CHAPTER II

OFF FOR SUNSET ISLAND!

Uncle Charles proved willing enough to go on the cruise, when the plan was explained to him. He’d hated the idea of a sanitarium all along, and declared that he felt better already at the thought of the sea voyage and the warmth and peacefulness of Uncle Joe’s tropic island. He certainly looked brighter, just talking of the change, and the brighter and more hopeful he seemed, the more Aunt Mollie threw off care, and bustled about packing and planning with her old light-hearted smile that we’d seen so seldom since Uncle Charles’ illness.

As for the boys--even Reddy--they were absolutely mad with excitement, and there was mighty little talked about in the Jennings household until the day for sailing came, that wasn’t in one way or another connected with the voyage and Sunset Island.

At first even a week seemed ages to our impatience, but after we got fairly into the midst of our preparations, the time flew so fast that Friday, the day we were to leave for New York, arrived long before it seemed possible.

Uncle Joe had decided that we were all to take the noon train from Braeburn for New York, and spend that night at a quiet little hotel he knew of downtown. In this way we could make an early start Saturday morning for the schooner, which was tied up at a wharf in the East River. Uncle Joe wanted to sail about eleven on account of the tide.

I had never been in New York before, and never on a ship, to remember it, that is. I’d been told that once, when Daddy’s ship came into Boston harbor, Aunt Mollie took me down to see her and we had our lunch on board, but I was so small at the time I don’t--very much to my regret, as you may believe--remember one single little thing about it.

Ordinarily, then, I’d have been crazy to see all I could of New York, but as matters stood I was saving all my curiosity for the _Myra_, and our trip to Uncle Joe’s pirate island. The boys and I had taken to calling it a pirate island because of that story about Morgan’s treasure being buried there; and oh, didn’t we make plans for finding golden ducats and pieces of eight after we reached it. It was all so gorgeously thrilling, it simply didn’t seem possible it could be actually happening to us.

Somehow, being a sea captain’s daughter, I felt as if I ought to know about ships by instinct, but of course I didn’t, and was just as mortifyingly ignorant as Andrée herself, about everything on board, when we went up the gangway and stood at last on the _Myra’s_ beautiful spick-and-span deck.

The _Myra_ was a sailing schooner, with an auxiliary engine for calms, or for coming into port. She had three masts, which Uncle Joe explained were called fore, main and mizzen. The fore-mast is the one up nearest the bow--which is what they call the front of a ship. The main-mast is the big one in the middle, and the mizzen-mast is the one behind--aft is the proper sea word.

I felt quite proud of myself when I’d picked up a few real nautical terms and decided I was going to listen and watch all I could on the trip south and see how much I could remember.

It was a beautiful morning when we cast off our mooring lines (I’m not _quite_ sure that’s the right way to say it, but I’ll let it stand till I can ask Uncle Joe some day, privately). We used the engine for going down the bay, but we hoisted some of the sails, too--one on each mast I think.

So much that was exciting happened in the weeks following our departure from New York, that I’m not as certain of my memory for details of the voyage itself as I’d like to be. Anyhow, I know the sails shone very white and beautiful against the blue sky and the blue water of the bay, and I can still hear how the wind made a pleasant little humming sound in the canvas, and among the sheets (that’s sea-talk for ropes; I learned that the first day, too).

Uncle Charles and Aunt Mollie sat in steamer chairs up on deck, on the sunny side, all wrapped up in rugs because it was cold, even for late October. But of course the boys and I scorned the very idea of deck chairs when there was so much to do and see; and even Andrée, for once, preferred being with us, and trailed along at our heels, as much interested as the rest of us in learning all she could about the _Myra_.

If there wasn’t such a lot to tell about what happened after we reached the Island, I might take the time to describe the week we spent at sea, on the way there. But as it was all quite peaceful, and calm and lovely, with no storms and nothing out-of-the-way from start to finish of the voyage, I’ll just say no one was seasick; that Uncle Charles improved simply miraculously, and that we all grew red and brown with sunburn and salt winds, and were hungrier and happier and thankfuller for Uncle Joe’s _scr-umptious_ idea every day of the trip.

