"WHEN I LET FLY THE ARROW IT SPED VERY TRUE." (See [page 335].)
PALM TREE ISLAND
BEING THE NARRATIVE OF HARRY BRENT SHOWING HOW HE IN COMPANY WITH WILLIAM BOBBIN OF LIMEHOUSE WAS LEFT ON AN ISLAND IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, AND THE ACCIDENTS AND ADVENTURES THAT SPRANG THEREFROM, THE WHOLE FAITHFULLY SET FORTH
BY
HERBERT STRANG
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ARCHIBALD WEBB AND ALAN WRIGHT
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
1910
Copyright 1909, by the G. H. Doran Company, in the
United States of America.
CONTENTS
OF MY UNCLE AND HIS HOBBY, AND WHAT CAME OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH TWO MARINERS
OF THE VOYAGE OF THE LOVEY SUSAN AND OF MY CONCERN THEREIN, ALSO THE DISTRESSFUL CASE OF WILLIAM BOBBIN
OF THE NAVIGATION OF STRANGE SEAS; OF MUTTERINGS AND DISCONTENTS, OF DESERTION, OF MUTINY AND OF SHIPWRECK
OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE CHEATED NEPTUNE AND CAME WITHIN THE GRIP OF VULCAN; AND OF THE INHUMANITY OF THE MARINERS
OF CLAMS AND COCOA-NUTS AND SUNDRY OUR DISCOVERIES; AND OF OUR REFLECTIONS ON OUR FORLORN STATE
OF OUR SEARCH FOR SUSTENANCE AND SHELTER; WITH VARIOUS MATTERS OF MORE CONSEQUENCE TO THE CASTAWAY THAN EXCITEMENT TO THE READER
OF THE BUILDING OF OUR HUT, TO WHICH WE BRING MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN SKILL
OF MY ENCOUNTER WITH A SEA MONSTER; AND OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE PROVIDED OURSELVES WITH ARMS
OF PIGS AND POULTRY, AND OF THE DEPREDATIONS OF THE WILD DOGS, UPON WHOM WE MAKE WAR
OF THE NAMING OF OUR ISLAND—OF A FLEET OF CANOES, AND OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE PREPARE TO STAND A SIEGE
OF OUR SUBTERRANEOUS ADVENTURE, AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THE WILD DOGS PROFITED BY OUR ABSENCE
OF A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN BILLY AND THE NARRATOR—OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH A SHARK, AND THE BUILDING OF A CANOE
OF OUR ENTRENCHMENTS; OF THE LAUNCHING OF OUR CANOE, AND THE DEADLY PERIL THAT ATTENDED OUR FIRST VOYAGE
OF OUR VOYAGE TO A NEIGHBOURING ISLAND, AND OF OUR INHOSPITABLE RECEPTION BY THE SAVAGES
OF THE SEVERAL SURPRISES THAT AWAITED BILLY AND THE NARRATOR AND THE CREW OF THE LOVEY SUSAN; AND OF OUR ADVENTURES IN THE CAVE
OF THE ASSAULT ON THE HUT, IN WHICH BOWS AND ARROWS PROVE SUPERIOR TO MUSKETS
OF THE END OF THE SEA MONSTERS; AND OF THE EVENTS THAT LED US TO RECEIVE THE CREW AS OUR GUESTS
OF THE DISCOMFITURE OF THE SAVAGES, AND THE UNMANNERLY BEHAVIOUR OF OUR GUESTS
OF OUR RETREAT TO THE RED ROCK, AND OF OUR VARIOUS RAIDS UPON OUR PROPERTY
OF ATTACKS BY LAND AND SEA; AND OF THE USES OF HUNGER IN THE MENDING OF MANNERS
OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE CREW ARE PERSUADED TO AN INDUSTRIOUS AND ORDERLY MODE OF LIFE
OF OUR DEPARTURE FROM PALM TREE ISLAND; OF THOSE WHO WON THROUGH, AND OF THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAY
ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
BY ARCHIBALD WEBB
[ "WHEN I LET FLY THE ARROW IT SPED VERY TRUE] . . . . . . Frontispiece
(see [p. 335])
[ "ONE LIFTED THE PLANK AND AIMED A FURIOUS BLOW AT MY HEAD" ]
[ "THE BEAST WHEELED ABOUT, AND RUSHED UPON BILLY" ]
[ "I CRIED OUT TO HIM THAT A MONSTER WAS ATTACKING ME" ]
[ "ONE DAY I FOUND HIM TRYING TO SHAVE WITH A FLINT" ]
[ "THE BEAST HEAVED ITSELF CLEAN OUT OF THE WATER" ]
[ "BILLY REACHED OVER, AND BROUGHT HIS AXE DOWN ON THE MAN'S HEAD" ]
[ "I DEALT HIM SUCH A BLOW THAT HE FELL DOUBLED UP AT THE DOORWAY" ]
PEN-AND-INK SKETCHES
BY ALAN WRIGHT
[ OUR FLINT SCRAPER FOR SHARPENING AXES ]
[ BILLY'S SCRAPER FOR ROUNDING ARROW SHAFTS ]
[ CLAY SAUCEPANS, AND TONGS OF WOOD ]
[ CLAY PAIL, THE HANDLE OF A TOUGH ROOT, BOUND ON WITH SHRUNK HIDE ]
[ OUR SMALL HUT TURNED INTO A FOWL-HOUSE ]
[ JUG WITH BENT-WOOD HANDLE, AND CUP ]
[ THE BRUSH BILLY MADE, SHOWING ALSO THE MANNER OF IT ]
[ RAKE HEAD AND SCALLOP-SHELL HOE ]
[ MY CHAIR AND BILLY'S STOOL ]
[ MAP OF PALM TREE ISLAND … … … … facing p. 96 ]
CHAPTER THE FIRST
OF MY UNCLE AND HIS OF HIS CONVERSATIONS WITH TWO MARINERS
I was rising four years old when my parents died, both within one week, of the small-pox; and the day of their funeral is the furthermost of my recollections. My nurse, having tied up the sleeves of my pinafore with black, held me with her in the great room down-stairs as the mourners assembled. Their solemn faces and whispered words, and the dreadful black garments, drove me into a state of terror, and I was not far from screaming among them when there entered a big man with a jolly red face, at whom the company rose and bowed very respectfully. The moment he was within the room his eye lit on me, and seeing at a glance how matters stood, he thrust one hand into his great pocket, and drew it forth full of sugar-plums, which he laid in my pinafore, and then bade the nurse take me away.
'Twas my uncle Stephen, said Nurse, and a kind good man. Certainly I liked him well enough, and when, two or three days thereafter, he set me before him on his saddle, and rode away humming the rhyme of "Banbury Cross," I laughed very joyously, never believing but that after I had seen the lady with the tinkling toes, Uncle Stephen would bring me home again, and that by that time my mother would have returned from heaven, whither they told me she had gone.
I did not see my childhood's home again for near thirty years.
My uncle took me to live with him, in his own house not a great way from Stafford. He was an elder brother of my father's, and till then had been a bachelor; but having now a small nephew to nourish and breed up, he did not delay to seek a wife, and wed a fine young woman of Burslem. She was very kind to me, and even when there were two boys of her own to engage her affections, her kindness did not alter. So I grew up in great happiness, having had few troubles, the greatest of them being, perhaps, those that beset my first steps to learning in Dame Johnson's little school. As for my subsequent search after knowledge on the benches of the Grammar School at Stafford, the less said the better: the master once declared, in Latin, that I was "only not a fool."
The light esteem in which the pedagogue held my intellects did not give my uncle any concern. He was bad at the books himself, saving in one kind I am to mention hereafter. He was a master potter, in a substantial way of business, and held in some repute among men of his trade. Indeed, it was the belief of many in our parts that he might have become as famous in the world as Mr. Wedgwood himself, had he not been afflicted with a hobby.
I will not follow the example of the ingenious Mr. Sterne, and write here a chapter upon hobby-horses; though I do believe I could say something on that subject, if not with his incomparable humour, yet with a certain truth of observation. Why is a man's hobby often at such variance with other parts of his character? Why did the late Mr. Selwyn, to wit, take the greatest pleasure in life in seeing men hanged, drawn, and quartered? Who that knew John Steer (I knew him well) only as he stood with knife and cleaver in his butcher's shop, would believe that 'twas his delight, after slaughtering his sheep and oxen, to solace his evenings with warbling on the German flute? My uncle's hobby was no less extraordinary. He was inland bred, and I do believe, until the year of his great adventure, had never gone above twenty miles from his native town; yet he had a wondrous passion for the sea and all that pertained to it. I am sure that he never saw the sea until he and I together looked upon it at Tilbury, and there, to be sure, the salt water is much qualified with fresh; yet, after business hours, he was for ever talking of it and reading about it and the doings of sailor men. He would pore for long hours upon the pages of the Sailor's Waggoner, and con by heart the rules and instructions of the Sailor's Vade Mecum. He was deeply learned in the Principal Navigations of Mr. Hakluyt; he could tell you all that befell George Cavendish in the Desire and Sir Richard Hawkins in the Dainty, and would hold me spell-bound as he recited with infinite gusto the stark doings of the Buccaneers. And when Mr. Cadell, the bookseller in the Strand in London, sent him the great volumes containing the discoveries of Commodore Byron, and those gallant captains Carteret, Wallis, and Cook in the southern hemisphere, the days were a weariness to him until he could light his candle and put on his spectacles and feast on those enthralling narratives. Many's the time, as I lay awake in my bed, have I heard my aunt Susan call down the stairs through the open door of her room, "Steve, Steve, when be a-coming to bed, man?" and his jolly voice rolling up, "Yes, my dear, I am near the end of the chapter"; and there he would sit, and finish the chapter, and begin another, and read on and on, until I might be stirred from a doze by the sound of him shuffling past in his stockings, and grumbling because there was but an inch of guttering candle left.
My uncle was a sturdy patriot, and took a great delight in knowing that the most of the navigators of those far-off seas were Englishmen. I remember how he fumed and fretted when his bookseller in London sent him the volume of Monsieur de Bougainville's voyage round the world. What had these French apes, he cried, to do with voyages of discovery? And when he read later, in Dr. Hawkesworth's book, of the trick which Monsieur de Bougainville played on Captain Wallis—how, meeting the captain on his homeward way, he sought with feigning to worm out of him the secrets of his expedition—my uncle smote the table with his great fist, and used such fiery language that my aunt turned pale and my little cousins began to blubber.
At this time I was in my seventeenth year, and had been for some months in my uncle's factory, learning the rudiments of his trade. 'Twas taken for granted that I should become a partner with him when I was of age, for the business was good enough to support both me and my elder cousin Thomas; while as for the younger, James, my aunt had set her heart on making a parson of him. But it was ordained that, in my case, things should fall out quite contrary to the intention, as you shall hear.
One fine Sunday we were walking home from church, my uncle and I, across the fields, as our practice was, when we saw that the last stile before we reached our road was occupied. A big fellow, clad in a dress that was strange to our part of the country, sat athwart the rail of the fence, with his feet on the upper step. Another man sprawled on the grass beside the fence, lying stretched on his back with his hands under his head, and a hat of black glazed straw tilted over his eyes. As we drew nearer, I saw that the man on the stile had a big fat face, his red cheeks so puffed out that his eyes were scarce visible, his mouth loose and watery, with an underhung chin, a thick fringe of black hair encircling it from ear to ear.
Seeing us approach, he began with uncouth and clumsy movements to descend from his perch; but he gave my uncle a hard look as we came up with him, and then, spitting upon the ground, he said,
"Bless my eyes—surely 'tis—ain't your name Stephen Brent, sir?"
My uncle looked at the man in the way of one who is puzzled, and for some while stood thus, the man smiling at him. Then of a sudden his face partly cleared, and he said—
"You are never Nick Wabberley?"
"The same, sir, Nick and Wabberley, as you knowed five and twenty year ago."
"Why, man, I am glad to see you," says my uncle heartily, offering his hand, which the man took, not however before he had rubbed his own hand upon the back of his breeches.
"Same to you, sir, and very glad I am to see you so hearty. After five and twenty year at sea——"
"You have been to sea!" cries my uncle, his jolly face beaming. "Then you must come up to my house to supper and tell me all about it."
"Why, d'ye see, sir, there's my messmate," said the man, with a glance at the prone figure, which had not moved; indeed, there came from beneath the hat a succession of snores, as untuneful as ever I heard. "We're in tow, d'ye see," added the big man.
"Bring him too," says my uncle. "We have plenty of bread and bacon, thank God."
Whereupon the man went to his sleeping comrade, and neatly kicked his hat into the air, bidding him wake, with a strange oath that startled me. The sleeper did not at once open his eyes, but his mouth being already open, he let forth a volley of curses, and demanded his hat, avouching that if he suffered a sunstroke he would "this" and "that" the other: his actual words I cannot write. My uncle's face showing his reprobation of such language, especially on the Sabbath, the big man excused his comrade, saying that 'twas only Joshua Chick's way, and he was really a good soul, and very obliging. At this the prostrate man opened his eyes, and, seeing my uncle, got upon his feet, and when he was told of the invitation to supper, he touched his forelock and said he was always ready to oblige. If the looks of Nick Wabberley did not take my fancy, still less did those of Joshua Chick, who was a small man, very lean and swarthy, and his eyes squinted so dreadfully that he seemed to be looking at my uncle and myself at one and the same time.
After a few more words we parted, the men promising to be at our house prompt at eight o'clock. And as we continued our walk home, my uncle satisfied my curiosity, telling me that the big man, Nick Wabberley, who was, as I had already guessed, the brother of Tom Wabberley, that owned Lowcote Farm some two miles from our door, had been a school-fellow of his, and the idlest boy in the whole countryside. He never got through a day without a flogging. The master birched him; his father leathered him; but neither did him any good: he remained an incorrigible dunce and truant, and no one was very sorry when one morning it was found that he had slipped out of his bedroom window during the night and run away. He had never since been heard of, but now that after twenty-five years he had returned to his native place, my uncle's heart warmed towards him because he had been to sea. Sailors were not often seen in our inland parts, and the prospect of discourse with a man who had actually beheld what he had only read about filled my uncle with delight.
Prompt on the stroke of eight Nick Wabberley arrived, accompanied by his messmate Joshua Chick. They proved to be excellent trenchermen: indeed, they prolonged the meal longer than either my uncle or my aunt liked, the former being impatient to hear stories of the sea, the latter watching with concern the disappearance of her viands. But supper was over at last, and then my uncle bade the visitors draw their chairs to the fire, gave them each a long pipe and a sneaker of punch, and settled himself in his arm-chair to drink in the tale of their adventures. Being near seventeen I was allowed to make one of the company, to the envy of my young cousins, who hung about the room for some time, but being at last detected were bundled off to bed.
It needs not to tell how late we sat up, nor how many tumblers of brandy-punch the two sailors tossed off between them before they departed, steady enough on their legs, but a trifle thick in their speech. My uncle was abstemious himself, and held a toper to be something less than a man; at an ordinary time he would have avoided to ply his visitors with liquor, but the truth is that on this occasion his whole soul was rapt away into a kind of wonderland by Nick Wabberley's tales, so that the men were able to replenish their glasses at intervals, unperceived. I have heard many a mariner's yarn since, and know them to be works of fancy and imagination as often as not; at that time I was as credulous as a babe, and my uncle scarcely less, and I doubt not we gulped down all the marvels we heard as greedily as the trout gapes at a fly. Certainly Nick Wabberley was a masterly story-teller, spinning yarns, as they say, as easily as a spider spins her web, and never at a loss for a word. Joshua Chick took but a modest part in the conversation, being very well occupied in replenishing the glasses; but every now and again he would slip in a word to correct some statement of his comrade, Nick accepting it with great composure. I noticed that these occasional contributions of Joshua's tended most often towards embellishment, and the level tones in which he related the most astonishing marvels, at the same time fixing one eye on my uncle and the other on me (keeping his hand on the brandy-bottle), made a wonderful impression on us.
