Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

by Clarissa A. Kneeland

She would have been glad of more lime, but it was such a task to gather and burn the shells that she decided to finish the house without it. They gathered up their pitalla poles now, clean, creamy-white poles, which they fastened in place by tightly lashing with small ropes. Where they needed them in the walls they packed the end that rested on the ground with rocks and mud and tied the upper ends. The house began to take shape rapidly. The pitalla poles were easily split when smaller, finer pieces were needed.

Finally they were ready for the thatch. It would take a great many trips to get that. They knew of but one place where it grew, and that was away up by the lagoon. They would go and cut grass, or rather dig it out by the roots, till they had enough for a bundle for each one. These bundles were graduated in size, of course, but Marian allowed no shirking. Nobody really tried to shirk but Davie. He didn’t like to carry thatch-grass down to the estero, and he tried all kinds of excuses to get out of it, but Marian was firm.

“Every little helps,” she said. “It is work that you can do, and you must.”

So, in spite of his grumblings and groanings, Davie carried his little bundle as well as the rest. They would make several trips, stacking the grass in a pile at the pier; then they would stop and carry it all to the top of the hill to the new house, and Marian and Delbert would put it on the roof. Jackie helped them there. He did not mind carrying quite a bundle of grass up the hill, for it was light and did not tax his strength. It was pulling that Jackie objected to.

They put the grass on very thick, tying each little bunch very firm and tight to the split pitalla prepared for it. Here again the little girls felt very sure that Marian was doing a much better job than was at all necessary. They were quite sure that much less grass would do just as well. But Marian, remembering the fury of that first storm on the Island, was not going to run any risks, and Delbert backed her up in her determination. So for weeks they worked at it, digging and tugging at the grass up by the lagoon, often cutting their fingers on the sharp edges, toiling down through the hot sun to the estero with their bundles, tying them on the Muggywah, and then paddling back home. Then, when Marian and Delbert climbed up on the roof, the little girls handed up bunch after bunch of the rank, heavy grass to the two above, who tied them with the stout little cords that they sometimes took a day off to make. And finally the whole roof was covered with a thick mat of the rustling grass, the long loose ends of each row hanging well down over the root ends of the row below. Several poles were fastened across to hold it down better and make it all the surer that the wind would not get in underneath and undo any of their labor.

Then there were the sides to come next. Marian had thought that they would maybe thatch them too, but the children were tired of going after grass. Indeed, they had gathered all the best of it; what was left was so much shorter and thinner that it would take much more time to get it. So she cast about for other material nearer home.

There were several big rocks in a line with the walls, two of which were immovable, but there were several others that they succeeded in prying up and swinging round into place. In between them Marian built up a wall even with their tops, using for her mortar the shells that had not been well burned, mixing them with clay brought from the pasture. It was very tiresome bringing it, but it did nicely after they got it there, for it dried hard and smooth and would stay so as long as it was kept dry at least.

One thing Marian was particular about was to use only the fresh water for her mortar. It was more trouble than it would have been to use salt, but she had heard some of the men at the Port once talking about some one who had made a failure of a kiln of bricks because he had used salt water in the making. She did not remember what they had said was the reason why the salt was bad in that particular place, nor just what effect it had had, but she intended to run no risks; so her mortar was all mixed with water from the well on the pier side of the Island.

But she could not build up the entire wall that way, and by the time she had it up as high as the big rocks there were no more loose stones near them and she had used up every bit of her burnt shells. All hands were very tired, too, of lugging earth from the pasture, and they could find no clay nearer home.

She turned to the banana-patch then, and they tore the big stalks into strips of uniform size and used these to weave in basket-fashion between the uprights and the split pitallas. It did very well except that, as with everything else, Marian insisted upon its being done so well that it seemed to take forever to do it. They also used the dried leaves, weaving them in and out and pounding them down so as to have a good thick wall. Some kinds of brush they used, too, fine branches that had no thorns, or at least no large ones, but the fibrous strips of the banana stalks were the main material used.