Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

OF OUR ENTRENCHMENTS; OF THE LAUNCHING OF OUR CANOE, AND THE DEADLY PERIL THAT ATTENDED OUR FIRST VOYAGE

While we were busy making the trench to keep the rain from our hut, another notion came all of a sudden into my mind, which, in a kind of merry sport, I at once made known to Billy.

"We will make a moat about our castle, Billy," said I.

"What's a moat, and where's our castle?" says he, leaning on his spade, and looking all around.

"Why, every Englishman's house is his castle, as they say," I answered, "and as to a moat, you must know, Billy, that in the olden times——"

"The times of Robin Hood or Robinson Crusoe?" says he; "for if it is I don't believe a word of it."

"This is quite true, I assure you," I said. "In the olden times, I say, when every great lord lived in his castle, there was a great ditch or trench all round it, to keep enemies away, for in those times lord often used to fight lord."

"Like rats," says Billy. "Go on, master."

"Well, that ditch was called a moat, and it could only be crossed by a drawbridge," I said, "that is, a bridge that was let down over it from the castle gateway; and so, when the bridge was up, and the moat filled with water, no enemy could get into the castle, and the people inside were safe."

"And suppose they were," says Billy, "what's the good unless they'd got enough victuals inside to last 'em ever so long? If I was the lord outside I'd stop there till they either starved or came out and had a good fight."

Beginning a Moat

I answered that no doubt that was what they did, and went on to say that if we continued our trench and made it wider and deeper, bringing it close against the walls of our castle, we might add very greatly to the strength of our position if ever the savages came to the island and we had to defend ourselves against them. As to the matter of food, I said that we had in the cavern below the castle as good a storehouse as we could wish for, and I resolved that we would start at once, or at least as soon as we had finished our canoe, to convey a great store of bread-fruit and yams, and salted pork and fish, into the cavern, for which purpose we should have to increase the number of our pots and pans. But since this storehouse would be of little use to us if we were driven out of the castle, Billy consented to help me to dig a moat, though he said it would take us ten years to finish it, if we made it deep enough and wide enough to be of any avail. And, indeed, we were not long in finding out, when we began the work, that it would take us a very great time, if not ten years; for to be of any defensive use the moat must be at least six feet deep and about twice as wide, and we were aghast when, at the end of a day's work with our spades, we saw the exceeding smallness of what we had achieved. I was minded to give up the attempt, though it always vexed me to leave a thing half done, and the partial excavation we had made gave an untidy appearance to the place which displeased me mightily. Moreover, the rains ceasing, and a season of dry weather ensuing, the ground became so much harder that we found our progress even slower than before, so that we did give it up, and went back very cheerfully to our canoe, which we had neglected all this time.

We had hollowed out the log sufficiently for our purpose, though when I looked at the clumsy product of our toil I had a great doubt whether we should be able to sail in it. It had none of the nice curves and shapeliness of a boat, and was the same at the one end as at the other, so that to talk of its prow cutting the water, or cleaving the waves, as fine writers say, would always have been ridiculous. However, we had first to bring it to the water, and that we found a prodigious task. The log, even hollowed out as it was, was much heavier than those we had used in building our hut, and all our pushing and pulling did not avail to move it an inch. We tried the plan of the rollers, whereby we had brought the trees down the hill-side, and by levering up the end of the canoe we managed to slip one of our round poles beneath it, and then others, and when we had several in place, we shoved it and moved it a few feet towards the sea. But the weight of it was so great that the poles were driven into the sand, and so far from being rollers, there they stuck, and we had no means of removing them except by digging them out. This was a pretty check at the outset, and I do not think anything could have been more vexatious. Billy and I stood beside our ungainly vessel, cudgelling our brains for some means of moving it, and Billy said he wished the worst storm that ever was would spring up, so that the waves would come dashing up the beach to the cliffs, and so carry back the canoe into its rightful element.

"What makes water so strong, master?" he said, when he had uttered this prayer for a storm. "The sea could lift this here ugly thing as easy as if it was a cork; but water ain't got no muscles, and it's muscles what does it."

