A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

“Your father, my poor Friday,” he answered, “is a very old savage, and he has been captured by the enemy. They will bring him here to eat him before very long, and then we’ll rescue him.”

“My father was a respectable Irishman, Mr. Crusoe,” said I, “and I won’t allow any man—I don’t care who he is—to call him an old savage.” I was so angry that I got up and left Mr. Crusoe after saying this, and I didn’t see him again till supper-time. However, he never said anything to me about it, and perhaps he didn’t notice that I had answered him in English.

By this time you must have found out that Mr. Crusoe was a very curious man. What was perhaps the strangest thing of all about him was that he wouldn’t make the least attempt to get away from the island. Not only did he forbid me to hoist a signal where any ship could see it, or to make a bonfire at night, but he would never listen when I proposed building a boat or making a raft, and so trying to get over to the main-land; that is, if it was the main-land that we could see from the top of the hill. He would always say, whenever I spoke about getting away, that an English ship would come for us after a while, and that we hadn’t been on the island half long enough yet. According to the almanac, as he called his post with notches cut on it, we had been on the island about two years when he turned me into a man Friday, though, according to my reckoning, we had been there less than a year. But Mr. Crusoe seemed to enjoy himself better the longer we stayed, and I made up my mind that he never meant to get away, and that unless I wanted to live and die a corked-up savage, I must contrive some plan for getting away alone.

I took the saw one afternoon when Mr. Crusoe was asleep, and went up to the top of the hill, and climbed the big tree that stood at the very top, and had only a few limbs. I began at the very top of the tree, and sawed all the limbs off except two that were opposite to each other, and stood out straight from the tree. Then I trimmed these two limbs until the whole tree looked exactly like an enormous cross. It stood to reason that no ship could see this cross without understanding that some one was on the island, and meant the cross to be a signal of distress; and no Christian ship would think of passing by the island without sending a boat to find out what was the matter.

I was afraid that Mr. Crusoe would be in a rage when he should find out what I had done, and I didn’t suppose it would be possible to keep him from finding it out. Still, I took the trouble to drag all the sawed-off branches into the woods, where Mr. Crusoe would not be likely to find them, and brushed up the leaves and the sawdust.

That night we had a very heavy thunder-storm, and the lightning struck three or four times very near us. Mr. Crusoe was a good deal frightened, and told me while the shower was going on that his grandfather didn’t like thunder, and that he was like his grandfather in most things. It appears that old Mr. Crusoe was in a terrible state of mind when it thundered and lightened, for fear that his gunpowder would take fire and blow him up; and it’s a great pity that it didn’t. My Mr. Crusoe thought that he ought to worry about the powder because his grandfather did; but I finally convinced him that when the lightning had the choice of twenty thousand big trees to strike, it would not demean itself to strike a little low but just for the sake of looking for some powder to blow up.

The next morning we happened to walk out where we could see my big tree, and I saw that the top of it was splintered, and that it was burned black. You see, the lightning had struck it, and it would have been burnt up if the rain had not put the fire out.

Mr. Crusoe was perfectly delighted when he saw the big cross. He never dreamed that I had anything to do with it, and he said that it was a sign to tell him that he was doing right, and that the English ship would come and take him off, and that everything would turn out well, only that we must hurry up and find my father and the Spaniards on the main-land, and be ready to kill the cannibals and to capture Will Atkins. I really began to think that perhaps Mr. Crusoe was a little crazy, and resolved that I would keep a close watch on him, and stand by to lash him to a tree, in case it should become necessary.

CHAPTER VIII.

Although Mr. Crusoe wouldn’t let me build a boat in which we could sail for some Christian country, he made up his mind that we must have a boat all ready to send over to the main-land in search of his precious Spaniards.