Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

by Clarissa A. Kneeland

It was very hard to handle it when it was hot. She had an assortment of green sticks and matted-fiber holders for this purpose. As when they were making the fish-spear, they used a flat rock for an anvil and the hatchet for a hammer, and after many heatings and hammerings they got the iron straight with a blunt point on one end.

But straightening the bar was only the beginning of the work. She kept the fire hot and heated the bar time after time, and burned three holes entirely through the two outside logs and corresponding ones well into the middle log. Then they took six of the toughest stakes they could find, whittled them straight and smooth to the right size, and drove them in through the burned holes like huge nails. Next they burned and whittled a big hole down into the center log as a socket for the mast. Then they picked out the best of the poles that had been in the raft and set it in place and drove in wedges to hold it solid. This got rid of the clumsy lashings and proppings, besides giving them a straight instead of a crooked mast, and it was not difficult then to rig up a sail that could be easily raised and lowered, using, of course, one of the blankets for a sail as before.

The platform that they burned their pitalla on when spearing next demanded their attention. It was too clumsy and was always needing repairs. Once out on the salt reef they had found a dead sea turtle half buried in the sand. They had fished it out and fastened it with stakes where it would not be washed away, though every tide would cover it, and the elements combined with the scavengers of the sea to clean the shell for them. With rocks and the hatchet they broke away the under part of the shell, and the top part, about two and a half feet in diameter, curved and dished, would hold the pitalla nicely.

Two stout, widespread crotches were cut and driven tightly into burned holes at one end of the projecting middle log, so that they supported the inverted turtle-shell. It did not, however, rest firmly enough till Marian had wired it to the crotches by means of the bail from the old wooden bucket, which was passed through little holes burned in the shell.

Away off up in the pasture they had found a place where the soil partook of the nature of clay. They brought some from there, mixed it to the right consistency and spread a coating all over the inside of the turtle-shell. It dried without much cracking, and the fire would harden it. This was a vast improvement over the old platform, which, in spite of their best efforts had always been a trifle wobbly and evinced a tendency to spill the fuel off into the water at the slightest provocation.

Delbert thought they had their task about finished now, but Marian had a great deal more to do to it still. She wanted to build on the other end a platform of some sort, where they could put things and have them stay dry. By burning holes and driving in stakes and then weaving in with small, tough green sticks, she succeeded in making that end of the raft look not unlike a huge basket. Then by filling that same basket with dried seaweed and such material, which was bulky but light, she had a place where things could be carried out of reach of the waves and where a little girl could lie down if she was tired. Of course, the waves slopped up and soaked through the seaweed to some extent when the raft was in use, but when it was moored quietly to the beach the hot sun dried it out pretty well.

When the raft was finished, their third rainy season on the island was past. Marian was learning, and the others along with her, something of the eternal patience of the universe. So long as she was accomplishing her purpose, she did not count much on the time it took to do it.

They all thought the new raft was such a beauty that it deserved a name. Marian suggested everything she could think of from “Fleet Wings” to “Annabel Lee,” but they finally decided on Jennie’s choice, which was “Muggywah.” She said it was Indian and meant something very safe and strong that nobody could conquer. Where she got the name or the notion Marian could not imagine, and she herself could not tell, but the Muggywah became one of the family forthwith.

Out where the center log projected, at the turtle-shell end, Marian burned the name. “Oh, we are getting wonderfully aristocratic,” she told the children. “It is not every family that can have their own private yacht.”

They went on a big spearing expedition when the Muggywah was finished. The tide was just right, and the fish were plentiful. They got three enormous red snappers and a lot of smaller fry, and it was the most satisfactory trip they had ever made.