We had never explored the island, for we had been too busy with other
things; but after our house was finished, Mr. Crusoe said that we must
set out on an exploring expedition.
It was warm weather, but that didn’t prevent Mr. Crusoe from loading
himself and me with about a thousand pounds of luggage. He carried in a
belt around his waist a sword, a saw, a hatchet, and two revolvers. Then
he lashed on his shoulders a basket holding two blankets and a lot of
provisions, and he carried a shot-gun on one shoulder and a rifle on the
other. He made me carry another load just like his own, and he grumbled
because he did not have an umbrella to keep the sun off.
We started early in the morning to climb the big hill, at the foot of
which we built our first house. If the luggage weighed a thousand pounds
when we started, it weighed at least ten thousand before we got to the
top of the hill. Mr. Crusoe’s sword and his saw kept getting between his
legs and tripping him up every little while, and when he came down you’d
have thought by the noise that a tin-peddler’s wagon had capsized. He
fell on the edge of the saw once, but it was probably a good thing, for
it helped him to get up quicker than I ever saw a man get up before. I
expected to see some of his guns and pistols go off every time he fell,
but they didn’t do it.
We were as hot and tired when we got to the top of the hill as if we had
walked twenty miles, and Mr. Crusoe piled up his cargo on the ground and
lay down to rest. We could see the whole island from the place where we
were. It was about two miles across and three miles long, and the coral
reef ran all around it, except just where there was the opening that we
could see from the beach. Far away to the southward I could see land,
but it was so far off that you could hardly tell it from a faint cloud.
I had brought the ship’s ensign in my basket unknown to Mr. Crusoe, and
I now got it out, for I meant to set it, union down, on one of the big
trees on the top of the hill.
Mr. Crusoe, tired as he was, jumped up and snatched it away from me.
“I know what you meant to do with that,” he said; “you were going to
signal the cannibals that we are here.”
“I never thought about the cannibals,” said I, “and I don’t believe in
them very much anyway. I was going to set the ensign as a signal of
distress, so that some vessel can see it, and come and take us off.”
“That’s just as bad,” said Mr. Crusoe. “You are getting tired of this
place, and want to get away from me. You’re an ungrateful boy. There’s
hardly another boy living who wouldn’t be glad to be shipwrecked on
Robinson Crusoe’s own island, and yet you can’t appreciate it, and want
to get away.”
“But, Mr. Crusoe,” I said, “we must get away from here some time, you
know, and we never will unless some ship comes and takes us off.”
“No ship will come until we’ve been here twenty-eight years,” replied
he. “Of course the Spanish ship will come and be wrecked here after a
while, but that won’t be any help to us. No ship would see your flag, if
you did put it on the top of a tree, until the twenty-eight years are
up, so don’t say any more about it.”
I put the flag back in the basket, but I did say, “Why don’t you want to
get away from here, Mr. Crusoe?”
“Never you mind,” he answered; “I’m free now, and I mean to stay so for
twenty-eight years.”
I remembered then that Mr. Crusoe’s servant used to watch him pretty
closely when we were at sea, and I thought it was just possible that Mr.
Crusoe had done something, and that the man was taking him to San
Francisco to put him in prison. That would account for his being so
willing to stay on the island.
We stayed on the hill till we got good and rested, and then Mr. Crusoe
said that, since we could see the whole of the island, it wasn’t worth
while to explore it any more that day, and we would go home and put away
our luggage. I was glad to hear this, but I thought I had seen some
animals moving across a clearing on the other end of the island, and
when I pointed them out to Mr. Crusoe he said they were goats.
After that he didn’t think any more about going home, but said we would
go and shoot a couple of goats before we did anything else. He started
off in a great hurry, but before he had gone ten feet his sword tripped
him up, and he rolled part way down the hill, scattering guns and
pistols and things all around him, and finally brought up with his head
against a stone. He was insensible when I got to him, but a cut that the
hatchet had made in the side of his head was bleeding nicely, and that
brought him to in a very few minutes. As soon as he was able to sit up,
he said he must go home and lie down, so we gave up the goats for that
day.
It was two days before Mr. Crusoe was well enough to explore any more,
and even then he was too weak and stiff to carry a very heavy load, so
he took only one gun and his revolvers. This time we walked along the
shore till we came to the other end of the island, when Mr. Crusoe
suddenly remembered that we must find a magnificent cave that his
grandfather used to keep somewhere near the south side of the island.
There was no sign of a cave where we were, so we went into the woods and
searched everywhere. Whenever Mr. Crusoe saw a hole in the ground large
enough to put his arm into, he would think he had found his cave; and it
was very lucky that there were no snakes on the island, or he would have
run foul of some of them at the bottom of some of the holes that he put
his arm or a leg into.
[Illustration:
“BEFORE HE HAD GONE TEN FEET HIS SWORD TRIPPED HIM UP.”
]
We searched for that cave for at least two hours, and I was beginning to
believe that there wasn’t any cave on the whole island, when we came to
a small hill with a hole in the side of it, just big enough to get your
head and shoulders into it. “Here we are at last,” says Mr. Crusoe; and
he lit a candle that he had brought with him, and took his coat off, and
jammed his head and shoulders into the hole. For some reason he couldn’t
get any farther—I always supposed the reason was that the cave was only
two or three feet deep, though he always pretended it was his
grandfather’s genuine private cave—and when he tried to back out again
he found he couldn’t do that. So there he was, stuck fast, and pretty
mad at everything. The candle had gone out, but not until it had set his
hair on fire and burned his eyebrows and eyelashes, and the candle-smoke
had got into his eyes, besides partly choking him. He was fitted into
the hole so tight that his voice sounded as if he were half a mile away,
but I managed to understand most of what he said.
