CHAPTER THE SIXTH
OF OUR SEARCH FOR SUSTENANCE AND SHELTER; WITH VARIOUS MATTERS OF MORE CONSEQUENCE TO THE CASTAWAY THAN EXCITEMENT TO THE READER
This little adventure with the pigs was, I verily believe, the means of saving us from the lethargy into which we had like to have been cast by brooding on our solitude. The knowledge that there were on our island animals that might be formidable, and were certainly good for food, proved to us at once the necessity of being watchful, and of setting our wits to work to devise a means of cooking. And a thing that happened the same night showed to us that if we were to make the best of our situation, and have any comfort in our solitary life, we must take some measures for our shelter.
A Storm
This event was nothing less than a violent storm of wind and rain which sprang up suddenly in the middle of the night. We had returned to our first shelter, the make-shift hut, or rather lean-to, which we had constructed of boughs and leaves around a great tree. The wind broke this down utterly, scattering the materials of it far and wide, and the rain drenched us to the skin, or I should say, soaked us to the bone, we having no garments but our shirts and breeches. That night was the most miserable of all my life, I assure you. We huddled together for shelter under the thickest trees, listening to the howling of the wind, and sometimes hearing great crashing noises that made us fear almost to remain under shelter at all, lest the trees should fall upon our heads and kill us. Never a wink of sleep had we that night, and when daylight came, we staggered forth from the wood, two shivering miserable mortals, who would have given the world for a roaring fire and a hot posset to comfort us.
We needed not to climb trees for our breakfast, for the wind had strewed the ground with cocoanuts, and had indeed uprooted many trees, one of which had narrowly missed the very spot where we had lain. As we ate our food, very wretched, we considered how we were to construct some sort of hut, in case another storm should visit us. There was timber in plenty, but neither Billy nor I had any knowledge of sawyers' or carpenters' work; nor if we had should we have been much better off, having no tool save the rough axe of Billy's fashioning. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and so it proved in our case, as will be seen more fully hereafter.
After breakfast the first thing that Billy did was to try his axe on one of the big fallen trees. He was able after very great labour—I taking my turns when he was tired—to lop some of the branches off, but the flint was so much blunted by it that we saw it would serve us little longer. Accordingly we set off up the mountain-side to find other flints of which to make axe-heads, and on this little expedition we were followed by the pack of dogs, which watched our proceedings as if they took a great interest in them, but always remained at a reasonable distance. By midday we had collected a fair number of sharp-edged flints, small and big, and Billy having made me an axe like his own—he would not let me do it, saying that he was sure he could make a better one than me—we felt a deal more comfortable both in body and mind, being satisfied that we should not lack tools, though rough, and our clothes being dried with the sun. Indeed, we found the sun rather oppressive, especially upon our bare heads, and we wished very heartily that our hats had been spared to us; coats we could do without in the daytime, though they would have been a great solace o' nights.
Plans
Having thus furnished ourselves with axes, we had to determine the site for the hut we purposed building, and we talked very seriously about this when we had eaten our dinner.
"One thing is sure," says Billy; "we must build it a good way from the old smoker" (so he called the mountain, above which we observed that a cloud of steam had again gathered, though it had been clear yesterday). If remoteness from the mountain had been the only point to be considered, we might have been content with the wood in which we had made our lean-to; but after our experience in the storm we did not regard it as suitable for a permanent habitation when it might be shattered any day or night. It was certain we could not build on those parts of the island that were bare rock, for we could not by any means dig foundations in it, and a hut without foundations, in an exposed place, might be carried away in a hurricane, and hurled into the sea, and we in it. And then it came into my mind that if we built too high upon the island, our dwelling might be spied by the savages of the neighbouring islands of which I have spoken, for we could not doubt that they were inhabited, and the people would certainly put to sea sometimes in their canoes. This set me on thinking that it would be well to make our dwelling less a house than a fortress, in which we could take refuge in case savages should at any time land upon our island. It seemed to me, then, that we ought to seek for a remote spot, very hard of access, and bethinking me of such a spot which I had seen in our course towards the north-east, I had almost resolved to choose that spot when I recollected all at once that there was no water in that neighbourhood, which was a very serious matter. Indeed, this lack of water gave us much concern, for as yet we had found none but what smacked of brimstone, and Billy said that we didn't need physicking every day, nor yet every week. We spent the rest of that day, therefore, in roaming over the island once more in search of fresh water, and made a more thorough exploration of the western end, in which the vegetation was wilder than in the other woodland parts. There was never a spring that we could see, and we should have had our search for nothing but for a discovery that Billy made. He had climbed a bare and very rough hillock, just beyond a patch of wood at the south-west corner of the island, and I saw him suddenly stoop, and when he rose to the erect posture he held something white in his hand, and began to caper with every token of delight. Then he came running down towards me, and shouted a word that sounded like "aig! aig!" which puzzled me exceedingly, until when he came close to me and opened his hand I saw what was certainly the likest to a hen's egg that I had ever beheld, and concluded that "aig!" was the manner of calling it at Limehouse. I could scarce believe it was indeed a hen's egg, for we had seen no fowls save those I have mentioned before, nor had we heard, amid the noises of the island, the clarion voice of any cock; yet it was like nothing else, and Billy declared with great positiveness that there must be roosters, as he called them, on the island, whose eggs would form an agreeable addition to our fare.
