CHAPTER V
ROBINSON SEES A FOOTPRINT ON THE
SAND, AND FINDS TRACES OF
CANNIBAL FEASTS
All this time Robinson had never gone near his canoe, but now the longing came on him to go over to where he had left her, though he felt that he should be afraid again to put to sea in her. This time, however, when he got to the hill from which he had watched the set of the current the day that he had been carried out to sea, he noticed that there was no current to be seen, from which he concluded that it must depend on the ebb and flow of the tide. Still, he was afraid to venture far in the canoe, though he stopped some time at his country-house, and went out sailing very often.
One day when Robinson was walking along the sand towards his boat, suddenly, close to the water, he stopped as if he had been shot, and, with thumping heart, stood staring in wonder and fear at something that he saw. The mark of a naked foot on the sand! It could not be his own, he knew, for the shape was quite different. Whose could it be?
He listened, he looked about, but nothing could he hear or see. To the top of a rising ground he ran, and looked all around. There was nothing to be seen. And though he searched everywhere on the beach for more footmarks, he found none.
Whose footprint could it be? That of some man, perhaps, he thought, who might come stealing on him out from the trees, or murder him whilst he slept.
Back to his house he hurried, all the way in a state of terror, starting every now and again and facing round, thinking he was being followed, and fancying often that a stump or a bush was a man, waiting to spring on him. That night he slept not at all, and so shaken was his nerve that every cry of a night bird, even every sound made by an insect or a frog, caused him to start with fear, so that the perspiration ran down his brow.
As day followed day, however, and nothing happened, Robinson began to be less uneasy in his mind, and went about his usual work again. But he strengthened the fence round his castle, and cut in it seven small loop-holes, in which, fixed on frames, he placed loaded muskets, all ready to fire if he should be attacked. And some distance from the outside of the fence he planted a thick belt of small stakes, so that in a few years’ time a perfect thicket of trees and bushes hid all trace of his dwelling.
Years passed quietly, and nothing further happened to disturb Robinson, or to make him think more of the footprint that had frightened him so much. But he kept more than formerly to the interior of the island, and lost no chance of looking for good places to hide in, if he should ever need them. And he always carried a cutlass now, as well as his gun and a couple of pistols.
He saw the mark of a naked foot on the sand