It appeared that the two sailors had been members of the company which sailed with Captain Cook (he was then lieutenant) on his first voyage into the southern hemisphere. My uncle knew by heart the story of this voyage as it is given in Dr. Hawkesworth's book, and expressed great surprise that so many of the incidents and particulars related by Nick Wabberley were not mentioned in that worthy doctor's pages. He even ventured at one point to controvert a statement of Nick's, adducing the doctor as his authority, at which Nick waxed mightily indignant. "Why, d'ye see, warn't I there?" he said. "Warn't I there, Josh?"
"You was," says Chick firmly.
"And warn't you there?" says Wabberley, his moist lips quivering with indignation.
"I were," replies Chick, with vehemence.
"Then what the blazes has any landlubber of a doctor got to do with it, what don't know one end of a ship from t'other!"
There was nothing to be said in answer to this, and my uncle afterwards confided to me his opinion that Captain Cook's own journals contained a good many things which Dr. Hawkesworth had not seen fit to print.
My uncle was so well pleased with the conversation of the seamen that he invited them to come and see him again, and before long it became their regular custom to drop in about supper-time, much to the annoyance of Aunt Susan. She called Nick Wabberley a lazy lubber, and as for Joshua Chick, she said his eyes made her feel creepy, and he ate enough for four decent men. But my uncle was fairly mounted on his hobby, and he asked her rather warmly whether she grudged a bite and a sup to worthy mariners who had braved the perils of the deep (not to speak of the appetites of cannibals) in the service of their country. 'Twas in vain she said that she knew Farmer Wabberley wished his brother at Jericho—the great fat lubber lolloping about doing nothing but eat and drink, when there were fields to hoe, and Joshua Chick looking two ways at once, one eye on bacon and the other on beer; 'twas a mercy he hadn't got two mouths as well, she said. My uncle would hear nothing against them; always kindly and indulgent, he reminded her that a gammon rasher and home-baked bread must be the most delectable of dainties to men who for months at a time ate nothing but salt junk and ship's biscuit.
He never tired—nor, I must own, did I—of listening to Nick Wabberley. His face fairly glowed as he heard of those favoured islands of the south where food grew without labour and wealth was to be had almost without lifting a finger. Wabberley described the ease with which pearls might be obtained in the Pacific: how he had seen the natives dive into the water and bring up oysters, every tenth of them containing a gem, so little valued by the finders that the present of a four-penny nail or a glass bead would purchase a handful of them. Wabberley heaved a great sigh as he deplored his desperate bad luck in not being permitted to trade. "The Captain, d'ye see, warn't a trader," he said; "he was always thinking of taking soundings and marking charts and discovering that there southern continent, which I don't believe there ain't no such thing, though they do say as how the world 'ud topple over if there warn't summat over yonder to keep it steady. And as often as not, when we come to a island, we was so desperate pushed for provisions, and vegetables to cure us of the scurvy, that he hadn't no thought except for stocking the ship. Oh! 'twas cruel, when we might all ha' been as rich as lords, and all vittles found in the bargain."
In those days I remarked a certain restlessness in my uncle. He would go to the door of an evening and look down the road for the two seamen, and if they did not appear, which was seldom, he would walk up and down, in and out of the house, with hands in pockets, melancholy whistlings issuing from his lips. He read even more closely than usual the pages of the Vade Mecum, and pored for hours on the maps that embellish Dr. Hawkesworth's volumes. For the most part he was silent and abstracted, but ever and anon he would startle me with some sudden exclamation, some remark or question addressed, it seemed, to himself. "Tugwell is a good man: I can trust him.... What will Susan say? ... A matter of a year or two: what's that? ... I haven't a grey hair in my head." I was somewhat concerned when I listened to these mutterings, and wondered whether much brooding on oversea adventures had turned my uncle's brain. And I was not at all prepared for the revelation that came one night, when, looking up from his book, which lay open on his knees, he waved his long pipe in the air and cried, "I'll do it, as sure as my name is Stephen Brent."
And then he poured out upon my astonished ears the full tale of his imaginings. He was bent on making a voyage round the world. The South Seas had cast a spell upon him. He longed to see the lands of which the sailor-men had spoken; he was athirst for discovery. Perhaps he might light upon this Southern Continent which had eluded the search of others, and if he could forestall the French, what a feather it would be in his cap, and how glorious for old England! And in these dreams he was not less a man of business. There was vast wealth to be had by bold adventurers; why should not he obtain a share of it, and amass a second fortune for his boys?
The greatness of this scheme as he unrolled it before me took my breath away. When I asked how his business would fare in his absence he swept the air with his pipe and declared that Tugwell, his manager, was sober and trustworthy, and he had no fears on that score. I spoke of the perils of shipwreck and pirates, of the Sallee rovers, of the numberless accidents that might befall; but he brushed them all away as things of no account. And then I myself took fire from his own enthusiasm and begged that I might go with him. "No, no, Harry, my boy," he said, kindly enough. "You must stay at home to look after your aunt and the boys. Tugwell is a good man, but growing old; and if anything happens to me you will be at hand to look to things; you are seventeen, and pretty near a man."
That night at supper, with much hemming and hawing, he broached his project to my aunt. You should have heard her laugh! 'twas plain she did not believe him to be serious; she said it was all gammon, and she wondered what next indeed. But when he assured her that he meant every word of it, she was first alarmed and then angry. She talked about a maggot in his head, and asked what she was to do, a widow and not a widow, with two growing boys that would run wild without their father; and she wondered how a respectable man nigh fifty years old should think of such a thing, and there wasn't a woman in the country who would put up with such a pack of nonsense. To which he replied that Captain Cook was a respectable man with a wife and family, and if the captain's lady could part with her husband for a year or two, for the honour and profit of England, surely 'twas not becoming in Mrs. Stephen Brent to make an outcry over such a trifling matter. This made my aunt only the more angry, and, for the first time in all my knowledge of them, the good people looked unkindly upon each other.
That my uncle's mind was firmly made up was plain to us next day. Bidding me say nought of his intentions, which he wished to be kept secret, lest they came to the ears of the French, he set off for London, and was absent for a matter of ten days, much to the displeasure of Nick Wabberley and Joshua Chick, who came to the house evening after evening and went very disconsolate away, my aunt detesting them both, and refusing to feed the men to whom she attributed this mad whimsy of her husband. Her anger somewhat moderated while he was away, and after a week or so she could smile at his rubbish, declaring to me that she was sure he would think better of it: he would be like a fish out of water in London Town, and the sensible folks there would laugh him out of his foolishness, that they would. She smiled and tossed her head even when he came back and told us with great heartiness that he had bought a vessel—a north-country collier of near four hundred tons, stout in her timbers and broad in the beam, built for strength rather than speed—just such a vessel as Captain Cook had sailed in. "Go along with you, Steve," she said. "Don't tell me! You'll never go rampaging over the seas—a man of your age: and 'tis a mercy, I'm sure, that you're a warm man and won't ruin yourself, for you won't get half what you gave for it when you sell your precious vessel again." She told me privately that she was sure, when the time came, the foolish man would never venture himself on a ship; what would he do on a ship, she'd like to know, when he couldn't ride a dozen miles in a coach, as he had told us, without becoming squeamish and feeling as if his inside didn't belong to him! The news that he had engaged a captain—a seasoned skipper, by name Ezekiel Corke—only made her lift her hands and cry out, "Well, did you ever see!" I am sure that her air of disbelief, and amusement mingled with it, was a sore trial to my uncle.
As for him, good man, he was in earnest, if ever a man was. One day after he returned he rode over with me to Lowcote Farm, where we found those two mariners, Chick and Wabberley, gloomily sucking straws on a five-barred gate, and idly looking on at a busy scene of sheep-shearing. Their dull faces brightened at the sight of him, and when he told them what he had been doing, and asked if they would join his crew, they smote each other on the back and swore lustily for very joy. They asked him many questions about the ship and the captain, talked very knowingly of spars and armaments and the various articles it behoved to carry for trading with the natives, and offered to go at once to London—my uncle paying their coach fares—and seek out old messmates who should form the finest crew that ever foregathered in a foc'sle. My uncle showed great pleasure at their willingness, and arranged that they should accompany him when he next went to London to make his preparations for the voyage.
The news of my uncle's enterprise soon spread through our town, and it became a nine days' wonder among our neighbours and the townsfolk. His friends accosted him in the streets; some poked fun at him for entering on a new branch of business at his time of life; others, with the best intentions in the world, addressed to him the most solemn warnings, taking him by the buttonhole and expatiating on the risks he was about to run, doubting whether any money was to be made at sea, and advising him very earnestly to stick to the clay. He bore their pleasantries and their counsels with great good nature, declaring that he knew what he was about, and they would see if they lived long enough. But I could not help feeling sometimes that he was not quite so confident as he liked to appear, and that the drawbacks and dangers he had shut his eyes to in the first flush of his enthusiasm were now looming larger in the prospect. Yet, whatever his qualms may have been, he pushed on his preparations with vigour. He spent another fortnight in London, collecting a crew with the aid of Wabberley and Chick, purchasing stores, and laying in a cargo, and then he returned to take leave of his family and friends.
All this time I was beset with a great longing. The making of pottery in a quiet town seemed to me a very tame and spiritless occupation: I felt an immense stirring towards a life of activity and adventure, and wished with all my heart that my uncle would change his mind and take me with him. Against this, however, he was resolute, and the utmost he would concede was that I should accompany him when he departed finally from Stafford, and see the vessel in which he was to sail forth. Accordingly, one fine August day ('twas the year 1775), I took passage with him in the London coach. All Stafford had gathered to speed him. He parted from my aunt and his boys at the inn door: up to the very last she had held to the belief that he would draw back; and even when he left her side and mounted into the coach she whispered to me, "I don't believe it. I won't believe it! He'll never go. He never will!" But the coach rumbled off, the crowd cheered, some one flung an old shoe after us for luck, and I had never a doubt that before the month was out my uncle would be afloat on the wide ocean, fairly committed to his wonderful adventure in the southern seas.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
OF THE VOYAGE OF THE LOVEY SUSAN AND OF MY CONCERN THEREIN; ALSO THE DISTRESSFUL CASE OF WILLIAM BOBBIN
The Lovey Susan—for so my uncle had named his vessel—lay at Deptford, and as we walked from our inn, the Cod and Lobster in Great Tower Street, to see how her fitting out was proceeding, I was amazed (this being the first time I had come to London) at the smells and the noises of the narrow streets, and at the number of rough seamen whom we met. How much greater was my amazement when we came to the docks, and I saw the multitude of shipping—the forests of masts, the great black hulls, the crowds of lighters that moved in and out among them. I remember the fond air of pride with which my uncle pointed to his vessel, and the smile upon his face when the captain spied him and touched his hat. Captain Corke did not in the least resemble the idea I had formed of a sea-captain. He was a little man, with lean cheeks, and a brown wig a world too small for his head, so that I could see the grey stubble of his own hair showing beneath it. My uncle presented me to him and to the first mate, Mr. Lummis, whose hand, when I shook it, left a strange pattern of tar on mine. Mr. Lummis was a rough-looking man, with a square face and a tight mouth, who broke off his talk with us very frequently to roar at one or other of the crew as they went to and fro about their duties. The captain took us over the vessel, which was all very strange to a landsman, and showed me his own quarters in the round house, and when we came to my uncle's cabin, which was certainly not so big as Aunt Susan's larder, nor half so sweet, I thought of what she had said, and for the first time I felt some pity for my uncle, and wondered how he would endure the being cooped up in so narrow a compass. I was presented also to Mr. Bodger, the second mate, who seemed a very shy and timid fellow, always looking away when he spoke. I did not see either Wabberley or Chick, but learnt by and by that they were on shore beating up for a few men to make up the ship's full complement.
Things were in a very forward state, and the captain said that the Lovey Susan would be ready to set sail in a week's time. We spent that week in going to and fro between the ship and our inn. I own I should have liked to see the sights of London, but my uncle was so much in love with his vessel that he could not bear to be away from her, and he would not let me go sight-seeing alone, saying that London was a terrible wicked place for a boy. The utmost he would consent to was to ride out to Tilbury and ride in again, which was a very paltry expedition. When the end of the week came, there were still some berths vacant, a number of the men having been seized for the king's ships, the press being then very active. This put my uncle in a desperate state of annoyance. He declared it was monstrous that his men should be stolen when he was embarking on an adventure which might bring great honour to the country. Since it was plain that his departure must be delayed, he said it was sinful for me to waste any more time in London when I might be useful at the works, and so took passage for me in the coach and dispatched me home. Knowing that the business would not suffer a jot by my absence, I wondered whether my uncle dreaded a scene of parting; and for my part I was so sore at not being allowed to accompany him that I thought it would save me an extra pang if I did not take my farewell of him at the ship's side.
I found my aunt wonderfully cheerful. She smiled when I told her of the hindrances my uncle had met with, and declared that we should even yet see him give up his whimsy and return to his proper business. This opinion, however, I scouted, and when, after about a week, we received a letter from him, I felt sure as I broke the seal that it was a last message penned on the eve of sailing. It proved otherwise, being a brief note to say that the crew was complete, through the good offices of the obliging Chick, but that the departure was once more delayed, my uncle being confined to his room at the Cod and Lobster by a slight attack of the gout. My aunt was for starting at once to attend upon her husband, but this I dissuaded her from, saying that by the time she arrived in London the attack might have passed and the ship sailed, and she would have made the long journey for nothing, besides wasting money. However, within three days comes another letter, in which my uncle wrote that he was much worse, and desired me to come to him post haste. This letter gave my aunt much concern, but on the whole pleased her mightily, for she was sure I had been sent for to bring my uncle home, and she went about with that triumphant look which a good lady wears when she sees events answer to her predictions.
I set off by the coach next morning. When I opened the door of my uncle's room he fairly screamed at me: "Take care! for mercy's sake take care!" I stepped back and looked about me in alarm, seeking for some great peril against which I must be on my guard. But I saw nothing but my uncle sitting in a big chair, with one leg propped on a stool, and his foot swathed in huge wrappings of flannel. "Take care!" he cried again with a groan as I approached. "Mind my toe! Keep a yard away; not an inch nearer, or I shall yell the house down." At that time I was astonished beyond measure at my uncle's vehemence; but having since then suffered from the gout myself—'tis in our family: my grandfather was a martyr to it, I have been told—I know the terror which a movement, even a gust of air, inspires in the sufferer.
My uncle told me, amid groans, that his heart was broken. The Lovey Susan was ready; he had as good a captain and crew as any man could wish to have, but he himself would never make the voyage. Three physicians, the best in London, were attending him, and their opinion was that not only might he be some considerable time in recovering of it, but that, being of a gouty habit of body, a new attack might seize him at any moment and without warning. "Suppose it took me on the voyage, Harry!" he said, groaning deeply. "Suppose I was like this on board! You saw my cabin; no room to swing a kitten. What if a storm blew up! What if I was tossed about!" Here he groaned again. "No doctors! No comforts! I must go home to Susan, my boy—if I can ever stand the journey—— Oh!" he shouted, as a twinge took him. "A thousand plagues! Give me my draught, Harry; take care! Mind my toe!"
I was distressed at my uncle's pitiful plight. 'Twas plain that his agony of mind was as great as that of his body, because of his disappointment in the check to his cherished design. For some while he did nothing but groan; presently, when he was a little easier, he announced the resolution he had come to, which was a great surprise to me, but a still greater joy. 'Twas nothing less than that I should take his place. He could not abide that his plans should be brought to nought. He had weighed the matter carefully as he lay awake o' nights; I was seventeen and nearly a man, and though no doubt I had gout in my blood, I need not fear that enemy for some years to come. Being sober-minded (he was pleased to say), and well acquainted with his purposes, I could very well represent him, and though this responsibility was great for one of my years, yet it would teach me self-reliance and strengthen my character. He spoke to me long and earnestly of the manner in which I should bear myself, with respect to the captain and kindliness to the seamen; and I must never lose sight of the object of the expedition, which was to discover the southern continent, if it were the will of Providence, and so forestall the French.