Eggs
He was not by any means cast down when I said that we had no fire for cooking, avouching that he had sucked 'em raw many a time, but added that this being the first egg we had found, it belonged by right to me as king of the island (so he called me in sport), and he would at once set about making a fire, as he had often said he would do, and roast it for me, we having no pan for boiling. When he spoke of boiling, I remembered all of a sudden the spring of hot water we had seen on the other side of the mountain, and thought it might very well serve to cook the egg; so we made all haste to that spot, Billy saying that if the water would cook an egg, it would also cook pig, and boiled pork was very good, though not so good as roast. We came to the spring, and laid the egg in the bottom of a cup-shaped hollow through which it flowed, and having neither watch nor sand-glass, Billy set himself patiently to count the seconds as well as he could, saying that the egg must not be overdone nor underdone, but boiled just proper.
"We will give it four minutes, master," says he, "instead of three, 'cos we ain't sure the water is on the boil, not what you would call real boiling."
Accordingly, the four minutes being expired (though I think he missed count when just past a hundred and fifty), he took out the egg and, breaking the shell at one end, gave it to me to taste, which I did, but instantly spat it out of my mouth, and cast the egg down upon the rocks, bespattering them with white and yellow. I told Billy with much spluttering that the egg was addled, and indeed the taste of it was very foul, and remained in my mouth a long time, till, having returned to our wood, I cured it with a copious draught of cocoa-nut juice, the acid of which was very grateful. Billy was much cast down at this unfortunate beginning of his cookery, and wanted to go instantly and kill a sucking-pig; but since it was already growing late, and would be dark ere he could go and come and finish cooking, even if he found a pig at once and caught it without trouble, I persuaded him to return with me to the wood, where we had to rig up another shelter for the night, in place of the one that had been shattered by the storm.
I will say here that we found more eggs afterwards, always in places that were hard to get at—on ledges in the land side of the cliffs, and in hollows of rocky eminences; and though we for some time saw no fowls and were much puzzled in consequence, we discovered by and by that they roosted high up in the trees, and concluded that they did this to take refuge from the rats and dogs, and kept silence for the same reason. There were very few of them on the island, their broods being no doubt much preyed upon when young and unable to fly.
I had almost forgot to mention a strange discovery we made while we were yet on the mountain. It chanced that Billy, prodding the ground with his axe, dislodged a lump of rock which rolled down into the spring, and had no sooner touched the water than it set up a great hissing noise, and we saw a cloud of dirty yellow smoke rise up from it into the air, with such a horrible stench that we choked and coughed, and ran away to some distance until the fizzing and smoking ceased. I had never seen or heard of the like before, and as for Billy, he said that Old Smoker was worse than he thought him, carrying such poisonous stuff in his inside. This made us careful how we trod, for we did not know but there might be rocks of other kinds, which might "go off," as Billy said, when we touched them. However, we did not find any such, and we almost forgot about the fizzy rock, as Billy called it, until a time came when we discovered a use for it.
