Three Little Cousins Part 18

"And I'd like Mr. and Mrs. Hips to have one," echoed Mary.

"Are they very wicked, black-hearted people?" asked Polly, darkly.

"Why--why----" Mary hesitated and looked to Molly for her cue.

"Do they have to be wicked to have an adventure?" asked Molly.

"If they join the Roseberries, they'll have to be, for the Roseberries are wreckers and smugglers." Polly spoke impressively, and at this flight of fancy Molly and Mary gazed at her admiringly. Yet they were not quite willing that their families should give up their morals to too great an extent.

"What do they have to do?" asked Mary, determined to find out the worst.

"Mine have a cave," said Polly, mysteriously. "It is on an island--I know what island I am going to have--and there they hide their treasures. They are counterfeiters, too," she added to their list of crimes, "and they have chests of counterfeit money--sand dollars."

Molly laughed and Polly looked at her reproachfully. "It is as good as any other counterfeit money," she remarked.

"Never mind the money. Go on, Polly." Molly was enjoying her cousin's inventions.

"Well, they go out in a boat on stormy nights and when a vessel is in distress, instead of helping, they don't do anything but just wait till the vessel is wrecked and then they help themselves, to what they can get. They have, oh, such a store of diamonds and rubies and precious stones in their cave, and they have their own vessel that flies a black flag."

"Then they're pirates," said Mary recoiling. "I don't want the Hips to be pirates."

"They don't have to be," Polly calmly a.s.sured her. "They can be as good as they want to, and can be on one of the vessels that gets wrecked."

"Then they'll all get drowned."

"No, they needn't; they can cling to a raft and go ash.o.r.e on some desert island."

Having saved the lives as well as the reputations of the Hips family, although they would probably lose everything else, Mary was satisfied, but Molly was ready to compromise. A little spice of wickedness seemed necessary to make her Applebys interesting. "My family can be smugglers," she announced, "but I don't want them to be pirates and I don't want them wrecked either. Smugglers aren't so wicked as pirates; they only bring in things that you ought to pay duty on, Uncle d.i.c.k told me, and Mary's father told her that in England almost everything comes in free, and that the United States is as mean as can be about making people pay for what is brought into the country. A lady, Molly saw on the steamer when they came over, had an awful time about a shabby old sealskin coat she'd had for years, and just because she wore it ash.o.r.e from the steamer, they made an awful fuss about it."

"Well, I don't understand about it, but if the United States said it was wrong, of course it must have been; they are always right," said Polly loyally. "I don't exactly know about smuggling," she confessed, "however, the Roseberries are going to be smugglers."

"Uncle d.i.c.k was telling us about smugglers the other night."

"Yes, I know, that is what made me think of it. He showed me the island where there used to be a smuggler's cave."

"I remember it; we saw it when we were out sailing one day."

"We must build a birch bark s.h.i.+p for the Hips family," said Polly, changing the subject. "Your Applebys can live on my island and if they don't want to a.s.sociate with the Roseberries they can have a cave to themselves."

"Roseberry is such a nice pleasant name for wicked people," remarked Mary. "Why don't you call them something else?"

"n.o.body ever does call them that," returned Polly readily. "The father is the leader of the gang, and he is Bold Ben. His three sons are One-eyed Peter, Crooked Tom, and Sly Sam. They call his wife Old Mag, and then there are two cousins, twins; they are Smiling Steve and Grinning Jim."

"Oh, Polly, how do you think of such names?" said Molly delightedly.

"What does Old Mag do?"

"She pulls in things from the wreck and she cooks the meals. Then, when the men are all away smuggling, she sits in the cave and spends her time looking at the jewels and letting them drip through her fingers."

"Jewels can't drip," observed Mary in a matter-of-fact way.

"Well, they look as if they could," returned Polly. "The diamonds are like drops of water, the pearls like milk and the rubies like blood."

"I know where you found that," said Molly; "in the fairy tale we were reading the other day."

Polly admitted the fact and the s.h.i.+p being now ready to launch, they proceeded to the sh.o.r.e where Polly pointed out the island. This was a large rock, nearly covered at high tide, but now showing quite a surface above the water. Its rugged sides held caves quite large enough for persons of such size as the Roseberry family, and they were presently hidden behind their barnacled barriers. In a little pool the Hips family were set afloat while the Applebys contented themselves with gathering stores of supposed precious stones from the little beach.

The Hips family had hardly set sail before Polly invoked a storm and stirred to monster waves the waters in their pool, so they were in great danger. "Oh, dear, the youngest Hips is floating away and I can't save him," cried Mary.

"Never mind, let him go; there are plenty more of them," returned Polly heartlessly banging her stick up and down in the water so the s.h.i.+p would rock more violently. "They've got to be wrecked, you know," she added. "I'll drive them on that rock, then you can grab them before they sink and get them on the raft."

Mary managed to rescue all but one more of the family, and these were set adrift on a piece of birch bark to which Polly tied a string that they might not go beyond return. She also allowed the storm to cease, but this was because the gang of wreckers had to haul up the s.h.i.+p and gather in their plunder. She kept up so lively an account of their doings that Molly left the Applebys to their own devices and Mary drew the Hipses to sh.o.r.e that she might listen to Polly's blood-curdling account of Bold Ben and the rest. Polly did not have to draw altogether from her imagination, for her brothers had been too often her playmates for her not to be ready with tales of plunder and adventure.

Time pa.s.sed very quickly and the children became so absorbed in the manoeuvres of the gang that they did not notice the stealthy rise of the tide till Mary exclaimed, "Oh, the Hipses have floated off and they were quite high on the beach!"

Polly looked around her. "No wonder," she said; "the tide is rising.

We'd better start back." Leaving Bold Ben and his comrades to their fate, she ran to the further side of the rock, but here she hesitated.

The sea was steadily making in, sending little cascades over the weed-covered ledges each time it retreated.

"Can't you get across?" asked Molly, as she came up with her Applebys, and saw Polly standing still.

"I'm almost afraid to jump," said Polly, "for if a big wave should come in suddenly it might wash in over my feet and the sea-weed is so slippery I'm afraid to trust to it, where it is shallower." Molly looked up at the rocky shelf jutting out above her. "If we could only get up there," she said.

"But we can't; it is too far to climb to that first jutty-out place, and we can't crawl under and then up, like flies."

Mary bearing the sole survivor of the unfortunate Hips family now came up. "I had to let the rest go," she said. "They were beyond reach. I fished this one out of the water just in time. What is the matter?

Why don't you go on, Polly?"

For answer Polly pointed silently to the creeping waves at her feet.

"What are we going to do?" asked Mary in alarm.

"Stay here till the tide goes down, I suppose. This rock is never covered," said Molly.

"But we may get dreadfully splashed," returned Mary.

"I hadn't thought of that," said Polly dubiously. She looked at the rock above her, and then at her two cousins. "Which of you two could stand on my shoulders and get hold of that rock so as to draw herself up and go for help?"

"Oh, I never could do it in the world," said Mary, shrinking back.

Polly turned to Molly. "Could you?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't pull myself up so far, but I could stand and let you get on my shoulders, if you could do the pulling up part."

"I could do that easily enough," Polly told her. "I've often practiced it with the boys, and we have swung ourselves up the rocks in the mountains out home. Are you sure you can bear my weight, Molly?"

"I can try."

"We'll both do it," Mary offered. "You can put one foot on my shoulder and one on Molly's, then you won't be so heavy for either one."