Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

"We can't do that," I said, "but we shall have to make war on them, or we shall never feel safe, either for our belongings or ourselves, for they attacked you, and I am pretty sure that if one of us was hurt and could not count on the help of the other he would soon be torn in pieces. We must teach them a lesson."

"Yes, but how?" says Billy. "They're such cowards that they won't stand still to be shot at."

"Nor would you, if you were a wild dog," I said. "I think we had better set a trap for them."

War on the Dogs

"Yes, and catch 'em alive oh!" says Billy, and we straightway began to consider of the kind of trap that would serve us best, Billy favouring a running noose, which seemed to me not very sure, so I proposed a pit covered over with branches and leaves. We tried this, and before we went to bed we put a good-sized piece of roast pork (Billy having shot a pig that day) on the covering of the pit, hoping that the dogs would be drawn to it by the smell and then would tumble into the pit, where we should find them in the morning. In the middle of the night we heard a yapping and yelping; but we did not get up, for one thing because it was dark and we could scarcely have seen to deal with our captives. However, in the morning we found the pork gone and also the dogs, and when we examined the pit we saw that some had fallen in but scrambled out again up the sides, though how they did it we never could tell, the hole being of a pretty good depth. This failure did not slacken our determination, and we soon thought of a more subtle trick, to which there was one drawback in the fact that we had no means of making a good torch, which seemed essential to it. We could, of course, have made a great blaze with our fire, which we had never let go out since we had first kindled it, except when a great rain put it out; but that would as like as not have defeated our own ends. However, it chanced that one evening we made a discovery which was useful to us in this particular, and much more afterward, as will appear.

I have mentioned the nut we pounded and mixed with glue to make our birdlime. Well, since we did not wish to use up too many cocoa-nuts or too much of our bread-fruit paste for feeding our two pigs, which were thriving wonderfully, we gave them these other nuts, which they appeared to like very well. On this evening I speak of, in replenishing the fire to cook our supper, we happened to throw into it two or three nuts which had got among the fuel, and we observed that they burned with a very bright flame, quite different from the flame of wood or cocoa-nut shells. We did not think any more of it for the moment, but when I lay in bed (I say bed, but it was only leaves and dried grass), our house being pitch-dark, I thought all of a sudden that perhaps we could make a candle of these nuts if we wished, though we had no need of a light, having nothing to read. I called out to Billy to know if he was awake, and telling him of my notion, he said, "What's the good?" which I remember he always did say when I suggested anything new. However, I resolved to see whether I was right, and next day I put two or three kernels together, and kindled them, and they burned with a light like a candle's, but with a rather offensive smell.

We at once set about making a torch, and finding that we had a difficulty in getting the kernels entire out of the shells, which were very hard, we thought of boiling them, and then found that the shells cracked with the slightest tap, so that the kernels came out whole. When we had some twenty of these kernels we skewered them together on a thin, hard stick, and so had a torch, and there being now no obstacle to the trick I purposed playing on the dogs, we took one of our pigs into the house, and surrounded the other with a kind of stout stockade inside the sty, and at nightfall we left the gate of the sty open, but contrived that we could easily close it by means of a rope which we carried into our house. We did not go to bed, but waited, holding our torch ready, with flint and tinder, and also a couple of the spears I have before mentioned, which, although rude weapons, were the fittest for the work in hand.

It was not long before we heard the light patter of feet, and soon after the squealing of our decoy. We waited a little, so as to give our expected guests plenty of time to establish themselves, knowing too that they would not be able to do any harm to the pig, and then we pulled the rope, so closing the gate upon the intruders. Then I kindled the torch, and holding it aloft in my left hand, I rushed out with a spear in my right hand, and Billy armed in like manner. The sty was a good way from the house, and before we got to it the dogs that were outside, alarmed by the unwonted glare and by our shouts, scampered away into the darkness, leaving their comrades howling and yelping in the sty, and the pig squealing too in a terrible fright. Having the prisoners now at our mercy, for they could not leap the walls of the sty, we doomed them to instant execution, and when some of them fled for refuge into the covered part of the sty, we took off a portion of the roof, and so fell on them again, and did not desist until we had killed every one. We left them there until the morning, and then carried them forth, nine in all, and Billy insisted on skinning them, saying that their coats would make fine mats for our house-floor, which indeed they did when they had been well washed in lake-water and dried in the open air. The vengeance we took had an excellent deterrent effect on the rest of the pack, which no more molested us, at least in that part of the island. We caught more fowls to replace those that had been stolen, and captured the litter of another sow, which we killed for food, and were happy in the thought that by natural increase our fowls and pigs would in course of time provide us with as much food as we needed, or even more. We kept the hides of those we killed, though we had no immediate use for them. Billy said he wished he could make a pair of boots, for the rough ground was very troublesome to his bare feet, and my boots were very much worn and, indeed, scarcely held together. But we knew nothing of bootmaking, and for some time did not attempt to provide ourselves with footwear, though afterwards we contrived to make some strange and uncouth foot-gloves: I can call them by no other name.

[[1]] This was clearly the candle-nut, of which more is said presently.—H.S.