There are few of the minor sweets of life more agreeable than to awake
refreshed, and to become gradually impressed with the conviction that
you are a perfectly free agent,--that you may rise when you choose, or
lie still if you please, or do what you like, without let or hindrance.
So thought our hero, John Jarwin, when he awoke, on the same spot where
he had thrown himself down, after several hours of life-giving slumber.
He was still weak, but his weakness did not now oppress him. The slight
meal, the long draught, and the deep sleep, had restored enough of
vigour to his naturally robust frame to enable him, while lying on his
back, to enjoy his existence once more. He was, on first awaking, in
that happy condition of mind and body in which the former does not care
to think and the latter does not wish to move--yet both are pleased to
be largely conscious of their own identity.
That he had not moved an inch since he lay down, became somewhat
apparent to Jarwin from the fact that Cuffy's chin still rested
immovable on his neck, but his mind was too indolent to pursue the
thought. He had not the most remote idea as to where he was, but he
cared nothing for that. He was in absolute ignorance of the time of
day, but he cared, if possible, still less for that. Food, he knew, was
necessary to his existence, but the thought gave him no anxiety. In
short, John and his dog were in a state of quiescent felicity, and would
probably have remained so for some hours to come, had not the setting
sun shone forth at that moment with a farewell gleam so intense, that it
appeared to set the world of clouds overhead on fire, converting them
into hills and dales, and towering domes and walls and battlements of
molten glass and gold. Even to the wearied seaman's sleepy vision the
splendour of the scene became so fascinating, that he shook off his
lethargy, and raised himself on one elbow.
"Why, Cuffy!" he exclaimed, to the yawning dog, "seems to me that the
heavens is a-fire! Hope it won't come on dirty weather before you an' I
get up somethin' in the shape o' a hut. That minds me, doggie," he
added, glancing slowly round him, "that we must look after prokoorin' of
our supper. I do believe we've bin an' slep away a whole day! Well,
well, it don't much matter, seein' that we hain't got no dooty for to
do--no trick at the wheel, no greasin' the masts--wust of all, no
splicin' the main brace, and no grub."
This latter remark appeared to reach the understanding of the dog, for
it uttered a melancholy howl as it gazed into its master's eyes.
"Ah, Cuffy!" continued the sailor with a sigh, "you've good reason to
yowl, for the half of a rotten fish ain't enough for a dog o' your
appetite. Come, let's see if we can't find somethin' more to our
tastes."
Saying this the man rose, stretched himself, yawned, looked helplessly
round for a few seconds, and then, with a cheery "Hallo! Cuff, come
along, my hearty," went down to the beach in quest of food.
In this search he was not unsuccessful, for the beach abounded with
shell-fish of various kinds; but Jarwin ate sparingly of these, having
been impressed, in former years, by some stories which he had heard of
shipwrecked sailors having been poisoned by shell-fish. For the same
reason he administered a moderate supply to Cuffy, telling him that "it
warn't safe wittles, an' that if they was to be pisoned, it was as well
to be pisoned in moderation." The dog, however, did not appear to agree
with its master on this point, for it went picking up little tit-bits
here and there, and selfishly ignoring the "share-and-share-alike"
compact, until it became stuffed alarmingly, and could scarcely follow
its master back to the fountain.
Arrived there, the two slaked their thirst together, and then Jarwin sat
down to enjoy a pipe, and Cuffy lay down to suffer the well-merited
reward of gluttony.
We have said that Jarwin sat down to enjoy a pipe, but he did _not_
enjoy it that night, for he discovered that the much-loved little
implement, which he had cherished tenderly while on the raft, was broken
to atoms in his coat-pocket! In his eagerness to drink on first
landing, he had thrown himself down on it, and now smoking was an
impossibility, at least for that night. He reflected, however, that it
would not be difficult to make a wooden pipe, and that cigarettes might
perhaps be made by means of leaves, or bark, while his tobacco lasted;
so he consoled himself in the meantime with hopeful anticipations, and a
quid. Being still weak and weary, he lay down again beside the
fountain, and almost immediately fell into a sleep, which was not at all
disturbed by the starts and groans and frequent yelps of Cuffy, whose
sufferings could scarcely have been more severe if he had supped on
turtle-soup and venison, washed down with port and claret.
