cormorants’ eggs, like the eggs of other seabirds, are not uneatable when one is hungry enough, and they are often eaten by fishermen.
The young girl thought and studied and made ropes and looked toward the “duck islands.” Every morning long lines of birds went out from them to the sea; every evening long lines came back.