Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

"I CRIED OUT TO HIM THAT A MONSTER WAS ATTACKING ME."

"I never did see such a wicked villain," says Billy. "Why, master, you're as white as a sheet!" and, indeed, I was not far from swooning, the horror of that great beast being still upon me. Billy was not near so much affected, not having felt the monster's grip nor seen closely its baleful eyes; and I think Billy was a trifle scornful of the terror I could not conceal, though afterwards he said he didn't wonder at my feeling pretty bad. It was some little time before I was sufficiently recovered to attempt the upward climb; but, with Billy's help, I presently clambered to the top, and threw myself very thankfully on the grass, never heeding Billy's lamentable outcry when he found that two of the eggs he carried had broken in his pocket.

This terrible encounter, and most happy escape, set me on thinking first what a mercy it was I carried my axe, and then how perfectly defenceless we were against any human enemy that might come against us armed. I said to Billy that we must spend the rest of our holiday in making weapons, though when I spoke I had not the least notion of what we could make that would be of any avail. Billy was for making huge clubs, and sticking pieces of flint into their knobby ends, which would beyond doubt have proved very formidable weapons at close quarters; but, as I had told him already, we should be shot down with spears or arrows before we could come within reach of the enemy, and therefore we could do nothing against them unless we made weapons like their own. Whereupon Billy declared for spears, since we had no strings for bows, and we spent a day cutting light poles for the shafts and in searching for sharp flints that might serve as the heads. But we had such a difficulty in fastening the heads on, and the spears were so exceeding rude and clumsy when made, that I despaired of ever making serviceable defensive weapons of them, and being by no means satisfied that it was beyond our capacity to fashion bows and arrows, I seized occasion while Billy was cooking our supper (which was baked bread-fruit and fried eggs, the latter stronger in flavour and not near so pleasant as hens' eggs, having a fishy taste)—I seized occasion, I say, to make a first trial for a bow-string, which Billy had very shrewdly perceived would be the greatest difficulty.

Making Arms

I tried first of all a very thin strand of a creeping plant, but though that was tough enough, it was not at all elastic, so that I gave that up at once. Next I bethought me of the fibres in the husks and leaves of the cocoa-nut, and wondered whether these could be woven into a cord; and if any are surprised that I should so much as mention this, having seen cocoa-nuts, perhaps, only as they appear in our shops, I will explain that the nut itself is enclosed in a tough fibrous husk of about two inches in thickness, while the leaf is covered for two or three feet of its length with a fibrous matting, very fine and strong, which acts as a kind of brace to the stalk and keeps it steadily fixed to the trunk. I had taken note of this fibrous substance, and, indeed, thought I remembered that the native people made thread of it; but when I came to the actual experiment, I found that the thread so made was as tough as you please, and it served us excellent well afterward in many ways, as will presently be seen, but it was quite lacking in that spring without which a bow-string is impossible.

I do not mean to say that I made all these discoveries while Billy was cooking the supper, but only that I began to make my trials then. It was, indeed, several days before we lighted on something that was suited to our purpose, and that by a kind of accident. We had gone up the mountain, as was our daily custom, to make our survey, and coming down again we left our usual path, for no reason that I can remember, and came upon a patch of plants of a kind that we had not observed before. We had become by this time so knowing in the vegetation of our island, though quite ignorant of the names of the plants, that we stopped to examine this new kind, and plucked some of it, which we peeled as we went our way. It seemed to me that the bark of it had a certain stretch in its fibres, and when we got back to our hut we pulled the fibres out and twisted some of them together in the manner of a cord, and fastened the ends of the string thus made to the ends of a short pliable twig, and to our great joy, when I pulled the string and released it suddenly, it shot back with a twang as like that of a true cord as can be imagined. In my delight I cried out that I would be Robin Hood and Billy should be Little John, which he took at first to be an affront on his shortness of stature, he being eight inches or more less than I was at that time; he grew afterwards till there was no more than four inches betwixt us. But on my telling him what stories I could remember of Robin Hood and his bold men in Lincoln green—Friar Tuck and Maid Marion and the rest of the company—Billy, who had never heard of any of these before, was greatly delighted, though he doubted whether they were quite so good marksmen as the stories said, and professed that of them all he would have preferred to be Friar Tuck, who had a nice taste in venison, just as Billy himself had in pork. However, he agreed to be Little John, reminding me very pertinently that we had not yet made our bows and arrows.

