And now began the really difficult part of our task. Although the ground was entirely bare of vegetation the surface was so exceedingly rough and broken, and so loose, that progress was very slow, becoming more so with every forward step; for while the lower slopes of the mountain were of quite an easy grade, they rapidly steepened as we advanced, until the last five hundred feet or so approached so nearly to the perpendicular that at length further progress seemed to be all but impossible, and we could only advance a yard or two at a time, climbing upon hands and knees, with short spells of rest between the spurts.
But when at length, about midday, we finally reached the summit, it was unanimously agreed that our toil was amply rewarded, for the entire island lay stretched out at our feet like a map, with mile after mile of the blue, foam-flecked ocean reaching far away to the horizon on every hand, while away in the south-western quarter, a hundred miles distant perhaps, there appeared a faint film of misty blue which indicated the presence of other land. But this last was much too distant to interest us in any way; it was our own particular domain that absorbed all our attention, and the first thing that we observed about it was that its length ran practically east and west. It was of very irregular shape, the most graphic way of describing it being, perhaps, to say that in general outline it somewhat resembled a rather acute-angled triangle, with two large pieces bitten out of it near the base, one bite having been taken out of the north side, while the other and larger had removed the south-west angle and formed the bay in which lay the wreck. The acute angle pointed toward the east, and the sides of the triangle were much twisted and broken. The mountain, upon the summit of which we stood, occupied the middle of the eastern half of the island, and proved to be, as we had anticipated, the crater of an apparently extinct volcano. The interior of the crater was elliptical in shape, about a mile long by half a mile wide, and was a funnel-like opening about five thousand feet deep, with practically perpendicular sides. It resembled, as much as anything, an enormous well, for there was water at the bottom of it, though probably of no great depth. Also at the bottom, all round the edge of the water and for some distance up the sides, there were enormous quantities of what we judged to be sulphur.
The top edge of the crater, which from below presented the appearance of a flat-topped hill, was about thirty feet wide and tolerably level; we therefore had no difficulty in walking right round it, and so obtaining a complete view of the entire island, which was everywhere covered with verdure, save immediately round the base of the volcano. But although the outline of the island was very irregular, there were only two indentations worthy of the name of bays in it, namely, the one in which the wreck lay, and which we at once decided to name South-west Bay, and another at the north-west extremity of the island, which we named North Bay. These two bays were the only portions of the coastline possessing anything in the nature of a beach; and, that fact once established, we knew that if natives existed anywhere on the island, we should find traces of them on one or the other of the bays. But we had already learned that there were none on the shore of South-west Bay; and now, carefully examining the other bay, we could see no trace of canoes on its beach, or huts along its margin, neither could we detect the slightest sign of a smoke wreath in any direction. We therefore finally came to the conclusion that, excepting ourselves, the island was without inhabitants, and one source of anxiety was thereupon removed from our minds.
Standing upon the edge of the crater and looking westward, we obtained a perfect view of the whole of the western half of the island, including both bays; and, looking down upon the land below us from a great height, as we now did, we were able to form a very accurate idea of its origin, which we at once judged to be volcanic. The entire island, in fact, was evidently the summit of a volcano projecting above the surface of the ocean, the two bays above referred to having evidently been at one time two craters or vents for the internal fires, since both were encircled by reefs which had all the appearance of having been at one time part of the lip of the respective craters.
As we stood up there, studying the conformation and general appearance of the island, we fell to discussing our future prospects, and soon arrived at the conclusion that, situated just where the island happened to be, far away from all the regular ship tracks, its very existence apparently unknown—since it was not marked upon the chart—it might be months, or even years, before we should be rescued by being taken off by a ship; and that therefore our wisest course would be, first, to save everything possible from the wreck, and then carefully break her up, using her timber to build some sort of a craft to convey us back to civilisation. This would at all events keep us busy and our minds occupied, giving us an object in life—something to strive for, think about, and achieve—and thus preserve us all from falling into a low and despondent frame of mind; and if in the end a ship should happen to appear and take us off, why, so much the better, while if nothing of the kind occurred we should in due time be able to effect our own escape. Cunningham was particularly enthusiastic over the scheme; yacht designing, it appeared, was a hobby of his, and he promised us that if we would only give him a free hand he would design us something which would not only be fairly easy to build, but would also be safe and comfortable, and quite capable of conveying us all to any part of the world we might choose as our destination. This struck me as a far too ambitious project for five men to undertake; but when, later on, we again discussed the matter, with a chart of the Pacific before us, and I discovered that the Sandwich Islands, the nearest civilised land, lay some fourteen hundred miles distant, I changed my opinion. I had already done one ocean trip in an open boat, and had no desire to attempt another.