It was very early in the morning--only a little after sunrise--when we got our first glimpse of our Island. I was sound asleep, and dreaming I was back in Braeburn, when someone knocked heavily on the door of the tiny cubbyhole of a stateroom Andrée and I shared between us.

At first the sound mixed itself up with the rest of my dream, but when it was repeated I sat up in bed in a hurry, feeling rather frightened.

“What is it?” I called. “Who’s there?”

“Martin, Miss,” came the answer. “The Captain says to come on deck, please. We’ve lifted the Island.”

And of course, at that, I woke Andrée in a hurry, and we fell out of our bunks and scrambled into our clothes faster than we’d ever made it before.

“We’ll be right up, Martin,” I shrieked. “How near are we? Oh, Martin, wait--what does the Island look like?”

But Martin had gone and we had to wait to satisfy our curiosity until we’d followed him up on deck.

Martin, who was the youngest sailor on board, was only a year older than Dan, but he’d been at sea for three years--two of them on the _Myra_ with Uncle Joe and I guess it sort of amused and pleased him to answer some of our million questions about the ship and his own sea adventures.

We realized Uncle Joe would probably be much too busy that morning to bother with us and our curiosity, but if we could keep near Martin we’d know the meaning of everything that was happening. Martin’s patience was endless, and besides, as I said, I think he liked the feeling of importance our asking gave him.

He had called Dan and Sydney first, so we found the boys on deck ahead of us, perched on the port rail, up near the bow, both of them squinting horribly as they tried to look straight into the glare of the sun which was pretty strong already, even if it was only a little way above the horizon.

It took us all quite a while, squinting and straining our eyes, to pick out the tiny, black speck, higher at one end than the other, that lay directly across the sun’s path.

“It doesn’t look like an island,” Andrée said in a disappointed tone. “It’s more like a ship with one tall mast in the stern.”

“Well, it’s not,” Dan said decidedly. “That’s Sunset Island. Uncle Joe pointed it out to me himself. Here, take the glasses, Gay. The glare doesn’t hurt so much through them.”

He passed them over, and I took a long, careful look to get my bearings, but at first all I could see was pink and gold light on the water, and deeper orange and red clouds all banded round the edges with violet, that reached down to the sea. Then, quite suddenly, the glasses caught it and showed up the place so plainly that I gave a gasp and forgot to breathe again for several seconds.

It looked, through the glasses, like a hilly little island, perhaps five miles, or less, long, with a ridge down the middle from end to end that kept you from seeing across it. The ridge rose at the north end to a small, but quite steep, mountain, pointed at the top like those hills that are always called “Sugar Loaf.” We have several in different parts of New England I’ve been in.

The whole island was thickly grown over with trees; I couldn’t make out the kind from the ship, except along the beach where the trees, growing down to the edge, were some sort of tall palms. I’d never seen a palm before, except in books and travel movies, and now, actually seeing them, rows upon rows of them, blowing in the lovely morning breeze right before me, made the whole thing--island, pirate treasure and all--seem actually _real_ for the first time since Uncle Joe had spoken of his plans to us.

Somehow, deep down inside of me, I hadn’t quite believed in them before. I think I’d gone about all those last ten days afraid I’d wake up any minute and find it was nothing but a dream.

But now I stopped quite suddenly being afraid.

There was the Island, getting nearer and plainer and more _like_ an island every minute. There was the same kind of sandy white beach I’d read of in desert-island stories--oh, _ever_ so different from ordinary seashore beaches at home! And there were the palms beckoning us to hurry, hurry; and the curving line of surf a little distance off the shore, appearing to go completely round the island like a long white wall.

That must be the reef--all desert islands you read of have a reef round them--and though I couldn’t see any break in it, even with the glasses, I knew there must be one somewhere that would let us through to the still water of the lagoon inside. It was too good to be true; only, it _was_ true.

