But Pomona Island, now and then, had its own little cares and
anxieties. How much longer was Cradock Nowell to live upon fruit, and
fish, and turtle, with ship–biscuit for dessert? When would the trader
come for his goods, or had he quite forgotten them? What would Amy and
Uncle John think, if the _Taprobane_ went home without him? And the
snakes, the snakes, that cared not a rap for the enmity of man, since
the rainy season set in, but came almost up to be roasted! And worst of
all and most terrible thing, Crad was obliged to go about barefooted,
while the thorns were of natureʼs invention, and went every way all at
once, like a hedgehog upon a frying–pan.
For that last evil he found a cure before he had hopped many hundred
yards. He discovered a pumpkin about a foot long, pointed, and with
a horny rind, and contracted towards the middle. He sliced this
lengthwise, and took out the seeds, and planted his naked foot there.
The coolness was most delicious, and a few strips of baobab bark made a
first–rate shoe of it. He wore out one pair every day, and two when he
went exploring; but what did that matter, unless the supply failed? and
he kept some hung up for emergency.
As to the snakes, though he did not find out the snake–wood, or the
snake–stone, or the fungoid substance, like a morel, which pumices up
the venom; he invented something much better, as prevention is better
than cure. He discovered a species of aspalathus, perfectly smooth near
the root, and not very hard to pull up, yet so barbed, and toothed, and
fanged upon all except the seed–leaves, that even a python—whereof he
had none—could scarcely have got through it. Of this he strewed a ring
all round his great mowana–tree, and then a fenced path down the valley
toward his bathing–place, and then he defied the whole of that genus so
closely akin to the devil.
But Wena had saved his life ere this from one of those slimy demons. Of
course we know how hateful it is to hate anything at all, except sin
and crime in the abstract; but I do hope a fellow may be forgiven for
hating snakes and scorpions. At any rate, if he cannot be, he ought to
be able to help it. While Cradock was making his fence aspalathine,
and before he had finished the ring yet, a little snake about two feet
long, semi–transparent, and jellified, of a dirty bottle–green colour,
like the caterpillar known as the pear–leech (_Selandria Æthiops_),
only some hundreds of sizes bigger, that loathsome reptile sneaked in
through and crouched in a corner, while Cradock thought that he smelled
something very nasty, as he smoked a pipe of the traderʼs tobacco,
before turning into his locker.
He had cut himself a good broad coving from the inside of the
mowana–tree, about three feet from the ground, fitted up with a flap
and a pillow–place, and strewn with fresh plantain–leaves. Across the
niche he had fastened a new mosquito net, borrowed from his friend
the trader, whose goods he began to look upon now as placed under his
trusteeship. And in that rude couch he slept as snugly, after a hard
dayʼs work, as the pupa does of the goat moth, or of the giant sirex.
Under his feet was Wenaʼs hole, wherein she crouched like a rabbit,
and pricked her ears every now and then, and barked if ever the wind
moaned. _Fortunatos nimium_; there was nobody to rogue them.
And yet no sooner was Craddy asleep, upon the night I am telling of,
than that dirty bottle–green snake, flat–headed, and with a yearʼs
supply of venom in its tooth–bag, came wriggling on its dappled
belly around the hollow ring, while the dying embers of the fire—for
the night was rather chilly and wet, and Cradock had cooked some
fish—showed the mean sneak, poking its head up, feeling the temper of
the time, ready to wriggle to anything. Then it came to the bedposts of
Cradockʼs couch, which he had cut, in a dry sort of humour, from the
soft baobab wood. It lifted its head, and heard him snoring, and tapped
its tail, and listened again. Very likely it was warm up there, and the
snake was a little chilly, in this depth of the winter. So without any
evil forethought—for I must be just, even to a snake—though ready to
bite, at a move or a turn, of the animal known as “man,” up went that
little serpent, cleverly and elegantly, as on a Bohemian vase. Cradock
would have died in two hours after that snake had bitten him. But
before that lissom coil of death had got all its tail off the ground,
fangs as keen as its own, though not poisonous, had it by the nape of
the neck. Wena knew a snake by this time, and could treat them aright.
She gave the devilish miscreant not a chance to twist upon her, but
tore him from his belly–hold, and walked pleasantly to the fire, and
with a spit of execration threw him into it, and ran back, and then ran
to again, and barked at the noise he made in fizzing. Therewith Cradock
awoke, and got out of bed, and saw the past danger, and coaxed the
little dog, and kissed her, and talked to her about Amy, whose name she
knew quite as well as her own.
After all his works were finished, and when he hardly knew what great
public improvement he should next attempt, Cradock received visitors,
unexpected and unfashionable. In fact, they were all stark naked;
although that proves very little. Climbing his tree, one beautiful
morning, he saw four or five little marks on the sea, as of so many
housemaidsʼ thumbs, when the cheek of the grate has been polished.
