A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

As soon as he saw I was alive he tried his best to get the gun away from me, and when he found that he could not do it, he dropped the gun and tried to draw a revolver from his belt; but I was too quick for him, and threw him down and tied his arms with his own belt.

Mr. Crusoe struggled hard and talked at the top of his voice, but I could not understand a word he said, any more than if he had been talking Chinese. He was as crazy as he could be, and I am sure that he believed me to be a cannibal, or else he would not have shot at me.

I tried to coax him to get up and walk home, but he would not do it, so I had to tie his feet together and hoist him on my back and carry him home. He kept on raving all the time, and when I got him home I had to lash him in my bunk.

I saw at once that he was so sick that he needed something more powerful than salts, and of course I wouldn’t give him any of his dreadful tobacco-tea. All the medicines in the medicine-chest had the right doses marked on them, so that the captain couldn’t make any mistake in giving them to the men. For instance, one bottle was marked, “Dose, one teaspoonful,” and another, “Dose, five drops.” The powders were all marked after the same fashion, so I was sure that I couldn’t serve out a dose that would kill Mr. Crusoe.

As I didn’t know what medicine would suit his case best, I resolved to begin and give him a dose of everything in the chest until I could hit on the right thing. Of course I couldn’t tell whether he needed bottled medicine or powders, so I began by giving him a dose out of bottle No. 1, and then a powder two hours afterwards. You see, I knew that medicine ought to be taken every two hours, because that is the way they gave me medicine once when I was sick in the hospital in New York.

It was hard work to make Mr. Crusoe take his medicine, and I had to wait till he opened his mouth, and then put a stick between his teeth to hold his mouth open till I could pour the medicine into it. This generally succeeded, though sometimes I would spill most of the medicine, and have to give him a second dose.

That day and all the next night I gave him his medicine regularly, and we worked along through six different bottles and six different powders. None of them seemed to do him much good, however, and two or three times in the night he was so sick that he couldn’t hold on to his medicine but a very few minutes.

“I WAS TOO QUICK FOR HIM, AND THREW HIM DOWN.”

When morning came I was pretty sleepy, having been on duty so long, but I remembered that Mr. Crusoe hadn’t had anything to eat for a long time, and must be getting hungry. At the hospital they used to give me a sort of soup called gruel until I was nearly well, and then some ladies came one day and gave me a lot of flowers and some chocolate. I didn’t know how to make gruel, and we hadn’t any chocolate, so I picked a lot of wild flowers and gave them to Mr. Crusoe, but I don’t think they did him much good. So I thought I would take the risk of giving him some fried pork and some canned peaches. He took the peaches, but he wouldn’t look at the pork, so I finished it myself.