Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

by Clarissa A. Kneeland

Inside there were several shelves put up by swinging them from the roof, and their largest piece of driftwood, laid across two rocks, made a very good table. These and the mantel-shelf were enough to hold all their dishes and other valuables. The bedding, folded up neatly in a corner, did not take up much room. The fireplace did not smoke, and it was very convenient indeed for the cooking.

At night the children lay down where they chose on the clean, springy seaweed floor, and pulled a part of a blanket or a rabbit-skin robe or the big cape over them and slept the sleep of the healthy till morning.

They had no lamp or lantern, but the bark of the pitalla burned with a white light that made the inside of the little house very cheery and cozy of an evening, and was a good enough light for anything they might want to do.

They had begun the house at the end of one rainy season; they had it finished just as the next one was upon them. They went with the Muggywah and gathered up all the pitalla bark, now nicely dry, which had been stripped from their poles and which they had not already brought in, and stored it in the Cave to keep it dry, and when they had that full they piled another heap in another cave, where it would be partially protected from the wet.

They gathered, too, a big pile of driftwood near the house,—light stuff such as the waves were always tossing up, and as much heavy stuff as they could get for back-logs to bury at night, so as to have good embers in the mornings when it was cold, for a bed of hot embers was a comfort indeed to start in with.

The children had begun calling the new home a wigwam, but Marian said she was quite sure that a wigwam was always made of skins stretched over poles, but she believed—she was not quite sure, but she believed—that a wickiup was made of wattles with a thatch or dirt roof; so, of course, theirs was a wickiup.

Rainy days had no terrors for them now, and no dreariness. They would do what was needful to make the little burros comfortable, gather into the wickiup what food and fuel was needed for the next day and night, close the storm door, on the side the wind and rain were coming from and open the other to let in plenty of light.

A very small fire would keep the room comfortable, and they could sit warm and dry, and do whatever amused them best,—weave baskets, or make little ropes, or sharpen knives or the hatchet. Rainy days were good times to crochet fiber into bags or clothing and to bore holes in wampum. Delbert made himself a beautiful wampum belt. It was woven of fiber about two inches wide, and he covered it with little shells sewed on through two little holes bored in each one. It was a great deal of work, but he was very much interested in it, and showed such ability in boring holes without breaking the shells, and in sewing them on so that they made a pretty pattern, that Marian was as proud of him for doing it as he was proud of the belt when it was done.

It was that summer that Marian took up the long-neglected task of the children’s education. She was handicapped certainly; her sole schoolroom equipments were half a lead-pencil, a piece of blue chalk half as big as her thumb, which chanced to be in her workbag, and a part of a newspaper that had lain in the bottom of their lunch-basket and had a dozen times only narrowly escaped being used up for something else. This paper consisted mainly of advertisements of real estate for sale, male and female help wanted, and a page of sporting news and market reports, with half a column of mineral discoveries. It was not an ideal primer, but it would do to teach Davie his letters from.

There was a place on the rock wall that was comparatively smooth, and Marian made it more so by rubbing it with flat stones small enough to be handled easily and as much like a grindstone in composition as she could find. She would rub and rub, throw on a little water, and rub again, and she kept that up till she had a space that would serve very well as a blackboard. Of course the blue chalk did not last long, but then they used bits of charcoal, and if bones were burnt just right they made a very good substitute for chalk. A bunch of mescal or banana fiber made a very good eraser.