STRANGE LIFE ON THE BEAUTIFUL ISLAND.
Tom Talisker knew nothing for some time after this of the terrible
tragedy that had taken place on the island. The place had once been a
small penal settlement for political prisoners from Ecuador, the
governor himself a suspect; but the men had revolted and slain both him
and his family, and escaping on a raft or boat had gone no one knew
whither, though in all probability to the bottom of the sea.
Such things as men landing from a passing ship, to rob and mayhap murder
a few inhabitants of a lonely island, have happened many times and oft,
and might happen again, Tom thought. He was determined, therefore, to be
prepared. So he built a little outlook, well screened with trees, on the
top of one of the highest hills, and here he or Brandy could go every
morning to reconnoitre, with the aid of the telescope they had brought
with them. They could from this vantage ground see passing ships, and if
possible signal to them by smoke or otherwise; but if men came on shore
who looked like cut-throats, it would be easy for them to hide in the
forest.
The finding of the skeletons and their burial in the orange grove did
not tend to raise the spirits of our hero; but as to Ginger Brandy,
nothing on earth was calculated to depress that boy long. More than once
next day, while they were busily engaged building their new hut not far
from the ruins of the old settlement, though nearer to the orange grove,
Brandy told Tom he was glad they had been cast away here, and that for
his part he would be sorry if any ship found them and brought them away.
The building of the new villa, as they called it, was a work of time as
well as art. First and foremost they had to transport all their stores
to a tent of bamboo and plaintain leaves which they erected near the old
settlement. This necessitated a great many journeys back and fore to the
coast; and when night came at last, and they could no longer work, both
were so tired that they fell sound asleep after supper, and did not
awake until well into the morning.
Some cattle were browsing near, but they fled in wild alarm as soon as
they saw human beings. One immense red-eyed fierce-looking bull at first
showed fight, but finally retreated slowly towards the other end of the
plain, growling ominously as he did so, and giving Tom clearly to
understand that his presence here was an intrusion that he should one
day resent. This bull had evidently been monarch of all he surveyed
before Tom’s arrival, and now to be deposed was hard indeed to bear.
But how labour lightens the mind. Both Tom and his dusky companion were
singing and laughing all day long as they worked away at the building of
the villa.
It really was no child’s play, however, which they had taken in hand.
All the uprights and transverse beams, the couples, &c., had to be made
of trees cut down in the woods, and borne on the shoulders to the site
they had chosen. Here they had to be deprived of their bark, for Tom
knew better than leave any shelter in his house for venomous
creepie-creepies. While he would be engaged at this bark-stripping
Brandy would be busy cooking the one great meal of the day, namely,
supper, which they discussed together by the camp fire and under the
stars.
It took them three whole weeks to complete the building of the house,
but when it was at last finished they had good cause indeed to be proud
of their handiwork. It was certainly of no great size, nor was it of
very showy pretentions. The couples that supported the grass roof came
right down to the ground, as they had no iron nails big enough to affix
it to the top of the plank walls. A couple of axes, a good saw, some
hammers and chisels, were all the tools they possessed, and the nails
had to be made of hard wood, the holes to receive them being bored by
means of a piece of red-hot iron.
All their energies and all their ingenuity too was therefore taxed to
make a complete job of this rustic dwelling.
“I tell you what it is, Brandy,” Tom said one day, “I thank my stars I
had such a clever uncle when a boy. Our hermitage in the woods was built
something in this fashion, and Uncle Robert taught me how to use not
only the woodman’s axe and the carpenter’s saw, but the plasterer’s
trowel as well.”
“Yes, sah,” replied Brandy; “and you mus’ tellee me mo’ ’bout dat same
uncle after dinner, sah.”
That after-dinner hour or two by the camp fire was the most delightful
of the whole twenty-four. Tom was the story-teller, and his powers of
invention were so great that he never once found himself short of
material for a good spicy tale of sea and land. All his adventures here
and there, in many lands and round the world, were related to his
companion with a hundred different verbal embellishments; and Brandy
made a most excellent listener.
