A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

There was a nice, steady breeze, and the boat steered so easily that I had hardly anything to do. Before long I was very sleepy, and once I nearly fell overboard as I stood at the steering-oar. About two o’clock, as near as I could calculate, I felt that I must turn in; so I took in the main-sail, hauled the jigger-sheet flat aft, and hove the boat to. Then I wrapped myself up in a blanket and went to sleep.

I woke up long after daylight, and found that there was a fresh westerly breeze, and that the sea was getting up. The canoe had drifted a long way while I was asleep, and the island was out of sight. It was a little lonesome all alone on the Pacific Ocean, and I found myself wondering how poor Mr. Crusoe would manage to build a fire and get his own breakfast. I opened a can of salmon, and with that and two or three biscuits I made a good breakfast.

Allowing for the course I had steered before I went to sleep, and the distance the boat had drifted afterwards, I could tell pretty nearly in what direction the island must lie. I wondered if Mr. Crusoe felt as lonesome as I did, and I wished he was with me. He was very trying at times, but then he was a good man, and he had been very kind to me.

After breakfast I made sail on the boat and headed her for the north again. If Mr. Crusoe couldn’t build a fire, he could have a cold breakfast, for he had at least four years’ supply of canned things. But what would he do if he were to be sick? He wasn’t a strong man, and I thought it was very likely that he might catch cold or get a fever or something.

I worried about Mr. Crusoe for the next hour, and then I said that I had done wrong to leave him, and that I would go back. I put the boat on the other tack, and steered for the island, and the moment I had done it I somehow saw that I had done a mean, cowardly thing in leaving Mr. Crusoe, and that I couldn’t feel happy again until I had told him so and begged his pardon.

I sailed for three hours at the rate of about five miles an hour, and by my calculation I ought to have seen the island by that time, but it wasn’t in sight. Then I began to be afraid that I would never find it again, and I grew more anxious to get back to it than I had ever been to leave it. Then I remembered that the canoe had no keel, and that she would drift a good deal faster than a civilized boat, so I beat up to windward nearly all the rest of the day, and by five o’clock I saw the cross on the top of the hill. I was never so glad to see anything in my life before. I said to myself that if I could once get ashore on that island again I would stand by Mr. Crusoe, no matter how long he might stay there.

At sunset I was only about ten miles from the island, which bore due south-west from the boat, when I saw a squall coming down directly from the south-west. When it struck me I had managed to reef my sail by rolling it around the mast until it was about as small as the jigger; but for all that the squall was so fierce that it drove the canoe astern at a terrible rate so long as the sails were shaking, and hove her way over on her side when I let the sails fill. Instead of passing over quickly, the squall seemed as if it had come to stay, and it was blowing a gale within half an hour after it had reached the boat.

There was no working the canoe to windward against such a gale, so I just hove her to under the jigger and let her drift. She drifted about as fast as an ordinary boat would sail, and I saw that if the gale continued I should be blown so far off the island that I could never find my way back. I made a sea-anchor out of a couple of poles that were in the boat, a lot of heavy tin cans, and a piece of canvas, and when I got this overboard it kept her from drifting quite as fast as she had done. However, the wind stayed in the south-west, and as long as it did not change I could not very well lose the bearing of the island.

I knew that Mr. Crusoe would make sure that I would be drowned, for I never saw a landsman yet who thought that a small boat could live in bad weather, although there are lots of big iron steamers that are worse sea-boats than a good whale-boat or a metallic life-boat. As for my canoe, the only trouble with her was that she was too long, considering that she had no sheer forward. For a while the half deck forward kept her pretty dry, but of course the sea kept getting up, and by-and-by the canoe got to dipping her head into every sea, and taking a lot of water into her.

There was no help for it except to put the canoe right before the wind, and keep sail enough on her to keep her out of the way of the seas. It was ticklish work to get her before the wind, and I should very likely have swamped her if I had not remembered that she was the same at both ends, and that instead of turning her around all I had to do was to take the steering-oar to the bow and make that the stern. So I set the jigger, cut away the sea-anchor, and got the steering-oar out at the bow. Away she went stern first, like a yacht running for the turning buoy, and she was as dry as a bone, barring a little spray that occasionally flew over her.