“Do you have ‘Silent Night’ or any Christmas records for your phonograph?” asked Mary.
“I’ve got ‘Jingle Bells,’ ” said Mr. Peterkin.
“Oh, let me play it,” begged Jean.
So the phonograph was wound up, and everyone joined Halfred in singing the jolly old song.
It brought back to Mary all the gay, snowy Christmases that she had known in the United States. How odd to be here on a desert island for Christmas! Jean’s remark that she was tired of Baby Island echoed sadly in Mary’s heart. It was fun for a while, but after all Father and home were best. Would they ever see them again? Resolutely Mary put these thoughts out of her mind.
Before the babies were put to bed, the girls and Mr. Peterkin hung their tiny stockings on the shelf behind the stove. The poor little socks were worn and old now, but Mary had kept them clean and well darned for just such an occasion as this. Although the babies could scarcely have been expected to understand it, Mary told them the sweet, familiar Christmas story, and even Halfred and Charley listened respectfully. Then the four babies were tucked in a comfortable row in Mr. Peterkin’s bed. It had been agreed that Mary and Jean would roll up in blankets on the floor, and Mr. Peterkin insisted that he would sleep in his hammock under the palm trees.
“It seems too bad to drive Mr. Peterkin out of his own house, and for a lot of ‘meddlesome young ’uns’ too!” said Jean.
“I know,” said Mary. “Tomorrow we’ll have to start building a new house.” But there was no enthusiasm in her voice. It seemed to her that they had been on Baby Island a very long time, and it was hard to have to begin again.
Perhaps the reformed seaman sensed the feeling of gloom which had fixed itself on the girls this Christmas eve, for suddenly he said: “Well, well, it’s been a ’ard day, an’ Miss Jean ’ere ’as ’ad a ’ard time. I been thinkin’ I’d like to do something for ’er to cheer ’er up, sort of.”
“For me?” said Jean, all in a flutter.
“There’s something I do once a year, that might be of interest to ’er.”
“Something you do?”
“Aye, can you guess what?”
“You—you play the phonograph.”
“No, something more hunusual.”
“You dust off Pharaoh’s Horses.”
“I ’ates dusting.”
“Then you—you count your clamshells.”
“No.”
Jean was wriggling with excitement, because all the time she had been thinking of something which she hadn’t dared suggest. Now she came out with it.
“You open your chest!”
“Aye, that I do,” said Mr. Peterkin calmly.
“Oh, chest! chest!
Beautiful chest!”
sang Jean, hopping up and down on one foot.
“Oh, what is inside
The chest so wide?
Oh, beautiful, bee-autiful chest!”
“Hush! hush! You’ll wake the babies!” cautioned Mary.
Mr. Peterkin took a clumsy key out of his pocket.
“I made this ’ere myself. There weren’t no key to this lock when first I ’appened onto the chest.”
“You found it on the island?” asked Jean breathlessly.
“That I did,” said Mr. Peterkin. “ ’Alf buried in sand it were, just up in the cove where ’igh tide couldn’t reach it.”
“Were it a pirate chest?” asked Jean, so excited that she had unconsciously fallen into Mr. Peterkin’s manner of speech.
“I think it were, lass,” said Mr. Peterkin solemnly.
“You aren’t making this up, are you, Mr. Peterkin?” asked Mary doubtfully.
“No, ma’am!” replied the honest seaman, flushing proudly. “This ’ere is the one hadventure that ever really ’appened to me. This one weren’t drab. It weren’t tame. This one really ’appened to me.”
“Was there anything in the chest?” asked Jean in a hoarse whisper.
“You take this ’ere key an’ look,” said Mr. Peterkin, putting the key in Jean’s hand. “ ’Tis just the way I found it.”
Jean inserted the key in the massive lock and was about to turn it when she remembered her conversation with Mary.
“There aren’t any dead ladies—or—or diseases—or—or skellingtons in it, are there?”
