Meanwhile, supposing the warrant to issue, let us see what chance there
is of its ever being served. And it may be a pleasant change awhile to
flit to southern latitudes from the troubles and the drizzle, and the
weeping summer of England.
Poor Cradock, as we saw him last, backed up by the ebony–tree, and
with Wena crouching close to him, knew nothing of his lonely plight
and miserable abandonment; until the sheets of plashing rain, and
long howls of his little dog, awoke him to great wonderment. Then he
arose, and rubbed his eyes, and thought that his sight was gone, and
felt a heavy weight upon him, and a destiny to grope about, and a vain
desire to scream, such as we have in nightmare. Meanwhile, he felt
something pulling at him, always in the same direction, and he did not
like to put his hand down, for he had some idea that it was Beelzebub.
Suddenly a great flash of lightning, triple thrice repeated, lit up
the whole of the wood, like day; and he saw black Wena tugging at
him, to draw him into good shelter. He saw the shelter also, ere the
gush of light was gone, an enormous and hollow mowana–tree, a little
higher up the hill. Then all was blackest night again; and even Wena
was swallowed up in it. But with both hands stretched out, to fend the
blows of hanging branch or creeper, he committed himself to the little
dogʼs care, and she took him to the mowana–tree. Then another great
flash lit up all the hollow; and Wena was frightened and dropped her
tail, but still held on to her master.
Cradock neither knew, nor cared, what the name of the tree was, nor
whether it possessed, as some trees do, especial attractions for
lightning. “Any harbour in a storm,” was all he thought, if he thought
at all; and he lay down very snugly, and felt for Amyʼs present to him,
and then, in spite of the crashing thunder and the roaring wind, snugly
he went off to sleep; and at his feet lay Wena.
In the bright morning, the youth arose, and shook himself, and looked
round, and felt rather jolly than otherwise. Travellers say that the
baobab, or mowana–tree, is the hardest of all things to kill, and will
grow along the ground, when uprooted, and not allowed to grow upright.
Frenchmen have proved, to their own satisfaction, that some baobabs,
now living, grew under the deluge of Noah, and not improbably had the
great ark floating over their heads. Be that as it may, and though
it is a Cadmeian job to cut down the baobab, for every root thereupon
claims, and takes, a distinct existence; we can all of us tell the
travellers of a thing yet harder to kill—the hope in the heart of a
man. And, the better man he is, the more of hopeʼs spores are in him;
and the quicker they grow again, after they have all been stamped upon.
A mushroom in the egg likes well to have the ground beaten overhead
with a paviourʼs rammer, and comes up all the bigger for it, and lifts
a pave–stone of two hundred–weight. Shall then the pluck of an honest
man fail, while his true conscience stirs in him, though the result be
like a fleeting fungus, supposed to be born in an hour by those who
know nothing about it, and who make it the type of an upstart—shall
not his courage work and spread, although it be underground, as he
grows less and less defiant; and rear, perhaps in the autumn of life, a
genuine crop, and a good one?
Cradock Nowell found his island not at all a bad one. There was plenty
to eat at any rate, which is half the battle of life. Plenty to drink
is the other half, in the judgment of many philosophers. But I think
that plenty to look at it ought to be at least a third of it. The pride
of the eyes, if not exercised on that vanishing point, oneself, is a
pride legitimate, and condemned by no apostle. And here there was noble
food for it; and it is a pride which, when duly fed, slumbers off into
humility.
Oh the glory of everything, the promise, and the brightness; the large
leading views of sky and sea, and the crystal avenues onward. The
manner in which a fellow expands, when he looks at such things—if he be
capable of expanding, which surely all of us are—the way in which he
wonders, and never dreams about wondering, and the feeling of grandeur
growing within him, and how it repents him of littleness, and all his
foes are forgiven; and then he sees that he has something himself to do
with all the beauty of it—upon my word, I am a great fool, to attempt
to tell of it.
