We had started a piggery, as I have mentioned. At first it was a great deal of trouble to us, for the dogs came yelping round the sty at night, and the wild pigs also tried to reach the two piglets we had captured, and we had to be constantly on the watch lest the walls of the sty should be broken through. However, these wild inhabitants of our island in course of time seemed to accept the piggery as part of the order of things, and left us in peace. But our troubles were started again when Billy all of a sudden conceived the notion of a poultry run. In the course of our second holiday, after our new hut was finished, we chanced to discover several nests of hens, which we had formerly sought for in vain, they being cunningly concealed or else very inaccessible. Domestic fowls do not seem in general to be very plentifully endowed with wits, but the fowls on our island, having to provide against the rapacity of rats and dogs and pigs, certainly had more intelligence than ordinary; and the hens were not particular about the comfort of their nests, so long as they could find a shelter—some secluded nook among the rocks where they could lay their eggs. Billy had said more than once that he would like to have a poultry run, but though we now and then found eggs, and once or twice managed to bring down a fowl with our arrows, which we roasted or boiled, we had never yet been able to catch one alive. They frequented mostly the little patch of woodland in the extreme west of the island, and there we sometimes saw them roosting in the upper branches of tall trees. It was near this spot that we found the nests I have mentioned, but the birds were very wary, and flew away at the first sign of our approach.
Fowling
It was clear that if we were to catch them, we must snare them in some way or other, and having not thought of making nets, which we might have done with cocoa-nut fibres—indeed, we did afterwards—we wondered whether the sticky substance that came from the bread-fruit bark might serve us as birdlime. We tried it, but we found that it hardened too quickly for our purpose; at least, that was how we explained our want of success; and we thought that if we mixed it with some other substance that would keep it moist the result might be different. We tried bread-fruit, and then shredded cocoa-nut, but neither was effectual; and then, almost as a last resource, we made the experiment with a nut that I have not before mentioned, because we had not found it of any use as food. It grew on a tall and very leafy tree, and the ground was at this time strewed with the olive-green fruits which had fallen, being over-ripe. We easily removed the outer covering, and within was a hard shell, something like a walnut, only smooth, and inside the shell was a whitish kernel, which we had found was not very palatable; but it was very oily, and we thought this, when pounded, might mix very well with our glue, as I may call it.[[1]] Accordingly we did this, and taking a quantity of the mixture to the spot which the fowls haunted, we smeared a fallen branch with it, and having spread some small pieces of baked bread-fruit as bait, we went among the trees to await the issue.
A Fowl-house
Billy was patient enough when work was a-doing, but he never could bide patiently, for which reason many holidays were not good for him. He ran so often to the edge of the wood to see if any birds were snared, that I am sure he was the cause why we had to wait so long, the birds taking alarm at his movements. At last I persuaded him to go with me back to our house, and when we returned after a long interval we suspected by the unaccustomed cackling we heard that our birdlime had proved successful; and so it was, for when we came to the branch, there was a fine hen fluttering her wings and cackling most lamentably, and also a kind of wood pigeon, which did not make near so much noise. Billy wrung the neck of the pigeon in an instant, saying it would make a tasty morsel for dinner, and then we tied the legs of the hen, and carried her home. But one hen does not make a poultry run, and it was a considerable time before we caught any more fowl, the fate of the first seeming to have warned the rest. However, we did succeed in catching four or five more at intervals, and we turned our small hut into a fowl-house, putting poles across for them to roost on. It is a strange thing, but after a little while the fowls, which had before scarce made a sound, began to cackle and crow just as the fowls do in England, and Billy said that finding they were now safe from their enemies, and fed regularly, they were much happier than before, and showed it by their singing. How that may be I know not, but I am inclined to think that they had better kept silence, for one morning after a night of wind and rain, during which we heard that strange sound we heard on our first night, we found the gate of our poultry run open and all the fowls gone, leaving only a great quantity of feathers scattered about, both inside and out. This told us pretty plainly what had happened, and if we needed assurance, we had it in the footprints in the sodden ground.
"'Tis them rampageous dogs, master," cried Billy in a fury. "The thieving villains! And one of the hens beginning to sit, too! I wish we could poison 'em."