“No—no—no!”
“Poltroons?”
“I don’t know what poltroons is.”
“She means doubloons,” put in Mary. “Poltroons are cowards, but Jean always gets them mixed up with the word for Spanish money.”
“Well, strike me pink!” said Mr. Peterkin. “You been tryin’ to get at that chest ever since you come ‘ere, and now when I give ye the key, you stand there like a zany an’ hask me what’s in it!”
Suddenly Jean left the chest, flung her arms around Mr. Peterkin’s neck, and kissed him on the end of the nose. While he was still gasping like a stranded fish, she flew back to the chest, turned the lock, and flung open the cover. And, sure enough, it was full of Spanish gold! Old, old pieces, dull with time and weather, but still they were gold!
Mary was the first to speak.
“Well, I never saw so much money in my life,” she said. “There’s enough there to put the babies through college!”
“What are you going to do with it?” asked Jean breathlessly.
“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Peterkin calmly. “There isn’t much need for money on a desert hi’land. I thought some day to get Belinda a silk dress—”
“That would be nice,” said Jean. “Does she have brown hair? You might get her a red silk one and a little black hat with a red feather.”
“But I’ve more than I want,” said Mr. Peterkin, “an’ ’tis Christmas eve. Fetch me the sugar scoop.” Wondering what the sugar scoop had to do with pirate gold, Jean obeyed. Mr. Peterkin filled the scoop with golden pieces, and then with great solemnity he began to fill the babies’ stockings. A scoopful of gold for every stocking!
Mary and Jean watched him in awed silence. What a curious Santa Claus! And wasn’t he pouring a small fortune into the babies’ socks?
“Where’s yours?” demanded Mr. Peterkin, when he had finished with the babies’.
“But ours are so big,” protested Mary politely.
“ ’Ang them up,” said Mr. Peterkin. “Ye deserve all ye get.”
So Mary and Jean watched him fill each of their stockings with gold until they were so heavy that they seemed in danger of bursting.
“Think what that will buy us,” said Mary, “if we ever get off the island!”
Long after she was supposed to be sound asleep, Jean kept opening an eye to look at her heavy stocking, hanging above the stove and faintly lighted by the last glow of the coals.
“If I ever get back,” she thought to herself, “I’ll get me another silk dress like the one the baby whale is wearing and a new doll like Miranda. But best of all was the fun of unlocking the chest and getting the first peep inside!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
An Answer to Jean’s Letters
AFTER the storm, christmas day dawned clear and bright. As soon as she was awake, Jean rubbed her eyes and looked at the row of stockings. They were still there, sagging with gold, so the mysterious chest was not a dream.
Mr. Peterkin brought in a little tropical tree which looked a good deal like a northern Christmas tree, and they trimmed it with more of the pirate gold. Fastened on the branches with string and tree gum, the quaint old golden pieces made a very pretty decoration. After the tree was trimmed, and they had dressed the babies and eaten breakfast and milked the goats, Mr. Peterkin, with his whiskers floured to look like Santa Claus, handed out the gifts.
Besides the stockings full of gold, which Mr. Peterkin seemed to consider of scarcely any consequence, he brought in a number of mysterious objects of which he was evidently very proud. It appeared that while the girls had been spending hours on the presents which were all swept away with the tepee, the good old
seaman had not been idle. He had made a little bamboo chair for his “Lizzie,” and a hardwood teething ring for Jonah, on which Jonah immediately celebrated by cutting his second tooth. For the twins he had made rattles by wiring together a couple of shells with tiny pebbles inclosed between them, and a neat handle of the bent wire. As a delicate final touch, Elisha’s shells were pink, and Elijah’s a pale blue. For Mary and Jean, Mr. Peterkin had carved two baskets out of cocoanut shells, highly polished, with their names carefully engraved upon the sides.
“But these are beautiful!” cried Mary.
“Better than gold?” asked Mr. Peterkin hopefully.
