Dummkopf was proud of competing with Defoe’s hero, and set to work without delay. He began by breaking off from his palm-tree several long branches, which he spliced together by means of fibres. He then waited until the crocodile entered the water for a few minutes—by way of keeping up its character as an amphibious animal—and extended his apparatus towards the river. The leaves at the extremity of the machine imbibed a considerable quantity of water, and the Professor, drawing back his improvised pump, refreshed his calcined lips by means of the saturated foliage. He repeated the experiment several times, and, in fact, gave himself up to all the excesses of intemperance. This was an ingenious device, for which Tantalus would have given his eyes!
But, above all, Dummkopf was amused at the notion of mystifying his crocodile, who, as for that, richly deserved it.
Having no longer any anxiety as to the means of satisfying the two chief wants of existence—hunger and thirst—the Professor now began to think how he should manage for his clothes. His aboriginal costume was admirably suited to a tropical climate during the day, but remembering that during the night he had felt rather chilly, he resolved to make himself without delay a garment of green leaves. Besides, how was he to appear before the public without clothes, if by chance a boat should present itself?
Dummkopf accordingly gathered in his aërial alcove a certain quantity of the largest leaves he could find, and crossing his legs like a tailor, proceeded to make them into a vegetable paletôt, which could not be said to belong to the latest fashion, but which, on the other hand, had a primitive cut about it that was highly picturesque. Two leaves sufficed for the nightcap, which, original or not as its appearance may have been, at all events looked much better than the hats we wear in open day.
Here was Dummkopf now lodged, fed, and clothed at the expense of Nature. Happiness is altogether relative; and, for a time, Dummkopf was happy indeed. He was proud of his inventions, and from the height of his palm-tree looked down upon Robinson Crusoe with contempt.
As he was reflecting calmly on his happiness he saw the monster, no longer horizontal, at the foot of the tree. He was making one last endeavour to take it by storm, but failing in the attempt had forthwith recourse to sapping and mining. He went to work with the air of a crocodile who had made up his mind, and who had said to himself, “There must be an end to this.”
Dummkopf shuddered as he heard the teeth of the monster grinding against the bark of the tree.
But the molars and incisors of the crocodile are so arranged that they can do no serious harm to the palm-tree; they can tear the bark off, but cannot pierce or crush the trunk. Dummkopf, however, was ignorant of this fact, and expected every minute that his asylum would fall to the ground, and leave him a prey to the horrid monster into whose scaly body he would enter as into a tomb of shell, but without the smallest epitaph to inform the world of the numerous virtues he possessed.
The crocodile next attacked the tree with his tail as with a battering-ram. How the Professor quivered when the tree shook! And the worst of it was, that, independently of the most terrible result that could possibly take place, there was the certainty that the Professor would lose a large portion if not the whole of his provisions, unless the monster desisted from his sanguinary assault; for with each blow from the crocodile’s tail down came a bunch of dates, and when, as often happened, the fruit fell on the animal’s back, his fury redoubled.