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Title: Magic by the Lake
Author: Eager, Edward [Edward McMaken] (1911-1964)
Date of first publication: 1957
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, undated
   [internal evidence suggests it appeared between 1962 and
   1970, it was the seventh printing of the book, and that it
   was printed using the plates from the 1957 first edition]
Date first posted: 17 November 2015
Date last updated: 17 November 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1283

This ebook was produced by Al Haines and Mark Akrigg


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

In Chapter 3 there is a mention of G. A. Henty's historical
novel By Pike and Dyke. The printed edition used as the base
for this ebook includes a minor error ("Dike"), which we have
corrected.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by
N. M. Bodecker (1922-1988) have been omitted from this ebook.

In the printed edition used as the base for this ebook, a
list of six other books by Edward Eager appears at the book's
beginning. We have moved this list to the end of the ebook.

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  Magic by the Lake

  EDWARD EAGER



  ILLUSTRATED BY N. M. BODECKER



  HARCOURT, BRACE & WORLD, INC.
  NEW YORK





  GHIJKLMN



  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 57-5267

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




FOR CANDACE DRAKE,

my god-daughter and constant reader




CONTENTS

1. THE LAKE

2. THE MAGIC

3. THE CANOE

4. THE STORM

5. THE BOTTLE

6. THE ISLAND

7. THE TREASURE

8. THE END




MAGIC BY THE LAKE


1. The Lake

It was Martha who saw the lake first.  It was Katharine who noticed the
sign on the cottage, and it was Mark who caught the turtle, and it was
Jane who made the wish.  But it was Martha who saw the lake first.  The
others didn't see it until at least ten seconds later.  Or, as
Katharine put it, at long last when all hope was despaired of, the
weary, way-worn wanderers staggered into sight of the briny deep.

This, while poetic, was not a true picture of the case.  They really
weren't so wayworn as all that; the lake was only fifty miles from
home.  But cars didn't go so fast thirty years ago as they do today; so
they had started that morning, their mother and Martha and Mr. Smith
their new stepfather in front, and Jane and Mark and Katharine and the
luggage in the tonneau, which is what people called the back seat in
those days, and Carrie the cat wandering from shoulder to shoulder and
lap to lap as the whim occurred to her.

At first spirits were high, and the air rang with popular song, for
this was going to be the four children's first country vacation since
they could remember.  But two hours in a model-T Ford with those you
love best and their luggage is enough to try the patience of a saint,
and the four children, while bright and often quite agreeable, were not
saints.  It was toward the end of the second hour that the real
crossness set in.

"That lake," said Jane, "had better be good when we finally get to it.
If ever."

"Are you sure we're on the right road?" said Mark.  "That crossroad
back there looked better."

"I want to get out," said Martha.

"You can't," said their mother.  "Once you start that all pleasure is
doomed."

"Then I want to get in back," said Martha.

"Don't let her," said Katharine.  "She'll wiggle, and it's bad enough
back here already.  Sardines would be putting it mildly."

"Just cause I'm the youngest, I never get to do anything," said Martha.

"That's right, whine," said Katharine.

"Children," said their mother.

"I," said Mr. Smith, "suggest we stop and have lunch."

So they did, and it was a town called Angola, which interested Mark
because it was named after one of the countries in his stamp album, but
it turned out not to be very romantic, just red brick buildings and a
drugstore that specialized in hairnets and rubber bathing caps and
Allen's Wild Cherry Extract.  Half an hour later, replete with
sandwiches and tasting of wild cherry, the four children were on the
open road again.

Only now it was a different road, one that kept changing as it went
along.

First it was loose crushed stone that slithered and banged pleasingly
underwheel.  Then it gave up all pretense of paving and became just red
clay that got narrower and narrower and went up and down hill.  There
was no room to pass, and they had to back down most of the fourth hill
and nearly into a ditch to let a car go by that was heading the other
way.  This was interestingly perilous, and Katharine and Martha
shrieked in delighted terror.

The people in the other car had luggage with them, and the four
children felt sorry for them, going back to cities and sameness when
their own vacation was just beginning.  But they forgot the people as
they faced the fifth hill.

The fifth hill was higher and steeper than any of the others; as they
came toward it the road seemed to go straight up in the air.  And
halfway up it the car balked, even though Mr. Smith used his lowest
gear, and hung straining and groaning and motionless like a live and
complaining thing.

"Children, get out," said their mother.  So they did.

And relieved of their cloying weight, the car leaped forward and
mounted to the brow of the hill, and the four children had to run up
the hill after it.  That is, Jane and Mark and Katharine did.

Martha was too little to run up the hill.  She walked.  And nobody gave
her a helping hand or waited for her to catch up, and she felt deserted
and disconsolate, and the backs of her knees ached.  When she arrived
at the top, the others were already in the car and urging her on with
impatient cries.  But she didn't get in the car.  She threw herself
down among the black-eyed Susans at the side of the road to get her
breath.  She glanced around.  Then she jumped up again.

"Look!" she cried, pointing.

The others looked.  Below them and to one side was the lake.  They
could see only part of it, because land and trees got in the way, but
the water lay blue and cool, and there were cattails and water lilies,
and from somewhere in the distance came the put-put of a motorboat.

Then Jane and Mark and Katharine started to get back out of the car,
and they all clamored to go running right down to the lake now, and
take their bathing suits and jump into it.

Mr. Smith had a lenient look in his eye, and their mother must have
seen this, for she became firm.

"All in good time," she said.  "First things first.  Wait till we get
to the cottage and unpack."

So Martha climbed back in the car, not feeling out of breath at all any
more, and they drove on till they came to a gate.  Mark jumped out and
opened the gate, and closed it after them, and then they drove over a
rolling pasture, and there were sheep staring stupidly and a few rams
looking baleful, and then another gate, and beyond it a grove of trees,
and in the grove was the cottage.

And of course before there could be any base thought of unloading the
car, the four children had to explore every inch of the cottage and the
grounds around it, only not going near the water, because their
mother's word was law and they kept to the letter of it.  But they
could see the lake from every window and between the silver birches
that picturesquely screened the front.

And naturally there was a hammock slung between two of the birches, and
better still there was a screened porch with cots on it that ran around
three sides of the cottage, and that was where the children would
sleep.  And there were three little rooms with more cots in them
downstairs and another cot in a corner of the living room, for rainy
nights, only of course there wouldn't be many of those.

There was a big kitchen, and a big room upstairs for their mother and
Mr. Smith, and that was all of the cottage.

"I'm sorry it isn't any better," they heard Mr. Smith saying to their
mother.  "It was the best I could do so late in the season."

The four children couldn't imagine what he meant.  So far as they could
see, the cottage was all that was ideal.

Next came a horrid interval of unloading and unpacking, but few would
wish to hear about that.  Suffice it to say that at last the four
children emerged in their new bathing suits, and the lake was waiting.

Mark and Katharine were the first to emerge from the cottage.  As they
waited impatiently for the others, Katharine noticed a sign by the
front door.  It was of rustic letters made from pieces of tree branch,
and they hadn't seen it before because it was the same color as the
cottage's brown shingles.  "Magic by the Lake," it said.

Katharine looked at Mark, a wild guess in her eyes.  "Do you suppose?"
For the four children had had experience of magic, or at least a kind
of half magic, in the past.

(After the half magic was over, they wondered if they'd ever have any
magic adventures again, and in the book about it it says it was a long
time before they knew the answer.  And here it was only three weeks
later, and already Katharine was ready for more.  But if you think
three weeks isn't a long time for four children to be without magic, I
can only say that it seemed a long time to them.)

"Could it be going to start again already?" Katharine went on.

Mark shook his head.  "Nah," he said.  "It's too soon.  We couldn't be
_that_ lucky.  That's just one of those goofy names people give things.
You know, like 'Dreamicot' and 'Wishcumtrue.'  Doesn't mean a thing."

And then Jane and Martha appeared, and their mother and Mr. Smith with
them, and there was a race for the small private beach that went with
the cottage.  And the beach proved to be perfection, first pebbles and
tiny snail shells, then soft sand and shallow water for Martha and
Katharine, and farther on a diving raft for those like Jane and Mark,
who had passed their advanced tests at the "Y" and could swim out deep.

You all know what going swimming is like, and it is even better when
it's your first swim from your own private beach in the first lake
you've ever stayed at.

After an hour of bliss, there was the usual rumor among the grownups
that maybe they'd been in long enough, and after an hour more even the
four children were ready to admit there might be more to life than
paddle and splash.  Just merely lying in the sun on the sand might be
even better.  So they did that until their mother cried out and said
they would catch their deaths.  Then reluctantly they went back to the
cottage and put on blue jeans (Mark) and old dresses (the three girls)
and set out to explore the rest of the grounds.

They found a nice rustic summerhouse on the high point of the shore
that would be useful for sitting in and watching the sunset and
listening to the water and the mosquitoes.  And down on an inlet, round
the corner from the beach, was the boathouse.

The boathouse, when investigated, proved to contain a flat-bottomed
rowboat and a trim red canoe named _Lura_, after the first name of Mrs.
Kutchaw, from whom they'd rented the cottage.  The four children had
met Mrs. Kutchaw and did not think Lura an appropriate name for her,
but the canoe was dandy.  Only their mother, when consulted, said
they'd better not take the canoe out without a grownup along, just yet.
But the flat-bottomed rowboat they could use, if they were careful.

"Better stay close to shore," said Mr. Smith.  "There are parts of this
lake in the middle where they've never found bottom."

This impressed the four children very much, and they now had even more
respect for the lake than they'd had before.  As Mark said, it must be
some lake.

None of them had ever done any rowing at all, and of course they all
had to try.  But after Martha lost an oar and Mark nearly fell in
rescuing it, and Katharine almost shipwrecked them on an unhandy
sandbank, it was decided that Jane and Mark should take charge, and the
other two lay back in luxury and were passengers.

"This is keen," said Mark, after a bit.  "I've got the crude inkling of
it now, just about."

"I've almost figured out how not to catch crabs already," said Jane,
plying the other oar and belying her words by sending a sizable jet of
water all over Katharine.

But the shore was slipping by them visibly now, and they explored its
possibilities with eager eyes.  After their own grove of trees came a
cottage or two, then more trees, then more cottages closer together,
till up ahead the four children saw a little settlement, with a hotel
and a dance pavilion and a soft-drink stand and a pier.

"That must be Cold Springs," said Jane, for that was the unusual name
of the resort on this side of the lake.

All the cottages had boats, and most of the boats were on the water
now, and when Mark saw a large excursion launch called the _Willa Mae_
heading toward them from the hotel pier, he decided traffic conditions
were too difficult for beginners and turned the rowboat around.

So they rowed back along the shore and decided which cottages they
liked the looks of, and chose a pink one with curlicues as their
favorite, till they came in sight of their own house and beach, already
looking familiar and home-like.  They rowed round the bend toward the
boathouse, but the inlet was so inviting, what with water lilies
gleaming whitely, and frogs sitting on lily pads looking bemused, and
dragonflies hovering over the water, that Mark and Jane shipped their
oars, and the four children drifted gently in the afternoon sun.  It
was then that Martha saw the turtle swimming past.

It was Mark who caught it.  It was a big turtle, and it looked even
bigger as he deftly scooped it up and landed it in the bottom of the
boat.

"Watch out, maybe it's the snapping kind," said Jane.

But the turtle merely gave one look at the four children and withdrew
into its shell in scorn.

"Put it back," said Katharine, who was of a tender heart.  "It's not
happy here."

"It will be," said Mark.  "I'll build it a tank.  I'll catch lots more
and train them."

But when they had put the boat away and carried the turtle tenderly to
the shade of a friendly oak, building a tank right now seemed all too
energetic.  The four children sat in the shade, lazily eating an
occasional gooseberry from a convenient bush, and talked, instead.  The
turtle still refused to make friends.  Its apparently headless,
footless shell lay upon the ground nearby.

"This summer," said Katharine, "is going to be a thing of beauty and a
joy forever."

"Not quite," said Jane.  "It's the middle of July already.  Two more
months and prison doors will yawn.  And I get Miss Martin for seventh
grade next year.  Help!"  And she fell back in a deadly swoon at the
thought, and lay pulling up blades of grass and nibbling the juicy
white bits off the bottom.

"Why couldn't we have found this place way back at the beginning of
vacation?" said Katharine.

"If we had, we wouldn't have found the half-magic charm and Mother
wouldn't have got married," said Mark.

"And there wouldn't have been any Uncle Huge to rent a cottage for us,"
said Martha, for that was the charming name she insisted on calling Mr.
Smith, whose given name was Hugo.

"Maybe there would have," said Jane.  "If I could find a magic charm
right on Maplewood Avenue, it stands to reason there must be lots of it
lying around still, just waiting for the right person to come along.
Meaning me," she added smugly, and whistled through a blade of grass.

"Have you noticed the name on the cottage?" Katharine asked.

Martha and Jane hadn't.  Katharine told them.

"Pooh," said Mark.  "I told her that doesn't mean a thing.  Just a
goofy name."

"Maybe it does," said Katharine.  "Maybe it means exactly what it says.
Maybe there's a secret passage in the wall, and a wishing well, and
buried treasure in the cellar!"

"And a dear little fairy in the keyhole," said Mark scoffingly.
"Bushwah!"

"Magic by the lake," said Martha, trying out the words to herself.
"Doesn't it sound lovely?  Don't you wish it _were_ true?"

"_I_ certainly do," said Jane.

There was a silence.  The turtle stuck its head out of its shell.

"Now you've done it," it said.




2. The Magic

"What did you say?" said Martha.

"You heard me," said the turtle.

"I didn't know you could talk," said Katharine.

"Well, now you know," said the turtle.  And it started to withdraw into
its shell again.

"Wait.  Please.  Don't go," were the words of Katharine and Martha and
Jane.

Mark wasted no time in speech.  He laid hold of the turtle's head and
hung on, deaf to all fear of snappings.  The turtle's neck stretched
alarmingly, but it could not get free.

"I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable," Mark told it politely but firmly.
"But you can't just say a thing like that and disappear.  You've got to
tell us more."

"Oh, very well," said the turtle crossly.  "Unloose me," it added in
rather a lordly way, and Mark let go its head.  "Really, the manners of
some people!"

"You're magic," said Martha.

"Naturally," said the turtle.  "When a race lives as long as mine does,
it stands to reason it would pick up a few rudiments.  Of course," it
added proudly, "_I_ happen to be a particularly intelligent specimen,
even for a turtle."

"Can all turtles talk?" asked Katharine.

"Oh, _that!_" said the turtle.  "We pick _that_ up the first fifty
years."

"Why don't you do it oftener then?" said Jane.

"We couldn't be bothered!" snapped the turtle, looking at her with no
great liking.

Mark thought it wise to intervene.  "About what we were just saying,"
he said.  "Did you mean you've granted our wish?"

"Don't go saying _I_ did it!" said the turtle.  "Don't come complaining
to _me_!  People who go around making wishes without looking to see
what magic beings are listening can just take the consequences!"

"Oh, we're not complaining," said Katharine quickly.  "We think it's
awfully nice of you.  We're grateful.  You've been very obliging.
Thank you very much."

"Humph!" said the turtle.

"Magic's just about all we needed to make things just about perfect,"
said Jane.

"Ha!" said the turtle.  "That's what _you_ think.  And a lot you know
about it!  But of course you couldn't be sensible, could you, and order
magic by the pound, for instance, or by the day?  Or by threes, the
good old-fashioned way?  Or even by halves, the way you did before?"

"Why, how do you know about that?" said Martha.

"I know everything," said the turtle.  "If it's worth knowing.  But no,
not you.  You had to be greedy and order magic by the lake, and of
course now you've got a whole lakeful of it, and as for how you're
going to manage it, I for one wash my hands of the whole question!"

"You mean the whole lake's magic?" said Mark.  "_All_ of it?"

"It is now," said the turtle.

Jane's eyes turned toward the lake.  She gasped.  "Look!" she said.

The others looked.

"What did I tell you?" said the turtle.  It took one look at the lake,
shuddered, and withdrew into its shell.

The four children stared, transfixed.

Every bit of the lake's surface seemed to be suddenly alive, and each
bit of it was alive in a different way.  It was like trying to keep
track of a dozen three-ring circuses, only more so.

Water babies gamboled in the shallows.  A sea serpent rose from the
depths.  Some rather insipid-looking fairies flew over.  A witch
hobbled on a far bank.  A rat and a mole and a toad paddled along near
the willowy shore, simply messing about in a boat.  A family of dolls
explored a floating island.  On the other side of the same island, a
solitary man stared at a footprint in the sand.  A hand appeared in the
middle of the lake holding a sword.  Britannia ruled the waves.  Davy
Jones came out of his locker.  Neptune himself appeared, with naiads
and Nereids too numerous to mention.

The two younger children shut their eyes.

"Make it stop," said Martha.

"Now I know what too much of a good thing means," said Katharine.  "I
never thought there could be before."

"I wouldn't enjoy it," said Jane, surveying the lake critically.  "Not
in front of all those people.  We couldn't enter in."

"Maybe it could be sort of simplified," said Mark.  "Moderation is
pleasant to the wise."  And he turned to appeal to the turtle.

But the turtle had seized this opportunity to escape and was making for
the water as fast as it could, which was fortunately not very fast.

The four children gave chase and brought it to bay.  It went into its
shell again.  Mark rapped on the shell politely.  The turtle peered
cautiously from within.

"We've got to talk this over," said Mark.  "You've got to do something."

"I did," said the turtle, from inside the shell, "and now look!
There's no satisfying some people.  And you needn't go asking me to
take it back, because it's too late.  Magic has rules, you know, the
same as everything else."

"Yes, we know," said Mark, "but you'd never think so, to look at it
now.  It's all every which way."

They all looked at the lake again.  Some Jumblies had appeared, going
to sea in a sieve.  A walrus and a carpenter danced with some oysters
on a nearby shore.  In the distance Columbus was discovering America.

"It's too big," said Katharine.  "I think it needs alterations."

"Couldn't you let us have a few more wishes," said Jane, "so we can
sort of tame it and know where we stand?"

"We'll be awfully grateful," said Katharine.  "We'll build you a lovely
tank and give you the best care money can buy."

"No, thank you," said the turtle.  "I was perfectly happy in my own
inlet, until you came along.  I had a lovely life there.  I want to go
home."

"Not till you let us make more wishes," said Jane, putting her foot on
the turtle firmly.

"Oh, very well," said the turtle, "if I must, I must.  Only _I_ have to
make them.  _I_'m the magic one around here.  And only three, mind.
That's the magic number."

"Naturally," said Jane.

"Proceed," said the turtle.  Jane removed her foot.

"First of all," said Mark, who had been thinking, "let's have only one
magic adventure at a time.  And not every day, just every so often.
Then we'll have time to recover in between."

"Is that all one wish?" said the turtle.  "I'll try, but it will take a
lot out of me.  The other two had better be easy."

"No grownups noticing," said Katharine.  "So Mother won't abandon all
hope of sanity, the way she did last time."

"And nothing scary," said Martha.

"Granted," said the turtle, "and that is absolutely _all_."

The other three turned on Martha.  "What did you have to go and ask
_that_ for?" said Jane.  "Now it'll be all tame and namby-pamby and
watered down!  Like those awful children's editions of books Aunt Grace
always gives us!"

"That _Three Musketeers_ with Lady de Winter left right _out_!" said
Mark.

"Excavated versions, I think they're called," said Katharine.  "You can
see why."

The turtle gave them a look.  "Don't be so sure," it said.  "After all,
_I_ made the wish; so there won't be anything in it that would scare
_me_.  But then," it added, and Katharine swore afterwards that it
winked at them, "nothing _does_!"

And it started for the lake, leaving the four children with that to
think over.

Mark ran after it.  "Wait," he said.  "How'll we know when it's time?"

"You won't," said the turtle, turning at the water's edge.  "When you
feel like magic, touch the lake and wish, and if the time is ripe,
you'll get it.  Or not, as the case may be."  And it plopped into the
water.

"Will we see you again?" Jane called.

"Not if I see you first," were the parting words of the turtle.  "Try
not to call unless it's absolutely necessary."  And it swam away.

And where it touched the water, the magic started disappearing, and the
disappearing spread outwards to both sides, like the wake of a ship,
until, as the last ripple of turtle vanished in the distance, the lake
lay calm and untroubled and uninhabited (except in a normal fishy way)
under the setting sun, just as though nothing out of the ordinary had
happened.

"So that's that," said Jane, "and we're left to cope with it."

"When'll it start, do you suppose?" said Katharine.

"Tonight?" faltered Martha.  "We just touched the lake a while back,
and I was probably wishing all sorts of things."

"I shouldn't think so," said Mark.  "I shouldn't think till tomorrow,
when it's fresh.  It's getting pretty late now."

"Good," said Martha.  "I'd rather it didn't start at night."

"Joy cometh in the morning," said Katharine.

"Dinner!" called their mother.

The four children went into the cottage.

Going to bed that night was interesting, for they had never slept on
their own sleeping porch before, to say nothing of crickets, and water
softly lapping, and the sound that night in the country makes, which
really isn't a sound at all but the echo of silence.

"The end of a perfect day," said Mark, from his side of the porch.

"Peace, perfect peace," said Jane, from hers.

On the long front part, by the summerhouse and the silver birches,
Martha got out of her bed and into Katharine's.

"What's the matter?  Can't you sleep?" said Katharine.

"I keep thinking," said Martha.  "I keep thinking about all that magic
in the lake.  And that part where they've never found bottom.  And that
big snake thing that came up out of it."

"Trust ye unto the magic's power," called Jane, who had overheard.  "It
never let us down before."

"In youth it sheltered us," said Katharine.  "Chances are it'll protect
us now."

At that moment a bloodcurdling laugh rent the air.

"Help!  What was that?" said Jane.

"A loon," said Mark, who was a Boy Scout.

"What's a loon?" whispered Martha, trembling.

"A bird," Katharine told her.

"It couldn't be," said Martha.  "It's that big snake thing."

"Hush," said Katharine.  "Listen to the crickets."

"I don't like them," said Martha.  "They could be ghosts twittering."

"They aren't," said Katharine.  "Get back in your own bed."

"Hold my hand, then," said Martha.

"Oh, all right," said Katharine.

And Martha got back in her own bed, and Katharine reached out an arm
from _hers_, and the sisters joined hands in the space between.  And
which limp hand fell first from the lifeless clasp of the other and
sank into utter drowsiness will never be known.  The next thing that
was known was the sun shining in their eyes and turning the lake all
blue and gold.