I fear I paid less heed than I ought to my uncle's solemn admonitions, so overjoyed was I at the wonderful prospect opening before me. Having taken his resolution, my uncle was not the man to delay in executing it. He sent for Captain Corke, and acquainted him with his design, adjuring him to regard me in all things as his deputy, and to take me fully into his counsels. He summoned before him Mr. Lummis and Mr. Bodger, and Chick, who was made boatswain of the vessel, and addressed them in my presence very solemnly, enlarging on the service they would do their country if they assisted Captain Corke and me to bring the expedition to a successful issue. And then, having dismissed them, he bade me fall on my knees (at a yard's distance from his toe), and besought the blessing of the Almighty on the voyage. A lump came into my throat as I listened to his prayer, and when at its conclusion I muttered my "Amen!" it expressed my earnest desire to do all that in me lay to fulfil my uncle's behests, and, in God's good time, to give him an account of my stewardship which should bring him comfort and happiness.
Next day, it being Friday the 22nd of August and a fair day, we loosed our moorings at four o'clock in the morning and fell down with the tide. We were lucky in encountering a favouring breeze when we came out into the broad estuary of the river, and rounding the Foreland, we set our course down channel. The movements of the sailors in working the ship gave me much entertainment, and the gentle motion of the vessel, the sea being calm, caused not the least discomfort, though it was the first time I had sailed upon the deep.
About eight o'clock in the evening, the time which mariners call eight-bells, I was standing beside the captain on the main deck, and he was pointing out a cluster of houses on the shore which he told me was the fishing village of Margate, when we were aware of a commotion in the fore-part of the vessel. I distinguished the rough voice of Mr. Lummis, shouting abuse with many oaths that were new and shocking to my ears. Presently the first mate comes up, hauling by the neck a boy of some fifteen years, a short and sturdy fellow in dirty and ragged garments, and with the grimiest face I ever did see. Up comes Mr. Lummis, I say, lugging this boy along, cuffing him about the head, and still rating him with the utmost vehemence. He hauls him in front of the captain, and, shaking him as a terrier shakes a rat, says, "Here's a young devil, sir, a —— stowaway. Found him on the strakes in the bilge, sir, the —— little swipe."
The captain looked at the boy, who stood with his shoulders hunched to defend his head from the mate's blows, and then bidding Mr. Lummis loose him, he asked him in a mild voice what he did aboard the vessel. The boy rubbed his hand across his eyes, thereby spreading a black smudge, and then answered in a tearful mumble that he didn't know.
"What's your name?" says the captain.
"Bobbin, sir," says the boy.
"Bobbin what?" says the captain.
"William, sir," says the boy.
"Bobbin William?" says the captain.
"William Bobbin," says the boy.
The captain looked sternly on William Bobbin for the space of a minute or two, but I do not remember that he said anything more to him at that time. Mr. Lummis lugged him away and set him to some task, the captain telling me that he would either put him ashore at some port in the Channel or keep him if he gave promise of making himself useful. I may as well say here that Billy Bobbin, as we called him, was not sent ashore when contrary winds made us put in at Plymouth. It had come out that his father was a blacksmith, of Limehouse, and the boy had run away from the cruelties of his stepmother, and being strong of his arms, and with some skill in smith's work, he proved a handy fellow. I often wondered whether his stepmother used him any worse than he was used aboard our vessel. The crew, as I was not long in finding out, were a rough set of men, and seemed to look on Billy, being a stowaway, as fair game. He was a good deal knocked about among them, and the officers, so far as I could see, did nothing to defend him from their ill-usage. When I spoke of it to the captain, he only said that was the way at sea; and, indeed, Mr. Lummis himself was very free in cuffing any of the seamen who displeased him, and once I saw him fell a man to the deck with a marlin-spike, so that it was not to be wondered at, when the men were thus treated, that they should deal in like manner with the boy. I did speak of it once to Wabberley, thinking he might perhaps put in a word for Billy, and he promised to speak to Chick, who would do anything to oblige; but I never observed that anything came of it.
We had fair weather for a week or more, with light breezes, and I was not the least incommoded by the motion of the vessel, whereby I began to think that I should escape the sea-sickness of which I had heard some speak. But when we had passed the Lizard the wind freshened, and the ship rolled so heavily that I turned very sick, and lay for several days in my bunk a prey to the most horrible sufferings I ever endured, so that I wished I was dead, and did nothing but groan. During this time I was left much to myself, the captain coming now and then to see me, and ordering Clums the cook to give me a little biscuit soaked in rum. However, the sickness passed, and when I went on deck again the captain told me that I had now found my sea-legs and should suffer no more, a prediction which to my great thankfulness came true.
We proceeded without any remarkable incident until the 14th of September, when we came to an anchor in Madeira road. The captain sent a party of men on shore to replenish our water-casks, Mr. Lummis going with them carrying three pistols stuck in his belt. I supposed that he went thus armed for fear of some opposition from the natives of that island, but the captain told me 'twas only to prevent the men from deserting, it being not uncommon for such incidents to happen. We sailed again on the 17th, and for two months never saw land, until the 6th of November, when we anchored off Cape Virgin Mary in the country named Patagonia. There we perceived a great number of people on the shore, who ran up and down both on foot and on horseback, hallooing to us as if inviting us to land. This the captain was resolved not to do, somewhat to my disappointment, for I should have liked to see the Indians more nearly, especially as I had heard many things about them from Wabberley when he related his voyages to my uncle. I had to content myself with gazing at them through the captain's perspective glass, and observed that all were tall and swarthy, and had a circle of white painted round one eye, and a black ring about the other, the rest of the face being streaked with divers colours, and their bodies almost naked. One man, who seemed to be a chief, was of a gigantic stature, and painted so as to make the most hideous appearance I ever beheld, with the skin of some wild beast thrown over his shoulders.
The captain questioned whether we should proceed through the Straits of Magellan or attempt to double Cape Horn. He decided for the latter course, and having heard somewhat of the violent storms that were to be encountered in that latitude, I was not a little apprehensive of our safety. However, having taken in water at a retired part of the coast, we doubled the Cape after a voyage of rather more than two months, having sustained no damage, and the Lovey Susan sailed into the South Sea. Here the calm weather which had favoured us broke up, and for several weeks we had strong gales and heavy seas, so that we were frequently brought under our courses, and there was not a dry place in the ship for weeks together. Our upper works being open, and our clothes and beds continually wet, as well from the heavy mists and rains as from the washing of the seas, many of the crew sickened with fever, and the captain kept his bed for several days. On the first fair day our clothes were spread on the rigging to dry, and the sick were taken on deck and dosed with salop, which, with portable soup boiled in their pease and oatmeal, and as much vinegar and mustard as they could use, brought them in a fair way to recovery.
We proceeded on our voyage, the weather being variable, and I observed that many strange birds came about the ship on squally days, which the captain took for a sign that land was not far off. He was anxious now to make land, for the men began to fall with the scurvy, and even those who were not seized by that plague looked pale and sickly. We were greatly rejoiced one day when the man at the masthead called out that he saw land in the N.N.W., and within a little we sighted an island, which approaching, we brought to, and the captain sent Mr. Lummis with a boat fully manned and armed to the shore. After some hours the boat returned, bearing a number of cocoa-nuts and a great quantity of scurvy-grass, which proved an inestimable comfort to our sick. Mr. Lummis reported that he had seen none of the inhabitants, who had all fled away, it was plain, at the sight of our vessel. It being evening, we stood off all night, and in the morning the captain sent two boats to find a place where the ship might come to an anchor. But this was found to be impossible, by reason of the reef surrounding the island. The captain marked it down on his chart, and called it Brent Island after my uncle; but I learnt many years afterward that it had already been named Whitsun Island by Captain Wallis, having discovered it on Whitsun Eve. We sailed away, hoping for better fortune. There was none of us but longed to stretch our legs on the solid earth again, and I think maybe it had been better for us if the captain had permitted the men to stay for a while at Cape Virgin Mary or some other spot on the coast of Patagonia, for the being cooped up for so many months within the compass of a vessel of no great size must needs be trying to the spirits even of men accustomed to it.
However, within a few days of our leaving Brent Island we made another, that afforded a safe anchorage. Here we went ashore by turns, and the native people being very friendly, we stayed for upwards of a fortnight among them. It was an inestimable blessing, after living so long on ship's fare—salt junk and pease and hard sea-biscuit (much of it rotten and defiled by weevils)—to please our appetites with fresh meat and fruits, and these the natives very willingly provided in exchange for knives and beads and looking-glasses and other such trifles. It was now I tasted for the first time many vegetable things of which I had known nothing save from the reports of Wabberley and Chick and the books I had heard my uncle read—yams (a great fibrous tuber that savoured of potatoes sweetened), bananas (a fruit shaped like a sausage and tasting like a pear, though not so sweet), and bread-fruit, a marvellous fruit that grows on a tree about the size of a middling oak, and is the nearest in flavour to good wheaten bread that ever I ate. As for flesh meat and poultry, we had that in plenty, the island being perfectly overrun with pigs (rather boars than our English swine) and fowls no different from our own, except that they were more active on the wing. In this place, I say, we stayed for a fortnight or more, and were marvellously invigorated by the change of food, so that our men recovered the ruddy look of health, and the scurvy wholly left us.
During this time the captain and I lodged in a hut obligingly lent us by the chief of the island. We talked frequently of the main purpose of our adventure, the discovery of a southern continent, the captain intending, when we left the island, to sail southwards by west, into latitudes to which his charts gave him very little guide. After we had spent some time in diligent search, whether we made the discovery or not, he proposed sailing north again, and visiting Otaheite and other islands whereon Captain Cook had landed, for another part of my uncle's purpose, though lesser, was to find what opportunities for trading there were in these seas. It was the first part that engaged my fancy the most, pleasing myself with the thought of my uncle's pride if we should succeed where so many navigators before us had failed.
When we left the island and sailed away, I remarked that the crew were very loath to quit this land of ease and plenty. Indeed, when we mustered the crew before embarking, we found that Wabberley and Hoggett the sailmaker were amissing, and the captain in a great rage sent Mr. Lummis with a party to find them. Chick offered to lead another party, so as to scour the whole island (which was only a few miles across) more expeditiously; but this the captain would not permit, for what reason I knew not then, though I afterwards had cause to suspect it. Half-a-day was wasted before the truants were brought back, and though they pretended that they had lost their way in the woods that covered the centre of the island, they looked so glum when they came that I conceived a notion that Wabberley, a lazy fellow at all times, would not have been much put about if we had sailed without him. It came into my head that in the play of The Tempest, when the sailors are cast upon an island, one of them proposes to make himself its king and the other his minister, and I was amused to think how Wabberley and Hoggett would have disputed about the allotment of those dignities, even as Stephano and Trinculo.
We took on board a good store of the fruits of the island, and sailed for many days without dropping our anchor, though we passed several islands both large and small. Then on a sudden the wind failed us, our sails hung idle, and for many days we lay becalmed, the vessel being so close wrapt about by mist that we could not see beyond a fathom line. This had a bad effect on the temper of the men, who, being perforce idle, had the more time for quarrelling, which is ever apt to break out, even among good folk, when there is little to do. Some lay in a kind of sullen stupor about the deck; others cast the dice and wrangled with oaths and much foul talk; and when they tired even of this, they took a cruel delight in tormenting poor Billy Bobbin in many ingenious ways. So long did the calm endure that our store of fresh provision gave out, and the men were put on short allowance, at which, although the need of it was plain, they murmured as much as they dared. Having always in mind my uncle's counsel to deal kindly with them, I had been treated hitherto with respect; but I now observed that some of them looked askance at me as I went about the ship, and once or twice after I had passed I heard a muttering behind me, and then a burst of coarse laughter. To make matters worse, the captain again fell sick of a kind of calenture, and took to his bed. For all he was a quiet man, he exercised a considerable authority over the crew, much greater than Mr. Lummis, though the first mate was rougher, and sparing neither of oaths nor of blows. With the captain always in his cabin the men became the more unruly, and I longed very fervently for a breeze to spring up, so that the need for work might effect a betterment in their tempers.
One day when I was in the fore part of the ship, I heard a great hubbub in the forecastle, and looking down through the scuttle, I saw a big ruffian of a fellow—it was that same Hoggett whom I have mentioned before—I saw him, I say, very brutally thrashing Billy Bobbin, dealing him such savage blows on the bare back with a rope-end that his flesh stood up in great livid weals, the rest of the men laughing and jeering. The boy was so willing and good-tempered that I knew there could be no just cause for such heavy punishment, and he was withal of a brave spirit, bearing the stripes with little outcry until one stroke of especial fierceness caused him to shriek with the pain. I had a liking for Billy, and when I saw him thus ill-used I could no longer contain myself, but springing down through the scuttle, I seized Hoggett's arm and so prevented the rope from falling. Hoggett held the boy with his left hand, but when I caught him and commanded him to cease, he loosed Billy and turned upon me, dealing me a blow with the rope before I was aware of it, and demanding with a string of oaths what I meant by interfering, and crying that I had no business in the forecastle. At this I got into a fury, and without thinking of the odds against me I smote him in the face with my fist, an exceedingly foolish thing to do with a man of his size. In a moment I lay stretched on the deck, with the fellow above me, belabouring me with his great fist so that I was like to be battered to a jelly, and I doubt not would have been but that Mr. Lummis chanced to come by. Seeing what was afoot he sprang down after me and immediately felled Hoggett with a hand-spike. I was very much bruised, and felt sore for a week after, and withal greatly distressed in mind, for none of the men, not even Wabberley, who was among them, had offered to help me, and I could not but look on this as a very clear proof that a dangerous spirit was growing up among the crew. True, I was not an officer of the ship, and was not in my rights in giving orders, as Hoggett said when Mr. Lummis sentenced him to the loss of half his rum for the week. But being nephew of the owner of the vessel, I considered, and justly, that my position was as good as an officer's; and as for my striking the man, Mr. Lummis did as much every day.
It was on the day after this that Billy Bobbin came to me with a tale that disturbed me mightily. He had been for some time uneasy in his mind, he said, but owned that he would still have kept silence but for my intervention in his behalf. He sought me after sunset (in those latitudes it falls dark about seven o'clock), when the men were at their supper, and he might talk to me unobserved. He said that the men had been grumbling ever since we left the island where we had stayed. They had a hearty dislike to the purpose of our expedition, and a great scorn as well, deeming the search for a southern continent to be merely a fool's quest. I own it caused me vast surprise to learn that Wabberley was the most scornful of them all, saying that, having been with Captain Cook on his first voyage, he knew there was no such continent, or the captain would have found it, and telling the others dreadful particulars of the tribulations they suffered: how some of them spent a night of terror and freezing cold (though 'twas midsummer) on a hillside of Tierra del Fuego, and how, out of a company of eighty, the half died of fever or scurvy. And in contrast to these ills he told us of the lovely island of Savu, and of Otaheite, where there was everything that man could wish for—a genial climate, the earth yielding its fruits without labour, or at least with the little labour that a man might demand of his wives (for he could have as many wives as he listed); in a word, a paradise where men might live at their ease and never do a hand's turn more. Furthermore, Billy told me (and this was the most serious part) that he had overheard the men talking, a night or two before, of deserting in a body when we next went ashore (provided the island was one of the fruitful sort, for there were some barren), and leave the officers to navigate the vessel as best they might. Great as my surprise had been to hear that Wabberley was one of the moving spirits of this conspiracy, still greater was it when Billy told me that this purpose of deserting was mooted by Joshua Chick the boatswain. I had never been drawn to that obliging person; nay, his very obligingness had annoyed me, just as sometimes I am nowadays annoyed by a person over-officious in handing cups of tea; and when I came to put two and two together, I could not doubt that this scheme had been in the man's mind from the first. In short, he and Wabberley had taken advantage of my uncle's hobby to beguile him upon setting this expedition on foot, for no other reason than to find a means of returning to these southern islands, where they might live in sloth and luxurious ease.
