A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

The water was so shallow that we poled the raft along with the two oars very easily. I meant to land on the beach, but Mr. Crusoe said we must keep away to the right, and land a little way up a creek that we would find just there. As Mr. Crusoe seemed to know all about the island, I did as he said, and presently we saw the entrance of a little creek, and a short distance from the mouth we found a beautiful place to land.

We carried our cargo ashore and piled it up together, and started back to the ship for another load. The tide was coming in, and it was hard work to pole the heavy raft against it, so I went ashore on the beach opposite to where the wreck lay, and made one end of my rope fast to a tree, and coiled the rest down on the raft. The rope was long enough to reach from the shore to the wreck, and when, after we had got to the wreck, I made the other end of the rope fast in the main channels, I had a line by which I could haul the raft back and forth without any trouble.

That is, I could have done it, only Mr. Crusoe objected because his blessed old grandfather had not known enough to do the same thing, although, according to Mr. Crusoe’s account, his grandfather’s wreck lay nearer the shore than ours did. However, he agreed to let me haul the raft up close to the beach, but he wouldn’t let me land there, and insisted that we should pole the raft around to the creek.

For the second load Mr. Crusoe said that we must take a grindstone, a dozen hatchets, three crow-bars, seven muskets, and a roll of sheet-lead. There were only two hatchets on board the ship, and neither a grindstone nor a roll of sheet-lead, though what he wanted of sheet-lead I never knew. He was quite angry when he found that he couldn’t load up the raft with grindstones and lead, and said that if he ever got back to New York he would sue the owners of the ship for not supplying her with proper provisions.

I put the two hatchets, three crow-bars, and seven rifles—for we had no muskets—on the raft, and then I loaded it with useful things. I put two more barrels of flour, a barrel of beef, and a barrel of pork in the middle of the raft, and piled up a hundred tin cans of preserved meat and vegetables around them. Then I got some pots and pans from the galley, and some China plates and cups, and some knives and forks, from the steward’s pantry, for now that I had got out of the forecastle, I meant to live like a gentleman. I took all the captain’s clothes, and wanted to get the clothes belonging to the men, but I could not get at the chests because the forecastle was full of water. Last of all, I put four mattresses, four pillows, and a pile of sheets and blankets on the top of the barrels, and we then had about all the raft would carry.

Mr. Crusoe grumbled a little, for he said his grandfather never brought mattresses, or dishes, or canned provisions ashore, and that he did not think it was right for us to do it. I said, “Now just look here, Mr. Crusoe; I suppose your grandfather was a very nice man, and you may be sure that he would have brought canned provisions ashore only they weren’t invented when he was alive.”

That seemed to strike him as a good idea, and he said, “Well, perhaps you’re right, Mike, about the canned things; but we’ve no right to bring mattresses with us, and I’ll die before I’ll sleep on one of them.”

I wanted to tell him that the only reason his grandfather did not take a mattress ashore with him was that he didn’t have sense enough to be trusted alone on an island; but of course I didn’t say so. Why, that ridiculous old man never thought to take so much as a teakettle with him, as I afterwards found out; though, luckily, Mr. Crusoe did not think of it until a week or two after we had begun to live on the island.

While we were poling up the creek, Mr. Crusoe, not being a sailor-man, managed to run one end of the raft ashore in a shallow place, and the cargo came near sliding off into the water. He was just as pleased as he could be. “It’s all right, Mike, it’s all right,” he kept on saying. “My grandfather ran his raft ashore in just the same way, and we had to do it too. Now, we’ll wait for the tide to rise a foot higher, and then we’ll be afloat again.”