Staring thereat with all his eyes—as we loosely express it—he found
that the thumb–marks got bigger and bigger, until they became long
canoes, paddling, like good ones, towards him.
This was not not by any means the sort of thing he had bargained for;
and he became, to state the matter mildly, most decidedly nervous.
He saw that there were invading him five great double canoes, each
containing ten or twelve men; and he had no gun, nor a pinch of powder.
Very likely they were cannibals, and would roast him slowly, to brown
him nicely, and then serve up Wena for garnish. He shook so up there
among the rough branches—for he did not so very much mind, being
killed, but he could not bear to be eaten—that Wena began to howl down
below, and he was obliged to come down to quiet her.
Then he tied up black Wena, and muzzled her, to her immense
indignation, with a capistrum of mowana bark, which quite foreclosed
her own, and then he crept warily through the woods to observe his
black brethrenʼs proceedings. They were very near the shore by this
time, and making straight for the traderʼs hut, of which they had
doubtless received some account. Cradock felt his courage rising,
and therewith some indignation, for he knew that the goods could not
be theirs, and by this time he considered himself in commission as
supercargo. So he resolved to save the store from pillage, if it were
possible, even at the risk of his life.
For this purpose he lay down in a hollow place by the water–side, where
he could just see over the tide–bank without much fear of discovery,
at least, till the robbers had passed the shed, which, of course,
was their principal object. It was evidently a king of men who stood
at the prow of the foremost canoe, with a javelin in his great black
hand, poised and ready for casting. His apparel consisted of two great
ear–drops, two rings upon his right wrist, and one below either knee;
also a chain of teeth was dangling down his brawny bosom. He was
painted red, and polished highly, which had to be done every morning;
and he looked as dignified and more powerful than a don or dean. One
man in each boat was painted and polished—doubtless the sign of high
rank and great birth.
When the bottom of the double canoe grated upon the beach, the negro
king flung back his strong arm, and cast at the shed his javelin. It
passed through the roof and buried itself in the body of the fetich,
which swung horribly to and fro, while the crinoline moved round
it. Hereupon a yell arose from the invading flotilla, and every man
trembled, waiting to see what would come of such an impiety. Finding
that nothing at all ensued, for Cradock had not the presence of mind
to advance at the moment, they gave another yell and landed, washing a
great deal of red from their legs. But the king was brought ashore,
dry and bright, sitting on some officers’ shoulders. Then they came up
the bank, without any order, but each with his javelin ready, and his
eyes intent on the idol. How Cradock longed for a piece of packthread,
to have set the dried codfish dancing!
At last they came quite up to the shed, and held a consultation, in
which it seemed the better counsel to allow the god, who looked ever
so much more awful now they were near him, a certain time to vindicate
himself, if he possessed the power to do so. Cradock was watching them
closely, through a tussock of long sea–grass, and, in spite of their
powerful frames and elastic carriage, he began to despise them in the
wholesale Britannic manner. They should not steal _his_ property, that
he was quite resolved upon, although there were fifty of them. They
were so near to him now that he could see their great white teeth, and
hear them snapping as they talked.
When the time allowed, which their Agamemnon was telling upon his
fingers, had quite expired, and Olympian Jove had sent as yet no
lightnings, the king, who was clearly in front of his age, cast
another javelin through the frame of crinoline, and leaped boldly,
like Patroclus, following his dart. Suddenly he fell back, howling
and yelling, cured for ever of scepticism, and with both his great
eyes quite slewed up, and all his virtue in his heels. Away went every
nigger, drowning the royal screams with their own, pell–mell down the
beach, anyhow, only caring to cut hawser. Words like these came back
to Cradock, as they rolled over one another—
“Mbongo, pongo; warakai, urelwäi;” which mean, as interpreted
afterwards by the Yankee trader,
“He is a God, a great God; he maketh rain, yea, very great rain!”
Headlong they tumbled into their boats, not stopping to carry the king
even, for which he kicked them heartily, as soon as he got on board,
and every son of a woman of them plied his knotted arms at the paddle,
as if grim Death was behind him.
Cradock laughed so heartily, that he rolled over with the hydropult
on him, and threw his heels up in the air, and if they had not yelled
so, they would have been sure to hear him. Very skilfully he had
brought the nose of that noble engine to bear full upon the royal
countenance, and the jet of water from the little stream passed through
the ribs of the fetich. That god had asserted himself to such purpose,
that henceforth you might hang him with beads, and give him a wig of
tobacco, and no black man would dare to look at them.
Cradock Nowell felt almost too proud of his mighty volunteer movement,
and began to think more than ever that the whole of the island was his.