Bidding Billy to be silent on what he had told me, I went to the captain, who, as I have said, was ill in his bunk, and acquainted him with this pretty plot that was a-hatching. He was in a mighty taking, I warrant you, and swore that he would hang the mutineers at the yard-arm, at the same time handing me a sixpence to give to Billy Bobbin for his fidelity. He called Mr. Lummis and Mr. Bodger into council, and could hardly prevail on the former not to fling the ringleaders into irons at once. Mr. Bodger, whom I had always regarded as a man of mild disposition, suggested that they should be put ashore among cannibals, and so be disposed of in the cook-pot (the natives, for the most part, boiling their meat), which led Mr. Lummis to declare, with a volley of oaths, that if the calm lasted much longer they would want food aboard the vessel, and Wabberley would cut up well. I own such talk as this seemed to me very ill-suited to the occasion, though when it came to the point the officers were not barren of practicable schemes for dealing with the mutineers, as will be seen hereafter.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
OF THE NAVIGATION OF STRANGE SEAS; OF MUTTERINGS AND DISCONTENTS, OF DESERTION, OF MUTINY AND OF SHIPWRECK.
We lay becalmed for several days longer, during which time there was no further outbreak among the men, for the captain bestirred himself and came on deck, though in truth he was not fit for it. His mere presence seemed to make for peace and quietness. He had counselled the officers to alter nothing in their conduct, yet to be watchful; and I think he never feared a mutiny on board the ship, expecting no danger until we should set foot to land again.
At length the mist cleared, the sails once more filled, and we set our courses again towards the south-west. The men went about their duties at first cheerfully, for the mere pleasure of action after so long idleness; but when, after about a week, they perceived that the captain held steadily on his course, without offering to touch at any of the islands we sighted, their looks fell gloomy again, and there was some grumbling, though subdued. Though our fresh food was now all gone, we still had great stores of the common victuals—biscuit and pease and oatmeal, besides salt junk, a sufficiency of rum, and water for two months. This was sparingly used, every man of us washing in salt water, which made my skin smart very much until I was used to it.
Day by day, as we approached the high latitudes, the air became sensibly colder, and in the morning we sometimes saw icicles on the rigging. The sky was for the most part gloomy; showers of sleet and hail beat upon us, and I own I felt a pity for the sailors at these times, having to spend so many long hours below decks in darkness and stench. For days at a stretch we crept through thick fogs, and by and by came among icefloes, and then among icebergs, against which we ran some risk of being shipwrecked, so that we had to keep a very careful look-out. When I marked the growing discontent of the men, I feared lest they should rise in mutiny and take the navigation of the vessel into their own hands, and I verily believe we were only saved from this by the captain's change of mind. He made it a point of honour to fulfil the desires of my uncle so far as he might, and would have continued the search for the southern continent against all risks; but when the ice grew constantly thicker, and our fresh water began to lie perilously low, he concluded that it was folly to try any more for that season, and so steered north.
Our men were greatly rejoiced at this resolution, and their cheerfulness was such that I began to lose my fear of untoward happenings. When I said as much to the captain, however, he observed that our particular danger would arise when we came to a land of plenty. It was his ill hap again to be seized with sickness at this time, and he seldom left his bunk in the roundhouse.
The South Seas
One fair day—I think it was about a year after our sailing from Deptford—we sighted an island which did not appear on our chart, but which, on our nearer approach, gave promise of furnishing that refreshment of which we were in need. It was very well wooded, and we knew while still a great way off that it was inhabited, seeing through our perspective glass a good number of canoes about its shore. When we came within a little distance of it some of the canoes put off towards us, and a crowd of people stood on the beach, inviting us as well by their gestures as their loud cries to land. The captain, who had come out of the roundhouse and sat on a stool by the door, considering that the fertility of the place and the friendliness of the natives favoured us, ordered the vessel to be hove to, and a boat to be made ready, with casks for bringing back a supply of water. He then appointed a dozen of the crew to man the boat, calling them before him, and commanding them very strictly that they should not stray far from the neighbourhood of the beach, but fill their casks at the nearest spring or freshet, and purchase what vegetables and fruit they could in exchange for such trifles as I have before mentioned. I observed that the captain had not chosen Wabberley and Hoggett, or any other of the men whom we certainly knew to be disaffected: indeed, both Hoggett and Chick, with several more, were then sick of the scurvy. The captain set Mr. Bodger over the boat's crew, and he went with a cutlass and two pistols in his belt, but the men were without arms.
As soon as they set off, being accompanied by two canoes which had by this time reached our vessel, Mr. Lummis, at a word from the captain, commanded the men that remained on board to collect all the arms that were in the ship and bring them into the roundhouse. It was plain from their looks that they were amazed and confounded at this order, which they obeyed very sullenly, Mr. Lummis having in sight of them all stuck a pistol in his belt. As they went to and fro they eyed the captain suspiciously, and cast many a glance towards the shore, where their fellows were beginning their task amid a great uproar of the natives. It had been arranged between the captain and Mr. Lummis that this precaution regarding the arms should be taken when the crew was thus divided, so that we should have the means of coping with any mutinous outbreak. The captain also insisted that I should take a pistol, which I was loath to do, having never fired one in my life.
The arms had all been bestowed in the roundhouse before the boat returned with its first cargo. When the men came aboard they began to tell their messmates of the exceeding richness of the island, as far as they had seen it, but they had gone but a little way in their tale before the other men broke in with an account of what had been done in their absence, which made them dumb with astonishment. Being conscious of their guilty designs, they perceived that we knew them too, though they were not able in their first surprise to divine the means by which we had obtained our knowledge. However, it was not a time to take counsel together, with the officers about them, and as they had performed but a small part of their task on shore, they went back into the boat with as meek a look as ever I saw.
Mutterings
When they came again to the island, they set about their work as before, though more sluggishly; but having filled a cask or two, and brought them to the boat, I observed them, all but one, go up the strand again without another cask to be replenished. I supposed that they were now going to procure vegetables, but Mr. Lummis, who was standing at my side, suddenly let forth a great oath, bidding me observe that the men went empty-handed. And then we saw Mr. Bodger, who had been left at the boat, hastily following them, and though we were too far off to hear any words distinctly (besides, the native people still made a great clamour), we could tell by his motions that the mate was calling after them, and we saw two or three of them turn round and laugh at him, and then go on up the island amid a concourse of the natives. Mr. Lummis cried out to him to use his pistol on the mutinous dogs, but he could not hear, and indeed he was a timid man, besides being apprehensive, perhaps, that the natives, many of whom had long spears, would turn upon him if he offered any violence. This notion of ours had some colour when we saw him return hastily to the boat, and endeavour, with the only man of them all that was left, to launch her. This, however, they were unable to do, the boat being beached high on the sand, and heavy with the full casks already laid in her.
Mr. Lummis went into the roundhouse, whither the captain had retired, to acquaint him with these proceedings. They thought, and so did I, that the men were putting in act the plot of which Billy Bobbin had told us, though it seemed to me strange that they should have gone without the ringleaders, who were still on board the vessel. We were considering of this when Mr. Lummis, with another great oath, cried out that he saw through the rascals' plan, which was, he said, to tempt us to send another boat's crew after them, and then, having both the mates ashore, to overpower them, as they would easily do with the aid of the natives, in spite of the pistols. But he swore that he would prove one too many for them, and having trained on the beach one of the six swivel guns we carried, he commanded two of the men to lower the dinghy, and then to come to the roundhouse for the captain's orders.
This being done, and the men coming in, the captain looked very severely upon them, and said that he was about to send them with Mr. Lummis to bring off the boat with Mr. Bodger in it, and that if they should attempt to join the rascals on shore, who had flatly disobeyed orders, Mr. Lummis would shoot them instantly. This he said in a very loud tone of voice, so as to be heard by the rest of the crew, who had sneaked up out of curiosity to learn what was toward. The two men with Mr. Lummis then descended into the dinghy, Mr. Lummis taking with him a large piece of bright-coloured cloth, two small looking-glasses, and a new sailor's knife.
When they came to the shore, Mr. Lummis stepped out and waved the cloth above his head, at which a number of the people came running to him, making strange and uncouth cries. I had afterwards, as will be seen, to learn how hard it is to communicate with men who have no common speech with us; but even as the beasts are able to hold converse with their kind, so the great Creator of all things has given to man the power to make his thoughts plain to folk sundered in speech by the iniquity of Babel. Mr. Lummis contrived to make these poor savages understand his wishes, and when, with the aid of them and of the seamen, the large boat was launched, and was rowed back to the ship, taking the dinghy in tow, one of their canoes came also, with some of their chief men in it.
At the invitation of Mr. Lummis, the savages came aboard our vessel, and then, with much pains, he acquainted them further with his desires. He pointed to the seamen who were gathered on deck, and then to the island, with gestures signifying that the men of their kind who had first landed must be brought back. He made them understand that a price would be paid for each man that was recovered, either a piece of cloth, or a knife, or a looking-glass like those he showed to them. And then, bethinking him that it were profitable to impress them with a sense of his power, he ordered the gun to be fired with a blank charge, at whose roar the savages fell flat upon their faces, and lay for some while quaking in a great fear. After this they made haste to get into their canoe and paddle to the shore, which was now deserted, all the people having fled away at the sound of our gun; and they ran very fleetly up into the wooded country and disappeared from our view.
We saw nothing more of them or of our seamen that day; but early the next morning, almost as soon as it was light, we heard a great commotion on the shore, and soon perceived a vast throng flocking to the beach, with our men among them. There they were cast with some roughness into three of the canoes, and I perceived by the manner of their falling, like as sheep when they are cast into a cart, that their limbs were tied, which, without doubt, sorely ruffled their tempers, being Englishmen. When the canoes came alongside our vessel, the natives shouting and yelling like mad things, Mr. Lummis let down a sling over the side, in which our men were hoisted one by one to the deck. It was as much as I could do to keep from laughing, so sorry was their look, their faces being scratched and bruised, and their garments very much tattered, and indeed on one or two hanging mere shreds. Mr. Lummis heartily cursed each one as he came up, with many quaint derisive observations which mightily vexed them. We had taken seven or eight aboard when Mr. Lummis, looking over those that were left in the canoes, perceived that there were only ten in all, when there should have been eleven, the party having numbered twelve at the first, of whom one had returned with Mr. Bodger. Mr. Lummis flew into a rage at this, supposing that the natives had kept back one man, with a design to chaffer for a higher price; but when he demanded of the rest where Wilkins was (that being the name of him who was missing), they answered sullenly that he was dead, for he had offered a stout resistance when the savages attempted to tie his hands, and had the temerity to fell the chief himself with his fist. This spirited act, which was in truth worthy of a true-born Englishman, cost him his life, for he was instantly thrust through with spears. I doubt not his death was the means of saving the lives of the rest, for seeing what had befallen their comrade, and being unarmed, they submitted (though surely with an ill grace) to be bound, and were so brought back to their vessel, as I have said. The savages having received the presents promised them returned to the island, where they immediately fell a-quarrelling about the apportionment of their wages, and we saw that the strip of coloured cloth was very soon torn into a hundred little pieces.
Mutiny
As for the seamen, they were by the captain's orders immediately put into irons and laid in the hold. Though we had not taken aboard near as much water or provision as we intended, yet the captain would not risk the sending of another crew to the island, albeit he might safely have done so, I think, the men being for the time sufficiently tamed. We had to wait the best part of the day for a breeze; then we weighed anchor and stood away to the north. While the island was still in sight, the wind suddenly shifted its quarter, and blew first a gale and then a hurricane, so that we had to shorten canvas. While this was a-doing the sea was lashed to a fury, prodigious waves sweeping over the deck and buffeting the vessel so heavily that her timbers shook, and we feared the masts would go by the board. With ten men in irons and about as many weakened by the scurvy, the crew were pretty hard pressed, and though they worked with a will, since their very lives depended on it, they railed without measure against the captain and Mr. Lummis, heedless of what punishment might be dealt to them when the storm abated. Presently a cry arose that the vessel had sprung a leak, and since none of those above could be spared to man the pumps, Mr. Lummis ordered the men in irons to be brought up, and made them work at the pumps in turn. The storm rather increased than diminished in fury, and the seamen were seized with a fear that the vessel would founder, and I heard them mingle prayers and curses in a breath, reviling the captain for taking them from the hospitable island, and crying out "Lord, have mercy on us!" again and again. Darkness fell upon us while we were still battling with the storm, which added to our terrors, for the vessel would not obey the helm, and we knew not but we might be cast upon some coral reef, such as abound in those regions, and there be clean broken up. In this extremity of peril I own I was dreadfully afraid, and prayed very fervently that we might be saved, thinking too of my uncle and aunt, and the happiness I had enjoyed with them, casting my mind back over many things in my past life, almost as a drowning man does, at least I have heard so.
I was inexpressibly relieved when at last the violence of the tempest abated, in the wind first, for it was long before the turbulence of the sea was sensibly diminished. About the middle of the night, however, we were able to stand once more upright on the deck without clinging to the shrouds or other things for support, and then, being utterly worn out, we sought repose, but not before the leak had been discovered and stopped, which took a long time, and the unruly seamen who were in irons once more confined in the hold. I gave hearty thanks to God who had so mercifully delivered us, and went to my bunk in as peaceful a frame of mind as if it were my bed at home.
I was awakened, how long afterwards I know not, by Mr. Bodger breaking into my cabin, which was on the maindeck, and calling on me to come instantly to the quarterdeck, and bring my pistol, for the crew had risen in mutiny, and having made a rush to the hold had liberated the men in irons. I sprang up and cast my coat, which was still dripping wet, about me, and seizing my pistol, followed the man up to where Mr. Lummis and the captain stood in front of the roundhouse. But a moment after I joined them we were aware that the crew were advancing to attack us, judging by the sounds of their shouting, for the night was so black that we could see but little, the men having put out the sole lantern. We were in a very desperate case, being but four against the whole crew, saving some few who were sick, not one of the men having come to our side; the captain, moreover, being very feeble from his illness. But we had all the firearms at our command, and Mr. Lummis trusted by means of these to do such execution among the mutineers that they would lose heart, and while the worst of them would be cowed, the better-disposed would yield to authority. Thus we four stood side by side, and as the men drew near Mr. Lummis called to them in a loud voice, warning them that we had weapons which we would use upon them if they did not instantly return to their duty. There was silence for a space; the shuffling of bare feet on the deck ceased; then a voice called out (I think it was Hoggett's) that the captain should return to the island we had lately left, and let 'em rest and recruit themselves, they being dead sick of sailing without end. He finished by saying that if the captain did not consent to this course, they would slit his weazand and cast him to the sharks, and serve all of us the same, and we had best make our choice without delay. Mr. Lummis, to whom the captain left all this matter, roared out a string of oaths and commanded the men to seize that rascal who had the insolency to order the captain's goings. There was a great laugh, very horrid to hear, being rather the sound that wild beasts would make than men; then there was again silence, or rather we heard the low murmurs of the men talking among themselves. Mr. Lummis cursed again, but this time under his breath, and muttering "They mean mischief," he bade Mr. Bodger in a whisper put out the lantern that swung from the roof of the roundhouse behind us, and so made a light against which our forms, as we stood on the threshold, could be distinctly seen by the men. This was no sooner done than there came a single shrill blast on the sea-pipe, and the men rushed up towards us with fierce shouts that made my flesh creep.
"Fire!" cried Mr. Lummis loud enough to be heard above all the din. As I have said before, I had never in my life fired a pistol, and what with excitement and flurry, my finger fumbled a little at the trigger, so that I was a thought behind the others; but even in that little moment I heard terrible screams as the bullets from the officers' pistols flew among the crew; and though I fired mine immediately after, I could not tell whether 'twas pointed up or down, or in what direction soever, and I was seized with a fit of shuddering when the thought came to me in a flash that peradventure I had slain a fellow-creature. You may think I was a coward, and perhaps I was; but yet I think I was not, but only new at such kind of work, because I do not recollect that ever I felt the same way again when I had to defend myself, as will appear in order.