I could only answer that such was the nature of things, and that made me think how feeble even the strongest man is, and how a puff of wind or a wave of the sea can undo in a moment the labour of weeks and months. I might have said something of this to Billy, though he was always impatient of such talk, only he broke in upon my musing: "Well," says he, "I suppose we'll have to go and cut some more poles, and make a regular road of 'em down to the sea, and that'll take us a week or more."

"Time doesn't matter to us," I said.

"Oh, but it does," cried Billy. "Suppose Old Smoker took it into his head to go a-blazing? Suppose there was an earthquake? If we had the canoe afloat, we could lie off a bit until Old Smoker's temper was over."

"But why suppose such things?" I said. "Here have we been two years or more upon this island, and nothing has happened to harm us——"

"Except that ugly monster with the long legs," says Billy, interrupting.

"True; and——" I began. But he interrupted again.

"And the shark," says he, "and the pig what tumbled me over, and the dogs what bit me. It's all very well for you to talk, master. Things ain't fair, that's all I've got to say. You don't get hurt, but I do. Why, even fleas, now. We had a lot of fleas at home, but d'you think they hurt my mother-in-law? Not a bit of it. They plagued me awful, till I could screech; but my mother-in-law never felt 'em at all, and that wasn't fair, 'cause she was big and I was little—at least, not so big as her."

I said it was true that Billy had suffered more mishaps than I, but perhaps my turn would come some day; meanwhile we had as yet discovered no way of moving the canoe, unless we tried Billy's plan of laying a kind of roadway of poles from the cliff to the sea, and we supposed we should have to do that, arduous as the work would be. We left it for that day, and for the next, too, being loath to begin a task we did not like; and then we saw another way of achieving our purpose, which I wonder we had not thought of before. We had rigged up over the hole in the floor leading to the cavern a sort of windlass, by means of which we lowered provisions into our store-room, and it was when we were letting down a basketful of yams that the idea came into my head. Could we by any means devise a windlass which would give us a sufficient purchase to haul the canoe to the sea?

"'Course not," said Billy, when I put it to him. I never knew Billy's like for the seeing of difficulties. "Nothing but oaks would be strong enough."

Launching the Canoe

But I was by no means satisfied that the plan was impossible, and I went down to the shore at low tide to look about me. I ought to say that the windlass in the house was a very simple machine. We had stuck two young stout saplings into the ground, one on each side of the hole, having shortened their stems so that the fork where the lowest branches were stood about three feet above the earth. Across these forks we laid a short round pole for the drum of the winch, at one end of this we lashed two slighter poles for the handle, and about the drum we wound and unwound the rope by which we lowered things. Now it was quite certain that we could not move our heavy canoe unless we had a contrivance very much stronger than this, and the difficulty was that a windlass for this purpose must be erected on the sand, and below low-water mark, or it would not bring the canoe to the water. There were certainly no trees of any kind growing in the sand, so that it seemed that any contrivance of the kind must be made there by our own hands.

But as I was walking along the beach, endeavouring to see my way through this difficulty, I observed a rock, not above three feet high, which had a deep jagged groove across the top of it, resembling in some degree the fork of a tree. I looked about for a companion rock near at hand, but all that I saw were flatter and much smaller, not one having any groove to match the other. But why should we not rig up, I thought, something that should serve as well? After a great deal of consideration I hit upon a plan, which Billy and I proceeded at next low tide to carry out. We got two stout poles, and drove them into the sand with the pummet, one across the other, so that the tops of them made a big letter V, the point of which was at the same height as the groove in the rock. We next laid a stout pole across from the V to the groove, smearing it at the resting-places very plentifully with fat, so that it would turn easily: this made a drum. Then we plaited a thick and long rope, and wound one end about the drum and knotted the other end to the nose of the canoe through a hole we made with our axes. Last of all, we fastened a handle to the drum in the same way as we had done with the small windlass in the hut.