“Better than gold,” said Mary, “because you made them your very own self.”
Even Halfred and Charley had gifts—large pieces of hardtack, decorated with red berries and green leaves.
“Well, what’s to stop us ’aving our dinner?” inquired Mr. Peterkin, when the gifts had been distributed, and this time Mary did not make him listen to a sermon. Indeed, he did not seem in need of quite so many texts today.
The girls bustled about the stove and larder, and presently such a meal was served up as Mr. Peterkin’s shanty had never known before. Roast wild fowl, hot biscuits, baked breadfruit, bamboo shoots for salad, with a grand climax of plum pudding for the elders and custard for the babies.
As the plum pudding, steaming hot, and wreathed in laurel leaves, was borne to the table, Mr. Peterkin started the phonograph to playing “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” Halfred commenced to sing, Charley to dance, and the babies to bounce themselves up and down in their chairs and to beat on the table with their spoons. Jean and Mary joined in the fun with shouts of laughter, and Mr. Peterkin suddenly began to do a sailor’s hornpipe. They were all making so much racket that they didn’t hear a very unusual noise which sounded far out in the bay. It sounded again, and still they didn’t hear it. It was only when everyone fell silent to watch Mary cut the pudding that they heard it—the hoarse blast of a steamer whistle!
Mary dropped the knife to the table with a clatter, and everyone paused just where he was, listening. It sounded once again, nearer and clearer.
“Oh!” cried Mary. “A boat!”
“A boat!” cried Jean. “A boat! a boat!” and even Mr. Peterkin exclaimed, “A boat!”
Snatching up the babies, they all tumbled out of the shanty and ran down to shore. Halfred, following on the wing, was the only one who could think of anything to say.
“Well, bless my soul and body!” said Halfred.
She was not a large boat—more like a private yacht than a commercial steamer. She came in as far as she could and dropped anchor. The eager watchers on the shore saw a small boat lowered, manned, and rowed swiftly toward them. In it were five men, two in sailor costume, the others evidently landsmen.
“Who can they be?” wondered Mary.
“Maybe it’s the pirates coming for their chest,” said Jean.
“They mean us no good,” said Mr. Peterkin suspiciously, running back to the shanty for his gun and his binoculars. But, when he returned a moment later, the small boat had landed, and he was just in time to see a most peculiar sight. The two sailors were busy pulling up the boat, but their three passengers had sprung on shore and were behaving like crazy men. One of these strange gentlemen had seized Mr. Peterkin’s “Lizzie” and was covering her with kisses, another gentleman was completely occupied with the three Snodgrass babies, and Mary and Jean clung wildly to the third gentleman, crying, “Father! Father! Father!”
The only thing Mr. Peterkin could possibly think of to say was, “Blow me down!”
“Oh, Father,” cried Mary, “however did you find us? And we thought that Mr. Arlington and Mr. Snodgrass were drowned with the Orminta! How did you all get here?”
“You see, the Orminta didn’t sink after all,” said Mr. Wallace. “Another vessel arrived and took the passengers off after your lifeboat had floated away. Your boat was cast off by mistake.”
“By mistake?” repeated Mary, in a daze.
“In the first alarm people thought that the steamer would sink before help could reach her, and in the confusion your boat was cast adrift too soon. But that is all long past. The great miracle is that we have found you!”
“But how did you know where to find us, Father?” cried Mary.
“It was difficult,” said her father. “We have been cruising around in these waters for some time now. Mr. Arlington hired the yacht and took us all with him. But we knew that you were alive and well and somewhere near.”
“How did you know that, Daddy?”
“Why, because of Jean’s letters to Aunt Emma, of course.”
“Jean’s letters to Aunt Emma?”
“Yes, indeed. They were picked up here and there, always in these waters. One of them was mailed to Aunt Emma, and two or three others were reported to the government, or to the shipping companies, and we were able to get hold of them. We never could have found you without them.”
