Hildegard G. Frey

“There’s one thing about those girls that always takes my breath away,” said Mr. Evans, “and that is their ability to get up a show on a moment’s notice. The most common circumstance seems to be charged with dramatic possibilities for them. And nothing seems too ambitious for them to attempt.” Having delivered this speech, Mr. Evans leaned back against the cliff and watched with amused eyes the performance of the “latest.”

Mrs. Evans and Uncle Teddy and Aunt Clara, who were sitting with him, agreed that “our girls,” aided and abetted by “our boys,” were equal to anything.

The dramatic representation then in progress was another inspiration of Katherine’s, which had come to her when Sandhelo, getting lonesome in his high pasture ground, had followed the others to the beach, walking down a steep side of the cliff by a path so narrow and perilous that it was never used by the campers. But Sandhelo, being a trick mule, accomplished the feat without difficulty. The bathers watched his descent in fascinated silence. They feared to shout at him and so make him miss his step.

178“Doesn’t it remind you of that piece in the Fourth Reader about the mule?” said Hinpoha. “The one that goes:

‘And near him a mule bell came tinkling
Midway on the Paso del Mar.’

I forgot how it begins.”

“Oh, you mean ‘The Fight of the Paso del Mar,’” said Migwan. “The one where the two fight and tumble over into the sea. I wore the page that poem was on completely out of the book reading it so often, and wished and wished I had been there to see it happen.”

“So did I,” said Hinpoha.

“Let’s do it,” said Katherine suddenly. “We have all the props. Here’s the mule, and the rocky shore–that low wedge around the base of the cliff will do beautifully for the Paso del Mar. And ‘gusty and raw is the morning,’ just the way the poem says, and if there isn’t enough fog to ‘tear its skirts on the mountain trees,’ we can pretend this light mist is a real fog. Everything is here, even the bell on the mule. I’ll be Pablo of San Diego and, Hinpoha, you be Bernal.”

“Migwan would make a better Bernal,” said Hinpoha modestly. “No,” said Katherine decidedly, “you’ll make a better splash when you fall into the lake, and anyway, Migwan always wanted to see it done, not do it. Hurry up and get your blanket, 179 and get it wrapped gloomily around you. Sandhelo and I will start out from the hills behind.”

Hinpoha fetched a blanket and strode across the beach, her fair forehead puckered into what she fondly believed to be a ferocious scowl, while the bathers ranged themselves into an audience. Katherine, between clucks and commands, designed to keep Sandhelo’s feet in the straight and narrow path, i.e., the low-jutting ledge of the cliff just above the water line, raised her cracked voice in a three-part harmony and “sang through the fog and wind.” Sandhelo moved forward willingly enough. Since Katherine had taken him seriously in hand that summer he had learned to carry a rider without the accompaniment of music. If he hadn’t, Katherine would never have been able to make him stir, for he certainly would not have classed her husky, bleating tones as music.

Bernal advanced cautiously onto the Paso del Mar, taking care not to slip on the wet stones, and encountered the blithe Pablo midway on the pass, holding tight to his mule’s bridle strap with one hand and covering up a rent in the waist of his bathing suit with the other.

“Back!” shouted Bernal full fiercely.

And “Back!” shouted Pablo in wrath, and then things happened. Sandhelo, with the sensitiveness of his artistic temperament, thought that all remarks made in his presence were intended to be 180 personal. So when Hinpoha looked him in the eye and shouted “Back!” and Katherine jerked his bridle and screamed “Back!” he cannot be blamed if he did what any gentleman would have done when commanded by a lady. He backed.

“Whoa!” shouted Katherine, taken unawares and nearly falling off his small saddle area. But Sandhelo considered that his first orders had been pretty definite and he continued to back along the narrow ledge. “Stop!” screamed Katherine, while the audience roared with laughter, “‘We turn not on Paso del Mar!’”

