A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

I can’t to this day understand how it was that I could have lived nearly a year with Mr. Monroe without seeing that he was a lunatic. Sometimes I used to say to myself that I believed he wasn’t quite right in his mind, but I never really thought so; and when towards the last he was raving crazy, I thought it was only because he had caught a fever by taking cold after he had shot himself in the leg.

As soon as Mr. Monroe was well enough we made ready to leave the island in the canoe. We victualled her with canned provisions, and put water aboard her enough to last us a month. Of course we took blankets and such things with us, but nearly everything else that we had we put into the house, and before we started we nailed a card on the door with our names written on it, and a promise that we would come back for our property in a short time.

I was in favor of sailing across to what we had always supposed was the main-land. Mr. Monroe said that if a picnic-party had landed on the island it proved that there was a town within at least a day’s sail, and that we should be very sure to find it by crossing to the main-land. I thought so too; so we set sail one morning with a fair wind, and by night were within four or five miles of the land. As we were afraid to try to land at night, we lay off the land till morning, and then, the wind having died out, we paddled to the shore.

We went ashore, but as there was no sign of any town, we coasted along expecting every time we doubled a headland to find a town behind it. We kept on all day, and never saw anything but sand or trees, and about sunset found ourselves just opposite the place where we had landed.

Instead of being the main-land the land was only another uninhabited island, much smaller than ours. There was no other land in sight except one island, and we went ashore and camped on the beach, feeling a good deal discouraged—that is, I was discouraged.

Mr. Monroe couldn’t be made discouraged by anything. He was the jolliest man I ever knew. I told him how he insisted that there were a lot of Spaniards kept as prisoners on the main-land by the cannibals, and how he was always expecting them to come over to our island, and he fairly rolled over and over on the ground, laughing at himself. Perhaps I ought to say that he was laughing at Mr. Crusoe, for he was such a different man from Mr. Crusoe that I could never feel as if they were the same.

Since we had found out that the main-land was nothing but another island, and that there was no more land in sight, we could not tell which way to steer in order to find land. As our ship had been driven out of her course a long way south before she was wrecked, we both agreed that the best thing we could do would be to steer north. So the next morning we set sail and steered northward all day; but that night Mr. Monroe stumbled and fell over the compass and smashed it, so after that we could only steer by the stars.

We had beautiful weather, with fair, fresh breezes that sent us along at about the rate of five knots an hour. Mr. Monroe learned how to handle the boat very quickly, and we used to take watch and watch; that is, he would steer for about four hours, and then he would take a rest for four hours. I never had a better time than I had in that canoe. We had plenty to eat, just work enough to keep us busy, and a good seaworthy boat under us. If I could have got rid of my goat-skin clothes I should have been perfectly happy; but when those clothes got wet, as they did almost every day, they were as stiff as planks, and felt as if they were full of sharp nails.

We cruised for eight days in the canoe. Twice we saw a sail, but she was always way up to windward, and we had no chance of catching her, and were too far away for her to see us. But the eighth day we saw a ship a good ways astern of us and a good ways to leeward, for we had a beam wind. We had no trouble in laying our course so as to meet her, and by noon we were safe aboard her, with our canoe lying on the deck alongside the long-boat.

She was an English ship, the Aberdeen, bound to San Francisco, and the captain treated us very well. He took Mr. Monroe into the cabin, but I turned to with the crew, for I had been ashore so long that I was very glad to see the inside of a forecastle again. We had a good run to San Francisco, and when we had landed, Mr. Monroe telegraphed home and got some money, and took me to New York with him on the train.