The First Hut
To come back to the matter of our house. Having sought in vain for a suitable site in the rougher parts of the island, we went down next day to the lake-side, where we should at least be within reach of water, though unpalatable. We found that the lake was very much swelled with the recent heavy rains, and the water was not near so clear as formerly, though it was much less nauseous to the taste, and we had a good drink of it without suffering any ill effects. This quite determined us in our choice, for we supposed that it would rain very frequently, as in England, so that the lake would be constantly replenished and the sulphurous character of its water be thus qualified. We found in course of time that rain did not fall near so often as in England, though usually much heavier; and that the effect on the lake was not quite so great as we expected, at least in regard to the taste, for the many rills and rivulets that carried water from the high parts of the island ran over sulphurous soil, some of which they washed down into the lake.
Being set on building a substantial house, or rather fortress, as I said, we saw that with our rude tools it would take us a very long time, and so we first took in hand to make a small hut which would shelter us while the other was a-building. This we determined to place at the edge of the wood above the lake, and we found much material in the trees which had been uprooted in the storm, and in young straight saplings which we could either pull up, the soil being thin, or cut down with our stone axes. These axes of ours soon became blunt, but we found a means to sharpen them by whetting on the hard rocks by the shore, and it became our constant practice to begin each day with bathing in the sea, and then sharpening our axes, which sharpened our appetites also, I do assure you. Having got a sufficiency of these slender poles for our walls, we stuck them in holes which we made with our axes, and held them together with tendrils of the creeping plants that grew very plentifully in the woods. We thus made walls about ten feet high, about a space twelve feet square, and it was not until the walls were up that we began to consider of how to put a roof to them, having no ladders nor any means of mounting to such a height. This made us see how needful it was to take thought beforehand, though we never succeeded in foreseeing all the difficulties that we should meet with, and I suppose no one ever did. All we could do about this roof of ours was to carry up small rocks from the shore, and pile these one on another until we made a stand high enough for us to lay saplings from wall to wall. Since it was clear that this roof would protect us but little, the rain being able to come through the interstices, we put up stands of rocks inside the hut, and supported on these we made shift to weave grasses and creepers among the poles, finding it very hard work, and very long too, we having to take the stands down and build them up again as we moved from place to place in the hut. As for the walls, we filled up the interstices in them with earth from the hill-side above us, which we found to be of a clayey sort, and soon hardened in the sun, though after a little it began to crack and crumble. We carried this earth in our hands, a very troublesome and slow manner of doing it, but we had no vessels, nor did we at that time think of making any.
This hut took us above a week in building, at least I think so, for after the first day or two we neglected to take any account of the passage of time. It was a poor sort of thing when finished, and could not have stood against a hurricane; but the weather was very fair, and besides, the place we had chosen was not near so much exposed as our first habitation, on higher ground. We hoped it would serve us until we should have made our proposed fortress, and the building of it was exceeding useful to us, for it took up, with the getting and eating of our food, every minute of the daytime, and by keeping our thoughts busy, as well as our hands, hindered us from dwelling on our loneliness.
I had almost forgot to mention two or three things: first, that every morning and evening one or other of us went up the mountain-side, to a spot whence we had sight of the sea all around, to spy whether a sail was visible. The second thing is, that Billy went out one day, and brought back a little sucking-pig, which he had killed with his axe. We cut off its hinder legs, and carried them to the hot spring, and found that they cooked very well; and though the meat had a slight savour of brimstone, it was vastly more agreeable than the salt junk we were used to have aboard ship. Indeed, Billy said that it only wanted pease-pudding to make a meal fit for a king, and he ran all the way to the wood and back again to fetch a bread-fruit, to see if that, when boiled, would supply the place of pease; but the fruit only boiled to a pap, and when Billy tasted it, he declared that it spoiled the flavour of the pork, so we ate the meat by itself.
