MAY 20th, 1925
[[99]]
May twentieth is my birthday, and Mother had made me a whole pirate outfit—pantaloon trousers, red sash, calico head scarf, a machete, rope soled shoes, and a ragged shirt.
Everybody met at Uncle Will’s cabin just before dinner, and then to the pounding of a big drum we all marched down to the dining saloon, everybody dressed in full pirate costumes, with wild looking wigs and knives and cutlasses of every description.
I got two knives, a jar of jam, a box of sweet crackers, a cocoanut, a fine piece of old Chiriqui Indian Pottery, and a peach of a collecting bag. “Lumpy,” the baker, made me a huge birthday cake. [[100]]
Then after dinner Shorty took a flashlight picture of the gang against the shrouds down on the hatch deck. We really looked like a pirate crew too, with everyone in costume and apparently on a sailing ship. The steep rocky island near the north point of Chatham Bay showed in the background, and made it seem even more real.
The Birthday Party.
The night of the birthday party Don Dickerman wore his “Marooned man” costume. It is entirely rags and tatters and mended with bits of old string and leather. With a wig of tangled hair all knotted and a bandanna and a cutlass he looks pretty awful. John Tee Van had torn trousers, bare body, a frightful long black wig and he painted on a terrible scar across his face, and slashes of blood on his insteps. Some of the others had fine clothes of velvet with old lace, the rich pirates or those who had stolen booty from some recent captive. And the girls looked like pirates’ wives or sweethearts, except Mother who came as a [[101]]wild woman, my captive, all bound up with ropes and being dragged along.