Breakfast followed as the day the night, and then Mr. Smith had to
leave for the city in time to open the bookshop for the afternoon,
which is what he had decided to do every day this summer except week
ends, when he would be gloriously free, like the others.  But first he
drove the four children over the rolling pasture to a farm on the red
clay road, and they saw milk being milked, and carried the nourishing
cans of it back to the car; and today Mr. Smith delivered it and them
to the cottage, but after this getting the milk would be the four
children's morning task, on foot.

And then Mr. Smith departed, and the children's mother suggested a
morning dip.

Farms have charms to soothe the most savage breast, and swimming is
just about the highest good; so it was some time before thoughts of
magic entered the children's heads.  When they touched the lake for the
first time, all they wished was that swimming would be as wonderful
today as it was yesterday, and it was.

It wasn't till they lay spent on the sand that they began wondering
about the magic, and when it would begin, and what would be its
alluring form when it did.

"Do you suppose we get to sort of choose at all, or will it take us by
surprise?" said Jane.

"Shush," said Katharine, nodding in the direction of their mother, who
was sitting all too nearby.

But their mother didn't look up from the book she was reading and
didn't appear to have heard a word; so that part of the magic seemed to
be working already.

"What would everybody choose if we could?" said Jane.

"Pirates," said Mark at once, touching the edge of lake that rippled
shallowly at his feet.

"Mermaids," said Katharine, touching her bit of lake-edge at the same
moment.

"Neither one," said Martha quickly, but nobody heard her because
everybody was talking at once.

"That's done it," Mark said.  "Now I suppose we'll get a sort of blend."

"What would the blend of a mermaid and a pirate be?" said Jane.

"A mer-pirate," said Katharine.  "Long golden hair and black whiskers."

But that wasn't what the four children saw a few minutes later.  What
they saw, floating toward the beach, was a perfectly ordinary mermaid,
such as you might meet any day in any perfectly ordinary sea.  She was
combing her long golden hair, and the scales of her supple tail
glittered through the foam behind her.  She saw the four children and
beckoned with her golden comb.

"Come, dear children, let us away, down and away below," were her
thrilling words.

Martha chose this moment to be difficult, as only she knew how.

"I won't go," she said.  "I know all about what she does.  Mother read
me a story.  She lures poor sailors, and they drown.  Something about a
laurel eye."

Jane propelled her sister forward.  "You can't back out now," she said,
"now we're in the thick of it."

"It would be changing courses in the middle of the stream," said
Katharine.

"Then that's what I'll do," said Martha.

But Jane took hold of one of her arms and Mark took hold of the other,
and Katharine pushed from behind, and the mermaid seemed to take hold
of all of them, though she had only two hands, and they shot forward
into the lake.

"Mother!" called Martha, to the vanishing shore.

"I see you," her mother nodded smilingly.  "Keep it up; you're swimming
fine."

Martha's answering wail was cut short as the waters closed over her
head.

At first she kept her eyes tight shut, but at last fear gave way to
curiosity, and she opened them cautiously.  To her surprise she could
see perfectly well under water, which had never been true before, but
she couldn't see much, because they were going too fast.  She got an
impression of sandy bottom far below.  Things moved squidgily in it,
and Martha shut her eyes again firmly.

Katharine was holding her breath.  After a while she began to wonder if
this were absolutely necessary.  At last, when utter bursting seemed
likely, she decided to try.

"Can we breathe, do you suppose?" she said, "or will we drown?"

"Glug glug," were the words of Mark.  Or at least that's what they
sounded like.  Katharine decided that breathing was possible but
conversation wasn't.

Then, just as the rushing wateriness was beginning to pall on even the
most venturesome heart (Jane's), there was a change in the atmosphere.
It grew lighter, and brighter, and next thing the four children shot
out of it entirely into open air.

"Land ahoy!" said Mark.

"Where are we?" said Martha, relieved to find herself anywhere.

Jane's eyes were shining.  "Lagoons!" she said, pointing.  "Desert
islands.  Coral reefs.  Coves."

The others looked where she pointed.  There was only one island and one
coral reef and one lagoon (or cove), but that was exciting enough.
They were floating rapidly past the reef and into the lagoon and toward
the island, the mermaid (who seemed to be a mermaid of few words) still
towing them.

Then they touched land, and barnacles scraped Katharine's knee.

"I didn't know the lake had all this in it," she said.  "Which way is
home?"

"Don't be silly," said Mark.  "We left that old lake behind ages ago.
We're halfway around the world by now.  Feel the climate.  It's
tropical."

Jane was already scrambling up the rocks.  Mark hoisted Martha up to
her, and he and Katharine followed.  The mermaid draped herself fishily
against the base of the rock.

"So far, so good," she said.  "Now sing."

"Sing what?" said Katharine.

"What for?" said Mark.

"To lure a ship in to shore, of course, stupid," said the mermaid.

"What did I tell you?" said Martha.

But now the mermaid was raising her voice in song, and Jane and
Katharine, feeling that in a magic adventure it is best to do whatever
seems to be expected of you, joined in.  After a bit, Martha added her
piping tones to theirs.

Who knows what song the sirens sang?  I do not, and neither did Sir
Thomas Browne, who once wrote some well-known lines on the subject.
Few will ever know what song Jane and Katharine and Martha sang upon
that coral coast, either.

But they listened to the mermaid's tune and did their best to follow
it, and as to what words they sang, they let inspiration take its
course.  "Come unto these yellow sands," they sang.  "Come all ye young
fellows who follow the sea.  Come, come, I love you only; my heart is
true."

Katharine even tried to put in the alto, the way her Aunt Grace always
did in church.  As for Jane, she got carried away completely, and soon
was nodding and becking and smiling wreathed smiles, and waving her
freckled arms with alluring grace, and combing her longish un-golden
hair with the mermaid's extra comb, which she borrowed for the purpose.

Mark, who had been holding his ears, turned away and made a gagging
sound.

But the song seemed to do the trick, for a sail appeared on the horizon
and turned into a ship that veered from its course and came rapidly
toward them.  And as it came nearer, a delighted gasp was heard from
the four children, and they would have shivered happily in their shoes,
except that they didn't have any on, being still dressed for swimming.

For the ship was dark and looming, and its sails were black and
sinister.  A skull and crossbones was its suitable flag.  And among the
toiling figures on the deck walked a tall man in high boots and the
kind of hat that made it all too plain what his dreadful trade was, and
from the way he strutted up and down you could tell even at a distance
that he thought it was a glorious thing to be a pirate king.

"Shiver my timbers!" said Jane.

"Shush," said Mark.

The ship was so near now that the four children could hear the pirate's
voice plainly as he gave orders to drop anchor and man the longboat.  A
few seconds later the longboat began to descend.

"This is where I leave you," said the mermaid, in a businesslike way.
And without a backward glance she turned tail and sank beneath the
waves.

"Wait!" cried Katharine, for there was much she wanted to ask the
mermaid about life in undersea circles.

But the mermaid was gone, and the four children were left a prey to
feelings of doubt and conspicuousness as the pirate chief and his men
drew ever nearer to shore in the longboat.

"Let's hide," said Martha suddenly, and all agreed that the suggestion
was excellent.

The island afforded little shelter except palm trees, but the four
children were soon stationed behind four of these, all too aware of the
fact that their plumper parts were still sticking out plainly to either
side of the meager trunks.

The bow of the longboat ground against sand, and the pirate chief
leaped nimbly ashore, for all his high, heavy boots.  The children
could see that he was a handsome devil, with beautifully curling black
whiskers.

"Up with the treasure and after me," he said to his men.  "Bring
spades, picks, and shovels."

Some of the men heaved a great chest up out of the boat.  Others
followed with the tools of digging.  The black-whiskered one strode to
a sandy spot just in front of the four palm trees.  He pointed with his
fine, white, gentlemanly hand that had rings on all the fingers,
diamonds and emeralds.

"Dig," he said.

And the men dug long and deep in the sand, while their chief paced up
and down, muttering to himself and biting his nails.  He did not seem
to see the four children, though they were sure that any minute he
would.

"This treasure," he muttered, "will rest safely here till I am ready to
retire and take my place in the world as a gentleman, or my name's not
Chauncey Cutlass!"

One of the digging men had overheard, and whispered to his fellows.
They put down their spades.  The first man stepped forward, with the
others behind him.  "What about our part in it?" he said.  "We pirated
it the same as you."

Chauncey Cutlass looked at him, and smiled a dangerous smile.  "I have
heard," he said, "of a captain who buried a man alive with his treasure
to guard it.  Are you so fond of this chest, Simon Sparhatch, that you
would care to stay with it?  Or are any of you other gallows-fodder
anxious to take his place?"  And he drew a pistol from his belt.

Simon Sparhatch retreated, a scowl on his ugly face.  The men growled
in their throats but made no reply.

"Well, all right, then," said Chauncey Cutlass.  "Dig."

The men dug again.

Katharine, like many a more classic heroine before her, chose this
moment to sneeze.

The pirates jumped.  So did the four children.

"Hark!" said Chauncey Cutlass.  "What was that?"

There was a pause.  Then Mark proved what a hero he could be, if
necessary.  He stepped out from behind his palm tree.

"It was me," he started to say.  But he suppressed the words in time.
For Chauncey Cutlass and his men were looking straight at him, and yet
they seemed to be looking straight through him at the horizon beyond.

"'Twas nothing," said Cutlass, after a moment.  "Mayhap a sea gull
flying over."

"A black-tailed godwit, I'd say," said a learned pirate, "or a booby."

"Or a seal barking," said another.

"Can't they see us?" hissed Jane, from behind her tree.

"I guess not," Mark hissed back.  "Kathie wished grownups wouldn't
notice, and I guess they're grownups, the same as any."

"But they're magic," Katharine joined in the whispering.  "They ought
to notice _everything_.  You'd think."

"I guess they _kind_ of notice, but not much," whispered Mark.

"How the wind whispers in the trees," said Chauncey Cutlass, just to
prove it.

"This is dandy," said Jane.  "Now we can plague them and prey on them
and bamboozle them to our heart's content, and they'll never know who.
What could be sweeter?"

"What'll we do?" said Katharine.

"Let's not do anything," said Martha.

"Hurry up with that digging," said Chauncey Cutlass to his men, "and
back to the ship.  I like not this shore.  The very trees seem to be
staring at me, and the air seems full of voices.  Spirits, I suppose.
Still, all the better to guard the treasure with.  Now.  In with the
box."

The digging men stopped digging and heaved the treasure chest down and
into the hole.  Then they started to shovel the earth in on top of it.

"Heel it down firmly," said Chauncey Cutlass, and they did, with a flat
stone on top to mark the spot.  Then the elegant pirate ordered one of
the men to spread a cloak on the ground so he wouldn't soil his own
velvet knees.  And he knelt down and carved his initials on the stone
with a diamond from one of his rich rings.

The four children meanwhile had repaired to the longboat, and the
others were soothing the faltering Martha, who wanted to steal the boat
now while all backs were turned and row away with it.  And she wasn't
interested in staying to play tricks on the pirates, either.

"It wouldn't be right," she said.  "What did they ever do to us?"

"Honestly!" said Jane.  "Imagine bringing up a thing like that at a
time like this!  Pointing morals when you're really just scared!
They're _pirates_!  They _ought_ to be preyed on!  It's the Golden
Rule!"

"Yes, I suppose there is that," said Martha.

"Don't worry," said Mark.  "We've had lots fearfuller adventures than
this and lived to tell the tale."

"That's true," said Martha.  She wrestled with her fears for a minute,
then set her jaw grimly.  "All right," she said.  "It's war to the
teeth."

"Good," said Jane.

And now Chauncey Cutlass had finished his carving and strode to the
shore, and his men clambered after him.  The four children barely had
time to jump into the longboat before it was pushed off.

Inside the boat it was rather crowded, what with four extra passengers.
"Stop shoving," said Captain Cutlass to Simon Sparhatch.

"I ain't," said Sparhatch.

"This is lovely," said Katharine, who was squashed between them.  "Like
being invisible, only better!"  And she nudged the captain in the ribs
with her elbow.

"Don't be so familiar," said the captain, glaring at Sparhatch
haughtily.

"I bain't," said Sparhatch.

"Careful," said Mark to Katharine.  "Don't do anything rash till we get
on the ship.  Once aboard the lugger and the world is ours."

"Maybe we can scuttle it with all hands," said Martha, her eyes
glowing.  That was always the way with Martha.  Once she stopped being
a baby she could be the terror of the block and the fiercest of any of
them.  Mark only hoped she wouldn't go too far, now she was roused.

They drew nearer to the ship, and the children could read its chilling
name, _The Scourge of Cuba_.

"Yo ho," said Jane, "for the Spanish Main."

"Pieces of eight," muttered Martha.

The pirates climbed the rope ladder to the deck, but the four children
lolled luxuriously in the longboat and waited for the pirates to hoist
them aboard.

"Summat be ailing with this here boat," said one of the pirates who
were doing the hoisting.  "It be heavy as a old scow."

"'Tis bewitched," said Simon Sparhatch, who was helping him.  "'Tis
them island spirits still a-following of us.  Sure 'tis a cursed
voyage.  There be a Jonah aboard, and scrape my barnacles if it be not
the captain hisself, the great strutting popinjay!"

"Stow it, Sparhatch," said the other pirate.  "That be mutinous talk."

"Then let it be," said Sparhatch, making the boat fast.

This gave Mark an idea.  Maybe if they could stir the men up enough,
then maybe they would have a mutiny as well as a pirate ship, and who
could ask for anything more?  As they scrambled out of the longboat
onto the deck, he called the others around him in a whispering huddle.

They made a few quick plans and then separated, Mark hurrying forward
to the captain's cabin, while the three others ran to the mainmast.
Coming from inland and being mere girls besides, they knew little of
nautical matters, but Katharine untied all the knots she could see, and
Jane found a jackknife and cut a few ropes here and there, and the
sails were soon sagging and flopping and tangling with each other like
wet sheets that you try to hang out on the line on a windy washday.

"Sink me!" cried one of the pirates, looking up.  "What devil's wind is
this, fouling our rigging while the sea be all calm as glass and nary a
breeze stirring?"

"Sure the ship be haunted!" cried another.

Katharine located the line that controlled the skull-and-crossbones
flag and started to let it down, and a moan went up from the deck.

"Wurra wurra!" cried all the pirates.  "We be all doomed!  See the flag
standing at half-mast for the whole crew of us!"

As for Martha, she knew no bounds.  "Pinch them, fairies, black and
blue!" she cried.  And running among the pirates, she suited the action
to the words.  The pirates began howling with fear and swatting at the
air, and one or two even climbed the rail, ready to plunge overboard
and escape the ghostly pinches.

"Belay!" cried Simon Sparhatch, taking command of the panicking men.
"The doom need be for only one of us!  And who but that great fop of a
captain who landed us on that cursed island and catched us this swarm
of spirits in the first place?  Over the side with him and rid us of
these pinching pests!"  And he snatched up a belaying pin and started
for the captain's cabin.

All the pirates ran along after him, with cries of "Mutiny!  Keelhaul
him!  Down among the dead men!"  And Jane and Katharine and Martha ran
with the others.

Meanwhile, Mark had stealthily entered the captain's cabin and looked
around.  The captain was standing before a mirror curling his black
whiskers with an iron and admiring his reflection.  Mark stole up
behind him, removed the brace of pistols from his belt, gave them a
good dousing with the captain's own Eau de Cologne, and replaced them.
The captain didn't seem to notice, exactly, but an uneasy expression
crossed his countenance.

"Am I alone?" he said to the air.  "I thought I was alone."

Mark closed the door behind him.  "Now we can have a really good talk,"
he said.

The captain didn't seem to hear the words, exactly, but he saw the door
closing, and his proud face blanched.

"Whose ghost are you?" he said.  "Are you Horrible Herbert that I fed
to the sharks in Biscay Bay or Newgate Ned that I marooned and left to
die on Rumtoddy Reef?"

"Beware!" said Mark in a hollow voice.  And whether or not the word was
heard, the sense of it got across.  Chauncey Cutlass trembled.

"Your ship is adrift, and your men have mutinied," said Mark.  "You are
as good as shark-bait, yourself, already!"  And the shouts of the
mutinying crew were heard outside the door to prove it.

Chauncey Cutlass showed that, whatever else he was, he had courage.  He
flung the door open and fired point-blank at Simon Sparhatch, who was
in the lead.  But a damp and perfumy puff of smoke was all that issued
from the pistol.

"Ha!" said Sparhatch, sniffing the air.  "His powder be like himself, a
great fizzle!  A fitting ammunition for a mincing jackanapes!  Up with
him to the deck and toss the dainty dancing-master over the rail, then
away to Hispaniola to make our fortune!"

The captain was trundled up the companionway, and villain though he
was, the four children could not help feeling sorry for him, a victim
of that merciless crew of cutthroats.

But they reckoned without the craft and courage of Chauncey Cutlass.

"Avast!" he cried, as the sailors lifted him to the rail.  "If you drop
me, I swear by the Great Horn Spoon I'll come back and haunt you worse
than these others!  A plague on you for a bunch of mollycoddles,
letting some old ghosts ruin our whole cruise!  If you do as I say,
we'll be free of the pesky things sooner than you can box the compass!
If we can feel their pinches, surely we can feel to _catch_ them, or
I'm a swab and a landlubber!"

The crew fell back and hesitated before him.

"Quick!" he went on, jumping lightly down from the rail.  "Batten down
all hatches so none may escape from the deck.  Then form two parties,
and all in each party join hands.  Stretch out the width of the deck.
Start at the stern and let one party stalk them to starboard and the
other to port.  When the two parties meet, you should have them trapped
between you!"

Cowed by his fierce glance, the men obeyed, though Simon Sparhatch
sulked and muttered.

And a horrible sort of game followed, as the pirates stalked the deck,
feeling before them and hunting down the spirit-like children, who fled
vainly from one line only to encounter the other.

"Here's one," cried a pirate, laying hold of Jane.  "A fierce female
ghost, to judge by the hair and teeth."

"And here be another," said a second pirate, poking at Martha
experimentally.  "A small fat one."

"Why, you!" said Martha, outraged.

Katharine was caught after that, and Mark last of all.

"Beware!" Mark cried balefully, as before, but this time Chauncey
Cutlass was beyond frightening.

"I don't care whose ghosts you are!" he said.  "I'll teach you to come
haunting _me_!  Fetch a plank and let them walk it.  Then we'll see
whether ghosts can swim!"

A plank was fetched, and the four children pushed onto it by the
feel-and-grab method.  Though invisible to the pirates, they were all
too evident to each other, and none took comfort from the pale cheeks
of the others.

"Will we drown, do you suppose?" said Jane.  "We didn't before."

"Then we had a personally conducted mermaid," Katharine reminded her.

"Now, if ever," said Mark, "is time to call the turtle.  It said not
unless it was absolutely necessary, and it is."

"Here, turtle," said Martha.

"That's no way," said Mark.  "It's not just some old pet.  You want to
be respectful, and flatter it.  O turtle," he began.  But at that
moment Chauncey Cutlass signaled to the men to tilt the plank, and his
words ended in wetness.

There was a moment of doubt, and struggling, and lashing out, and
courage sinking to its lowest ebb.  Then a familiar voice sounded in
Mark's ear.

"Well?" it said.  "Pirates were what you asked for.  I hope you're
satisfied."

Mark opened his eyes.  A familiar figure was swimming beside him.  But
there seemed to be three more figures just like it, only smaller,
swimming there, too.  And suddenly Mark realized that he felt very
peculiar and stiff in the middle and small in the arms and legs.

"What happened?" he said.

"Didn't you ever hear of turning turtle?" said the turtle.  "It was the
only thing I could think of at the time."

Mark looked down at himself.  It was true.  Plated shells encased him
on top and below, and little fat arms and legs protruded from the
corners and were paddling him along through the water.

"Now," said the turtle, "you can see how the other half lives."

"Thanks," said Mark.

They went on swimming.  They went on swimming for what seemed like
forever, for turtles are not the quickest of creatures, but at last
they came into shallow water and up over the familiar sand and pebbles
and snail shells of their own beach.

"There," said the turtle.  And it swam away, leaving the other four
turtles on the shore, confidently waiting to change back to their real
selves.

But they didn't.

Not a thing happened except that their mother looked up from her book
and said, "Well, did you have a good swim?  Come on inside; it's time
for lunch."

And she went into the cottage, and the four turtles looked at each
other, and shrugged, which is hard to do when you are a turtle, and
plodded after her.

Carrie the cat took one look at them, hissed, spat, and leaped onto the
mantel.  But their mother went on not noticing a thing, except to scold
them for tracking water into the house and tell them to go back outside
and dry themselves.

Handling a Turkish towel is even harder for a turtle than shrugging,
and sitting at the table to eat lunch was harder yet, particularly as
it was turtle soup.

"I feel like a cannibal," said Katharine.

"Cheer up.  Maybe it's just mock," said Mark.

"What do turtles eat usually?" said Martha.

"Fish eggs, don't they?" said Jane.  "Do we have any caviar?"

"Certainly not," said their mother.  "What in the world are you talking
about?"

After lunch she took them for a walk to Cold Springs to buy a few
necessaries of life, and the four turtles caused quite a stir among the
lakeside children as they stood in the grocery-store cashier's line
carrying their parcels.  But of course none of the grownups noticed
anything unusual, and scolded all their children roundly when they got
home for telling such horrid pointless fibs.  Several were sent to bed
without any supper.

As for Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha's mother, she didn't seem
to see the other children crying out and pointing, but got quite cross
at her own offspring for the way they were dilly-dallying and walking
so slowly today.  The four turtles grew wearier and wearier and more
and more footsore as they plodded homeward, trying to keep up with her.

It was with feelings of utter exhaustion that they finally flopped on
the cool grass under the hammock late that afternoon.  Martha went so
far as to withdraw into her shell and announce that she wasn't coming
out until conditions improved.

"How long will it last, do you suppose?" said Katharine.

"Till sundown, I guess, if it's like all the books," said Mark, "though
this isn't like any book I ever read."

"The shell part's the worst," said Jane.  "My middle keeps itching, and
I can't get at it to scratch."

At that moment the sun sank redly behind the silver birches, and a few
seconds later Katharine smiled with relief at the ordinary, but
welcome, face of her older sister.  Martha uncurled her head and arms
and legs from a very peculiar and uncomfortable-looking position.

"After this," said Mark, "I'm going to feel lots closer to that turtle.
Think what it goes through."

