A new Robinson Crusoe

by W. L. Alden

My name is Mike Flanagan—my father was Michael Flanagan, and my uncle was Patrick Flanagan—and I was born in Ireland, in the city of Cork. We all came to America when I was a baby, and after everybody that belonged to me died I went to sea. I never saw my uncle Patrick, but I always thought a great deal of him because I was told he was a pirate, and that, of course, made the family very proud; but I found out after I grew up that he was only a pilot in Queenstown harbor, which is very different from being a pirate.

When I went to sea I was fourteen years old, and I made seven voyages between New York and ports in England, France, and Germany. I liked the Atlantic well enough, but I wanted to make a voyage in a deep-water ship, so I shipped on board the H. G. Thompson, a big American ship that was bound from New York to San Francisco, and then to China. I was sixteen years old then, and though I shipped as ordinary seaman, I expected that after the ship got back to New York I would be able to ship as A. B.

There were twenty-two of us in the forecastle—ten A. B.’s, ten ordinary seamen, and two boys. The captain and the second mate were very decent, but the mate was a hard man, and as I was in his watch, I didn’t have a very good time. He was a Nova Scotia chap, and he was a mean, bullying fellow. He was no sailor-man either, and I don’t see how he ever got to be mate of a ship.

We had one passenger. He was a man about thirty years old, and he was making the voyage for his health because he wasn’t very well. He was thin and tall, with the brightest eyes you ever saw, and he had a servant with him to take care of him who was the laziest and most worthless chap I ever saw aboard a ship. None of us knew exactly what was the matter with the passenger, except that he didn’t seem to be very strong. At least we all thought he wasn’t, until one day when the mate happened to be laying into me with a rope’s end—which he had a way of doing—the passenger jumped up and snatched the rope away, and told the mate that if he touched me again he’d heave him overboard. The mate was twice the passenger’s weight, but instead of killing him on the spot, as I expected of course he would do, he was actually frightened, and walked away without saying a word.

That was the beginning of my acquaintance with the queer passenger. After that he often used to talk to me when we happened to be on deck together, and was as kind to me as he could be. He told me his name was James Robinson Crusoe, and that his grandfather was a very celebrated man, who lived for twenty-eight years on an island all by himself, having been cast away. The passenger was forever talking about his grandfather, whose name was Robinson Crusoe, without the James; but I never could see that the old man amounted to very much, though I never read the book of travels that he wrote, and perhaps the passenger did not always tell the truth about him.

I got to like Mr. Crusoe very much, though he afterwards gave me more trouble than any sailor-man ever before got into through being kind to a passenger, and being willing to talk to him. However, he meant to do right, and I shall never forget how he stood up for me when the mate was arguing with me, though of course, being a passenger, he had no right to be interfering between the officers and the men.

We sailed from New York on the first day of November, and we had very decent weather all the way to the Horn, and around it, for that matter. We all thought we were going to make about a ninety-day passage to San Francisco, when our luck turned, and we got a strong northerly wind that lasted till the captain got out of patience, and put the ship to the westward in hopes of meeting a fair wind. We must have run a long ways out of our course, but the wind still hung in the north, until one day a tremendous hurricane struck us all of a sudden from the eastward. It was about noon, and all hands were at dinner, and the captain and mate had gone below to work up their observations, when the second mate sung out for all hands to shorten sail. We were on the starboard tack, carrying all three top-gallant sails. We got the top-gallant sails rolled up, the main-sail, the outer jib, spanker, and maintop-gallant stay-sail stowed, and were furling the fore and mizzen upper top-sails, when the gale struck us. The captain was on deck long before this time, and as it was blowing too hard to bring the ship up to the wind with the sail she had on her, he squared the yards and put her right before it.

We had the worst job I ever saw to get the sail off her. By the time we had the upper top-sails furled and the fore and aft sails stowed we had to reef the fore-sail, the fore and main lower top-sails, and to furl the mizzen-top sail. All hands were on the foreyard for at least an hour before we could get the sail reefed, and half a dozen times I thought we should have to give it up. However, we got it reefed and set at last, and when we were just through with it the sail split and blew away.

By this time it was blowing harder than I ever saw it blow before, and the ship was taking in green seas on each side over the rail every time she rolled. The captain knew we had no time to lose, for the ship was continually burying herself nearly up to the foremast, she still had so much sail on her; so he ordered the fore and mizzen lower top-sails to be brailed up, and let them blow away, while we close-reefed the lower maintop-sail, which we did without very much difficulty, and then knocked off to get our suppers.

The forecastle was all afloat with the water that had come down the hatchway before any one had thought to close it, so we had our supper on the quarter-deck, where all the people except the cook and Mr. Crusoe were gathered. Mr. Crusoe had got a fall, so I heard his servant say, and his left leg was a little sprung, so that he didn’t care to come on deck, but stayed below in his berth.