A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

He looked awfully angry, and said that he believed that I had done it on purpose, and that I still had a hankering for human flesh, and wanted to join the cannibals. But I didn’t pay any attention to what he said, and told him that we ought to go back to the house and finish loading our guns.

This struck him as being a sensible idea; but he said that we would leave all the guns except the two rifles among the trees, and would go back and fetch the bullets, and load them where we were. I agreed to hide the guns where the cannibals couldn’t find them, and I did it by dropping them into a pool of water, and then we started to go back to the house.

By the time we reached the house Mr. Crusoe’s leg was hurting him so badly that he could hardly manage to walk, and I began to hope that he would give up the idea of going back to fight the cannibals; but no sooner had we got inside the house, and put up the bars against the door, so as to prevent the cannibals from coming in, than Mr. Crusoe picked up a bit of rope and jumped on me. He wasn’t a strong man naturally, but he had suddenly got so strong that I couldn’t do anything with him without hurting him, and that I was resolved not to do. In about a minute he had me tied hand and foot, and then he filled his pockets with bullets and got ready to go and fight all by himself.

Now Mr. Crusoe was a landsman, and of course he couldn’t make a knot that was worth anything. I lay perfectly still, to see what he was going to do, but I believed all the time that I could easily get my hands free.

Presently Mr. Crusoe came and stood over me with one of his pistols in his hand. He said that he thought he ought to kill me to keep me from joining the cannibals, but on the whole he had decided to let me live until after he had either driven the cannibals away or had been killed himself. He was very sorry, so he said, to find that I could not be trusted, but he supposed that I had been a cannibal so long that I really could not get over my depraved taste. Then he shouldered both of the rifles and started for the beach.

As soon as he was gone I tried to get my hands loose, but found that I couldn’t do it. Some way or other Mr. Crusoe had contrived to tie a knot that wouldn’t slip. After getting my wrists sore by trying to pull them out of the lashing, I resolved to roll over and over till I could reach the place where we had built the fire for breakfast, and see if I could find a live coal, and set the lashing on fire with it. But I remembered that I had eight revolvers in my belt, and I didn’t dare to roll on them for fear they would go off.

Then I thought that if I could turn over on my face, and manage to get up on my knees, I could shuffle over to the fireplace. I rolled over gently, though the revolvers cut into my side a good deal, and then scrambled on to my knees; but as soon as I tried to move away from the place where Mr. Crusoe had left me, I found that he had made the end of the rope that was around my ankles fast to one of the timbers of the house, and I couldn’t possibly get at it to unfasten it.

I tried in every way I could think of to get loose, but I couldn’t do it. My hands were tied together so closely that I couldn’t use them to loosen the rope around my feet; and I could not get out my knife, for it was on my left side out of reach. After twisting myself into all sorts of knots, and wearing all the skin off of my wrists and ankles, I finally gave it up, and lay down on my back to rest.

I waited a long while to hear the sound of Mr. Crusoe’s rifle, but as I didn’t hear it, I made up my mind that he had given up the idea of fighting, or that perhaps the visitors had caught him, and convinced him that they were not cannibals. But if they had done that they certainly would have come up to the house to find me; so I waited, expecting every minute to see them come in the door.

You may not believe it, but I actually fell asleep while I was lying there on the floor, and when I woke up the sun was shining straight in the door, as it always did just before sunset. I forgot about being tied, and tried to jump up in a hurry, but I remembered what was the matter when the rope tripped me up, and I fell with my head against the side of the house.