"I shouldn't think it would put up with it," said Jane.  "I should
think it'd go on strike."

"We must be specially kind to it," said Katharine, "when we see it
again."

"I wonder when we will," said Martha.

"Dinner," said their mother, from the doorway.

And they went inside.




3. The Canoe

"The thing is," said Mark, after their morning swim next day, "how
often does every so often _come_?  We said not every day; so at least
today'll be time out."

"That doesn't signify," said Katharine.  "We asked it to give us time
to rest up, in between, and I'm all rested now."

"Who isn't?" said Jane.

"Me," said Martha, but of course nobody paid any attention to _her_.

"The turtle said when we feel like magic we should touch the lake and
wish, and if the time is ripe, we'll get it," Mark reminded them.

"Well?" said Jane.  "What are we waiting for?  Lake, here we come.
What does everybody want to wish?  Now _I_ think," she started to go on.

"If you ask _me_," said Katharine at the same time.

"_My_ idea is," said Mark.

A period of utter confusion and rude interrupting followed.  But at
last Jane and Katharine and Mark decided that being in on the burning
of Rome was what would make this morning just about perfect.

Martha said she didn't feel like going anywhere or seeing anything
right now, let alone a burning, and anyway their mother had said never
to play with fire, and anyway she wasn't going to come.  And she
started burying herself in the sand, all but her head, "like an
ostrich, only backwards," as Katharine said.

"Never mind her.  Come on," said Jane.  So she and Mark and Katharine
went down to the water's edge and touched the lake and wished.  They
waited, but nothing happened.

"I guess the time's still green," said Katharine.

"Yes," said Mark.  "I kind of figured it might be.  It stands to
reason.  We don't want to be greedy."

"We ought to have sort of a timetable, though," said Jane.  "Like every
third day or something.  Something we can depend on.  This way's too
risky.  It'd be just like that magic to sneak up behind us when we
least want it."

"Let's find the turtle and ask," said Katharine.

To board the flat-bottomed rowboat was but the work of a moment, and a
moment after _that_ Jane and Mark and Katharine were cruising round the
inlet among the frogs and the lily pads.  Turtles were there in
abundance on every side, but who was to say which was _their_ turtle?

"O turtle?" said Mark experimentally to the nearest one.  It took one
look at the four children, turned, and swam away as fast as it could.

"Was that him or not?" said Katharine ungrammatically.  "I thought ours
was more sort of pointy."

"What's the difference?" said Jane.  "Let it go.  Our turtle said _all_
turtles are magic, didn't it?  All we need to do is row up near any one
of them and wish it would start granting wishes.  If we could get two
or three of them working for us at once, we could have wishes
practically every few minutes!"

"No, that wouldn't be right," said Mark.  "It'd be going against the
rules, I know it would.  It wouldn't be fair."

"Who cares?" said Jane ruthlessly.  "We can be the exception that
improves the rule."  She raised her voice.  "I wish," she began.

Immediately there was a plopping sound from all sides as all the
turtles in the neighborhood jumped into the water and swam rapidly away
before they could hear any more.  So that seemed to be that.

"Oh, well," said Mark.  "We've still got the lake, magic or not."  And
Jane and Katharine had to agree.

They tied the boat to a convenient willow tree and went and dug Martha
out of the sand and threw her into the shallow water to wash her off.
Then they all jumped in after her and had another swim.  Then it was
time to get dressed for lunch.  And after lunch their mother sent them
to Cold Springs to get the mail.

Getting the mail was lots more fun at Cold Springs than it ever had
been at home, with none of your ordinary mailmen or post office boxes,
exciting as these may be at times, like Christmas, for instance.

Cold Springs managed these things much more interestingly.

At exactly one o'clock every day a truck came whizzing up and stopped
between the hotel and the dance pavilion.  And a hoarse-voiced lady in
a red straw hat stood in the back of the truck and cried out the names
on the different pieces of mail, and everybody stood around listening,
and those whose mail it was spoke up and claimed it.

Today the four children stood up in the crowd and listened admiringly
while the hoarse lady shrieked, "Yagerfritz!  Spooncraft!  Iggleblod!"
Or perhaps those weren't quite the names, but that's what they sounded
like.

"I wish we'd get an interesting package, don't you?" said Katharine to
Martha.

"Don't!" Martha almost screamed.  "Suppose the time got to be ripe
suddenly and it came true?  We might get a ticking one with a bomb
inside!"

"I haven't touched the lake, silly," said Katharine.

"You have so," said Martha.  "You were lazy and left your bathing suit
on under your dress; I saw you.  It's still damp, and there's lake
water touching you right now."

Katharine looked down.  Sure enough, a damp patch showed through her
dress at her middle.

At that moment the hoarse lady called out the four children's last
name.  Everybody gasped.  Mark took the package gingerly.  But it
turned out to be just the extra blue jeans their mother had ordered for
him, and all agreed that, while useful, they could hardly be called
interesting.

Katharine got a letter from her best friend Edie Eubank, and that was
all the mail.  Edie was enthralling in her description of life at home
during the one day the children had been gone.  The Loo Tay Hand
Laundry had burned down, and Edie had caught seventeen grasshoppers and
put them in a bottle, and she was yours friendly, Edie Eubank.  By the
time Katharine had finished reading the letter out loud, the four
children were back at the cottage.

For the rest of the afternoon they went their several ways.  Martha
started making a collection of snail shells from the beach, and
Katharine caught grasshoppers and put them in a bottle, to be like Edie
Eubank, only she was tender-hearted and let them out again every time
she had two or three gathered together.

Mark lay in the hammock reading _By Pike and Dyke_.

Only Jane, ever the most persistent, put her time to good employ by
making a list of interesting wishes to be wished.  She started with
suitably watery things, like diving twenty thousand leagues under the
sea and getting caught in a typhoon and crossing the Pacific Ocean in
an aeroplane (for few people had done that in those days).

But as the afternoon wore on, she branched out and put down just
anything exciting that occurred to her.  Pretty soon Mark came over to
the summerhouse, where she was sitting, and started reading over her
shoulder (and breathing down her neck).

"Besiege a castle.  Explore Mars.  Be a movie star," he read.  And then
down at the bottom of the page, "rabbit hole?" written with a question
mark after it and then crossed out.

"What's that mean?" he said.

Jane blushed.  "Oh, that.  That's nothing.  That's dumb.  When I was
little, I always kind of wanted to be a rabbit in a rabbit hole.
That's kid stuff, though."

"Sure."  Mark was sympathetic.  "And if we did it, that would be bound
to be the day a fox came hunting round."  But all the same it made him
feel good about Jane somehow to think that she could have ideas like
that, and not just be bold and dashing _all_ of the time.  "Being
otters might not be so bad," he said.  "They have lots of fun, sliding
down those old slides.  It'd be handy to the lake, too."

And then the chug-a-chug of Mr. Smith's car was heard, and Mark ran to
open the gate and let him in from the field.

Mr. Smith seemed tired at dinner, as well he might, for driving fifty
miles twice a day wasn't so easy back in those earlier days of
motoring.  He seemed a bit worried, too, and said business at the
bookshop hadn't been too good today.  But he perked up after dinner and
asked whether everybody would like to go up to Cold Springs for a
while.  For at Cold Springs there was dancing in the pavilion three
nights a week, and this was one of the nights.

Even as he spoke, the strains of distant music came wafting down the
lake, with that extra haunting beauty that music heard over the water
always has, and from that moment on all was spatter and dash as the
girls did the dinner dishes and everybody hurried into good clothes and
rummaged for extra flashlights.  Twenty minutes later the procession
started, going single file because the path was narrow.

Walks in the country at night are always mysterious, and land that may
be friendly and familiar by day seems suddenly strange and untamed.
Tonight their own grove of trees was a haunted forest and their lake a
vast unexplored sea, hanging dark and cavernous at their elbow.  The
silver birches glimmered like ghosts.  The four children were glad when
they passed a lighted cottage.

But soon there were more lights up ahead, and the noise and bustle of
Cold Springs.  And the dance orchestra, which had taken time out for
Orange Crushes, began playing again, and they entered the pavilion to
the triumphant strains of "Tiger Rag."

Mr. Smith bought a whole strip of dance tickets at ten cents each, and
he and the children's mother danced.  He offered some tickets to the
four children, but Mark shuddered at the very thought and quickly lost
himself in a crowd that was buying cotton candy, and Jane and Katharine
were too proud to dance with each other.

"What are we, mere wallflowers?" said Jane haughtily.

So they and Martha sat and watched the dancers, and pretty soon Mark
joined them and treated them all to cotton candy, to make amends.

It was interesting studying the lovely young girls and their
white-flanneled escorts and deciding which were the prettiest (or
handsomest) and criticizing their dresses and dancing form.  At least,
it was interesting to Jane and Katharine.

"Cheek-to-cheek!" said Jane, pointing to a couple that was dancing in
that picturesque position.  "I think it's disgusting!"

"Romantic, though," said Katharine dreamily.

Mark uttered a sound of contempt.  What interested Mark was a sign
prominently displayed on the dance floor.  "Shimmy-Sha-Wobble
Positively Prohibited," it said.  He hoped that pretty soon somebody
would do the Shimmy-Sha-Wobble, whatever that might be, and be put off
the floor.  But nobody did, and he began to yawn, a prey to
restlessness.

Martha was openly bored, and went and climbed up on the bandstand and
talked to the piano player, and kept asking him to play "Yes, We Have
No Bananas," which was the only popular song she knew, until he told
her to go away.

But at long last even Jane and Katharine grew weary of merely gazing at
the vain pomp and glitter, and the four children wandered on, out to
the end of the pavilion, where it projected over the lake.  They stood
looking at the water plashing alluringly below.  Presently Mark climbed
over the rail and sat on the edge, and the others followed.  They took
off their shoes and socks and swung their legs, paddling their toes in
the cool wetness (all except Martha, whose legs were too short to
reach).

"How old do you suppose you have to be before you can start going to
dances _really_?" said Katharine.

"_I_ mean to start when I'm sixteen," said Jane.

"I think it's dumb," said Mark.  "Pushing each other round an old
floor, slub, slub, slub, what's the point?"

"I don't want to be sixteen, ever," said Martha.  "I just want to stay
the age I am."

"A lot you know!" said Jane.  "Why, sixteen's the beginning of
_everything_!  It's just the whole crowning point of life, that's all!"

"When Mother was sixteen, she was so popular a whole lot of boys came
calling at once, and they all sat in the porch swing, and there were so
many they pulled the porch ceiling right _down_!  She told me," said
Katharine.

"_I_ mean to be popular, too," said Jane, with decision.  "Only we
won't bother with any old porch swings.  We'll drive round in sports
cars."

"To fraternity house parties," said Katharine, not sure just what these
were, but thinking they sounded dashing.

"And midnight canoe rides," said Jane.

"I wish we were sixteen right now, don't you?" said Katharine, trailing
one foot in the water.

"Yes," said Jane, trailing one of hers, "I do."

Immediately they were.

Mark felt the change coming just before it happened, and started to cry
out, but what could he say?  All he could do was watch, horrified, as
his sisters' figures lengthened in the middle and their scratched legs
grew slim and elegant, and their faces changed from tan and freckled to
pink-and-white and powdered and uppity.

"I don't like it!  Tell it to stop!" cried Martha, gazing at her
expanding sisters in dismay.

"It's that magic," said Mark.  "We said not every day, but nobody said
anything about the nighttimes!"

Of course, if the magic had chosen to be really mean, it could have
made Jane and Katharine grow up, still in their short smocked frocks
and circle-combs, and they might have looked like little girls, only
stretched, the way Alice did after she ate the cake that said, "Eat me."

But it took pity on their faltering youth and provided suitable dance
dresses, one pink and one turquoise.  And their straight un-sixteenish
hair curled rapidly into a fashionable frizz, cut in the new shingle
bob.

"Eek!" said the vision in pink (who seemed to be Katharine), pulling
her foot quickly up out of the lake.  "What nasty cold water!"

"Paddling with the little ones, how quaint," said the altered Jane.

And the two smartly-dressed flappers hurried to pull on the silken hose
and satin slippers the magic had thoughtfully left in place of their
cast-off socks and scuffed oxfords.

"Run along, children," said the Jane one.  "Go tell your mother she
wants you."  And she and the Katharine one turned toward the dance
floor.

Mark grabbed Martha's hand, and they hurried after them anxiously.  The
children's mother and Mr. Smith passed, going in the opposite direction.

"Hello, darlings, having fun?" said their mother, not noticing a thing,
of course.

But two white-flanneled young men who were lounging near the dance
floor seemed to notice Jane and Katharine quite a lot (which proved
that they were perhaps not quite such grown-up young men as they
thought they were).

One of the young men was dark, with slickum in his hair; the other
sported a downy blond mustache.  As Jane and Katharine drew near, the
blond young man nudged his friend.  The dark young man uttered a low
whistle.

"I say, Topsfield," said the blond one affectedly.  "What say to a spin
on the floor with yon fair damsels?"

"Some keen chickens," said the dark one, smoothing his hair.

"Did you hear that?" whispered Jane to Katharine.

"Aren't they _awful_?" whispered Katharine to Jane.  They giggled and
preened.

"Dudes!  Cake-eaters!  Harold Teens!" muttered Mark furiously, in the
shadows.

The young men approached.  "How about a bit of the giddy whirl?" said
the dark one to Jane.

"I don't mind," said Jane, tossing her head for all the world as though
she really didn't.

"Shall we join the maddening throng?" said the affected blond one to
Katharine.

"Charmed," said Katharine, fluttering her eyelashes.

"Ick!"  Mark squirmed in his lurking-place.

"I like the dark one best, don't you?  He looks like Rudolph
Valentino," Martha whispered in his ear.

"He does not!  He looks like a big prune!" growled Mark, savage at this
desertion by his one ally.

The orchestra struck up "Three O'Clock in the Morning," and the two
enchanted maidens went gliding away in the arms of their youthful
cavaliers.  Mark didn't know what to do next, but he thought he ought
to do something.  Some of the dance tickets Mr. Smith had bought were
still in his pocket; so he grabbed Martha and shoved two tickets at the
ticket taker.  A second later they were sliding and hopping about the
floor, pretending they were waltzing but really being detectives hot on
the trail.

At first Mark couldn't locate either of his grown-up sisters as he
tottered and heaved his way through the throng of giddy, whirling
figures.  At last he saw Katharine and the blond young man.  They were
dancing cheek-to-cheek!  Katharine's eyes were closed, and the blond
young man was whispering in her ear.  Mark was so sickened at the sight
that he forgot to lurk, and bumped straight into them.

"Really!" said the blond young man, looking down at him loftily.  "What
grubby children!  I didn't know they allowed _babies_ on the dance
floor!"

"Aren't they horrid-looking?  I wonder who they could be," said
Katharine.

Mark stared at his sister with the open mouth of outrage.

"Shut your mouth; you'll trip and fall in it," said the blond young
man, forgetting to be affected and being just a snippy sixteen-year-old.

This made Mark so angry that he squared up to the bigger boy and told
him to put up his dukes.  But at that moment the eddy of the dance
swept Katharine and the blond young man away.

Mark looked around wildly and caught sight of the other young man with
Jane.  They were just leaving the dance floor.  They were going to sit
this one out, in the moonlight.  Mark had heard of sitting dances out
in the moonlight, and he was sure no good would come of it.  What if
the young man proposed?  What if they eloped, and then Jane turned back
into a little girl again, right at the altar?

Pulling Martha with him, he gave chase.  Outside, Jane and the dark
young man were just sitting down on a rustic bench bathed with suitable
moonbeams.  Mark and Martha crouched behind a handy hemlock, and peered
out and listened.

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank and all that sort of
thing," said the dark young man airily, crossing his legs in a
sophisticated manner.

"I adore poetry," said Jane.

The dark young man shifted nearer and made his eyes big and soulful.
"The night is yet young," he said, "and romance is in the air."

"Is it?" said Jane in thrilled tones.

"Yes," said the young man, "it is.  Listen.  I know where I can hire
this certain canoe.  What say to a cruise on the rolling deep after the
last dance?"

"All right," said Jane.

Mark groaned, but nobody heard him, because at that moment the band in
the pavilion started playing "Home Sweet Home," and a minute later
people began streaming out through the doors.

"Let's go find the others," said Jane, and she started for the
pavilion, followed by the dark young man, followed by Mark and Martha.
As the procession neared the entrance, the four children's mother
appeared with Mr. Smith.  Walking right past Jane as though she didn't
see her, she came up to Martha and Mark.

"Oh, there you are," she said.  "Come along, it's time for bed."

"What about Jane and Kathie?" said Martha.

"Aren't they with you?  They must have gone on ahead, then.  Come on."

"In a minute.  I have to get something."  Mark fidgeted and tried to
peer past his mother.

"Have to get what?"

"Something I lost."  He could see no sign anywhere now of Jane or
Katharine or the young men.

Two more precious minutes were wasted in idle argument before he and
Martha could escape.  Once out of sight of the unwitting grownups, they
ran.  They ran to the pavilion.  It was deserted.  Then they ran down
by the shore.  There was a boathouse and a sign that said, "Canoes for
Hire."  But the man in charge was unhelpful.

"We don't hire to no kids," he said.  "Gwan home."  He went in and shut
the door.

Mark and Martha ran to the water's edge.  Over the lake came the sound
of merry voices.  Someone was playing a ukulele and singing, "Paddlin'
Madeline Home."

"When'll they change back, do you suppose?" said Martha anxiously.
"The other magic didn't wear off till sundown; do you suppose at night
it won't be till moonset?  When _is_ moonset?"

"I don't know," said Mark.  He stood hesitant.

"Can't we unwish them?" said Martha.

"No," said Mark, "we can't.  That never works.  It's against the rules."

"Oh, those old rules again!" said Martha.

"Wait," said Mark.  "At least we can be with them and know the worst."
And hoping the time would still be ripe, he touched the lake.

Immediately they were with their sisters.

But he had forgotten to put in that they wanted to end up actually _in_
the canoe; so where they found themselves was in the water, right next
to it.  The sudden cold plunge was quite a shock, and for a minute all
Mark could do was splutter and gasp.

From the canoe (which was the extra-long tandem kind) four astonished
faces gazed.

"Help!  I'm drowning!" cried Martha, who nearly _was_.

The blond young man stood up and began stripping off his jacket
heroically.  "Be calm, ladies," he said in red-blooded tones.  "Leave
it all to me.  I'll save her!"  Then his expression changed as he
recognized Mark and Martha.  "Oh, it's you again," he said.  "Am I
going to have _more_ trouble with you?"

Amazement gave way to wrath in the face of Jane.  "Honestly, of all the
tag-alongs!" she said.  "Do you two have to follow me wherever I go?"

"Beat it, small fry!" said the dark young man rudely, strumming his
ukulele.

"How perfectly mortifying!" said Katharine.

"Just a minute," said Mark.  He didn't have to worry about touching the
lake this time, because there was very little of him or Martha that
_wasn't_.  The next minute he had wished, and they were sitting
drippingly in the bottom of the canoe, which was rocking dangerously.

The dark young man stopped playing his ukulele in mid-strum.  "Whew!"
he said admiringly.  "That was some jump, kid.  How'd you do it?  You
ought to train for aquatic sports!"

"You're dripping on my white shoes," complained the blond young man.

Mark paid them no heed.  "I'm sorry," he said, "butting in like this,
but I've got to tell you something.  You're making a terrible mistake.
I wanted to warn you before it's too late.  Those girls you've got
there aren't what they seem."

"They're minors," said Martha.

"Miners?" said the dark young man.

"She means minors," said Mark.  He pointed at Jane.  "You may not
believe it, but that is a child of twelve."

"Some child!" said the dark young man, looking at Jane's willowy frame.

"They're my sisters," said Mark.  "They ran away from home.  I came to
fetch them back.  The other one's nine.  They're big for their age."

"They're overgrown," added Martha helpfully.

"Of all the ridiculous stories," said Jane in disdain.

"Never in all my life!" said Katharine.

"They're sort of out of their minds right now," went on Mark, hardly
knowing what he was saying.  "That's why we keep them shut up."

"You'll have to think up a better story than that," said the blond
young man.  "I wasn't born yesterday!"

"I don't need a brick house falling down on _me_!" chimed in the dark
one.

"You wouldn't like them at _all_, really," Mark rattled on desperately.
"They're not your type.  She bites her nails," he said, pointing at
Jane, "and _she_"--he pointed at Katharine--"sucks her thumb still.
Well, _sometimes_ she does," he said, being fair.

"And they both play paper dolls," said Martha.

"Shame on you!" said the blond young man to Mark.  "Teaching this
innocent little child to tell lies that way!"

"Only a skunk would do a thing like that!" said the dark young man.

"You're right, Topsfield!" said the blond one.  "You hit the nail on
the head!  Only a skunk!"  And he glared at Mark.  "She's too young to
know any better, but as for you, we've had enough of your funny jokes!
I give you ten seconds to get out of this canoe!"

Mark felt more desperate than ever.  He didn't know what to wish, and
he couldn't unwish, and at any moment the time might stop being ripe.
Then he remembered what Martha had said about the magic's maybe being
over when the moon set.  And he touched the lake and wished quietly
that it would be moonset right now.

Immediately the moon shot down the sky, fell into the lake (at least
that's what it looked like), and disappeared.

"Great Scott, Topsfield!" cried the blond young man.  "Did you see that
comet?"

"More like a shooting star, I'd say, Wigglesworth," said the dark one.
They sat blinking in the sudden darkness.

But of course you can't make a moon set just any old time.  The moon
was scheduled to set that morning at five-forty-one A.M., and so of
course that's what it immediately was, and the dawn started coming up
like gray streaks of paint above the lake, and its wan light bathed the
six passengers in the canoe.

"By Jove!" said the blond young man, aghast, staring at a suddenly
shrunken Katharine.  "Topsfield, do you see what I see?"

"Gad, Wigglesworth!" said the dark one, looking with horror at small
Jane with her nobbly knees and blue-and-white socks.  "Did they look
like that all along?"

"Where are we?" said Jane, like someone coming out of a trance.

"Don't you remember?" said Martha.

"I don't know," said Jane.  "It's kind of mixed up."

"It's all like a dream," said Katharine.

"You're in a canoe," said Mark, beginning to enjoy himself.  "These
nice big boys took you for a little trip.  Say thank you to the nice
big boys."

"Gee.  Thanks.  Gosh," said Jane, in unmistakably childish and
unglamorous tones.  "I always wanted to ride in a canoe."

