Smugglers' Island and the devil fires of San Moros

Marian Hadley stood in the doorway of her home in a small seaport town of Mexico, watching her ten-year-old brother Delbert come stumbling up the hill with his arms full of mail.

“We’re out early,” he shouted. “The teacher let us all out early. There are the girls coming now, down by the office. Oh! and we’re not going to have any more school this week. The teacher has got to go to the dentist every day, and she isn’t going to feel like teaching; so we are going to have vacation.”

“Dear me,” said Marian, smiling, “what in the wide world will you children do, with so much spare time on your hands?”

“O Marian! Marian! Can’t we--it will be just the time to do it--can’t we go to Smugglers’ Island?” Delbert’s body fairly quivered with excitement, and his dark eyes were shining like stars. “Let me ask Mr. Cunningham for the launch. We could go to-morrow. O Marian, do, please!”

Marian hesitated. “Smugglers’ Island! That is a long way off. We couldn’t be ready by to-morrow; it is late now.”

“We don’t need anything but a lunch. I don’t mean to get up a party. Just us go. We don’t need to go to a lot of fuss.”

If Marian had an especial weakness, it was her brother Delbert. She was proud of that spirited, handsome little face, and rarely clouded it by a refusal if a consent was possible. Besides the sister love she gave him in common with the other children, there was a desire to make up to him the loss of a companion brother who had died a few years before, a brother a little older than Delbert, but of much the same cast of features.

Now she thought, “Why not? Why think one must make elaborate preparations for every little pleasure, when the children would enjoy it as well, maybe better, without?”

She laughed. “Here come the girls,” she said. “We’ll put it to a vote.”

The little girls, Jennie and Esther, came up the path. Jennie was eight, a puny, thin little shadow, with eyes that seemed much too big because the face was so thin and colorless. She had been born a sickly baby and had averaged at least one illness every year of her life since, and had never known what actual health was. When Mrs. Hadley had decided to accompany her husband on his business trip to Guaymas she had thought seriously of taking Jennie with her, though she had had never a moment’s uneasiness at leaving the other three in their sister’s care. But it had seemed a pity to take the little girl out of school, where she was doing well; and also there was a good American doctor in town, whom Marian promised faithfully to send for at the first symptom of anything wrong; so, as Jennie herself did not seem to care about going, it was finally decided she should stay.

Esther, the six-year-old, stood in pleasing contrast to her sister. Having never known sickness, she was a sturdy, robust little specimen, as plump as the baby David, dimpled and rosy, with curly hair that was forever getting into her bright eyes.

Delbert was dancing with delight. “Girls, girls,” he squealed, “listen, quick. All in favor of going to Smugglers’ Island to-morrow, signify by saying ‘Aye.’”

“Aye, aye, aye!” he yelled; and Esther, taking her cue, also launched a myriad of “ayes,” but Jennie shook her head in grave disapproval.

“You are too ev’lastin’ noisy,” she said. “Marian, we are not going in the launch, are we?”

The baby was calling “Aye” most lustily.

“There,” declared Delbert, “that’s a m’jority, Marian. Three out of five’s a m’jority.”

Marian drew Jennie tenderly to her. “Delbert wants to go to Smugglers’ Island to-morrow. It is a long way, but perhaps you would not be seasick in the launch. Do you want to go?”

The little girl’s shining eyes were answer enough. Marian laughed and kissed her. “Delbert,” she said then, “take that bill that is in my purse down to Mr. Cunningham now and refund him for the duties on these packages and thank him for me,--don’t forget that,--and then see if he can let us have the launch to-morrow. It may be let to some one else, but if it isn’t, and if we can have it, why, pay him for that too, and don’t forget that. But I warn you children there’s not a thing for lunch but bread and butter. I haven’t so much as a cooky in the jar, and it’s too late for me to bake now.”

Previously there had lived at the Port for some years an American boy whose chief joy in life had been found on the water, and, having been blest with a small sailboat of his own, he had been able to indulge his sailor propensities to the utmost. Sometimes with other boys, often alone, he had sailed up and down the coast for miles, exploring the shallow bays and winding esteros,[1] and he knew all the sandbars and islands.

[1] An estero (pronounced es-tāʹ-ro) is an estuary, an arm of the sea.

A few miles out from the Port was a group of islands known to the Americans thereabouts as the Rosalie Group. The natives gave them another name, unpronounceable, and certainly unspellable. They consisted of quite an assortment of rocky knolls and stunted trees, and little beaches, fine for bathing. Most people confined their seaward excursions to trips of greater or less duration of time to these islands, some half-dozen in number, but Clarence had ventured much farther; he had even gone as far as San Moros, many miles down the coast.

San Moros was a wide-mouthed, shallow bay, full of rocks and sandbars, but at its farther extremity the young explorer had discovered an island that gave unmistakable evidence of having once been inhabited,--probably by smugglers, as in times past they had flourished like the bay tree all up and down the west coast, as everybody knows.

Boy-like, Clarence had kept his discovery a secret, or at least had revealed it only to a chosen few, Marian and Delbert being among the elect. And when afterwards he had made a second trip to the place, Mrs. Hadley had allowed Delbert to go with him. Clarence had been fond of children and of Delbert in particular, and often took the little boy with him on his all-day trips on the water. On this occasion they had camped over and explored the Island and its surroundings.

It was long months now since Clarence’s family had moved from the Port, but Delbert had always been anxious for a second trip to the Island in San Moros, being eager to show it to Marian and his little sisters.

Before long Delbert came rushing back. “We can go! We can go!” he called. “We--where’s Marian?--oh, there you are. Mr. Cunningham says we can have the launch. The man he usually sends with it is sick or something, but he got Mr. Pearson to take us instead. We can start early in the morning. Goody! And say, Marian, can’t you fix some dough for doughnuts and let me fry ’em for you?”

Marian looked severe. “Do you remember what happened the last time I let you fry doughnuts?” she asked.

Delbert’s eyes twinkled. “Yes,” he said, “but that was learning; I won’t do it that way now.”

“Shall we trust him, Jennie?” she asked.

“If you don’t, there won’t be any doughnuts to-morrow,” Delbert assured her. “Marian has not got time to make ’em.”

“I guess we can this time,” decided Jennie.

“Me fry doughnuts, too,” said Esther.

“I am afraid me had better not,” said Marian; “but you and Jennie may roll and cut them out for Delbert. And Davie, you sit up in your high chair and watch sister stir up these doughnuts quickly, and then Davie shall make a doughnut of his very own. Delbert, put the granite-ware kettle on, and the lard is in that pail on the shelf there by you. I think there is just enough; put it all in.”

She hurried the ingredients together, and, as soon as the dough was ready for rolling out, turned it over to the apprentices and ran out of the kitchen to the numerous other tasks that awaited her.

“You haven’t read us mamma’s letter yet,” called Jennie.

“Oh, I will read it while we eat supper,” Marian answered.

“What mamma say?” shrilled Esther.

“Says they will be back in two weeks,” came Marian’s muffled voice from the far bedroom.

Presently she came back. “Jennie,” she said, “do you know what was done with your and Esther’s bathing-suits when you came back from bathing the other day?”

Jennie looked blank, but Esther answered promptly.

“Down to Bobbie’s.”