I had already made up my mind as to the wood we should use for making the bows. It was that same red wood of which I have spoken once or twice, and which, being flexible as well as hard, seemed to me the fittest for our purpose of all the woods in the island. Accordingly we chose two strong saplings of this tree growing to my own height, or a little more, and having uprooted them, we cut off the branches and twigs, peeled the bark off, and then pared them for three or four inches in the centre, so as we might grip them easily. This done, we shaved the ends as well as we could with our axes until they tapered, and about two inches from each end we burned a notch in which we purposed fitting the strings. Thus with an easy day's work we had two fine bows, not very cunningly shaped, but strong and serviceable—at least, we hoped so.

Billy took upon himself to make some arrows while I made the strings. For this purpose he chose some straight light shoots, about as thick as your finger, peeled off the bark as we did with the saplings, and trimmed them with his axe and other sharp stones, rubbing them also with sand, until they were wonderfully smooth. Billy was more patient in this work than I had ever seen him, and as each shoot was prepared he held it up to his eye and looked along it as if to see whether it were a trifle out of the straight, and if he thought so, he would rub and polish again until he was satisfied. He had near a dozen of these shoots prepared by the time I had finished the strings for our two bows, and he then began to point the heads; but it appeared that he was quite ignorant of the use of feathers, so while he was pointing the shafts I roamed about the woods in search of feathers, and found a good number on the ground, and these we stuck on the tail end of the shafts as I had seen them in pictures, for as for the actual things, I had never had them in my hand. This made me wish, and so did many other matters, that I had given more heed to the construction of things, for barring pottery and rabbit-hutches I was a perfect simpleton in using my hands. Of course, when the first arrow was finished, I tried it with the bow, and found that it did not fly near so well as I hoped; nor did the second and third that we made, which was a great trouble to us. The flight of these arrows was neither far nor steady, and for a long time we could not make out in the least why we had failed. It was Billy that discovered the reason, though I believe it was more by guess than by deduction.

"Why, master," he said, "I do believe 'tis all along o' those silly feathers you've been and gone and stuck in, so that the tail's heavier than the head."

I saw that there might be something in Billy's notion, so we first of all tried the experiment of making one of the arrows taper towards the tail; and when we found that it certainly flew from the bow much better than the others, I thought of improving still further by fitting stone heads to the shafts. We split up some pieces of flint, and using a flat corner of the lava tract as a kind of anvil, Billy chipped away at some of the smaller pieces with a heavy lump of the rock containing iron until we had a little heap of flakes shaped something like a leaf. Some of these we lashed to shallow grooves in our shafts by means of pieces of the string I had made; others we drove into clefts in the top of the shafts; and when we came to try these new-tipped arrows on the bow, we found that they flew very much better than any that we had made before.

By the time we had furnished ourselves with the bows and a dozen arrows our week's holiday was past, and we ought by rights to have gone back to our work on the house. But arrows were not made merely to be looked at, nor to be shot off only for fun, as Billy said, and he was bent on employing our new weapons in the useful work of providing food. We had had nothing but bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and eggs, and pork twice, ever since we had been on the island, which I reckoned to be now a matter of three or four months or so, and I own I agreed with Billy that we should be none the worse of a more frequent change of diet. Of late we had seen very little of the wild pigs, being so much busied with our building work and pottery, and other things; but the dogs were frequent spectators of our proceedings, though not so constantly as at first, finding no profit in them, I suppose. However, we now set off with our bows and arrows, fiercely bent on slaughter.

We tramped for a good long time across the island before we discovered a herd of pigs in a little open space beyond a wood. They were grunting, as pigs do, and poking their snouts into the ground as if in search of food, though I doubted whether they would find anything fit to eat, even for them, which are not particular, as everybody knows. We crept up very stealthily to the edge of the open space, so that they did not perceive us, and then, selecting the two nearest animals, we let fly our shafts both at the same moment. The arrows flew very swiftly from the bows, but clean over the pigs, so that we did not hit one of them, and the twang of the bow-strings being very audible, the pigs instantly took fright, and scampered away, all but one old boar, as he seemed, who stood with his snout lifted, grunting very loud, as if angry with being disturbed.