The boy called Topsfield uttered a groan.  "Gad, Wigglesworth," he
said.  "What do you suppose came over us?"

"It must have been those lemon cokes.  They must have gone to our
heads," said his friend.

"Imagine!" said Topsfield.  "Playing with little kids at our age!  If
the gang finds out about this, I'm ruined!"

"If this story gets around, my name is mud at Princeton Prep!" agreed
Wigglesworth.

"We won't tell, whatever it is," Katharine assured him comfortingly.
"Cross my heart and hope to die, never see the back of my neck!"

"Shall we swear it in blood?" asked Jane, producing a jackknife and
holding it out in rather a grubby paw.

The boy called Topsfield winced and looked away from her.

"It's all right, old man," said Mark.  "We won't any of us say a word
if you just take us back to our own cottage right now."

And the big boys did, paddling fast as though they couldn't wait to see
the last of them.

And though the seating accommodations were crowded and Mark and Martha
were still wet to the skin, the four children enjoyed every stroke of
the way, and all agreed that canoe travel was every bit as exciting as
it was cracked up to be.

At last the canoe came to rest on their own familiar beach, and the
four children jumped ashore.

"Mum's the word?" said the one called Topsfield anxiously.

"Silent as the tomb," Mark assured him.

"Thanks a lot, old man," said Topsfield, wringing his hand.

"That's all right, old man," said Mark, thumping him on the shoulder.
And the canoe skimmed off into the morning.

As it vanished in the distance, the voice of Wigglesworth floated back
over the water, still lamenting that his name would be mud at Princeton
Prep.

"Aren't they silly?" said Katharine.

"Boring," Jane agreed.

"Oh, I don't know," said Mark tolerantly.  "Typical sixteen-year-olds,
I'd say."

"_I_ think sixteen is a perfectly horrible age," said Jane.  "Isn't it
grim to think we'll be like that some day?"

"_I_ won't," said Katharine.  "I don't want to be sixteen, ever.  I
just want to stay the age I am."

"Well," said Mark wisely, "I guess the chances are you _will_, for a
while."

And they went into the cottage.




4. The Storm

Of course, their mother hadn't noticed any of the magic, and never knew
they hadn't come home till morning, and never said a word to Mark and
Martha about their wet clothes.  The clothes caused some trouble later
on, though, because they shrank, and Mark and Martha had to go on
wearing them for best all that year, which was sheer torture, and their
mother never noticed a thing wrong.

But she noticed (and said) a good deal about the way the four children
couldn't be wakened up till long past noon that day, and the way they
went on being dopey and droopy and sleepy all afternoon when they _did_
get up.

And since she had had a short night herself (and so had everybody else,
for that matter, what with the sudden moon-setting, though of course no
grownups ever knew about that), she had overslept and was tired, too,
and Mr. Smith got off to work late after too little breakfast, and in
general there was small time for fun and games about the cottage that
day, and it wasn't till the middle of the afternoon that Mark and Jane
and Katharine and Martha found themselves free and in one piece and
assembled on the beach.

Mark marched straight down to the water's edge and called, "O turtle!"

"What are you going to do?" said Katharine in alarm.

"No magic!  Please!  Not today!" said Jane, collapsing wearily upon the
sand.

Martha turned and started making tracks for the cottage.

"'The time has come,'" Mark said, "'to talk of many things.'"

"It won't answer.  It didn't yesterday," said Jane.

"Today I think it will, somehow," said Mark.

And he was right.  A few seconds later the turtle came swimming into
sight.  It didn't land itself on the beach, though, but stayed at a
safe distance, treading water.

"Well?" it said.  "Is this absolutely necessary?"

"Yes," said Mark.  "Yes it is.  We've got to talk things over."

"I suppose you're all pleased with yourselves about last night," said
the turtle.

"Were you there?  I didn't see you," said Katharine.

"I'm _always_ there," said the turtle.

"No, we're not very pleased," said Mark.  "I did get us home, though,"
he added, with a touch of justifiable pride.

"Humph," said the turtle.  "Never counting the cost, of course.  Just
making one wish after another, hardly a minute to rest up between
times, wearing a poor lake out!  A lakeful of magic doesn't last
forever, you know!"

"It doesn't?" said Katharine.

"Did you ever hear of anything that did?" said the turtle.

"I thought this one might," said Mark cleverly.  "After all, they've
never found bottom."

"Just cause they've never found it doesn't mean it isn't there,"
snapped the turtle.  "_You're_ getting down toward the bottom already.
Take that wish about being sixteen.  That's a dry-land wish.  Nothing
watery about that.  A dry-land wish takes a lot out of a lake.  You've
heard of a fish out of water; well, for a lake out of water it's the
same principle.  After this, wish wet wishes."

"We'll try," said Katharine.

"And then all that meddling with the moon," went on the turtle.  "That
never pays.  I'd say a wish like that was worth about twenty ordinary
ones.  Difficult things, moons.  What with the tides and all.  Hard to
manage.  Can't say I ever understood the principle of the whole thing
properly myself!"

"What does it matter!" said Jane.  "When the magic gets really shallow
we can just wish on you, and fill it up again."

"No," said the turtle, "that's just what you _can't_ do.  Not any more.
It's out of my hands now.  The lake's stronger than I am."

"It is?" said Martha, who had edged back to join the group.

"It is, since you made that first wish," said the turtle.  "It's hard
to explain.  You mere babes and sucklings wouldn't understand."

"Why, you!" said Martha, who was sensitive about being called a baby.

"I think I kind of see," said Mark.  "You had the power to make the
lake full of magic, but now it's bigger than you are.  Like
Frankenstein."

"Exactly," said the turtle, "and you know what happened to _him_!  I
suggest after this you think twice before you wish anything at all."

"We're going to," said Mark.  "That's why I called you.  We want to be
safe and sane from now on.  And I think we need one more rule.  No
magic except every third day.  Then we'll know when to expect what."

"When I gave you those three extra wishes," said the turtle, "you
promised that would be absolutely all."

"We didn't know then what we know now," said Mark.

The turtle looked thoughtful.  Then it shook its head.  "I couldn't
take the chance," it said.  "With that lake in the mood it's in now,
dear me knows what it might do.  That's a tired lake."

"All right, then," said Mark.  With a sudden pounce he splashed into
the water and caught hold of the turtle with both hands.

"Bully!" said the turtle, struggling in his grasp.  "Brute force never
solved anything yet."

"Sure," said Mark.  "Naturally.  I wouldn't try a thing like that.  I
just want to talk a little more."

He knelt down till his face was on a level with the turtle's and looked
it in the eye.  "You know," he said, "Kathie was saying just the other
day that we ought to have some way of knowing you when we see you, so
you won't seem just like any old Tom, Dick, or Harry of a turtle.  It'd
be more friendly.  And I was thinking.  I saw a turtle once, in a
shopwindow, that was keen.  All painted white it was, with pink
rosebuds."

"No!" cried the turtle in heart-rending tones.  "You wouldn't do that.
You couldn't.  I'd be branded for life as a mere household pet, a
domestic slave!  It would be the end of me socially!  Say you won't do
it, and I'll grant any wish you like!"

"Just the one I said," said Mark.

"Unloose me," said the turtle.  Mark did.  The turtle assumed an
expression of great concentration.  Then it relaxed.  "That's done it,"
it said.  "The lake put up a fight, but I pushed it through."

"Every third day?" said Mark.

"Every third day," said the turtle.

"Counting from today?"

"Counting from today."

"Thanks," said Mark.

"Don't mention it," said the turtle with dignity.  "And now may I go?"

Mark's conscience smote him.  "No hard feelings?" he asked.

The turtle looked at him.  "Oh, no," it said.  "Certainly not.  I
_love_ having great two-footed creatures invading my privacy and
wearing out my lake and interfering with my way of life.  I _adore_
catering to their silly wishes.  It's my one hobby!"  But Mark thought
it winked at him as it swam away.

He stood up.  "So now," he said, "we know where we stand."

"Yes," said Jane.  "I guess we've got everything just about under
control now."

"And we can relax and forget about the magic for two whole days!" said
Martha.

"As though we _could_!" said Katharine.

But it was surprising how nearly they did.  That first day was just
about over already, and they were only too willing to drag their
exhausted selves to bed right after supper.  That night of the early
moonset had taken a lot out of them, as well as the lake.

The next day, when Mr. Smith had left for work, their mother asked them
if they thought it would be fun to take a picnic lunch and go for a
trip in the excursion launch called the _Willa Mae_.  So they did, and
soon all was whitecaps and brass railings and blue distances and people
waving from the shore.

As they were eating their lunch (hard-boiled eggs and
spring-onion-and-radish sandwiches), Jane turned to Mark.

"If this were one of the magic days," she said, "we could be rounding
the Horn."

"The mighty schooner strained at its seams, and the sails sang in the
hurricane," agreed Katharine.

"Or we could be explorers charting unknown seas," said Mark.

"_There's_ a good unknown sea now," said Martha, as the _Willa Mae_
passed an inlet all choked with waterweeds, and a broken-down cottage
beside it that looked haunted, at _least_.

But pretty soon they stopped at an amusement park on the far side of
the lake and stayed there for two whole hours, and the thought of magic
was thrown to the winds as all donned bathing suits and slid down
shoot-the-chutes that came to a watery end amid splashes and the
ear-splitting screams of utter enjoyment.

That night just before bedtime the four children met in solemn council.

"Don't anyone dare _think_ a wish between now and after breakfast,"
said Jane.

"That's going to be hard," said Mark.  "Like remembering to say
'Rabbit, rabbit,' when you wake up on the first of the month."

"Everybody think wet thoughts all night, just in case somebody
forgets," said Katharine.  "We want to pamper that lake."

"I bet I wake up first," said Martha.

"If you do, let's not have any going down to the lake ahead of the rest
of us," said Mark.  "The first one up wakes the others, and we plan."
And all agreed.

As it turned out, it was Katharine who opened her eyes first the next
morning.

It was a flash of lightning that made her open them.

And then came a gigantic crash of thunder that woke the others, and
after that the rain came pelting and blowing all over the screened
porch, and the four children made a mad dash for indoors.

Too late they remembered about the magic and started to dash out again,
but their mother was up by now and barred the way.

"Nobody goes near that lake this morning," she said.  "Water's
dangerous in a thunderstorm."

"But we _have_ to!" said Jane.  "Just for a minute!"

"It won't hurt us.  It _knows_ us," said Martha.  "It's _expecting_ us!"

"Stop talking nonsense and help get breakfast," said their mother.

"It's probably only a shower, anyway," said Mark.  "We can wait."

But it wasn't.  It kept on raining and raining for what seemed like
hours.  And even though the thunder and lightning were fewer and
farther between now, their mother was still firm.

"Wouldn't you know?" said Jane.  "Now everything's just utterly and
completely ruined!"

"I think it's trying to clear up," said Katharine, at a window.

For answer there came a really blinding flash that drove her back into
the middle of the room, and the rain redoubled its force on the roof.

"Hark!" said their mother, coming into the room from saying good-by to
Mr. Smith.  "What's that?"

_That_ was a dripping sound and proved to come from a leak in the roof,
in a corner just over one of the indoor cots.  While their mother ran
to get something to put under it, Mark discovered another leak in the
kitchen ceiling, and Jane found one merrily plip-plopping right in the
middle of the upstairs bedroom.

Five minutes later the fourth leak was discovered, and they were
beginning to run out of dishpans and double-boiler-bottoms.  The sound
of water dripping tinnily into pots made an interesting obbligato to
the music of the storm.

The four children sat around the dishpan on the living-room floor (the
cot had been moved out of the way for the sake of the sheets) and
watched the water gradually filling it.  Carrie the cat, who didn't
like thunderstorms, came and sat next to them, and Martha
absent-mindedly took her in her lap.

"How many drops make a gallon?" said Katharine, not because she really
wanted to know, but because there was nothing better to say.  Nobody
knew the answer.

"Where does it all _come_ from?" said Martha, a prey to exasperation.

It was then that the sudden brilliant thought struck the mind of Jane.
"Why, it comes from the lake!" she cried.  "Doesn't it?  Sure it does!
It's scientific!  The sun draws the water up, and then it condenses and
comes down again, and that's rain!  This is lake water we've got right
here in this pan!"

"Will it be magic still, after it's been through all that?" said
Katharine.

"Why not?  Condensed magic!"

"It ought to be even stronger, if it's anything like condensed milk!"

"At least we can try!"

The four children hung over the dishpan, all talking at once.

"What in the world are you doing?" said their mother, passing through
the room.  "You look like witches round a caldron."  She went out again.

"Do you suppose she's begun to notice?" whispered Martha.

"Probably just a quincidence," said Mark.  "Now.  Everybody keep calm.
Let's plan.  Take it slowly.  Start big and narrow down.  Do we want to
go somewhere in time, or just space?  Or both?"

"I never can think what anything means when you put it like that," said
Martha.  "It sounds too much like school-work."

"We have to keep it wet," said Katharine, who was often of a one-track
mind.  "What wet things are fun?"

"Niagara Falls in a barrel?  Battle of Trafalgar?  Ulysses?" said Jane,
reading from one of her many lists.

"No," said everybody else.

"Start the other way round," said Mark.  "What fun things are wet?"

"Sailboating," said Jane promptly.

"Too real," objected Katharine.

An idea dawned in Mark.  "What do you say?" he said, and broke off.
His eyes took on a glazed expression.

"To what?" said Martha.

"No," muttered Mark.  "That wouldn't work."

"_What_ wouldn't?" said Katharine.

"On the other hand, though," said Mark, and stopped again.

"Do you want us to scream?" said Jane.

"Well," said Mark, "I was just thinking.  What's snow, if it isn't
water sort of frozen?  And who's ever had _really_ enough snow at one
time?  And where is there the most of it to be had?"

"The North Pole!" said Jane.

"We could see Santa Claus," said Martha.  The others were too
considerate of her tender youth to comment on this.

"No," said Mark.  "Not the North, that's too tame.  But the South one
hasn't been discovered yet, hardly."

"We could find it and claim it for the United States of America," said
Katharine, her eyes shining with the spirit of true patriotism.

"What do you say?" said Mark.  "Shall we wish?"

"It's certainly wet enough," said Jane.

"Put in about having warm clothes," said Katharine.

"And not catching cold," said Martha.

"We could take along hot possets," said Jane.

There was a pause, while cocoa was hastily brewed.  A few moments
later, clutching the steaming mugs of it, the four children clustered
round the dishpan again.

"Let's all touch at once," said Katharine.  "That'll be more sort of
mystic."

The hands that weren't clutching the cocoa went out toward the dishpan.

"Look!" said Jane, pointing at the water.  Already a thin scum of ice
was forming across its top.  "It thinks it's a good idea.  It _wants_
us to!"

The next minute all hands had touched and all hearts had wished.

And the minute after _that_, the dishpan had disappeared, and the water
in it had turned white and frozen and grown bigger and bigger until it
was a vast snowy plain, and the four children found themselves seated
in the middle of it, suitably bundled up and befurred, and with mugs of
cocoa still in their now fur-mittened hands.

Carrie the cat found herself there, too, through no wish of her own,
for Martha had forgotten to put her off her lap.

"Brr!" said everybody, in the sudden wintry blast, and four noses were
buried in four steaming mugs.

"Whiff!" said Carrie, putting back her whiskers.  She took one or two
delicate steps across the snowy crust, not sure whether she liked it.

Thawed by cocoa, the four children stood up and peered around
interestedly.

"Is this all there is to it?" said Martha, looking at snowy whiteness
and nothing else as far as the eye could see.

"What did you expect?" said Mark.  "A big post sticking up?"

"I just thought there might be more _to_ it, somehow," said Martha.

Still, if the magic said this was the South Pole, this must be it.  So
Mark, who always had pencils, took one out, and using the eraser end,
wrote an inscription in the snow.

  "SOUTH POLE.  PROP. OF U.S.A.  WE FOUND IT."


After that he put the date, and they all signed their names.  Martha
had Carrie sign her paw-print, too.  Carrie did not seem to appreciate
the privilege.  And that seemed to be that.

But _after_ that there were snowballs to be thrown, and a snowman to be
built, and ice to be found and slid on, and if you have ever been
transported suddenly from a hot and thundery day in July to the middle
of a Winter Sports Carnival in December, you will have some idea of how
the next fleeting moments happily passed.

"Darn!" said Jane.  "We should have put in a toboggan while we were
wishing!"

"And skis!" said Katharine.

"And snowshoes!" said Mark.

"Who cares?" said Martha.  "Let's lie down and make angels."  And she
and Katharine did.

It was just as the four children were organizing a game of
fox-and-geese (and wishing they'd brought more people along so there'd
be enough to play it properly) that the cry was heard in the distance.

"What was that?" said Jane.  "It sounded human."

"Eskimos!" said Martha.

"They don't have those _here_," said Katharine.  "That's Alaska."

"What _do_ they have, then?"

"They don't.  It's uninhabited," said Mark.

"So far as anyone _knows_," said Jane.

Martha's lip trembled.  "I don't _like_ things that live where it's
uninhabited!"

Just then the cry was heard again, and nearer now, and as the four
children looked around to see where it had come from, a furred and
booted figure staggered into view.  It seemed to see them, and started
forward in a kind of tottering rush, and as it drew nearer, they could
see that it was a man.  But they couldn't tell much else about him,
because his face was covered with about a week's growth of beard.  The
sight was not a reassuring one, and Martha turned to flee.

But the man seemed just as upset by them as they were by him.  As he
came nearer, he stopped short, rubbed his eyes, gave a despairing moan,
sank on his knees in the snow, and covered his face with his hands.

"It's all over.  Might as well give up now," he cried in something
between a sob and a shudder.  "Now I'm seeing things!  Angel children
dancing in a ring!"  He peered between his fingers.  "Now they're gone.
It's the beginning of the end.  My mind's given way.  Might as well lie
down and die right here!"

"No, don't do that," said Katharine, ever sympathetic, edging forward
to see if she could be of some help.

"We're not angels," said Mark.

"We're not even specially good," said Jane.

"We're just children," said Martha.

The man groaned and covered his ears.  "Now I'm hearing voices!" he
said.  "I hope the end comes quickly.  I can't stand any more!"

"It's no use," said Mark.  "It's that thing of grownups noticing a
little, but not much.  He thinks we're spooks."

The four children stood looking at the man.  And now an expression of
even greater horror came over his face, and he gave a terrible cry.  He
was staring at something beyond them, and they turned and followed his
gaze.

Carrie the cat stepped forward, picking her way elegantly along and
waving her tail.  And maybe because she hadn't really been part of the
wish but had only got into it more or less by accident, the man seemed
to see her all too clearly.

"No!" he cried, waving her away and shutting his eyes to blot out the
sight.  "No!  Scat, you horrid beast!  Now I know I'm really crazy!  If
it were a polar bear now, I might believe it.  Or a Saint Bernard dog
with a bottle of brandy round its neck!"

"Poor thing.  I wish we had some brandy, don't you?" said Katharine.

"There's the cocoa," said Jane.

And now a strange thing happened.  The four children could never decide
afterwards whether Carrie did it deliberately or not.  Certainly she
had never gone out of her way to be helpful to anyone before.  But now
she walked majestically over to where the four mugs of cocoa still
stood, balanced on the snowy crust where the four children had put them
down.  She leaned delicately over one of the mugs.  There was a sound
of lapping.

The man had followed her, as though hypnotized, and though he didn't
see the cocoa (for hot possets had been part of the wish), he heard the
lapping.  And throwing table manners to the winds, he flung himself
down on the snow and sought its source with his mouth.  The four
children looked away politely.

And now the man began to laugh hysterically.  "Ha ha ha!" he cried.
"Cocoa!  If it weren't so tragic, it'd be funny.  I said I'd find the
South Pole or die, but I thought it would be a hero's death.  I never
thought I'd spend my last hours drinking cocoa with a domestic cat!"
But he drank the cocoa.

And even though it was invisible to him, it seemed to do him good.  For
he perked up noticeably, and the flush of health began to appear on his
wan cheek (such of it as could be seen between whiskers).

"Now I know what he's doing here," said Mark.  "He's an explorer and
he's lost.  He's trying to find the South Pole."

"Oh, is that all?  Why doesn't he look, then?" said Martha.  "It's
right behind him."

"He doesn't notice it," said Katharine.  "He doesn't see our
inscription, either.  It's invisible to him."

"We could help," said Jane.  "We could sort of shove him along with our
ghostly unseen hands till he's right on it."

"No we couldn't," said Mark.  "Then he really would go mad.  No mortal
mind could stand it."

And it turned out not to be necessary.  For now, having drained her
half of the mug of cocoa, Carrie started parading slowly toward the
inscription Mark had written in the snow.  Every few steps she turned
and looked over her shoulder at the man.  Fascinated, he followed her.

Carrie reached the spot, sat down on it, and purred.  The man came and
stood beside her.  Suddenly an idea dawned.  He took out his compass.
He took his bearings.  And a great light broke over his face.

"Eureka!" he cried.  "At last, at last!  After all these years!  Oh,
what a lucky fellow I am!"  He took put a whistle and blew it.  He
started shouting and waving his arms.

"Admiral!" he called.  "Fellows!  Barriscale, Chelmsford, McAlpine!
Here it is!  I found it!  We've done it!  We're successful, we're
famous, we're heroes!"

And from the distance four more figures came staggering into view,
furred and booted and bearded and pale and tottering, but with excited
grins and joyful flushes marking each face.  They ran up to the first
man.  _They_ took out their compasses.  _They_ took their bearings.
And then they all began jumping for joy and thumping each other on the
back in congratulation and dancing round and round the Pole in delight.

"How did you ever find this spot in the first place, Fordyce?" said one
of the men to the first man.

"I don't know.  Something just seemed to lead me to it," said Fordyce.
"Instinct, I guess."

"Isn't he going to give even _Carrie_ any credit?" said Katharine to
Mark.

Carrie was wreathing herself around the men's legs now and making
conversation.

"What's that sound?" said the fourth man.  "Kind of a meowing and
wawling."

"For a minute I thought I saw a pussycat," said another.

"But that couldn't be, of course," said still another.  "Not in the
Antarctic."

"We don't want to go home saying we saw a thing like that," said the
one who seemed to be the Admiral.  "Nobody would believe a thing we
_do_ say.  Nobody would believe we found the Pole at all."

All of the men were looking straight at Carrie now.

"I don't see a thing, do you, fellows?" said Fordyce.

"Not a thing," said all the others.

