A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

Then Mr. Crusoe buckled two sword-bayonets around his waist, and put two big knives and eight revolvers in his belt. He made me carry the same load, besides a bag slung over one shoulder and filled with ammunition. Each of us carried four guns on each shoulder, and with this nice little load we started for the beach, where the cannibals were getting ready for dinner.

Anybody who has ever tried to carry a lot of oars on his shoulder without first lashing them together, knows how they will separate and spread out like a fan. Mr. Crusoe’s guns did the same thing. The two that were nearest to his head kept swinging up against his ears, and banging pretty hard against his head, and the others spread out so that he could not hold them. This worried him so much that he got angry, and threw the whole lot down on the ground. One of the guns went off, and a bullet hit Mr. Crusoe in the calf of the leg. He was more frightened than hurt, and after I had tied his leg up he found that he could limp without hurting himself very much. I had lashed my guns together, so that I could carry them easily enough, and I passed a lashing around his so that he could put them all on one shoulder. They were awfully heavy, but he staggered along until we got where we could see the cannibals through the bushes without their seeing us.

There were about twenty men and eight or nine women on the beach, and a nice little cutter yacht was lying at anchor near the shore. The people were all white, except two negro servants, and we were near enough to hear them talk, and know that they were English. They had started a big fire, and while two of them were cooking, the rest were standing about and talking.

Mr. Crusoe was terribly excited. He called the visitors “cannibals of the deepest dye,” and said that there were three or four prisoners on the yacht who would be brought ashore and killed as soon as the fire was ready. He laid all the guns side by side, and told me that as soon as we had fired them all we would rush out with our pistols and kill all the cannibals that might be left alive.

“I will shoot at the men on the right-hand side of the fire,” said Mr. Crusoe, “and you, Friday, will shoot at those on the left. We must be sure and kill every man we aim at, and we must treat the women just like the men, for they are just as strong and blood-thirsty. We’ll wait till they get pretty close together, and then we’ll begin.”

“HE CALLED THE VISITORS ‘CANNIBALS OF THE DEEPEST DYE.’”

I was dreadfully afraid that he would really shoot and kill somebody, and then that the rest of the picnickers would kill him before I could explain. I thought I would try once more to make him listen to reason before seizing him and taking his gun away from him. So I said, “Mr. Crusoe, we are perfectly certain to be killed and eaten if we fire at the cannibals now.”

“Why so?” he asked.

“Because,” I said, “now that I remember it, I forgot to put any bullets in the guns, and we have nothing to defend ourselves with except the two Remington rifles and the pistols.”