This first discharge of our weapons caused the mutineers to draw back, and we instantly seized other pistols which Mr. Lummis had laid in readiness within reach. He called out, "Have ye had enough, you dogs?" and from the silence I really thought they had, especially as Mr. Bodger whispered that he heard no groans, and so believed that the men who were hit must be dead. But all of a sudden, without any kind of warning, except a slight whistling in the air, and then it was too late, there was a crash a little to the left of me, where the captain stood, and looking round I saw him lying in a heap against the wall of the roundhouse, and heard him groan. "Fire!" shouted Mr. Lummis again, but I was on my knees beside the captain, who told me very faintly that he had been struck on the head by something; and, indeed, when I felt along the deck with my hand I found the marlin-spike which had done the mischief. He bid me stand and help the officers, whose shots I had again heard; but scarce had I risen to my feet when Mr. Lummis staggers against me and cries that his arm is broken. At the same moment there was a great crash of breaking glass, which made us know that another missile had smashed the skylight of the roundhouse; and then, when there came a perfect clatter of heavy things, belaying pins and the like, striking the timbers of the roundhouse, Mr. Lummis said that we must withdraw into that place, or we should be battered to pieces. Accordingly Mr. Bodger and I, we dragged the captain within the sliding door and shut it fast, and taking the table and bench we drove them against the door as a barricado, which we had scarcely done before the men, guessing by the cessation of our fire what had happened, came outside and hammered on the wood, shouting with triumph and derision. "Send a bullet through the door, sir," cries Mr. Lummis, which I did, and there was a howl of pain, and the men scuttled away, for being without firearms they were still at a disadvantage against us.
Mr. Bodger having relit the lantern, we saw that the captain had fainted clean away, and there was a great cut in his head from which the blood was flowing. While I dashed some water upon his face and poured a little rum between his lips, Mr. Bodger looked to the hurts of the chief mate, who was roaring as much with fury as with pain. It proved that his arm was indeed broken, as he had said, and I never heard anybody howl as he did when Mr. Bodger made shift to set it and bind it up. Meanwhile the captain had come to, but his face was ghastly pale, and I feared the worst from the enfeebled state in which he was.
I was already aware, from the altered motion of the vessel, that her course had been changed, and could not doubt that the mutineers were purposing to sail back to the island we had quitted. In this matter we were wholly at their mercy, but I thought it a very hazardous proceeding in the blackness of the night, especially as they had no chart and could not have the least notion of how to set the course truly. It would have been at least the act of reasonable men to heave to and wait for morning light; but I had already observed that seamen have little forethought, being like children in that respect, and they were so eager to attain the haven of their desires as to be ready to brave the perils of striking a reef or running aground on a shoal. We talked together of what we should do if the vessel arrived at an island, Mr. Bodger saying he feared they would murder us or maybe hand us over to the savages, for though we were secure against them while we remained in the roundhouse, 'twas clear that we must needs issue forth some time, or starve for want of food.
Shipwreck
Some time had passed, I know not how long, when we became aware of a marvellous perplexing change in the atmosphere. I felt a strange tingling in my fingers; Mr. Bodger declared he was all pins and needles, and Mr. Lummis cried out with an oath, without which indeed he seldom spoke, that some one was walking over his grave. Almost as the words left his lips a tremendous shock, as of an immense wave striking the vessel, sent us all spinning to the deck, and immediately afterwards there was a mighty crash, and Mr. Lummis cried that the mainmast had gone by the board. The vessel had so listed that we expected she would instantly founder; but she righted herself, and then we heard a great hubbub outside, the men calling one to another in accents of affright and dismay. It being plain that the vessel was in a desperate case, I thought the seamen would be too intent on saving their own lives to have any notion of taking ours; so with Mr. Bodger's help I pulled away our barricado and opened the door. By the light of the lantern I saw the seamen most frantically cutting away the wreckage, in the midst of which there came a great shout that the leak had opened again, only much bigger than before, and that water was pouring into the hold. Instantly there was a cry to lower the boats; none thought of manning the pumps, which indeed would have been vain, as we saw pretty soon. We had three boats aboard, but one of these had been smashed by the fall of the mast, and the men were cutting the lashings of the other two, some also casting into them whatever things they could lay hands on, never stopping to consider whether they were useful or no. They lowered the boats over the side, not without great danger, for the vessel was rolling heavily, and then began to jump into them. I could not believe that they would be so heartless as to leave their officers to go down with the ship, though they had proceeded hitherto without so much as a look towards us; and rushing among them, I cried out that the captain and Mr. Lummis were severely hurt, begging them to wait just so long as to rescue them. But they thrust me away, and Chick with a brutal laugh shouted that the officers might drown for all he cared, and when I still urged him he dealt me such a buffet that I fell sprawling among the wreckage.
When I rose to my feet, having lain stunned for a space, there was not a man to be seen. I was for a little while like one demented, running to the side of the vessel—which had no bulwarks, but only a timber railing—with the intent to fling myself into the boat, and so escape. But then I thought of the officers, and could not bring myself to desert them in their extremity, and so ran back to the roundhouse, to see if by any means we could devise a raft of spars sufficient at least to keep us afloat. I found Mr. Lummis stretched on the deck, having, it seemed, stumbled over some of the wreckage and hurt his arm again, so that he fainted. There was a figure standing by the door, which I at first took to be Mr. Bodger, but on running up to ask him concerning that matter of the raft, I perceived with amazement that it was not the second mate at all, but Billy Bobbin. I looked around, but no Mr. Bodger could I see; I called aloud for him, but there was no answer, nor could I tell whether he had fallen overboard or been taken away among the men. I rushed again to the side, hoping that even at the last the seamen might have repented; but it was all one blackness; the boats were clean gone.
I went back, and seeing both Mr. Lummis and the captain still lying motionless on the deck, I was well-nigh overcome with the horror of our situation, and sat me down on a coil of rope and buried my face in my hands. But in a moment I sprang up; I could not consult with the officers, but there was Billy Bobbin, whom I supposed the men had refused to take with them—I learnt afterwards that he had not offered to go, but had remained of set purpose to stand by me who had treated him kindly. He told me, too, that Mr. Lummis had not fainted, but had been thrown down by the men, who came rummaging in the roundhouse for arms, of which they took several, and powder and shot. I cried to Billy to help me build a raft, for, little of a seaman though I was, I perceived that the vessel was already beginning to settle down. We had but a single lamp to assist us, and to add to our trouble, a great storm of wind and rain beat upon us, causing the ship to labour so heavily that we could scarce keep our feet. I was fairly at my wits' end. If it had been daylight, and calm, we might have heaved some spars and planks overboard and lashed them together, but that was impossible in the darkness. Moreover, if we made a raft strong enough to hold us four, we could not by any means, Billy and me, lift it and launch it from the deck. All that we could do was to lash together what spars and planks we could find there on the deck, and trust that when the vessel foundered we might contrive to cling to it, though how we were to fasten the helpless officers to it I was not any way able to see.
While these perplexities were tossing in my brain my hands were not idle; indeed, I wrought so desperately, and Billy too, that the skin was torn from our fingers, though we did not know it until the dawn showed them to us all sore and bleeding. It was growing misty light, and we had finished our raft, a poor makeshift thing, but the best we could do, and were considering of how to fasten the officers to it, when all of a sudden the ship gave a great lurch, and while we were endeavouring to save ourselves from being cast into the sea, the deck beneath us was riven asunder with a noise as of a great gun. Of what happened then I know nothing; but when I had again possession of my senses, I found myself struggling in the sea, in desperate straits for breath. For some while I could see nothing, in such confusion was I; but presently, breathing more easily, and keeping myself afloat, I perceived that the ship had totally disappeared, and I was amid a strange assemblage of all manner of small objects bobbing up and down on the surface. In a little I spied our raft, and near by it the wreck of the mainmast, which had been cut almost clear by the seamen before they took to their boats; but never a sign was there of Mr. Lummis or the captain or Billy. I struck out for the raft, wondering within myself whether I had strength to reach it, for I was marvellously exhausted, having, as I came to think afterwards, been drawn down to a great depth by the sinking vessel. All at once I saw a head rise above the further edge of the raft, and a moment after Billy scrambled on to it, and flung himself down as utterly spent. I strove to strike out more lustily, feeling a great joy that one at least of my comrades was saved; but my strength was so far gone from me, and the sea so disturbed, that I made scarce any progress, and in an extremity of despair, gasping as I was, I raised my head above the water and shouted Billy's name. He lifted himself and looked about him amazedly; then spying me at a distance of six fathoms or more, as I guessed, he leaped into the sea and came swimming towards me. I was at the point of sinking when, with inexpressible joy, I felt his arm placed beneath me, and thus sustained by him I plied my limbs again, though with great effort, and came at length to the raft, which I seized eagerly, and rested a while until I should recover strength enough to clamber upon it as he had done. However, when I made the essay, the side of the raft sank beneath my weight, and I know not what I should have done had not Billy bid me still cling to it while he swam round to the other side, and then, both heaving ourselves up at the same moment, we contrived to get aboard of it, and sank utterly fordone at either end, and Billy burst into tears.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE CHEATED NEPTUNE AND CAME WITHIN THE GRIP OF VULCAN; AND OF THE INHUMANITY OF THE MARINERS
We sat, or rather crouched, on the raft, and 'twas a mercy the sea was not now so tempestuous, for had it been, I am sure we should have had no strength to battle with it. The rain had ceased, but a white mist lay over the water, and, dripping wet as I was, I shivered and my teeth chattered and I felt desperately sick. All around us floated sundry bits of wreckage—planks and spars, a hencoop, some pots and pans and empty barrels, and near at hand a something that caused me a sharp pang at heart: it was Captain Corke's wig, and I thought of that good seaman, and of Mr. Lummis too, both gone to their long account. For a time, as I contemplated the flotsam by which we were surrounded, I gave never a thought to the unhappy posture of Billy and me; but all at once it came upon me with a great shock that we were castaways on the wide ocean, far away from land, clean out of the track of any likely vessel, and with no food, nor any means of procuring it, to be the sport of wind and wave. I was even considering whether it were not better to plunge overboard at once, before the pangs of hunger and thirst got hold upon us, when Billy, who had raised himself upon his elbow, suddenly gave a shout and stretched his hand towards me. "Land! land!" he cried. I turned myself about, so quickly that I almost lost my balance, and sure enough, through the mist I saw a long dark line, which on this waste of water could betoken nothing else but land, as Billy had said. And in that moment I blamed myself for my gloomy thoughts and stark hopelessness, considering for the first time that the good hand of God had preserved us hitherto from the dreadful fate of the officers, and might have further mercies in store.
The Island
It was impossible to guess, because of the mist, how far the land was from us, but with our hearts full of this reviving hope we took thought by what means we might propel our raft thither. We did not consider whether it was a barren or a fruitful land, or what perils we might encounter of wild beasts or wild men; all our mind was bent upon escaping from our present danger. The raft was composed of spars and staves of the boat which had been shattered on the deck of the Lovey Susan, lashed together with ropes. I felt in my pocket for a knife wherewith to cut one of the spars loose, designing to use it as an oar, but my pocket was empty save for one solitary button, which I remembered having put there a day or two before when it started from my breeches, intending to have it sewn on. I asked Billy if he had a knife, and he, feeling in his pockets, confessed them likewise to be empty, having left on the deck the knife we had used in making the raft; but when I told him what I had in mind, he at once fell to pulling at one of the knots with his fingers, which being hard, as a seaman's always are, he contrived in a wonderfully short time to loose the short spar, and began to thrust it into the water in the manner of paddling. To our great joy the raft moved, as I could tell by its passing some of the floating articles of wreckage, which it did so close to some that I might have seized them by stretching forth my hand, and I wished I had when I thought of it afterwards, for they would have been of great use to us, and saved us a deal of labour, as you shall see.
We moved, I say, towards the shore, Billy keeping our course pretty straight by plying the spar now on the right side, now on the left. And then I perceived a shine upon the water, and, looking back, saw the blessed sun as a ruddy disk, but like the moon in size, glimmering through the mist behind us. Billy hailed the sunrise with a cheerful shout, which did my heart good to hear it, and cried to me that the mist was lifting, and we should soon see the land clear. And so it was, though when we did behold it, we did not much like the look of it. From the edge of the sea it rose to a considerable height, and it was of a grey colour, or rather slate, and yet not quite that either, but approaching to black. To the right the slope was covered with vegetation, and about half way-up there was what in the distance—for we were, as I reckoned, near a mile from the shore—looked to be a dense wood, as indeed it afterwards proved. Still further to the right a promontory of a reddish colour jutted out into the sea, and I perceived that the water ran right through it by an archway, which I suppose the sea had cut for itself, for I could not conceive it had been made in any other way. This promontory also was green at the top with plants and trees, and beyond it we could see a rock of the same red colour, which appeared to be of very great size, like to an immense iceberg, but much broader than any I have seen. To the left of the blackish slope that I have before mentioned there were other patches of green, and I was much exercised in my mind to know why the centre portion was thus barren when there was vegetation on either side.
We could not yet see the top of the slope, for the mist still lay upon it; but as we drew nearer a pretty gentle gale sprang up, which with the sunbeams drove the mist away, leaving only a small portion, which hovered like a thick white cloud, or a nightcap, over the dark summit. While I was gazing at it, wondering why it stayed so constantly just there, I was amazed to see a part of this cloud shoot up to a prodigious height, and while I was still in that amazement, we heard a dull booming noise, like the discharge of a great gun far away. At this Billy ceased paddling and looked at me as one affrighted, and asked me very fearfully whether we had come to a country where the French were fighting with the native people. But I perceived now that the sea was in commotion around us, and it suddenly came into my mind that this mountain we saw before us was a burning mountain, or volcano, like to what I had read of in my lesson books, though I had thought that they sent forth fire and smoke and burning streams of lava. And then, remembering the great wave which had struck our vessel and caused the panic among the seamen, I bethought me that it was maybe due to an earthquake, which affects as well the sea as the land. I told Billy what I thought, and he was much relieved that we had not happened upon the French, but said very gloomily that we should not be much better off on land below a burning mountain than on the sea, and for his part he would sooner drown, that being, as 'twas said, an easy death, than be burned alive. However, I said that we had as yet seen no fire, and perhaps the furnace in the mountain was dying out, and we could at the least put it to the test. In short, I persuaded him to take up his paddle again, which he did, and so brought us a little nearer to the land.
But we now perceived that the raft was taken in a current, which bore us to the right hand towards the promontory I have mentioned above, but obliquely, so that we were like to be carried past it without being able to land. The wind was blowing against the current, and we hoped it might stay our course long enough for us to come at some haven; but though we loosed another spar, which I used very diligently though with little dexterity, the current gained upon us, and I saw that we should never do it. In that predicament it came into my mind that we might use our coats as a sail, and we instantly stripped them off and joined them together by the sleeves, and then we lashed them to the spar I had been plying and held it upright, Billy drawing the loose end taut by two short lengths of rope which he fastened very quickly to the extremity of the raft. The sail made a very extraordinary appearance, as you may believe, but Billy laughed merrily when he saw it fill with the wind, and so, he working his paddle, and me holding the mast—with no little difficulty, for the wind was blowing more strongly—we drew nearer and nearer to the land.
And now, when we were, as I guessed, about two furlongs from the beach, I spied all of a sudden two boats lying close together near a small spit of land. I might have noticed them before but for being so busy with the sail. Billy saw them too, and cried out that they were our own boats, and was for steering instantly out to sea again, for he would sooner have faced a tempest than Hoggett, or any other of the men who had ill-used him. But even before I could answer him we were aware of a strange trembling of the raft beneath our feet, in no wise like the wonted heaving of the sea, and while we were in the article of wondering what it might be, the raft seemed to sink under us, as if a great gap had opened beneath it and it was falling through empty air. I was in a terrible fright, and catched at my breath, but still keeping my feet, and in a moment we heard a strange rushing behind us, and, turning about, beheld a great wall of water bearing down upon us. With one consent we flung ourselves on our faces, clutching at the ropes that bound the raft together, and had barely got a grip of them when the mountainous wave crashed upon us, and we were completely engulfed.
