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THE LITTLE SAVAGE
BY
CAPTAIN MARRYAT
THIS IS FAIRY GOLD, BOY; AND 'T WILL PROVE SO.
SHAKESPEARE
INTRODUCTION
There is a reference, in _The Life and Letters of Captain Marryat_ by
his daughter Florence Marryat, to "_The Little Savage_, only two
chapters of the second volume of which were written by himself."
This sentence may be variously interpreted, but most probably implies
that Marryat wrote all Part I (of the first edition) and two chapters
of Part II, that is--as far as the end of Chapter xxiv. The remaining
pages may be the work of his son Frank S. Marryat, who _edited_ the
first edition, supplying a brief preface to Part II:--
"I cannot publish this last work of my late father without some
prefatory remarks, as, in justice to the public, as well as to himself,
I should state, that his lamented decease prevented his concluding the
second volume."
"The present volume has been for some time at press, but the
long-protracted illness of the author delayed its publication."
_The Little Savage_ opens well. The picture of a lad, who was born on a
desert island--though of English parents--and really deserves to be
called a savage, growing up with no other companionship than that of
his father's murderer, is boldly conceived and executed with some
power. The man Jackson is a thoroughly human ruffian, who naturally
detests the boy he has so terribly injured, and bullies him brutally.
Under this treatment Frank's animal passions are inevitably aroused,
and when the lightning had struck his tyrant blind, he turns upon him
with a quiet savagery that is narrated with admirable detachment.
This original situation arrests the reader's attention and secures his
interest in Frank Henniker's development towards civilisation and
virtue. His experience of absolute solitude after Jackson's death
serves to bring out his sympathies with animals and flowers; while, on
the arrival of Mrs Reichardt, he proves himself a loyal comrade under
kind treatment.
It is much to be regretted that Marryat did not live to finish his work.
R. B. J.
_The Little Savage_ originally appeared in 1848-49. Marryat, who was
born in 1792, died at Langham, Norfolk, August 9, 1848.
The following is the list of his published works:--
Suggestions for the Abolition of the Present System of Impressment in
the Naval Service, 1822; The Naval Officer, or Scenes and Adventures in
the Life of Frank Mildmay, 1829; The King's Own, 1830; Newton Forster
(from the _Metropolitan Magazine_), 1832; Jacob Faithful (from the
_Metropolitan Magazine_), 1834; Peter Simple, 1834; The Pacha of Many
Tales, 1835; Midshipman Easy (from the _Metropolitan Magazine_), 1836;
Japhet in Search of a Father (from the _Metropolitan Magazine_), 1836;
The Pirate and The Three Cutters, 1836; A Code of Signals for the Use
of Vessels employed in the Merchant Service, 1837; Snarleyyow, or The
Dog Fiend, 1837; A Diary in America, with Remarks on its Institutions,
1839; The Phantom Ship, 1839; Poor Jack, 1840; Olla Podrida (articles
from the _Metropolitan Magazine_), 1840; Joseph Rushbrook, or The
Poacher, 1841; Masterman Ready, or The Wreck of the _Pacific_, 1841;
Percival Keene, 1842; Narrative of the Travels and Adventures of
Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas, 1843; The
Settlers in Canada, 1844; The Mission, or Scenes in Africa, 1845; The
Privateer's Man, 1846; The Children of the New Forest, 1847; The Little
Savage (posthumous), 1848-49; Valerie (posthumous), 1849; Life and
Letters, Florence Marryat, 1872.
THE LITTLE SAVAGE
Chapter I
I am about to write a very curious history, as the reader will agree
with me when he has read this book. We have more than one narrative of
people being cast away upon desolate islands, and being left to their
own resources, and no works are perhaps read with more interest; but I
believe I am the first instance of a boy being left alone upon an
uninhabited island. Such was, however, the case; and now I shall tell
my own story.