Failure
This failure made Billy determine again to try his hand at making fire, which we had no time for when building our little hut. He picked up a straight twig, that seemed to promise well for his purpose, and sharpening his flint axe, he peeled the twig and cut it so as to make a stick about a foot long, one end of which he brought to a point. But, finding the wood too soft for the use to which he designed it, he went prowling about to discover a tree hard enough, testing them with his axe, and after a long search, lighted upon a tree that was very hard, and whose sap was of a blood-red colour.[[1]] Having cut a stick of this, he sharpened one end to a point, and then took two chunks of wood, one of a soft kind, the other of the new-discovered tree, which we called redwood, and in each of these chunks he made a little hollow, one in the soft wood for the sharp end of the stick, the other for the blunt. Then, fitting the stick into these hollows, he gave me all three pieces of wood to hold, and while I held them tightly clamped together, he began to twirl the stick between his hands as fast as he could, as he had seen the savages do, though often they used a bowstring. He continued this for a good while, until his hands, hard as they were, grew sore and his face was running with sweat; but whether that the wood was damp, or that Billy was not dexterous enough, I know not, only that there was never a sign of smouldering, though the wood was hot when we felt it. Billy insisted that I should take a turn, which I did, and twirled the stick even faster, I believe, than he did, though not so long; but it was all no good, and at last we threw the wood from us, concluding that if we were to obtain fire, it must be in some other way. I do not mean that we never tried the native way again: we were not so easily discouraged; we tried more than once in the intervals of doing other things, and I think that with perseverance we might have succeeded at last, only it was not necessary, as will be seen hereafter.
Building Materials
This failure, though it annoyed us at the time, was of use to us, inasmuch as it set us on noticing
[[1]] This appears to have been what botanists call Rhizophora mucronata.—H.S.
the differences between woods, which until that time we had thought little about, but was now become a matter of importance, with our fortress in view. We needed a hard, strong wood, yet not too hard to be worked with our clumsy tools, and we spent a day or two in testing the varieties of trees that grew on our island. The cocoa-nut palm was by far the most plentiful, and the bread-fruit tree came next: but we did not think of cutting down either of these to make posts of, because they were food trees, and, being ignorant how often they bore fruit, we did not venture at the first to diminish the source of our provision by so much as one. Besides, we found, when we tried to cut a cocoa-nut tree which had been cast down in the storm, that the wood was exceeding hard, and so heavy that it sank in water. After this testing, I say, we discovered a tree on the hill-side whose wood was neither too hard nor too soft, and as it existed in great numbers, and bore no fruit, none that was edible, at least, we determined on this as the material for our house. I never knew the name of it, but it seemed to be a kind of pine.
I had now, as I say, clean lost count of the days, and had no means of keeping a journal, even if I had had the patience. You must therefore think of us as getting up every day with the sun, and going to bed every night when it became dark. I say, going to bed, though indeed we had little that deserved the name, our couch consisting of nothing but the bare ground and such leaves and grasses as we found serviceable. It was a mercy that the climate was so even, and the nights were not at all cold, or I do believe we should have perished, our clothing being so light. Indeed it was not long before we began to look with concern upon our garments, which were much rotted already by the drenchings they had had, and were becoming rent and frayed from hard usage. We had no means either of repairing them, or of making others, and we could only think that in course of time we should have to go naked, like the savages. However, this did not trouble us at the moment, since we had so much to do and to think about, what with getting our food, and preparing our house, and fending off the dogs, which were very troublesome, keeping at a distance, indeed, by day, but prowling around our hut at night, and scratching at the walls so that they often disturbed our sleep. Between sunrise and sunset we worked very diligently, and resting one day in seven—or it might be five, or six sometimes, since we kept no strict count; but I did not think God would be angry with us if we were not very exact in this, since we did as well as we could.
We set to work getting material for our big house, as we called it, immediately after our little house, or hut, was finished. At first we were greatly disheartened, for though we chose small trees of which to make our logs, both for easiness of felling and of moving when they were felled, we found that our clumsy axes were very poor tools. Not only did the flints need sharpening every few minutes, like a mower's scythe, but being attached to the handles only with creepers, and not very skilfully, they continually worked loose, and we had to desist in order to bind them again, which mightily exasperated us. At the end of the first day, seeing what little progress we had made, we were ready to despair. "It will take us a hundred years, master," says Billy, "and the corner posts will be rotted before we get the roof on. I don't believe in none of your Robinson Crusoes; and we'd better have been drownded; and I warrant you Hoggett and Chick and great fat Wabberley are just enjoying themselves somewhere, and I'm sick of my life."
