CHAPTER III

PLANTER’S HOUSE

While Uncle Charles rested on the tiled terrace, with Andrée to keep him company (she still refused to go inside the house), Uncle Joe tried to unlock the front door with the big brass key Mr. Carreau, the Frenchman, had given him when he bought the Island.

The lock must have rusted badly, however, in the five years it hadn’t been used, for the key simply couldn’t budge it, no matter how hard Uncle Joe tugged and twisted.

So Syd volunteered to climb through one of the broken windows and see if he couldn’t open the door from the other side.

I didn’t say anything, but I made up my mind I was going to see the inside of the house as soon as Sydney did, and when he pulled himself up to the sill I was close at his heels before Aunt Mollie could say I mustn’t.

The window opened on a stairway, so instead of the drop we’d both expected to the floor, we only had to step over the sill and there we were, standing on a beautiful broad staircase that curved down to a perfectly huge hall below.

The hall ran clear through the house, from front to rear, and the second story opened on it with a sort of balcony going all around. You could come out of any of the upstairs rooms and look right down on the hall over a lovely carved mahogany railing.

The floor of the hall was all tiled, in tiny red and white squares, and in the middle of it there was--yes, honestly and truly there was--a fountain in a creamy marble basin sunk in the floor. Of course the fountain wasn’t playing now, but the little figure of a mermaid holding up a shell for the water to pour through was awfully pretty.

Naturally I’d never lived before in a house with a fountain in the main hall, and I fell in love with the idea at my first glimpse of it. I made up my mind the very first repair work (if I had anything to say about it) that Uncle Joe and Martin did, would be to start the mermaid fountain going again. I could imagine how cool and musical the splashing of the water into the basin would sound in that big room.

Sydney, however, wasn’t interested in fountains. He had run down the stairs at once and after some fussing with the catch, he succeeded in getting the front door open, and letting the rest of the party in.

It took us almost an hour to go all through the house, there were so many rooms, and we found so much to stop and exclaim over in every one. Contrary to what the condition of the house outside had led us to fear, we found the rooms in pretty good shape. Of course, where the windows were broken, storms had rained in and done some damage, warping the floor boards just under the windows, and leaving stains in places on the painted walls. But Aunt Mollie was relieved to find things no worse, and that the furniture was apparently unhurt--even the mattresses on the beds were quite dry and ready to be slept on after they’d had the airing in the hot sunshine out on the terrace that she ordered for them.

Uncle Joe had brought a lot of supplies of all sorts on the _Myra_, not knowing just what we’d need, and among these were several sheets of plate glass, which could be cut to the right size to replace the broken window panes.

He was anxious to move into the house as soon as possible so the _Myra_ could continue on her way, under command of Mr. Hooper, the mate, to deliver her cargo at Montevideo, way down in Uruguay.

After we’d been all through the house, and Uncle Joe had made notes of what we would need from the schooner, we went out on the terrace again and found Uncle Charles looking much less tired, talking cheerfully to Andrée about plans for our stay on the Island.

Andrée seemed a little ashamed of having made a scene, and laid herself out to be specially sweet to Uncle Joe on the walk back to the beach. By the time then that we were back on the _Myra_ again everybody was almost as cheerful as they’d started out.

Uncle Joe took Martin and the ship’s carpenter--a man named Graham--back to the house right after dinner, and Dan and Sydney and I begged to be allowed to go, too, assuring him we could make ourselves much more useful than he thought. We were, too.

We had brought brooms and pails and dust cloths from the _Myra_, and Syd and I undertook to sweep out the bedrooms. Dan took the mattresses and pillows downstairs to beat and leave in the sun.

By the time darkness came, and we had to stop work and go back to the schooner, all the broken windows had new panes and the whole second floor was scrubbed and swept and dusted as clean as a new whistle. Even with Aunt Mollie to direct us, I’m sure it couldn’t have been done more thoroughly, for though usually I’m fonder of being outdoors than doing housework, this time it seemed just part of an exciting game.