Cradock saw his lovely island, and was well content with it. It was
not more than four miles long, and perhaps three miles across; but it
was gifted with three grand things—beauty, health, and nourishment.
It might have been ages, for all he saw then, since man had sworn
or forsworn in it; perhaps none since the voyagers of Necho, whose
grand truth was so incredible. There were no high hills, and no very
deep holes; but a pleasant undulating place, ever full of leaves and
breezes. And as for wild beasts, he had no fear; he knew that they
would require more square miles than he owned. As for snakes, he was
not so sure; and indeed there were some nasty ones, as we shall see
by–and–by.
Then he went to the shore, and looked far away, even after the
_Taprobane_. The sea was yet heaving heavily, and tumbling back into
itself with a roar, and some fishing eagles were very busy, stooping
along the foam of it; but no ship was to be seen anywhere, and far away
in the south and south–east the selvage of black clouds, lopping over
the mist of the horizon, showed that still the typhoon was there, and
no one could tell how bad it was.
Cradock found a turtle, at which Wena looked first in mute wonder, with
her eyes taking jumps from their orbits, and then, like all females,
she found tongue, and ran away, and barked furiously. Presently she
came back, sniffing along, and drawing her nose on the sand, yet
determined to stick by her master, even if the turtle should eat him.
But, to her immense satisfaction, the result was quite the converse:
she and her master ate the turtle; beginning, _ab ovo_, that morning.
For, although Crad could not quite eat the eggs raw (by–the–by, they
are not so bad that way), and although he could not quite strike a
light by twirling one stick in the back of another, he had long ago
found reason _for_, and he rapidly found that excellent goddess _in_,
the roasting of eggs. And for that, he had to thank Amy. Only see how
thoughtful women are!—yes, a mark of astonishment.
But the astonishment will subside, perhaps, when we come to know all
about it; for then all the misogynes may declare that the thought was
born of vanity. Let them do so. Facts are facts, I say.
Amy had sent him a photograph of her faithful self, beautifully
done by Mr. Silvy, of Bayswater, and framed in a patent loverʼs
box, I forget the proper name for it—something French, of course—so
ingeniously contrived, that when a spring at the back was pressed,
a little wax match would present itself, from a lining of asbestos,
together with a groove to draw it in. Thus by night, as well as by day,
the smile of the loved one might illumine the lonely heart of the lover.
Now this device stood him in good stead—as doubtless it was intended to
do by the practical mind of the giver—for it served to light the fire
wherewith man roasteth roast, and is satisfied. And a fire once lit
in the hollow heart of that vast mowana–tree (where twenty men might
sit and smoke, when the rainy season came), if you only supplied some
fuel daily, and cleared away the ashes weekly, there need be no fear of
philanthropy making a trespasser of Prometheus. Cradock soon resolved
to keep his head–quarters there, for the tree stood upon a little hill,
overlooking land and sea, for many a league of solitude. And it was not
long before he found that the soft bark of the baobab might easily be
cut so as to make a winding staircase up it; and the work would be an
amusement to him, as well as a great advantage.
Master and dog having made a most admirable breakfast upon turtles’
eggs, “roasted very knowingly”—as Homer well expresses it—with a
large pineapple to follow, started, before the heat of the day,
in search of water, the indispensable. Shaddocks, and limes, and
mangosteens, bananas—with their long leaves quilling—pineapples,
mawas, and mamoshoes, cocoa–nuts, plantains, mangoes, palms, and
palmyras, custard–apples, and gourds without end—besides fifty other
ground–fruits, ay, and tree–fruits for that matter, quite unknown to
Cradock, there was no fear of dying from drought; and yet the first
thing to seek was pure water. If Cradock had thought much about the
thing, very likely it would have struck him that some of the fruits
which he saw are proof not so much of human cultivation, as of human
presence, at some time.
But he never thought about that; and indeed his mind was too full for
thinking. So he cut himself a most tremendous bludgeon of camelthorn,
as heavy and almost as hard as iron, and off he went whistling, with
Wena wondering whether the stick would beat her.