Thus did those castaways spend the first night on their island.
It must not be supposed, however, that we are going to trace thus
minutely every step and sensation in the career of our unfortunate
friends. We have too much to tell that is important to devote our
"valuable space" to everyday incidents. Nevertheless, as it is
important that our readers should understand our hero thoroughly, and
the circumstances in which we find him, it is necessary that we should
draw attention to some incidents--trifling in themselves, but important
in their effects--which occurred to John Jarwin soon after his landing
on the island.
The first of these incidents was, that John one day slipped his foot on
a tangle-covered rock, and fell into the sea. A small matter this, you
will say, to a man who could swim, and in a climate so warm that a dip,
with or without clothes, was a positive luxury. Most true; and had the
wetting been all, Jarwin would have had nothing to annoy him; for at the
time the accident occurred he had been a week on the island, had managed
to pull and crack many cocoa-nuts, and had found various excellent
wild-fruits, so that his strength, as well as Cuffy's, had been much
restored. In fact, when Jarwin's head emerged from the brine, after his
tumble, he gave vent to a shout of laughter, and continued to indulge in
hilarious demonstrations all the time he was wringing the water out of
his garments, while the terrier barked wildly round him.
But suddenly, in the very midst of a laugh, he became grave and pale,--
so pale, that a more obtuse creature than Cuffy might have deemed him
ill. While his mouth and eyes slowly opened wider and wider, his hands
slapped his pockets, first his trousers, then his vest, then his coat,
after which they fell like pistol-shots on his thighs, and he exclaimed,
in a voice of horror--"Gone!"
Ay, there could be no doubt about it; every particle of his tobacco was
gone! It had never been much, only three or four plugs; but it was
strong, and he had calculated that, what with careful husbanding, and
mixing it with other herbs, it would last him for a considerable length
of time.
In a state bordering on frenzy, the sailor rushed back to the rock from
which he had fallen. The "baccy" was not there. He glanced right and
left--no sign of it floating on the sea. In he went, head foremost,
like a determined suicide; down, down to the bottom, for he was an
expert diver, and rioted among the coral groves, and horrified the fish,
until he well-nigh burst, and rose to the surface with a groan and
splutter that might have roused envy in a porpoise. Then down he went
again, while Cuffy stood on the shore regarding him with mute amazement.
Never did pearl-diver grope for the treasures of the deep with more
eager intensity than did John Jarwin search for that lost tobacco. He
remained under water until he became purple in the face, and, coming to
the surface after each dive, stayed only long enough to recharge his
lungs with air. How deeply he regretted at that time the fact that
man's life depended on so frequent and regular a supply of atmospheric
air! How enviously he glanced at the fish which, with open eyes and
mouths, appeared to regard him with inexpressible astonishment--as well
they might! At last Jarwin's powers of endurance began to give way, and
he was compelled to return to the shore, to the great relief of Cuffy,
which miserable dog, if it had possessed the smallest amount of
reasoning power, must have deemed its master hopelessly insane.
"But why so much ado about a piece of tobacco?" we hear some lady-reader
or non-smoker exclaim.
Just because our hero was, and had been since his childhood, an
inveterate smoker. Of course we cannot prove our opinion to be correct,
but we are inclined to believe that if all the smoke that had issued
from Jarwin's lips, from the period of his commencing down to that
terrible day when he lost his last plug, could have been collected in
one vast cloud, it would have been sufficient to have kept a factory
chimney going for a month or six weeks. The poor man knew his weakness.
He had several times tried to get rid of the habit which had enslaved
him, and, by failing, had come to know the tyrannical power of his
master. He had once been compelled by circumstances to forego his
favourite indulgence for three entire days, and retained so vivid a
recollection of his sufferings that he made up his mind never more to
strive for freedom, but to enjoy his pipe as long as he lived--to swim
with the current, in fact, and take it easy. It was of no use that
several men, who objected to smoking from principle, and had themselves
gone through the struggle and come off victorious, pointed out that if
he went on at his present rate, it would cut short his life. Jarwin
didn't believe _that_. He _felt_ well and hearty, and said that he "was
too tough, by a long way, to be floored by baccy; besides, if his life
was to be short, he saw no reason why it should not be a pleasant one."
