How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that, but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam swear at Eve, even before the fall. And then those awful spiders, whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject, please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge. Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went, two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his mind to respect every form of life so.
Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to stop other people, to have lectured us under the circumstances, or to have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and thought that even dogs are allowed a hell.
After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany. Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that, instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of those plants before.
We cannot follow him, day by day. It is too late in the tale for that, even if we wished it. Enough that he found no other trace of man upon the island, except the traderʼs hut, or store, with the hideous scarecrow hanging, and signs of human labour, in the growth of some few trees—about which he knew nothing—and in a rough piece of ground near the shanty, cleared for a kitchen–garden. Cassavas, and yams, and kiobos, and pea–nuts, and some other things, grew there; which, as he made nothing of them, we must treat likewise. There had even been some cotton sown, but the soil seemed not to suit it. It was meant, perhaps, by the keen American, who thought himself lord of the island, for a little random experiment.
When would he come back? That was the question Cradock asked, both of himself and Wena, twenty times a day. Of course poor Cradock knew not whether his lord of the manor were a Yankee or a Britisher, a Portuguese or a Dutchman; “Thebis nutritus an Argis.” Only he supposed and hoped that a white man came to that island sometimes, and brought other white men with him.
By this time, he had cut a winding staircase up the walls of his castle, and added a great many rough devices to his rugged interior. Twice every day he clomb his tree, to seek all round the horizon; and at one time he saw a sail in the distance, making perhaps for Loanda. But that ship was even outside the expansive margin of hope. And now he divided his time between his grand mowana citadel and the storehouse, with whose contents he did not like to meddle much, because they were not his property.
There he placed the shipʼs hydropult, which he had found lying on the beach; for the mate had brought it to meet the chance of finding shallow water, where the casks could not be stooped or the water bailed without fouling it; and the boatʼs crew, in their rush and flurry, had managed to leave it behind them. Cradock left it in the storehouse, because it was useless to him where he had no water, and it amused him sometimes to syringe Wena from the brook which flowed hard by. Moreover, he thought that if anything happened to prevent him from explaining things, the owner of the place, whoever he might be, would find in that implement more than the value of the biscuits which Cradock was eating, and getting on nicely with them, because they corrected the richness of turtle.
Truly, his diet was glorious, both in quality and variety; and he very soon became quite a pomarian Apicius. Of all fruits, perhaps the mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana) is the most delicious, when you get the right sort of it—which I donʼt think they have in Brazil—neither is the lee chee a gift to be despised, nor the chirimoya, and several others of the Annona race; some of the Granadillas, too, and the sweet lime, and the plantains, and many another fount of beauty and delight—all of which, by skill and care, might be raised in this country, where we seem to rest content with our meagre hothouse catalogue.
I do not say that all these fruits were natives of “Pomona Island,” as Cradock, appreciating its desserts, took the liberty of naming it; but most of them were discoverable in one part or another of it; some born from the breast of nature, others borne by man or tide. And almost all of them still would be greatly improved by cultivation.
So the head gardener of the island, who left the sun to garden for him, enjoyed their exquisite coolness, and wondered how they could be so cool in the torrid sunshine; and though he did not know the name of one in fifty of them, he found out wonderfully soon which of them were the nicest. And soon he discovered another means of varying his diet, for he remembered having read that often, in such lonely waters, the swarming fish will leap on board of a boat floating down the river. Thereupon he made himself a broad flat tray of bark, with a shallow ledge around it, and holding a tow–rope, made also of bark, launched it upon the brook. Immediately a vast commotion arose among the finny ones; they hustled, and huddled, and darted about, and then paddled gravely and stared at it. Then, whether from confusion of mind, or the reproaches of their comrades, or the desire of novelty, half a dozen fine fellows made a rush, and carried the ship by boarding. Whereupon Cradock, laughing heartily, drew his barge ashore, and soon Wena and himself were deep in a discussion ichthyological.