"Come on," said the one called the Admiral.  "Let's get back to the
plane and broadcast the good news home to the States."

And still clapping each other on the back and rejoicing in their good
fortune, they hurried off across the snow.

"Wait!" called Martha after them.  The others didn't even bother.

"Really!" said Jane.  "Some people!"

"And now I suppose we just go home," said Katharine.

"No, we don't," said Mark.  "Not till sundown.  Remember?"

Everybody looked at the sun.  It shone brightly, straight above them.
Time passed.  They looked at it again.  It hadn't moved an inch and
didn't look as if it intended to.  And then Mark remembered something.

"Oh-oh," he said.  "We're at the South Pole, remember?  Didn't you ever
hear of the midnight sun?  When there is any sun at all down here, it
hardly ever sets.  Sometimes not for weeks, I guess."

"And here we are," said Katharine.

"And here we'll be," said Jane.

"I want Mother," said Martha.

After that nobody said anything for a few minutes.  "Who wants to throw
snowballs?" said Mark finally.

Nobody did.

"Now I know where the snows of yesteryear are," said Katharine.
"They're all here.  They must be."

"Now I see why people go to Florida in the winter," said Jane.  "I for
one will never build a snowman again."

Mark cleared his throat.  "O turtle?" he said.

"Don't be silly," said Jane.  "It couldn't come here.  It'd freeze."

"_We_'re here and _we_'re not freezing, are we?" said Mark.

"_Who_ isn't?" said Martha bitterly.

At that moment a voice spoke at their elbow.  "Hello," it said.

The four children turned.  An odd figure in nunlike black-and-white
confronted them.

"You're a penguin," said Katharine.

"Naturally," said the penguin.

Carrie the cat arched her back and hissed.  She could not abide a bird.

"Do you know our turtle?  Did it send you to help us?  Are penguins
magic, too?" said Martha.

"Don't we look as though we were?" said the penguin.  And the four
children had to admit that this was true.

"Wish us home, then," said Martha.

"Make the sun set," said Katharine.

"Please," said Mark, either because he had better manners than the
others or because he was more tactful.

"It's not so simple as that," said the penguin.

"Naturally.  It never is," said Jane.

"As you ought to know by now," agreed the penguin.  "However.  Just sit
there patiently for a bit.  Perhaps I'll think of something."

The four children sat there patiently while the penguin paced up and
down, deep in thought.  Carrie the cat followed the penguin with her
eyes.  She crouched low to the ground, her tail lashing.  She started
forward.

"Call off this fierce marauding beast," said the penguin.  "I can't
think when I'm being stalked."

Martha took Carrie in her lap.

"That's better," said the penguin.  "Now then.  Follow me.  I have a
plan."

It led the way, and the four children followed, Martha still keeping
tight hold of Carrie.  Carrie's lip curled in disgust every time she
looked at the penguin.  Presently they came in sight of an
endless-looking wind-swept sea, with a great mass of ice at its edge.

"That's probably the Antarctic Ocean," said Mark, who knew about such
things.  "That's probably a glacier just up ahead."

Even as he spoke, there was a crash, and a sizable mass of ice detached
itself from the shore and went floating away over the cold, vasty deep.

"Hop on," said the penguin.  "The next iceberg leaves in two minutes."

The four children hopped where it pointed and sat down on cold
slipperiness that moved.  A few seconds later there was another crash,
and a crack appeared between them and the penguin.  The crack widened
rapidly into a watery gulf, and the four children found themselves
sailing away in the wake of the previous iceberg.

"Good-by!" they called, waving at the shore.  "Thanks a lot!"  The
penguin flipped a flipper.  Carrie uttered a parting snarl.

And then shore and penguin were lost to view, and there was nothing to
be seen on either hand but cold water and other bobbing icebergs.

"Hard-a-lee!" said Jane.  "This is as good as being on a yacht.  Well,
almost."

"My sitting-down part's cold," said Martha.  "It's damp, too."

"Do icebergs always go this fast?" said Katharine.  "We're passing all
those others already.  And I think it's getting warmer."

"Isn't it?" said Jane.  "That penguin must have sent us by special
express.  We must be getting up in the Temperate Zone already."

"_I_ think we're shrinking," said Martha.  "Look!"

Jane and Katharine looked.  It was true.  The edges of their icy float
were visibly melting away before their eyes.

"This is awful," said Jane.  "We're down to half-size already.  How
long do you suppose we'll last?"

Mark said nothing.  He was scanning the horizon.  Now he suddenly took
off his coat and started waving it.  "Ship ahoy!" he called.

A ship had appeared on the horizon and was steaming swiftly toward
them.  Soon it was so near that the four children could see the faces
of the people who lined the deck.  But the faces didn't seem friendly a
bit.

"Keep away!" called the people on the ship.  "How dare you run your
nasty old iceberg across our course?  Don't come any nearer.  You'll
run us down!"

And the ship turned in craven flight and hurried away, fearful of being
rammed and caved in.  "Though for all the damage we could do by now,"
said Jane, "we might as well be a mere popsicle!"

It was true.  The iceberg had dwindled away till there was barely room
for the four of them and Carrie to sit, huddled together as closely as
they could huddle.  The four children took off the thick coats the
magic had provided in order to make more room (and because it was
growing so very hot all of a sudden), and the coats sank to a watery
grave as the edges of the iceberg melted away under them.

"Darn!" said Katharine.  "I liked mine lots better than my regular
winter one."

"Never mind," said Jane.  "They'd probably have vanished at sundown,
anyway."

"Speaking of sun," said Mark, dashing perspiration from his forehead
and beginning to take off his shirt, "this must be the tropics.  It's
hot!"

"The tropics?" cried Martha in alarm.  "You know what they have there,
don't you?  Sharks!"

Katharine glanced ahead.  She turned pale.  "Don't look!" she cried; so
of course everyone did.

A curved fin was bearing down toward them.  No one needed to be told
whose fin it was.  Martha began to cry.

"Don't give up.  Not yet," said Mark grimly.  "Look over there."

Everybody looked the other way.  The tropical sun, a hot red ball, was
sinking toward the blue waves.  In its heat the last remnants of the
iceberg were dissolving fast.  The four children could hear small
tinkles and crackings below them now as its underpinnings gave way, and
when they looked down, they could see heaving sea through the poor
final fragment that was just big enough to bear their weight.  It was a
race between the iceberg and the sun.  The shark could afford to wait.
Martha had her hands over her eyes, but she peeked between her fingers
and saw the curved fin hovering nearby.

Then the last thin ice melted, and the four children felt themselves
sinking.  But they didn't plunge into watery saltness, or into sharky,
toothy sharpness either.  For as the iceberg sank, so did the sun, and
the four children landed with a thud on hard, dry flooring.

They were sitting in a circle on the living-room floor looking at a
dishpan full of water.

Their mother came into the room.  "What are you doing in here?" she
said.  "The storm stopped ages ago.  Don't you want to go swimming?"

Mark and Martha and Jane and Katharine rose crampedly to their feet and
staggered to fetch their bathing suits.  And the mind of each grappled
dazedly with the fact that it was still only morning after the long
full day they'd already had.

As they came out into the sunlight, a black-and-white towhee was
scratching among the weeds near the porch.  Thinking it was the penguin
grown to handier, convenient size, Carrie hurried away after it.

The four children paid her no heed.  The lake was waiting.  They ran
into it.




5. The Bottle

When Mr. Smith came home from the bookshop that evening, he brought
newspapers with him, and the newspapers had staring headlines.  Some
American explorers had discovered the South Pole.

"Isn't it exciting?" said the children's mother.

"Oh, that," said Martha.

"It's all right, I guess," said Jane, "if you like that kind of thing."

But as soon as they were alone, the four children read the newspaper
accounts through carefully.  None of the stories made any mention of
Carrie, and they didn't say anything about four ghostly children,
either.

"It's not fair," said Jane.  "It was our best chance of going down in
history, so far.  Now I'll have to think of something else."

"I don't mind for myself," said Martha.  "It's Carrie.  You'd think the
least they could do would be name the continent after her!"

"Little Cattia," said Mark.

"Feline Island," said Katharine.

"New Carrie," said Jane.

There was a pause.  "Oh, well," said Mark.  "At least we'll always know
we were a part of it."

"We can feel secretly proud," said Katharine.

"Virtue is its own reward," said Martha.

"It would be," said Jane.  "As if it weren't dull enough already!  It's
adding insult to injury."  But she cut the newspaper stories out and
put them away in her top bureau drawer just the same.

The reason the four children were alone was that their mother and Mr.
Smith were in the upstairs bedroom talking.  They talked for a long
time, and dinner was late, and after dinner (and dishes) their mother
and Mr. Smith kept looking at each other as if they had something on
their minds and wanted to be alone with it, and kept asking the four
children if they weren't tired and didn't want to go to bed early,
until at last the four children saw the point and decided to humor the
poor hapless adults, and they went to bed.  And Jane and Katharine and
Martha went to sleep.

Mark went to sleep for a while, but then he woke up.  The reason he
woke up was that their mother and Mr. Smith had come downstairs from
their bedroom for a midnight snack and were sitting in the living room
having it.  And the light shone in Mark's eyes on the sleeping porch,
and he could hear every word they said.

Of course, he knew perfectly well that eavesdropping is wrong, and he
probably should have called out and warned them, but by the time he
thought of this he'd already heard so much he decided it would be
embarrassing.  And besides, he wasn't dropping from the eaves; he was
lying obediently in his own bed, and if people _would_ come talking
right by an open window right next to him, he couldn't help that, could
he?  And besides, it was interesting.

So he lay low and said nothing.  After a while their mother and Mr.
Smith put out the living-room light and went upstairs.  But still Mark
lay awake for a long time thinking.

Right after breakfast next morning, before swimming or anything, he
called a conference.  And because the sight of the lake might prove too
tantalizing, when there was nothing they could do about it till day
after tomorrow, he called it on the other side of the cottage, the side
next to the pasture with the sheep and the unfriendly rams.  Jane and
Katharine and Martha sat in a row on the split-rail fence and listened,
while Mark perched on a boulder and drew patterns in the earth with a
stick, as he talked.

"The thing is," he said, "this summer may be all very well for us, and
a consolation devoutly to be wished, but it's hard on Mr. Smith," (for
he could never bring himself to say Uncle Huge, the way Martha did).
"He has to run all this and the bookshop, too.  He's having to kind of
lead a double life."

"Like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," said Katharine.

"Only different," said Jane.

"And the thing is," said Mark, "it's beginning to Tell on him.  His
Business is Suffering.  And he's worried about it.  I heard him tell
Mother so."

"He looks tired, too," said Martha.  "All that driving back and forth."

"And it's all our fault," said Katharine.  "We've been enjoying the
magic, and wasting its sweetness on our own desert air, and never
thinking of others at all."

"We've got to do something," said Jane.

"What'll we do?" said Martha.

"That's the whole point," said Mark.  "The next wish has got to be for
_him_."

"You're right," said Jane.  "It's only fair."

"What'll we wish?" said Martha.

"That's the whole point," said Mark again.  "We don't want to rush off
half-cocked, the way we did when we tried to help Mother with the
half-magic that other time.  Remember what happened."

They remembered.

"No," he went on, "this time we've really got to think it over first.
And that's why it's good that we've got two whole days before the
magic.  We can be thinking."

"Good," said Jane.  "We'll do that."

"Let's," said Katharine.

Martha nodded her head earnestly.

And with that settled, the four children forgot all about Mr. Smith for
the moment and turned their minds happily to the important question of
how they were to while away the golden hours in the meantime.

It was a blue-skied morning, and the sun shone brightly but coolly, and
a fresh wind blew.

"This," said Mark, "is the kind of day when the open road calls."

"Let's explore," said Jane.

"We already did," said Martha.

"Not that old South Pole," said Jane in tones of scorn.  "Let's explore
our own territory.  See America first.  We've never found out where
that red-clay road _goes_."

"We could take our lunch," said Katharine.

"What kind of sandwiches?" said Mark.

"Jam," said Martha thoughtfully, "and peanut-butter-and-banana, and
cream-cheese-and-honey, and date-and-nut, and prune-and-marshmallow..."

A time passed.

Their mother came into the kitchen.  "What's all this mess?" she said.
"Nobody leaves this house till it's cleaned up."

And nobody did.

By the time Jane and Mark and Katharine were ready to go, the sun had
climbed lots higher in the sky and wasn't half so cool.  And they had
made so many sandwiches and tasted the important parts of each so many
times to get just the right blends that by now everybody's gorge rose
and nobody felt like having a picnic for ages, at least.  But they
packed the lunch basket with the sandwiches, anyway.

"Where's Martha?" asked somebody.

It turned out nobody had seen her for some time.

"Here I am," said a voice at that moment.  "Are we all ready?"  And a
small figure walked in from outside.

"No thanks to you," said Mark.  "Workshirk."

"I had something to do," said Martha.

"Naturally," said Jane.  "At a time like this.  Just for that you get
to carry the lunch basket."  And Martha did.

The four children went over the rolling meadow with the sheep, keeping
well out of the way of the untrustworthy rams, and came into the
red-clay road some distance beyond the farm where the milk came from.
From now on all was unexplored territory, and they explored it.

Once some bluebirds flew over saying, "Tru-a-lee," and for a while
there were some bright yellow wild flowers growing by the side of the
road that Mark, who always knew about such things, said were tansy,
also called bitter buttons.  Jane, ever venturesome, tasted a few and
said they were bitter all right.  None of the others cared to try.

But otherwise, one red-clay hill proved very much like another, and
they kept going on and on, and there didn't seem to be any end to them,
until at the top of the third one Martha, who hadn't been in on all the
sandwich-making and who had been carrying the heavy basket all this
while, sat down by the side of the road and said she wasn't going a
step farther until she had her lunch right here and now.

"Not out here in the sun like this," said Katharine, wiping
perspiration from her eyebrows.  "Human flesh couldn't stand it.  It'd
broil."

"There's a woods coming," said Mark, pointing ahead.  "If we just keep
on, we're sure to find an ideal spot."

So he and Jane and Katharine and a reluctant Martha trudged down the
third hill and toiled up the fourth, and at the top of it the woods
came right up to the side of the road, and there proved to be a track
that turned off and went in among the trees, and the four children
followed it.

"Coolth," said Katharine.  "Blessed, blessed coolth."

"That's no word," said Jane.

"It ought to be," said Katharine, pressing on.

A woods in August isn't quite the magic thing that it is in early
spring, when birds are still fresh-voiced and violets are pushing
through.  Still, a woods is a woods, and the four children hadn't been
in one for weeks at least, and there were branches to swing from
(Mark), and side paths to explore (Jane), and ferns to collect and keep
dropping (Katharine), and all the time Martha kept finding one ideal
spot after another, and the other three kept saying they weren't quite
ideal enough.

At last they came to a clearing with a brook curving through, and
though it wasn't the babbling time of the year, there was still a
satisfactorily wet trickling at the bottom, and Jane sat down on the
bank and took off her shoes and socks and put her feet in the water and
announced that this was the place for her.  So then there were the
sandwiches to be unpacked and divided with scrupulous fairness, and
after that Jane traded all her peanut-butter-and-banana for all
Katharine's prune-and-marshmallow, and after that nobody said anything
for a long time.

"Now," said Martha finally.  "What are we going to do about Uncle Huge
and the magic?"

"We can't do anything," said Mark.  "Not yet."

"What are we going to do when we _do_ do something?" said Martha,
sounding like a popular song, as Katharine pointed out.

A discussion of the chief ballads of the day followed, and a stirring
rendition of "Do, Do, Do What You've Done, Done, Done Before" on the
part of Jane and Katharine.  When silence had been restored, Martha
returned to the subject.

"I've been thinking," she said, "about that treasure."

"What treasure?" said Katharine.

"The treasure on the island, silly," said Mark.  "The pirate treasure,
the treasure in the chest.  I've been thinking about it, too."

"Why, yes!" Jane joined in excitedly.  "Sure!  That pirate captain
marked the stone with his initials as plain as plain!  We could find it
and dig it up in no time!  It's a cinch!"

"Of course, we never saw inside it," said Katharine, "but you can guess
what it'd be.  Would pieces of eight still be worth anything after all
these years?"

"Rare coin collectors would give untold millions," said Mark.
"There're probably jewels there, too.  We could probably give Mother
some and still have enough left over to put us all on Easy Street!"

"That's what we'll do, then," said Jane.

"I thought of it first," said Martha.

"Day after tomorrow," said Katharine.  "I can't wait."

"We'll get back to the house now and plan," said Mark.

To pack the empty sandwich papers in the lunchbox and bury the
unsightly crusts (of which there were a good many) was but the work of
a moment, and the four children set upon the homeward trek.

"Which direction?" Katharine wondered.

"That-a-way," said Mark, pointing, and then starting through the trees.
Everyone else followed.

Ten minutes later they were still walking, and there was still no sign
of the red-clay road.

"It ought to be right ahead any minute now," said Mark.

But it wasn't.  What _was_ right ahead was a clearing, with a brook
curving through and a stray sandwich paper somebody had forgotten
caught in a bush and rustling in the breeze.

"We've come in a circle," said Jane.

"Are we lost?" said Martha, beginning to sound scared.

"Pooh," said Mark.  "That's nothing.  That always happens in a woods.
You veer toward the left cause your heart's on that side."

"Well," said Jane, "it's nice to know our hearts are on the right side,
anyway."

"Left," Mark corrected her.

"You know what I mean," said Jane.

"Maybe if we all sort of leaned toward the right and tried again," said
Katharine.

This didn't sound very sensible and looked even sillier, but the four
children were willing to try anything.  Turning their backs to the
brook, they walked lopsidedly away.  A time passed.

"I've seen that stick before," said Katharine, pointing at the ground.

"That's not a stick, it's a branch," said Jane.

"Whatever it is," said Katharine.  "I remember that knobbly part.
We're in a circle again."

A few steps farther on, the familiar brook appeared.

"We _are_ lost," said Martha, sounding really scared now.  The four
children sat down on the bank and faced this fact.

"Now I know what it means about not seeing the woods for the trees,"
said Jane, looking round at the curtain of green.

"I for one," said Katharine, "will never feel the same about Arbor Day
again."

"If that brook were the lake," said Jane, "we could touch it and wish
ourselves home right now."

"And if it were day after tomorrow," Mark reminded her.

"Oh, those old rules!" said Martha.  "Always making things harder!"

"We asked for them, don't forget," said Mark.  "It was worse when we
didn't have any."

"Maybe we should call the turtle," said Katharine.  "It sent a penguin
before."

"What would it send in a woods?" Jane wondered.  "A moose, maybe."

"O turtle?" said Mark, but not as if he expected any answer.

Still, everybody looked round in every direction, just the same.
Nothing passed by but a caterpillar who was just looking.

"It can't come," said Mark.  "The magic's bigger than it is now.  It
said so."

"Yes, it did, didn't it?" said Martha in rather a peculiar voice.
"Then if we had some lake water here now, we could _make_ it come,
couldn't we?"

"If," said Mark.  "If!"

"Well?" said Martha.  And she triumphantly drew a small bottle from her
pocket.

"That's Mother's best French perfume," said Jane.

"It _was_," said Martha.  "She used the last drop the night we all went
to the dance.  She said I could have the bottle for my handkerchief
drawer.  It's got lake water in it right now.  I went down to the beach
and got some before we started, just in case!"

She finished and looked round at the others proudly and defiantly, and
everybody's heart sank.  Because everybody knew Martha had got over
being scared now and was going to be awful.  That was always the way
with Martha, and when she was that way, there was no doing anything
with her.

"This is terrible," Katharine wailed.  "She'll make the turtle come,
and that'll break all the rules, and the magic'll be out of control
again!  Wait!" she begged Martha.  "Remember how it was that first day!
Remember that big snake thing?"

"Give me that bottle," said Jane, "before you do something foolish."

"I won't," said Martha.  "What do I care about those old rules, or that
old snake thing either?  If we wait till day after tomorrow, Uncle Huge
could go bankrupt in the meantime!  We've got to get him that treasure
right now!"

"Careful," said Mark.  "Every time we ever broke rules before it
brought us nothing but disaster!"

"I don't care," said Martha.  "Anyway, I'm tired of woods and my feet
hurt."

"Of course _that's_ the whole point," said Jane.  "Shame on you!
Pretending you're doing it for Mr. Smith when all along you're just
being selfish!"

"Oh, I am, am I?" cried Martha in a rage.  "Just for that I'll do the
whole thing by myself, and you needn't any of you even bother to come
along!  You can stay here and wait for three days for all I care!  I
don't need you and I don't need that old turtle, either!"  And pulling
the stopper from the bottle, she dashed its contents recklessly all
over her hands and front.  "I wish," she cried, "that all the rules
were broken and I was on that island with the pirate's treasure this
minute!"

And she was.

It all happened so quickly that not even Mark could do a thing to stop
her.  All he and Jane and Katharine could do was stand staring stupidly
at the spot where Martha had been and where she now suddenly wasn't any
more.  And if you have ever looked at a spot where somebody suddenly
isn't any more, you will have some idea of how he and Jane and
Katharine felt.

A chill wind sprang up and blew through the empty space, just to make
it eerier.

Some drops of water that had rolled off Martha's hands splashed to the
ground.

"Quick!" cried Katharine.  "Touch them and wish!"

But the drops of water didn't behave like ordinary drops of water at
all.  They didn't form a pool, or soak into the ground, but gathered
themselves together and went rolling along like bits of mercury when
you let the thermometer fall and break it (as you always do).  And
before anybody could touch any of the little rolling balls, they had
bounced down the bank and joined the mossy trickle of the brook.

"Now it's all diluted!" cried Jane.

"Touch it anyway!" cried Katharine.

Mark threw himself down by the edge of the brook, stuck his finger in,
and wished with all his might.

Nothing happened.

"I guess the magic's gone out of it," he said.

"Either that," said Jane, "or it's watered down below human strength."

"What'll we do?" said Katharine.  "We've got to get out of this woods
somehow and save her from herself!"

"If we only had a compass," said Jane.

"Wait," said Mark.  "I've been watching the sun.  Back there before any
of this started happening.  It's been going _that_ way."  He pointed.
"That means that way's west.  And the lake's west of the road, because
I saw it on the map.  So if we just start after the sun and keep
following, we ought to hit the road first, and the lake after that."

"Come on," said Jane.

A minute later the clearing was deserted.  A possum emerged from the
trees and washed itself at the brook.  But whether it had any wish in
mind, and whether the magic was watered down below possum strength,
too, will never be known, at least not by Jane and Mark and Katharine.

