The family Robinson Crusoe

by Johann David Wyss

——I have caught him,—I touched him, cried Fritz, without hearing one word I had been saying.—The tortoise is ours, it cannot escape, father! Is not this then a valuable prize, for it will furnish dinners for us all for many weeks!

I soon admitted the idea that in reality the harpoon had secured the animal, which, feeling itself wounded, thus agitated the vessel in its endeavours to be disengaged, for the rope of the harpoon was necessarily fastened at the other end to the windlass. I quickly pulled down the sail, and seizing a hatchet, sprung to the boat’s head to cut the rope, and let the harpoon and the tortoise go; but Fritz caught hold of my arm, conjuring me to wait a moment, there being no immediate cause for alarm, and not so hastily bring upon him the mortification of losing, at one stroke, the harpoon, the rope, and the tortoise; he proposed watching himself, with the hatchet in his hand to cut the rope suddenly should any sign of danger appear. I yielded to his entreaties, after a due exhortation to him to take good care not to upset the boat, or run her upon the rocks.

Thus then, drawn along by the tortoise, we proceeded with a hazardous rapidity, and having no small difficulty to keep the rudder in a straight direction, and so to steady the boat, as to prevent her yielding to the irregular motions of so singular a conductor. In a little time I observed that the creature was making for the sea; I therefore again hoisted the sail; and as the wind was to the land, and very brisk, the tortoise found resistance of no avail: he accordingly fell into the track we desired to take, and we soon gained the current which had always received us in our visits to and from the wreck: he drew us straight towards our usual place of landing, and by good fortune without striking upon any of the rocks which so much abound in that spot. We, however, did not disembark without encountering one difficult adventure. I perceived that the state of the tide was such, that we should be thrown upon one of the sand-banks, and this accordingly took place: we were at this time within a gun-shot of the shore; the boat, though driven with violence, remained perfectly upright in the sand. I stepped into the water, which did not reach far above my knees, for the purpose of conferring upon our conductor his just reward for the alarm he had caused us, when he suddenly gave a plunge, and I saw him no more; following the rope, I however soon found the tortoise stretched at length at the bottom of the water, where it was so shallow that I was not long in finding means to put an end to his pain by cutting off his head with the hatchet; when he soon bled to death. Being now near Tent-House, Fritz gave a halloo, and fired a gun, to apprise our relatives that we were not only arrived, but arrived in triumph. This soon produced the desired effect: the good mother and her three young ones soon appeared, running towards us; upon which Fritz jumped out of the boat, placed the head of our sea-prize on the muzzle of his gun, and walked to shore, which I reached at the same moment; and all were once more received with the kindest salutations, and such questions as kindness best knows how to propose.

After some gentle reproaches from my wife, for leaving her and the boys for so long a time, the history of the tortoise was related in due form, and excited due interest and much merriment in our auditors. The tender-hearted mother, after heaving a sigh for the hard fate of the creature, began to shudder at the thought of the danger we had been exposed to, and the escape we had effected. We all now fell to a new examination of the adventure, and were struck with surprise that Fritz should so exactly have hit the vulnerable part of the animal, at the first plunge of the harpoon: next that the tortoise should have gone to sleep, and left this very part exposed, contrary to his usual habit of drawing the neck within his shell; and lastly, that with the harpoon stuck in his flesh, and sunk still deeper by the act of drawing in his head to save himself, he should yet have been able to pull a heavy laden boat and a raft tied to it, along, with even an alarming degree of rapidity.

Our conversation being ended, I requested my wife to go with two of the younger boys to Falcon’s Stream, and fetch the sledge and the beasts of burden, that we might not fail of seeing at least a part of our booty from the ship put safely under shelter the same evening. A tempest, or even the tide, might sweep away the whole during the night! We took every precaution in our power against the latter danger, by fixing the boat and the raft, now, at the time of its reflux, as securely as we could without an anchor. I rolled two prodigious masses of lead, with the assistance of levers, from the raft upon the shore, and then tied a rope to each, the other ends of which were fastened, one to the raft, and the other to the boat, and thus satisfied myself that they could not easily be forced away.

While we were employed on this scheme, the sledge arrived, and we immediately placed the tortoise upon it, and also some other articles of light weight, such as mattresses, pieces of linen, &c.; for I reckoned that the animal itself weighed at least three quintals, the strength of our whole party was found necessary to move it from the raft to the sledge: we therefore all set out together to unload it again at Falcon’s Stream. We pursued our way thither with the utmost gaiety of heart, and found the time pass both agreeably and quickly, in answering the numerous questions with which the three youngest boys assailed us, as to the nature and amount of the treasures we had brought from the vessel. The chest containing the articles in silver, and another filled with trinkets and utensils made of different kinds of metals, the most powerfully excited their interest; for Fritz had dropped a hint of what was in them, and nothing could exceed the measure of their curiosity.—Are they left on the raft or in the boat? asked Ernest. We will open them to-morrow, and I shall have my watch.

Jack.—I assure you, I shall not be content with only a watch; I must have, since I hear there are so many, a snuff-box also.

Francis.—And I shall ask for a pretty purse filled with louis.

Father.—Vastly well imagined, my young ones.—Jack intends then, I presume, to take now and then a pinch of the snuff he has not got, and Francis perhaps means to sow his louis that they may produce him a crop.

Jack.—Now, father, you are for this once mistaken; I have no liking for snuff, and know very well we have not any: what I want the box for is, to preserve in it the seeds I mean to collect from all the charming plants that we see around us, as, should we ever return to Europe, I could then have them in our garden. I have also found some chaffers, and different kinds of flies, which I should also be glad to keep.