In truth, I had not seen it at all. But when the difficulty was thus suggested it was plain enough that such a wheel would never do for what we wanted. I did not answer this most pertinent suggestion, for the very good reason that it could not be controverted. The wheel idea was quite out of the question.
After a little while he resumed by saying, “But I have also seen a modification of the same sort of machine, in which the gourds were attached to an endless rope instead of to the wheel itself. This device is used by the same people where the water is to be raised to a greater height than can conveniently be done with the wheel. I think we might possibly make such a modification work successfully.”
“Can you recall how this modification was constructed?” said I, anxiously.
“Perhaps I can recall enough to enable you to get the idea,” he replied, throwing back his head and closing his eyes in the effort to remember. “Yes,” said he, after a little reflection, “I think I can. I remember the general features very well indeed. However, the most vivid recollection I have, connected with these machines, is the hideous, creaking screech of their ungreased axles as they were turned hour after hour all through the hot summer nights, the natives ‘spelling’ one another at the work. How well I remember the dry, hot nights when I lay listening to these sounds from far and near. You could easily tell when the laboring coolie was tired by the gradual slowing of his machine and the lengthening of the interval between screeches. Then a fresh man mounted the treadmill and the screeches quickened; and so these monotonous alternations continued through the still night.”
After a few reminiscences of his old life in India the old man proceeded to give a description of the machine as nearly as he could recall it. It consisted of a drum, or skeleton wheel, about six feet in diameter, mounted on a platform over the water; each end of the drum overhung the platform and carried an endless rope, to which open-mouthed gourds were tied at regular intervals. The drum was revolved by stepping on its bars as in a treadmill. The gourds were carried down into the water empty and brought up full by the endless rope. Troughs at each side received the water as the gourds tipped to return. In short, it was a sort of chain-pump, or modification of that well-known device. From his description, aided by my own imagination and a full knowledge of the result sought, I was able to reconstruct in my mind this machine, or at least to see how one could be built that I conceived would answer the purpose. We agreed that we would start at this work as soon as the weather was pleasant enough to be out of doors with reasonable comfort.
It was very tedious to be without any fire or means of obtaining one during the rain. The house was getting damp; we missed our hot coffee; cold victuals were not pleasant, and our supply of cooked food was about gone, so that if the rain continued we should speedily be reduced to raw bacon and cocoanuts. As the leaden sky gave no immediate promise of sunshine, Mr. Millward and I concluded to try our hand at producing fire by friction. For this purpose we attached a piece of hard wood to the final shaft of the old fanning-mill, and setting it in rapid motion held a piece of soft wood against it as it revolved. I turned the crank while he held the wood. It presently began to char and smoke, but no fire came, though I ground away until the sweat poured off my body. We were about to give it up as a bad job, when Mr. Millward hit upon the idea of rasping off a quantity of fine wood-dust by grinding a piece of wood on the end of the iron shaft itself. When he had collected some of this and sprinkled it into the hot, smoking cavity of the softwood stick the motion soon caused the light material to catch fire, and we were speedily rewarded with a glowing coal from which we were able to start the fire, which you may be certain was not permitted to go out again. I very quickly had a hot fire in the oven, one near the shed out of doors, and a third in the fireplace of the house. With fire, life became speedily more endurable.
The comforting and cheering influence of an open fire, the sight of the blaze or the glowing coals, is a mysterious thing, and is not to be explained by the mere personal comfort due to the warmth, for a close stove or a steam coil will give that as well and perhaps better and more equably. There is an instinctive something deep down in the heart of man that responds to the open fire, and makes it act like a tonic on the disposition. This feeling is common apparently to all mankind. Everybody alike, old or young, rich or poor, is cheered by the glow and blaze of the fireside, the crackle of the burning, the sight of the flames on the hearth. Men who have been brought up from childhood to live in houses heated by the modern steam, hot-water, or hot-air apparatus, or have lived in the tropics where fires for warmth are rarely if ever needed, no sooner approach the blazing hearth than they feel its cheering influence. I have thought sometimes that the explanation might be found in heredity,—in a deep-seated habit of the human mind descending from parent to child through countless ages and generations. Far back of history, in the dim twilight of primitive life, we may imagine our ancestors living in such wildness as can scarcely be found on earth to-day even among the lowest savages; and we can picture the primitive hunter returning exhausted from the chase to seek his rest and comfort by the open fireside. By the fireside he rests, by the fireside he eats, here he meets his family, here in his nakedness he is warm, here are all his joys and loves and comforts. Every pleasure and every comfort are directly associated with the sight of the glowing embers and the bright, leaping blaze. And this has been going on through thousands and thousands of years. When Nature so impresses their habits upon her creatures that the dog, ages after it has become domesticated, will yet run round and round before lying down on a carpet, because its wild ancestors did so in order to flatten the tall grass in which they slept, is it too much to believe that man should have kept the habit of associating comfort with the sight of an open fireside?
Whatever may be the true explanation, the fact was that the glowing fire in the chimney cheered our hearts, and made us merry, as we sat laughing and talking and joking, and listening to the old man’s tales that night; and this pure delight was not in any wise lessened by the moaning of the wind and the intermittent dash of the rain upon the walls and roof. We three and Duke, in a sociable semi-circle lighted only by the flickering rays of the fire, enjoyed the shelter, the homelike sense of comfort, and the quiet of perfect content that night, and it seemed to all, I doubt not, as it did to me, a pity that the hour of bedtime should come around to break up so pleasant a party.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PEARL-FISHERS.
FOR two days longer the rain continued, and then with a gentle southerly breeze the sky cleared and the sun came out again, lighting up once more the land and sea and releasing us from the confinement indoors, which had begun to grow irksome. Of course the first thing to be done was for all three of us to be ferried over the creek and to walk up the beach to the galleon. The two sand-banks were now dry and the water in the basin was quite clear and transparent, so that the hull was plainly visible, the raised poop and forecastle being only about three or four feet under the surface. All her masts and spars had fallen and disappeared long ago. A cluster of corals seemed to indicate where the foremast once had stood. A curious thing was the appearance of a single pane of glass which was visible in the side of the cabin. This pane had changed its transparent quality to a milky condition of pearly irridescence, and shone under water like a gem as it caught and reflected the light from above.