But Brandy himself had an accomplishment: he could sing. His voice was a
sweet contralto; and, strange as it may seem, he always sung in good
English, though we know he could not talk the language well. Tom taught
him a great many songs he had never known before. So, what with
story-telling and singing, the long dark evenings passed quickly enough
away, and once they laid their heads down on their grass pillows they
knew no more about the world until the sun rose once again.
Brandy was always first up, and Tom’s breakfast was waiting for him by
the time he had come back from the lake, where he used to have his
morning swim, much to the consternation of the half-wild ducks that
floated there, and built their nests among the sedges.
When the hut was built it was plastered inside and out with a blackish
clay, which finally grew as hard as cement. Then some rude seats were
made, and a rough table, while all around the house a garden was
trenched and inclosed with a plantation fence. All kinds of vegetables
were planted or sown in this garden, and flowers from the woods and the
valley planted in beds and borders, with climbing ones along the fence;
but not along the walls. Tom knew better than that, for during their
work in the woods he had come across some very awful-looking spiders,
and other ugly crawling things that he wished to keep at as safe a
distance as possible.
If Brandy was enamoured of his wild and lonely life, so was Black Tom,
the cat. He was seldom at home from sunrise till sunset; but invariably
put in an appearance at dinner-time, and kept up the old sea custom of
sleeping in his master’s arms every night. Tom had come to love this
honest cat so much, that he even doubted whether he would not as soon
have lost Brandy himself as puss. If he happened to be half an hour late
of an evening his master would even put dinner back till he came.
Black Tom one day proved himself a friend in need in a very remarkable
manner.
All unconscious of danger Tom Talisker was coming singing to himself,
gun on shoulder, across the plain, when out from the woods rushed that
fiery-eyed bull. He was close on Tom before he knew what was about to
happen. His rifle was unloaded. Instinct caused him to run, and he did
his best while doing so to get a cartridge in.
On rushes the maddened brute, with tail erect and awful horned head at
the charge. It seems as if nothing can save Tom. The cartridge will
neither go in nor come out from where it has stuck. But at that moment
something rushes past Tom which at first he can hardly see. It is his
feline friend, and he springs at once on the bull’s head with a yell of
anger and claws at his eyes. This is more than the bull has bargained
for. He pauses and tosses his head wildly in the air, but the cat keeps
firm hold.
At last the cartridge goes home, and Tom advances now. But where to fire
is the difficulty. His aim must be a steady one, else he may kill his
little protector.
Bang! at last, and the bull drops. Dead? Yes, dead; for the bullet has
entered behind and below the ear, torn through the carotid artery, and
lodged in the brain itself.
The cat comes singing up now and rubs himself against his master’s knee,
and the two walk home together.
The very next day another huge black bull was seen to quietly possess
himself of the dead monarch’s flock. Where he had come from Tom could
not even guess, but the probability is he had been condemned to a life
in the woods during his predecessor’s reign.
“Do cats go to heaben w’en dey dies, sah?” asked Brandy one evening as
the three friends lounged near the camp fire.
“What makes you speak so, Brandy?”
“‘Cause, sah, I ’spects dat cat is one angel, sah. I ’spects some day he
talk.”
“Well, I shouldn’t wonder a great deal. Indeed, I would not wonder at
anything that happened in this strange island.”
It may be as well mentioned that never an evening did Tom lie down
without reading a portion of the Bible that his mother had given him,
and praying a simple but earnest little prayer for their own safety
during the silent watches of the night, and for those who were far, far
away in their homes beyond the sea.
No work was ever done on Sunday, and no stories told except those of
Bible lands or the sweet old story of our salvation, which the negro boy
was never tired listening to.
One evening, about three months after they had landed on the island, a
terrible storm swept over it. The lightning seemed to set the very woods
on fire, and to run along the ground in the awful rain. Next day the
inland lake was a little sea, and acres of the forest had been levelled
to the ground by the force of the gale.
When Brandy went out in the morning to prepare breakfast, a sorrowful
lad was he; for the rain had completely drowned out the fire, and there
were no matches.
He was not to be beaten, however; and so set to work to make fire in the
usual way adopted by savages--piercing a hole in a piece of soft plank
and twirling a pointed piece of very hard dry wood. It took him nearly
an hour, however, to accomplish the feat.
