Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

Between the corner posts, and about six inches apart, we planted strong poles about three inches across, leaving a gap on the side farthest from the lake, this being our doorway. On the outside of these upright posts we lashed a number of thicker logs, twice as thick indeed as the others, by means of creepers, laying the logs horizontally one upon another. This was only done with prodigious labour, as you may guess, all the poles and logs having to be felled and trimmed by us with our rude instruments, and if I had hitherto been able to keep count of the days, I should have clean lost it now, for we did not desist from our work until the walls were finished, and every day was like the one that went before and the one that came after. When the walls were finished, and it was a question of the roof, we deliberated for a little whether to make it flat, or to give it a pitch, like the roofs of cottages at home in England. What determined us was the discovery that water was beginning to ooze through the flat roof of our small hut; the rains becoming heavier and more frequent as we drew near to the winter season. Accordingly we gave a pitch of about four feet to our roof, thus forming a fair slope on each side to carry off the rain water. The framework of the roof was formed of bamboos lashed together, and resting on grooves which we cut with much toil in the tops of the wall posts. In order to keep out the rain we decided to thatch the roof over, and for this purpose we collected a great quantity of grasses and reeds from the borders of the lake. Billy told me that the thatched roof of a cottage belonging to his uncle at Plumstead was full of fleas, and as we did not desire to be visited by any such creatures we soaked our materials very thoroughly in the sulphurous water of the hot spring, thinking this would repel them, afterwards drying it in the sun. We need not have troubled ourselves in this matter, for during all the time we dwelt on the island we saw neither fleas nor any other noxious insect; indeed, the grasshopper was the only kind worth mentioning, and we grew to like their cheerful song in the evenings.

The thatching took a long time, neither of us having the least idea how to set about it, and I doubt not a true thatcher would have laughed at our botching and bungling; but we did as well as we could, and were mightily pleased with ourselves when the work was done. There only remained the door, and if it had not been for the wild pigs and dogs on the island we should never have troubled about a door at all, the climate being such, even in winter, which was now upon us, that we need never have closed our house to keep out the cold. But seeing that we should never be secure from molestation by these beasts without a door, we made one of stout logs lashed together, a little wider than the doorway, and since we could not hinge it, we contrived so that when we wished to close the hut at night or when we left it, we slid the door between the wall and two stout posts which we drove into the ground inside. As for a window, we did not need one, since we were up at dawn and abed with the dark, and had the doorway always open when we were in the hut during the daytime.

I said we were abed with the dark, but we did not always sleep at once, and oftentimes lay talking, so that we knew pretty nearly all about each other before we had been many months on the island. Billy's life had been so hard before he ran away to sea that I believe he was more contented now than ever before, having got over his first fears of savages and starvation, and the old smoker, as he called the burning mountain. (This, I ought to say here, had not been violently active since we first came to the island, though we sometimes heard faint rumblings, and saw spurts of steam and water, but never so great as at first.) I was not near so contented as Billy, for my life had been very easy and comfortable at Stafford, and I remembered my kind friends there, and sometimes felt in the lowest deeps of misery when I thought I might never see them again. But when I reflected I saw that I ought to be thankful that I was not cast on a barren island, or among savages, and there was always a hope that some navigator might sail towards our island and spy our flagstaff, though we often vexed ourselves with the thought that a vessel might pass us in the night and we know nothing about it. I think by this time we had altogether forgotten the men of the Lovey Susan, and did not in the least trouble ourselves to guess at what had become of them, though Billy did say once that he was sure they were eaten up by savages.

Clothes

Our large hut being finished, I thought we deserved another holiday, having never left working at it for many weeks, or perhaps months. But the very first day we purposed being idle, a great storm of rain overtook us as we roamed over the hills, and drove us back to our house for shelter. We were drenched to the skin, and our garments were so old and tattered that we thought they would fall to pieces when we stripped them off to dry them; and moreover, though the air was not cold, as we know cold in England, yet it was chilly sometimes, especially at night, and I feared sometimes when we got wet, that we should be seized with an ague. We began to consider whether we could not by some means contrive to make ourselves clothes, and I reminded Billy that we had made a kind of cloth for our flag out of the bark of the bread-fruit tree.

"Yes, but we ain't got no scissors," says he, "and there's a deal of cutting out to be done in making clothes. My mother—not my real mother, you know—used to make my breeches out of father's, and you should have seen her snipping at 'em, gnashing her teeth together all the time. We can't cut out with our axes, or them things you call knives."

This was true, but I suggested we might beat out the strips of bark till they became of the proper shape. Billy scoffed at this. "What about patterns?" he said. "She used to have paper things, and lay 'em on the cloth and cut round 'em, and you can't make sleeves without 'em, that I'm sure of. Besides, where's our needle and thread?"

"We've made thread out of the fibres of the cocoa-nut," I said, "and as for needles, couldn't we point some thin sticks, and try them?"

"We can try," says he, "but it won't be no good, and you've forgot all about thimbles."

We did try, and I was not very much surprised when we failed, for though we could point a stick with our flints, we had nothing with which we could pierce the eye, and we found that tying the thread to the end was by no means satisfactory. However, we did contrive to put a few patches into our breeches by sticking on some of the bread-fruit cloth, which was soft and brown, with the sticky stuff that came out of the bark when we beat it. I should mention that we were not able to use this stuff immediately, for it did not make the cloth adhere; but we found that if we left it for a day, it became hard, and being then heated in one of our pots over a fire, it turned into a very fair glue. Besides patching our breeches thus, we made ourselves long coats, or rather cloaks, for they had no sleeves, being simply a long piece of cloth with a hole in the middle, and though we laughed at each other a good deal when we put them on, they covered us from neck to heel, and were very useful in keeping off the rain. And while we were about this, we thought we might as well make hats too, if we could; and after many failures we managed to fashion some bonnets out of cocoa-nut leaves, which kept our heads dry, and when the summer came defended them from the sun's heat, and our necks too, for we stuck on flaps at the back.