A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

Now I didn’t very much believe that we could ever launch the canoe, though of course I never expected that Mr. Crusoe could stir her all alone, but I didn’t want to give it up without trying. But Mr. Crusoe wouldn’t let me try. He said that we could bring the water up to the boat by means of a canal, and that there was no other possible way of launching her. So I had to begin to dig a canal, though I knew all the time it was mere foolishness, for it would have taken both of us at least four years to dig one broad enough and deep enough to float the canoe. However, I dug for two days, while Mr. Crusoe superintended, and then he said that it was of no use, and I might knock off, and that his grandfather once made a canoe that he was never able to launch.

This showed that Mr. Crusoe had never expected to launch the canoe, and that he had made me do all the work of making it just because his grandfather had been the same kind of a lunatic, and had made a big canoe a quarter of a mile from the shore. I was always good-tempered, except, of course, when something went wrong, but this time I was angry, and I walked off and didn’t speak to Mr. Crusoe again until the next day.

He never said anything more about the canoe, and seemed to have forgotten all about it, but I determined to launch it just to spite him and his grandfather. With the help of a long lever I pried the canoe up, and put half a dozen rollers under her. Then I smoothed the ground as well as I could between her and the beach. About half the way was level ground, and the rest of the way was downhill to the beach. This was one of the things that made it impossible to dig a canal, for the upper end of the canal, near where the canoe lay, would have been about forty feet deep, provided we could have dug it.

We had an enormous big “fish-tackle” that I had brought ashore from the wreck, and that was used when we fished the anchor. I carried this up to the canoe, and rigged it so that I could use a lever to haul on it with. The lever was my own invention, and it worked almost as well as a capstan. Of course it was very slow work, but I was able to move the canoe a little at a time, and after two weeks of working at odd times when Mr. Crusoe was asleep or busy, so that he did not miss me, I got the canoe up to the top of the high ground and was ready to let her run down to the beach. At first I thought I would get Mr. Crusoe to help me launch her, but as there was no surf, and the beach was fairly steep, I decided to do the work alone. Before I started her downhill I cut a lot more of rollers, and laid them all the way from the canoe to the water, and I ballasted the canoe with about a ton of heavy stones. Then I made the tackle fast to her stern and to a tree, and got in and let her go.

She bumped down the hill as fast as I would let her go, and shot into the water without taking a drop into her. I anchored her with a stone, cast off the tackle, and swam ashore. I felt pretty proud of what I had done; not so much because it was a bit of good sailor work, but because I had done what old Mr. Crusoe didn’t have sense enough to do. She was really a fine boat. She was thirty-six feet long and nearly three feet wide. Of course this would have been narrow for a Christian boat, but I meant to put an outrigger on her, such as the natives use in the Sandwich Islands, and this, I knew, would make her as stiff as a church. With a half deck fore and aft, a good mast and sail, and a steering-oar, she would be fit to cross the Pacific Ocean with a dozen people in her.

After dinner, when, as a rule, a man is more reasonable than at other times, I took Mr. Crusoe to the beach and showed him the boat. Do you think he was pleased? Not much. He said I had no right to launch the boat; that his grandfather’s memory was insulted by it, and that it was our duty to leave the canoe to rot on shore, and to make a smaller one that we could launch easily. Luckily, he couldn’t help himself, for he couldn’t get the canoe back into the woods where she was made, and so he had to make the best of it.

Mr. Crusoe was not a very modest man. In fact, he thought he knew everything, and he tried to tell me how the canoe ought to be rigged. I couldn’t keep him from talking, but I went ahead all the same and rigged the boat as she ought to have been rigged: with a leg-of-mutton sail forward and a jigger aft, just big enough to jam her on a wind. Mr. Crusoe wanted very much to have her fitted with a rudder, because his grandfather fitted a canoe with a rudder, though I knew just as well as if I had seen his canoe that no rudder ever made her steer. Of course I used a steering-oar instead of a rudder, and when I had fitted her with an outrigger, and decked her over for five feet from the stem and the stern, I hoisted the sails and took her out for a trial trip.

She sailed beautiful, and the jigger brought her around every time as handy as if she had been a cat-boat. She was perfectly dry, and the outrigger kept her almost on an even keel. Mr. Crusoe watched her from the shore, and when I brought her in and anchored her, I could see that he was proud of her, although he was that obstinate that he wouldn’t say so. In the course of the day, however, he hit on an idea that reconciled him to the canoe. He made believe that she was the second canoe we had built, and that the first one was still lying up in the woods. He said to me, “Friday, you have done well to build a new canoe entirely by yourself. She is smaller than the first one that we built and couldn’t launch, but she is quite big enough.” I understood in a minute what he meant, and agreed with him that the first canoe was far too big. It was a pity to see a full-grown man act so babyish about a thing, but it was a warning to me never to bother my head about following the example of my grandfather.

I had made up my mind, now that we had a boat, to provision her for six weeks or so, and to try to find some civilized country or to fall in with a ship. The island was comfortable enough, for we had plenty to eat and nothing to do, unless we wanted to do it, and for the first month or two I thought I would like to live there forever. But I was surprised to find, after a while, that I was getting tired of it, and wanted to get back on board a deep-water ship, and meet somebody besides Mr. Crusoe. I had no fault to find with him, except that he once had a grandfather, and I was ready to do anything in reason to please him, but I didn’t want to spend all my life with him and nobody else.

I knew Mr. Crusoe would never consent to leave the island in the canoe, but I meant to get him to come out with me for a little sail, and then lash him, and keep him lashed until we should be well out of sight of the island.