Two months passed away, making five months in all since the foundering
of the _’Liza Ann_, but all that time they had never seen a passing
ship. True, they spent only a part of the day at the outlook; but the
view was so extensive that had a vessel been anywhere within a radius of
twenty miles or more they would have discried it.
All the food, consisting chiefly of biscuits and tinned meats which they
had taken from the ship, had long since been finished; but this was a
small matter so long as their ammunition held out. Of this, however, Tom
was now unusually careful; and for ordinary purposes of hunting they
used bows and arrows, and soon became very accomplished marksmen indeed.
They also paid frequent visits to the sea-shore, and, embarking in their
dinghy, caught fish. As to fruit and vegetables, these were abundant;
so that on the whole they wanted for nothing.
Salt, by the way, was at first wanting, till Tom thought of the
old-fashioned plan of placing seawater in shallows or rocks. When it
evaporated it left a crust of saline matter, and this had to do duty as
a relish.
And now with constant hard work in the forest their clothes began to get
somewhat ragged, and also their shoes; so Tom had to learn two new
trades, those of shoemaker--or rather cobbler--and tailor. As for Ginger
Brandy, he dispensed entirely with the use of shoes, and almost entirely
with clothes even. He told Tom that he was not afraid of the sun
spoiling _his_ complexion.
“But, O marster,” he added, “_you_ is getting redder ebery day. Bymeby
you turn brown, den black, and den dere will be two niggah boys. Aha!
Your ole moder won’t know you, sah, when you goes home.”
“Home, Brandy!” said Tom with a sigh. “Heigh-ho! I begin to think we
will never, never see home any more.”
Yes, Tom had sighed. It was the first sigh for liberty; for albeit the
wild free life the two Crusoes led now was very enjoyable, there were
times when, do as he might, he could not prevent thoughts of home from
crowding into his mind.
But he could not help thinking also how happy he was to have such a
faithful companion as Ginger Brandy. To be quite alone on such an island
as this at night and all the livelong day would, he thought, have driven
him out of his mind.
The silence was irksome by day, although then there were the songs of
birds and the loud hum of insect life; but at night hardly a hush was to
be heard, except now and then a strange eerie cry in the forest that
only served to make the solitude feel more deep and awful.
They were several miles inland, and yet every night the sound of the
waves breaking on the rocks fell distinctly on their ears, and all night
long till sunrise awakened once more the voices of the woods and glens.
There grew a tree with a tall, slim, even stem not far from the hut, and
every Saturday afternoon Tom cut a notch thereon, and thus kept count of
time. One day he reckoned these up. There were thirty-eight in all! He
started. He could hardly believe it. But it was true nevertheless. They
had been over eight long months on the island!
And the time had gone quickly enough by. Tom could not say he was
unhappy. There was something in the very air they breathed which had
seemed to brew contentment, and make the days fly quickly past.
Birds and beasts too became very tame. Wild ducks even came in flocks to
the water’s edge to be fed, and the new bull was such a gentlemanly
fellow that he used to lead his cows towards the hut to be milked. The
mocking-birds would sit on the fence at sundown and sing low and sweetly
till darkness fell, and moon or stars shone out.
But I have something still more wonderful to relate. Those elephantic
tortoises that came almost every day to look for their favourite food in
the valley--a species of sweet and esculent cactus--grew so tame at last
that they no longer drew in their necks or even hissed when Tom or
Brandy approached, which they never did without an armful of something
for them to eat.
They had their regular beaten tracks to or from the high plateau where
the Crusoes lived. When upon these they turned neither to the right hand
nor to the left, but went steadily though slowly on to their journey’s
end.
Well, Brandy and Tom soon fell upon a plan to take advantage of this. If
they wanted to go towards the beach they would turn a monster in that
direction on his beaten pathway, then mount his back and be hauled away.
If the monsters they squatted on felt disinclined to move, they had only
to strike two on the shell and off they waddled.
This was glorious fun, and only had one drawback--the tortoises seldom
moved at a quicker pace than two miles an hour; but as time was no
object to either Tom or Brandy, it did not make much difference in the
long run. They were always good to their strange steeds and never
attempted to ride back to the valley, and it is to be hoped the
tortoises appreciated their goodness.