We set to work getting material for our big house, as we called it, immediately after our little house, or hut, was finished. At first we were greatly disheartened, for though we chose small trees of which to make our logs, both for easiness of felling and of moving when they were felled, we found that our clumsy axes were very poor tools. Not only did the flints need sharpening every few minutes, like a mower's scythe, but being attached to the handles only with creepers, and not very skilfully, they continually worked loose, and we had to desist in order to bind them again, which mightily exasperated us. At the end of the first day, seeing what little progress we had made, we were ready to despair. "It will take us a hundred years, master," says Billy, "and the corner posts will be rotted before we get the roof on. I don't believe in none of your Robinson Crusoes; and we'd better have been drownded; and I warrant you Hoggett and Chick and great fat Wabberley are just enjoying themselves somewhere, and I'm sick of my life."
Billy Scoffs at Romance
I have forgot to say that when we were eating our meals, or resting, I had told Billy the surprising story of Robinson Crusoe, of whom he had never heard, encouraging both him and myself with the tale of how that good mariner, after tribulations like to our own, came at length happily to his own land again. But I own I thought our case was much worse than Crusoe's, for he had clothes, and corn food, and good liquors, and firearms, and good tools, though few; and, indeed, everything he needed save company, and that came to him at last; whereas we had absolutely nothing except the fruits of the island and what things we could make for ourselves. Yet in reckoning up our situation and his, I felt very thankful that I had a companion, for the worst of evils are tolerable if we have some one to share them, and I wonder that Crusoe did not go stark mad, being alone for so many years till his man Friday came. Billy often scoffed when I told him what I remembered of Crusoe's story, and said he wasn't near so badly off as we were, and if he—that is, Billy—only had what Crusoe had, he would do as much as he, or more, especially if he had a forge and blacksmith's tools. And in particular, when I told him of Crusoe's horror when he saw a footprint in the sand, he burst into a laugh, and asked why there was only one footprint, and made me go down to our little bit of sandy beach there and then, and showed me the prints he made with his own feet, and asked me triumphantly whether the man whose mark Crusoe saw was a one-legged man, or what.
Another thing I must mention, before I forget it, was that the first time we went down to the shore we saw that the second boat, which, being broken, the mariners had left, had been washed away. We were very much vexed at this, and wished we had had the forethought to drag it higher up, where the waves could not reach it. I do not think we could have mended it enough to make it seaworthy, but we might have tried; and it would at least have provided us with planks which we should have found useful. However, it was gone, and there was no use repining.
But to come back to our house. We were, I say, in despair at the small result of our first day's hard labour, especially as we saw no way of improving our tools, and had no other means of felling the trees. It came into my mind that if we only had fire, we might have burned them down, and we tried again for a good while to make fire with the stick and the chunks of wood. But we had no more success than before, and Billy cried out that he wished he could get some of the fire that set the mountain water a-boiling, but he supposed he would be burned alive if he tried to get any. I smiled at his simplicity, and to ease his thoughts a little, I asked him to accompany me up the mountain, it being my turn to take our nightly look-out over the sea. It chanced that as we strayed over the mountain-side we lighted upon one of the splinters of the boulder which Billy had broken before, and the gleam of metal in it catching my eye, I said to Billy that it was desperately plaguy to be where metal abounded, and not be able to use it.
Making Fire
"Why, master," says he, "who knows as how we can't use it? We ain't tried. Why didn't we think of it afore?" And straightway he picks up the splinter, and I found a flint, and he struck them together, and fairly danced with delight when he made a spark, though he stopped dancing and howled next moment, having hurt his bare feet on the sharp rock.
I felt as great a delight as Billy, it being plain that we now had the first means of making fire, and if only we could discover anything to serve as tinder we might soon have a fire as large as we pleased. We went back to our hut by the wood very quickly, being eager to try before it was dark; but though we collected plenty of dry grass and struck spark after spark out of the flint, we could not kindle a flame, and, to our great disappointment, ate cold supper again. The next day also we were no more successful, though we neglected our work while we tried again and again, and should have been very sorry for the loss of time but that time mattered very little to us. However, in the afternoon, when we went into the wood to get cocoa-nuts, I sat myself down on the trunk of a great tree which had been thrown down by a storm, I suppose—not our storm, but earlier, for the leaves were all withered. I sat myself down, I say, but went lower than I intended, the trunk, that appeared solid, giving way under me, so that I toppled over backwards in a cloud of dust. When we looked at the tree, we saw that the inside of it was completely rotted away, with the dry rot, as we say, and we both cried out at the same moment that this might be our tinder. We immediately broke off a strip of the bark, and collected some of the dust upon it, and then striking a spark, we caught it on the tinder, which was, however, so dry that it flared up and burnt out in an instant, without kindling the bark. We remedied this very soon by mingling some dry grass, rubbed small, with the wood dust, and this burning more slowly, it caused the bark to smoulder, from which we blew up a flame, and in a few minutes had a very pretty fire of sticks. Billy leapt around it in an ecstasy, and I could not help but liken him to a fire-worshipper, whose religion I understood better now than before, after all the trouble we had had.
"Now we can bake some bread," said I.
"And roast some pork," says Billy.