They were far away by now, crashing through the underbrush and
following the sun, stopping every so often when Mark told them to so he
could take his bearings.

They came out onto the red-clay road at last, farther from home than
where they had left it.  The lake wasn't even visible from here, and
Mark decided the best plan was to head back toward their own field.
Katharine counted seven hills before they reached their gate.  Nobody
had breath enough for much talking, but as they climbed the gate and
went bumping over the field (little heeding whether the rams were
unfriendly or not, this time), Jane managed to utter a few words
between puffings.

"What'll we do when we get there?" she said.  "Just wish?"

"What else?" gasped Mark.  "We can't worry about consequences now.
We've got to save her.  No matter what."

"Let come what may," agreed Katharine.

The three children thudded across the hilly field, over the second
gate, and through the yard of the cottage.  Their mother sat reading on
the porch.  She looked up and saw Jane and Mark running, with Katharine
trailing behind.

"Hello, darlings," she said.  "Playing tag?"

Nobody answered.  Snail shells crunched under their flying feet now,
followed by the splud, splud of damp sand.  A glance showed the lake,
blue and ordinary and empty of magic menacings, before them.

"But that doesn't signify," said Jane.  "Imagine what's probably
underneath!  Just lurking there!"

"Let's not," said Katharine.

Mark touched the lake first.  "I wish we were on the island with
Martha," was all he could say before breath utterly failed.

And then they were.




6. The Island

The next thing Martha knew after she made the wish, a salty breeze was
lifting her hair, and she was standing on the rocks that rimmed the
familiar coral island.  Just before her were the four palm trees where
she and the others had hidden on that first fateful magical day.  She
ran forward.

There, right in front of the four trees, was the flat stone, just as
she remembered it, with Chauncey Cutlass's initials blazoned on its
front.  She flung herself on her knees and scrabbled in the sand with
her fingers.  Too late, she wished she had brought a shovel.  Still,
maybe one could be fetched by magical means.

Hurrying back to the rocks, Martha leaned over, plunged her finger in
the water, and wished again.  Nothing happened.  So Mark must have been
right that first day, and this tropic sea had no connection with the
magic lake.  Either that, or the salt got in the way of the magic
current.  "Like a short circuit," muttered Martha to herself, running
back to the flat stone, "whatever that is."

If there were a tree-branch she could make a stick for digging!  But
the only trees were palm trees, and Martha felt that a palm leaf right
now would be but as a broken reed.  So she used her hands again.

At last she managed to get one end of the stone free of the encroaching
sand (breaking several fingernails in the process).  Huffing and
puffing, she heaved the stone away and to one side.  Beneath it was
just more sand, heeled down and trampled well by the industrious
pirates.  Martha got to work on it.  Her fingers were sore by now, and
there seemed to be no end to the gritty graininess, except that as she
got lower it got wetter and scratchier.

"I've heard of the sands of time," she said aloud, "and these must be
it."

But a second later one hand struck solid metal, and a tantalizing
corner of pirate-chest appeared at the bottom of the hole.  Martha
started to dig faster.

Then she stopped.  All this while she had been half-hearing a sort of
plashing sound in the water at her back.  Probably just waves, she
thought.  But now the plashing was nearer and louder.  Something made
her turn and look behind her.

A long, canoe-shaped boat was fast approaching the island, manned by
what looked like hundreds of black-skinned figures.  A few strings of
beads here and there formed their only costume.  Their white teeth
gleamed in the sun.

"Natives!" was Martha's first thought.  "Friends or enemies?"

Probably the natives wouldn't notice, though, was her second thought.
Probably they wouldn't any more than half-see her, the way the pirates
had that other time, and probably they'd just think the island was
haunted, and she could scare them away as easy as pie and get on with
the digging.

As her mind spoke this thought, one of the natives stood up (rocking
the boat) and pointed straight at her with his paddle.  And a fierce
battle cry went up from every dusky throat.

And Martha remembered that she had broken the rules and wished there
_weren't_ any rules any more, and now there _weren't_.  And here she
was, alone and unprotected on a desert island, and _everybody_ would
notice.  Particularly savages.

A weaker spirit might have quailed, or hid its head in the sand.
Martha did neither.  Her one concern now was to protect the treasure,
and Mr. Smith and the bookshop.  Huffing and puffing harder than ever,
she dragged the flat stone back into place and started stamping it down.

Behind her she heard a boat-landing sound, followed by the thud of
running feet.  Then the running stopped, and the only sound was a sound
of breathing.  Whether it was her own or the savages', Martha wasn't
sure.  She decided to look around again.

She did, and quickly shut her eyes.  But that was even worse, and she
opened them once more.  The bead-clad savages were standing in a ring
around her.  Some carried spears with jaggy-looking edges (if a spear
can have an edge).  All of them were looking straight at her, and she
could read only utter unfriendliness in their gaze.  And she could read
something else, only she wasn't quite sure what it was.  Or if it was
what she was afraid it was, she hoped she was wrong.

She thought it time to address the islanders.  "Ugh," she said.
"Mugwump.  Mattapan.  Chop Suey."

The head native paid her words no heed.  He pointed at her with his
spear, which was the jaggiest-looking of them all.

"Supperum," he said.  "Smallum fattum girlum.  Roastum stuffed with
breadfruit crumbs.  Custard apple in mouth all same like sucklingum
piggum."

"Yum yum yummmmmmmmmmm," said all the other natives.

And Martha knew then what it was she had seen in the expressions of the
savage eyes.  It was hunger.  This was a cannibal island, and they were
cannibals.

As this fell thought sank into her brain, rough hands seized her, and
she knew no more.

When she came to, for a minute she didn't know where she was.  She
tried to move, and couldn't.  She looked down.  Then she knew.

She was bound hand and foot and tied to the handle of a long spear that
was standing up with its point plunged deep in the sand.  Her feet
dangled high above the ground.  It was an undignified position, and she
would have been furious if she had had room for any feelings but fear.

Drums were beating somewhere nearby, and there was a sound of rough
voices raised in something that was probably intended to be song.
Martha looked.  It was just as she feared.  A huge bonfire blazed on
the beach nearby, and the islanders were dancing round it, waving their
spears.  A vast caldron hung over the fire.  Steam issued from it, and
Martha knew only too well (from Katharine's home cooking lessons) that
any minute it would come to a boil.

"O turtle!" she cried, trying to make her voice heard above the din.

Not a thing happened.  Naturally.  All rules were broken now, and there
wouldn't be a soul to help her, and she was the one who had done it.
It was only what she deserved, but that was small comfort.

The caldron began to bubble.  Martha spared a second for a wish that if
Jane and Mark and Katharine ever got out of the woods and arrived back
at the magic lake and were noble enough to try to help her, it would be
too late.  After all, there was no point in their being boiled, too.
Then she wept, a prey to despair.

Savage hands seized her, spear and all, and carried her toward the
bonfire.  She could feel its heat all around her now, and the steam
from the caldron was warm and damp on her face.

Then, just at the moment when she was abandoning all hope, there was an
interruption.

Three forms appeared on the island's rocky shore.  The forms were those
of Jane and Katharine and Mark.  Because at just that moment they had
arrived at the lake and made their wish, and it wasn't too late, and
here they were.

Their horrified eyes took in the scene.

"What'll we do?" said Katharine.

"Pretend we're white gods from the sea, silly!" said Jane.  "That's
what explorers _always_ do!  It _always_ works!"

"Wait," said Mark, wanting to stop and think it over, as usual.

"There's no time!" said Jane, and for once she was right about this,
for the natives were holding Martha poised over the caldron now, and
one of them was just reaching out to cut the bonds that held her to the
spear and were all that kept her from the scalding depths below.

"Stop that!" cried Jane, striding forward and waving her arms as a
great white goddess from the sea should.  "Salaam!  Hallelujah!  Boria
Book Ga!"

Katharine tried to follow her example, but she couldn't think of
anything godlike to say.  "Vamoose!  Twenty-three skidoo!  Skat, you
nasty things!" were the words that fell from her lips.

The cannibals jumped, startled, and some of them dropped their weapons.
The ones who were holding Martha's spear let it fall (luckily to one
side of the caldron, and Martha was only slightly bruised).  Mark took
advantage of the distraction to kick quite a lot of sand onto the
bonfire.  It went out.  He reached down to pick up one of the weapons
the savages had dropped.

But the cannibal chief wasn't to be discouraged so easily.  He put his
foot on the spear Mark was trying to pick up.

"Bushwah!" he said (or a native word that sounded very much like that).
"Don't believum.  White man always tell same old storyum.  All same
likum Captain Cook.  Tellum native him great white goddum.  Wasn't.
Heap big fakum."

He rallied his flagging cohorts round him, and they started for Jane
and Katharine menacingly.  Mark ran forward to bar the way.

"Beware!" he cried wildly.  "Great white goddum!  Am, too!  Prove it!
Heap big magic!  Fire magic!  Voodoo!"  And pulling out a box of
matches he happened to have in his pocket, he struck one of them and
brandished it in the cannibal chief's face.

The chief remained unimpressed.  "Old stuffum," he said.  "Modern
invention.  Safety matchum."  And blowing out the match contemptuously,
he seized Mark in his raven grip.  Others of the savage horde laid hold
of Jane and Katharine.

Mark fleetingly wished he were the Connecticut Yankee at the Court of
King Arthur and could predict an eclipse of the sun, and then it would
happen, and that would show them.  But he wasn't, and he couldn't.

And the cannibal chief had probably had the book read out loud to him
by some missionary, anyway, Mark reflected bitterly.  And then he had
probably eaten the missionary, coat and bands and hymnbook, too.

The only thing Mark _could_ do was let himself be bound hand and foot
and tied to a spear like Martha before him.  Out of the corner of one
eye he could see Jane and Katharine being subjected to the same
humiliating treatment.  Five minutes later the four children were
dangling from their four spears like so many sides of meat hanging in a
butcher shop waiting to be roasted.  Mark shuddered.  Every idea he had
seemed to lead back to the same horrid subject.

The natives were hurrying about below them now, gathering wood for
another fire and hauling out three more caldrons (though how they had
fitted four caldrons into their one narrow canoe Mark couldn't imagine).

"This is the worst thing that's happened to us _yet_!" cried Katharine
from her spear.

"Don't give up.  Keep thinking.  We've always managed to find a way out
before," called Mark, reassuringly from his, though he didn't really
feel as hopeful as he tried to sound.

"We hadn't broken all the rules then, and ruined everything," said
Jane, who was in no mood to consider the feelings of her youngest
sister.

Martha gave way to tears again.  I will not say whether any of the
others joined her, or which ones.

The bonfires were nearly built now, and the caldrons being hung in
place.  But the natives were moving more slowly, and pausing every few
moments to wipe their brows.  The sun had climbed high in the heavens.
It was hot.  Some of the cannibals abandoned all pretense of work and
flung themselves down on the sand and shut their eyes.  Others followed
their example.

"What's the matter with them?" said Jane.  "Why don't they cook us now
and get it over with?  This suspense is awful."

"They're tired," said Katharine.  "No wonder, after all that fire, and
dancing, and then working in this heat.  I feel as if I were cooked
already."

A savage hurried up to the chief and said something.  He pointed at the
sun directly above.  The chief nodded and cried out a word of command.
All the cannibals immediately stopped whatever they were doing, and
dropped whatever they held at the moment, be it stick or caldron
(several toes were quite badly crushed), and flung themselves down
wherever they happened to be.  Slumber descended on their perspiring
faces.

As for the chief, he curled himself up in the shade of a sheltering
palm and began to snore.  Two of the natives who seemed to be slaves
propped a canopy over him and fanned the flies away for a bit, before
going to sleep themselves.

"What is it?" said Katharine in the sudden silence.

"It's siesta time," said Mark.  "All tropic tribes do it.  They take
naps every noon."

"Naps!" cried Jane.  "I never thought I'd be glad to hear that word!  I
wish I could take one right now, and wake up and it was all a dream!"

"As if we could sleep at a time like this!" said Katharine.

But it's surprising what the tropical sun can do, particularly when you
are tied to a spear in the full glare of it.  First Katharine and then
Jane gave way to its soporific rays and began to nod.  Mark stayed
awake for a while trying to think of a way out and not finding any;
then he, too, lapsed into utter dozing.  Horrible nightmares disturbed
his rest, but he only twitched and muttered and slumbered on.

Only Martha remained sleepless, a prey to woe and remorse, promising
herself that if they managed to escape this time--only she couldn't
think how--she would never wish on a lake, or anything else, again.

A time passed.

The other three awoke to the sound of voices.

"Where am I?" said Katharine.

"Who's there?" said Mark.

"Three guesses," said Jane bitterly.  "It's those natives.  They're
discussing whether they want us stewed or parboiled."

But it wasn't the natives.

"Look!" said Katharine, pointing.  "It's Martha.  Who in the world is
she talking to?"

Jane and Mark looked.  Sure enough, the natives were still all
stretched out, motionless.  Several of them were snoring loudly.  And
there, at the foot of Martha's spear, where it was plunged in the sand,
stood three children.  Only Jane and Mark couldn't see them very
clearly.  It was as though they were sort of _half_ there, the way
Martha had been once on a half-magic time, long ago.

Martha and the three strange children were making conversation, for all
the world as though they weren't in the least peril at all.

"I'm seven years old," Martha was saying.  "I'm in the second grade
next year.  My teacher's name is Miss Van Buskirk."  All trace of tears
or care had vanished from her voice.

"Honestly!" said Jane.  "At a time like this!  Who are you?" she added
rudely, staring down at the three strange children.

"This one's called Ann," said Martha happily, pointing at the smaller
girl, "and the boy's Roger and the big girl is Eliza.  They're in a
magic adventure, too, and our magics kind of overlapped.  Isn't that
interesting?"

"Oh, they are, are they?" said Jane, who was in no mood for trifling.

"Yes, we are.  Did you think _you_ had all the magic in the world?"
said the one called Eliza, proving that she could be just as rude as
Jane.

"That's why we can't see you clearly, then," said Mark.

"Can't you?" said Martha.  "_I_ can."

"That's funny," said the one called Ann.  "Roger and I can see _you_
clearly, but Eliza can't."

"I can see _that_ one," said the girl called Eliza, pointing at
Katharine.

"I can see _you_, too," said Katharine, beaming at her.  "Still, that's
typical of that magic," she went on wisely.  "You never can tell what
it'll do."  A new thought struck her.  "Why, when you think of it,
there're probably hundreds of children in the middle of hundreds of
magics, wandering all over the world all the time!  It's a wonder we
don't meet more often.  It's a wonder we don't have collisions!  How
did you happen to come _here_?"

The boy called Roger looked at the girl called Ann.  "Why, we..." he
started to say.  But Katharine interrupted him, chattering on.

"I know.  Of course.  The turtle sent you."

"What turtle?" said the girl called Ann.  So that couldn't be it.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" fumed Jane.  "What is this, a social tea?
What does it matter how they got here?  The point is, can they get us
down?"

"Our magic only works for time," said the boy called Roger.

"Really?" said Jane, feeling superior.  "Ours works for _everything_!"
Then she remembered.  "Only right now it isn't working at all," she
admitted.  "That is, it's working, but it's all gone wrong."

"That happens to us sometimes, too," said Roger.

"Pooh!" said the dashing one called Eliza.  "We don't need any old
magic to get them off those spears.  We have our two hands, don't we?
And our crude childish strength?"  And digging in the sand suddenly,
she uprooted Jane's spear, and Jane fell heavily to the ground,
knocking all the wind out of her.  She always maintained afterwards
that Eliza had done it on purpose.  But whether or not this was true,
it was also true that once she had brought Jane to earth, Eliza worked
just as hard as anyone else at undoing her bonds.

The boy called Roger let Mark down more gently and went to work on the
ropes that held him.  As soon as he and Jane were untied, they and
Roger and Eliza attended to Katharine and Martha.

"Free at last," said Katharine, rubbing her chafed wrists.

"And with no help of turtle," said Jane.  "Stuck-up thing.  We'll show
him."

Martha said nothing.  So far, so good.  Maybe they were going to get
home unscathed, after all.

"How did you get here in the first place?" asked the little girl called
Ann.

"We were after buried treasure, and the cannibals caught us," said
Katharine.

"That's right, the cannibals," said Mark, looking round at the
slumberous natives.  "I was almost forgetting.  We'd better talk
softly."

"Do you get captured by cannibals _often_?  I never have, so far," said
the Eliza one in rather an envious voice.  "What about the treasure?
Can we help you find it?  Where's it buried?"

An unworthy thought troubled the mind of Mark, and from looking at Jane
he could see that she was thinking the same thing.  If these nice
strange children helped them find the treasure, maybe they would have
to share it with them, and that would mean so much less for Mr. Smith
and the bookshop.  Still, seven heads (and fourteen hands) were better
than four (or eight).  And besides, it would be only fair.

"Shall we tell them?" Jane's eyes spoke to Mark.

"Yes," Mark signaled back.  "Follow me," he said aloud.  "Better be
careful.  Walk tiptoe."

Quite a lengthy procession crossed the sand.  Mark heaved away the flat
stone, and then paused on the brink of the hole Martha had dug.

"We'd better figure out first how we're going to get away afterwards,"
he said.

"And if we _can_," agreed Jane.  "Those natives might wake up any
minute."  She turned to the three strange children.  "How does your
magic work?  Do you say spells?  Or do you have something with you?
Some magic coin or something?"

"We have _something_," admitted the boy called Roger.  And he took
_something_ carefully from his pocket.  Mark and Jane and Katharine and
Martha couldn't see clearly what it was, though Jane stood on her
tiptoes and peered.  She said afterwards that it looked just like some
old pieces of grass to _her_, but of course it must have been more than
that.  Anyway, as they all afterwards agreed, it certainly was
_something_!

"We have this," the boy Roger went on, "but it only works for time, the
way I told you."

"It gets us back to our own time when we're finished," said Ann.

"Maybe it'd get _you_ back to _yours_, at the same time," said Eliza.
"Only it _wouldn't_ be the same time, if you see what I mean."

"Clear as mud," said Jane.

"_I_ get it," said Mark.  "You mean maybe it'd take us back to _your_
time with _you_, instead."

"That's what I'm worried about," said Roger.

"What if it does?" said Jane.  "We could rest up, and then go on from
there."

The boy Roger shook his head doubtfully.  "You wouldn't like it," he
said.  "It wouldn't work out.  You wouldn't fit in."

"Why?" said Katharine.  "What time _is_ it?"

"It's later than we think," said Mark, studying the sky anxiously.
"It's getting to be afternoon.  We'd better hurry.  Those cannibals'll
wake up any minute.  If they do, we'll just have to take a chance."

Seven heads turned to the treasure hole, and fourteen hands set to
work.  All dug hard, but none dug harder than Jane and Eliza.  In next
to no time at all, the same corner of chest appeared at the bottom of
the hole, just as it had for Martha.

Now there was a difference of opinion.  Mark, ever cautious, and Roger,
who seemed to be of the same temperament, wanted to keep digging till
the chest was all uncovered and get it out whole.  Jane and Eliza
wanted to scrape the sand away from the rest of the lid and open it and
look inside first.

"How do we know?  Maybe it's all a hoax," said Jane.  "It'd be just
like that Chauncey Cutlass."

"Who's he?" said Ann.

"Never mind.  Let's be digging," said Eliza.  She and Jane won by sheer
dint of getting in the way of any who tried to dig in a different
direction.

The four corners of the chest-lid appeared.  Jane laid hold of them and
pulled.

"Maybe it's locked," said Katharine.

But it wasn't.  The lid flew back on its hinges.  Everybody took one
look and gasped.

Pieces of eight were inside, and jewels, just as Mark had predicted.
Diamonds glittered in necklace-y coils, and emeralds and rubies and
sapphires and other stones nobody knew the names of but that were just
as pretty and probably just as precious.  There was enough to divide
and still have plenty to save more than one faltering bookshop.

"We'll go halves," said Jane nobly to Eliza.  "There's probably
somebody _you_ could help, too."

"Let's start," said Eliza.  "You take a diamond necklace and I'll take
a diamond necklace; you take a ruby ring and I'll take a ruby ring...."

Two eager hands reached out and down.

And at that moment the cannibal chief woke up.

He took a look around, rubbed his eyes, and took another.  He saw the
seven children, and his eyes flashed fire.  "Wah!" he cried.  "Samoa!
Goona goona!"

All the cannibals immediately woke up, reached for their weapons, and
scrambled to their feet.  Their teeth gleamed hungrily as they saw
three extra children for dinner, and their faces lighted with avarice
as they beheld the pirate's treasure, for gold is gold no matter where
you find it.  They rushed forward, spears in hand.

"Quick!" cried Mark to Roger.  "Make the wish!  _Any_ time's better
than this one!"

Roger clutched whatever it was he had in his hand tight, and muttered
something.  Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha were never sure
afterwards what he said.  But whatever it was, it did the trick.

The next thing they knew, the four children were standing on their own
beach by their own lake.  There was no sign of the cannibals and no
sign of the treasure, and there was no sign of the strange children
called Roger and Ann and Eliza, either.

But their mother was there, sitting in a deck chair, on the sand, and
because all rules were broken, she saw them appear out of the
everywhere into the here perfectly plainly, and the four children had a
terrible time explaining to her how they had done it so that she
wouldn't think her mind was giving way, the way she had one time before.

"We were in the maple tree on the bank, and we all jumped down," said
Mark, crossing his fingers behind his back.

"You couldn't.  It's too high," said their mother, looking at the tree.

"We did, though," said Jane, crossing _her_ fingers.

"Then you shouldn't have," said their mother.  "How many times do I
have to tell you...."

The speech that began with these familiar words went on for quite some
time.  The four children listened patiently.  At the end of it, their
mother went into the cottage, still looking from the tree to the beach
and shaking her head despairingly.  The four children were alone and
could discuss really serious matters.

"Why didn't you grab some of that treasure before he wished?" said
Martha to Jane.  "Even one necklace would have helped Uncle Huge."

"I couldn't," said Jane.  "It happened too fast."

"At least we know it's there now," said Katharine, ever the peacemaker.
"We can go back for it next time."

"If there _is_ any next time, after what you did," said Jane to Martha
accusingly.  "You'll have a lot of explaining to do to that turtle.  It
probably won't ever speak to us again.  You've probably just ruined the
whole thing utterly and completely."

"Except if all rules are broken and the lake's full of magic," Mark
reminded them, "we could probably wish for anything any old time."