Uncle Joe had the man at the wheel lay a course to pass around the southern tip of the island--the end that didn’t have the little sugar loaf mountain--and as soon as the _Myra_ had rounded this, we could all see there was an opening in the reef, just as we’d known there must be.

It looked pretty narrow for a ship as big as the _Myra_ to pass through, and the water was pounding and fairly boiling over the reef on both sides of the break, so that the idea of missing the entrance by some miscalculation wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.

But Uncle Joe had no fear on the subject apparently. There was a steady wind blowing, and the _Myra_ raced through the water like a wild thing running for the sheer joy of it.

It was awfully pretty, and sort of thrilling, but I’ll confess I would have enjoyed it more if the _Myra’s_ nose hadn’t been pointed so squarely at a particularly boiling patch of white water to the left of the entrance. She looked as though her first and main object in the race was to climb right over the reef at that special spot, but when we seemed right on the point of doing it, the man at the wheel put it over hard, and the next moment we were through the break in the white wall, with the water thundering and breaking in clouds of spray on either side of us.

Inside the little lagoon there was hardly a ripple, and the _Myra_ stopped like a big gull lighting, her white sails folding exactly like wings. The water was the blue of a lovely aquamarine ring I once saw at a jeweler’s in Boston, and so clear you could look away-way down to a bottom of clean white sand like that on the beach. And across it, from the island itself, there came to us the spiciest, most delicious smell that was like nothing I’d ever smelled or imagined up to that moment--orange blossoms, and new grass, and just a tang of salt air, and wet seaweed, and hot sand, and lots of other things I hadn’t any names for, all mixed up together. I put up my snub nose the way an inquisitive puppy will, and sniffed and _sniffed_.

Uncle Joe came along at that moment, and how he did laugh at me. But I was so excited. I was past caring about that.

“How soon can we go ashore?” I begged.

He laughed again and shook his head at me.

“Nobody goes ashore from my ship without breakfast,” he told me. “Depends on you and Andy, here, how soon that’s eaten.”

Usually, as I knew perfectly well, Andrée hated his nickname for her of Andy, but that morning she didn’t notice it. She slipped her hand through my arm.

“Hurry up, Gay, and let’s eat quick, then,” she said, and of course I didn’t need any urging when I found that was the condition on which our going ashore depended.

Half an hour later everybody, including Aunt Mollie and Uncle Charles and Reddy, were on deck, to find the long boat already in the water, with Martin and another sailor waiting at the oars. It was only a little bit of a row from the schooner to the beach, and we all went, even Uncle Charles, who insisted he felt like his old self, and couldn’t be tired by anything that morning.

The first thing Syd said when he stepped ashore was, “Do you suppose it was here the pirates landed?”

The boys weren’t interested in anything but buried treasure. I don’t believe they’d so much as noticed that lovely fragrance, or the blueness of the lagoon, and how beautiful the palms looked blowing against the blue up above, and the dazzling white sand in what I’ve heard artists call the foreground of the picture.

Still, I suppose boys are made like that, and there’s no use expecting them to be different. Now with me, even if there proved never to be any treasure, Sunset Island was romantic and exciting enough for me just as it was that morning.

Martin answered Sydney’s question quite seriously.

“If they ever came here at all--which ain’t sure, you know--I guess they came same way we did, unless they owned wings ’stead of boats. There ain’t but one entrance through the reef, the Captain says.”

So that was that.

Well, it wasn’t so silly of the boys after all. It certainly added to the thrill to know that _maybe_ Morgan and his men, carrying their heavy treasure chests, had come across the same sandy beach we were standing on, once upon a time.

The Island hadn’t been inhabited for nearly five years, according to Uncle Joe, and five years in the tropics make lots of changes. The jungle grows quickly when it isn’t fought and kept out and trimmed.

Martin was the one who first found traces of what had been the old road from the beach to the French planter’s house. It was pretty nearly hidden with vines and underbrush now, but it wasn’t quite so dense as the rest of the thicket.

“Martin and I’ll go first and cut a way,” Uncle Joe said. They had brought curious looking axes with them in the boat, that Martin told us were called _machetes_, and were specially useful in clearing wild undergrowth.

