A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

Well, the storm blew itself out by daylight, but it took a good six hours for the sea to go down. There wasn’t a particle of the wreck visible in the morning, for the wind and sea must have worked it off the beach, and carried it over towards the reef, and it must have sunk in deep water, for we never saw the first bit of wreckage afterwards. The spars that I had towed ashore were missing too, but some of them came on to the beach again at high tide a few days later.

Things were pretty damp in our house, but there was not much of anything that was really spoiled. The guns and all the iron tools were rusted, and the mattresses and blankets were soaking, but a little bright sunshine made them all right. Mr. Crusoe’s cave had caved in again, and was now spoiled for good; but as we did not intend to live in the house any longer, Mr. Crusoe didn’t take much interest in the cave. He said that we would live in our country-house, and keep the first house for a fort and a place to sleep in now and then.

We spent the morning in getting our things dry, and in the afternoon we selected a place for our new house, and pitched our tent there. The way we selected it was this: Mr. Crusoe wanted to go clear over to the other side of the island, where he said there was a beautiful valley, but I wanted to build on a little rising ground under some big trees. I got him to come and look at the place, but before he had begun to find fault with it he accidentally picked up a flat stone, and found “R. C., 1671,” scratched on one side of it. He said the letters had been scratched by his revered grandfather, and that the stone was a sign that we should build the house just where we stood, which was what I meant the stone to be when I scratched the letters on it, and dropped it where he could find it.

As Mr. Crusoe couldn’t remember how his grandfather’s country-house was built, he let me build the new house to suit myself. I began by setting four posts in the ground, one for each corner of the house, and then set other posts between them. To these I nailed planks on the inside of the house till the four sides were all covered. Then I planted another set of posts about a foot outside of the first posts, and planked these on the outside. In this way I had a double shell for the house, and I filled up the place between the two shells with dry sand rammed down hard. One side of the house I made four feet higher than the other side, so that I could make a slanting roof, and I lashed the roof beams to the upright posts, for I didn’t want the roof to blow off, and I was afraid to trust to nails.

I left a place for a door, and also for one window two feet square. In each side of the house I made loop-holes, out of which we could fire in every direction. The door I made of six thicknesses of one-inch planks, and swung it on two iron rods that once were pump rods on board the H. G. Thompson. I made a window-shutter as thick as the door, and put stout wooden rests on each side of the door and window in which I could put crow-bars, as bars to fasten them. The edges of the planks of the roof and sides of the house overlapped one another, so that no rain could get in.

Inside of the house I made two bunks, and put up a lot of shelves, so that I could put all our small things where they would be dry. The guns were hung on rests on each side of the house, so that at least one could always he handy to any one who was looking out of a loop-hole. Of course I made a good plank floor for the house, and you have no idea how comfortable and safe it was. Nobody could break open the door when once we had barred it; and if you had fired rifle-bullets at the house all day, not one of them could have gone through the wall.

I did not put any chimney on the house, for I knew I could not make the roof tight enough to keep out the rain where the chimney came through. You see I hadn’t lived in my grandmother’s shanty without learning something. Then I didn’t fill the house all up with tin cans, for they couldn’t be much hurt by rain; so I piled them all together outside of the house, and put a little tent over them. I made a fireplace out-doors under the trees, and put a sort of wooden roof over it, to keep rain from putting the fire out.

It took nearly six weeks to build this house, and when it was done Mr. Crusoe wanted to build a wall all around it. I asked him how long it was since we had driven in the stakes of the fence around our first house.

He went down to the beach and looked at his almanac, and said that it was thirteen months since we drove the first stake. According to my calculation it was about ten weeks.

“Are they beginning to sprout yet?” asked I.