There was a nice westerly breeze blowing that night about ten o’clock
when I crept out of the house without waking Mr. Crusoe. I had found my
old flannel clothes, and I had a lump of soap with me, and when I got to
the beach the first thing I did was to break out of my goat-skin
clothes, wash the burnt cork off of myself, and put on my old
sailor-clothes. I felt comfortable then for the first time in a great
many weeks, and I thought what a fool I would be to stay on the island
and wear goat-skin clothes, and have to listen to stories about old Mr.
Crusoe.
I had a compass and a lantern in the canoe, but as there was a full moon
I could see to steer for the opening in the reef without the compass. I
was glad of this, for I did not want to light the lantern for fear that
Mr. Crusoe might wake up and see it. I had forgotten that I had to swim
out to the canoe when I put my flannel clothes on, so I had to take them
off again till I was safe on board.
I got up my anchor and got sail on her without making any noise. The
canoe slipped along through the water towards the opening in the reef,
and in about ten minutes after I started I was just abreast the south
end of the island. I had to run close to a ridge of rock that projected
out towards the reef, and to my great surprise I saw somebody sitting on
the rocks and watching the boat. From his goat-skin clothes I knew it
was Mr. Crusoe, but he sat perfectly still, and never even hailed me. I
could not imagine how he could have got to the end of the island before
me, until I remembered that I did not look to see if he was in the house
when I left it. He must have been out taking a walk in the moonlight
when I started for the boat, and of course he knew when he saw the boat
under sail that I was leaving him.
I expected every minute that he would call to me to come back, or that
perhaps he would fire at me, but he sat still until I was nearly outside
of the reef, and then he got up and walked slowly away. It made me feel
a little sorry to have him catch me in the very act of leaving him, but
then he had only himself to blame that he was not with me.
Beyond knowing, from the height of the sun at noon, that the island was
a long way south of the line, I did not have the least idea where it
was, and of course I could not tell what course to steer in order to
reach any inhabited country. I did not steer for what Mr. Crusoe and I
used to call the main-land—that is, the little bit of land that we could
see from the island—for I felt sure that if it was inhabited at all, it
was inhabited by savages. So, after I had got well clear of the island,
I headed the boat due north, and resolved to keep on that course until I
could find either land or a ship.
There was a nice, steady breeze, and the boat steered so easily that I
had hardly anything to do. Before long I was very sleepy, and once I
nearly fell overboard as I stood at the steering-oar. About two o’clock,
as near as I could calculate, I felt that I must turn in; so I took in
the main-sail, hauled the jigger-sheet flat aft, and hove the boat to.
Then I wrapped myself up in a blanket and went to sleep.
I woke up long after daylight, and found that there was a fresh westerly
breeze, and that the sea was getting up. The canoe had drifted a long
way while I was asleep, and the island was out of sight. It was a little
lonesome all alone on the Pacific Ocean, and I found myself wondering
how poor Mr. Crusoe would manage to build a fire and get his own
breakfast. I opened a can of salmon, and with that and two or three
biscuits I made a good breakfast.
Allowing for the course I had steered before I went to sleep, and the
distance the boat had drifted afterwards, I could tell pretty nearly in
what direction the island must lie. I wondered if Mr. Crusoe felt as
lonesome as I did, and I wished he was with me. He was very trying at
times, but then he was a good man, and he had been very kind to me.
After breakfast I made sail on the boat and headed her for the north
again. If Mr. Crusoe couldn’t build a fire, he could have a cold
breakfast, for he had at least four years’ supply of canned things. But
what would he do if he were to be sick? He wasn’t a strong man, and I
thought it was very likely that he might catch cold or get a fever or
something.
I worried about Mr. Crusoe for the next hour, and then I said that I had
done wrong to leave him, and that I would go back. I put the boat on the
other tack, and steered for the island, and the moment I had done it I
somehow saw that I had done a mean, cowardly thing in leaving Mr.
Crusoe, and that I couldn’t feel happy again until I had told him so and
begged his pardon.
I sailed for three hours at the rate of about five miles an hour, and by
my calculation I ought to have seen the island by that time, but it
wasn’t in sight. Then I began to be afraid that I would never find it
again, and I grew more anxious to get back to it than I had ever been to
leave it. Then I remembered that the canoe had no keel, and that she
would drift a good deal faster than a civilized boat, so I beat up to
windward nearly all the rest of the day, and by five o’clock I saw the
cross on the top of the hill. I was never so glad to see anything in my
life before. I said to myself that if I could once get ashore on that
island again I would stand by Mr. Crusoe, no matter how long he might
stay there.