The word “turn” seemed to give Sandhelo a brilliant new idea, and, without warning, he rose on his hind legs, whirled around in a dizzy semi-circle, and started back in the direction whence he had come. Katherine, unable to check his inglorious flight, hung on grimly. He left the narrow ledge and started climbing the hill, leaving the black-hearted Bernal in full possession of the Paso del Mar. At the top of the hill Katherine slid off Sandhelo’s back, the soft grass breaking her fall, and lay there laughing so she could not get up, while Sandhelo raced on to his favorite grazing ground.

“To think it had to turn out that way, when I was dying to see the part where you fall into the lake,” lamented Migwan, when the cast had collected itself on the beach. “It wasn’t at all the real thing.”

181“Some of it was,” said Sahwah. “The beginning was all right.”

“And the mule did go home ‘riderless’ eventually,” said Katherine, rubbing her bumped elbow. “Didn’t he make speed going around that narrow, slippery ledge, though?” she went on. “I expected him to go overboard every minute. But he tore along as easily as if he were running on a velvetine road.”

“On a what?” asked Slim.

“She means a corduroy road, I guess,” said Gladys, and they all shouted with laughter.

“Ho-ho-ho!” chuckled Slim, “that’s pretty good. Velvetine road! Would there be any binnacles on it, do you suppose?” he added teasingly.

“That’s right, everybody insult a poor old woman what ain’t never had a chance to get an eddication!” sobbed Katherine, shedding mock tears into her handkerchief. “What’s the difference? Doesn’t velvetine sound just as good as corduroy? And, anyhow, it’s better style this year than corduroy.”

“Hear the poor, ignorant, old lady talk about style,” jeered Sahwah. “I didn’t think you ever came out of your abstraction long enough to know what was in style.”

“Even in her absentmindedness she seems to have a preference for fine things, though,” said Gladys, beginning to giggle reminiscently. “Do you remember 182 the time she walked out of Osterland’s with a thirty-dollar hat on her head?”

Katherine rose as if to forcibly silence her, but Sahwah held her back and Gladys proceeded for the edification of the boys. “You see,” said Gladys, “she was in there trying on hats all by herself because the saleswomen were busy with other people. She had put on a mink hat and was roaming around looking for a handglass to see how it looked from the back, when she suddenly got an idea for a story she was to write for that month’s club meeting. She forgot all about having the hat on her head and started for home as fast as she could. Out on the sidewalk she met Nyoda, who admired the hat. Then she came to.”

“Mercy!” said Aunt Clara to Katherine, “weren’t you frightened when you discovered it?”

“Not she,” said Gladys. “She walked right back inside, big as life, hunted around until she found her own hat, and handed the mink one to the saleswoman, who had just sent a store detective out after her. The detective escorted her to the door that time, but it didn’t worry her in the least. She went right back into the store the next day and tried the same hat on again and couldn’t imagine why the saleswoman left another customer and was so attentive to her. The simplicity of some people is perfectly touching.”

“I won’t stay and be made fun of,” said Katherine, 183 and marched up the hill with an injured air, calling back over her shoulder, “all people who ordered fudge today might as well cancel their orders, because I’m not going to make any, so there!”

“Oh, I say, don’t get mad,” said Slim in alarm, whereat everybody laughed. He was the one for whom Katherine’s words were intended, nobody else having “ordered” any fudge.

“Honest, I forgot I promised not to tell about the binnacles,” said Slim pleadingly.

But Katherine was adamant and would not forgive him. Slim grunted ruefully and exclaimed: “Shucks! I always manage to get in bad with her. Always in bad,” he repeated dolefully.

“We’ll have to re-christen you ‘In-Bad the Sailor!’” said Sahwah.

“Really!” said the Captain, making a grimace of comical surprise at her. “Who would have thought the child was so deucedly clevah, bah Jove!”

But the name of In-Bad the Sailor struck the others as being such a good one that they adopted it right away, and Slim had to answer to it half the time for the rest of the summer.

