Baby Island (5 page)

“What is it, Jean?” called Mary, preparing to pick up the babies and run if any danger threatened.

“Bananas!” cried Jean, waving her arms as she ran.

“Bananas! bananas! bananas!

I’m singing hosannas

‘Cause I’ve found bananas!

Bananas! bananas! bananas!”

“Really?” asked Mary, incredulously.

“Really!” said Jean, all out of breath, dropping down on the sand beside them. She exhibited half a dozen large yellow bananas. “The trees are full of them. Oh, I never hoped to find such a heavenly place on earth! Think of having all the bananas you want to eat! That’s almost like picking caramels off bushes.”

“Oh, yum!” said Mary. “I like bananas, too.”

“Nana! nana!” cried the twins, reaching sandy fingers.

Jean distributed the fruit. The twins instantly began to pull off the skins and stuff the ripe fruit into their mouths.

“Dear me!” said Mary weakly. “I don’t know what Mrs. Snodgrass would say. Bananas before breakfast! Isn’t that supposed to be terrible for the digestion?”

“Oh, let them, just this once,” begged Jean. “Today we ought to celebrate because we’ve reached our island.”

“However did we get here, Jean? Did you see us arrive?”

“No, I was asleep, too. But I felt a sort of gentle bump and a grating on sand, and then we stopped moving, and I woke up and here we were. I sat up and looked around. You and the babies kept right on sleeping as if nothing had happened, and at first I thought maybe I was having one of my nightmares, only it was really too pleasant to be a nightmare. I started to wake you up, and then I thought: ‘Gracious! somebody’s always yanking me out of a nice, cosy sleep, and that makes me cross. I’ll let poor Mary sleep it out. We’ll probably be here long enough, anyway!’”

“Well, I
was
surprised,” declared Mary, “and I expect you’re right about our being here a long time. It certainly does look like a desert island, if I ever saw one. We’ll have to begin exploring right after breakfast, and then we’ll have to set up housekeeping somewhere. We’ve got the babies to think of, you know.”

“What shall we name our new country? Bananaland?” Jean was already beginning on her fifth banana.

“How about Babyland?” suggested Mary. “You and I will be king and queen, and all our subjects babies.”

“We do seem to be terribly mixed up with babies,” admitted Jean. “How about calling this place Baby Island? For, of course, it’s an island or we wouldn’t have come bumping into it the way we did right out in the middle of the ocean.”

“All right,” said Mary. “I like that name. Baby Island it shall be!”

Just then from the boat they heard Ann Elizabeth’s voice, crying for breakfast. Her lusty cry was immediately joined by Jonah’s shrill wail, making a sort of alto and soprano duet.

“Our subjects are calling us,” said Mary, starting to run.

“You’re all mixed up, Mary,” laughed Jean, as she ran to help her sister. “We’re not the king and queen of Baby Island—we’re the slaves!”

The girls made a hasty breakfast in the boat, for they were both in a hurry to begin exploring. But first of all there was a certain amount of housework to be done. There was washing, and the babies all needed baths.

“First let’s pull the boat as far up on shore as we can,” said Mary, “so that a sudden wind won’t carry it out to sea. We can let the babies roll around on the sand until we get that done.”

So they left the babies rolling and tumbling in the clean sand, while they went at the task of pulling the boat ashore. This was hard to do, for the boat was heavy. Bobbing on the open sea, it had often seemed small, but now that they had it on the beach, it seemed as heavy and unwieldy as a dead elephant. But the two girls pulled and pushed with all their strength, working it inch by inch up onto the dry sand.

“Whew!” remarked Jean, wiping the perspiration from her forehead. “That was some job!”

“I know,” said Mary, “and that’s not the last hard thing we’ll have to do before we leave this island. But we won’t let anything beat us, Jean. A Wallace never gives up.”

“No, sir!” said Jean. “Never!” And the two young Wallaces ground their teeth and gave the boat a last triumphant tug.

“Now we’ll make a tent,” announced Mary.

