Next day we finished our lean-to, making walls and roof of the trellis-work I have mentioned, and being very tired we went to sleep without paying another visit to the island. I thought we were doing very well, and the only thing that gave me any concern was our canoe, for we had no very safe harbourage for it on the rock, and if a storm came I was afraid the sea might wash it from the ledge on which it lay, and then we should be in a lamentable fix. However, as we usually had some warning of bad weather, in the low flying of seabirds and other signs we had become used to observe, we determined at the first warning to take the canoe into the cave and lie up there until the storm was past. Of course we could not do this if the storm broke upon us suddenly in the night, but in that matter we must simply trust to Providence.
All necessary work on the Red Rock being done, we began to find time hang somewhat heavy on our hands. Our asylum (as I may call it) was no more than some two hundred feet square; at least, the habitable part of it was no more: and having explored every get-at-able corner of it, and finding nothing to reward us except a few seabirds' eggs, we had nothing to do; and to lie about looking at each other was vastly uninteresting. We clambered to the highest point, and there, under cover of a craggy rock that overhung the island, we looked over the domain from which we had been expelled, and I scarce think Adam himself was more grieved at the loss of Eden than we were now. We could not see our hut, but a great part of the island between it and the sea, to the westward and southward, was open to our view, and of course the mountain, and the long slope that ran downwards from the crater to the archway. Once or twice we caught glimpses of the seamen as they roamed the island, and then Billy's wrath and indignation knew no bounds, and he pleaded with me to land and post ourselves behind trees, and shoot the men with our arrows, but this of course I would not consent to, having besides in my mind a better way of dealing with them. And I bade Billy remember that they must be very uneasy at not lighting on any traces of us, to which he replied scornfully, "Suppose they are, what's the odds? They'll soon believe as how we are drownded, and then they'll be jolly enough, using our things and all."
"Maybe they'll be afraid of seeing our ghosts," I said.
"That would frighten 'em, wouldn't it?" says he. "Fancy old Wabberley, now, seeing a thing all white come creeping along, making gashly sounds, and all that; wouldn't he holla and cry for mercy! I wish we could turn into ghosts for once, only I suppose we can't till we're dead, and I don't want to be dead, do you, master?"
The next night chanced to be stormy, with a high wind, and we heard that strange howling I have before mentioned, and of which we had never discovered the cause, for it was clear no dogs made it, there being none now on the island. But on sailing our canoe to the cave, for safety's sake, we learnt at last what made the noise, which was nothing less than the wind blowing across the mouth of the cave. Billy said the sound would frighten the men as well as any ghost could do it, and I think he was himself pleased to know that the explanation was so simple and natural.
The weather cleared next day, and we returned to the Red Rock. Being determined to set off for the island that very night, and begin to put into practice the scheme I had been forming in my mind, we had a good sleep in the afternoon, and embarked in the canoe just after sunset. The moon was up, but we did not suppose the seamen would wander from the hut at night-time, and the moonlight would help us. When we landed, we went up to the cocoa-nut grove, and began to strip the trees of all the nuts, ripe and unripe, starting with those that were furthest from the hut, and so were the least likely to be known as yet by the men. We conveyed the nuts, in the baskets we had brought on our backs, to the canoe; and then, Billy being still mighty concerned about the pigs, lest they should all be killed and eaten, we determined to go very stealthily towards the hut, to see if we might anyways get a pig from the sty, and also to learn what the men had done about our settlement. Spying down upon the place, we saw that the door of the hut was open, and that the drawbridge was not laid across the moat, so that we supposed all the men were sleeping within. But as we drew nearer, and came close to the fowl-house, we were surprised by great snores proceeding from it, by which we knew that some of the men had made it their lodging, though we could not guess what they had done with the fowls which they had turned out. They had let them loose, as we afterwards discovered, never supposing that they would have any difficulty in catching them when they wanted them for food; and we were very much amused when we learnt of their anger and amazement at finding that the fowls had betaken themselves to inaccessible places, so that they never had but two or three all the time they were on the island.
I thought there would be too great a risk in trying to purloin one of our pigs, the sty being not above a dozen yards from the fowl-house, but Billy would do it, and assured me he would get one of the young ones as easy as anything. Accordingly I let him go, and sure enough he came back in no long time carrying one of the piglets close in his arms, and I had not heard above one feeble squeal, the reason I heard no more being that Billy slipped into the little pig's mouth a bit of cocoa-nut he happened to have in his pocket. But Billy himself was in a furious temper, telling me, when we had gotten ourselves safe away, that he had seen his best axe, and his own wooden spade, on which he had carved the initial letter of his name, lying close by the pig-sty, and he was perfectly overcome with anger at the thought that his very own tools were being used by these sacrilegious hands. Nothing would satisfy him but that he must go back and bring them away, which he did, and we took them and the pig down to our canoe, and paddled back to the Red Rock, very well satisfied with our night's work.