When this rough piece of machinery was ready we began to turn the handle, both of us heaving at it, because the canoe was so heavy that it needed all our strength. At first, indeed, we could scarcely move it, and feared that all was again for nought; but when we had greased the drum again with pork fat where it fitted into the supports, we managed to turn it a very little way, and that giving encouragement, we persevered, and had the joy of seeing the canoe coming inch by inch, with much creaking and groaning of our machine, nearer to the water. If the canoe had had a keel, I doubt whether we could have moved it, for it would almost certainly have ploughed into the sand and stuck; but being rounded and not pointed, it slid down, though slowly and with many checks. And so, having drawn it down to a spot where the depth of water when the tide came in would be sufficient to float it, we let forth a shout of delight and went home to dinner with cheerful minds and keen appetites, I do assure you.

We had left our mooring-rope attaching the canoe to the rock, so that it should not float away while we were at dinner; and when we had finished the meal we went down to the shore again, very impatient to try the vessel's buoyancy. The tide was not yet come near high enough to float it, and we waited for a good while, watching the ripples crawling up over the sand, every moment a little higher. At last the water was washing around the canoe; then it floated, and no sooner did it float than Billy pushed it out with a great shove into deeper water and leaped aboard, and I laughed heartily at what ensued, for he turned a somerset and went souse into the sea, and the canoe filled and sank. Billy came up spluttering, and the first words he said were, "What's the good of the silly thing!" And, indeed, I saw that maybe the matter was not one for amusement, for if the vessel toppled over, or turned turtle, as they say at sea, whenever we tried to board her, we should have had all our labour in vain. However, we could but wait until the tide fell again, when she would be left high and dry, and meanwhile we went back to the house, as well to dry Billy's clothes (what there was now left of them) as to consider how we might improve the stability of the vessel on which we set such store.

The Outrigger

I remembered that when we were on the island where we sojourned for a time (how long ago it seemed!) we had seen some strangely-shaped canoes which very much moved my curiosity. There were cross-pieces of wood let into the side of the canoe, and bent over, being fastened at the lower extremity to a pole or plank which floated on the water. This odd contrivance I had heard the seamen call an outrigger, and the purpose of it was to keep the vessel on an even keel, as one may say, though having no keel it would be better to say plainly, to keep it steady. I was now much more alive to the benefit of this contrivance than when I had merely seen it as a spectator; things do take on very different aspects according as we are personally interested or not; and we immediately set to work to fashion an outrigger for our vessel, which took us two or three full working days to make, and another day to adjust. When it was done, we floated the canoe once more, and got into her, and felt exceeding pleased with ourselves for the space of perhaps a minute, and then our complacency received a wound, for by some shifting of our position the balance of the vessel was altered, the outrigger rose up and made best part of a circle in the air, and Billy and I were cast into the water. It was plain that the outrigger was too light, and we made another one, using this time the heavy wood of the cocoa-nut palm, which being very hard, too, gave us a deal of trouble to fashion to the right shape; but we managed it at last, and when we fixed this new outrigger to the canoe, we found that we could sway from side to side without any danger of capsizing. Billy was greatly uplifted at this, and wanted to set off there and then on a voyage; he even said that perhaps we might rig up a sail and voyage to England; but I told him that we had not yet proved the vessel, and did not even know whether she would ride through a sea of any roughness; and as for England, it was impossible to think that we could ever cross the immense ocean in so clumsy a craft, though the mention of it set me a-longing, and I felt more miserable than I had done for many a day.

We had not yet made any paddles for propelling our canoe; Billy very sensibly saying that 'twas no good wasting time on them until we had proved whether our vessel would float. However, now that we were assured of this, we made some paddles, finding it a pretty hard job, for we had no means of splitting planks from the trees, and we had to content ourselves with short poles, with blades made in the following manner. To one end of the pole we lashed a thin flexible rod, bent to the shape of a circle, and we made a kind of basket-work on this by crossing and re-crossing with threads of cocoa-nut fibre, which we drew as tight as we could. When we had coloured it red with the sap of the redwood tree of which I have spoken before, we had a very serviceable paddle, and not ill-looking either. We paddled about in shallow water near the sandy beach, not venturing to go further out as yet, from fear of capsizing where we might be snapped up by a shark. Our vessel behaved very well, though with no grace of movement, to be sure, and we found after a little practice that we could sit on the crosspieces of the outrigger, which joined the sides of the canoe, and work our paddles very well.

