by Ruth Chew
Timothy and Sarah saw that the sea was washing across the road. Now that the tide was in, the house and the mill were completely surrounded by water.
They were on an island.
By the end of the week Sarah and Timothy felt as if they had never lived anywhere but in the gray clapboard house on Mill Island. There were lots of chores to be done. Timothy took the cow to the pasture in the morning and went to get her before supper. He pulled weeds in the cabbage patch and carried water from the spring to the house. Sarah learned to make butter and cheese. She sprinkled clean sand on the wide planks of the floor and swept it into patterns with a broom made of twigs.
At breakfast on Sunday morning Heer Maarten told the children, “There’s no service at our church here in New Amersfoord this week. I thought we might drive over to Flatbush to see Hans and his wife.”
Vrouw Maarten looked very happy. “Hans is our son,” she said. She looked at Sarah. “Those clothes need washing. Why don’t you wear the dress I made for you?”
Sarah took off her shirt and jeans. She poured water into the basin on the wash-stand and scrubbed herself all over. Vrouw Maarten gave her white linen underclothes to wear. Then Sarah put on the long blue dress Vrouw Maarten had made from one of her own.
Vrouw Maarten brushed Sarah’s hair and made two neat braids. “You look like a different girl,” she said.
Timothy changed into a long-sleeved shirt and baggy knee breeches that had been carefully patched. The clothes felt strange. But they were fresh and clean.
Both Sarah and Tim wore wooden shoes. They had been wearing them for a week now and were getting used to them. Vrouw Maarten had scrubbed their sneakers clean. She said they made very good house shoes.
When the tide was out, Heer Maarten hitched up the horse and wagon. His wife climbed up on the seat beside him. Sarah and Timothy sat in the back.
They drove across the salt marsh and then past fields of long grass. A few miles down the road they came to a little wooden church.
“The minister will come from Flatbush to preach here next Sunday afternoon,” Vrouw Maarten told the children.
For a long way the ground was flat and without trees. Now and then they passed a farm house. Stone wails bordered the fields, and a grassy path ran along each side of the road.
After a while the road began to wind through a wood. It was cooler here. Sarah was glad. She was not used to wearing so many clothes in the summertime.
The road was hardly more than a narrow lane here in the woods. Low tree branches brushed against the wagon. The gray horse had trouble pulling it.
“Tim and I can walk,” Sarah said. “Then the horse could go faster.”
The children climbed down from the wagon. They raced ahead down the lane.
“Sarah, look what we have here.” Tim turned off the lane into a little sunny glade. The ground was covered with low thorny bushes. They were loaded with ripe blackberries.
Sarah was following her brother. She picked a juicy berry and popped it into her mouth. “M-m-m. Let’s pick some for a surprise for Vrouw Maarten.”
“What will we carry them in?” Timothy asked.
Sarah stopped to think. If she held up the front of her dress, she could put them in that. But the berries might stain the dress.
“I’ve got an idea,” Timothy said. “What about putting the berries in our wooden shoes?”
The two children stared at the berries and wondered what to do. Suddenly Sarah heard a low growl. She looked up.
On the other side of the glade was a large bear. He began to walk toward them through the thorny bushes.
Sarah grabbed Timothy’s hand. She stepped backward toward the road.
The bear began to move faster.
Timothy pulled his hand away. “Run!” He bent down, took off a wooden shoe, and threw it at the bear’s head. For a minute the bear was stunned. Timothy pitched his other shoe and then ran after Sarah in his stocking feet.
Sarah reached the dirt road. She too slipped out of her wooden shoes. It was easier to run without them. Sarah raced across the road into the woods on the other side. Timothy was right behind her. The bear stopped in the middle of the road to sniff Sarah’s shoes.
Timothy and Sarah ran along a narrow deer trail. They didn’t stop to think where they were going. All they wanted was to get away from the bear.
Sarah held up her long dress to keep from tripping over it. She wished she was wearing her blue jeans.
The trail led to a rocky stream. Sarah bent down to pull off her socks. She lifted her skirt higher and waded into the water. “This will throw the bear off the scent,” she told her brother. “I read it in a book.”
Timothy looked at her with admiration. He too took off his socks and stepped into the stream. “What’ll I do with my socks, Sarah?”
Sarah held out her hand. “Give them to me.”
Timothy handed Sarah his socks. She tied all four socks end to end and then looped them around her waist. The socks had been knitted by Vrouw Maarten. Sarah knew she had better take care of them. But they were much too hot to wear on a day like this.
The cool water of the stream felt good to their bare feet. They sloshed along for a long time without speaking.
There were bright red flowers growing along the edge of the stream. Thick oak and hickory trees grew close together on each side of the water. It was dark in the woods, but a little sunlight came through the leaves and glittered on the stream.
The ground was hilly now. The stream wound between steep banks. Then it grew wider and deeper. Sarah stopped walking when the water reached above her knees. She climbed up the bank and sat down on a rock. “We must have lost the bear by now,” she said.
Timothy scrambled up beside her. “I think we’ve lost ourselves, too, Sarah.”
“Caw, caw, caw.” A large black crow flapped over their heads.