The next night we paid another visit to the island, and this time we went to the plantation of yams, finding, as we half expected, that the men had already made some depredations on it. Having brought spades as well as baskets, we dug up a good many of the yams that remained, and carried them to the canoe in two or three trips. We continued these expeditions night after night, finding a certain fascination in them, and being tickled with the thought that while the men were lapped in slumber we were gradually depriving them of their means of subsistence. "'Tis just like housebreakers, ain't it, master?" said Billy gleefully once; "only there ain't no watchman to cop us. And what's more, it ain't wrong neither, for a man ain't doing no wrong if he takes what's his very own." Night by night we drew nearer to the hut, and had worked so often without the least alarm that we flattered ourselves there would soon be no more fruit to gather, and then, as Billy said, Hoggett would begin to starve.
One night, the seventh or eighth, I should think, since we began, we had brought our canoe to the strip of sand beside the lava beach, and had gone up to a small clump of trees which we had not been able to strip completely the night before. Billy had gone aloft, being nimbler in climbing than me, and I was about to follow him, when all of a sudden he called out, quite loud, his surprise making him to be off his guard, that there wasn't a single cocoa-nut left. Immediately afterwards I heard him say, not so loud, "Oh geminy, now I've been and done it!" and began to slide down very rapidly; but in a moment I heard a loud crackling of twigs close by, and then a shout, "Here's the devils!" and I knew that the men were upon us; it was plain they had observed how the fruits were disappearing night by night, and had been on the watch for us. Billy came down the tree more quickly than any monkey could have done, with great damage to his hands and still more to his breeches, as we afterwards discovered, the bark-cloth with which we had patched them being clean torn away, so that "the rent was made worse," as the Bible says. His feet were no sooner on the ground than we set off a-running with all our might towards the canoe, and we had not got above fifty yards when some of the men broke from cover and ran after us, shouting the most terrible curses. We had to go about two hundred yards before we came to the edge of the cliff, but being much more nimble on our feet than the seamen we did not lose ground, but rather gained; and arriving at the edge, we immediately began to descend towards the sea, in such haste that I am sure no two men ever came so near to breaking their necks. The cliff, as I have said before, was exceeding steep and rough, and the descent was all the more perilous because it was night, though moonlit; and to this day I marvel that we came safe to the bottom. There was nothing that could be called a path; we could only scramble down as best we might, trusting to luck, or rather to Providence; and though we escaped with our lives, and our limbs sound, yet our feet and legs were pretty badly cut by the sharp edges of rock. The seamen, when they came to the brink, did not dare to follow us, but caught up stones and hurled them down upon us, and if they had been able to take good aim we must certainly have been killed. However, we came safe to the beach and to our canoe, into which we leapt and paddled away as quickly as we could, and the men spying us set up a great howl of rage, and I was vexed they had seen our vessel, but it could not be helped. They ran along the top of the cliff watching us, the moon being up, as I said; but we disappeared from their view so soon as we had come beneath the cliffs, and then, so that they should not know of our refuge on the Red Rock, we lay for a good while in the entrance to Dismal Cave, not proceeding further until we thought the men would have returned to their quarters.
Billy was exceeding vexed to think that his careless outcry had had so untoward an issue. "I could knock my head off, master," he cried passionately, and when I asked him what good that would be he said, "Well, I couldn't stick it on again, could I? Only I have got a silly tongue." I told him that he need not reproach himself, for I was sure the men had been on the watch for us, having no doubt observed the nightly disappearance of the fruits. "Yes," says Billy, "but if they hadn't spied us they might ha' thought they was taken by goblins or such," to which I replied that I did not think goblins fed on such substantial fare, and so by degrees I brought him to a more tranquil frame of mind. I thought it very likely that the men would now guess what our purpose was, and gather in all the foodstuffs that were left, so that there would be none for us to venture for; wherefore we must leave the further working out of our plan to time. Accordingly, we went no more from the Red Rock to the island, except once, and that was to get another pig as mate to the one we had already captured. We delayed to do this for several days, until we thought the men would not be so carefully on guard as they would be immediately after their discovery of us; but when we did venture to land and creep near to the pig-sty, we feared our errand was impossible, because the men had lit an open fire near the hut and we saw two of them on watch. However, Billy said he was not going to be beat, and he asked me to go into the woods and make a terrible noise, which he thought would draw the men away, and so give him an opportunity of seizing the pig. I would not consent to this at first, for it seemed like leaving the dangerous part of the work to Billy; but he insisted that he could get the pig more easily than I could, which was true, and so I agreed at last, but thought of another way instead of making a noise, and that was to go into a clump of trees on the other side of the hut from the pig-sty, and there strike a light, which I doubted not would be seen by the men. Knowing the country as I did, it would be easy to escape down to the canoe, which we had left this time in the little cove on the east of the island, guessing that the men would make for the sandy beach if they suspected our presence. There was a risk, of course, that not all the men would be drawn towards the light, but we had to chance that, and so I departed, bidding Billy have a very great care.