I had thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night for thinking of what we’d done during the day, and the still more wonderful possibilities that lay ahead in the next two months, but after all, I was so tired that I went to sleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

The next morning Aunt Mollie went ashore with us, taking the blankets and linen and the new plated table silver we’d brought from Braeburn. The minute we reached the house we all fell to, with Martin helping us, to clean the first floor, which had a big living room, library and dining room, besides the hall where the fountain was.

Martin was very understanding for a boy, about how much having that fountain play again meant to me, and after tinkering with it for an hour, suddenly he gave a funny sort of grunt, and jumped out of the basin quickly, as a thin, silvery jet of water leaped high in the air from the mermaid’s shell, and came down in a long arc of spray right on his neck.

After that the fountain went to work as nicely and steadily as you please, sending up its jet of water--that took the loveliest colors from the sun shining in the west window across the hall--and letting it fall with a sound like little tinkling fairy bells, into its white marble basin. I felt as though we were living in some old Moorish palace out of a story-book, and I could have stood there beside it, listening to and looking at it all day, if only there hadn’t been so many more important things to do.

We spent that night on the _Myra_ again, but the morning after, we moved ashore bag and baggage, hung up our clothes in the huge mahogany wardrobes in our bedrooms, put the food stores we’d laid in to last till the _Myra’s_ return--canned things, you know, and ham, bacon, tea and coffee in packages--in the big dark storeroom that opened into a little passageway off the dining room. Last of all, we said goodbye to the friends we’d made on the _Myra_, especially Martin, and watched the schooner spread her white gull-wings and sail away through the passage in the reef, south to Montevideo.

Then, rather soberly for all our anticipations of good times ahead, we walked back, without talking much, through the thicket along the old Planter’s Road, to the house.

It was too late now for anybody to change his or her mind about staying on Sunset Island. There we were and there we must remain, no matter what happened, until the _Myra’s_ sails showed over the horizon two months later bound north from Uruguay.

Well, I, for one, wasn’t a bit sorry. I loved Sunset Island, and the house had quite lost its deserted, lonely look since we’d mended the windows and fixed blinds to shut out the glare, and had smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney.

Of course, like most houses in the tropics, the kitchen wasn’t in the house itself but in a small outbuilding connected with the house by a covered passage. Still the smoke looked awfully cheerful curling up from the chimney out there, as Aunt Mollie set about getting our supper. She hadn’t gone down to see the schooner sail, because she didn’t want to leave Uncle Charles, who was tired, and so the first thing we saw as we trooped up the old drive about sunset was the curling eddies of smoke from Aunt Mollie’s supper-fire.

Unfortunately, our first night in our new home was also our first experience of a real tropical hurricane. The wind came up while we were at supper, but as we were snugly shut indoors, with lots of lamps and candles, we thought it had rather a pleasant sound in the trees around the house.

But by the time we went to bed it had become a furious roar and the wind seemed to take the house itself in its clutch from time to time and shake it with such force that even the boys, finally, began to look worried. It certainly sounded as though nothing, no matter how solid, could hope to last through constant assaults like those.

Then, after a while, we heard a new note in all that uproar; not coming and going like the attacks of the gale, but a steady din that rose in a kind of high crescendo, and immediately after each outburst started upward again.

We children puzzled over it for a while, until Uncle Joe enlightened us.

“It’s the surf on the reef,” he explained. “There’s a wild sea outside--and bound to be wilder before morning.” He looked rather serious, and suddenly I knew he was thinking of the _Myra_, heading for Montevideo through all that violence of wind and waves. Probably he was wishing, too, he was on board her. You see, the _Myra_ was Uncle Joe’s very own--nobody else owned a share in her, and he loved her, I honestly believe, as if she were a living thing, and a member of his family.

Syd noticed his expression also, and came over to where I was sitting.

“I bet this is a worse storm than we realize, Sis,” he said in a low voice. He’d always called me Sis or Sissie, since I could remember.

“Uncle Joe’s worried sick about the _Myra_. He’s trying not to let on, but I’m sure of it.”