Timothy and Sarah sat very still on the rock above the stream. They watched a deer with two little spotted fawns come down to take a drink. A breeze rustled the leaves of the giant oak that leaned over the water.
At last Timothy spoke. “What are we going to do, Sarah?”
Sarah had been thinking. “There’s not much use going back up the stream,” she said. “We might run into the bear again. I think we ought to keep going until we come to a farm house.”
Timothy slid down the bank to the water. He made a cup of his hands and drank from them. Sarah wondered if she ought to stop him. Her mother had told her never to drink from a stream. But there was no other water here. Sarah was thirsty, too. She went down to get a drink. The water tasted better than any she had ever had.
They walked along the bank. When they came to a patch of blackberries, they sat down among the brambles and ate. There was no longer any question of how to carry the berries. Timothy rubbed his stomach. “Much better than a wooden shoe,” he said.
Sarah was quiet. She was wondering what Heer and Vrouw Maarten would think when they found her wooden shoes in the road. She wished she could let them know that she and Timothy were all right. But even if they found a farm house, there wouldn’t be a telephone.
She got to her feet. “Had enough berries, Tim? We’d better move on.”
The two children walked among the cardinal flowers, which grew along the muddy banks. Sarah heard a humming noise. A tiny green bird with a red throat was dipping his long beak into one of the blossoms.
There was no breeze now. The air in the woods was heavy and warm. Both Timothy and Sarah were uncomfortable wearing so many clothes.
They could see a wide patch of blue sky between the trees just ahead of them. Then the stream flowed into a little lake. A flock of mallard ducks with shiny green heads swam on the still water. Timothy pointed at them. “Those birds have the right idea!”
Sarah thought so, too. She untied the belt of socks from around her waist and pulled the long dress over her head. Then she slipped out of the bulky underwear. A fallen log lay beside the water. Sarah folded
all her clothes and placed them on the log. She ran across the narrow beach and waded into the water.
Timothy had a great many buttons to undo. Sarah was already swimming on her back and spouting like a whale when he came splashing into the water after her.
The sun was lower in the sky when Timothy and Sarah finished their swim. They shook themselves like puppies to get the water off. In a few minutes they were dry enough to put their clothes back on.
When they were dressed, Sarah said, “We’ve come to the end of the stream. Now let’s follow the sun. We’ll be going west that way, not just round and round.”
They set off through the woods. Ahead of them was the tallest hill they had come to all day. “Why don’t we walk around it, Sarah?” Timothy asked.
Sarah wanted to climb the hill. When she was halfway up the steep slope it began to remind her of another hill—one she knew very well. She could hear Timothy slipping and sliding behind her.
Up and up they went. When they got to the top there was a little clearing. Sarah walked across it and looked out over the forests below.
Timothy came puffing over. “Hey, Sarah, this is just like Lookout Mountain in Prospect Park.”
Sarah nodded. “I think it is Lookout Mountain,” she said. “Someday our house will be out there where all those woods are.”
Timothy grabbed her arm. “There’s a house there now,” he said. “Look!”
Sarah looked where her brother was pointing. A thin line of smoke was rising out of the woods. It was a little to the right of the direction that they had been going. Sarah held up the skirt of her dress and started down the other side of the hill. She stubbed her toe on a rock. “Ow!”
“Sh-sh!” Timothy warned her. “Even if this is Prospect Park, the bears aren’t in cages.”
The two children walked as fast as they could after they came down from the high hill. The ground was rolling now. They came at last to a path that led through the woods. Here they could go much faster.
The path led to a small open field. Around it was a fence of wooden stakes. Tall green stalks of corn grew in the field.
“It’s a farm, Sarah,” Timothy said.
Sarah looked for the farmhouse. At first she didn’t see it. She walked around one side of the fence. Then, in the shadow of the trees at the other side of the field, she saw a small house, shaped like an upside-down bowl. It was covered with bark and dry grass.
Sarah walked slowly toward the house.
Before she reached it a rope came down over her head. It was pulled tight around her chest. Sarah could hardly breathe. She managed to turn around. But she stumbled over something.
It was Timothy. He was lying facedown on the ground. His hands and feet were tied together.
Someone was trying to push Sarah down, too. She squirmed away. Then she saw who it was. “Beaver!”
The young Indian was reaching out to grab Sarah. At the sound of his name he stopped and stared into her face. “Sarah!” he said. He stepped back. “What are you doing in those clothes? I didn’t know you.”
Beaver wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Now Sarah saw that his hand was shaking. His face was streaked with dirt.
“Something’s wrong, Beaver,” Sarah said. “Take these ropes off Tim and me and tell us what’s the matter.”
Timothy rolled over onto his back. He watched as Beaver untied the rope from around Sarah’s chest. Then Timothy raised his feet in the air so the Indian could untie them. Sarah bent over her brother and undid the ropes that bound his wrists together.
“I thought you were a friendly Indian,” Timothy said. “Even if you didn’t know it was Sarah and me, why would you do this?”
“If someone dragged away your family to make slaves of them, would you be friendly?” Beaver asked.
“Who would do a thing like that?” Sarah said.
