Nora Archibald Smith

“ From time to time he eyed the steel chain that hung from Stumpy’s pocket with such a covetous air that its owner clapped his hand over it in pretended alarm and cried laughingly, “Oh, you Jim Crow! You young, handsome bird! You no want take chain from poor old man.”
“Jim-ery Crow-ery, never-y you-ery mind-ery!” cried Lesley, affectionately. “Bad-ery Stump-ery, tease-ery you-ery!”
“Oh-ery you-ery think-ery Jim-ery never-y bad-ery!” exclaimed Ronald.
“Oh, that secret language! When I learn?” sighed Stumpy. “I tell you many times you better learn Spanish.” ”

“ HOW THE CAT CLIMBED
When Stumpy had gone, Ronald wandered off among the rocks looking for sea-birds’ eggs for his collection, and Lesley strolled along the shore picking up shining shells and telling herself a story. In this romantic tale she was a princess prisoned in a tower on a far-off island, but the suitors who landed there, having heard of her marvelous beauty, were unable to declare their passion as, unfortunately, she understood no tongue but her own and that was strange to all of them. ”

“ Life is never very dull when, like the gulls, the murres, the gannets, and the rabbits, you have to seek out your daily food and shelter and go without it, if you find nothing suitable. The domestic animals on the island were well provided for; still, there were daily and exciting climbing-parties among the goats and kids, and Jenny Lind amused herself by hiding away from the Lightkeeper whenever there seemed a chance that she might be asked to draw the little car to the shore. ”

“ He was not a native, but an immigrant, for the Lighthouse Inspector had brought him to Lesley on one of his visits, saying that he had been found in the woods on the mainland—just a little bunch of fuzz with short dark feathers sticking out here and there—and that it was supposed that he had fallen out of the nest and been deserted by his parents.
The Inspector had cared for him until he was now a fine fellow with the glossiest of black feathers, and as he appeared to be of a good disposition and of winning ways there was no reason why he should not make an admirable pet. ”

“ Do you believe Jim might have taken Lesley’s necklace?”
“Jim?” questioned his father in a puzzled way. “Oh, you mean Jim Crow? Why, I don’t know. What makes you think so?”
“It’s too bad!” cried Lesley, appearing at this moment; “Ronnie hasn’t a bit of reason to say Jim took it.”
“Well,” said the boy, a little daunted by his sister’s indignation, “I only thought.... You know yourself how much he likes shiny things, and Mother has caught him stealing in the kitchen.” ”

“ The springs had not ceased to bubble after what the children considered Ronald’s first-class joke, when the sound of clattering hoofs and the roll of wheels announced the approach of that Jenny Lind whom they had intended to use as a playmate.
“Run, Ronnie, quick!” cried Lesley, “and see if father’s going down to the beach. Maybe we can go with him.”
“Hi! Father! Father!” called Ronald. “Wait for us!” running at top speed toward the cliff. ”

“ No be sailor for nothing. You wait; you see!”—and waving his hand to Ronnie he started off for the storehouse.
Lesley waited on the black rocks in an agony of fear expecting every moment that Ronald would slip down from his perch, and while she watched his small figure and turned with almost every breath to see if Stumpy hove in sight, she kept saying to herself, “No, I didn’t watch him; I didn’t. I forgot all about him. Mother will never call me her faithful little girl again!” ”

“ There was to be a water festival, an afternoon of sports and games, a grand banquet at night, fireworks and an illumination of the palace. The king and his beautiful daughter appeared early upon the streets, arrayed in the greatest magnificence and were cheered and applauded wherever they went. The day was spent in gayety, but, at night, as Balancin stepped into the boat which was to take him back to the palace his foot caught on one of the thwarts and, shaking it, in a moment of impatience with the pain, off fell the White Slipper into the stream! ”

“ It’s the Light that helps them, isn’t it?”
“Hush! Ronnie, you’re not thinking,” cried his mother. “Who made the sea and the sailors? Who gave his brains to the man who thought of the Light and set it here? The Light is but a senseless thing and needs some one to tend it, as well you know your father does both night and day.”
“Oh—h!” murmured Ronald, “I see!”
“You’re a funny boy!” commented Lesley, as usual.
“Sleep-ery, head-ery,
Better go to bed-ery!” ”