I asked Billy what we should call our vessel.

"Blackamoor, that's what I say," said he.

"But she's only black inside," said I; "her outside is fair enough; and now I come to think of it, we can paint her and make her look better still."

Naming the Vessel

Accordingly we did this, expressing oil from the candle-nuts of which I have spoken, and mixing this with sap from the red-wood tree. We made a paintbrush of thin spines, and with this we painted the sides of the vessel, which took us above a fortnight, I should think, for it was wonderful what a prodigious quantity of paint we used, and what a prodigious number of nuts we pressed before we got enough oil for our purpose. When the painting was finished, Billy said that we ought to call the vessel Painted Sally, or some such name; but I thought she deserved a more respectful appellation, and suggested Esperanza, a name which I had come upon somewhere in my reading, and which I thought had a pleasant sound. However, Billy would not hear of it.

"It's French, that I warrant you," he said, "and I can't abide 'em. Besides, what's it mean? I suppose it means some rubbish or other."

"Well, I think it means 'hope'," I said, "and I think it a much prettier word."

"I don't," says Billy bluntly; "it's too soft like."

"And therefore it suits our vessel," I said, "for you know, Billy, ships are always given ladies' names."

"Yes, and the Lovey Susan," says he, "she went to the bottom, and her name was soft enough, and I don't believe any boat with the name Esperanza would ever have the strength to ride through a storm. I likes a plain straightforward name, I do, like my own; you won't find any man," says he, "with a better name than Billy Bobbin."

"Well, shall we call her Billy?" I asked.

Billy looked very serious at this, and after considering for a minute he said he wasn't going to be called a "her" or a "she" for anybody, not even on a boat, and then added, "Call her plain Hope and settle it, master, and never mind about your Esperanzas."

"Fair Hope would suit a lady better than Plain Hope," I said very gravely, and Billy, who was quite unconscious of the verbal point ('twas a very small one, I own), agreed that Fair Hope wasn't bad; and so we got some powdered charcoal and mixed it with oil, and printed the name in black letters on the larboard bow, as Billy called it, and having done this, we thought we might now venture to make a short expedition up the coast.

We go Sailing

It was a fair bright morning when we set out on this our first voyage, and we were very much excited, as you may imagine. We had been by my reckoning, which was pure guess-work, above two years on the island, and though we had become pretty reconciled to it, regarding it indeed as our home for the rest of our lives, there were times when our lot seemed to be that of prisoners, and the prospect of getting beyond our bounds, though ever so short a distance and for ever so short a time, seemed like the loosening of fetters and the removing of prison bars. This made me think what a blessed thing is liberty, and when I remembered unfortunate people whom I had read about as falling into captivity I compared our lot with theirs, and saw how much we had to be thankful for.

However, to return to our voyage. We had been taught a certain caution by sundry incidents that had already happened in our life on the island, so we put some food and two or three pots of fresh water in the bottom of the vessel, and our spears, axes, and bows and arrows as well. While Billy carried these things down to the vessel, I went up to our watch-tower, to see whether any canoes were in sight, for we should have been very sorry if we had run among a fleet of savage vessels. However, there was not a speck to be seen, only the low dusky line on the western horizon that we believed to be the coast of some island. Accordingly we set off in perfect ease of mind, and paddled slowly along, keeping close to the shore, and following its indentations as well as the rocks and shoals would permit us.

