“By Jove!” I exclaimed, in amazement, “what an extraordinary thing. I’ll swear I hit him. I had him as neatly covered as possible; my hands were as steady as rocks; and there is not enough wind to deflect the bullet; furthermore, I heard it strike.”
“Yes; so did I,” agreed Billy. “I am certain that you hit the brute, Mr Blackburn. I can’t say for certain that I actually saw the bullet hit, but I believe that a second or two after you fired, and an instant before the beast turned and bounded away, I saw a tiny dark spot on the dirty white skin of its breast.”
“I wonder whether you really did, or whether it was merely imagination,” said I. “Anyway, the beggar must be a tough one to kill; for while I feel as certain as you do that I hit him, the fact remains that he was very far from being dead when we last saw him; furthermore, that yonder plain harbours such creatures is a strong argument against our camping there to-night; the only thing, therefore, that I can see for it is to stand off-shore for a mile or two, anchor the boat, and rough it aboard her for the night.”
Which we did. And ample reason had we to congratulate ourselves upon our decision, for shortly after nightfall and all through the hours of darkness our ears were assailed by an almost continuous succession of such hair-raising shrieks and howls, roars and bellowings, as thoroughly convinced me that North Island was no sort of dwelling-place for human beings with a penchant for peace and quietness. Furthermore, there was a moon, that night, well advanced in her second quarter, and at frequent intervals during a particularly restless night I caught glimpses of shadowy forms moving restlessly hither and thither ashore.
With the arrival of dawn next morning we were astir; and after an early breakfast the anchor was hove up and we got under way to resume our voyage of exploration. On the previous afternoon we pretty closely skirted the western shore of the bay; now, on our way out, we as closely hugged the eastern shore, which I kept under continuous scrutiny with the help of the telescope. But nothing worthy of record was seen; and that day’s voyage might be dismissed with the mere mention of it, but for the fact that when we were about half-way down the bay we reached a spot where the water and the swamp were so intermingled that we actually ran right into a vast bed of rushes without grounding. There was, perhaps, nothing very remarkable about that, but there was a peculiarity about those rushes that Billy was the first to observe and remark upon, namely, their absolutely perfect straightness. This inspired me with an idea: our stock of ammunition was limited, and when it should become exhausted, what were we to do? So long as we remained upon the group we must have weapons of some sort, and the only substitute for the rifle and revolver that I could think of was the bow and arrow. I cut one of the rushes and found it to consist of an exceedingly hard outer casing filled with soft pith; it was remarkably light; and it instantly occurred to me that the smaller, thinner rushes—they ranged from about an eighth of an inch up to quite two inches in diameter—would make ideal arrows. We therefore set to work, there and then, and cut about two hundred reeds of suitable diameter, each of them being long enough to make at least two arrows. When, toward sunset that evening, we again reached the little islet that I had resolved to make our home—and which I named Eden because it was so like a garden—the first thing we did was to spread our reeds out on the grass to dry; next we rigged the tent—for we intended to spend the night on the island—and then Billy and I took a walk up as far as the shoulder of the hill, from which was to be obtained a view of the sea, upon the off-chance of there being a sail of some sort in sight. But, as I more than half expected, the ocean was bare. We met with no adventures, unpleasant or otherwise, that night, but enjoyed several hours of sound, dreamless sleep, and awoke refreshed the next morning to pursue our voyage of exploration.
Nor did we meet with any adventures worth recording on the third day of our voyage. We sailed past the eastern end of the island inhabited by the natives, leaving it about two miles on our starboard hand as we steered south; then we sailed past another and much bigger island, which I estimated to measure some sixteen miles long by about fourteen miles wide. It was in the form of a double-coned hill sloping on all sides down to the water’s edge, the higher of the two cones being about nine hundred feet high, and the other perhaps two hundred feet less. It was thickly wooded from beach to summit, and I had no doubt that many of the trees we saw bore edible fruits; but we did not land to test the matter. Rather late in the afternoon we arrived abreast another and much smaller island that proved to be the southernmost of the group. This we named “South Island”; and about sunset we ran into a tiny bay close to its western extremity and, anchoring the boat, passed the night in her, this time without disturbance of any kind.
Continuing our circumnavigation of the group, we reached the wreck again about an hour before sunset on the fourth day of our travels, keeping within the lagoon all the time and thus confirming my theory that the reef completely encircled the whole group. I estimated that in the course of those four days we sailed a distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, but it was well worth it, for I now had considerable knowledge of the general characteristics of the entire group, to which I could add when I set out to traverse the intersecting channels.
The matter about which I was now most anxious was the erection of our projected house on our little islet of Eden; and to the cutting and shaping of the timber that was to be employed in its construction Billy and I at once devoted ourselves energetically, making remorseless inroads upon the wreck for the required materials, but maintaining the cabins and after part of the ship intact, that we might not deprive ourselves of the one dwelling-place until the other was ready to receive us. And I was all the more anxious to get this important piece of work completed without loss of time because I had a suspicion that in those latitudes there is what is known as a “hurricane season”, during which extremely violent gales are prevalent, and I knew that the very first of these—when it came—might destroy the wreck and so turn us out of house and home.
No sooner had we begun our work than I recognised the wisdom that had prompted me to prepare a carefully drawn detailed plan of our future house beforehand, for now I was able to determine, by reference to my plan, the exact dimensions and shape of every piece of timber required, thus saving a vast amount of time and labour that must otherwise have been spent in consideration, and in the tentative fitting together of the several pieces.
There is no need to tax the patience of the reader by describing in detail our daily progress. Let it suffice to say that we worked all day and every day from dawn to sunset, until at length, after five weeks of strenuous but uneventful labour, punctuated at intervals by thunderstorms of terrific violence, accompanied by torrential downpours of rain—which we thankfully utilised for the replenishment of our fresh-water supply—the carpenter work of our projected house was finished, and then came the still more formidable task of erection.