Searching among the piles of driftwood which lay here and there along the beach, the girls found two long sticks, and stuck them deep into the sand a short distance from the boat. To these two poles they fastened two corners of the tarpaulin which had already been so useful to them in the boat. The other two corners were fastened to the side of the boat, so that it formed a sort of tent with the side of the lifeboat as a sheltering wall at the back. At first they had some difficulty in fastening the tarpaulin securely, but by twisting the corners of it around the stakes and using Jean’s safety pins to fasten it tightly in place, they managed to get a good, firm anchorage.

“Maybe that’s not the way a seaman would do it,” said Mary, sitting back on her heels to admire the result. “But I call that a pretty fine tent.”

“Oh, Mary, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” said Jean, “but Ann Elizabeth is eating sand. Do you suppose we gave her enough breakfast?”

“Oh, Ann Elizabeth, no! No!” cried Mary, running to the rescue. “It’s nasty! ‘Pit it out. ‘Pit it out right away. Oh, Jean, get the water jug and we’ll wash her mouth out.”

“The dirty baby! And there you go talking baby talk to her!” exclaimed Jean disapprovingly. But she fetched the water jug just the same. Ann Elizabeth seemed to enjoy the sand very much, for she said, “Goo-goo,” and reached for more.

“Poor darling! She doesn’t know any better,” apologized Mary tenderly, as she cleaned the squirming baby’s mouth. After washing Ann Elizabeth’s mouth, she picked up the water jug, weighing it carefully in her hands. She tried to peer inside it, but the earthenware neck was too small to allow her to see how much water was left.

“You know this water isn’t going to last forever,” she said dubiously. “The next thing we must do is to hunt for fresh water, and, when we find it, we must build our house near it. Folks can’t get along without water.”

“Isn’t there any way of using sea water, Mary?”

“No. It is so salty, it would just make us thirstier and thirstier. If we can’t get fresh water, we’ll all die.”

“Oh, dear,” said Jean. “I’d hate to die now, Mary, just
when I’ve found all the bananas I want to eat! I always did like bananas better than water.”

“Yes,” continued Mary, “as soon as we can get the babies all asleep for their naps, we must go exploring for a stream of water. It’s very important. But first we will give them their baths.”

“Oh, Mary,” cried Jean, laughing, “the Blue Twin has taken his already. Just look at him!”

During the excitement of washing out Ann Elizabeth’s mouth, the Blue Twin had escaped the girls’ watchful eyes, and gone down to the sea. There he was splashing and paddling to his heart’s content. The beach sloped so gradually into the water that there was no danger, and he squealed with joy as the little frothy ripples splashed over him. The Pink Twin stood on the shore clapping his hands at his brother’s antics, and ready at any moment to plunge in himself.

“Wa-wa!” he cried happily. “Ba-ba, wa-wa!”

Mary caught him just before he splashed in beside Elijah.

“You hold Pink, while I dry Blue,” said Mary. “We must never, never mix them!”

“They are so much alike that I don’t see what difference it would make, if we did mix ’em up,” objected Jean.

“Really,” said Mary, “I think that’s rather heartless, Jean. It wouldn’t somehow be honest to Mrs. Snodgrass to
put a pink shirt on Elijah and call him Elisha, nor to put the blue shirt on Elisha and call him Elijah, because she intended it the other way around.”

“Oh, pouf!” said Jean. But just the same she knew that Mary was right.

Mary stripped Elijah and hung his blue-edged shirt and nightie to dry on the boat. Then she proceeded to give him a bath as well as she could without soap, sponge, or towel. The towel was really not greatly needed, because the warm sun so readily dried him.

“But I do wish I had a good cake of castile soap,” said Mary, “and a can of talcum powder. I suppose that babies
can
be raised without the use of talcum powder, but I’ve never heard of its being done.”

“This sand is nice and fine—” suggested Jean.

“Oh, Jean,” said Mary in despair, “you can’t compare sand with a nice baby talcum—
ever!”