My first recollections are, that I was in company with a man upon this
island, and that we walked often along the sea-shore. It was rocky and
difficult to climb in many parts, and the man used to drag or pull me
over the dangerous places. He was very unkind to me, which may appear
strange, as I was the only companion that he had; but he was of a
morose and gloomy disposition. He would sit down squatted in the corner
of our cabin, and sometimes not speak for hours--or he would remain the
whole day looking out at the sea, as if watching for something, but
what I never could tell; for if I spoke, he would not reply; and if
near to him, I was sure to receive a cuff or a heavy blow. I should
imagine that I was about five years old at the time that I first
recollect clearly what passed. I may have been younger. I may as well
here state what I gathered from him at different times, relative to our
being left upon this desolate spot. It was with difficulty that I did
so; for, generally speaking, he would throw a stone at me if I asked
questions, that is, if I repeatedly asked them after he had refused to
answer. It was on one occasion, when he was lying sick, that I gained
the information, and that only by refusing to attend him or bring him
food and water. He would be very angry, and say, that when he got well
again, he would make me smart for it; but I cared not, for I was then
getting strong, whilst he was getting weaker every day, and I had no
love for him, for he had never shown any to me, but always treated me
with great severity.
He told me, that about twelve years before (not that I knew what he
meant by a year, for I had never heard the term used by him), an
English ship (I did not know what a ship was) had been swamped near the
island, in a heavy gale, and that seven men and one woman had been
saved, and all the other people lost. That the ship had been broken
into pieces, and that they had saved nothing--that they had picked up
among the rocks pieces of the wood with which it had been made, and had
built the cabin in which we lived. That one had died after another, and
had been buried (what death or burial meant, I had no idea at the
time), and that I had been born on the island; (How was I born? thought
I)--that most of them had died before I was two years old; and that
then, he and my mother were the only two left besides me. My mother had
died a few months afterwards. I was obliged to ask him many questions
to understand all this; indeed, I did not understand it till long
afterwards, although I had an idea of what he would say. Had I been
left with any other person, I should, of course, by conversation, have
learnt much; but he never would converse, still less explain. He called
me, Boy, and I called him, Master. His inveterate silence was the
occasion of my language being composed of very few words; for, except
to order me to do this or that, to procure what was required, he never
would converse. He did however mutter to himself, and talk in his
sleep, and I used to lie awake and listen, that I might gain
information; not at first, but when I grew older. He used to cry out in
his sleep constantly.--"A judgment, a judgment on me for my sins, my
heavy sins--God be merciful!" But what judgment, or what sin was, or
what was God, I did not then know, although I mused on words repeated
so often.
I will now describe the island, and the way in which we lived. The
island was very small, perhaps not three miles round; it was of rock,
and there was no beach nor landing place, the sea washing its sides
with deep water. It was, as I afterwards discovered, one of the group
of islands to which the Peruvians despatch vessels every year to
collect the guano, or refuse of the sea birds which resort to the
islands; but the one on which we were was small, and detached some
distance from the others, on which the guano was found in great
profusion; so that hitherto it had been neglected, and no vessel had
ever come near it. Indeed, the other islands were not to be seen from
it except on a very clear day, when they appeared like a cloud or mist
on the horizon. The shores of the island were, moreover, so
precipitous, that there was no landing place, and the eternal wash of
the ocean would have made it almost impossible for a vessel to have
taken off a cargo. Such was the island upon which I found myself in
company with this man. Our cabin was built of ship-plank and timber,
under the shelter of a cliff, about fifty yards from the water; there
was a flat of about thirty yards square in front of it, and from the
cliff there trickled down a rill of water, which fell into a hole dug
out to collect it, and then found its way over the flat to the rocks
beneath. The cabin itself was large, and capable of holding many more
people than had ever lived in it; but it was not too large, as we had
to secure in it our provisions for many months. There were several
bed-places level with the floor, which were rendered soft enough to lie
on, by being filled with the feathers of birds. Furniture there was
none, except two or three old axes, blunted with long use, a tin
pannikin, a mess kid and some rude vessels to hold water, cut out of
wood. On the summit of the island there was a forest of underwood, and
the bushes extended some distance down the ravines which led from the
summit to the shore. One of my most arduous tasks was to climb these
ravines and collect wood, but fortunately a fire was not often
required. The climate was warm all the year round, and there seldom was
a fall of rain; when it did fall, it was generally expended on the
summit of the island, and did not reach us. At a certain period of the
year, the birds came to the island in numberless quantities to breed,
and their chief resort was some tolerably level ground--indeed, in many
places, it was quite level with the accumulation of guano--which ground
was divided from the spot where our cabin was built by a deep ravine.