“Dear me!” said Jean, as surprised as anybody. “I am a smart girl after all, aren’t I?”
On board the yacht were Mrs. Snodgrass, Mrs. Arlington, and the poodle, and the family reunions that day were beautiful. Mr. Peterkin looked on with ever-softening heart
“Touching, I calls it,” he murmured to himself. “Touching, if you hask me!”
There were so many places of interest on the island to show the parents that it was decided not to leave until the next day. They must see the site of the tepee, the path through the jungle, the Christmas tree, and have a taste of Mary’s pudding. But, when they entered the shanty, they were amazed to see that the pudding had almost entirely vanished. On either side of the table sat Charley and Halfred with fat stomachs and drowsy eyes. Their guilty looks betrayed them.
“Never mind!” cried Mrs. Arlington. “There’s lots of food on board the yacht, and some day Mary shall make us another pudding.”
“And there weren’t no garlic in it neither!” lamented Mr. Peterkin.
That night the children spent on board the anchored yacht, and the next morning they went ashore again for a few last belongings and to say farewell to Mr. Peterkin and Halfred, of whom they had grown so very fond.
“Oh, Mary,” said Jean. “It’s nice to be going home and all, and it’s just what I wanted to happen and too good to be true and everything else, but, oh dear! I do hate to go away and leave Mr. Peterkin and Halfred!”
“I know,” said Mary. “It’s been on my mind, too! Who’ll do their cooking and their cleaning? And they’ve got so used to babies now, I think they’ll miss us!”
But Mr. Peterkin had been planning his own future. As they came ashore they saw Mr. Peterkin locking his shanty. Halfred was on his shoulder, looking rather pale about the eyes and beak from too much Christmas pudding. In Mr. Peterkin’s hand was his dufflebag, out of which protruded the purple morning-glory horn of his precious phonograph, and beside him on the beach lay his chest of gold.
“Give me a ’and with this chest, will ye, mates?” he called to the sailors, and to the girls he said: “I couldn’t bear to stay. Baby Hi’land without no babies! ’Twould be too lonesome now. I’m agoin’ ’ome an’ marry my Belinda, I am!”
“Oh, Mr. Peterkin! I’m glad you’ve seen the light!” cried Mary, and, to Mr. Peterkin’s great embarrassment, Jean repeated what she had done on Christmas eve. She threw her arms around Mr. Peterkin’s neck and kissed him on the nose.
“And after you are married,” said Mary, “why don’t you come to Australia and live near us?”
“I been athinkin’ of that,” said Mr. Peterkin, “if your Pappy wouldn’t mind, and would help me to locate some land.”
“I shall be delighted!” cried Mr. Wallace, cordially shaking the honest seaman’s hand.
“And you’ll bring Halfred, won’t you?” begged the girls.
“Aye, Halfred and me is mates, ain’t we, Halfred? I’ll not be leavin’ ’im!”
While they
had so much desired it, there was yet something a little sad about leaving Baby Island. Living there had been a great adventure!
“We were very happy,” said Mary, “even if it was hard.”
“Yes,” agreed Jean. “It was a real nice place to stop over at on our way to Australia.”
They went to the stern of the yacht as she steamed away, and watched Baby Island as long as they could see it on the blue horizon. The babies were busy with their mothers, who could not get enough of them after such a long separation, so that Mary and Jean stood alone.
They waved their handkerchiefs to the empty island until it was out of sight.
“Well,” said Mary, “it was better than borrowing babies for an afternoon anyway. Just think, we had them for nearly three months. Jonah got his first tooth, Ann Elizabeth learned to walk, and the twins to talk. It was better than never having had babies.”
“Yes,” said Jean. “It was worth all we went through. Of course, there are sure to be babies in Australia that we can borrow, and anyway, Mary, we have one of our babies left.”
Prince Charley, who had been swinging in the rigging by his tail, leaped down to her shoulder and put his skinny little arms about her neck.
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