Slim shadowed Katherine so closely and volunteered so gallantly to do all her dinner chores that she relented in the middle of the afternoon and brought out the brown and white “makin’s” that Slim’s sweet tooth so delighted in. The Captain 184 looked at them and jeered as he went past on his way down to the landing.

“Slim would eat his words any day if he could roll them in a piece of fudge,” he called. Slim only smiled sweetly as he watched the experimental spoonful being dropped into the cup of water. Nothing could ruffle him now.

The Captain walked briskly down the hill and untied the small launch.

“Where are you going?” called Hinpoha from the log where she was sitting all by herself reading.

“Over to St. Pierre, to mail a Special Delivery letter for Uncle Teddy,” replied the Captain.

“Do you need any help getting it over?” asked Hinpoha.

“Why, yes,” said the Captain, laughing, “come along if you want to.” Hinpoha tripped gaily over the beach and seated herself in the launch with him.

“Hadn’t you better wear your sweater?” asked the Captain, looking rather doubtfully at Hinpoha’s low-necked and short-sleeved middy. “There’s a raw wind today and cutting against it will make it worse.”

Hinpoha shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not a bit cold,” she replied carelessly. “I always go like this; even in lots colder weather. I’m so hardened down to it that I never catch cold. Besides, we’re not going to be out after dark, are we? You’re just going straight over to St. Pierre and back?”

185“That’s all,” said the Captain. “Just to mail this letter and buy some alcohol for Uncle Teddy and some peanuts for the chippies. Hadn’t ought to take more than an hour and a half altogether.” He started the engine and off they chugged. They reached St. Pierre in good time, mailed the letter, bought the alcohol and the peanuts and a postcard with a picture of a donkey on it to give to Katherine and some lollypops for Slim and started back.

“What’s happened to the sun?” asked Hinpoha. It had been feeble and watery on the way over, but now it had vanished from the sky, and a fine mist seemed to be falling all over. Hinpoha shivered involuntarily as they started off.

“You really should have brought your sweater along,” said the Captain. “Here, spread this tarpaulin over you, it’ll keep you warm a little.”

Hinpoha declared she wasn’t very cold, but, nevertheless, she availed herself of the protection the tarpaulin afforded and was glad to have it. The mist thickened until it looked like steam, and almost before they knew it they were surrounded on all sides by a dense fog. They could not see a boat length ahead of them.

“Nice pickle,” said the Captain, buttoning his collar around his throat. “How are we ever going to find our way back to Ellen’s Isle in this mess?”

Hinpoha strained her eyes trying to peer through the white curtain. “I don’t know,” she said, “unless 186 you can guide yourself by the fog horn in the harbor of St. Pierre. Keep it behind us, you know.”

“But the sound seems to come from all around,” said the Captain.

“It will at first, but afterwards you can tell,” said Hinpoha. “Nyoda used to keep making us tell the direction from which sounds came and we can almost always do it. The fog horn is behind us now.”

The Captain kept on in the direction they had been going and ran very slowly. “It’ll take us all evening to get home at this rate,” he said. “If we don’t run past the island,” he added under his breath.

A few minutes later the chugging of the engine ceased and their steady, if slow, progress was arrested. “What’s the matter?” asked Hinpoha.

“I don’t know,” said the Captain in a vexed tone. “It can’t be that we’re out of gasoline–I filled up before we left. The engine’s gone dead.”

He struck match after match in an effort to see what the trouble was, but they only made a feeble glare in the fog and he could not locate the trouble. “What are we going to do now?” he exclaimed in a tone of concern.

“Sit here until the fog lifts, I suppose,” said Hinpoha calmly.

Finally, satisfied that he could do absolutely nothing to fix the trouble until he could see, the Captain settled back to await the lifting of the fog. The chill in the air was getting sharper all the time, and, 187 although Hinpoha did everything she could to prevent it, her teeth chattered and the Captain could feel her convulsive shivers, even under the tarpaulin.