“An’ keep your eyes peeled for snakes,” Martin added, never dreaming what a bomb that single word “snakes” was going to cast into the party behind him.

Aunt Mollie looked startled and gathered her skirts about her, as if she were going wading, but she’s a good little sport, Aunt Mollie, if there ever was one, and she didn’t _peep_, just started pluckily after Martin, holding on to Uncle Charles’ arm.

Andrée, however, isn’t made of hero-stuff. She repeated the word “snakes” in a gaspy sort of voice, and sat down on the sand, drawing her legs up under her dress.

“Why didn’t you tell me there were snakes before?” she asked and hugged her knees tighter with both arms, rocking back and forth. “I won’t go into that place. I won’t--I tell you I _never_ will! I want to go back to the ship.” And she began to cry. I’d have _died_ before I’d have done that, no matter how scared I might be.

“Spoil sport!” Syd jeered at her. “Cry-baby! All right, go back to the ship. But you can’t go till we come back for you. Sit there on the sand alone, if you want to. We’re going on.”

But of course she wouldn’t do that either, and it took us ten solid minutes, all of us pleading and reasoning in turn and together, before she decided she’d rather brave the snakes in our company in the thicket, then have them come out and surprise her on the beach by herself.

So we made a second start. But some of that first flame of excitement we’d been feeling had been nicely drowned now by Andrée’s silly tears. Uncle Charles can’t stand a scene since he’s been sick, and I could see he was already beginning to feel nervous and upset and half sorry he’d ever attempted the trip ashore. But we kept on walking.

There weren’t any more interruptions, and we found the road freer after a while, and at the end of two hundred yards or so we came out of the trees into a beautiful green clearing, in the center of which stood a low, white house that looked from where we were, as though it were made of stucco or concrete. It had a red tiled roof that had lost quite a lot of the tiles in places, and some heavy vines with bright orange flowers were climbing over the corners and dropping down the white walls.

It was the loveliest place you can imagine and yet--in a way I can’t describe--somehow it was the loneliest as well. A house shows so plainly, you see, when there’s nobody living in it and loving it.

There was a wide tiled terrace in front of it, and a million weeds were growing luxuriously out of the cracks between the tiles in every direction. Most of the windows hadn’t any glass in them, and vines had grown across the openings.

“Well, well,” Uncle Joe said cheerfully. “We’ll have to turn to and do some quick repair work on our new house. It won’t be hard, folks, don’t all look so discouraged. Wait till you see what Martin and I can do to put things shipshape again!”

It was unfortunate that at that moment a huge land crab came scuttling and clattering across the weedy terrace toward us, and seeing us, turned with a funny sidewise jump and rattled off indignantly into the bushes. I didn’t know then it was a land crab, still, he wasn’t a bit a frightening looking creature to me--he was just _funny_.

But Andrée didn’t see any humor in the situation. She shrieked and clung to Aunt Mollie.

“Let’s live on the ship while we’re here,” she sobbed. “I hate this place!”

“But look here, Andy-girl,” Uncle Joe interposed gently. “We can’t live on the _Myra_ because she’s bound for Montevideo with a cargo from New York. She’ll call back for us in two months or so.”

Andrée faced him with the scaredest eyes I’ve ever seen.

“You--mean,” she demanded, “that we’ll be left stranded here on the Island for _two_ months in--that _awful_ house? That we can’t leave till the ship comes back? Suppose somebody gets sick--suppose--”

“_Andrée_,” Aunt Mollie said quickly, “don’t be a goose. Nothing’s going to happen. Hush, my dear!”

I saw Uncle Charles’ forehead crease in that old troubled pucker we had come to dread, and he looked, all of a sudden, so terribly worn it frightened me.

“I think--I’m a little tired, Mollie,” he said slowly. “I’d better sit down for a minute or two.”

And he had started out so full of beautiful enthusiasm and a belief that he was _almost_ well!

I wanted to take Andrée by her shoulders and shake her till her silly head wobbled. It would have done both of us good.