“I’m afraid he is,” I replied soberly. “Do you suppose this is a hurricane, Syd? They have them down here, you know, and I think I’ve read somewhere that though summer is the regular time for them, they do turn up as late as October.”

We looked at each other very thoughtfully.

“It sounds like it,” Syd declared then. “But don’t for Pete’s sake mention it before Andrée. She’s such a cry-baby she makes me sick. If it wasn’t for the _Myra_,” he added, “I’d sort of enjoy seeing a hurricane. We’re safe enough here on the Island--unless maybe the roof blows off, though I don’t guess that’ll happen.”

But several times in the night which followed, I woke up with a start, thinking that probably the roof _was_ coming off, after all. It seemed as if the wind simply dug its fingers under the edges and shook it the way a terrier might shake a helpless kitten. For a wonder Andrée slept through it all; I didn’t see myself how she could, but I was mighty glad she managed it. She’d have just about died over some of that wild howling overhead, and as for the pounding of the surf on the reef, it sounded so close that once or twice I half believed the sea was coming clear over Sunset Island.

The worst of the gale--or hurricane, whichever it was--blew itself out toward morning and when I woke after my last nap the sun was already up, and shining beautifully, and there was only a nice, stiff sailing breeze to keep the palms waving their arms.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and as soon as we’d had breakfast, all of us, including Uncle Charles, started out down the road to the beach to see the surf break on the reef.

The lagoon was as smooth as a piece of shiny blue silk, but out on the barrier reef there was the most glorious big surf lashing and pounding.

We sat down on the sand, which was as dry and hot already as if it had just come from being baked, and watched the waves. Uncle Joe had his glasses and we all of us took turns looking out to sea through them.

It was Syd who first noticed the pieces of wreckage floating way out beyond the reef, but being drawn nearer steadily by the tide.

“It looks like the top of a ship’s mast snapped off,” he announced, after a long look. “And there’s a boat--or at least the stern part of one drifting near it. Have a squint at ’em, Uncle Joe?”

Uncle Joe took the glasses back in a hurry. He focussed them on the bit of row boat for so long that Syd and I watched him feeling sort of anxious. Luckily, none of the others seemed to notice.

When he laid them down, his face was grey instead of ruddy brown, but he only walked off quietly up the beach without a word.

Syd snatched the glasses up, and stared hard at the boat in his turn. Then he passed them to me.

“Sis, see if you can read what the name painted on the stern is,” he whispered. “It looks like--no, I won’t say it. You read it for yourself.”

I did. The boat-end had floated so much nearer now that you could almost read it without glasses. It was a piece of one of the life boats from the _Myra_.

“But it might have been washed overboard in the storm,” I argued, feeling my heart do a queer somersault. “It doesn’t mean anything. Why Syd, you can’t think----”

“I don’t want to,” he said fiercely. “The boat by itself mightn’t mean anything, as you say, Sis. But there’s that big piece of mast, too. I can see Uncle Joe’s half crazy over it.”

“Well, look here, let’s not tell the others,” I said quickly. “They haven’t seen that wreckage evidently.” (Andrée had started them all on a hunt for shells, and Uncle Charles and Reddy were making a race of it to see which could find the most brightly colored ones). “If Uncle Joe doesn’t speak of it, let’s not either. You see, we don’t actually _know_ anything’s happened to the _Myra_.”

“You’re a good kid, Sissie,” Syd told me approvingly. “I guess there’s no use starting a panic. It isn’t as if we could help things by telling. But you--you understand what it means, don’t you, if the _Myra_ _has_ gone--to the bottom?”

I nodded dumbly, swallowing hard on a big lump in my throat.

Aside from the loss of our good friends on the schooner, if there were no _Myra_ to call for us in two months how were we going to get away from Sunset Island? No one at home knew when we were planning to return. Probably none of them actually knew the Island’s exact latitude and longitude, and on Martinique, where the deed had been recorded, they didn’t know anything about our movements and likely enough cared less.

I remembered, too, Uncle Joe’s saying once that Sunset Island lay well out of the regular lanes of ocean travel. It might be months--or even years--before a ship happened that way, near enough to signal her.