At sunset I was only about ten miles from the island, which bore due
south-west from the boat, when I saw a squall coming down directly from
the south-west. When it struck me I had managed to reef my sail by
rolling it around the mast until it was about as small as the jigger;
but for all that the squall was so fierce that it drove the canoe astern
at a terrible rate so long as the sails were shaking, and hove her way
over on her side when I let the sails fill. Instead of passing over
quickly, the squall seemed as if it had come to stay, and it was blowing
a gale within half an hour after it had reached the boat.
There was no working the canoe to windward against such a gale, so I
just hove her to under the jigger and let her drift. She drifted about
as fast as an ordinary boat would sail, and I saw that if the gale
continued I should be blown so far off the island that I could never
find my way back. I made a sea-anchor out of a couple of poles that were
in the boat, a lot of heavy tin cans, and a piece of canvas, and when I
got this overboard it kept her from drifting quite as fast as she had
done. However, the wind stayed in the south-west, and as long as it did
not change I could not very well lose the bearing of the island.
I knew that Mr. Crusoe would make sure that I would be drowned, for I
never saw a landsman yet who thought that a small boat could live in bad
weather, although there are lots of big iron steamers that are worse
sea-boats than a good whale-boat or a metallic life-boat. As for my
canoe, the only trouble with her was that she was too long, considering
that she had no sheer forward. For a while the half deck forward kept
her pretty dry, but of course the sea kept getting up, and by-and-by the
canoe got to dipping her head into every sea, and taking a lot of water
into her.
There was no help for it except to put the canoe right before the wind,
and keep sail enough on her to keep her out of the way of the seas. It
was ticklish work to get her before the wind, and I should very likely
have swamped her if I had not remembered that she was the same at both
ends, and that instead of turning her around all I had to do was to take
the steering-oar to the bow and make that the stern. So I set the
jigger, cut away the sea-anchor, and got the steering-oar out at the
bow. Away she went stern first, like a yacht running for the turning
buoy, and she was as dry as a bone, barring a little spray that
occasionally flew over her.
There was no sleep for me that night, for I couldn’t leave the
steering-oar a minute or the canoe would have broached to, and there
would have been a sudden end of my voyage, and Mr. Crusoe would have
been left alone for good and all.
However, the gale was a short one, and it blew itself out by morning,
and then the sea went down very fast. By eight o’clock there was only a
stiff breeze, and I was able to heave the boat to and get my breakfast
and a little rest. I calculated that I must be about a hundred miles
from the island, but the wind had backed into the north-west, and I
could lay a straight course for home. I had never called the island home
before, but now I was regularly homesick for it, and I would have given
almost anything to see Mr. Crusoe, and tell him that I would stick by
him in spite of his grandfather.
I sailed all that day and the next night, and by my reckoning I ought to
have sighted the island by daylight, but I was disappointed. Way up to
windward I saw the smoke of a steamer, but there wasn’t the least use in
trying to beat up to her, and I didn’t try it. All that day I stood on
what I thought was the right course, but no island came in sight, and
for fear that I would miss it in the dark, I hove to again for the
night.
Luckily I had the same breeze in the morning, for I had only one little
paddle in the canoe, and I could have done nothing with her in a calm. I
had now been steering south-west so long that I was sure I must have
passed the island, but whether it lay on the right hand or the left I
could only guess. I resolved to steer south-east for six hours, and
then, if the island did not come in sight, I intended to steer as nearly
north-east as the wind would let me for another six hours.
By this means I made sure that I should sight the island by night, but,
as it turned out, I didn’t. I steered south-west from eight till twelve,
and then the wind all died out. There wasn’t a breath, and the canoe
might as well have been anchored, so far as I could see.
The calm lasted all day, and I turned in at night expecting to wake up
if there should be a breeze. I could not get asleep for a long while. I
had heard of calms on the Pacific lasting three weeks, and I felt as if
I should go stark crazy if I had to float in a boat in a dead calm and
in hot weather for any such time. I felt more than ever that I had done
wrong to leave the island, and that the chances were that, instead of
finding a ship, and getting the captain to go and take Mr. Crusoe off, I
might be becalmed, and drift with a current so far that I would
completely lose my reckoning, and not be able to tell anybody where the
island was, even if I should be picked up.
At last I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was broad daylight, and the
sun was just behind an island that was only fifteen or twenty miles
away. At first I didn’t recognize it, but before long I saw it was my
own island. There was a gentle breeze, that was blowing me directly
towards the land, and I suppose there must have been a current that had
carried me in the same direction during the night. It did not take me
many minutes to set both sails and to rig out a blanket for a spinnaker,
and by noon I was at the entrance in the reef, and keeping a bright
lookout for Mr. Crusoe.
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