Timothy got to his feet. “Who did it, Beaver?”
“The palefaces,” Beaver said. “They came rowing in from a big ship in the bay. I was behind a big rock cleaning a fish I had caught.
“The rest of my family was digging clams on the beach. My father went to greet the strangers. They pointed a gun at him. Then the palefaces put all my people in their boat and rowed away.”
Sarah was sure that people like Heer Maarten would never do anything like this. But the Indian told her, “You can’t trust palefaces.”
“Why do you trust us?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. You seem different from all the others,” Beaver said. “What are you doing here? It’s a long way from where I met you. And why are you in these clothes? I like your other ones better.”
“So do we,” Timothy told him.
“If you really want to know how we came here,” Sarah said, “we might as well tell you.”
The three children sat cross-legged in a circle under a hickory tree. Sarah told Beaver how she and Timothy had stepped back in time to live in the gray clapboard house with the miller and his wife. Beaver listened and nodded his head. He did not seem to find the story hard to believe.
Then Timothy told about the bear and how they were lost in the woods.
While they were talking a black cloud had come over the sun. Far off there was a rumble of thunder. A few raindrops splashed down. The sky grew darker and darker. Then a flash of lightning lit up the wood. Crack! It sounded as if a tree had crashed to the ground. The rain began to come down harder.
“Come.” Beaver ran toward the little house. The doorway was covered by a flap of bark. It was so low that Beaver had to stoop to go into the room inside. Timothy and Sarah came in after him.
Once the three children were inside the house, the door flapped shut behind them. Timothy straightened up and looked around. “This is neat, Beaver.”
The Indian boy smiled. “I helped my father build it,” he said.
A small fire burned in a pit in the center of the floor. Over it a hole had been left in the roof to serve as a chimney. By the flickering light Sarah and Timothy saw that the house had been made of a circle of young trees. They were tied together at the top with leather strings. The outside of the house was plastered with mud and covered with grass and bark.
There were benches around the walls. Strings of fish and clams were drying on poles that stretched across the room. Beaver reached up and took down a large shad.
“I speared this one today,” he said. “I was cleaning it when I saw the men come from the ship.”
Sarah looked around for a frying pan. “How are you going to cook the fish?”
“Watch.” Beaver pushed a pointed stick through the shad and laid it across the top of the fire pit.
“We cook wienies that way,” Timothy said.
There was water in a large clay jug. Beaver dipped some into a clay pot and set it on the fire. He took a hard yellow squash out of a round basket.
“Let me help,” Sarah said.
Beaver handed her his knife. She set to work to scrape and cut up the squash.
The thunder still rumbled through the forest. They could hear the rain beating on the outside of the Indian house. But inside it was dry. While the squash was cooking in one pot, Beaver boiled cornmeal in another.
There were no spoons or forks or plates. Beaver cut hunks off the fish and gave them to Timothy and Sarah. They ate everything with their fingers. Sarah tried dipping pieces of fish into the boiled cornmeal. She liked both the fish and the cornmeal better that way.
At least there weren’t any dishes to wash.
While she was eating, Sarah was thinking. “Beaver,” she said, “what were the men like who kidnapped your family?”
“They had swords and guns,” the Indian boy told her. “Some of them wore gold rings in their ears and had bright-colored cloths tied around their heads.”
Timothy had seen men like this in the movies on television. “Pirates!” he said.
“Their ship is still anchored out in the channel,” Beaver said. “I watched from the shore wh
en they rowed away. Some of the men seem to be camped on an island.”
“Could we swim to the island?” Sarah asked.
Beaver looked at her for a minute. Then he said, “I remember now. You’re not afraid of the water like the other palefaces.”
“They wouldn’t expect anybody to swim to the island then,” Timothy said.
“It’s too far for that.” Beaver stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I have a canoe.” He went to the door to look out. “It’s stopped raining.”
He came back and pulled a large basket out from under a bench.
“What’s in there?” Timothy asked.
“Clothes.” Beaver took the lid off the basket. “In winter I wear more than this.”
Sarah and Timothy came over to look at the soft leather skirts and jackets and leggings. Some of them were trimmed with shells and porcupine quills.
“Oh,” Sarah said, “they’re beautiful!”
Beaver smiled. He smoothed a little fringed skirt with his hand. Then he handed it to Sarah. “This is easier to move in than that paleface skirt you’re wearing. Put it on.”
Timothy took off the stiff shirt and baggy knee breeches Vrouw Maarten had given him. Sarah slipped out of the long, full-skirted dress. They changed into the soft leather clothes that the Indians wore. Everything was more comfortable. The moccasins were the best of all. Sarah liked them almost as much as her sneakers.
It was not yet dark outside. Timothy and Sarah followed Beaver down the narrow trail through the woods.
Rain dripped from the trees and rolled off the leather jackets. The children dodged low branches and marched over a ridge. Beaver stopped at the top of a hill. He pointed in the direction of the setting sun.
Timothy and Sarah looked down at the water of the Upper Bay. A tall ship was anchored out in the middle. It was near a small, tree-covered island. Gray smoke curled up into the aft from a fire burning there.