She was a splendid little swimmer, better even than Marian, and it used to seem to Marian that she was the prettiest little mermaid any one ever set eyes on.
CHAPTER VII
THE MUGGYWAH
The time came when Marian had to face the problem of clothing. Every bathing-suit was worn to rags, and everything else was so near it that there was no trusting anything. When the weather was cold they had their wraps, and these covered a multitude of tattered sins, and none of the tribe save Marian herself ever wore anything into the water any more, but even with such economy there was no dodging the issue any longer. Unless she were willing that her flock should revert to extreme savagery in costumes, something had to be done.
Her first attempt was to crochet clothing out of fiber, but it took so long to make a garment that way that she was always eagerly on the alert for other modes. She remembered that soaking skins in wet ashes would remove the hair. Old Mr. Faston had said so once. So she tried it with some rabbit-skins. It worked very well. After being packed in a little hollow of the rock with ashes and water all night, the fur was easily pulled off. Then, when the ashes were washed off and the skin was nearly dry, it could be rubbed and worked till it was soft and pliable and Marian could begin dressmaking.
Rabbits were getting scarce in their immediate vicinity, however, and the search for better hunting-grounds took them back to the mainland again. They did not cross the harbor and go to climbing mountains this time, however. They took the raft down the bay and followed one of the winding esteros that led between mango bushes, off and off, farther and farther, twisting and turning and growing narrower and more and more shallow till they came out into a comparatively level country, with no hills near at hand, but great stretches of mud flats and sandbanks and miles and miles of pitalla and scrubby brush.
They took the raft as far as they could and tied it to some bushes and proceeded afoot. They wandered several miles, taking care not to lose their bearings. They found wagon-loads of fine pitalla and some other wood, rabbits galore, and a few stone or flint arrowheads, but no sign whatever of human habitation.
Delbert shot eight big jack rabbits, Esther got three, and Jennie two, thirteen in all. They decided that the unluckiness of the number was for the rabbits, not for them. They took only the skins home with them, for they did not need the meat, and they had plenty of other things to carry back to the raft.
They loaded it with all the good dry pitalla they could pile up and tie on. Down close by the water, half buried in the salty mud, Delbert found a stone hatchet. Once before he had found a broken one, but this was perfect. He held it in his hand with a dreamy look on his face. “How long ago do you s’pose it was, Marian, when they made ’em and used ’em like this one?”
“Mercy! I have no idea; hundreds of years at the least and like as not a million.”