We next, under Arthur’s direction, commenced laying in a stock of provisions. Abundance of ripe bread-fruit could now be procured. We gathered a considerable quantity, which Arthur and Eiulo baked and pounded, and prepared, by burying it under ground, wrapped in leaves, in such a manner that it would keep, as they said, for several months. We also piled up in one corner of the small room, a great heap of cocoa-nuts, with the husks on, in which way they can be preserved fresh a long while. A bushel of candle-nuts, and about the same quantity of taro and patara roots, completed our winter supplies.
Johnny was much dissatisfied with the poverty of these preparations for the rainy season. He thought we ought to have laid in a large stock of salted or smoked fish, besides catching a score or two of turtle, and depositing them safely upon their backs in some convenient place, ready to be converted into soup, at any moment by the magic of Max’s culinary art.
Arthur thought that we need not anticipate a season of continuous storms or steady rains—that though the prevailing weather for some months would be tempestuous, there would nevertheless be some fine days in nearly every week, during which we could venture forth.
Another storm, as violent as the last, fully decided us to make the contemplated removal to the cabin, and that without further delay. Johnny transported thither his entire collection of shells, corals, etcetera, which had now grown to be quite extensive. Arthur carried over an armful of specimens of plants and flowers, which had long been accumulating for an “herbarium.” Max, however, averred that they were a part of the materials for a treatise on “The Botany of Polynesia,” which Arthur cherished the ambitious design of composing, and which was to be published with coloured plate, simultaneously with the history of our adventures. In order that he too might have some indoor occupation during the anticipated bad weather, Max provided himself with a huge log, hacked and sawed with great labour, from a bread-fruit tree, blown down in the last gale, out of which he declared it to be his purpose to build a miniature ship, destined to convey the aforesaid history, together with Arthur’s botanical treatise, to America.
The day fixed for our final migration to “Lake Laicomo,” at length arrived, and taking a farewell for “the season,” of our deserted tenement at Castle-hill, we set out for the cabin, to spend our first night there. It was not without some feelings of regret that we left a spot now become so familiar, to bury ourselves in the woods out of sight of the sea. It seemed almost like going again into exile. Johnny, in particular, felt greatly humiliated, at being obliged to abandon the house which had cost us so much toil, to take refuge in one constructed by others. He seemed to look upon this as a kind of tacit admission of our own utter incapacity to provide for ourselves in that respect.
On arriving at the cabin, we were somewhat surprised to see our democratic friend the parrot, perched over the door, as if waiting to welcome us to our new quarters. He appeared to be in no degree disturbed at our approach, but greeting us with one or two boisterous “Vive Napoleons!” maintained his position until we had passed into the house, when he flew in also, and alighting on the shelf against the wall, seemed to feel as much at home as any one. Johnny sagely suggested that he knew that the rainy season was coming on, and was anxious to establish himself in comfortable quarters until it was over: possibly this supposition did our visitor injustice, by ascribing to him motives more selfish and interested than those by which he was really actuated. It is more charitable to believe, that having been once accustomed to human companionship, and being weary of his solitary life in the woods, where his vocal accomplishments were wasted on the desert air, he now sought our society, as being more congenial to his tastes and education, than that of the feathered denizens of the forest. Be this however as it may, “Monsieur Paul,” (as he called himself), from that time took up his abode with us, and though he would sometimes disappear for days together, he was sure to come back at last, when, if he found the door and windows closed, (as sometimes happened), he would scream, and hurrah for “Sheneral Shackson,” until he gained admittance. One circumstance, which I am sorry to say throws some shade of suspicion upon the pure disinterestedness of his motives, is, that he generally went off at the commencement of fine weather, and returned a little before a storm. This was so uniformly the case, that Max used to prophesy the character of the weather by his movements, and often, when to our eyes there was not the slightest indication of a change, he would say— “There comes Monsieur—look-out for a storm presently”—and it was rarely that he proved mistaken in such predictions.
The second day after our removal, there was a gale, in which great trees were blown down or torn up by the roots. Though shaken by the force of the wind, the cabin was too firmly built to permit any apprehension of its being overthrown; and there were no trees of large size near it, by the fall of which it could be endangered: but we should scarcely have felt safe in our former dwelling.
We now improved every pleasant day to the utmost, in completing our preparations for the period of heavy rains, which Arthur declared to be close at hand. Browne and Morton made a fish-pond by building a dam of loose stones across the rapids below the fall, just where the stream entered the lake. It was soon well-stocked, without any trouble on our part, with fish resembling roach and perch, numbers of which were carried over the fall, and prevented by the dam from escaping into the lake. We also collected a large quantity of bread-fruit bark, and of the fibrous netting which binds the stalk of the cocoa-nut leaf to the trunk, to be worked up in various ways. This singular fabric, which in texture somewhat resembles coarse cotton cloth, is often obtained from the larger trees in strips two or three feet wide. It is strong and durable, and is used by the natives for making bags, and for other similar purposes. Garments too, are sometimes made from it, though for that purpose tappa is preferred. While the leaves are young and tender, this remarkable substance is white and transparent, quite flexible, and altogether a delicate and beautiful fabric, but not sufficiently strong to be put to any useful purpose: as it becomes older and tougher, it assumes a yellow colour, and loses much of its flexibility and beauty. A quantity of hibiscus bark was also collected, to be used in the manufacture of cord for fishing-lines, nets, etcetera.
While the rest of us were actively engaged, under Arthur’s direction, in accumulating a stock of these materials, Max devoted all his energies to the task of capturing an enormous eel which frequented the upper end of the lake. But he exhausted all his ingenuity in this endeavour without success. The monster had a secure retreat among the submerged roots of an old buttress tree, beneath an overhanging bank, from which Max daily lured him forth by throwing crumbs into the water; but, after devouring the food that was thrown to him, he would immediately return to his stronghold under the bank. Max was at great pains to manufacture a fish-hook out of a part of a cork-screw found in the till of the blue chest, by means of which he confidently expected to bring matters to a speedy and satisfactory issue between himself and his wary antagonist. But the latter would not touch the bait that concealed the hook. Driven to desperation by this unexpected discomfiture, Max next made sundry attempts to spear and “harpoon” him, all of which signally failed, so that at the end of the brief interval of fine weather, this patriarch of the lake, whose wisdom seemed to be proportioned to his venerable age and gigantic size, remained proof against all the arts and machinations of his chagrined and exasperated enemy.