A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

“BEFORE HE HAD GONE TEN FEET HIS SWORD TRIPPED HIM UP.”

We searched for that cave for at least two hours, and I was beginning to believe that there wasn’t any cave on the whole island, when we came to a small hill with a hole in the side of it, just big enough to get your head and shoulders into it. “Here we are at last,” says Mr. Crusoe; and he lit a candle that he had brought with him, and took his coat off, and jammed his head and shoulders into the hole. For some reason he couldn’t get any farther—I always supposed the reason was that the cave was only two or three feet deep, though he always pretended it was his grandfather’s genuine private cave—and when he tried to back out again he found he couldn’t do that. So there he was, stuck fast, and pretty mad at everything. The candle had gone out, but not until it had set his hair on fire and burned his eyebrows and eyelashes, and the candle-smoke had got into his eyes, besides partly choking him. He was fitted into the hole so tight that his voice sounded as if he were half a mile away, but I managed to understand most of what he said.

I got a good hold of both of his legs, and braced myself and pulled my very best, but his boots fetched loose, and I sat down pretty hard, with a boot in each hand. Then I got a better hold of his ankles, and hauled away, but I couldn’t start him; and after a while Mr. Crusoe said that he thought he had begun to come apart at the waist, and that I needn’t pull any more.

Then I thought I would try oil; so I went back to the house and got a bottle of sweet-oil, and poured it on him as near to his shoulders as I could reach, and then took a fresh pull at him, but I couldn’t start tack nor sheet of him. He was getting low-spirited by this time, and said he didn’t believe he could ever get out of that hole, but I told him that if he didn’t eat anything for a few days he would be sure to thin down, so that I could pull him out.

However, he did not want to wait so long, and proposed that I should get a crow-bar and break the rock away around his shoulders. He was giving me a good deal of trouble, but I didn’t mind that, for I was in hopes that he would have had enough of hunting for caves if he once got out of the one he was in. So I went all the way back to the house once more and got a crow-bar, and went to work at the rock. Of course I couldn’t help hitting him occasionally, but I didn’t do him any serious harm. It was slow work, but I gradually broke the rock away, so that by an extra heavy pull I dragged him out.

What with his hair and eyebrows having been burned, and his face smoked and scratched, and his clothes torn and soaked with oil, and bloody on account of two or three digs that I had accidentally given him with the crow-bar, Mr. Crusoe looked pretty bad when he came out of the cave. But he was very grateful to me, and said I had saved his life a second time, and that he certainly wouldn’t kill me for a week yet.

I supposed he would have been willing to quit searching for his grandfather’s caves and things; but no! he insisted upon looking for a valley full of grapes, where his grandfather had a country-house. So, after he had taken a dip in the surf, and made himself look a little more decent, we marched on again.

We did not find any grapes, though we searched the island all over for them, and at last Mr. Crusoe had to give it up, and admit that there wasn’t a grape on the island. He explained it by saying that Will Atkins and his gang naturally made wine out of the grapes, and got drunk, and then tore the vines up by the roots. As near as I could make out, this Will Atkins was the captain of a gang of train-robbers who lived on the island when Mr. Crusoe’s uncle was there. There were a lot of Spaniards too, Mr. Crusoe said, who lived with Will Atkins, but were very good men; so I suppose they brought information to Will Atkins, and stood in with him, but didn’t actually knock people down and rob them. If old Mr. Crusoe had been half the man Mr. Crusoe pretended to think he was, he would have taken his seven guns and cleaned out the whole island.

We found the valley we were looking for by following old Mr. Crusoe’s sailing directions, which were: to go up the creek where we first landed till we came to the end of it, and then to cross over a little hill. Mr. Crusoe said that the valley was all right, and looked just as it ought to have looked, except that there were no grapes; but I showed him that there was no end of cocoa-nut-trees, and that cocoa-nuts were a great deal more useful than grapes.