He certainly took things easily; more so than is quite in accord with
human nature and reason. But the state of his mind was to blame for it;
and the freshness of the island air, after the storm of the night.
Even a rejected lover, or a disconsolate husband, gives a jerk to his
knee–joints, and carries his elbows more briskly, when the bright
spring morning shortens his shadow at every step. Cradock, moreover,
felt quite sure that he would not be left too long there; that his
friends on board the _Taprobane_ would come aside from their track to
find him, on their return–voyage from Ceylon; and so no doubt they
would have done, if it had been in their power. But the _Taprobane_,
as we shall see, never made her escape, in spite of weatherly helm and
good seamanship, from the power of that typhoon. She was lost on the
shoals of Benguela Bay, thirty miles south of Quicombo; and not a man
ever reached the shore to tell the name of the ship. But a Portuguese
half–caste, trading there, found the name on a piece of the taffrail,
and a boat which was driven ashore.
After all, we see then that Cradock was wonderfully lucky—at least,
if it be luck to live—in having been left behind, that evening, on an
uninhabited island. “Desolate” nobody could call it, for the gifts
of life lay around in abundance, and he soon had proof that the feet
of men, ay, of white men, trod it sometimes. Following the shore, a
little further than the sailors had gone, he came on a pure narrow
thread of crystal, a current of bright water dimpling and twinkling
down the sand. Wena at once lay down and rolled, and wetted every bit
of herself; and then began to lap the water wherein her own very active
and industrious friends were drowning. That Wena was such a ladylike
dog; she washed herself before drinking, and she never would wash in
salt water. It made her hair so unbecoming.
Cradock followed up that stream, and found quite a tidy little brook,
when he got above the sand–ridge, full of fish, and fringed with trees,
and edged with many a quaint bright bird, scissor–bills and avosets,
demoiselles and flamingoes. Wena plunged in and went hunting blue–rats,
and birds, and fishes, while her master stooped down, and drank, and
thanked God for this discovery.
A little way up the brook he found a rude shanty, a sort of wigwam,
thatched with leaves and waterproof, backed by a low rock, but quite
open in front and at both ends. Under the shelter were blocks of ebony,
billets of bar–wood piled up to the roof, a dozen tusks of ivory, bales
of dried bark, and piles of rough cylinders full of caoutchouc, and
many other things which Cradock could not wait to examine. But he felt
quite certain that this must be some traderʼs depôt for shipping: the
only thing that surprised him was that the goods were left unprotected.
For he knew that the West Africans are the biggest thieves in the
world, while he did not understand the virtue of the hideous great
Fetich, hanging there.
It was made of a long dried codfish, with glass eyes, ground in the
iris, and polished again in the pupil, and a glaring stripe of red
over them, and the neck of a bottle fixed as for a tongue, and the
body skewered open and painted bright blue, ribbed with white, like a
skeleton, and the tail prolonged with two spinal columns, which rattled
as it went round. The effect of the whole was greatly increased by the
tattered cage of crinoline in which it was suspended, and which went
creaking round, now and then, in the opposite direction.
No nigger would dare to steal anything from such a noble idol. At least
so thought the Yankee trader who knew a thing or two about them. He had
left his things here in perfect faith, while he was travelling towards
the Gaboon, to complete his cargo.
Cradock was greatly astounded. He thought that it must be a white
manʼs work; and soon he became quite certain, for he saw near a cask
the clear mark of a boot, of civilized make, unquestionably. Then he
prized out the head of the cask, after a deal of trouble, and found a
store of ship–biscuit, a little the worse for weevil, but in very fair
condition. He gave Wena one, but she would not touch it, for she set
much store by her teeth, and had eaten a noble breakfast.
