I bathed my knee, and did all I could for it, but it was many days before I fully recovered the use of the limb; in fact, for three days I used a crutch, which helped me along famously. Fancy a Crusoe on crutches! After this adventure I made up my mind that I was not born to be drowned.
Now, a week after my Creux adventure another incident occurred which greatly influenced my career both as regards my stay on the island and my after life. This was a curious discovery I made quite by accident.
It happened to be a very wet morning when I rose, and looked as if it would continue all day, so I thought I would stay indoors and tidy up my dwelling. I soon prepared my breakfast, and sat down to enjoy it, and as I and my dog were discussing it, I could not help noticing the dilapidated state of the stained and ragged wall-paper. It had probably been on many years, and I recollected that somewhere among my stores I had about a dozen rolls of new paper, so I said to myself, "Why not strip the walls and re-paper the room?"
Good! I soon cleared the room, and with a pail of water and a brush began to soak the old paper and strip it off, when I found, to my surprise, that it was several layers thick—five at least—while underneath all was a kind of netting of some sort of linen-looking fabric. I surmised that this was to give a better adhesive power to the paste, as probably the walls might be damp, although they did not appear to be so. So I tore the various papers off the wall, till I clumsily dragged off a piece of the netting also. The netting came quite off in my hand; a circular piece, about eighteen inches across. I examined it to see what it really was, and to my amazement discovered it was a beautiful lace collar. What a curious way of putting a collar on I thought, and returned to the wall to see if it wore any other finery, and quickly discovered that the four walls were covered all over with lace of beautiful design. There were pieces of all shapes and sizes, and most of it of exquisite workmanship; so, packing it into a trunk with plenty of tobacco among it to keep away insects, I sealed it up, and stood it in a dry place for future consideration.
Even this curious find was not all I discovered, nor the most important, although at the time I made my second discovery I did not attach any value to it. It was this. When I came to the third side of the room, opposite the door, I came upon a sort of niche or cupboard, close up to the ceiling, which had no door, but simply a piece of lace tacked over the aperture, and then thickly papered over some seven or eight times. The opening was about ten inches high, eight inches wide, by six inches deep, and in it stood two leathern drinking cups, capable of containing about a pint each. In the first I took down was a tiny vial and three gem rings, and in the second a small roll of paper, which upon unrolling I found to be about two feet long by four inches wide. Upon it, in very faded ink, was a long list of something in French. It looked like a very heavy washing bill, and I was about to throw it away when I reflected that it might tell something about the lace and the rings, so I rolled it up in a linen bandage, and put it and the other articles in my clothes box, so that some day I might get it deciphered.
All this made me very excited, and I am afraid my thoughts were more on my discoveries than upon my work, for the new paper was very badly put on the walls; it was not hung perpendicularly, and had several gaping joints, which annoyed me all the time I was on the island. But I had not paper enough to recover the walls, as I used the rest for my bed-chamber; therefore it remained, a lasting memorial of my slovenliness and bad workmanship.
About this time I shot a curious specimen—too large for stuffing—a grampus. I was in my boat one day fishing for whiting, when I heard a peculiar noise behind me, and looking round, saw a huge monster rise from the sea about a hundred yards off, and make straight for me. Before getting to the boat he dived again and again, when I saw that it was apparently a young whale. Instinctively I clutched my gun, and as the monster dived within a dozen yards of my boat I watched its rising; up he came, not twenty feet away, whereupon I let him have both barrels at the back of his head, and to my surprise he immediately turned over, belly upward, gave a shudder, and was dead. I took my prize in tow, and found on landing that it was upwards of ten feet long, and must have weighed several hundredweight, for out of the water it was perfectly unmanageable. I had to yoke "Eddy" and myself together, and drag the monster above high water-mark, till I decided what to do with it.
In the morning I took off the skin, which would have made excellent leather, but I had no means of tanning it, so was jettisoned. Beneath the skin was a thick layer of blubber, and this I flayed off, making myself in a pretty pickle, and soon had a large pile of this reeking adipose deposit. Then I brought my copper on the beach, as it was a portable one, and lighting a fire I "tryed," or boiled my blubber down and had several gallons to bottle by the end of the day.
The flesh, I believe, is eatable, but it looked so dark and rich that I was afraid to cook a piece and try it. Grampus is, no doubt, all very well for shipwrecked mariners, but as I had plenty of other food the carcase followed the skin into the sea. As it glided into the rough water the oil exuded, and made a large patch of calm water as smooth as a mill-pond.
This gave me a splendid idea for using the oil. For the future I would always take some with me on my boating expeditions! I did, and put it in a bottle which I kept near the bows, and whenever I got into difficulties near rocks or in a rough sea I could command a calm. This power I used on many occasions, and with invariable success. For instance, if my lines got foul in a choppy sea, I could make the sea calm, and get my gear out of tangle capitally, which, with the pitching of my craft and the "send" of the following waves, would have otherwise been a nearly hopeless task. Another use I put the oil to was to pour some on my fish pond and bring the surface to a perfect calm; then I could study my fish as well as if they were simply under a sheet of glass, while by lying flat down on the margin of the pool, with my face near the water, I could see even the most minute object on the bottom. Looking into this pool was to me like looking into another world. Once when very intent upon the doings of some spider-crabs, the rock upon which I leaned my chest and hands gave way beneath my weight, and I was immediately transformed into a fish, or at any rate, for some moments I was an occupant of the same element and abode as the fish; but I soon scrambled out without even a crab or lobster taking the opportunity of tweaking my nose.