“ Old Jim Crow,
You’re just a funny bird;
And that I know!”
“Well, maybe that is better,” agreed Ronald, “and I can dance it, any way.” And he began to whirl about the playroom, stamping out the measure with a will.
“Oh, hush, Ronnie!” cried Lesley; “you’ll tear the house down.... I wonder,” she added slowly, holding the crow to her cheek while he caressed her with his [89] beak, “if Father will let us take old Jim if we go away.”
“Why, shan’t we take everything?” questioned Ronald, with wondering eyes. “Jenny Lind and Jim Crow and the goats and—no, not the rabbits, o’ course.” ”

“ The “Gov’ment” had never felt it necessary to build a pier at Friar’s Island, so the only way to land the stores and the barrels of oil was to lower a few of them at a time from the tender into the little boat, row them back to the shore, and then haul them up by a derrick to a small platform that jutted out from the rocks. It was Pacific Ocean, you know, straight up to the island, with no friendly bay or shallow water, just wild surf and big breakers to the very base of the unfriendly cliffs. ”

“ Ronald was ready to meet him when he reached the safety of the rocks below and to hold out his hand and say, like a man, “I’m sorry, Stumpy, and I’ll never be so careless again. Thank you, and Mother and Father will thank you, too.”
“Oh, no need thank,” smiled Stumpy. “Everybody help friend in trouble. But now other trouble begin. Got to go home and tell boss what you do and Lesley tell she forgot to watch like Mother say.” ”

“ It was true enough. Lesley and Ronald, eleven and eight years old, were the only children on the island and the only ones who had ever been there, but they were not by any means the only young things. There was a score of light-footed, dancing kids, there was a comfortable number of chickens, a rushing, scampering horde of rabbits, “Jim,” the pet crow, and uncounted half-grown sea-birds in the shelters of the cliffs.
As for grown-ups, there were the children’s father and mother, Malcolm and Margaret McLean, and the old Mexican sailor, Pancho Lopez, commonly known as “Stumpy.” ”

“ Every man do his best; I pray to saints, but no can see ship’s lights, no can see other men’s face, not know where we go. Of a sudden, maybe pretty near ship—we can’t tell—come wave like big mountain, knock every man flat, turn boat over, upside down, no light, no help anywhere.”
“Oh, poor Stumpy,” sighed Lesley, patting his sleeve, “how dreadful!”
“Every man start to swim best he know how, but where he swim when he see nothing? We half-dead already when we hear that Johnny sing out, ‘Look at cat! Look at cat! ”

“ Malcolm laughed in his good-humored way. “It’s a fine thing you’ve got your children on an island,” he said. “If they were on the mainland, you’d be worrying about them night as well as day.”
Lesley meantime was composing a piece of po’try in the secret language, which was to be a sort of ode to Stumpy on his return from foreign parts.
“Stump-ery home-ery,
No longer roam-ery.
Children are glad-ery,
So is their dad-ery.” ”

“ No two-legged, or four-legged, or ever-so-many-legged creature could draw loads from the shore to the Lighthouse over such a roadway, even if it had been on level ground, and so Malcolm McLean, with the help of old “Stumpy” and a man brought from the mainland for a week, had laid down rails the entire distance and prevailed upon the Government to send him a little car which Jenny Lind pulled with ease over her private track.
[5] “Going down to the storehouse for oil,” called Father, looking around at the youngsters from his perch in front. ”

“ Dave waved his hand again for silence and leveled his piece a second time, for the mother was slowly circling down to see what was amiss in the nest. The old man was a wonderful marksman, the best I shall ever see, for he fired again just at the very moment when she was stretching out her feet to alight and in a second we saw her tumble down the side of the crag.”
“Oh, that was splendid!” cried Ronald, his eyes sparkling with excitement, “and then the poor mother knew that her baby was safe.”
“Not at all,” answered McLean. “She knew nothing of the kind, and none of us did. ”

“ Mrs. McLean pulled, Lesley pulled, Ronnie beat his hands and kicked and roared until the mother was thoroughly frightened. “Get your father, quick!” she cried to Lesley, and the child climbed, panting, to the tower where Malcolm was trimming the Light. She was too breathless to speak when she reached him, but he saw that something was wrong below and half-leaped, half-tumbled down the stairs to the kitchen. He took the baby in his arms and succeeded with his big sailor voice in reaching the ears under the kettle.
“Be quiet, Ronnie!” he ordered. “Stop crying at once! Father’s here. ”