These things show, more than anything else can, his return to human
reason; for of the rational human being—as discovered ordinarily—the
very first instinct and ambition is the ownership of a peculium. What
man cannot sympathize with that feeling who has got three fields and
six children? Therefore when a beautiful schooner, of the true American
rig, which made such lagging neddies of our yachts a few years since,
came into view one afternoon, and fetched up, with the sails all
shaking in the wind, abreast of the shed, ere sun–down, Cradock felt
like the owner of a house who sees a man at his gate. Then he came down
quietly with Wena, and sat upon a barrel, with a pipe of Cavendish in
his mouth, and Wena crouched, like a chrysalis, between his pumpkinʼd
feet.
Even the Yankee, who had not been surprised at any incident of life
since his nurse dropped him down an oil–well, when he was two years
old, even he experienced some sensation, when he saw a white man
sitting and smoking upon his barrel of knowingest notions, with a black
dog at his feet. But Recklesome Young was not the man to be long taken
aback.
“Darn me, but yoo are a cool hand. Britisher, for ten dollars. Never
see none like ‘em, I donʼt.”
“You are right,” answered Cradock, “I am an Englishman. Very much at
your service. What is your business upon my island?”
“Waal,” said the Yankee, turning round to the four men who had rowed
him ashore; “Zebedee, this is just what I likes, and no mistark about
it. One of them old islanders come to dispute possession. And perhaps
a cannon up the hill, and a company of sojers. Ainʼt it good, Zeb,
ainʼt it? Lor, how I do love them!”
“Now, donʼt be too premature,” said Cradock, “it is the fault of your
nation, as the opposite is ours.”
“Darned well said, young Britisher, give us your hand’ upon it; for,
arter all, I likes yoo.”
Cradock shook hands with him heartily, for there was something in
the manʼs face and manner, when you let his chaff drift by, which an
Englishman recognises, as kindly, strong, and sincere, although now and
then contemptuous. The contempt alone is not genuine, but assumed to
meet ours or anybodyʼs. The active, for fear of the passive voice.
“You are welcome to all the island,” said Cradock, “and all my
improvements, if you will only take me home again. The whole of it
belongs to me, no doubt; but I will make it all over to you, for a
passage to Southampton.”
“Canʼt take you that way, young Boss, and donʼt want your legal
writings. How come you here, to begin with?”
Cradock told him all his story, while the men were busy; and the keen
American saw at once that every word was true.
“Strikes me,” he said, with a serious drawl, which the fun in his eyes
contradicted, “that yoo, after the way of the British, have made a
trifle free, young man, with some of my goods and chattels he–ar; and
even yoor encro–aching country canʼt prove tittle to them.”
“Yes,” replied Cradock; “and I will pay you, if I have not done so
already. I will give you the thing which has saved the whole from
plunder, and perhaps fire afterwards.”
Then he fetched the little machine, which the Yankee recognised at once
as an American invention, and he laughed till his yellow cheeks were
reeking at the description of the “darned naygursʼ retreat.”
“Rip me up, young man,” he said, “but yooʼd be a credit to us aʼmost.
Darnʼd if I thought as any Britisher wud ever be up to so cute a dodge.
Shake hands agin, young chap, I likes yoo. And yooʼve airned your
ticket anywhor, and a hunderd dollars to back of it. Weʼll take yoo to
the centre of the univarsal world, and make yoo open your eyes a bit.
Ship aboard of us for Noo Yerk, and if that donʼt make a man of yoo,
call me small pumpkins arterwards.”
“But I want to get to England,” said Cradock, looking very black; “and
I have no money for passage from New York to Southampton.”
“Thur now, yoo be all over a Britisher agin, and reck–wirin
enlightʼment. Yoo allays spies out fifty raisons agin a thin’ smarter
than one in itʼs favior. Harken, now, Iʼll have yoo sot down in the
docks of Suthanton, free, and with fifty dollars to trade upon, sure as
my name is Recklesome Young. Thur, now! Bet, I donʼt, will yoo, and
pay me out o’ my spisshy?”
Not to dwell too long upon these little side–paths, it is enough to
record that Captain Recklesome Young, of New York, and the schooner,
_Donʼt you wish you may catch me_, made sail two days afterwards, with
half of his best cabin allotted to Cradock and to Wena. And, keen as
he was to the shave of a girlʼs lip, in striking a contract or cutting
it, upon a large scale, he came down as nobly as the angels on Jacobʼs
ladder. No English duke or prince of the blood could or would have
behaved to Cradock more grandly than Recklesome Young did, when once he
understood him. In such things the Yankees are far ahead of us. Keen as
they are, and for that same reason, they have far more trust than we
have, in large and good human nature. Of the best of them I have heard
many a true tale, such as I never could hope to hear of our noblest
London merchants. Proofs of grand faith, and Godlike confidence in a
man once approved, which enlarge the heart of him who hears them, and
makes him hate small satire.