On our way back to the beach abreast the wreck, which now constituted our temporary home, we took a look at North Bay. With this, as a place of residence, we instantly became violently enamoured: because, in the first place, it was open to the north-east Trade wind, and was therefore far cooler and more pleasant than the beach of South-west Bay, shut in as the latter was under the lee of high cliffs, and opposed to the afternoon sun; next, there was a little stream of delicious fresh water falling over a low cliff into a small rock basin, affording an ideal freshwater bath; next, we discovered a fine large, perfectly dry cave, close to the shore, with an entrance so narrow that it constituted of itself a perfect rock fortress; and, lastly, a large and varied assortment of very fine fruit trees was discovered growing quite close to the beach, only needing to be cleared of the undergrowth to make a splendid orchard. The one drawback to the bay was that it was about two miles distant from the wreck, near which we should of necessity be obliged to establish our shipyard; but its many advantages so far outweighed this that we took possession of the cave there and then, and slept in it that night.
And now ensued a particularly busy time for us all; for when we came to consider the situation we found that there were several matters demanding our attention, and they were all of so urgent a character that it was rather difficult for us to determine offhand which should be the first to receive it. For, to begin with, we were all agreed that unless something quite unforeseen and unexpected, in the nature of a call at the island by a ship, should occur in the meantime, we must be prepared for a sojourn of at least a year in our present quarters; and that, of course, meant that we should be obliged to give serious consideration to the question of the maintenance of our health, which, in its turn, meant that we must carefully regulate our diet, and alter it as much as possible, not depending too much upon fruit, but varying it by a frequent change to fish, our only possible alternative.
But we soon discovered that in order to catch fish, as well as for many other purposes, it was not only very desirable, but also almost imperatively necessary that we should have something in the nature of a boat, which, of course, remained to be built. Then there was the salvage of everything contained in the wreck of the schooner, including the timber and metal of which she was built; to say nothing of certain gardening operations projected by Murdock, with the object of improving the quality of the fruit growing in the immediate vicinity of our cave, the cultivation of certain vegetables, and sundry other schemes having for their object the betterment of our condition during the period of our sojourn upon the island—Murdock’s hobby happening to be gardening, as Cunningham’s happened to be yacht designing (and, as often happens when men take up some useful occupation as an amusement, both soon proved themselves to be exceptionally skilful in all matters relating to their respective hobbies). Therefore, while Chips, Sails, and I went strenuously to work upon the operation of salving everything that we could find aboard the wreck, the boatswain, with the assistance of poor Cooky’s fire shovel, and a few other iron implements which he converted into tools, devoted himself to the production of a fruit and vegetable garden in the immediate neighbourhood of our cave dwelling, clearing away all the scrub which grew around and choked some two dozen fruit trees, digging and hoeing up the soil, and planting therein every potato, onion, and bean that we could find for him among the cook’s stores aboard the ship. And while he and we were busy in the manner described, Cunningham rescued a few sheets of paper and some lead pencils from the skipper’s cabin, carefully dried the former, sharpened the latter, and, with an empty packing case for table, and a scale constructed with the assistance of the carpenter’s two-foot rule, assiduously devoted himself to the task of designing what he called a “catamaran” for immediate use, and then a small schooner by means of which we were eventually to make our escape from the island and return to civilisation.
The catamaran struck me as being a particularly simple and ingenious affair, some of its many merits consisting in the facts that it needed no moulds for its construction, that it could be built of any fragments of wreckage that were too short and too much splintered and damaged to be of use in the construction of the schooner, and that it needed no very elaborate working or shaping. It consisted essentially of two oblong tanks or boxes, each thirty feet long by two feet wide by two feet six inches deep. These boxes were not unlike a Thames fishing punt in shape, although they were, proportionately, much narrower and deeper. The bottom of each was perfectly flat transversely, and also longitudinally, except at the ends, where it curved up gradually in a semi-parabola until it met the gunwale. These two boxes, or punts, having been decked over and made perfectly watertight, were then joined together—with a space of eight feet between them—by stout beams, over the after part of which was laid the schooner’s wheel grating, to serve the purpose of a deck; a broad-bladed steering paddle was fitted securely into a grommet attached to the aftermost beam; the punts were simply rigged with an enormous lateen sail made out of the schooner’s tattered foresail, and there we had a nondescript kind of craft, thirty feet long by twelve feet beam, drawing only about eight inches of water when light and on an even keel, buoyant, unsinkable, and uncapsizable, which, when we came to try her, developed a speed under sail that was positively astounding, and went to windward like a racing cutter.
She was wet, of course, particularly when driven hard to windward, but in such a climate as we now enjoyed, to be drenched with salt water was a pleasure rather than otherwise, and, regarded as a drawback, was not worth a moment’s consideration. It took us a month almost to a day to build and rig her complete; and after our first trial of her we almost invariably used her to go to and fro between the two bays, although the trip by water was about seven miles in length, as compared with the short cut of two miles overland. Yet we did it either way in a little over half an hour, while the sail home in the evening, after a hard day’s work, was much the more exhilarating mode of travelling of the two. And what, perhaps, gratified us as much as anything in connection with the construction of this exceedingly useful craft was that in building her we had not been obliged to touch the schooner at all, but had drawn for our material entirely upon the loose wreckage of bulwarks and so on that we had found strewn about the beach on the day after the wreck, together with four stout saplings which we cut down to serve as beams, and which we found to be exceedingly tough and in many respects to resemble elm.