Billy Scoffs at Romance
I have forgot to say that when we were eating our meals, or resting, I had told Billy the surprising story of Robinson Crusoe, of whom he had never heard, encouraging both him and myself with the tale of how that good mariner, after tribulations like to our own, came at length happily to his own land again. But I own I thought our case was much worse than Crusoe's, for he had clothes, and corn food, and good liquors, and firearms, and good tools, though few; and, indeed, everything he needed save company, and that came to him at last; whereas we had absolutely nothing except the fruits of the island and what things we could make for ourselves. Yet in reckoning up our situation and his, I felt very thankful that I had a companion, for the worst of evils are tolerable if we have some one to share them, and I wonder that Crusoe did not go stark mad, being alone for so many years till his man Friday came. Billy often scoffed when I told him what I remembered of Crusoe's story, and said he wasn't near so badly off as we were, and if he—that is, Billy—only had what Crusoe had, he would do as much as he, or more, especially if he had a forge and blacksmith's tools. And in particular, when I told him of Crusoe's horror when he saw a footprint in the sand, he burst into a laugh, and asked why there was only one footprint, and made me go down to our little bit of sandy beach there and then, and showed me the prints he made with his own feet, and asked me triumphantly whether the man whose mark Crusoe saw was a one-legged man, or what.
Another thing I must mention, before I forget it, was that the first time we went down to the shore we saw that the second boat, which, being broken, the mariners had left, had been washed away. We were very much vexed at this, and wished we had had the forethought to drag it higher up, where the waves could not reach it. I do not think we could have mended it enough to make it seaworthy, but we might have tried; and it would at least have provided us with planks which we should have found useful. However, it was gone, and there was no use repining.
But to come back to our house. We were, I say, in despair at the small result of our first day's hard labour, especially as we saw no way of improving our tools, and had no other means of felling the trees. It came into my mind that if we only had fire, we might have burned them down, and we tried again for a good while to make fire with the stick and the chunks of wood. But we had no more success than before, and Billy cried out that he wished he could get some of the fire that set the mountain water a-boiling, but he supposed he would be burned alive if he tried to get any. I smiled at his simplicity, and to ease his thoughts a little, I asked him to accompany me up the mountain, it being my turn to take our nightly look-out over the sea. It chanced that as we strayed over the mountain-side we lighted upon one of the splinters of the boulder which Billy had broken before, and the gleam of metal in it catching my eye, I said to Billy that it was desperately plaguy to be where metal abounded, and not be able to use it.
Making Fire
"Why, master," says he, "who knows as how we can't use it? We ain't tried. Why didn't we think of it afore?" And straightway he picks up the splinter, and I found a flint, and he struck them together, and fairly danced with delight when he made a spark, though he stopped dancing and howled next moment, having hurt his bare feet on the sharp rock.
I felt as great a delight as Billy, it being plain that we now had the first means of making fire, and if only we could discover anything to serve as tinder we might soon have a fire as large as we pleased. We went back to our hut by the wood very quickly, being eager to try before it was dark; but though we collected plenty of dry grass and struck spark after spark out of the flint, we could not kindle a flame, and, to our great disappointment, ate cold supper again. The next day also we were no more successful, though we neglected our work while we tried again and again, and should have been very sorry for the loss of time but that time mattered very little to us. However, in the afternoon, when we went into the wood to get cocoa-nuts, I sat myself down on the trunk of a great tree which had been thrown down by a storm, I suppose—not our storm, but earlier, for the leaves were all withered. I sat myself down, I say, but went lower than I intended, the trunk, that appeared solid, giving way under me, so that I toppled over backwards in a cloud of dust. When we looked at the tree, we saw that the inside of it was completely rotted away, with the dry rot, as we say, and we both cried out at the same moment that this might be our tinder. We immediately broke off a strip of the bark, and collected some of the dust upon it, and then striking a spark, we caught it on the tinder, which was, however, so dry that it flared up and burnt out in an instant, without kindling the bark. We remedied this very soon by mingling some dry grass, rubbed small, with the wood dust, and this burning more slowly, it caused the bark to smoulder, from which we blew up a flame, and in a few minutes had a very pretty fire of sticks. Billy leapt around it in an ecstasy, and I could not help but liken him to a fire-worshipper, whose religion I understood better now than before, after all the trouble we had had.
"Now we can bake some bread," said I.
"And roast some pork," says Billy.
"We had better make bread first," said I.
"My mouth is watering for the crackling," says Billy.
"Bread will be the sooner done," I said.
