One evening, about three months after they had landed on the island, a terrible storm swept over it. The lightning seemed to set the very woods on fire, and to run along the ground in the awful rain. Next day the inland lake was a little sea, and acres of the forest had been levelled to the ground by the force of the gale.
When Brandy went out in the morning to prepare breakfast, a sorrowful lad was he; for the rain had completely drowned out the fire, and there were no matches.
He was not to be beaten, however; and so set to work to make fire in the usual way adopted by savages—piercing a hole in a piece of soft plank and twirling a pointed piece of very hard dry wood. It took him nearly an hour, however, to accomplish the feat.
Two months passed away, making five months in all since the foundering of the ’Liza Ann, but all that time they had never seen a passing ship. True, they spent only a part of the day at the outlook; but the view was so extensive that had a vessel been anywhere within a radius of twenty miles or more they would have discried it.
All the food, consisting chiefly of biscuits and tinned meats which they had taken from the ship, had long since been finished; but this was a small matter so long as their ammunition held out. Of this, however, Tom was now unusually careful; and for ordinary purposes of hunting they used bows and arrows, and soon became very accomplished marksmen indeed.
They also paid frequent visits to the sea-shore, and, embarking in their dinghy, caught fish. As to fruit and vegetables, these were abundant; so that on the whole they wanted for nothing.
Salt, by the way, was at first wanting, till Tom thought of the old-fashioned plan of placing seawater in shallows or rocks. When it evaporated it left a crust of saline matter, and this had to do duty as a relish.
And now with constant hard work in the forest their clothes began to get somewhat ragged, and also their shoes; so Tom had to learn two new trades, those of shoemaker—or rather cobbler—and tailor. As for Ginger Brandy, he dispensed entirely with the use of shoes, and almost entirely with clothes even. He told Tom that he was not afraid of the sun spoiling his complexion.
“But, O marster,” he added, “you is getting redder ebery day. Bymeby you turn brown, den black, and den dere will be two niggah boys. Aha! Your ole moder won’t know you, sah, when you goes home.”
“Home, Brandy!” said Tom with a sigh. “Heigh-ho! I begin to think we will never, never see home any more.”