“I s’pose not,” said Jean sadly.

When Elijah’s blue clothes were well dried, he was dressed again, and then Jean undressed the Pink Twin and let him splash, while she and Mary bathed Ann Elizabeth and Jonah. The three older babies felt so lively after their baths that Jean asked Mary if she might have a circus with them in the new tarpaulin tent. Mary, busy preparing Jonah’s milk and getting him ready for his long
nap, readily consented. So Jean spread a blanket on the sand under the shelter, and crawled in with the three babies. At first she played that she was a lion and crept around, growling and snarling, to the great delight of the twins who pulled her hair and squealed with happiness. Then they wanted to be lions themselves and growl and tumble about, so Jean turned herself into an elephant and took Ann Elizabeth riding on her back. It was a very gay and successful circus, and gave the babies such an appetite for dinner that Mary began to wonder how much longer the milk supply was going to hold out. After they had eaten, the fat little things simply toppled over asleep in a state of happy exhaustion.

“Aren’t they darling?” cried Jean. “Let’s leave them just where they are.”

“No, I think that we’d better put them in the boat,” said Mary. “If anything should happen, they would be better off there.”

So the girls tucked them in as carefully as they could, and, with a last anxious look at them, they hurried away on their tour of exploration.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HE
girls went along the beach, because, as Mary said, if there was a stream anywhere on the island it would be sure to run down to the sea. Besides, they could go more quickly and safely on the beach than in the tangled undergrowth of the inner island.

“I hate awfully to go and leave the babies alone like this,” said Mary, as they hastened along, “but it seems the only way.”

“Yes,” said Jean, “we shouldn’t get along very fast carrying four fat babies. It’s too bad we didn’t get shipwrecked with a nice automobile or at least a pony and cart. But shipwrecks are so unexpected, you never know what you’re going to need until it’s too late.”

They soon forgot everything else in wonder and admiration, as new stretches of beach opened out before them. A short distance from the spot where their boat had landed, a ridge of rocks broke through the sand and straggled down into the sea. When they had clambered on top of this, they
could see more beach and rocks ahead, and here and there clumps of palm trees leaning out toward the sea.

“There ought to be cocoanuts in those palm trees, if I remember my geography,” said Mary, “but dear, oh, dear! the trunks are so tall and slippery-looking, I don’t know how we’ll ever get them.”

About their feet in the crevices of the rocks were little pools of sea water, and Jean often exclaimed over some funny crab or sea creature.

“Oh, Mary,” she cried, “do you suppose that we could find clams for a clambake? Or lobsters Newburg, or finnan haddie, or something like that?”

“I expect so,” said Mary. “Nothing would surprise me now that we are on a desert island.”

The sun grew hotter as they went along, and it seemed as if they had walked miles before they saw anything but sand and rocks and sea. At last, however, they saw yellow cliffs rising at the edge of the beach.

“Well, they look
different
anyway! Let’s run for them and see what we can find.”

They raced along the beach until they reached the cliffs and dropped down, panting, in the welcome shade of overhanging rocks.

“I have an idea,” said Mary. “Do you see that turn in the cliffs right ahead? We can’t see what’s around that
corner, so let’s make a game of it. Let’s shut our eyes when we get to the turn, and walk ten steps without looking. Then we’ll open our eyes and see what we find. We have been lucky so far—perhaps we’ll be lucky again.”

So, forgetting their weariness, the two girls got up again and went to the turn in the cliffs. Just before they got to the place where they would be able to look around the bend and see what was ahead of them, they closed their eyes, took hold of hands, and started forward across the smooth sand. One—two—three—four—five (ouch! Jean stubbed her toe, but she didn’t open her eyes)—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—open! They both looked about them. There was no sound or sight of babbling brook, but in the side of the cliff was something which made them forget their need of water in the excitement of discovery.

“It’s a cave, Mary!”

“Jean, it’s a cave!”

They caught each other about the waist and executed a couple of dizzy whirls.