"But the taste of pork stays in the mouth longer," says Billy.
It nearly came to a quarrel between us, as to which should be cooked first, meat or bread; but when we were in the heat of the argument we perceived that our fire was going out, and that brought us to our senses. We piled more sticks on it, and broken cocoa-nut shells, and Billy, yielding to my desire for bread, went out into the wood and soon returned with two or three fine large fruits, weighing, I should think, about three pounds apiece. We had seen the native way of cooking this fruit, paring off the rough rind and baking the inner part, between the rind and the core, in an oven; but having no oven, though we promised ourselves to build one soon, we laid the fruits as they were on a red part of the fire, turning them about as you do chestnuts, and after a while we took them up and, having broken away the rind, ate the bread hot, and I do think I had never in my life before made such a hearty meal as I now did, though, to be sure, the bread had a slight flavour of burnt wood. However, we ate a good supper, and went to bed much happier than at any time since we first came to the island.
Bread
We made our breakfast in the same way when we awoke, but finding that it took some time to get a fire, we considered whether we could not keep it constantly alive, yet without needing to replenish it too frequently with fuel, which would have been a trouble, as well as a hindrance to our work. After some thought, we devised a kind of covered-in grate, which we built four-square of stones and pieces of rock, filling up the spaces between them, where they did not fit, with the clayey earth I have before mentioned, which we moistened with water, fetched from the lake in half a cocoa-nut shell, and then worked with our hands into a kind of mortar. We made a cover to this grate with small boughs plaited with grass and smeared all over with earth, and at the bottom of the grate we left two small holes by which air might enter, not a great current, but enough to keep the fire smouldering without burning much fuel. This device answered our expectations very well. We found that by casting into the embers a quantity of dry brushwood, and blowing upon them, we could obtain a brisk fire in a very little time, and when we had no more need of it for the present, we laid on a heap of grass and twigs, not too dry, and shut down the lid, and so found that we could keep our fire alive for a whole day with no more tending. We discovered, moreover, that by making a second enclosure about our grate, and covering this in also, we had a very convenient oven, in which we could lay in the morning the bread-fruit we needed for our dinner, and at midday find it very well cooked, neither too much nor too little. I must not forget to say that our neighbours the dogs watched these proceedings very curiously, and the first time we left the grate they went to it, to investigate with their noses; but the stones being very hot, their noses were burnt, and they ran yelping away, and came to it no more except the first time we roasted some pig's flesh, and then, being in a perfect frenzy at the savoury smell, they scratched down the walls of our oven and ran away with our meat, hot as it was, so that we had none for dinner. At this Billy flew into a fine rage, I assure you, and we had to consider of some way of preserving our meat from these greedy maws, of which more in its place.
Wood-cutting
Having now fire at our command, we set about putting it to the use for which we had so greatly desired it, namely, the felling of trees for our big house. We kindled fires against the trunks of four trees of a fair size which we selected for our corner posts, at first setting the fire all round, until we saw both that the wind, which was fairly strong that morning, blew the flames all one way, and also that it would be more convenient to burn the tree on the opposite side from the direction in which we wished it to fall; then we put out the fires except on the windward side. We found it no easy matter to keep the flames at a just height, so that they did not burn more of the trunks than we desired. Every now and again we chipped away the charred wood with our axes, and so the fire ate deeper and deeper into the trees, and we cut deeper and deeper also, until by the close of this day the trees stood, as it were, but by a thread. We wished we had ropes, wherewith we might pull the trees to the ground, but having none we threw ourselves with great violence against the trunks, and so cast them all down but one, which we left for a little more burning on the morrow, and went to our hut very well satisfied with our day's work.
We were sitting at our supper when of a sudden Billy gave a jump and cried out, "What if any savages have seen our smoke!" Our fires had given a good deal of smoke, especially the damper woods with which we fed them; but I said that even the nearest island was too far off for our smoke to be easily seen from it, and as for any savages who might be cruising in canoes, they would suppose it came from the mountain. I could not doubt that our island was an object of terror to the peoples of the neighbouring islands, and I said we ought to be thankful to God that it was so, since it was better to be lonely than to be made slaves, or eaten by cannibals. This comforted Billy, though he said that we had better use the driest woods we could find for our fires, so that the smoke would be less.