“Here,” he said, taking off his coat and putting it around her shoulders, “put this on.”

Hinpoha shoved it away resolutely, shaking her head. She could not speak articulately. But the Captain was determined and made her put it on in spite of her protests.

“Y-you’ll t-t-take c-c-c-cold,” she said.

“No, I won’t,” said the Captain, “but you will.” Hinpoha made him take the tarpaulin as she began to warm through in the coat.

“It’s kind of fun,” she said in a natural voice again. “It’s a new experience.”

“Is there anything you girls don’t think is fun?” asked the Captain in an admiring tone. “Most girls would be wringing their hands and declaring they would never go out in a boat again. Aren’t you really afraid?”

“Not the least bit,” said Hinpoha emphatically.

“You’re a good sport,” said the Captain.

“‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said,’” replied Hinpoha. But she was pleased with the compliment, nevertheless, because she knew it was sincere. The Captain never said anything he did not mean.

They sat there drifting back and forth with the current for several hours, and then suddenly there 188 was a break in the white curtain and two bright eyes looked down at them from above. “It’s the Twins!” cried Hinpoha delightedly. “The Sailors’ Stars. They have come to guide us back. Don’t you remember, they’re always directly in front of us when we come home from St. Pierre in the evening.”

The fog was breaking and drifting away before a fresh breeze which had sprung up and first one star and then another came into view. Soon they could see a bright red light in the distance and knew it was a signal fire, which the folks on Ellen’s Isle had built to guide them. Hinpoha held her little bug light down while the Captain searched for the trouble in the launch engine and he was not long in discovering that it was nothing serious. A few pokes in her vitals and the launch began chugging again.

The whole family was lined up on the beach awaiting their arrival and they were welcomed back as though they had been gone a year. It was nearly nine o’clock. They had been out on the lake more than four hours.

“Stop hugging Hinpoha, Gladys,” bade her mother, “and let her eat something. Those blessed children must be nearly starved.”

This was not quite true, because they had eaten the two quarts of peanuts and the half dozen lollypops originally consigned to the camp, which had saved them from starving very nicely.

The clearing wind, which had dispelled the fog, 189 came from the north and blew colder and colder as the night wore on. In the morning the Captain woke stiff and chilled and with a very sore throat. “I’m all right,” he protested when Aunt Clara came in to administer remedies, but his voice was a mere croak. Aunt Clara felt of his head and found a high fever. She promptly ordered him to stay in bed and set herself to the task of breaking up the cold. Hinpoha wandered around distracted all day.

“It was my fault, all my fault,” she wailed. “If I had only had sense enough to take my sweater he wouldn’t have made me take his coat. Is he very sick, Aunt Clara?”

By night the Captain was very much worse. He had developed a bad case of bronchitis and his breath rattled ominously.

Hinpoha, crouching anxiously at the foot of a big tree near the tent, overheard a low-voiced conversation between Uncle Teddy and Aunt Clara, who were standing in the path. “It would be pretty serious if he were to develop pneumonia out here,” said Uncle Teddy in an anxious tone.

“We’re doing our best,” said Aunt Clara, “but he’s a very sick boy. In the morning you must bring the doctor from St. Pierre.”

They passed on and Hinpoha heard no more. But her heart sank like a lump of lead. The Captain was going to have pneumonia and it was all her fault! If he died she would be a murderer. How 190 could she ever face Uncle Teddy again? She was afraid to go back with the rest, but sat crouched there under the tree almost beside herself with remorse until Aunt Clara herself found her and made her go to bed.

In the morning Uncle Teddy brought a doctor from St. Pierre who stayed on the job all day and by night announced that there was no danger of pneumonia, although the Captain had had a very narrow escape.

“Now what are you crying for?” demanded Katherine, coming upon Hinpoha all by herself in the woods.

“Be-c-cause I’m s-so g-glad,” said Hinpoha from the depths of a thankful heart.

“You make me tired,” said Katherine, and brushed a tear out of her own eye.