The seaward aspect of the familiar parts of the island was very interesting to us, and we amused ourselves with guessing what places in the interior were opposite to us when the cliffs hid them from sight. For some distance we passed beneath low cliffs; then the shore took a great curve inward, making the bay we had called by Billy's name; the head of this bay we judged to be the point of the shore nearest to our hut, which was not itself visible from any part of the sea, lying as it did in a hollow. We paddled out to the nearest of the big rocks that stood like sentinels guarding this side of the island, and found a great quantity of clams upon it, some of which Billy insisted on taking into the boat, to see if they tasted any different from those we found on our own shore, and in reaching over he pretty nearly upset the vessel. From thence we went on to the second rock, some little distance out to sea, and Billy wanted to get out and climb the rock, which stood almost perpendicular, but with jagged sides, so that climbing was possible; but the base of it was so thickly covered with slimy seaweed that it would have been difficult to maintain a footing, so I persuaded Billy to forego the enterprise. Leaving this rock, we continued on our course, and came by and by to the rocky spar that was what may be called the land's end of this part of the island. Here the cliffs were very steep, indeed, almost perpendicular, as we had discovered before when we had tried to walk round the coast, and found our way blocked. When we had turned the corner, we found another little bay, but no beach, except a very small strip of sand at the foot of the cliffs. We saw a great quantity of driftwood on this beach, and when we paddled up to it, a huge eel darted away from beneath a water-sodden log, on which Billy made a great lamentation because we had not brought our fishing lines and hooks. Among the driftwood we saw two or three very old planks, worm-eaten and covered with moss, and we wondered whether they were planks of the boat of the Lovey Susan, which we might have had now if we had been more thoughtful. We took them on board, not that they would be of any use to us, but that we might keep them as mementoes.

The Cave

Paddling out of this bay, we were coasting along by more high cliffs when we came all of a sudden to an immense opening, which appeared to run a great way into the shore, though we could not tell how far, for its depths were very black.

"A cave, master!" cried Billy, full of excitement, and I was excited too, there being I know not what of mystery and fascination about a cave. "Let us go in," says he.

You may think it strange, but I felt a great reluctance to paddle into that gloomy place; my imagination, more active than Billy's, saw it peopled by sea-urchins and hobgoblins, and I could fancy I already heard strange noises, the fruit, I suppose, of my reading that wonderful play of Shakespeare, The Tempest. However, I could not show the white feather before Billy, so we paddled into the entrance, finding a considerable depth of water there, and so for twenty or thirty yards, there being more light in the cave than we had thought when outside, because it was lofty, and the water threw up reflections. But when we had come some twenty yards into it, it made a sudden bend to the right, and at the same place became very much darker, so that though we peered in we could see but a few yards in front of us. We stayed for a little, looking about us, and seeing nothing but what appeared to be considerable patches of seaweed floating on the water; nor did we hear any noises, but all was as still as death, so that even Billy was oppressed by the silence, and even more by the hollow echo when he spoke.

"I don't much like the look of this place, master," he said.

I did not tell him that my feeling was the same, but affected to laugh at him, though at the same time I dipped my paddle to bring the vessel round with her head pointing to the opening. As I did so, I observed a sort of heaving and undulating movement in one of the patches of seaweed, and marvelled at it, for there was no current on the surface, and the vessel was perfectly steady. But supposing there must be an under-current of some kind, I paid no more heed to it, but continued to paddle, and we soon brought the vessel out of the cave and among a little labyrinth of rocks, partly above the surface and partly submerged. We had but just got there, however, when we found our vessel begin to lose way and our paddles to stick in the seaweed, as we supposed, which was now very thick on the surface, and which was the greater impediment to us because of the outrigger. We strove as hard as we could to force the vessel through, but it was like tugging at a rebellious slip-knot; the harder you tug the more you tie yourself up. We were thinking of backing the vessel, so as to go round about the obstacle, when all of a sudden, as I took notice of how the tendrils of the seaweed were clinging about the outrigger and curling up towards the side of the canoe, I was seized with the horrid suspicion that we had not to deal with seaweed at all, but with a monster, or maybe several, like to that terrible creature which had almost dragged me down when we were searching for eggs, as I have related. This thought made me shudder with a sickening apprehension, especially when the notion struck me, as it did at that moment, that this cavern could not be very far from the steep and rugged cliff by which we had descended. Even before I could whisper my dread thought to Billy, some of the tentacles, as I had now no doubt they were, were creeping over the side, and one of them touched my leg and immediately held fast. For an instant I was perfectly overcome with horror, as I was on the cliff, and, as it were, paralyzed in my will; but then, making a great effort, I jerked myself free, at the same time calling aloud to Billy and chopping with my axe, which I had seized, at the tentacles that held the canoe in their grip and had altogether stopped its motion.

