Baby Island Read online

  “That’s right!” said Mary, thinking rapidly. “I’ve heard Mrs. Snodgrass say it myself. ‘Jonah is subject to the colic,’ she said, ‘if his milk doesn’t agree with his stomach or if a cold draught blows on his head.’ Goodness knows, the poor lamb has had enough cold draughts on his head today, and there’s no telling how this canned milk agrees with his stomach. It must be the colic!”

  “Whatsh colic?” asked Jean, beginning to take a sleepy interest in things.

  “It’s a terrible stomachache, that’s what it is!” said Mary, cuddling the screaming baby.

  “Too bad you couldn’t have let me sleep, Mary,” grumbled Jean. “Listening to him howl isn’t going to help him any, and it certainly hurts me a lot.”

  “Oh, Jean! Aren’t you ashamed? Think now! See if you can remember what Mrs. Snodgrass does for the colic.”

  Jean tried hard, but every time she began to remember she dozed off to sleep.

  “It’s no good,” she said at last, “my thinker’s gone to bed.”

  “Oh, dear!” sighed Mary. “I don’t know if colic is ever fatal, but he’s certainly got an awful case. Oh, I wish Mrs. Snodgrass were here!” For some time poor Mary rocked and struggled with the unhappy baby. Then she decided to heat some water over the lantern. She handed the squalling baby to Jean, who took him in a daze, holding him gingerly at arm’s length.

  “Of coursh you know what they did to Jonah in the Bible, Mary,” she remarked.

  Mary was too busy trying to warm her water to pay much attention to Jean’s remark. “What did they do?” she asked. “I hope it was a good cure for colic.”

  “I guess it was,” said Jean. “You know there was an awful storm, and the ship was about to be wrecked, and the sailors prayed to the Lord to save them, and He said, ‘I will save you, if you’ll throw Jonah overboard.’ And they did, and He did, and the storm ceased.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with colic.”

  “Yes, but it had a lot to do with Jonah. Maybe if the captain of the Orminta had thrown Jonah Snodgrass overboard in time, we wouldn’t be out here now floating around in a lifeboat.”

  “Jean!” shouted Mary. “You aren’t thinking of throwing Jonah overboard?”

  “Well, it’s an idea,” said Jean.

  Mary gave a little scream and caught the baby out of Jean’s arms. In her excitement she flung him sharply against her shoulder.

  “Glub! glub!” said Jonah, with a gasp and gurgle like air escaping from a toy balloon. Immediately he stopped howling. Mary was so alarmed at this sudden silence that she felt sure she must have killed him. But, when the moon came struggling out of the clouds, she discovered that he was looking at her with calm round eyes and peacefully sucking his thumb.

  “Oh, Jean!” she cried, “he’s coughed up his misery!”

  Just then the cup of water, which she had set on top of the lantern, began to bubble, and in a moment she had succeeded in giving him a little warm water. He cried fitfully for half an hour after that, but now Mary was no longer worried. She knew how to put him against her shoulder and pat his back until he gulped up the troublesome gas. Presently he fell asleep, and it seemed as if the waves of the sea and all the stars in the firmament had suddenly grown calm now that Jonah had ceased to howl. Much relieved, Mary put him snugly to bed and looked around to see what had become of Jean. All she could see was a dark bunch in the bottom of the boat. Jean had melted into a heap of slumber just where she sat.

  Several days later Mary asked Jean if she remembered wanting to throw Jonah into the sea. Jean looked at her in indignant surprise.

  “Why, Mary,” she said, “you must have been dreaming!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bananas!

  A FTER her troubled night, Mary slept late next morning. When she woke at last, the sun was shining brightly. It dazzled her for a moment and she couldn’t think where she was. Something strange had been happening to her for the last few days, but she couldn’t quite remember. Then somewhere in the distance she heard Jean singing one of her made-up songs, and somebody was tugging at her sleeve. She opened her eyes wider and found herself gazing into the earnest round face of the Pink Twin. Then Mary remembered that she was at sea in a lifeboat with Mrs. Snodgrass’ twins. When the Pink Twin saw her awake, he began to bounce himself up and down with excitement.

  “Bye-bye, Me-me, bye-bye!” he exclaimed.

  “Darling thing,” said Mary, trying to kiss him, “we can’t go bye-bye.”

  But he wriggled from her embrace, and pointed a dramatic finger, crying: “Bye-bye! Me-me, ba-ba bye-bye!”

  Suddenly a tremendous idea flashed into Mary’s mind. The boat was no longer moving! She could hear the waves lapping against it, but the boat itself was quite still. With a little cry, she sprang up and gazed about her. To her astonishment she saw that they were safely lodged on a sandy shore, just at the edge of the dancing, sparkling waves. She could see a long stretch of shining sand, and then a fringe of graceful palm trees and vegetation. Running in and out among the first of these trees, she could see Jean, gleefully capering, shouting, and singing.

  Mary sat down again, perfectly flabbergasted.

  “Well,” she gasped, “we got here!” Then she added fervently, “Oh, thank you, Lord!”

  Ann Elizabeth and Jonah were still asleep. The Blue Twin had clambered over the side of the boat and was toddling after Jean. The Pink Twin still pulled at Mary’s skirt and cried, “Bye-bye! bye-bye! bye-bye!”

  “All right, Pink,” cried Mary happily. “I don’t know how we got here, but we aren’t going to let Jean and Elijah beat us. No siree!” Casting a glance at the sleeping babies, she caught Pink up under her arm and ran after the other twin, who had fallen on his nose in the soft sand.

  “Oh, twinsies!” she said, setting them both right side up again. “What a wonderful sandpile! Aren’t you the lucky babies!” The twins may not have understood her words, but they understood her happy tone of voice, for they clapped their fat hands and squealed with delight. “Just see,” she went on, catching up handfuls of the sand, “what castles we can make. I guess not even the richest millionaire in America has such a sandpile as this in his backyard for his babies!”

  Pink began digging like a little dog, throwing the sand out behind, between his fat legs, and Blue amused himself by pouring sand in his hair and chuckling with delight when it ran tickling down the back of his neck.

  Just then Jean came running from the group of trees, shouting at the top of her voice and waving something yellow which she held in her hands.

  “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 an
d 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

  Time and Tide

  THE 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.