It was vain for these disagreeable men of principle to urge that when
his health began to give way he would not find life very pleasant, and
then "baccy" would fail to relieve him. Stuff and nonsense? Did not
Jarwin know that hundreds of thousands of _old_ men enjoyed their pipes
to the very last. He also knew that a great many men had filled early
graves owing to the use of tobacco, but he chose to shut his eyes to
this fact--moreover, although a great truth, it was a difficult truth to
prove.
It was of still less use that those tiresome men of principle
demonstrated that the money spent in tobacco would, if accumulated, form
a snug little fortune to retire upon in his old age. John only laughed
at this. "Wot did he want with a fortin in his old age," he would say;
"he would rather work to the last for his three B's--his bread and beer
and baccy--an' die in harness. A man couldn't get on like a man without
them three B's, and he wosn't goin' for to deprive hisself of none of
'em, not he; besides, his opponents were bad argifiers," he was wont to
say, with a chuckle, "for if, as they said, baccy would be the means of
cuttin' his life short, why then, he wouldn't never come to old age to
use his fortin, even if he _should_ manage to save it off his baccy."
This last argument always brought Jarwin off with flying colours--no
wonder, for it was unanswerable; and thus he came to love his beer and
baccy so much that he became thoroughly enslaved to both.
His brief residence on the south-sea island had taught him, by painful
experience, that he _was_ capable of existing without at least two of
his three B's--bread and beer. He had suffered somewhat from the change
of diet; and now that his third B was thus suddenly, unexpectedly, and
hopelessly wrenched from him, he sat himself down on the beach beside
Cuffy, and gazed out to sea in absolute despair.
We must guard the reader at this point from supposing that John Jarwin
had ever been what is called an intemperate man. He was one of those
honest, straightforward tars who do their duty like men, and who,
although extremely fond of their pipe and their glass of grog, never
lower themselves below the level of the brutes by getting drunk. At the
same time, we feel constrained to add that Jarwin acted entirely from
impulse and kindly feeling. He had little to do with principle, and did
not draw towards those who professed to be thus guided. He was wont to
say that they "was troublesome fellers, always shovin' in their oars
when they weren't wanted to, an' settin' themselves up for better than
everybody else." Had one of those troublesome fellows presented John
Jarwin with a pound of tobacco in his forlorn circumstances, at that
time he would probably have slapped him on the shoulder, and called him
one of the best fellows under the sun!
"Cuffy, my friend," exclaimed Jarwin at last, with an explosive sigh,
"all the baccy's gone, so we'll have to smoke sea-weed for the futur'."
The terrier said "Bow-wow" to this, cocked its ears, and looked earnest,
as if waiting for more.
"Come along," exclaimed the man, overturning his dog as he leaped up,
"we'll go home and have summat to eat."
Jarwin had erected a rude hut, composed of boughs and turf, near the
fountain where he had first landed. It was the home to which he
referred. At first he had devoted himself entirely to the erection of
this shelter, and to collecting various roots and fruits and shell-fish
for food, intending to delay the examination of the island until his
strength should be sufficiently restored to enable him to scale the
heights without more than ordinary fatigue. He had been so far
recruited as to have fixed for his expedition the day following that on
which he sustained his irreparable loss.
Entering his hut he proceeded to kindle a fire by means of a small
burning-glass, with which, in happier times, he had been wont to light
his pipe. Very soon he had several roots, resembling small potatoes,
baking in the hot ashes. With these, a handful of plums, a dozen of
oyster-like fish, of which there were plenty on the shore, and a draught
of clear cold water, he made a hearty repast, Cuffy coming in for a
large share of it, as a matter of course. Then he turned all his
pockets inside out, and examined them as carefully as if diamonds lurked
in the seams. No, not a speck of tobacco was to be found! He smelt
them. The odour was undoubtedly strong--very strong. On the strength
of it he shut his eyes, and endeavoured to think that he was smoking;
but it was a weak substitute for the pipe, and not at all satisfying.
Thereafter he sallied forth and wandered about the sea-shore in a
miserable condition, and went to bed that night--as he remarked to his
dog--in the blues.