"I'll have a shot for old father bacon," says Billy, fitting an arrow to the string, and taking aim as well as he could, he shot it; but having seen that his first shot went too high, he aimed the second too low, and it stuck in the ground a yard or so in front of the solitary boar. And then Billy flew into a mighty rage, I assure you, for the boar marched up to the arrow, sticking out of the earth, and sniffed at it with very loud grunts for a moment, and then snapped it up and broke it in two. "There's half-a-day's work spoiled," cried Billy, who was already angry enough at having missed his mark twice, and he rushed out, calling the boar by many very unseemly names. The beast was taken by surprise, and instantly turned tail and scampered after the rest of the herd, with Billy at his heels, and me not far behind, for remembering the scrape that Billy had fallen into once before, I did not like to let him go out of my sight. And so we pursued those pigs for above half-an-hour, I should think, and never came within fifty yards of them, nor getting any chance to take a shot at them, because they were never still. We gave it up when we were thoroughly weary, and were going back to our hut, much disappointed of our expected meat, when Billy remembered that we had left two arrows where we had first encountered the pigs.

"We must go back for 'em," says he, shaking his fist in the direction whither the pigs had fled. "They are easier shot than made, and easier broke than shot, drat it; but I'll make 'em porkers pay for leading us this dance, see if I don't."

I agreed that our arrows, made with such toil, were much too precious to be wasted, and we went back to the place where we had shot them, not finding it by any means easy to light on the spot again.

"We shall have to practise, Billy," I said on the way; "we can't expect to be good marksmen all at once."

"I s'pose we can't," says Billy ruefully; "we do have to have three or four goes at a thing afore we does it proper. But I did want some pork."

Coming at length to the open space, we searched for a good time before we found the two arrows; but as I was stooping I made a discovery that quite banished my disappointment and more than made amends for our long tramp. The pigs, as I said, had been grubbing the ground vainly, as I had thought; but I now saw that it was not so, for there before me lay a long round root as big as a man's head, and of a dark brown colour, which I immediately recognized as a yam. I called Billy to come and see it, and remembering that we had ate some that time we sojourned on the island, and found them very like potatoes when boiled and mashed, but sweeter, we were exceedingly pleased, and Billy at once said that we must certainly make some pork sausages to go with our mashed potatoes.

"Provided the pigs have left us any to mash," said I, for I now saw that they had grubbed the ground pretty thoroughly, and though we searched it for some time, we did not find above six yams, which we carried back to our hut, and boiled one of them for dinner. Unless we should find another plantation of them on the island, which I scarcely hoped for, it seemed that our supply would be soon exhausted; but it then came into my mind that we might plant some of those that we had, and so grow them for ourselves. We knew nothing about the season for planting, nor the right kind of soil for them, but supposed they would be something like potatoes in their nature as well as in their taste, and so determined to eat no more of them for the present, but to keep them until such time as seemed fitting for planting.

This question made us think of times and seasons, which, living from day to day as we did without concern for the morrow, we had not yet troubled ourselves about. It was summer when we first came to the island, and we were now, as I guessed, about the end of autumn, though there was little in the weather to show it, nor very much, so far as we could tell, in the varying length of day and night. But the near approach of winter came upon my mind with a kind of shock. We knew not what the winter was like in these latitudes, nor whether we should be afflicted with severe cold; but we could tell from the ripeness of the fruits of the island that they would not hang much longer upon the trees; indeed, some had already fallen; and I began to wonder what we should do for food in the winter. We had discovered that the bread-fruit, when plucked, remained good for three or four days, if the rind was not pierced; but we had never kept any for a longer time, and I was not a little dismayed as I thought of the straits we should be put to if we could not preserve the food in some way.

Billy reminded me that the native people with whom we had dwelt for a fortnight had given us a bread-fruit pudding, which was delicious. I asked him whether he had seen it made, and he said that he had not, but it looked uncommon like batter pudding when it was baked, and indeed I remembered it was just such a rich brown colour as well-cooked batter. I had many a time seen my aunt Susan make batter, and though we had neither milk nor flour, we had eggs, and it seemed to me at least worth the trial to attempt a batter of bread-fruit. Accordingly we took two large bread-fruits, very ripe, and having cut away the rind and rejected the core, we put the white pulpy part into one of my earthen vessels, and pounded and worked it with a thick stick until it looked very like a thick batter. Billy meanwhile had beat up an egg, and when we added this to the other, and mixed it, Billy cried out it reminded him of pancake day, when his stepmother always made two thick pancakes for herself and his father, and he had a thin one if there was any left over. Since all the earthen vessels I had made were round-bottomed, and we had nothing at all resembling a frying-pan, we were thinking of boiling the mixture, and hoped it would not burn, being so thick, when Billy asked why we shouldn't bake it. I pointed out that we had no baking tins, and without something to hold it the batter would indeed become as flat as a pancake; but Billy was equal to this difficulty.