I got a good hold of both of his legs, and braced myself and pulled my
very best, but his boots fetched loose, and I sat down pretty hard, with
a boot in each hand. Then I got a better hold of his ankles, and hauled
away, but I couldn’t start him; and after a while Mr. Crusoe said that
he thought he had begun to come apart at the waist, and that I needn’t
pull any more.
Then I thought I would try oil; so I went back to the house and got a
bottle of sweet-oil, and poured it on him as near to his shoulders as I
could reach, and then took a fresh pull at him, but I couldn’t start
tack nor sheet of him. He was getting low-spirited by this time, and
said he didn’t believe he could ever get out of that hole, but I told
him that if he didn’t eat anything for a few days he would be sure to
thin down, so that I could pull him out.
However, he did not want to wait so long, and proposed that I should get
a crow-bar and break the rock away around his shoulders. He was giving
me a good deal of trouble, but I didn’t mind that, for I was in hopes
that he would have had enough of hunting for caves if he once got out of
the one he was in. So I went all the way back to the house once more and
got a crow-bar, and went to work at the rock. Of course I couldn’t help
hitting him occasionally, but I didn’t do him any serious harm. It was
slow work, but I gradually broke the rock away, so that by an extra
heavy pull I dragged him out.
What with his hair and eyebrows having been burned, and his face smoked
and scratched, and his clothes torn and soaked with oil, and bloody on
account of two or three digs that I had accidentally given him with the
crow-bar, Mr. Crusoe looked pretty bad when he came out of the cave. But
he was very grateful to me, and said I had saved his life a second time,
and that he certainly wouldn’t kill me for a week yet.
I supposed he would have been willing to quit searching for his
grandfather’s caves and things; but no! he insisted upon looking for a
valley full of grapes, where his grandfather had a country-house. So,
after he had taken a dip in the surf, and made himself look a little
more decent, we marched on again.
We did not find any grapes, though we searched the island all over for
them, and at last Mr. Crusoe had to give it up, and admit that there
wasn’t a grape on the island. He explained it by saying that Will Atkins
and his gang naturally made wine out of the grapes, and got drunk, and
then tore the vines up by the roots. As near as I could make out, this
Will Atkins was the captain of a gang of train-robbers who lived on the
island when Mr. Crusoe’s uncle was there. There were a lot of Spaniards
too, Mr. Crusoe said, who lived with Will Atkins, but were very good
men; so I suppose they brought information to Will Atkins, and stood in
with him, but didn’t actually knock people down and rob them. If old Mr.
Crusoe had been half the man Mr. Crusoe pretended to think he was, he
would have taken his seven guns and cleaned out the whole island.
We found the valley we were looking for by following old Mr. Crusoe’s
sailing directions, which were: to go up the creek where we first landed
till we came to the end of it, and then to cross over a little hill. Mr.
Crusoe said that the valley was all right, and looked just as it ought
to have looked, except that there were no grapes; but I showed him that
there was no end of cocoa-nut-trees, and that cocoa-nuts were a great
deal more useful than grapes.
“Were there cocoa-nut-trees here, sir, when your grandfather was here?”
I asked Mr. Crusoe.
“I suppose there were,” he replied; “for in his book he speaks of
‘cocoa-trees,’ which must have been the same thing.”
“Then, of course, he made dishes out of the shells, and drank the milk,
and made cocoa-nut pies and such,” I continued.
“He didn’t do anything of the kind,” answered Mr. Crusoe; “at least, I
don’t think he could have made cocoa-nut pies, for he was never sick but
once; and I know he didn’t use cocoa-nut dishes, because he made clay
dishes.”
“Well,” said I, “we can use cocoa-nuts, can’t we, whether he did or
not?”
“Mike,” said Mr. Crusoe, looking at me as if I wasn’t fit to live, “if
you touch even the outside of a cocoa-nut you’ll wish that you had eaten
a dozen cocoa-nut pies—that is, if I can find a way to make you suffer
as you would deserve to suffer. How dare you propose to do what my
grandfather didn’t do!”
So when I wanted a cocoa-nut I had to watch my chance and take one when
Mr. Crusoe was out of sight. This, of course, made me the more anxious
for cocoa-nuts, and twice I made myself pretty sick by eating too many.
I don’t think that three or four cocoa-nuts would hurt anybody, but you
can’t eat many more at one time without running the risk of being
twisted all up into a Turk’s-head knot.
Mr. Crusoe insisted that we must build a country-house in the valley. I
had had about enough of building houses, and I told him so, but it
didn’t make any impression on him. His grandfather had a country-house
in that very valley, and so we must have one. I suppose if his
grandfather had happened to have a broken leg anywhere on the island, we
should have had to break one of our legs in the same place.
I said to him, “Mr. Crusoe, now just look at this a minute. Did your
grandfather have three houses?”
“No, I can’t say he did.”
“But if we build a house here we shall have three, and I’m sure that
will be wrong,” I said.
Mr. Crusoe didn’t say anything, but just stood and looked at me.
“Then,” I went on, “your grandfather didn’t have a house in a cocoa-nut
valley, but in a grape valley. Now this is a cocoa-nut valley, and I
don’t believe your grandfather would ever have been willing to build a
house right in the middle of a cocoa-nut grove. Why, it seems to me it
would be almost wicked to do such a thing. Of course we should both be
glad to build a new house, but I think we ought to be sure that it is
the kind of thing that your grandfather would have done.”
Mr. Crusoe was so pleased that he was almost ready to hug me, and he
said that we would wait a few days, and his grandfather would probably
appear to him in a dream and tell him just what to do. So I got rid of
building another house, for Mr. Crusoe was never able to dream about it,
although he tried his best.
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