On this spot, which might perhaps contain about twenty acres or more,
the sea birds would sit upon their eggs, not four inches apart from
each other, and the whole surface of this twenty acres would be
completely covered with them. There they would remain from the time of
the laying of the eggs, until the young ones were able to leave the
nests and fly away with them. At the season when the birds were on the
island, all was gaiety, bustle, and noise, but after their departure it
was quiet and solitude. I used to long for their arrival, and was
delighted with the animation which gladdened the island, the male birds
diving in every direction after fish, wheeling and soaring in the air,
and uttering loud cries, which were responded to by their mates on the
nests.
But it was also our harvest time; we seldom touched the old birds, as
they were not in flesh, but as soon as the young ones were within a few
days of leaving the nests, we were then busy enough. In spite of the
screaming and the flapping of their wings in our faces, and the darting
their beaks at our eyes, of the old birds, as we robbed them of their
progeny, we collected hundreds every day, and bore as heavy a load as
we could carry across the ravine to the platform in front of our cabin,
where we busied ourselves in skinning them, splitting them, and hanging
them out to dry in the sun. The air of the island was so pure that no
putrefaction ever took place, and during the last fortnight of the
birds coming on the island, we had collected a sufficiency for our
support until their return on the following year. As soon as they were
quite dry they were packed up in a corner of the cabin for use.
These birds were, it may be said, the only produce of the island, with
the exception of fish, and the eggs taken at the time of their first
making their nests. Fish were to be taken in large quantities. It was
sufficient to put a line over the rocks, and it had hardly time to go
down a fathom before anything at the end of it was seized. Indeed, our
means of taking them were as simple as their voracity was great. Our
lines were composed of the sinews of the legs of the man-of-war birds,
as I afterwards heard them named; and, as these were only about a foot
long, it required a great many of them knotted together to make a line.
At the end of the line was a bait fixed over a strong fish-bone, which
was fastened to the line by the middle; a half-hitch of the line round
one end kept the bone on a parallel with the line until the bait was
seized, when the line being taughtened, the half-hitch slipped off and
the bone remained crossways in the gullet of the fish, which was drawn
up by it. Simple as this contrivance was, it answered as well as the
best hook, of which I had never seen one at that time. The fish were so
strong and large, that, when I was young, the man would not allow me to
attempt to catch them, lest they should pull me into the water; but, as
I grew bigger, I could master them. Such was our food from one year's
end to the other; we had no variety, except when occasionally we
broiled the dried birds or the fish upon the embers, instead of eating
them dried by the sun. Our raiment, such as it was, we were also
indebted to the feathered tribe for. The birds were skinned with the
feathers on, and their skins sewn together with sinews, and a fish-bone
by way of a needle. These garments were not very durable, but the
climate was so fine that we did not suffer from the cold at any season
of the year. I used to make myself a new dress every year when the
birds came; but by the time that they returned, I had little left of my
last year's suit, the fragments of which might be found among the rocky
and steep parts of the ravine where we used to collect firing.
Living such a life, with so few wants, and those periodically and
easily supplied, hardly varied from one year's end to another, it may
easily be imagined that I had but few ideas. I might have had more, if
my companion had not been of such a taciturn and morose habit; as it
was, I looked at the wide ocean, and the sky, and the sun, moon, and
stars, wondering, puzzled, afraid to ask questions, and ending all by
sleeping away a large portion of my existence. We had no tools except
the old ones, which were useless--no employment of any kind. There was
a book, and I asked what it was for and what it was, but I got no
answer. It remained upon the shelf, for if I looked at it I was ordered
away, and at last I regarded it with a sort of fear, as if it were a
kind of incomprehensible animal. The day was passed in idleness and
almost silence; perhaps not a dozen sentences were exchanged in the
twenty-four hours. My companion always the same, brooding over
something which appeared ever to occupy his thoughts, and angry if
roused up from his reverie.