"Only not right now," said Katharine hastily.

"And we'd better clear it with the turtle anyway, just in case," Mark
decided.

"Still," said Martha after a pause, "I'm sort of glad I did it, in a
way.  If I hadn't, we probably wouldn't ever have met those other
children.  I liked them."

"I liked the Eliza one," said Katharine.  "She was fun."

"I wonder where they are now," said Jane.

"I wonder if we'll ever see them again," said Martha.

"Children," said their mother from the porch.  "Come help get supper."

So they did.




7. The Treasure

The next morning after breakfast (and after bedmaking, dishwashing, and
other dull details, but I prefer not to mention them, as who
wouldn't?), the four children went down to the shore.  Martha didn't
want to go, but the others made her.

The turtle was waiting on the beach with wrath in its eye.

"Well?" it said.

"I know," said Martha.  "I'm sorry.  At least," she went on, feeling
that she ought to be truthful, "I'm sorry for what I did, but I'm glad
I met those children.  Will we ever see them again?"

"That," said the turtle, "would be telling.  And now is not the time.
What did I tell you about considering that lake's feelings?"

"You told us to wish wet wishes," said Martha with a hint of rebellion,
"and I did."

"Humph!" said the turtle.  "A wish out of season's just as bad as a
lake out of water.  You've heard about disturbing the balance of
nature.  Well, magic has a balance, too, and when you break the rules,
you upset it.  I told you once that lake's stronger than I am now.  And
now you've got it all upset, there's no telling what it might do next!"

"You mean the magic might dry _up_?" said Jane.

"Either that," said the turtle darkly, "or the other extreme."

What the other extreme from drying up might be, no one liked to think.
Explode, probably, or come running up the bank and overflow.  The four
children had heard of flood disasters, and a _magic_ flood disaster
would probably be even worse.  Martha thought of the big snake thing
they had seen and trembled.

"You mean it's all over?" said Mark.  "We can't wish any more?"

"I think," said the turtle, "that it would be much safer not to."

"Who cares about safe?" said Jane recklessly.  "We've _got_ to!  We've
got to find that treasure.  Now we know it's there."

"Why?" said the turtle.

They told it.  They told it all about Mr. Smith, and the bookshop, and
about business being bad, and all Mr. Smith had done for them, and how
much they wanted to help him in return.

The turtle (so far as could be seen, what with the shell) relaxed a
little, as it heard their story.  "Hmmmm," it said, when they had
finished.  "Good intentions again.  Sometimes I think they're worse
than the other kind.  Still," it added thoughtfully, "you never can
tell with magic.  It might take that into consideration if I went and
explained to it.  It might think the end justified the means.  Though
_that_," the turtle went on, with a severe look at them all, "is a
highly dangerous doctrine and one I shouldn't think of recommending to
you mere mortals.  Why, you could justify _anything_ that way!"

"I _know_!" said Katharine wisely.  "Wars and conquest!"

"Exactly!" said the turtle.  "Look at Napoleon!  But that's another
story."  It broke off and studied them with its cold, hooded gaze.  "I
wonder," it said, "exactly how much you want to help this friend of
yours.  Would you do it if it meant your last wish?"

"Our last wish on the lake," said Mark, "or our last wish ever?"

"It might even come to that," said the turtle.

All eyes met, and all hearts sank for a moment.  But all spirits were
steadfast.

"Yes," said Mark.  The three others nodded.

"Then I'll see what I can do," said the turtle.  "I'll go speak to that
magic.  I'll put it up to it man to man, as you might say."

"What do we do in the meantime?" said Jane.

The turtle looked at her.  "I haven't the least idea," it said coldly.
"What do you _usually_ do?"  And it turned to go.

"Wait!" said Mark.  "At least tell us when to expect it!  If it happens
at all, I mean.  Because if we aren't prepared, we might make a mistake
again, and it would be awful to waste our one chance!"

The turtle's gaze softened.  "The only way I know to straighten out a
mess like this," it said, "is to go back to the beginning and start
over."

"With the same old rules?" said Katharine.

"Every third day?" said Martha.

The turtle eyed her.  "_I_ always thought that a very sensible
arrangement myself," it said.  "It was good enough for me and my father
before me.  Not to mention sundry enchanters of eld."

"Then it'll happen day after tomorrow," said Jane.

"Don't count on it," said the turtle.  And it walked into the water and
swam away.

The rest of that day and all the next one passed uneventfully.  A few
good things happened, like driving in to Angola to see chapter seven of
Ruth Roland in _Ruth of the Rockies_, and the time Mark saw a bird that
wasn't in his small bird book, and Mr. Smith brought a big important
one home from the bookshop and Mark looked it up and it turned out to
be a blue-gray gnatcatcher, which is very rare, at least at an Indiana
lake.  This wasn't very interesting to anyone but Mark, but then there
is nothing so boring as bird-watching, except to those people to whom
it isn't boring at all.

And otherwise little happened that was worth recording, and little was
said that needs repetition.  The third day dawned neither very good nor
very bad.  It wasn't the kind of sunny singing morning when miracles
seem made to happen, but it wasn't the kind of dun-gray day that
discourages all hope, either.  Clouds ringed the sky, but there were
bright intervals.

The four children assembled on the beach rather late, wanting to give
the magic every opportunity and not rush it.  No one breathed a word of
the question that was in all hearts.  No one had to ask what the wish
was going to be.  No one but Mark even spoke.  He marched straight to
the water's edge, and Jane took one of his hands and Katharine took the
other, and Martha joined on at one end.

"I wish," said Mark, "that we would find the buried treasure."

Immediately everyone gasped for breath, and a great wind seemed to blow
away the world, as it so often does when you wish to be taken somewhere
by magic and it happens.

"It worked!" said Martha, when the wind stopped and she could catch her
breath.

"You didn't say _what_ buried treasure!" said Jane to Mark.  "You
didn't wish we could _keep_ it, either!"

"What does that matter?" said Katharine.  "We're here."

"Yes, but where?" said Mark, looking around.  "This isn't our island."

And it wasn't.  Instead of the well-known sand and sparse palm trees,
lush vegetation met the four children's gaze.  The trees hung with ripe
fruits, rare flowers laid their scent upon the breeze, and pure, clear
streams coursed everywhere.  A sky of a peculiarly bright blue canopied
the scene.  Beyond some rocks, a sea of a deeper blue lay dreamily
becalmed.  It was an island all right, but it wasn't theirs.

"I knew it!" said Jane, glaring at Martha.  "The magic couldn't do it.
It tried, but it wasn't up to it.  It's been through too much.  And
it's all your fault."

"I know," said Martha, hanging her head.

"Wait," said Mark.  "It may not be so bad.  There may be buried
treasure here, too.  There must be, or it wouldn't have brought us
here."

"Unless it's getting even!" said Jane.

Everyone felt a clutch of fear at these dark words--everyone but
Katharine, who didn't hear them.  She had wandered away and was busily
exploring.

"Anyway, it's a wet wish," said Mark, pointing at the sea around them.
"That's a good sign.  You'd think."

Katharine came running back.  "I've been here before!" she said.  "At
least it feels as if.  It's all sort of familiar.  Like a book I read
or something!"

"Maybe it's _Treasure_ Island," said Mark.  "Maybe we'll see Jim
Hawkins!"

"And Long John Silver, and match wits with him!" said Jane, who had
always wanted to try.

"No," said Katharine.  "It's not _that_ exactly.  But it's on that
order."  She broke off, and looked around again.  "I know," she said.
"It's like a _picture_ in a book.  The way those rocks are, and that
blue sky.  It's like a picture by the man that did the one in my room.
The amfalula tree picture!"

"Maxfield Parrish," said Mark, who always knew the facts.

"I guess so," said Katharine.  "What book of his do we have?  Something
kind of oriental."

Light dawned on Jane.  "_The Arabian Nights_!" she cried.  "We're in
Arabian Night country!"

And all the others agreed, as they studied the landscape, that an
Arabian Night was exactly what it looked like, except that right now it
was daytime.

"What island is there in that?" said Katharine.

"Don't you remember?" said Mark.  "Sinbad the Sailor!  And the roc's
egg!"

Everyone took another look around.  Sure enough, there, poised on a
cliff not far away, was an enormous round white object.

"Well?  What do we do now?" said Martha.

"Wait for the roc to come down, of course," said Jane, "and then fly
away with it.  If Sinbad could do it, we can!"

Even as she spoke, an immense cloud darkened the sun.

"Here it comes now!" Jane went on.  "Hurry up!  We tie ourselves to its
claws and then it carries us away!"

"There's no treasure in that story," objected Katharine, hurrying along
with Jane and the others just the same.

"There is, too.  There's the ground all covered with diamonds and
serpents," said Jane.

"Ugh!" said Martha, stopping in her tracks and refusing to go another
inch.

"Don't worry, it won't be that," Mark told her.  "That's not _buried_
treasure, and we asked for _buried_.  The magic couldn't get it _that_
wrong."

"I don't care!" said Jane.  "We're supposed to catch on, just the same.
I _know_ we are.  Otherwise it wouldn't be here.  It all works out.
Maybe it'll take us somewhere else.  Maybe it'll take us to our own
island!"

Martha let herself be persuaded, and the four children arrived at the
roc's egg just as the giant bird alighted over the egg and, crouching
down, spread its wings and brooded over it, and composed itself to
sleep.

Mark started walking round the roc, observing it from all sides and
making mental notes for his bird-watching book, but Jane was impatient.

"Don't waste time!" she said.  "It may be leaving any minute!"

So Mark tied himself to one fabulous claw, like Sinbad before him, only
Mark used the belt of his blue jeans.  The three girls bound themselves
on with their hair ribbons, all except Martha, who had lost hers.  She
used Jane's long white socks instead.

Then, ready for anything, the four children waited for the roc to wake
up and fly away.  Nothing happened.

"If there's one thing I haven't any use for," said Jane, after what
felt like two hours at _least_ had passed, "it's a bird.  You and your
blue-gray gnatcatchers!"  And she directed a withering look at Mark.

But at long last the roc awoke and, with a loud cry, rose from the egg.
The children rose with it.  Martha gave a loud cry, too.

But after the first few sickening moments, the sensation was lovely,
and the four children studied the scene below with interest.  At first
there was just heaving sea, but then a rocky coast appeared.

"Island ahoy!" said Mark.

But it wasn't an island.  It was a vast continent that went on and on
as the roc flew inland, over field and forest.

"Where's it taking us?" said Martha.

"Somewhere in some other Arabian Night, I suppose," said Jane.  And a
city full of mosques and minarets appeared below, just to prove it.

"I'll sing thee songs of Araby," breathed Katharine romantically,
looking down, "and tales of far Cashmere."

"Don't," said Martha.  "Not at a time like this.  I couldn't stand it."
Even as she spoke, the city below gave way to another forest.

A sudden thought struck Mark.  "I know!" he said.  "Of course!  Where
in _The Arabian Nights_ is there buried treasure?  Well, _sort_ of
buried," he corrected himself.  "Under ground, anyway."

Before the others could guess, the roc slackened pace and began
circling lower and lower.

"Does it know it's got passengers?" said Martha.  "Will it stop and let
us off?"

"I'm not sure," said Mark.  "Better get ready for an emergency landing."

He started loosening the belt that held him to the great claws, and the
girls went to work on their hair-ribbons (and socks).

For only an instant the roc hovered low over a clearing in the forest.
The four children had barely time to get free and jump before it sailed
away again.  They landed lightly on soft leaf-mold.

"Thanks a lot," called Martha after their departing guide.  The roc did
not reply.

"Where are we?" said Katharine, picking herself up.

"Don't you know?" said Mark, on his feet now and pointing.

Everybody looked.

Before them was a huge rock, so steep and craggy that it was almost a
mountain.

Mark didn't hesitate.  He walked straight up to the rock, opened his
mouth, and just before he spoke light dawned, and everybody else knew
what two words he would say.

The two words were, "Open, Sesame!"

Immediately the expected happened.  A door in the rock opened.  Beyond
it yawned a vast cavern.

"It's the cave Ali Baba found.  It's the cave of the Forty Thieves.
It's _that_ buried treasure!" said Mark, as though anybody needed
telling now.  "Come on!"  He hurried forward, and everybody else
followed.  Martha hung back, but the others pushed her.  As soon as
they were inside, the door shut, of itself.  Martha wished it wouldn't.
But she looked round at what the cave contained and oh'ed and ah'ed
with the others, just the same.

There were all sorts of provisions, rich bales of silk stuff, brocade,
and valuable carpeting, piled upon one another, gold and silver pieces
in great heaps, and ancient Arabian coins in bags.

"What'll we take?" said Jane.

"Ought we?" said Katharine.

"Of course.  Ali Baba did, didn't he?  It's all right to rob robbers!"

"Money!" suggested Martha simply.

"Better not," said Mark.  "You never can tell with currency.  It might
be debased by the time we get it back home."

"What's that?" said Martha.

"Not good any more," said Jane.  "Better concentrate on jewels and
precious metals.  They _always_ come in handy."

So she and Mark and Martha sat down on the floor of the cave and
started to make a pile of handy things to take home.

"Gold pieces for Mr. Smith," said Mark, starting to sort these out from
the silver.

"And jewels for Mother," said Jane, pointing to a heap of diamonds and
rubies no one else had noticed.

"What about these carpets?" said Katharine, tugging at a pile of rugs.
"One of them might be a magic one.  We could sail home in style!  And
it'd be useful for later on, if the lake magic's really worn out after
this wish."

"Too risky," Mark decided.  "We couldn't find out if it's magic or not
without sitting on it and wishing to be somewhere, and then it'd
probably _take_ us there, and we'd probably get all involved in some
other adventure and probably never get back to find the treasure at
all!"

And from their experiences in the past, the others could not but agree
that this was probably only too likely.

"Put that carpet _down_!" said Jane to Katharine.  "You don't know
where it might _go_!"  Katharine moved on, exploring.

Mark dumped the money out of one of the bags, filled the bag with gold
pieces and jewels, put a few of the coins back in for his coin
collection, and pulled the drawstrings.  "Well," he said, "I guess
that's it.  Might as well start for home."

But they didn't.

"Psst!  Lookit!" came a voice at that moment.  The voice was
Katharine's, and it came from deeper in the cave.  "Come here!" she
called, and the others went there, Mark carrying the bag of treasure.
They looked where Katharine pointed.

"Oil jars!" she was saying excitedly.  "Thirty-eight of 'em.  I
counted.  They're the jars the robbers hide in when they try to kill
Ali Baba!"

"But that doesn't come into the story till later," objected Jane,
"after they've found out Ali Baba's been taking their treasure and they
try to get even!"

"They'd have to store them somewhere in the meantime, wouldn't they?"
said Katharine.  "They've probably just reached that part of the story,
and this is where we came in!  Anyway, there they are!"

And there they were, thirty-eight perfectly ordinary Arabian Night oil
jars made of goatskin standing in a neat row in the depths of the cave.

"Sure, that's probably it," Mark figured it out.  "They've probably
just bought the oil jars, and tonight the robber chief'll take them to
Ali Baba's house with the thieves hidden inside them, and then in the
story they're supposed to jump out and kill everybody, only that slave
girl thwarts them!"

"Maybe there's thieves hiding in them right now!" said Jane.

"Let's go home," said Martha.

"Wait," said Katharine.  And daringly standing on tiptoe, she peeked
into one of the jars.  But it was empty.  And so were all the others
when they looked, except one that was full of oil, for the appearance
of things.

"We'd better hurry, though," said Mark.  "They may be here any minute."

"Wait," said Katharine, again.  "I wonder how it feels hiding in one of
those things.  I've always wanted to find out."  And before anyone
could stop her, she had climbed on a convenient chest and was easing
herself down through the neck of the nearest jar.  "Plenty of room
inside."  Her voice came to them hollowly.  "It smells of salad
dressing, though."

"Come out!" called Martha beseechingly.

"Just a minute," said Katharine's voice.  There was a scrabbling sound,
followed by a silence.  When she spoke again, she didn't sound so
daring.  "I can't!" she said.  "I can't catch hold.  It's slippery, and
it sort of _gives_!"

"How did the robbers get out in the story?" said Jane.

"They used a knife, and cut their way through," said Mark.  "Who's got
a knife?"

Nobody had one.

Fate chose this moment to bring a sound of chinking and clanking from
outside, as of many people mounted upon mules.  A voice cried out
something.  The four children couldn't hear what it said, but it
sounded all too much like two fateful, and familiar, words.

"Somebody do something!" cried Martha.  "It's those thieves!  They've
come back!  They're opening Sesame!"

Mark jumped up on the chest and tried to grab Katharine's hand to pull
her out, but he couldn't get any purchase.

From behind them came a sound of rock scraping upon rock as the door of
the cave started opening once again.

"It's too late!" said Mark to Katharine.  "Scrooch down.  Maybe they
won't notice.  Maybe they'll only half-see us, like the pirates that
other time.  It stands to reason, now we've got the rules back."

He and Jane and Martha hid behind a pile of rich brocades.  Katharine
scrooched down.  The robber chief stalked into the cave, followed by
thirty-seven bloodthirsty henchmen.  (The other two of the forty
thieves had already come to no good end earlier in the story.)

The chief took a look around the cave and smote one fist against the
other.  "By Allah!" he roared.  "Someone has been here meddling again!
See the gold pieces all every which way, and the diamonds dispersed and
the rubies rearranged!  Do I have to find our treasure tampered with
every time I come in here?  Probably that miserable Ali Baba butting in
once more!  But we shall give him bastinadoes and send him to Gehenna
before this day is done, or know the reason why!"

"Please, O all-highest," said one of the thieves, investigating the
pile of rugs.  "The magic carpet has been tampered with, too!"

"You see?" hissed Jane to Mark, behind the pile of brocade.  "It _was_
magic.  Don't you wish now we'd sat on it?"

"_I_ do," said Martha, "and we wouldn't be here now."

"Shush," said Mark.

"No matter," said the bandit chief.  "He shall rue the day.  Our plans
are laid.  Man your oil jars.  Boot, saddle, to mule, and away!"

"Oh, dear," said one of the robbers, looking at the oil jars
apprehensively.  "I always get so nervous in an enclosed space.  I
don't think I can go through with it, really I don't!"

"You know your duty, Abdul," said the chief sternly.  "Man that oil
jar!"

"At least let me practice first," said Abdul.  And screwing up his
courage, he marched to his appointed jar (which happened to be the one
in which Katharine sat scrooched).  He laid hold of the jar.  He leaned
over and peered within.  Then he gave a cry, and leaped at least ten
feet away, and fell on his face, pointing in the direction of Mecca.
"Allah defend us!" he cried.  "It be already occupied!  It be haunted
by an evil spirit!"

"Fie!" said the bandit chief.  "More likely 'tis you who be haunted by
the spirit of overmuch date wine!  What did this evil spirit look like?"

"All small it was," said Abdul, "and the light shone through it."

"You see?" whispered Mark to Jane.  "They can just half-see us!"

"And its face," continued Abdul with a shudder, "was that of a perfect
fiend!"

"Why, you!" said Katharine, within the oil jar.

"Hark!" cried the terrified Abdul.  "It speaks!"

The chief thief paled for a moment.  Then he rallied.  "Fie on you for
a cowardly yoghourt," he said.  "Probably a mere genie.  You've heard
of a genie in a bottle, haven't you?  Then why not a genie in an oil
jar, I should like to know?  This is luck!  Now it will do our bidding,
and we can thwart that Ali Baba all the better and probably never have
to leave home at all!"  He marched straight over to Katharine's hiding
place.  "Genie, genie," he said, "come out of your jar."

Katharine's heart thumped.  This was her big moment, and she knew it,
and yet what could she do?  The proper thing, of course, would be to
issue forth in a cloud of smoke and grow into a figure ten feet tall,
and start doing magic tricks right and left.  But she couldn't even
climb out, let alone issue.

"I'm coming," she said, playing for time.  "Just a minute."  Once more
she tried to catch hold of the slippery sides of the jar, and wished
with all her heart that the lake wasn't worn out and the magic would
aid them just once more.

"How the jar trembles!" cried Abdul, with another shudder.

"Hmmmmm," commented the chief, beginning to look skeptical.  "A
peculiar genie.  It seems to be stuck.  Never in a thousand and one
nights have I seen the like!"

At that moment something pressed against Katharine, and a voice spoke
in her ear.

"Move over," said the voice.

Katharine turned as far as she could in her cramped position.
Scrunched against her in the narrow jar was a figure.  I shall not
attempt to describe what it looked like.  Suffice it to say that it was
a genie.

"Oh, good!" said Katharine.  "I was just wishing something like you
would turn up.  Now you can fix everything.  Did the turtle send you?"

"Not directly," said the genie, "but there are certain lines of
communication among us magic beings.  It sent out an SAS."

"You mean SOS," said Katharine.

"I do not," said the genie.  "'Send A Sorcerer' is the complete
expression.  'Send _O_ Sorcerer' would be nonsense!"

"How the genie mutters!" said the chief thief.

"Who's she talking to?" hissed Jane to Mark in their hiding place.

"More mutterings!" said the chief.

"Now that you're here, what are you going to do?" said Katharine to the
genie.  "Burst out and kill them all?"

"Certainly not," said the genie.  "That would be interfering with the
story.  They have to go on and try to murder Ali Baba, just the way the
book says.  Changing that would be against the rules."

"But maybe if you just _scared_ them a little," said Katharine, "then
maybe they'd reform, and there wouldn't have to be _any_ killing.  And
there'd be thirty-eight souls saved for Paradise.  I should think you'd
like that.  I should think it'd be worth the effort."

"Hmmmmm," said the genie.  "There may be something in what you say.
Let me think it over for a minute."

There was a pause.

"I for one," said the bandit chief, "am getting tired of this waiting.
I'm beginning to think there isn't any genie in there at all."

"Mayhap whoever was meddling with our treasure is hiding there,
instead," said one of the thirty-seven henchmen.

"Mayhap 'tis Ali Baba himself, and now he's our prisoner," said another.

"It didn't _look_ like him," said Abdul, "unless he's shrunk."  But the
others paid him no heed.

"Whoever it is," said the chief thief, "we shall give him a surprise.
Fetch the jar with the oil and pour it in and suffocate him.  _That_
should teach him, genie or not!"

Ready feet ran to get the jar, and ready hands raised it to the waiting
brim.

"It seems to me," said Katharine in the jar, "it's time to do
something."

"I could not agree with you more," said the genie.  "Suffocate _me_,
would they?  That settles it!  Watch this!"