What happened to us then neither Billy nor I could ever perfectly tell, though we talked about it often; but I must suppose that the raft was rolled over and over, with us a-clinging to it. I had scarce got a little breath into me again, after a greater space of time even than when I had been sucked under at the sinking of our vessel, when the return wave smote upon us, and we were hurled back, and while we were still gasping after this, another green wall fell upon us from seawards, though not so high as the first, and, its force being spent, we found ourselves, sore bruised and breathless, on the landward side of a small group of rocks of about seven or eight feet high, and not above thirty yards from the beach. We had been carried clean over it, and the raft, to which we had clung as by a miracle, was floating in two or three feet of water. This we discovered afterwards, for we were as near dead as any one could be, and, indeed, I wonder that we were not killed outright, as we should have been beyond doubt but that the raft prevented us from being dashed upon the ground. We had had battering enough as it was, but coming to our senses, and very sick from the water we had swallowed, we sprang off the raft and hauled it ashore, Billy crying out that his feet, which were bare, were cut to pieces on the beach, which was very hard and jagged, though I escaped hurt, having my boots on.
We were immediately aware of a deep rumbling from the hill above, and lifting our eyes, we beheld prodigious quantities of smoke or steam, we could not tell which, belching from the top, and then a vast torrent of water pouring down towards us, with steam rising from it in clouds. We were near paralyzed with the sight, but recovered ourselves in time to skip back to the rocks over which we had been cast, and clambered to the top of them with what haste we might, Billy's feet being all red with blood from the sharpness of the beach. The torrent spread out as it flowed downwards, and, coming straight towards us, I was in a great fear lest, even though we were perched up, we should not escape it, and we were, indeed, on the point of casting ourselves into the sea. But I was thankful we did not do it, for the stream did not rise higher than within three feet of our perch, but dashed up a great shower of spray, which was scalding hot. It also hurled our raft with great violence against the rock beneath us, breaking off a good portion of it; but it did not carry it out to sea, the rocks preventing it.
Then, as we looked up towards the summit of the hill, we saw a number of figures, very small in the distance, hasting pell-mell downwards. At first I thought they were savages, who had espied us, but within a little I knew them for seamen of our crew. They ran at the edge of the torrent, avoiding the clouds of steam, but this they could no longer do when they came to where the water had spread over the beach, and we heard them uttering very great yells of pain, as well from the scalding water as from the jagged edges of the ground, their feet being unshod save for one or two of them. They skipped from point to point, endeavouring to find a safe way, and I recollected afterwards the strange antics of Wabberley, who, being of a ponderous shape, was very unfit for such feats of agility. The men gave no sign of having seen us, but bore away towards their right and our left towards a small tract of sand which, being protected by the slope of the hill, had not been covered by the lava from the mountain top, for such I concluded to be the constitution of the hard, blackish soil of which I have before spoken.
The seamen who came first to the beach disappeared from our sight behind a number of rocks like to those upon which we sat, and immediately afterwards we heard loud cries of alarm proceeding from that quarter. Those behind hasted on with even greater expedition than before, and when they joined their comrades there arose a perfect chorus of execration, which puzzled us a good deal, until, glancing seaward beyond the rocks that hid the men from our sight, I descried the nose of a boat, and shortly afterwards made out that it was empty. Without doubt it was one of the two boats we had seen laid up on the beach, and a wave had carried it out to sea, and it was this had provoked the cries we had heard. But I did not see the second boat, and wondered why the men did not put off in this to pursue the truant instead of spending their breath in vain outcries. When some little while had passed, and the boat was still drifting out, none pursuing it, I was taken with a great curiosity to see what the reason might be, and descended from my perch to creep towards them, taking care as I went to haul our raft to a safe place on the beach. As for Billy, he refused to budge, saying that he would not go a foot nearer to the men, because he was sure they would do him a mischief, a thing which I could by no means believe, their minds being taken up with other matters. However, he would not come, so I left him there, and went on alone.
It being my purpose to see without being seen—at least, until I knew what mind the men bore towards us—I went softly, and coming to the rocks beyond which they were, I peeped round one of them with great caution. And then I understood both why they did not pursue the boat and why they had let out so lamentable an outcry. The second of the two boats had a great hole stove in her bottom, without doubt by that huge wave which had well-nigh struck the breath out of us. The men were at their wits' end what to do, for the other boat was drifting further and further from the shore, and was at this time, as I reckoned, at least a hundred yards distant. One of them, as I looked, cried out that he would swim out to it; otherwise they were undone, for they were in peril of being boiled or burnt alive; and he plunged into the water and made a stroke or two. But immediately afterwards another of the men cried out that he saw the fin of a shark, at which the first man—his name was Pumfrey, and he was the ship's carpenter—instantly turned about and swam for the shore, splashing most vehemently with his arms and legs and bellowing like a bull, as much to frighten away the shark as from fear.
Seeing this their last hope of recovering the boat altogether dashed away, the seamen did nothing but walk to and fro in great agitation of mind, letting forth the most dreadful curses that ever I heard. As for Mr. Bodger, whom I spied among them, he sat down on a rock, being a timorous creature, as I have before said, and setting his face in his hands, groaned and sighed in pitiful fashion, as did those that were sick and wounded among them. It came into my mind—what I had not thought of before—that Billy and me, being partners with them in their unhappy situation, were no better able than they to leave this terrible place, at least with any prospect of success, for I knew very well that our raft would be a poor vessel for any voyage. And since it appeared to be our doom to live or die with them, I saw no benefit that could arise from any attempt to hide our presence. Accordingly I walked round the rock into their midst. It was Wabberley that spied me first, and when he saw me his jaw dropped and his face went green, as having beyond doubt believed me to be now at the bottom of the sea. He uttered a strange cry, which the others hearing, they looked towards him, and at the same instant beheld me, and after a sudden brief silence came running at me, demanding with the greatest eagerness how I had come ashore. When I told them, on a raft, they shouted for joy, and Hoggett catching me roughly by the arm, cried to me to say where that same raft was, or he would dash my head against the rocks. I answered that there was no need of threats or violence, for the raft lay but a short distance away, and he might perhaps use it to overtake the boat, and at the same time I pointed to the further rocks. Without more ado he set off at a run, and spying Billy still sitting upon the rock he asked whether we had the captain and Mr. Lummis also with us. But he did not wait for an answer, running very swiftly until he came to the place where our raft lay, the other men following him in a crowd.
When he saw what a poor shattered thing the raft was, he broke out again into cursing, thinking that it would be useless for his purpose, as indeed it might have been, he being a very ponderous man. But then bethinking himself he catched hold of Billy, and, Joshua Chick coming up, swore that Billy and he, being of no great weight, should go on the raft and pursue the boat, which, as we now perceived, had come into the current that had nearly carried us past the further extremity of the shore. Billy cried out that he would not go, but Hoggett took him by the middle, and when Chick had launched the raft, he threw the boy fairly on to it, bidding Chick fling him into the sea if he made any bones about it. And then, wrenching up two of the planks of the broken boat to serve as paddles, he gave them to the boatswain and Billy, who thereupon began to ply them with the utmost vigour.
We watched them as they went further and further from the shore, the seamen shouting with excitement, and even laying wagers one against another, though, being bereft of everything save their weapons and some few articles that were in the boat, it seemed to me great folly. And when after a long chase the boat was overhauled near the archway in the red rock of which I have spoken, they fell into a perfect ecstasy of joy, clapping each other on the back and shouting like frantic people. We saw Chick baling out the boat, Billy helping him, and as they were a long while doing this, it was plain that she held a great quantity of water and would most likely have foundered in no long time. Whilst they were at this work of baling, the raft floated away, and neglecting it they began to pull back to the beach. But they had not taken many strokes before we saw them turn again, and the men around me burst forth into horrible execrations, supposing in the first moment (so base of mind were they, as well as witless) that Chick was purposing to row away and desert them. But I told them that Billy had only remembered the raft, and so it proved, for they rowed after it, and having catched it up, fastened it by a rope to the boat's stern and so headed again towards the shore.
While they were yet some distance off, the ground beneath our feet trembled and we heard a great rumbling, and the sea was mightily troubled, whereupon the men fell into their panic again, fearing that an earthquake would swallow them ere ever they got clear away. They cried in great terror to Chick to haste, and while the boat was yet some fathoms' length from the beach, Wabberley and two or three more dashed into the sea, and wading out, scrambled into the boat, with such violence that they were not very far short of overturning it. Which seeing, all the rest of the seamen rushed to do likewise, Hoggett and some others carrying all the articles that were in the broken boat, and then I saw that the boat, being the smaller of the two, could not possibly contain us all, and indeed the men saw that too, and there was such a fight to win places that I thought the boat would fill with water and sink. As for me, I stood watching in a kind of amazement, now in the mind to rush towards the boat with the others and fight for a place, now deeming it better to wait until I saw to what issue things came.
Abandoned
All this time Mr. Bodger had remained by my side, no doubt expecting that he as an officer would be given a place as of right. But now there came a mighty roar from the mountain; more terrible than any we had yet heard, and I saw belching out of it not merely steam and water, but smoke of a lurid darkness, the sky above becoming perfectly black with a shower of ashes shot forth from the top, intermixed with fire. At this the fight about the boat waxed still more violent, and Mr. Bodger, darting from my side, sprang out into the sea. Then I saw Hoggett fling Billy out of the boat, and three or four of the weaker men who had been beaten from it mounted on to the raft, upon which also Mr. Bodger scrambled in his desperate haste. The men upon it, finding it likely to sink with the weight of them all, thrust him back again into the water, and I heard him scream with terror when, striving to regain his place, and clinging desperately to the edge of the raft, they beat upon him with their fists and sought to loosen his hold. He was on the point of being cast off when Hoggett, in the boat, which now stood some little way off, shouted "Take him aboard, you fools; we may want him," and they did as he said, though grumbling, one of them saying that Hoggett was safe himself, and had taken mighty great care not to overload his craft.
And then, as Billy came out of the water towards me, and I saw both the boat and the raft moving away, and knew that we were to be left alone on this dreadful shore, with the volcano vomiting forth fire—then, I say, I was shaken out of the amazement which had held me, and being perfectly frantic with terror, I rushed into the water, thinking nothing of Billy or aught else than my own safety. With desperate strokes I swam after the boat, shouting to the men to take me aboard. She was moving but slowly, being greatly overladen, and having the raft in tow, so that I was able to overtake the latter. But the men cried that there was no room on it, and commanded me roughly to sheer off, and when I still clung to it, one lifted the plank that had been used as a paddle, and aimed a furious blow at my head. The violence of his movement causing the raft to sink towards one side, he failed of his brutal design, yet not wholly; for the plank as it descended grazed the side of my head, inflicting such a cut that I was well-nigh stunned, and was forced to loose my hold. I tried to set to swimming again, but my strength was gone from me, and in my daze I might have gone to the bottom if Billy had not swum after me. With his help I was able to reach the shore, and when we stood up on the dry land and saw that the seamen had beyond doubt abandoned us, we flung ourselves down on our faces, in all the misery of wild despair.
"ONE LIFTED THE PLANK ... AND AIMED A FURIOUS BLOW AT ME."
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
OF CLAMS AND COCOA-NUTS AND SUNDRY OUR DISCOVERIES; AND OF OUR REFLECTIONS ON OUR FORLORN STATE
I think I lay for a time in a kind of lethargy, for I was perfectly unconscious of anything that might be happening about me, and it seemed to me that my mind was a total blank. Whether it was the heat of the sun, which had mounted well-nigh to the zenith, or the pangs of hunger that roused me, I know not; but when I did arise I was aware of a prodigious aching in my inwards, which was very natural, seeing that I had not eaten for sixteen or twenty hours. And then I discovered that Billy had risen first; indeed he told me that he had not lain long, being not near so much overcome as I was, his harder life having indurated as well his feelings as his skin. When I beheld him he was a hundred yards or more away, sitting on a low flat rock, and eating with a great appearance of relish. Seeing me get to my feet, he called to me to come and eat likewise, and when I reached his rock I found a great array of shells beside him, some broke apart and empty, others still closed up.
Clams and Cocoa-nuts
"They ain't bad, master," he said, for so he commonly called me, "but they do make a body uncommon dry."
I was amazed, and indeed almost angry, because he seemed so comfortable, not reflecting that after the dog's life he had led aboard the Lovey Susan his present posture was, at least, one of ease and security, the mountain having done no harm as yet. My gorge rose when I saw him take out the slimy inhabitants of the shells and eat them raw; I had never eaten shell-fish at all, much less uncooked, and for all my famishment my stomach refused this sort of food. The horror of our situation smote upon my mind: here were we, little more than boys, left on a strange shore with no food but what we could pick up, no clothes but what we stood in—and they were but shirt and breeches, for the coats we had used as a sail had been washed from the raft when the great wave struck us—and no implements or tools of any kind, not so much as a jack-knife. As yet we knew nothing of the land whereupon we had been cast, though I guessed it must be an island, but whether large or small, peopled or desolate, fertile or barren, all remained to be discovered. The sum of our knowledge was that we were at the foot of a burning mountain, and that was a very terrible thing to contemplate. The thought of it drew me to look aloft at the summit, where there still hung a cloud of steam, though not so large as before, and the fire and smoke had ceased, but a stream of hot water was still flowing down the side, yet not in a great volume.
The sky was now very clear, and my head being uncovered, I found the heat of the sun very discommoding, and withal my throat was parched, and I had a great thirst, though Billy's must have been greater after the salt things he had been eating. When he saw me turn from them with loathing, he got up and said that we had better find a spring of fresh water, so we walked along the hard beach, going to the right hand with the design to ascend to the woods above, where I thought we might find a spring, and certainly shelter from the sun. Billy groaned as the sharp edges cut his bare feet; nevertheless he would not suffer me to go alone, for which I was sorry, for when we had gone a little way we came to some cliffs, which rose up so straight and forbidding that we did not think fit to scale them, at least until we had sought an easier way. Accordingly we went back again, crossing the stream of hot water, which was now only trickling, and so continued until the lava ended at the strip of sandy beach. I was now minded to strike up from the shore, but was a little timid of approaching so near the course of the hot flood, not knowing but that we might meet another torrent and suffer a scalding. But, having come to the end of the sand, we arrived at more cliffs, which, though not so high as the first, were no less steep, so that we had to make a choice between scaling them and ascending by the lava slope. Taking counsel with Billy, I determined to venture on this latter, hoping that before we had gone far, we might find a means of reaching the woods either on the right hand or the left.
When we had gone a good way up, very toilsomely, I saw with great thankfulness a slope to our left hand, which seemed to lead away from the barren lava to living soil. We struck up this and found ourselves by and by on a mossy plateau, on which Billy danced, so joyful was he at feeling so soft a carpet beneath his feet. The wood was just beyond us, not above a hundred yards away. When we came to it we were pretty well blown, and exceeding hot, having never rested nor even looked back since we left the beach. But now we bethought us to turn and gaze over the sea, having some hope—at least I had—that the seamen might even at the last have repented and put back to take us off. We saw the boat indeed, but it was a mere speck, and the raft we could not see at all, being in doubt whether it had sunk, or whether it was only the distance that made it invisible. But far beyond the boat, we saw a dark line which a landsman might have supposed to be a cloud, but which we, our eyes being accustomed to ranging over wide spaces, knew at once to be land. It did not seem likely that the seamen could yet have discovered it, since it had escaped us when we were at the sea level; I considered it to be a happy chance for them that they had directed their course so truly, though when I said so to Billy, he said he hoped they would find the land full of cannibals, who would cook and eat them all, and Hoggett first. This mention of cannibals set up an apprehensiveness in my mind, and I was chary of entering the wood, lest we came upon savages, but Billy said very sturdily, that savages or no savages, he must drink, and so went on among the trees, with me close at his heels.
