“Was there many more o’ ’em, lad?”
“Ay, five moloncholly brothers and sisters, an’ a hideously fat mother left to mourn the loss o’ this chap. I’ll be after them to-morrow. They won’t go far, for I’ve noticed that when pigs take a fancy to a spot they don’t leave it for a good while. Here we are at home, an’ now for a splendid roast. There’s nothin’ like grub when ye’re hungry.”
“’Xcept drink when ye’re dry,” observed Gaff.
“Of coorse, an’ a snooze when ye’re sleepy; but don’t let’s git too pheelosophical, daddy; it an’t good for digestion to argufy on a empty stummik. An’ I see ye wants me to argue, but I won’t do it; there now!”
It was one of Billy’s devices to keep himself and his father cheery in their prolonged exile, to pretend that he didn’t like to argue, and to stoutly assert that he would not do it, while at the same time he led his parent into all sorts of discussions.
On the present occasion, while he was engaged in preparing the pig for the spit, and his father was mending the handle of a fish-spear of his own fabrication, the discussion, or rather the conversation, turned upon the possibility of two people living happily all their days on a desert island.
Billy thought it was quite possible if the grub did not fail, but Gaff shook his head, and said it would be a blue look-out if one of them should get ill, or break his leg. Billy did not agree with this at all; he held that if one should get ill it would be great fun for the other to act the part of nurse and doctor, while the sick one would learn to value his health more when he got it back. As to breaking a leg, why, it was no use speculating how things would feel if that should occur; as well speak of the condition of things if both of them should break their necks.
The discussion diverged, as such discussions usually did, to home and its inmates, long before any satisfactory conclusion was come to, and it was brought to a close in consequence of Billy having to go out of the cave for firewood to roast the pig.
The cavern home had assumed a very different aspect from that which it presented when Gaff and his son took possession of it five years before. It now bore, externally and internally, the appearance of an old much-used dwelling. The entrance, which was an irregular archway of about ten feet in diameter, had been neatly closed up with small trees, over which strong banana leaves were fastened, so as to make it weather-tight. In this screen two holes were left—a small one for a door, and a still smaller one for a window. Both were fastened with a goat-skin curtain, which could be let down and fastened at night. In the daytime both door and window were always left wide-open, for the island on which our friends had been cast was one of a group of uninhabited islets, the climate around which is warm and delightful during the greater part of the year.
The ground outside of the cave was trodden by long use to the hardness of stone. The small vegetable garden, close to the right of the door, was enclosed by a fence, which bore evidence of having been more than once renewed, and frequently repaired. Some of the trees that had been cut down—with stone hatchets made by themselves—when they first arrived, had several tall and sturdy shoots rising from the roots. There was a flat stone deeply hollowed out by constant sharpening of the said hatchet. There was a rustic seat, the handiwork of Billy, that bore symptoms of having been much sat upon. There were sundry footpaths, radiating into the woods, that were beginning to assume the hardness and dimensions of respectable roads; while all round the place there were signs and symptoms of the busy hand of man having been at work there for years.