Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

"We shall have to practise, Billy," I said on the way; "we can't expect to be good marksmen all at once."

"I s'pose we can't," says Billy ruefully; "we do have to have three or four goes at a thing afore we does it proper. But I did want some pork."

Coming at length to the open space, we searched for a good time before we found the two arrows; but as I was stooping I made a discovery that quite banished my disappointment and more than made amends for our long tramp. The pigs, as I said, had been grubbing the ground vainly, as I had thought; but I now saw that it was not so, for there before me lay a long round root as big as a man's head, and of a dark brown colour, which I immediately recognized as a yam. I called Billy to come and see it, and remembering that we had ate some that time we sojourned on the island, and found them very like potatoes when boiled and mashed, but sweeter, we were exceedingly pleased, and Billy at once said that we must certainly make some pork sausages to go with our mashed potatoes.

"Provided the pigs have left us any to mash," said I, for I now saw that they had grubbed the ground pretty thoroughly, and though we searched it for some time, we did not find above six yams, which we carried back to our hut, and boiled one of them for dinner. Unless we should find another plantation of them on the island, which I scarcely hoped for, it seemed that our supply would be soon exhausted; but it then came into my mind that we might plant some of those that we had, and so grow them for ourselves. We knew nothing about the season for planting, nor the right kind of soil for them, but supposed they would be something like potatoes in their nature as well as in their taste, and so determined to eat no more of them for the present, but to keep them until such time as seemed fitting for planting.

This question made us think of times and seasons, which, living from day to day as we did without concern for the morrow, we had not yet troubled ourselves about. It was summer when we first came to the island, and we were now, as I guessed, about the end of autumn, though there was little in the weather to show it, nor very much, so far as we could tell, in the varying length of day and night. But the near approach of winter came upon my mind with a kind of shock. We knew not what the winter was like in these latitudes, nor whether we should be afflicted with severe cold; but we could tell from the ripeness of the fruits of the island that they would not hang much longer upon the trees; indeed, some had already fallen; and I began to wonder what we should do for food in the winter. We had discovered that the bread-fruit, when plucked, remained good for three or four days, if the rind was not pierced; but we had never kept any for a longer time, and I was not a little dismayed as I thought of the straits we should be put to if we could not preserve the food in some way.

Billy reminded me that the native people with whom we had dwelt for a fortnight had given us a bread-fruit pudding, which was delicious. I asked him whether he had seen it made, and he said that he had not, but it looked uncommon like batter pudding when it was baked, and indeed I remembered it was just such a rich brown colour as well-cooked batter. I had many a time seen my aunt Susan make batter, and though we had neither milk nor flour, we had eggs, and it seemed to me at least worth the trial to attempt a batter of bread-fruit. Accordingly we took two large bread-fruits, very ripe, and having cut away the rind and rejected the core, we put the white pulpy part into one of my earthen vessels, and pounded and worked it with a thick stick until it looked very like a thick batter. Billy meanwhile had beat up an egg, and when we added this to the other, and mixed it, Billy cried out it reminded him of pancake day, when his stepmother always made two thick pancakes for herself and his father, and he had a thin one if there was any left over. Since all the earthen vessels I had made were round-bottomed, and we had nothing at all resembling a frying-pan, we were thinking of boiling the mixture, and hoped it would not burn, being so thick, when Billy asked why we shouldn't bake it. I pointed out that we had no baking tins, and without something to hold it the batter would indeed become as flat as a pancake; but Billy was equal to this difficulty.

"I've seen my mother—she ain't my real mother, 'course—put a piece of greasy paper round a dough-cake before she popped it in the oven, and it came out all right, only a bit burnt sometimes, and then, my eye, didn't she make a row!" When I said that we had no paper, he at once replied, "But we've got leaves, and I don't see why a leaf of a leaf, as you may call it, shouldn't be as good as a leaf of paper, or better, the name being such." This appeared to me to be quite a good notion, so we got some leaves and wrapped some of our batter in them, making little oblong parcels about four inches long and two broad, and these we put into our oven, which I have before mentioned, and when we took them out and removed the leaves, we found our cakes to be of a fine brown colour, and they smelled exceeding good and tasted better: in fact, we had made the bread-fruit pudding we had so much liked before, only ours was richer by the addition of the egg.

We were very well pleased with this, but I own I was still better pleased two or three days after, for I then came upon a portion of the batter which we had left uncooked in the pot and forgotten, and found that it was perfectly sweet and good, being not in the least offensive either in taste or smell. It then came into my head all of a sudden that if the bread-fruit pulp would keep good for days even when exposed to the air, it might keep good for weeks and months if kept from the air, and thus all our anxiety about our winter food would be removed. When I suggested this to Billy he shook his head, saying, "We used to keep potatoes in a cellar, but then they had their jackets on, and I've never heard tell of fruits keeping. You can't keep an apple, 'cause I've tried, only I ate it afore it was quite rotten." But I was determined to make the experiment, though having no cellar or other confined space I was at first at a loss how to form a large enough receptacle for our store. After considering of it for some time I had a notion of digging a hole in the ground and lining it with pottery ware, but to this Billy said that we might use leaves and so save a lot of time. So we dug a hole, not very deep, and lined it well with large thick leaves, and into it we poured a great quantity of the bread-fruit pulp that we had mashed—not mixing it with eggs, of course—and then we covered it over with leaves, and put heavy stones on the top, and waited for a week to see what came of it.

Archery

While we were waiting the result of our experiment at storage we practised very diligently with our bows and arrows, and I observed that Billy was pitting himself against me, though he did not say so, at least not then, but he told me afterwards that he meant to try whether Little John could not beat Robin Hood. At first we chose broad trees for our targets, but we found after a time, when we began to be able to hit them, that our arrows were very much blunted against the bark, which made us think of devising a target, for the arrows took so long to shape that it was important to us they should not be injured. This making of a target gave us no trouble, for we had only to stretch leaves across a light framework made of twigs; and to mark the centre of it, for what I believe is called the bull's-eye, we smeared a circle with the sticky substance which, as I have said, came out of the bark of the bread-fruit tree when we beat it to make our flag, and then sprinkled the sticky circle with sand, which stood out, light in colour, against the dark green of the leaves.