We looked about us eagerly, both for water and for fruits wherewith to stay our hunger: but as for the former we saw none, and for the latter, though we saw many plants bearing berries, and some trees with fruits hanging upon them, we did not recognize at first any that we had seen on the island where we recruited, and durst not, hungry as we were, attempt anything strange lest they should be poisonous, and our first meal prove our last. At one point we were startled by a small animal leaping across our path, and Billy, crying it was a rabbit, without thinking dashed after it, a very useless thing to do; but it had this good result, that, tumbling headlong over something, he picked himself up ruefully, and then shouted with delight, the obstacle being a large cocoa-nut which had fallen from a tree. We were in a quandary at first how to break it open, having no knife or other tool to pierce the husk; but Billy bethought him of the buckles on our belts, and taking these off, we cut and scraped at the husk until we came to the inner nut, and then broke this open by hammering it very hard against the tree-trunk, finding it the more easily breakable because it was over ripe; and though we lost some of the liquid thereby, there remained enough to furnish us with a very refreshing draught.
While I was digging my teeth ravenously into the kernel, Billy shinned up the stem, which was straight like the mast of a ship, to obtain some more of this precious fruit. Having cast down two or three at my feet, he cried out that he was going to the masthead to take a look round. He went almost to the very top, and when he came down, told me that the hill we were on was not the highest in the island, the highest being the mountain, whose peak was still covered by the cloud of steam; but except what might be hidden by this mountain, he could see all the rest of the island, which by his reckoning could not be above two miles long. He told me of the high red rock which we had seen through the archway as we approached the land, and which lay now on our right hand. On the left he discovered a little bay, with a strip of yellow sand, though he could not tell how wide this was because of the cliffs. Beyond the bay the land went to a point, and beyond this again, some distance out in the sea, were two red rocks, not very large, standing up like the posts of a gate, or, as I thought when I myself saw them, like sentinels. All the country to the left of the burning mountain—that is, to the west—was covered with vegetation, either woods or grasses, which I was very glad to hear, since there was promise of food, at least of the vegetable kind. I concluded that the streams of lava cast forth by the mountain had flowed only towards the beach at which we had landed, or at any rate had flowed no other way for a long time, since otherwise the land could not have been so fruitful. I asked Billy anxiously whether he had seen any wild beasts, or any sign of the habitation of men; but he said that he had seen neither the one nor the other, but only some birds, at which I was vastly relieved.
We sat for some while appeasing our appetites, scarcely speaking, for Billy was not a talkative boy, and I was still too much under the oppression of our lonely situation. All at once I set up a laugh, at which Billy stopped munching at his cocoa-nut and looked at me in astonishment.
"Oh, Billy," I said, "if you had catched that rabbit, what could we have done with it?"
"Why, eat it, to be sure," says Billy. "I like rabbit meat."
(We knew afterwards that there were no rabbits on the island, and thought the animal we had seen must be a rat, though it did not run like one.)
"But how could we cook it?" I said.
At that he looked startled, and felt again in his pocket, which, as I have said, was empty. He had quite forgot that we had neither flint, steel, nor tinder, so that we had no means of making a fire. He looked very sober for a space, and then reminded me that we had seen the savages make fire at the island where we stayed, by the very rapid twirling of a stick, and he was sure he could do the like. However, there was no need of a fire at that time, for the very good reason that we had nothing to cook, and so we fell to again on our cocoa-nuts, and ate a great quantity before we were satisfied. We saw that we had come into a grove of those useful trees, and with their fruit, and the shell-fish on the shore, which if it came to a pinch I must eat raw, as Billy had done, we should be in no immediate danger of famishing. We saw about us, too, many birds which we might eat if we could only snare them and make a fire, though they were quite strange to both of us, excepting parrots. The most of them were something larger than a sparrow, but with brighter plumage, and they came flying about us very tamely, yet never near enough to catch.
Though we had no anxiety for the present in the matter of food, I was still far from easy in mind about our situation, for there might be wild beasts and men on the island, though we had not as yet seen any, and I was troubled about our utter defencelessness. So after we had eaten our fill and rested a while, I thought it behoved us to go through the wood and see what there might be on the other side. Accordingly we got up, feeling plaguy stiff from the many wettings we had had, though the sun had dried our clothes, and went on until we came to the edge of the wood, where we found another slope very much steeper than the first, fairly open, but with saplings growing here and there. Before we descended I bethought me it were well to have some weapon in our hand in case we should meet any enemy, man or beast, so Billy swarmed up a tree and broke off two branches, which, when stripped of their twigs and leaves, made very fair clubs, though to be sure of a rough appearance, and little likely to avail us much if we encountered men in any wise armed. Still they were better than nothing, and with these in our hands we descended the slope until we came to another thick wood, which stretched on our right hand half way or more to the summit of the smoking mountain. We went through this wood, which differed very little from the first, and then all at once we came upon a shining sheet of water, above two hundred yards long and near as broad, with a few ducks swimming on it. The moment Billy saw this he let forth a great shout, and bounded towards it, falling on his knees and drinking very heartily. I was as glad as he was, for the juice of cocoa-nuts is very agreeable, but not near so good as water for quenching the thirst; but I was not so quick as Billy, nor did I gulp it so eagerly, but took a mouthful and tasted it before drinking more. The water was cool and seemed to me good to drink, though it had a taste like the sulphur water my aunt Susan always gave to us in the spring; she said it cleared our skin. I drank a few mouthfuls more, and then we went on, skirting the base of the mountain on the further side.
Wood and Water
We found the ground here very rough; indeed, nowhere on the island, as we afterwards discovered when we came to explore it thoroughly, did we find a stretch of level ground above twenty yards in length, even in the parts where the vegetation was thickest. There were not many trees growing on this side of the mountain, but we continued our journey in as near a straight line as we could, observing more woods on our right hand which I thought to examine another day. At length we came to a high cliff overlooking the sea, and when we came to the top of it, suddenly we saw towering over us the monstrous red rock of which we had already had a glimpse when we first drew near to the shore. It rose sheer out of the sea to the height of four or five hundred feet, as I guessed, and was very broad too; at least, the side that fronted us was, being full a quarter of a mile long. Between the rock and the cliff on which we stood there was a narrow strait, through which the sea rushed at a furious pace. I felt quite dizzy as I gazed down upon it from our great height, though Billy, being used to climbing to the masthead, went to the very edge of the cliff and stood there without the least tremor. Indeed, he gave me a fright by saying that he would leap across the strait to a ledge that jutted out from the rock towards our island, approaching so near to it that he declared he could do it easy; but I sprang to him and pulled him back, overcome with horror at the thought of the terrible risk he would run and his dreadful death if he missed his footing, and also of my solitude if I lost my only companion.
I now saw that his face was very pale, and I thought that he was frightened at his own daring; but he suddenly bent his body double, and when I asked him what was the matter he said that he had a very bad pain.
"That comes of eating those slimy things raw," I said. "I didn't eat any."
He made no answer, but flung himself on the ground, groaning, and I stood over him, condoling with him, and very much concerned lest he was poisoned. I had stood thus for the space of a minute or two, when all at once I felt a terrible pain myself, and soon was beside him, groaning full as loud as he. Since I had eaten none of the shell-fish, and cocoa-nuts had never done us any harm before, I concluded, when I was able to think, that our sufferings were caused by the sulphurous water of the lake, which indeed turned out to be the true explanation; for after we had drunk of it next day we were both afflicted with the same violent colic, so that we resolved never to taste it again. Billy was worse than me, having drunk the greater quantity, and it was a good while before we were able to stand, and then we trembled so much and felt so weak that we wished for nothing but to lie down and sleep. And that put us on thinking of what we should do in the night. We had come so slowly across the island that the sun was already sinking, and we must needs find some secure place for repose before darkness fell upon us. We were both used to discomforts aboard the Lovey Susan, but there we had at least a bunk or a hammock and security from all but the storm, whereas here there was no shelter save the woods, and we did not know what strange perils might beset us there. And I know not whether 'twas the oncoming of the dark that made me more fearful, but certain it is that I found myself looking about me timorously, and at one point I was so sure that I saw a man that I clutched Billy hard by the arm and whispered him to look too. Which doing, he cried out in a perfectly loud voice, "Why, master, 'tis but an old stump of a tree. 'Tain't nothing to be scared on." Billy, I will say now, was never affrighted at imaginary perils so much as at real ones.
Night
We had to consider, I say, of how we should pass the night. I was not the least disposed to trudge back over the island, and indeed there was no need, for no part, so far as I knew, was better than any other; in short, we were both pretty tired, so that we determined to take shelter in a small wood on the edge of the cliff on the opposite side of the burning mountain from that where the lava had flowed. Our entrance caused a great disturbance among the birds, which flew out in great flocks and making shrill cries. We saw some brown rats, too, scuttering among the undergrowth, and these put Billy in mind of the rats in the Lovey Susan, which sometimes ran across the face of the seamen in the forecastle when they slept.
"I don't like them things, master," he said, "and we'd best climb up into a tree and sleep on a bough."
But it seemed to me that a bough of a tree would be a most uneasy resting-place; I should assuredly lose my balance and topple to the ground, though Billy, being accustomed to dizzy perches in the rigging of the Lovey Susan, might find it comfortable enough. Yet I had no mind for a lodging on the ground, without any defence from rats, to say nothing of wild animals, of which there might be some on the island, though we had not seen any. We talked about it for some time, and the end of it was that we set about collecting some broken branches that lay on the ground, and snapped off others that were within our reach, and so piled up a little shelter round about a thick trunk. By the time we had finished this work it was perfectly dark within the wood. We sat ourselves down on the mossy carpet, with our cudgels close to our hands, and then, bethinking us of the custom of setting watches on board ship, we determined that one of us should watch while the other slept. Being the older, I took the first watch, and Billy was soon fast asleep, and I sat very melancholy by him, thinking of our lonely situation, and of my good uncle and aunt at home, whose thoughts were, I doubt not, fondly busy about me.
There was no way whereby I might tell the time, and it might have been two hours or three had passed when, feeling my head very heavy, I waked Billy and told him to take his turn, which he did very willingly, though he rubbed his eyes and yawned in the manner of one who has not had his sleep out. In the midst of my slumber I was wakened by Billy grasping my arm, and when I sat up, he whispered to me, as if greatly affrighted, to listen. Since I heard nothing but the rustling of the wind in the trees, it having got up while I slept, I thought that Billy must have fallen into a doze and been visited by a nightmare. But all at once there came a strange howling sound, that seemed to be near at hand, and then it went into the distance, at one moment being quite low and soft, the next very loud, though it never altered in pitch. We clutched our cudgels and sat very close to each other, and Billy whispered that he felt a cold shiver running down his back, as I myself did, but I forbore to tell him so. The sound was very dreadful, as of some creature in agony, though it was not the least like any sound I had ever heard before, except once, when I heard a man tuning, as they say, the organ in our parish church; and falling upon our ears in pitchy darkness it made us very uneasy, as you may think. We were too much affrighted to rise and seek for the cause of it, even if it had been possible to find it in the dark; and so we listened to it, huddled thus together, for a very long time, as it seemed, until, being quite overcome with fatigue, we both fell asleep, and so remained until morning light without keeping any guard.
Wild Dogs
I awoke first, and was instantly aware of a scratching at some part of our barricade of branches. I sat up, grasping my cudgel, and in a moment, it being broad daylight, I saw a little opening in the barricado, and the nose of some animal pushing through it. I lifted up my cudgel and, thrusting myself forward, aimed a blow at the intruder so well that I hit him clean upon the point of the nose. There was a sudden yelp and a snarl, and the nose withdrew itself, and when we sprang to our feet—Billy having wakened at the sound—we spied a pack of small dogs, above a score, at some little distance from our shelter. They were of a strange kind, the like of which neither Billy nor I had ever seen, being of a yellowish brown in colour, and with smooth coats, not hairy like our dogs at home. Billy roared at them, asking whether it was they that had made such uproar in the night; and when they did not budge, but only looked at him without the least alarm, we both sprang over our fence and ran towards them, brandishing our cudgels and shouting very fiercely. Then they turned tail, and ran away yelping and snarling; but as soon as we stopped, thinking that we had put them to flight, instantly they stopped also, and sitting upon their haunches, gazed at us very solemnly again.
They did not offer to attack us, and, being of a small size, we did not fear them as if they were great hounds or mastiffs; but the very number of them making us somewhat uneasy, we set forward again to drive them away. It happened as at first: they ran while we ran, but the moment we stopped, they came to a stand also and gazed upon us in the same saucy manner as before. Billy shook his fist at them, and called them by a foul name which he had learnt, I suppose, from the rough seamen of the Lovey Susan; but I will say this, that on my telling him it was not a pretty word, he immediately promised never to use it again, since it offended me, and I never heard it from his lips but once after, which I will speak of in course, if I remember.
But to return to our dogs: when we saw that it was useless to pursue them, though we could scare them easily enough, we determined to go on our way as if they were not there. And as you may believe, we set our course first for the cocoa-nut grove, being amazing hungry, and as we went thither we saw some trees of the bread-fruit, and Billy climbed one of them, the trunk being no more than two feet thick, and threw one fruit at me and another at the dogs, which had still followed us, dogging us, as we say. They scampered after it as it rolled down the hill, like as kittens chase a ball of worsted, which amused Billy very much. As for me, I picked up the fruit he had cast at my feet—it was near two pounds weight, I should think—and having broken the rind, not without difficulty, for it was very tough, I tasted the milky juice and afterwards the pulp, but found them both so unpleasing that I cast it from me, very sorrowfully, for it seemed that we should never have any other food but cocoa-nuts, unless we could devise some means of cooking. We went on thence until we came to the palms, the dogs following us again, except two that found the fruit I had thrown away, and they stayed for a while sniffing at it, but finding it as unpalatable as I had done, they by and by left it and joined the pack. I observed that when Billy climbed up the cocoa-nut palm they drew in closer, as if they guessed him to be more violent than me, and supposed it no longer needful to keep at so great a distance. Indeed, when he flung down a cocoa-nut, they dashed towards it, as if he did it merely for their sport; but then I ran among them, striking at them smartly with my cudgel, though I never hit them, for they immediately fled, but came back when Billy and I sat down upon the ground to eat the fruit, and watched us with such gravity that I could not contain myself, but laughed very heartily.
When we had finished our breakfast, we went down the hill to drink at the lake, and the dogs still following at our heels, we began to feel it a persecution, and resolved to make another attempt to rid ourselves of them. The ground, as I have said before, was rough, and at one side of the lake, nearest the mountain, we saw many pieces of rock scattered about, and having collected them in a heap we began to throw them very briskly at the dogs, which kept so close together that we could not fail of hitting several. These ran yelping away, and after a while those that were not hit became aware of the discomfiture of their fellows and withdrew to a greater distance; but I observed that they went no farther than the range of our cast, from which I concluded that they were possessed of a certain intelligence. However, since their hovering was now at a more convenient distance, we paid them no further attention, and had freedom to think of other things.
We had been so much taken up with these creatures that we had given scarce a thought to our situation; but now, casting my eyes towards the summit of the mountain, I saw with great delight that the cloud of steam was altogether gone.
"See, Billy," I cried, "we are not like to be burnt alive. The mountain is quiet; yesterday's work has tired him out."
"He's only pretending, belike," says Billy.
But then I told him of what I had read in my lesson-book—I liked reading the Latin part, but did not much relish the putting the English back into Latin—about the mountain Vesuvius, that had been quiet so long as that people made great cities at its base, and lived there very merrily, the story being told very well by Plinius.
"This is a different sort, then," says Billy, "because there ain't no cities here, nor people neither."
The Mountain
I laughed at this, and then proposed that we should climb up the mountain from the place where we stood, namely, the edge of the lake, in which we had already drunk. For a great while Billy would not be persuaded, but I prevailed with him at last, and we set off up the mountain side, finding it a great toil, so steep was it, and rugged; and being shod myself, I did not think enough of the pain to Billy's bare feet, which he endured nevertheless without a murmur. There were many pieces of jagged flint lying on the mountain-side, and Billy seeing one that was flat and had a sharp edge, he picks it up and slips it in his pocket, saying that we could break open our cocoa-nuts more easily with it than by striking them against the tree-trunks or the rocks. We had not gone above half way up the mountain when we were seized with the same violent pains I have before mentioned, which made us helpless for some while, and caused us, as I have said, to forswear the water of the lake. But recovering by and by, we continued on our way, and, taking heart from the perfect stillness, there being no rumbling nor any shoot of boiling water as on the day before, we came at last to the very top, and stood at the brink of the cup, or the crater, as we say.
