Chapter Fourteen.
On a Desert Island.
Poor Ben was very melancholy at the feeling that he was alone on that desert island; still, he was thankful that his own life had been preserved. “God surely would not have taken me out of the sea to let me die here by inches of hunger and thirst,” he said to himself. “I will trust in God, as I have always done.” As he said this, he put his hand in the bosom of his shirt. There was safe the little Testament which his mother had given him, and which he had been reading before the gale sprang up. He spread it out open on the sand, that the leaves might dry. “He has spared me this; He has other good things in store for me,” he whispered to himself. He also spread out his clothes, which very quickly dried.
Ben had lost his cap, so, while his Testament and clothes were drying, he sat down and began making another out of some broad leaves which grew close at hand. While thus employed, and thinking over what he should do, he recollected that he had not prayed, nor thanked God for preserving him; so, having put on his clothes, he knelt down in the thin shadow of a tall palm, and prayed as he had never prayed before. After doing this, he felt greatly supported; yet his condition was indeed a forlorn one. He rose from his knees, and looked around. He felt thirsty, but not very hungry—sufficiently so, however, to remind him that he must look out for food. He was not aware of the difficulties of procuring it, so that his mind was not troubled on that score. His first idea was to survey the island, so as to learn to a certainty whether any of his shipmates might have been cast on it. He found a piece of timber on the sand, which served him for a walking-stick, and, supported by it, he set off to walk round the island.
He first climbed up to the top of a rock near him, from which, between the trees, he could look across the island, and he thought that it could be little more than half a mile wide. How long it was he could not so well judge. He walked on and on, looking about for signs of fresh-water, for he knew that he must not drink that of the sea. He could find none. He became more and more thirsty; his tongue was parched, and his throat dry: still he would not give up. He dragged his weary feet along, helped by his stick. Some rocky mounds, scarcely to be called hills, appeared in the distance, and he hoped that water might be found near them. This gave him fresh strength to drag himself along. The mounds were not so high even as he had fancied, and were much nearer. Again he was disappointed. He paced round and round them; all was stony and dry.
Ben was very nearly giving way to despair, when he espied, scarcely fifty yards off, a group of tall trees with large round fruit hanging from them. At once he knew them to be cocoa-nuts, and he went on, eager to quench his thirst with the pure milk they contained. Yet, weak as he was, how could he climb up to the top of those trees? He had often seen the natives do it with a band round their waists. If he were strong, he might do it in the same way, could he but find the band; but, in his weak state, that was impossible. Again he was doomed to disappointment, he feared, and was about to pursue his exploring tour, when he saw, not far off, a nut on the ground. He ran eagerly and picked it up. It had been blown off during the recent gale. After stripping off the husk, he soon broke in the end; and, though he spilt a little, there was sufficient milk in it to quench his now burning thirst. He then more slowly ate pieces of the fruit, which he cut out with his knife. Here was one means of supporting life, and Ben’s elastic spirits again rose. At his age the thoughts of the future did not press heavily on him. He had, too, ‘a conscience void of offence towards God’: not that he did not feel and know himself to be a sinner; but he felt himself to be a pardoned one, as a sincere believer in Christ. That was the secret of his light-heartedness. Still he had a longing for pure water. He knew, too, that he could the better cook any fish he might obtain if he could find it. How was he to light a fire, however? Just before the gale came on, the cook had sent him below to get his tin-box of matches, and after the cook had taken one out, Ben had put it into his pocket. There it was, and, the lid fitting tightly down, the matches were uninjured. “I must cherish them carefully, however,” he thought; “when they are gone, I shall be unable to light a fire.” He looked about and found several other cocoa-nuts, which he collected, and piled up where he could again find them.
Much refreshed, Ben continued his walk. At last he saw the end of the island. For a quarter of a mile or more it was low and barren, hard rock washed apparently by the sea; so he turned round and went back by the other shore. The island was, altogether, nearly two miles long; but there were not many cocoa-nut trees on it,—nor much soil indeed, which was the reason probably that it was not inhabited. He might now exclaim, though sadly, “I am monarch of all I survey;” but he would rather have been the meanest subject of a small kingdom, with civilised companions, than a king and all alone on that nearly barren reef. Still he had no fear of starving; shell-fish he saw on the rocks in abundance. During the calm, too, some of the natives had been fishing over the side of the vessel, and he also had got some hooks and a long line. These he had put into his pockets. He might, he hoped, find some roots, and thus be able to vary his diet. As the sun rose, the horizon became very clear, and he thought that he could distinguish land in one direction; it was at all events a long way off, and it was so faint that it might be only a cloud just rising above the horizon. He should be able to judge better after watching it for a day or two.
As Ben walked on, his eye was continually roving about for signs of water. How gladly would he have welcomed the sight of even a little mossy pool, or some moisture in the crevice of a rock! He did not despair. He had hitherto only explored the shore; water might rise in the interior, and be lost in the sand before it reached the beach. “One thing I ought to have before night,” he said,—for he had got into the way of talking aloud,—“that is, shelter. I must build myself a hut;” and so he set to work. There were canes, and bushes, and broad leaves of the pandanus and other trees in abundance. He did not require a very spacious mansion; still he wanted one high enough to sit in. He worked on till he was tired and hungry. He had left his cocoa-nuts some way off, and had to go for them. He brought as many as he could carry back to his hut. Knocking a hole in the end of one of them, and carefully scraping out the fruit after he had drunk the milk, he waded into the water, and cut some mussels off the rocks. His cocoa-nut he filled with salt-water. Coming back, he lighted a fire in a hole a little way from his hut. Would he put his cocoa-nut on it? No; he was too wise for that; but he made some stones red-hot, and kept tumbling them into the water till the mussels were sufficiently cooked. Others he toasted before the fire, but he liked the boiled ones best. He thus made a tolerably substantial meal. To keep in his fire, he built up a wall of stones round it, and put on a quantity of green sticks, which would burn slowly, hoping in that way to save the expenditure of another match.