A Shoal of Monsters

"The monster, is it?" cries Billy, who hated the thing with the same aversion as I did, but seemed to be quite exempt from its fascination. "I'll monster him," says he, and he dropped his paddle and took up his axe and began hacking away with all his might at the horrid feelers that were crawling over the vessel. There were the two of us, then, slashing and chopping with desperate energy, running, or rather creeping as quickly as we could, from end to end of the canoe whenever a tentacle showed itself above the gunwale, with the result that the grip of the creature (or creatures, for we knew not whether we had to do with one or many)—the grip of it, I say, relaxed, and we thought we could leave our axes and take to the paddles again. But we had not gone above two yards when the vessel was brought up again, and this time the paddles themselves were seized, and though I struggled with all my strength, my paddle was drawn out of my hands and I saw it no more. Billy was more lucky, and kept his, but he had to drop it into the bottom and take to his axe again, as I did to mine, and so we fell to it again, slashing and chopping at these hideous tentacles that came up over the side, parts of them falling into the bottom of the vessel as we severed them and writhing there. Once more we beat off the enemy thus, and then I seized Billy's paddle in feverish haste, and plied it with all my might, Billy doing what he could also with two spears held together. And this time we got clear of the rocky labyrinth, to my unutterable relief, though with some scraping of the outrigger, for you may be sure we were in so great a hurry to get away that we could not stop for nice steering; and we kept on paddling hard for some minutes after we were a fair distance along the shore, and, indeed, did not cease until we found ourselves in the channel between the island and the red rock, and then we had another alarm, but of a different kind, for our vessel was caught in the mighty current which rushed through the narrow passage, and was swept on as if it had been a cork, we gripping the thwarts and fearing every moment that we should either be dashed against the rocks on one side or the other, or be totally submerged in the boiling torrent. However, we came out at the further end safe, though very wet and terrified, and were carried on, though not so violently, past the place where the cascade fell from the mountain, and so on towards the long spit of land that had the natural archway at its end.

The End of the Voyage

We still had cause for alarm, for as yet we had no mastery of the vessel, and feared we should be carried by the current right out to sea. But by dint of great efforts, Billy with the paddle, which he had taken from me, being the more muscular, and I with the spears, we managed to take the vessel across the current and towards the land on our right hand, and by and by got into pretty calm water near the archway. Here, in the steep wall of the cliff, we saw a small cove, where we might have beached the canoe; but after what we had come through we had little disposition to linger, and so we paddled through the archway and turned the corner, and went along by the lava beach until we came at length to the sandy beach whence we had started. We were fairly worn out, I assure you, as well with our frights and terrors as with our exertions, and besides, we had eaten nothing since the morning, though we had provisions with us, having had too much to think about otherwise. Never did mariners land with more thankfulness than we did. When we had tied up our vessel we went to our house and built a roaring fire, to cheer our spirits as well as to dry our clothes; and when we had eaten a comforting meal and fell a-talking, we spoke of our satisfaction in the seaworthiness of the Fair Hope, and also in having circumnavigated the island.

"I'd like to kill that monster," says Billy, as we talked about that part of our adventure; "and I will, too, if he'll come out of that cave where we can see him proper."

"I think we had better leave him in possession undisturbed," I said, with the horror of the creature still upon me. "Perhaps there is a shoal of the monsters there; the rocks we saw would make a very good home for them. And I don't think we'll go that way again, Billy; I seem to see those dreadful tentacles crawling all about me, and the leathery feel of them when I chopped makes me shudder still."

"Cheer up, master," says Billy. "After all, we did 'em more damage than they did us, and taught 'em a lesson, I warrant you."