We were so much terrified at our own boldness that, having reached the top, we immediately ran some way down the slope, as if some dreadful monster were at our heels. But coming to our senses again, we resolutely made our way once more to the summit, and, holding each other by the hand, we crept to the edge and peeped over. I own I was very much surprised at the seeming innocence of the crater. The walls were very steep, and made of some massive sort of stone, and so jagged that we could easily have climbed down, as on steps, for a depth of two hundred feet at least. But then the sides of the crater drew in towards the centre, and we could see that it had no floor, but a hole that looked very black and terrible; and the thought that one slip might hurl us down, we knew not how far, into the bowels of the mountain amid fire and brimstone, made us shrink back. Our curiosity was satisfied, and I do not remember that we ever looked into that yawning pit again, though we had occasion to climb the mountain more than once.
We then turned about and looked back over the island and across the sea beyond. It was a magnificent fair day, the sky of a light blue colour and very clear, and from our high perch we could see a prodigious great distance on every side. Far away, like a cloud on the horizon, and south-by-east, as we knew by the sun, was the island whereto the seamen had set their course, and the remembrance of them set Billy in a rage, and he cried out on them for taking away our raft. To the westward we spied two or three islands close together, and nearer to us, though not much, than the island to the south-east. I could not think that all these islands were uninhabited, and became again not a little uneasy in my mind, for supposing our own island had no people on it, of which I was by no means assured, yet it might be visited sometimes by savages from other islands, and it would be a fearsome thing for us if any should land and discover us. Billy scoffed when I spoke out my thought.
"Why," he said, "d'ye think, master, they'd be such fools as to come here to this old smoker? And water what gives you the gripes too! No, we shan't see nobody, black or white, never no more, and we shall live here for ever and ever, if we gets enough to eat and drink, and then when we're very old we'll be dead, and no one to put us away decent," and at that he burst into tears, and begged me not to die first, because he couldn't bear it. I was a good deal touched by the honest boy's trouble, but I bid him cheer up, for we were both sound and well, though I own I felt a great lump in my throat as I thought of our present solitude and of my dear friends at home. To divert his thoughts, and my own too, I pointed to the big red rock of which I have spoken before, and which seemed more monstrous still, seen from this side. There were birds sunning themselves on its bare top, and the sight of them set me thinking that there were many birds on our island, and there must also be eggs, which we could use for food, though I remembered afterwards that having no fire we could not cook them, and I could not eat them raw as I had seen some do.
We walked round about the crater, observing, but not at first with any minuteness, the many rocks and boulders of strange shape that were scattered about, having been cast up at some time, I suppose, from the depths of the mountains. Billy laid his hand on one great boulder, and immediately started back in a fright, crying that it was burning hot, which somewhat alarmed me too, not supposing that the mountain sent forth aught now but hot water. But in a moment I saw that we had no cause for terror, for the sun was by this time high in the heavens, and the stone was made hot thereby, and by nothing else. When I said this to Billy he was in a rage with the stone for giving him a start, and shoved it very hard, and it being poised insecurely, it set off a-rolling down very fast until it struck another boulder of even greater size, and split with a mighty crash. "Serves you right," says Billy, and we both clambered down to see what had happened to it. We were surprised to see some bright streaks in the rock where it had been fractured, and Billy declared that there must be iron in it; indeed, it was of the brightness of steel. This set me on to think of the great wealth that might lie a-hiding in our island, and of the great delight it would have given my uncle if his adventure had gone as he wished; but the discovery brought no comfort to us in our helpless situation; indeed, it only made me the more sad.
We had gone but a little farther when we saw a spring of hot water bubbling out of the rock and running down in a cloud of steam. We followed its course, picking our way very slowly, for the side of the mountain was steep, until we came to a place where it dropped over a sheer cliff, and fell a perfect cascade into the sea. Then we crept round from this side of the mountain until we overlooked the long slope of blackish rock that ran down to the beach on which we had landed, and we descended slowly on the left side until we came to a strip of woodland. Here we found more bread-fruit trees, at which we were not so well pleased as if they had been cocoa-nut palms, because we had no present means of making a fire for cooking. Billy offered to make fire in the native way, but I said that he might do that afterwards, as I wished to see what this end of the island was like. So we went through the wood, and came out at the edge of a cliff, and saw below us the promontory with the archway through it, of which I have spoken. Here, too, we had another view of the monster rock, and observed that this face also was steep and straight like the others, so that it must be quite impossible to scale the rock unless its seaward face were more practicable.
PALM TREE ISLAND
Reflections
We had now traversed the whole of our island except the north-east corner, and having seen no living things except birds and small animals, we began to be pretty sure that we were the only human beings upon it. This, while it put away from us the present fear of being slain by savages, or despitefully used, yet brought home to us the full meaning of our loneliness. We sat down on the cliff, and looking over the sea, which stretched away without any sign of land, nor even the sail of a ship, we gave ourselves up to gloomy meditation. I knew that but few ships ever ventured into this southern ocean, and the chance that any ship would sight this tiny island was very small indeed. Still less was it likely that a vessel would draw in so close as to observe any signal that we might make. I remembered how Alexander Selkirk had lived four years on his desolate island before a friendly ship hove in sight, and that island was near the mainland, whereas ours was in the midst of a vast ocean, remote as well from populous lands as from the track of merchant ships. It seemed to me that we were doomed to a lifelong imprisonment, and though I had before bid Billy to be of good cheer, I was now myself utterly cast down, as one without hope.
Being thus a prey to wretchedness I sat with my head in my hands, not heeding the heat of the sun, which was now beating fiercely down upon us, until I felt very sick and dizzy, and then I got up and looked for Billy, who had disappeared. But he had only gone into the wood to find food, it being nigh dinner-time. He came back and told me that there was nothing but bread-fruit, and that we could not eat, so we had to make our way to the cocoa-nut wood, which we did by descending to the beach and climbing up the slope as before. In going along the beach Billy picked up two or three shell-fish which he called clams, the purple kind, not the larger sort, which were very heavy; indeed, one of them would have made a meal for a family. We saw, too, several crabs of a very large size, some above two feet long; and Billy, idly poking his cudgel into a hole beside a rock, he could not draw it back, and when he peeped in to see what held it, he cried out that it had been seized by a great crab, and though he pulled very hard, he could not draw it out. When we came to our wood we ate cocoanuts and quenched our thirst with the juice, Billy striking them open with the sharp flint he had in his pocket; but I could not forbear wondering how we were to live without fresh water, of which we had seen none but what was in the lake, and that was a medicine we were by no means inclined to. Having appeased our hunger and thirst we were too listless to walk any more, and too miserable to talk to each other, and so we laid ourselves down and fell asleep.
Weapons
When I awoke I saw that Billy had been fashioning for himself a new club in place of that which had been seized by the robber crab, only this time he had made a better one. Having observed that the sharp flint, of which I have before spoken, had two notches on its blunt side, he had conceived the notion of binding it to his club, and so using it as an axe-head. At first he was much exercised, as he told me, how to fasten the two together, and sighed for some iron-wire, or at least some stout cord; but glancing around he spied a creeping plant with very long and slender tendrils, which he proved to be very tough, and breaking off some lengths of this with his flint, he had nearly finished binding the flint to his club.
"What d'ye think of that, master?" says he, very proud of his achievement. I told him it was a villainous, murdering instrument, and asked him what he purposed doing with it. "Why," says he, "fight, to be sure. It would kill a savage, or even a lion." At this I laughed, saying that we had seen no lions or other wild beasts, and as for savages, if we encountered them they would certainly shoot him with their arrows or pierce him with spears before ever he was near enough to strike them with his club. But he answered stoutly that a club was better than bare fists, and an axe than a club, and as for its ugliness, he would like to see me make a prettier one, on which I said no more.
I had fallen into a doze again, when I was suddenly awakened by Billy, who shook me by the shoulder and when I sat up, pointed through the trees to a little open space at the edge of the wood. I looked and saw a number of little pigs—strange little creatures, with heads very much too large for their bodies—grubbing in the ground with their snouts, and a monstrous big sow near by. Billy springs up, and whispers he will catch one of the piglets, and then he starts off and begins to steal quickly through the wood towards the family group. I got up on my feet to follow him, and seizing the club that lay nearest, found that I had taken Billy's instead of my own, he having taken mine in his excitement. Billy had just arrived at the open space when, being very simple in his nature, he gave a great shout, and instantly the pigs set off scampering away, with him hot-foot after them. However, he had gone but half-way across the clearing when I saw a great boar with monstrous curved tusks charging from the left-hand side. Billy caught sight of the beast just in time, and turning about, he brought my club down upon the beast's head very sharply; but it was not heavy enough to do any great mischief, and, indeed, though it caused the boar to turn a little aside, it did but increase its fury. The beast wheeled about, and rushed upon Billy, who, though he smote it again, was carried off his feet and lay sprawling, the club being struck from his hand as he fell.
"THE BEAST WHEELED ABOUT, AND RUSHED UPON BILLY."
Billy has a Fall
When I saw the unhappy posture of my companion, I ran towards him as fleetly as ever I could, being in a terrible fright lest the boar should rend him with its tusks before I could come up with him. My very speed incommoded me when, coming to the spot where Billy lay on the ground, with the boar over him, I brought the flint-headed club down upon the beast's skull, for the blow was not near as straight and heavy as it might have been had my rush not been so headlong. However, it served to make the boar turn round to spy at its new adversary; and having now come to a standstill and collected myself, I dealt it such a blow behind the ear, with a full swing of the club, that it fell over sideways, and I did not observe that it made any movement after. I picked Billy up, and saw with great trouble that the boar had rent a great hole in his breeches and made a gash in his leg, which was bleeding very freely. "That's nothing, master," says he, when I asked him if he was much hurt; "but what d'ye say about my ugly murdering axe now? Ain't it a good one?" he asked triumphantly. "Wouldn't it kill a lion or a savage?" I owned that it had proved a very serviceable instrument indeed, and said that I would certainly make one like it for myself; but first I begged Billy to bathe his wounded leg in the lake, which he did, and in a little the bleeding stopped, and we went back to the wood, Billy declaring that he would certainly make fire in the native fashion, and we should have pork for supper. But when we got back to the dead boar, we found it already surrounded by a pack of dogs, which were tearing its flesh very gluttonously. They snarled and growled savagely when we essayed to drive them away, and knowing that it is an ill matter to part a dog from his bone, I did not think it prudent to provoke the rage of such a fierce regiment, though Billy cried out valorously that he would fight them all sooner than allow them to eat his pork. However, he gave in to my entreaty, vowing that he would have pork to eat before many days were past, and as for the dogs, he would teach them a lesson, that he would.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
OF OUR SEARCH FOR SUSTENANCE AND SHELTER; WITH VARIOUS MATTERS OF MORE CONSEQUENCE TO THE CASTAWAY THAN EXCITEMENT TO THE READER
This little adventure with the pigs was, I verily believe, the means of saving us from the lethargy into which we had like to have been cast by brooding on our solitude. The knowledge that there were on our island animals that might be formidable, and were certainly good for food, proved to us at once the necessity of being watchful, and of setting our wits to work to devise a means of cooking. And a thing that happened the same night showed to us that if we were to make the best of our situation, and have any comfort in our solitary life, we must take some measures for our shelter.
A Storm
This event was nothing less than a violent storm of wind and rain which sprang up suddenly in the middle of the night. We had returned to our first shelter, the make-shift hut, or rather lean-to, which we had constructed of boughs and leaves around a great tree. The wind broke this down utterly, scattering the materials of it far and wide, and the rain drenched us to the skin, or I should say, soaked us to the bone, we having no garments but our shirts and breeches. That night was the most miserable of all my life, I assure you. We huddled together for shelter under the thickest trees, listening to the howling of the wind, and sometimes hearing great crashing noises that made us fear almost to remain under shelter at all, lest the trees should fall upon our heads and kill us. Never a wink of sleep had we that night, and when daylight came, we staggered forth from the wood, two shivering miserable mortals, who would have given the world for a roaring fire and a hot posset to comfort us.
We needed not to climb trees for our breakfast, for the wind had strewed the ground with cocoanuts, and had indeed uprooted many trees, one of which had narrowly missed the very spot where we had lain. As we ate our food, very wretched, we considered how we were to construct some sort of hut, in case another storm should visit us. There was timber in plenty, but neither Billy nor I had any knowledge of sawyers' or carpenters' work; nor if we had should we have been much better off, having no tool save the rough axe of Billy's fashioning. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and so it proved in our case, as will be seen more fully hereafter.
After breakfast the first thing that Billy did was to try his axe on one of the big fallen trees. He was able after very great labour—I taking my turns when he was tired—to lop some of the branches off, but the flint was so much blunted by it that we saw it would serve us little longer. Accordingly we set off up the mountain-side to find other flints of which to make axe-heads, and on this little expedition we were followed by the pack of dogs, which watched our proceedings as if they took a great interest in them, but always remained at a reasonable distance. By midday we had collected a fair number of sharp-edged flints, small and big, and Billy having made me an axe like his own—he would not let me do it, saying that he was sure he could make a better one than me—we felt a deal more comfortable both in body and mind, being satisfied that we should not lack tools, though rough, and our clothes being dried with the sun. Indeed, we found the sun rather oppressive, especially upon our bare heads, and we wished very heartily that our hats had been spared to us; coats we could do without in the daytime, though they would have been a great solace o' nights.
Plans
Having thus furnished ourselves with axes, we had to determine the site for the hut we purposed building, and we talked very seriously about this when we had eaten our dinner.
"One thing is sure," says Billy; "we must build it a good way from the old smoker" (so he called the mountain, above which we observed that a cloud of steam had again gathered, though it had been clear yesterday). If remoteness from the mountain had been the only point to be considered, we might have been content with the wood in which we had made our lean-to; but after our experience in the storm we did not regard it as suitable for a permanent habitation when it might be shattered any day or night. It was certain we could not build on those parts of the island that were bare rock, for we could not by any means dig foundations in it, and a hut without foundations, in an exposed place, might be carried away in a hurricane, and hurled into the sea, and we in it. And then it came into my mind that if we built too high upon the island, our dwelling might be spied by the savages of the neighbouring islands of which I have spoken, for we could not doubt that they were inhabited, and the people would certainly put to sea sometimes in their canoes. This set me on thinking that it would be well to make our dwelling less a house than a fortress, in which we could take refuge in case savages should at any time land upon our island. It seemed to me, then, that we ought to seek for a remote spot, very hard of access, and bethinking me of such a spot which I had seen in our course towards the north-east, I had almost resolved to choose that spot when I recollected all at once that there was no water in that neighbourhood, which was a very serious matter. Indeed, this lack of water gave us much concern, for as yet we had found none but what smacked of brimstone, and Billy said that we didn't need physicking every day, nor yet every week. We spent the rest of that day, therefore, in roaming over the island once more in search of fresh water, and made a more thorough exploration of the western end, in which the vegetation was wilder than in the other woodland parts. There was never a spring that we could see, and we should have had our search for nothing but for a discovery that Billy made. He had climbed a bare and very rough hillock, just beyond a patch of wood at the south-west corner of the island, and I saw him suddenly stoop, and when he rose to the erect posture he held something white in his hand, and began to caper with every token of delight. Then he came running down towards me, and shouted a word that sounded like "aig! aig!" which puzzled me exceedingly, until when he came close to me and opened his hand I saw what was certainly the likest to a hen's egg that I had ever beheld, and concluded that "aig!" was the manner of calling it at Limehouse. I could scarce believe it was indeed a hen's egg, for we had seen no fowls save those I have mentioned before, nor had we heard, amid the noises of the island, the clarion voice of any cock; yet it was like nothing else, and Billy declared with great positiveness that there must be roosters, as he called them, on the island, whose eggs would form an agreeable addition to our fare.