“But there isn’t the least danger in sleeping on board,” said I. “The ship will stay where she is, unless we get a heavy blow from the southward.”
Mr. Crusoe wouldn’t so much as answer, but he began to walk around and look up into all the trees. Presently he said, pointing to a big tree that was all surrounded with thorn-bushes, “There’s where I’m going to sleep.”
“But what do you want to sleep in a tree for?” I asked. “If you will sleep ashore, why don’t you sleep on the sand, where you can be comfortable?”
“And be eaten up by wild beasts half a dozen times before morning,” he replied.
I told him that in the first place there were no wild beasts on the Pacific islands, and that if there were they would not come down to the beach in the night, but would go where they could get fresh water.
“Michael Flanagan,” answered Mr. Crusoe, “if you only knew what you were saying you would be sorry. I’ve got to sleep in a tree for this one night, or else treat my grandfather’s memory with disrespect. Now be silent, or I shall be angry with you.”
When a man is as obstinate as that, what are you going to do about it? I just kept quiet, and made up a good bed for myself on the beach, while Mr. Crusoe tried to climb up the tree. He wouldn’t let me help him, because nobody helped his old lunatic of a grandfather, and he got two good falls among the thorns before he got up into the branches, and wedged himself into a place between two limbs, and said good-night.
It must have been about the middle of the night that he woke me up by falling down from the tree with an awful crash. He couldn’t get himself out of the thorn-bushes till I went and helped him, and then it took me about an hour to pick the thorns out of him. He had had enough of sleeping in a tree, and was willing to lie down on a mattress like a Christian; but I heard him groan a good deal before he finally dropped asleep.
I didn’t say anything to him in the morning about his obstinacy, but I only asked if all the thorns were out of him. He was quite pleasant, and said that he didn’t care anything about his fall, because he knew that he had done his duty. Of course, if he really considered it his duty to go to sleep in a tree and fall out of it, he did what was right; but I didn’t consider it my duty to be an idiot because somebody else’s grandfather was one.
We worked all that day bringing things ashore from the wreck, and must have brought enough canned provisions to last us for ten years, besides more flour, beef, pork, and bread. I brought one tremendous load of boards ashore, for I suppose the captain had expected to pick up a lot of Chinese passengers somewhere in China, and had brought the boards to make bunks with.