"I've seen my mother—she ain't my real mother, 'course—put a piece of greasy paper round a dough-cake before she popped it in the oven, and it came out all right, only a bit burnt sometimes, and then, my eye, didn't she make a row!" When I said that we had no paper, he at once replied, "But we've got leaves, and I don't see why a leaf of a leaf, as you may call it, shouldn't be as good as a leaf of paper, or better, the name being such." This appeared to me to be quite a good notion, so we got some leaves and wrapped some of our batter in them, making little oblong parcels about four inches long and two broad, and these we put into our oven, which I have before mentioned, and when we took them out and removed the leaves, we found our cakes to be of a fine brown colour, and they smelled exceeding good and tasted better: in fact, we had made the bread-fruit pudding we had so much liked before, only ours was richer by the addition of the egg.

We were very well pleased with this, but I own I was still better pleased two or three days after, for I then came upon a portion of the batter which we had left uncooked in the pot and forgotten, and found that it was perfectly sweet and good, being not in the least offensive either in taste or smell. It then came into my head all of a sudden that if the bread-fruit pulp would keep good for days even when exposed to the air, it might keep good for weeks and months if kept from the air, and thus all our anxiety about our winter food would be removed. When I suggested this to Billy he shook his head, saying, "We used to keep potatoes in a cellar, but then they had their jackets on, and I've never heard tell of fruits keeping. You can't keep an apple, 'cause I've tried, only I ate it afore it was quite rotten." But I was determined to make the experiment, though having no cellar or other confined space I was at first at a loss how to form a large enough receptacle for our store. After considering of it for some time I had a notion of digging a hole in the ground and lining it with pottery ware, but to this Billy said that we might use leaves and so save a lot of time. So we dug a hole, not very deep, and lined it well with large thick leaves, and into it we poured a great quantity of the bread-fruit pulp that we had mashed—not mixing it with eggs, of course—and then we covered it over with leaves, and put heavy stones on the top, and waited for a week to see what came of it.

Archery

While we were waiting the result of our experiment at storage we practised very diligently with our bows and arrows, and I observed that Billy was pitting himself against me, though he did not say so, at least not then, but he told me afterwards that he meant to try whether Little John could not beat Robin Hood. At first we chose broad trees for our targets, but we found after a time, when we began to be able to hit them, that our arrows were very much blunted against the bark, which made us think of devising a target, for the arrows took so long to shape that it was important to us they should not be injured. This making of a target gave us no trouble, for we had only to stretch leaves across a light framework made of twigs; and to mark the centre of it, for what I believe is called the bull's-eye, we smeared a circle with the sticky substance which, as I have said, came out of the bark of the bread-fruit tree when we beat it to make our flag, and then sprinkled the sticky circle with sand, which stood out, light in colour, against the dark green of the leaves.

We set up this target at varying distances, which we made greater as we grew more proficient, and we found that our arrows took no hurt from striking against it, passing through the leaves, indeed, so that we had to make another target by and by; but not very soon, because it was some time before either of us hit the target at all, and as for a bull's-eye, we thought we should never do it. Indeed, when we had practised for about a week, Billy declared that he was sure there never was a Robin Hood (he had made the same declaration before about Robinson Crusoe), and he thought the tales about these two heroes must have been invented by the same liar, because the one was Robin and the other Robinson. When I said that was impossible, because Robin Hood lived five or six hundred years before Crusoe was heard of, Billy said 'twas no matter; the stories of both were all pure fudge, and he wouldn't believe until he saw it that any one could ever hit the bull's-eye at a greater distance than ten yards. It chanced that our target was thirty yards away at that moment, and fitting an arrow to the bow, I let it fly without any nice calculation, and Billy was fairly dumfoundered, and so was I, when we saw the arrow sticking in the circle of sand, a little to the right of the exact centre. For a moment Billy looked foolish; then he flushed, and turning truculently to me he said, "I lay you a dollar you don't do it again, not in ten shots." This put me on my mettle, and it did not occur to either of us that we had no dollars nor any such thing; but I fired my shots one after another with the most careful aim I could, and missed the target altogether six times, and the other times only grazed the outer rim. Whereupon Billy began to caper, and said I owed him a dollar, and a pretty fine Robin Hood I was, with more of that boyish sort of talk, which made me angry, and I flung down my bow, intending, I own, to punch Billy's head. When he saw this, he flung down his bow also, and squared himself, and put up his fists in such a remarkable way, calling to me to come on, that I could not keep from laughing, and then he laughed too, and so we were friends again at once. This was the first time things got so near to a fight with us, and though we had little disagreements that are not worth mentioning, we never fought but once all the time we were on the island, and of that I must tell in its place, if I think of it.