A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

“That’s just as bad,” said Mr. Crusoe. “You are getting tired of this place, and want to get away from me. You’re an ungrateful boy. There’s hardly another boy living who wouldn’t be glad to be shipwrecked on Robinson Crusoe’s own island, and yet you can’t appreciate it, and want to get away.”

“But, Mr. Crusoe,” I said, “we must get away from here some time, you know, and we never will unless some ship comes and takes us off.”

“No ship will come until we’ve been here twenty-eight years,” replied he. “Of course the Spanish ship will come and be wrecked here after a while, but that won’t be any help to us. No ship would see your flag, if you did put it on the top of a tree, until the twenty-eight years are up, so don’t say any more about it.”

I put the flag back in the basket, but I did say, “Why don’t you want to get away from here, Mr. Crusoe?”

“Never you mind,” he answered; “I’m free now, and I mean to stay so for twenty-eight years.”

I remembered then that Mr. Crusoe’s servant used to watch him pretty closely when we were at sea, and I thought it was just possible that Mr. Crusoe had done something, and that the man was taking him to San Francisco to put him in prison. That would account for his being so willing to stay on the island.

We stayed on the hill till we got good and rested, and then Mr. Crusoe said that, since we could see the whole of the island, it wasn’t worth while to explore it any more that day, and we would go home and put away our luggage. I was glad to hear this, but I thought I had seen some animals moving across a clearing on the other end of the island, and when I pointed them out to Mr. Crusoe he said they were goats.

After that he didn’t think any more about going home, but said we would go and shoot a couple of goats before we did anything else. He started off in a great hurry, but before he had gone ten feet his sword tripped him up, and he rolled part way down the hill, scattering guns and pistols and things all around him, and finally brought up with his head against a stone. He was insensible when I got to him, but a cut that the hatchet had made in the side of his head was bleeding nicely, and that brought him to in a very few minutes. As soon as he was able to sit up, he said he must go home and lie down, so we gave up the goats for that day.

It was two days before Mr. Crusoe was well enough to explore any more, and even then he was too weak and stiff to carry a very heavy load, so he took only one gun and his revolvers. This time we walked along the shore till we came to the other end of the island, when Mr. Crusoe suddenly remembered that we must find a magnificent cave that his grandfather used to keep somewhere near the south side of the island.

There was no sign of a cave where we were, so we went into the woods and searched everywhere. Whenever Mr. Crusoe saw a hole in the ground large enough to put his arm into, he would think he had found his cave; and it was very lucky that there were no snakes on the island, or he would have run foul of some of them at the bottom of some of the holes that he put his arm or a leg into.