A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

I couldn’t see any use in this. Even if there were any Spaniards where we could get at them, they wouldn’t have been any use to us. Spaniards are all very well in their own country, I suppose, but they are the most useless kind of sailors. Indeed, you can’t make sailors of them if you try your very best. I tried to tell Mr. Crusoe that if we filled the island up with a lot of Spaniards they would eat up all the provisions, and then grumble for more, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

We had plenty of wood for the timbers and planking of a large boat, and we two together could have built it in a short time, but that wouldn’t suit Mr. Crusoe. He said we must cut down a big tree and hollow it out, so as to make a canoe. There wasn’t the least use in arguing with him, for he told me that a poor, ignorant, converted cannibal like myself couldn’t possibly know anything about boats—which was pretty hard to bear, especially from a landsman.

There were plenty of big trees near the water, but Mr. Crusoe wouldn’t look at them. He selected a tree that stood nearly a quarter of a mile from the shore, and said that it was just the tree we wanted. I knew he would have a good time launching a heavy canoe that would have to be dragged over the ground for such a long distance, but I let him have his way, which is always the best thing to do when you can’t help yourself.

It was a big job cutting that tree down, for it was at least three feet thick, but we cut it down at last, or rather I did, for Mr. Crusoe soon got tired of swinging his axe, and said that he would content himself with superintending me. He brought a blanket and a pillow, and put them on the ground near the tree, and superintended very comfortably, only the tree came down a little sooner than we expected, and he had just time to run before it fell directly across the blanket.

Chopping the tree down was the easiest part of the work. It took a week longer to trim off the branches. Then we had to cut away the sides of the tree, and shape it something like a whale-boat, only without the sheer. This took the best part of another week; and all this time the only thing Mr. Crusoe did was to lie on a blanket and superintend.

The hardest work of all was to hollow out the canoe. Mr. Crusoe said that in my country we always hollowed out a log by kindling a fire on the top of it, and of course I had to try it. Anybody except a man belonging to the Crusoe family would have known that this plan wouldn’t work; and even Mr. Crusoe became convinced after a while that a big tree couldn’t be hollowed out in any such way.

It took five weeks of good steady work to get that tree hollowed out with the adze, but when it was done we really had quite a decent-looking boat. Mr. Crusoe wanted to rig her before we launched her, but he gave up the idea when I asked him if his grandfather rigged his canoe before he launched it; and he was obliged to admit that even that forsaken old idiot had sense enough to not do such a ridiculous thing. I had always considered old Mr. Crusoe as about half-witted, but I had been made by this time to suffer so much on account of him that I couldn’t bear even to hear his name.

MR. CRUSOE SUPERINTENDS THE BUILDING OF THE CANOE.

I needn’t tell you that when the canoe was ready for launching we couldn’t stir her. Mr. Crusoe came and put his shoulder against her, and gave a shove that would hardly have started a barrel, and then said, “It’s of no use trying; we shall have to dig a canal to the beach.”