Fair play

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

Its plan was simple enough, and had first been drawn by Justin upon paper. It was a low, square, spacious house, all of one story, to keep it safe from destruction by the tornadoes that sometimes visited the island.

It contained four large rooms, separated by two long passages that ran, one from front to back and the other from end to end, crossing each other at right angles in the centre of the house, so that each room was completely divided from the others. It had four doors, one at each extremity of the two passages. The rooms had each two windows in the outer walls, and two doors opening into the passages.

The walls were built of the long, straight, smooth trunks of the cocoa-palm tree, which, in the absence of a sawmill, formed the very best substitutes for planks. The roof was made of transverse poles cut from the trunks of very young trees and covered with the broad, strong, feathery palm leaves, laid one over another in rows, and kept down by other transverse poles securely fastened. This rustic roof afforded a complete protection against the rain and the wind.

The kitchen chimney was built of fragments of rock joined with a strong cement made by mixing the sap of the cocoa tree with lime burned by Justin from the shells and bones collected from the island.

There were no floors, except the ground, which was leveled and beaten hard. The walls inside were made smooth by a rude plastering of moistened soil packed in between the logs. And then both floor and walls were covered with the cement, that gave them the appearance of cream-colored stone.

I said the house fronted west. The windows of the two front rooms only were glazed with glass, taken from the sashes in the cabin of the wreck. They had also shutters. The two back rooms had shutters only.

The northwestern front room was the family parlor. It was neatly fitted up with the furniture rescued from the saloon of the wreck. It had a red carpet on the floor, a centre table and a lamp, a side table and bookshelves, a sofa, a rocking-chair and four common chairs, and lighter articles too numerous and trivial to mention.

The southwestern front room was Britomarte’s bedchamber, which was also shared by Judith. It was daintily fitted up with furniture saved from the ladies’ cabin and berths of the wreck. It had a neat carpet on the floor, white curtains at the windows, and two little white beds, in opposite corners. It had also a chest of drawers surmounted by a looking glass, flanked by a workbox and a dressing case; a washstand provided with a white china basin, ewer and soap dish, only a little the worse for being knocked about in the wreck; a low chair, a footstool, a little candlestand, and other small conveniences.

The southwestern back room was Justin’s sleeping apartment. It was fitted up with severe simplicity. The windows were not even glazed, but were only provided with rough wooden shutters; the hard floor was bare; the bed was a narrow mattress laid upon a rude bedstead; the washstand was a broad wooden shelf, with a tin basin and a stone pitcher; the chair was a three-legged stool, and the wardrobe a few strong pegs driven into the walls, upon which he hung his clothes. All these primitive articles of furniture were of his own manufacture, from fragments of the wreck.

This rude seaside dwelling place was fenced in by a low wall made by driving short stakes, cut from the cocoa tree, closely together into the ground after the manner of a stockade; and two rude gates, one front and one back, gave entrance and exit to the premises.