"No one would but a fool," says Billy, interrupting, and when I tried to explain what my aunt meant he said that was all very well, but where did the chimney-pots come in? However, to shorten the story, he gave in to my wish, and we carried the puppies to our hut, and made them up a bed of grass and leaves in one of our large pans. We were hard put to it to know how to feed them, and indeed, the food we gave them—bread-fruit made into pap, and scraps of chicken, and the like, as well as broth sometimes—did not agree with them very well, because they were so young, so that I doubted whether we should succeed in rearing them. One died in three days, but the others survived, and I ought to say that Billy was fully as diligent as myself in tending them, and showed a marvellous ingenuity in the preparation of their meals. As they grew up, we used to watch them anxiously, expecting that one fine day they would leave us and join themselves to their own kindred in the wilds, and Billy said he hoped his dog would not leave us the first, for he would never forgive it. But we saw with great satisfaction that they showed no inclination towards the society of their kind; indeed, it was the contrary; they shunned them, and showed every mark of enmity if they approached, so that we saw they would prove to be very good watchdogs when fully grown. Billy called his dog Robin, which he said was a good name for a dog but not for a man, and I called mine Little John to match; and they soon learnt to answer to their names.
[[1]] Probably the fissure had at one time extended to the surface, but had been gradually filled up with soil brought to the spot by drainage from the high ground.—H.S.
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
OF A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN BILLY AND THE NARRATOR—OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH A SHARK, AND THE BUILDING OF A CANOE
We now began to consider ourselves as the possessors of considerable wealth, compared with our condition when we first came to the island. We had a fair estate, with none to dispute our title, at least, none had yet done so; a substantial and commodious house, by no means a mansion, and very plainly furnished, but having the necessary things, to which we could add the others, and did. We had food, both of the animal and vegetable kind, of our own breeding and growing, so that we were always sure of its freshness. We looked abroad on our little domain with a great deal of honest satisfaction, seeing our own handiwork in it, and being ever urged on to other achievements by what we had already done. This summer, for an instance, finding that our yam plantation throve exceedingly, and needed hoeing because of the very fertility of the soil, we made ourselves rakes and hoes, the former of wood and bits of bone (these took us a long time), the latter of scallop shells bound with cords about crutched sticks. Then, when the yams were ripe, and we had to bring them to our house from the plantation, which was at some distance, we thought of making a wheelbarrow, which also employed us for a good time, and was indeed one of the most difficult jobs we took in hand, the want of nails being a great hindrance. The body of it was made of wicker-work closely plaited, and the wheel a disc of pottery, which answered very well until it broke in going over rocky ground, and then we had to carve out a wooden one, which was a very tiresome job. We made also a sort of bench-table out of the stump of a tree, which we split down the middle by driving in flint wedges, and when we had split it we took one half and planed the inside of it with scrapers, also of flint, and then scoured it with sand, not being content until it was as smooth as a sawyer's plank. It was on this that I drew the map I have mentioned before, using a mixture of charcoal and oil pressed from candle-nuts, and Billy was very proud when he saw BOBBIN'S BAY marked on it in pretty neat, big characters. We made also some rough stools and chairs, using always strong cords of cocoa-nut fibre in the place of nails. Billy and I had a little difference about the stools, he preferring them to be of three legs, and I of four, my reason being that the four-legged sort were the more stable, while his reason was nothing but a contrariness of temper that sometimes seized him; in which frame of mind if I said I should like pork for dinner he would immediately declare for chicken.