Having made a rough examination of the deserted shed, and found no
sort of clothing—which did not vex him much, except that he wanted
shoes—he resolved to continue the circuit of his new dominions, and
look out perhaps for another hut. He might meet a man at any time; so
he carried his big stick ready, though none but cannibals could have
any good reason to hurt him. As he went on, and struck inland to cut
off the northern promontory, the lie of the land and the look of the
woods brought to his mind more clearly and brightly his own beloved
New Forest. He saw no quadruped larger than a beautiful little deer,
lighter than a gazelle, and of a species quite unknown to him. They
stood and looked at him prettily, without either fear or defiance,
and Wena wanted to hunt them. But he did not allow her to indulge that
evil inclination. He had made up his mind to destroy nothing, even
for his own subsistence, except the cold–blooded creatures which seem
to feel less of the death–pang. But he saw a foul snake, with a flat
heavy head, which hissed at and frightened the doggie, and he felt sure
that it was venomous: monkeys also of three varieties met him in his
pilgrimage, and seemed disposed to be sociable; while birds of every
tint and plumage fluttered, and flashed, and flitted. Then Wena ran up
to him howling, and limping, and begging for help; and he found her
clutched by the seed–vessels of the terrible uncaria. He could scarcely
manage to get them off, for they seemed to be crawling upon her.
When he had made nearly half his circuit, without any other
discovery—except that the grapes were worthless—the heat of the noonday
sun grew so strong, although it was autumn there—so far as they have
any autumn—that Cradock lay down in the shade of a plantain; and, in a
few seconds afterwards, was fast asleep and dreaming. Wena sat up on
guard and snapped at the nasty poisonous flies, which came to annoy her
master.
How heavenly tropical life would be, in a beautiful country like that,
but for those infernal insects! The mosquito, for instance,—and he is
an angel, compared to some of those Beelzebubs,—must have made Adam
swear at Eve, even before the fall. And then those awful spiders,
whose hair tickles a man to madness, even if he survives the horror of
seeing such devils. And then the tampan—but let us drop the subject,
please, for fear of not sleeping to–night. Cradock awoke in furious
pain, and spasms most unphilosophical. He had dreamed that he was
playing football upon Cowley Green, and had kicked out nobly with his
right foot into a marching line of red ants. Immediately they swarmed
upon him, up him, over him, into him, biting with wild virulence, and
twisting their heads and nippers round in every wound to exasperate
it. Wena was rolling and yelling, for they attacked her too. Cradock
thought they would kill him; although he did not know that even the
python succumbs to them. He was as red all over, inside his clothes
and outside, as if you had winnowed over him a bushel of fine rouge.
Dancing, and stamping, and recalling, with heartfelt satisfaction, some
strong words learned at Oxford, he caught up Wena, and away they went,
two solid lumps of ants, headlong into the sea. Luckily he had not far
to go; he lay down and rolled himself, clothes and all, and rolled poor
Wena too in the waves, until he had the intense delight of knowing that
he had drowned a million of them. Ah! and just now he had made up his
mind to respect every form of life so.
Oh, but I defy any fellow, even the sage Archbishop who reads novels to
stop other people, to have lectured us under the circumstances, or to
have kept his oaths in, with those twenty thousand holes in him. The
salt water went into Cradockʼs holes, and made him feel like a Cayenne
peppercastor; and the little dog sat in the froth of the sea, and
thought that even dogs are allowed a hell.
After that there was nothing to do, except to go home mournfully—if a
tree may be called a home, as no doubt it deserves to be—and then to
dry the clothes, and wish that the wearer knew something of botany.
Cradock had no doubt at all that around him grew whole stacks of leaves
which would salve and soothe his desperate pain; but he had not the
least idea which were balm and which were poison. How he wished that,
instead of reading so hard for the scholarship of Dean Ireland, he
had kept his eyes open in the New Forest, and learned just Natureʼs
rudiments! Of course he would have other leaves to deal with; but
certain main laws and principles hold good all the world over. Bob
Garnet would have been quite at home, though he had never seen one of
those plants before.
