Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

We brought Hoggett away last of all, and alone. He looked very ill, and said never a word to us, but I could see that he was inwardly a very furnace of wrath. Billy had said to me, as we went to fetch him, "Mind you shoot him, master, if he tries any tricks," and I was very carefully on my guard and did not feel at all easy in my mind until I saw him safely landed. I lately saw a lion-tamer performing tricks with lions in a cage, and as I watched, my thoughts went back many years to this day of our life on Palm Tree Island, and I fancied that the tamer must feel pretty much as I felt when we had Hoggett in the canoe—as if the wild beast might at any moment break loose.

Sheep and Goats

Having thus conveyed all the men to the rock, we returned to the island, and laid up the canoe just as it was falling dark, being pretty tired, especially Billy, for though I had taken a turn at paddling he would not let me do much, saying that he knew he would be a bad hand with a musket, and might shoot me instead of the men if one of them proved mutinous. We went up very eagerly to our hut, feeling like wanderers returning home, Little John frisking and barking about us in as great a delight as we ourselves. But our mirth was turned to melancholy when we came to the hut, for it was in such a dreadful state that we could not endure the thought of passing the night in it, and so we dragged our weary limbs back to the canoe, and slept there, supperless, for the men had not kept the fire in, and we had nothing with us which we could eat raw. Our sleep lasted until pretty late the next morning, and then, having kindled the fire and cooked our breakfast, we sat talking of the remaining part of my scheme. Billy's face beamed when I showed him how I meant to make the men work for their living, and for once he did not ask, "What's the good?" but declared he couldn't have thought of anything better himself.

I had a pretty good notion of the characters of the men individually, having been for upwards of a year on board ship with them; and Billy knew them even better than I did, because of his nearness to them in the forecastle. A ship is a little world, and there, as in the great world, there are good and bad, and some that are neither good nor bad, for there are a good many colours, as you may say, betwixt white and black. The crew of the Lovey Susan, to be sure, was made up rather of evil-disposed than of well-disposed, for it was recruited by Wabberley and Chick, as I said at the beginning of my story, and you know what I thought of them. The better sort among them being few, could not prevail against the many, and especially against a man like Hoggett, who was so exceeding strong and masterful. Now it was a part of my scheme to sunder the sheep from the goats, if I may say so; and they being all on the rock I could do this, I hoped, without seeming to make any distinction among them, at any rate at first. For when I spoke of their working for their living, I did not have the rock in mind as the scene of their labours, but the island. To feed so many, we should need to enlarge our plantation, and this would mean work; and I had already thought, with leaping heart, of another task we might put in hand when I had brought the men to a proper humbleness and docility. But since there would not be at first enough work for all of them, nor indeed would it be safe to employ them all, I had resolved to begin with the least wicked of them. As we sat at breakfast, therefore, Billy and I conned over their names, passing judgment on them, as it were.

"What about Clums?" I said.

"He's a fat fool," says Billy, "but there ain't no harm in him, away from Hoggett. But he can't do anything but cook, and I can cook as well as him now."

"Well, he must learn to do other things," I said. "And Jordan?"

"Not by no means," says Billy. "He speaks you pretty fair, but he's a sly wretch, the sort of man to pick your grub when you warn't looking."

"What do you say to Hoskin, then?" I asked.

"Why, I don't think much of Hoskin," says he; "but I'll say this for him, that he's about the only man of 'em that didn't kick and cuff me, though he looked on when the others did. But what about Mr. Bodger?"