Reader, it is not possible to give you an adequate conception of the
sensations and sufferings of John Jarwin on that first night of his
bereaved condition. He dreamed continuously of tobacco. Now he was
pacing the deck of his old ship with a splendid pipe of cut Cavendish
between his lips. Anon he was smoking a meerschaum the size of a
hogshead, with a stem equal to the length and thickness of the
main-topmast of a seventy-four; but somehow the meerschaum wouldn't
draw, whereupon John, in a passion, pronounced it worthy of its name,
and hove it overboard, when it was instantly transformed into a shark
with a cutty pipe in its mouth. To console himself our hero endeavoured
to thrust into his mouth a quid of negro-head, which, however, suddenly
grew as big as the cabin-skylight, and became as tough as gutta-percha,
so that it was utterly impossible to bite off a piece; and, stranger
still, when the poor sailor had by struggling got it in, it dwindled
down into a point so small that he could not feel it in his mouth at
all. On reaching this, the vanishing-point, Jarwin awoke to a
consciousness of the dread reality of his destitute condition. Turning
on his other side with a deep groan, he fell asleep again, to dream of
tobacco in some new and tantalising form until sunrise, when he awoke
unrefreshed. Leaping up, he cast off his clothes, rushed down the
beach, and plunged into sea, by way of relieving his feelings.
During the day John Jarwin brooded much over his dreams, for his mind
was of a reflective turn, and Cuffy looked often inquiringly into his
face. That sympathetic doggie would evidently have besought him to pour
his sorrows into his cocked ears if he could have spoken; but--alas! for
people who are cast away on desert islands--the gift of speech has been
denied to dogs.
Besides being moody, Jarwin was uncommonly taciturn that day. He did
not tell Cuffy the result of his cogitations, so that we cannot say
anything further about them. All that we are certainly sure of is, that
he was profoundly miserable that day--that he postponed his intended
expedition to the top of the neighbouring hill--that he walked about the
beach slowly, with his chin on his breast and his hands in his pockets--
that he made various unsuccessful attempts to smoke dried leaves, and
bark, and wild-flowers, mixing with those substances shreds of his
trousers' pockets, in order that they might have at least the flavour of
tobacco--that he became more and more restive as the day wore on, became
more submissive in the evening, paid a few apologetic attentions to
Cuffy at supper-time, and, finally, went to bed in a better frame of
mind, though still craving painfully for the weed which had enslaved
him. That night his dreams were still of tobacco! No lover was ever
assailed more violently with dreams of his absent mistress than was John
Jarwin with longings for his adorable pipe. But there was no hope for
him--the beloved one was effectually and permanently gone; so, like a
sensible man, he awoke next morning with a stern resolve to submit to
his fate with a good grace.
In pursuance of this resolution he began the day with a cold bath, in
which Cuffy joined him. Then he breakfasted on chestnuts, plums,
citrons, oysters, and shrimps, the former of which abounded in the
woods, the latter on the shore. Jarwin caught the shrimps in a net,
extemporised out of his pocket-handkerchief. While engaged with his
morning meal, he was earnestly watched by several green paroquets with
blue heads and crimson breasts; and during pauses in the meal he
observed flocks of brightly-coloured doves and wood-pigeons, besides
many other kinds of birds, the names of which he did not know, as well
as water-hens, plover, and wild ducks.
"Lost your appetite this morning, Cuff?" said Jarwin, offering his
companion a citron, which he decidedly refused. "Ah!" he continued,
patting the dog's sides, "I see how it is; you've had breakfast already
this morning; bin at it when I was a-sleepin'. For shame, Cuffy!--you
should have waited for me; an' you've bin an' over-ate yourself again,
you greedy dog!"
This was evidently the case. The guilty creature, forgetful of its past
experiences, had again gorged itself with dead fish, which it had found
on the beach, and looked miserable.
"Well, never mind, doggie," said Jarwin, finishing his meal, and rising.
"I'll give you a little exercise to-day for the good of your health.
We shan't go sulking as we did yesterday; so, come along."
The sailor left his bower as he spoke, and set off at a round pace with
his hands in his pockets, and a thick stick under his arm, whistling as
he went, while Cuffy followed lovingly at his heels.