It was no easy job, I can tell you. We worked like beavers to get the cave the way we wanted it; but when it was done, it was what you may call hunky-dory. Bill Drake's father had a flat-bottomed boat that we got into and rowed along shore. We rigged up a sail; but there was something the matter with it, and it kept flopping about, and wasn't much good, but anyhow it looked nice. We never went far from shore. We weren't afraid, but we didn't care to. Smugglers always kept along shore.
We all had blue shirts, and pulled our caps down over our eyes to look fierce. And Bill Drake kept an old pipe of his father's in his mouth; it hadn't any tobacco in it, but it was a real pipe, so we made Bill captain. The thing was to get lots of traps into the cave to look like smuggled goods. We fished up old bathing pieces and bits of broken bottles, and Bill brought down a red petticoat; but the best of all was Aunt Pam's shawl.
Now I'd scorn to do a mean or sneaking thing, especially to Aunt Pam, but she didn't seem to care a button for that shawl. I didn't think it was worth twopence. She used to wear it in all sorts of weather, and it looked to me as if it was patched up out of bits that she hadn't any other use for. I'm sure she'd worn it since she was a baby. I could remember seeing that shawl around as long as I could remember anything, and it was just the thing for our cave. It was kind of like a Turk's best turban as to color; and when it was fixed over Bill Bates's bathing suit, and one corner hung down over the rock, it made the cave look bully. I went into Aunt Pam's room one morning, and found it thrown over the foot of the bedstead, like an old blanket, and I carried it off to the cave.
When I came home from school, I saw Aunt Pam out walking with a worsted thing that one of my sisters made for her, and I thought it was enough sight handsomer in the way of a shawl. I went on down to the cave, and when I got home again there was a regular hullabulloo in the house.
The girls were ransacking the closets, Aunt Pam was flying around like a hen with its head cut off, and everybody was turning everything inside out. "Maybe Tom's seen it," said mamma. "Tom, have you seen your aunt Pam's shawl?"
"That old thing she used to wear around?" I said.
"Old thing!" they all shrieked together. "Why, it's a camel's-hair shawl; it's worth five hundred dollars."
"Oh no!" I said. "I beg your pardon; there wasn't the hair of a camel, or even a cat, in the shawl that I mean; it was just sewed together on the wrong side like a bed-quilt."
"That was it, you ridiculous boy," said my sisters. "Have you seen it?"
"Seen it!" said I; "I've only seen it every day since I was born, and yet I remember it well." I went whistling away, and they began to rush around again for that shawl.