We cannot follow him, day by day. It is too late in the tale for that,
even if we wished it. Enough that he found no other trace of man
upon the island, except the traderʼs hut, or store, with the hideous
scarecrow hanging, and signs of human labour, in the growth of some
few trees—about which he knew nothing—and in a rough piece of ground
near the shanty, cleared for a kitchen–garden. Cassavas, and yams, and
kiobos, and pea–nuts, and some other things, grew there; which, as he
made nothing of them, we must treat likewise. There had even been some
cotton sown, but the soil seemed not to suit it. It was meant, perhaps,
by the keen American, who thought himself lord of the island, for a
little random experiment.
When would he come back? That was the question Cradock asked, both
of himself and Wena, twenty times a day. Of course poor Cradock knew
not whether his lord of the manor were a Yankee or a Britisher, a
Portuguese or a Dutchman; “Thebis nutritus an Argis.” Only he supposed
and hoped that a white man came to that island sometimes, and brought
other white men with him.
By this time, he had cut a winding staircase up the walls of his
castle, and added a great many rough devices to his rugged interior.
Twice every day he clomb his tree, to seek all round the horizon; and
at one time he saw a sail in the distance, making perhaps for Loanda.
But that ship was even outside the expansive margin of hope. And now he
divided his time between his grand mowana citadel and the storehouse,
with whose contents he did not like to meddle much, because they were
not his property.
There he placed the shipʼs hydropult, which he had found lying on the
beach; for the mate had brought it to meet the chance of finding
shallow water, where the casks could not be stooped or the water
bailed without fouling it; and the boatʼs crew, in their rush and
flurry, had managed to leave it behind them. Cradock left it in the
storehouse, because it was useless to him where he had no water, and
it amused him sometimes to syringe Wena from the brook which flowed
hard by. Moreover, he thought that if anything happened to prevent
him from explaining things, the owner of the place, whoever he might
be, would find in that implement more than the value of the biscuits
which Cradock was eating, and getting on nicely with them, because they
corrected the richness of turtle.
Truly, his diet was glorious, both in quality and variety; and he
very soon became quite a pomarian Apicius. Of all fruits, perhaps the
mangosteen (_Garcinia mangostana_) is the most delicious, when you get
the right sort of it—which I donʼt think they have in Brazil—neither
is the lee chee a gift to be despised, nor the chirimoya, and several
others of the Annona race; some of the Granadillas, too, and the
sweet lime, and the plantains, and many another fount of beauty and
delight—all of which, by skill and care, might be raised in this
country, where we seem to rest content with our meagre hothouse
catalogue.
I do not say that all these fruits were natives of “Pomona Island,” as
Cradock, appreciating its desserts, took the liberty of naming it; but
most of them were discoverable in one part or another of it; some born
from the breast of nature, others borne by man or tide. And almost all
of them still would be greatly improved by cultivation.
So the head gardener of the island, who left the sun to garden for
him, enjoyed their exquisite coolness, and wondered how they could be
so cool in the torrid sunshine; and though he did not know the name of
one in fifty of them, he found out wonderfully soon which of them were
the nicest. And soon he discovered another means of varying his diet,
for he remembered having read that often, in such lonely waters, the
swarming fish will leap on board of a boat floating down the river.
Thereupon he made himself a broad flat tray of bark, with a shallow
ledge around it, and holding a tow–rope, made also of bark, launched
it upon the brook. Immediately a vast commotion arose among the finny
ones; they hustled, and huddled, and darted about, and then paddled
gravely and stared at it. Then, whether from confusion of mind, or the
reproaches of their comrades, or the desire of novelty, half a dozen
fine fellows made a rush, and carried the ship by boarding. Whereupon
Cradock, laughing heartily, drew his barge ashore, and soon Wena and
himself were deep in a discussion ichthyological.
As may well be supposed, the pure sea breezes and wholesome diet, the
peace and plenty, and motherly influence of nature, the due exercise
of the body, without undue stagnation of mind, the pleasure of finding
knowledge expand every day, stomachically, while body and mind were
girded alike, and the heart impressed with the diamond–studded belt of
hope—all this, we may well suppose, was beginning to try severely the
nasal joints of incessant woe.