And a cloud of smoke enveloped him, and he sailed out of the jar in its
midst and grew to at least twelve feet tall before the startled eyes of
the thirty-eight thieves.  And in some way that Katharine never
afterwards figured out, the genie carried her along on the smoke with
him.  The smoke made a soft seat, though it was rather warm and steamy
underneath.

"There," said the genie, depositing Katharine safely on the floor of
the cave.  He turned to glare at the robbers, and even their chief
quailed.

"Well, genie," he said, trying to put up a show of bravado.  "Have you
come to do my bidding?"

"I certainly have not!" said the genie.  "On your knees, villains!"

Mark and Jane and Martha ran out of their hiding place and joined
Katharine, watching to see what would happen next.

"What did I tell you?  It _is_ an evil spirit!" cried Abdul.  "And four
imps with him!"

And he and the chief and all the bandits flung themselves flat, little
heeding whether they faced Mecca or not, and rubbed their faces in the
dirt in terror.

And then and there the genie began to teach the thieves such a lesson
as they had never before had.

Invisible hands seized them and put them across invisible knees and
gave them bastinadoes until they howled aloud for mercy.  Thunder
roared and lightning crackled.  Earthquakes shook the cave, and great
cracks opened in its floor.  Through it all the laughter of the genie
sounded with the voice of a hundred tornadoes.  Jane and Mark and
Katharine and Martha jumped up and down and shouted with excitement.

At last a final bolt of lightning ripped off the whole top of the cave,
and the blue Arabian sky showed through from above.  Rocks rolled and
bounced all about, but the four children were unhurt (though many a
thief was bruised black and blue).

Then came a sudden silence like the calm after a storm.  Dust settled
thickly.  The howls of the robbers died away to exhausted whimpers.

"Well?" said the genie.  "_Now_ are you sorry?"

"Yes, yes, yes," cried all thirty-eight thieves.

"And you've reformed?  And you'll never be robbers any more?  And
you'll let Ali Baba alone after this?"

"Even so!  By Allah!  Cross my heart!" cried the thieves.

"Very well, then," said the genie.  He turned to the four children.
"Are you ready to leave?"

"Sure," said Mark, catching up the bag of treasure.

"This was keen," said Jane.  "All this, and treasure, and a good deed,
too!"

"Brace yourselves," said the genie.

There was a whoosh, and the cave disappeared, and once again Katharine
felt the strange sensation of traveling on the genie's smoke, and the
other three felt it for the first time, and the next thing the four of
them knew, they felt sand and snail shells underfoot, and they were
staring at their own magic lake, and it was still morning.


When the smoke had cleared away, back in the robbers' cave, the chief
robber looked around cautiously.  Then he got to his feet.

"Well?" he said to his prostrate men.  "What are you all doing down
there on the floor?  You look ridiculous."

The other robbers scrambled up hastily.

"There was a genie," said Abdul dazedly.  "We made a promise.  We
reformed."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the chief.  "You must
have been dreaming.  _I_ never saw any such thing.  I never made any
such promise, either.  Catch _me_!  Did any of _you_ see anything?"
And he looked round at his men threateningly.

The men were groaning and rubbing the parts of them that ached from the
bastinadoes (and the falling rock).  Now they stopped quickly.  "Who?
Us?" they said.  "Certainly not.  Not very likely.  We never saw no
such thing, neither!"  And they all shook their heads solemnly.

"Very well," said the bandit chief.  "Then get to work.  Tote those
jars.  Harness those mules!"

And the thieves hefted up the oil jars, and got on their mules, and
rode away to try to kill Ali Baba (and get killed themselves in the
process), just as though nothing had happened.  Which proves that the
genie was right in the first place, and it's never any use trying to
interfere with stories and make them end differently, because the way
they ended in the first place is the way they're _supposed_ to end.

And the genie was spoken to severely by his superiors, when he got back
to headquarters, for forgetting it.


Meanwhile, on the shore of the lake, four minds had but a single
thought, and four forms flung themselves down on the beach, and Mark
undid the drawstrings of the bag and poured the shining treasure out
upon the sand.

For an instant the bright gold and the red and white gems sparkled in
the morning sun; then they seemed to suffer a change.

"What's happening?" said Jane in alarm.  "It's all sort of melting!"

It was true.  Every piece of gold and every diamond or ruby was
shifting and sliding within itself, only instead of melting down to a
liquid, they were flaking into dustlike grains that held their color
for a moment and then went all lackluster and dead and earth-colored as
they trickled away to mingle with the sands of the lake shore.

"It's chemistry!" said Mark.  "They were buried too long, and we
exposed them to the air too quickly.  They couldn't stand it.  Their
molecules gave way!"

"It's that magic!" said Jane.  "It could have held them together if it
really tried.  It's working against us."

"Can't we save the pieces?" said Katharine.  "Even the littlest bit of
gold ought to be worth _something_!"

"We'd never find _them_," said Mark.  "They're part of the dust of ages
by now."

"There's some money, still," said Martha, pointing.

And sure enough, the ancient Arabic coins had survived transplanting
and lay looking dull and uninteresting on the beach.

"What about them?" said Katharine.  "They must be from awfully long
ago.  They ought to be worth a fortune by this time.  Maybe they're the
real treasure we're supposed to find!"

But when Mark ran and got his rare coin catalogue from the cottage and
looked them up, it turned out they were the commonest ancient Arabic
coins there were, and they weren't worth anything at all hardly.

And they weren't magic talismans, either, because the four children
held each one in turn and wished, and nothing went on happening.

"Honestly!" said Jane.  "That's the last time I'll even _speak_ to that
magic!"

"Better not say that," said Mark.  "You may be more right than you
know.  Remember what the turtle said!"

And they all remembered.

"You mean it's really over?" said Katharine.  "I don't believe it.  It
wouldn't all end like this.  What would be the point?  Why, we didn't
learn a moral lesson, or anything!  Even that would be better than
nothing.  So far as I can see, we might just as well not have gone at
all!"

"You found out what hiding in an oil jar is like," Martha reminded her.

"And there was the genie," said Mark, "and flying.  I guess I'm just
about the only living bird-watcher who ever watched a roc.  I may take
up aviation when I grow up," he added thoughtfully.  "I think it's here
to stay."

"The bastinadoes were lovely!" gloated Jane.  "Anyway, it may all come
right.  That's the way that magic is.  It's like some people.  It never
does what you _want_ it to exactly, but it's never been really _mean_
before.  Somehow it always works out in the end."

"I wouldn't count on it," said Mark.

There was a silence.

"Still," said Katharine, "we can't help hoping, can we?"

And somehow, in the long un-magic days that followed, they couldn't.




8. The End

The long un-magic days that followed were horrible at first, because
the four children couldn't help waiting for the third day to see if
anything would happen, and then when nothing did, they couldn't help
waiting for the _third_ third day (which ought to have been twice as
magic, or even _cubed_ as much).  And when nothing happened _then_, all
hope was despaired of, but after that things began to settle down into
the normal lake-y routine.

Picnics were had, and walks were taken.  Motorboat rides were even
enjoyed.  Mr. Smith taught Mark and Jane to paddle the canoe.  Mark
went on with his bird-watching and became quite knowledgeable about the
least bittern.  Katharine and Martha started a butterfly collection,
only Katharine was always too tender-hearted and let the butterflies
out of the net again after she'd caught them.  (Martha, of course, knew
no mercy.)

As for swimming, it never palled, in spite of the dire irony that there
they were, plashing about day after day in a lake that was full of the
most spine-tingling enchantments, and yet they couldn't break through
to get in touch with any of them.

"Just think," said Jane to Mark one day as he was practicing the
Australian crawl.  "Nixies and Rhine maidens may be gamboling in this
very same foam right now.  They may be even touching us, for all we
know.  That frog over there might be the Frog Footman."

"Or the Frog Prince," said Katharine.

"Or Mr. Jeremy Fisher," said Martha.

"Stop it," said Mark.  "Let sleeping frogs lie."  And for the most part
they did.

But ever and anon one of them would notice one of the others dipping
his finger in the lake and muttering something, and then looking
disappointed.  And once Martha came upon Katharine lingering by the
boathouse and whispering, "O turtle?" to the evening dews and damps.

"Don't," said Martha.  "He won't come.  Or if he does," she went on,
wisely for her age, "it'll be when we least expect it.  He likes a
surprise, I think."

One good thing was that Mr. Smith's bookshop didn't seem to be actually
failing yet.  From a hint garnered here and a remark gleaned there, the
four children gathered that business wasn't getting any better, but it
wasn't getting any worse, either.

And as August ripened into September, and goldenrod gilded the
roadsides and the pollen drifted from the ragweed and Mark began
sneezing with his annual hay fever, the thought of magic retreated deep
into their minds, and the thought that lay uppermost was the thought of
school.

"Only three more days of vacation!" said Martha one sunny afternoon.
"Monday's Labor Day.  We drive home then."

"O day of labor rightly named!" said Jane.  "I think it's mean of them,
calling it that.  As if going back into bondage weren't bad enough,
without rubbing it in!"

"I'm kind of looking forward to next year," said Katharine.  "We get
fractions."

"Just wait is all I can say!" said Jane.

"What'll we do in the meantime?" said Martha.  "We ought to make every
second count.  What'll we do today?"

"Get out the rowboat," said Mark.

"Boring."  Jane vetoed this.  "I know every inch of this shore
backwards by now."

"I wasn't thinking of _this_ shore so much," said Mark.  "I was
thinking of the other one."  And he pointed across the lake.

"We're not allowed," Katharine reminded him.  "They've never found
bottom.  We're supposed to stay in close to the edge."

"Well?" said Mark.  "We don't have to go straight across, do we?  We
can stay by the edge and row right _around_.  I've always been going to
do that.  And I was thinking.  Remember that old broken-down cottage
you can see from the _Willa Mae_?  The one that looks haunted?"

The mention of this entrancing word was all that was needed to lend a
sparkle to every eye and fleetness to every foot.  It was a race to see
who could reach the boathouse first.  Mark won, hotly contested by
Jane.  Ten minutes later, oars were plying gaily in the direction of
Cold Springs.

And soon that gracious center of civilization glided past and into
their lee, and they were plowing unfamiliar waters.  At least, they'd
seen this coast before from the _Willa Mae_ dozens of times, but a
coast is always different and more interesting when you're up close by
it and can note every stone and bush and inch of flaking paint on land.

At first there were just more cottages to note, and laundry hanging
out, and tin Lizzies parked in dooryards, and an occasional voice
calling something mundane like "We ain't got no eggs."  But then the
cottages dwindled, and there were desolate tangled thickets, and
swamps, and reedy marges, and haunts of coot and hern, as Katharine
poetically put it.

Once the rowers, who happened to be Jane and Martha at the moment, were
lured off course and found themselves progressing up a stream that got
narrower and narrower every minute.

"This must be the lake's source!" said Jane.  "We could follow it and
dam it up and then see how long it takes the lake to dry!"

"There's no time," said Mark.  "Even if there isn't a spring in the
bottom, it'd take weeks to evaporate, and we'd be gone home by then and
never know.  And anyway, I want to see that haunted house.  Here, let
me."

And he took Martha's oar from her and backed water, and got the boat
half turned around, and then they stuck on a mudbank, and time was
wasted in recrimination, but at last they were headed the other way,
and out into the lake again, and this time it was only a few moments
before the weed-clad inlet came into view, with the dilapidated cottage
crumbling on its banks.

To beach the rowboat and leap to shore was the work of a moment, and
only Martha's feet got _really_ wet in the process.  The four children
scrambled up the stony ledge to where the cottage's front porch sagged
from its foundation.

"That way's too dangerous," said Mark.  "Let's try around at the back."

Around at the back the kitchen steps still held, and Mark ran up them
and the others followed.  They stood looking into a murky waste of dust
and old newspapers and broken kitchen chairs.

"Come, ghoulie, come, ghaestie, come long-leggedy beastie," said Jane,
and a large spider scuttled across the floor.  This made a promising
start.

They entered the house warily, Katharine and Martha hanging back and
clutching at each other.  But when no bloodcurdling yells or sheeted
forms materialized, they gained courage, and soon were running eagerly
from room to room looking for bloodstains on the floor or muffled
shapes hiding in closets.

Neither of these proved prevalent, but Martha picked up an old collar
button with some dark marks on it that were probably only rust, and
Katharine found a scrap of letter that said, "Dear Bert, yours received
and contents noted."

And then, as might have been expected, Mark lagged behind the others
and hid in a cupboard and didn't answer when they called him, and then
started shuffling along the dark hallway after them, and groaning and
dragging his feet and clanking a piece of old tire chain he had found.
And even though the three girls were almost sure it was Mark all along,
they all cried out and gibbered and rushed screaming from the house,
and Mark ran howling horribly after them until they all four collapsed
breathlessly on the ground of the weedy backyard, amid the shrieks and
thudding hearts of utter terror and enjoyment.

"Ow!" said Martha, rubbing herself.  "I sat down on something hard."

"A rock, most likely," said Mark, rolling over to investigate.  He
cleared the encircling weeds away.  Then he gulped.

It was a loud gulp, and the others crowded round to see.  There, on the
ground, lay a flat stone they had seen before.  It had initials carved
on it.  The initials were "C.C."  Nobody needed to be told whose
initials they were.

"Chauncey Cutlass!" breathed Jane.

"Is it a quincidence?" said Katharine.

"Of course not!  It couldn't be!  It's _it_!  It's the pirate treasure
after all these weeks!  It's that turtle!  It put it there!" cried Jane.

"Sure, don't you see?" said Mark.  "This is the one way we could find
buried treasure without telling about the magic, and no questions
asked!  Wasn't that crafty of it?"

"Well?  What are we standing here for?  Let's be digging," said
Katharine.

"Wait," said Mark, and then stopped, thinking hard and fast.  "Look.
We want Mr. Smith to have the treasure, don't we?"

Three heads nodded.

"Well, then I think _he_'d better be the one that finds it.  If we dig
it up and try to give it to him, he's sure to go all noble and refuse
to accept, and want to put it aside in trust funds for our college
education!  And we don't want _that_ kind of thing happening!"

"Ugh!" said Martha.

"It would just utterly and completely ruin everything!" said Jane.

"Exactly!" said Mark.  "No.  The thing is to leave it, and then lure
him here tomorrow, when he's home for the week end, and let nature take
its course!"

"Can't we even peek first?" said Katharine.

"It would be leading us into temptation," said Mark.

"What if somebody finds it and steals it before then?" said Jane.

"I don't think there's much danger," said Mark.  "I think it was put
there specially for _us_.  It's that last wish we made come really true
after all.  If anybody else happened along, I don't think it'd even
exist!"

But he smoothed the attendant weeds back over the stone, just the same.

And regretfully the girls allowed themselves to be led away from the
yard and the stone and the haunted house (though _it_ had lost all
charm by now), and the four children got into the rowboat and headed
for home.

No one watched the shore on the journey back, for all hearts burned
with impatience to get to the cottage and start working on Mr. Smith.
And at last their own beach came in sight, and because it hadn't been a
magic adventure (strictly speaking), more time had passed than you
would believe, as is usually the case when you've been enjoying
yourself thoroughly, and supper was already merrily cooking, but Mr.
Smith wasn't there.  And their mother told them that a message had been
delivered at the farm where the milk came from (for the cottage itself
had no telephone).  The message was that Mr. Smith had been detained in
town on business and wouldn't be home till next day.

And the next day he didn't get there till nearly dark, and it was too
late to start luring him anywhere.

"What do you suppose he's been _doing_?" said Martha that night, when
four pajamaed forms had assembled upon the sleeping porch.  "Do you
suppose he's ruined and bankrupt _already_?"

"He can't be," said Katharine.  "Not with rescue staring him in the
face, if he'd only look."

"I still worry about what's happening to the treasure in the meantime,"
said Jane.  "It might corrode."

"It won't, though," said Mark.  "It's all going to work out.  It'll
have to be tomorrow, though.  It's our last day.  It's our last chance."

But when they woke up next morning, their mother was already up and
heaving bedclothes off beds, and Mr. Smith was in the kitchen packing
saucepans into grocery cartons, and all the four children's luring fell
upon deaf ears.

"There's just one thing for it," said Jane.  "We'll just have to be
useful."

And the others privately agreed.

And they worked so hard and fast, and dropped so many hints in between
chores, that the unknowing grownups finally got the idea, and their
mother finally said, "Everybody's being so good, I think we all deserve
a last treat," just as they had willed her to.

And though a visit to a haunted house wasn't perhaps the treat the
grownups would have chosen, still, as Mr. Smith said, this was supposed
to be the children's summer, and they ought to have the say.

The car was packed now, and the cottage swept clean of all familiarity,
except for the bathing suits still hanging on the line.  Mr. Smith had
decided they would drive home that night to avoid Labor Day traffic
next day.

"We'll have a picnic lunch at your haunted house, come back here for a
last swim, and then have dinner at the hotel before we go," their
mother decided.

Five minutes later they set out, Jane and Mr. Smith leading the way
dashingly in the canoe, and Mark and their mother and Katharine and
Martha following in the rowboat.

The haunted house was there waiting.  And because the four children
didn't want to be too obvious about the treasure, they had to pretend
to be scared all over again, though it was an old story.  And then they
warmed to the spirit of the thing and hid in a closet and pounced out,
and their mother obligingly shrieked a couple of times, and then it was
time for lunch.

The four children chose the spot for the picnic, though their mother
suggested other, less weedy, places.  Jane and Katharine spread the
picnic tablecloth.  Mark maneuvered it so Mr. Smith would sit in just
the right place.  Martha watched with bated breath.

Mr. Smith sat down.  Then he looked surprised.  Then he looked beneath
him.

"Hmmmm," he said.  "This is interesting."

"Yes, isn't it?" said Mark unguardedly.  Then he remembered and quickly
bent over to look at the stone, just as though he hadn't seen it before.

"C.C.," said Mr. Smith, reading the initials.  "That must stand for old
Mr. Cattermole.  He used to live here.  They were telling me about him
at the hotel the other day."

"No it doesn't," said Martha.  "It stands for..."

"Shush," said Katharine.

"Well?" said Jane impatiently.  "Aren't you going to dig?  Aren't you
going to find out what's under it?"

"I don't suppose there's anything," said Mr. Smith.  "He was a peculiar
old man.  Proud of anything that was his.  Used to put his initials all
over everything.  Some people said he was a miser.  They never found
any money after he died, though."

"He _was_?  They _didn't_?" said all four children.  Their fingers were
itching.  What they were itching to do shone in their eyes.

"You might as well humor them, Hugo," said their mother, with a
long-suffering sigh.

And Mr. Smith began to dig.

"Wasn't that _clever_ of the turtle?" said Katharine some time later,
as they lay on the beach after their last swim.  "Changing the pirate's
treasure into good old American ten-dollar bills right before our eyes!
And so _many_ of them!"

"What _I_ don't see," said Jane, "is how he arranged it so old Miser
Cattermole had lived there in the first place."

"That turtle moves in a mysterious way," agreed Mark admiringly.

Of course, they weren't going to get the money right away.  It seemed
that there were rules about buried treasures, just as there were about
magic.

"And about just about everything, I guess!" sighed Jane resignedly.

First they had to advertise for old Mr. Cattermole's heirs.  And if
none turned up, and everybody at Cold Springs seemed to think none
would, then the government had to get a lot of it.

"Not that I begrudge _that_ part," said Jane.  "I'm happy to do my bit."

"You mean Mr. Smith's bit," said Mark.

And it was going to be all right about the bookshop, anyway.  Because
what had kept Mr. Smith in town was that a man had turned up who
thought Toledo, Ohio, _needed_ a bookshop, and he was willing to invest
some money to make Mr. Smith's bookshop a _bigger_ bookshop.

"And even that didn't happen till after we found the treasure," said
Mark.  "I checked on the time.  So you see the turtle did it all."

And if any of the miser's money _did_ come to Mr. Smith, he was going
to buy a summer cottage with it, so they could have a summer by a lake
every year.  Only not _this_ cottage, because it wasn't for sale.

"And I hope not this lake, either," said Jane.  "It would only remind
us."

"You're thinking what I'm thinking," said Mark.

"Yes," said Jane.  "No more magic for us.  It stands to reason.  Some
people never get any at all, and we've had it twice."

"_Three_'s the magic number," said Katharine wistfully.

"Even so," said Jane firmly, "and notwithstanding."

And in spite of their greedy youth, Katharine and Martha had to agree.

"The only thing that bothers me," said Katharine, "is I thought we'd
get to talk to the turtle one more time.  I wanted to thank him."

"And _I_," said Martha, "wanted to ask about those three children we
met.  I liked them."

There was a pause.

"Children!" called their mother.  "Time to go!"

The four children got up.  They stood looking at the darkening water.

"I'm going to miss this lake," Mark said.

"Another one just won't be the same," Jane agreed.

"If anybody ever plays 'Back Home in Indiana,' again," said Katharine,
"I shall cry."

"It'll be better to start fresh, though," said Jane.  "Next year."

And the three of them turned their backs on the lake and started for
the car.

Martha lingered.  She went close to the rippling edge.  "O turtle?" she
said softly.  She waited, listening.

There was a tiny plashing sound, and a head and two front feet appeared
where the water joined the land, with a humped shell behind them.

"Well?" said a cold voice.

"Don't worry," said Martha quickly.  "I understand about probably no
more magic, and I'm not asking for anything more.  I just wondered.
About those children we met.  That Roger and that Ann.  I just
wondered, will we ever see them again?"

The turtle blinked once.  It put out its tongue after a passing midge.
Then it spoke.  "Time will tell," it said.

Martha's heart beat faster.  "Oh, good," she said.  "In books that's
always a good sign.  At least it's better than no."

"But whether you'll know them or not, if you do," went on the turtle,
"is another story."  It took a backward step, and the waters closed
over its head.

Martha stood on the darkling sand thinking this out.

The horn of the car sounded.

"I'm coming!" she called.  She ran up the bank toward it.

The car door slammed.  The car lights swung round the driveway.  There
was a pause, as Mark opened the gate into the field.  Then the lights
moved on up the hill and out of sight.

The waters of the lake plashed softly against the sand.  But nobody was
there to hear them now.



      *      *      *      *      *



_by the same author_

HALF MAGIC

KNIGHT'S CASTLE

THE TIME GARDEN

MAGIC OR NOT?

THE WELL-WISHERS

SEVEN-DAY MAGIC







[End of Magic by the Lake, by Edward Eager]