“ What makes you think of it now?”
[60] “Why, because Stumpy read it, too, and he was saying when he was up here to-day that it was a ‘foolishness,’ as he called it, and no bird could carry such a weight.”
“Oh, that’s not so,” said Mr. McLean, decidedly, while the children dropped their checkers and pricked up their ears for a story. “I don’t know about a good-sized boy, but we know that an eagle could carry a small one. My idea is that they can lift as much in proportion to their weight as a hawk or a horned owl, and I’ve known a horned owl to snatch up a large house-cat and make off with it. ”

“ Balancin was astonished again, and the courtiers could hardly restrain their laughter, but the monarch replied at once: ‘The horse shall be yours, Master Goldfinch, and in fifteen days I shall expect you here again. If you succeed in the cure, you know what the reward will be; if you fail, your daring will receive a fitting punishment.’
“Goldfinch made a profound bow and withdrew; the horse was provided at once, and the youth left the city followed by the hoots and jeers of the entire populace. ”

“ Of course as the Lighthouse tender was sent only once in two months and as no other vessel touched the island regularly, to see her come in was a great event and one always viewed with excitement by the entire population, with the exception, perhaps, of the sea-birds, the rabbits, and the fishes, who did not care much for outside gayety. ”

“ We all get in boat, push off, and begin to row hard as we can, but the farther we get from land the blacker get the dark and the big wave come splash, crash, lift us ’way up, sink us ’way down, keep us tossing like ball in air. ”

“ I tell you he funny fellow, and we go uptown and leave him on beach with cat. Some men go get good dinner; some men get drunk, like always; I find other sailor like me, been all over world and we ‘swap yarn,’ you know.”
“We know,” nodding heads wisely, for old sailors often came to the island.
“We have orders get back twelve o’clock night,” continued Stumpy; “we know, anyway, got do that, and we all start along ’bout eleven, pretty dark, big wind, storm coming all right. ”

“ A fisherman whose boat had been blown far out to sea by adverse winds had landed on the island for fresh water and brought the news back to Santa Barbara, adding that one old man among the natives had been able to speak Spanish and had begged him to tell the Missions along the coast of their plight and to implore the good Fathers to rescue them from their island prison. ”

“ Six times a year the Lighthouse tender called at the island with stores for its inhabitants, so tea and sugar and coffee, flour and meal, spices and cereals were always on hand, but for the rest they depended on [19] goats’ milk, fresh fish, eggs, chickens, rabbits, and such vegetables as they could raise on their wind-swept height, three hundred feet above the sea. ”

“ Both children hung their heads and blushed, but [54] they knew their duty well enough and had known it without Stumpy’s reminder, so they set off for the Lighthouse, hand in hand, with a sorrowful good-bye for Stumpy.
The soft-hearted old man watched them go with a half-smile and a half-sigh. “Good children!” he said. “Good boy, that Ronnie, but too much like little cat. Climb up so far she can go; never think how she get down!”
Mr. and Mrs. McLean heard the children’s story quietly and laid the blame on Ronald, where it rightfully belonged. ”

“ My belief is that if hawks or owls can carry more than twice their weight—and everybody knows they can—that an eagle could do as much, or more, perhaps. Once, when I was a lad, I found an eagle lying helpless on his back in the road shot through the body with a rifle-ball, poor creature. ”

“ The youth gained a light employment to support his scanty needs and spent his remaining time in study, whereby, one day, he found a marvelous specific for wounds which, however, required the use of a plant only to be found at a great distance and was thus completely out of his reach, as he possessed neither horse nor money. ”

“ The unfortunate monarch now posted notices in every part of his kingdom offering the hand of Diamantina and the succession to the throne to whosoever [79] would find the White Slipper. The princess, ready to sacrifice all for her beloved father, watched from the palace windows the swarm of youths who swam and dived in the neighboring stream in search of the missing treasure. ”

“ The party descended to earth, but the ladder was left in place while stout thread and large needles were [34] demanded. Lesley and Ronald sought their stores in Humpty Dumpty Land, and in the course of an hour put together a necklace which would have shamed all the jewels of the Princess Badroulboudour in the “Arabian Nights.”
Malcolm McLean, laughing at the pranks of his astonishing children, climbed the ladder and placed the ornament in Jim Crow’s hidy-hole and when next that honest bird went to examine his treasures, he is reported to have exclaimed, “My stars and garters! ”

“ McLean knew very well that the children would never be likely to have any playmates, save each other, while they were growing up, for the [23] work on the island was not more than enough for one man, with Stumpy’s assistance, and so there could be no other families in residence. ”