BREAD-MAKING.
There was a wooden tub lying near the oyster heap, which I conjectured
was for holding water in which to open and separate the oysters in the
examination for pearls. I filled this tub at the stream and set it in
the shade of the willows. Then, with bared arms, and nostrils plugged
with leaves, I began the disgusting task of examining the oysters
carefully one by one. The second oyster I opened contained fifteen
little seed pearls not much larger than a grain of mustard seed. Then I
drew blank after blank in the lottery, until I had opened perhaps fifty
shells. Then a great prize came out in the shape of a beautiful
pear-shaped pearl of the size of a small hazel-nut, rainbow tinted and
lustrous as a moon-lit cloud. Thus it went with varying fortune all the
afternoon, until the heap was exhausted and I had collected two hundred
and fifty seed pearls, ninety-seven small pearls, and a hundred and
sixteen larger ones, some of them of great lustre and beauty. What the
value of these pearls would prove to be I had no means of estimating,
but it doubtless would be considerable. I tied them carefully in my
handkerchief and put them in my pocket. The smell of the decayed
shell-fish is something frightful to remember, and after I had finished
and washed myself thoroughly in the stream it still seemed to cling to
me and to permeate everything in the neighborhood. Why I had not noticed
this awful stench on my first visit was strange to me, and must have
been due to the course of the wind at that time.
When I had finished this loathsome task it was so late that I concluded
to stay all night at the cove instead of trying to go home. If the
weather kept clear there would be no great hardship in sleeping on the
grass for one night. The sun set, however, with an angry red glow amid a
mass of heavy clouds portending foul weather. Moreover, as the night
fell there was an oppressive calm, and the heat was intense. So
threatening was the aspect of the weather that had I been at all sure of
being able to find my way in the darkness, I should have certainly
attempted to get home even after the sun had set. There was no shelter
if it should rain, and I was at my wits’ end how to contrive a place to
pass the night. What a fool I had been not to notice the approaching
storm in time to get to my comfortable house. The best provision I was
able to make was to gather some grass and willow-boughs and take them
under an overhanging rock, where I cut with the axe in the dark some
limbs and boughs and made a sort of lean-to. This I supplemented with
the tub turned up toward the quarter whence the rain would most probably
come, and Duke and I crept into this sorry nest to await events.
One event came without waiting, and that was a powerful stench from the
unlucky tub. But as I had endured this already for nearly half a day, I
concluded it would, by familiarity, become less and less offensive. I
could not go to sleep, but lay there turning and tossing on my
uncomfortable couch and watching the weather.
The calm continued until near midnight, when a cool breeze sprang up and
swept down the gorge and out to sea. I thought this indicated that the
storm was about to pass around and away; but the heavy rumble of
thunder out at sea, growing louder and sharper, and becoming almost
continuous, and the constant play of lightning, quickly dissipated this
notion. I looked out with awe at this tremendous electric display.
The breeze fell presently, and I looked out and saw coming in from the
sea a coppery red mass of cloud glowing as though it contained a
furnace. Instinctively I crouched down behind the rock beside the dog,
who was shivering with fear, and grasped the corners of a huge fallen
fragment. With a dreadful, screeching roar, mingled with a din of
thunder such as I am utterly unable to describe, and can liken to
nothing I ever heard before or since, the hurricane burst upon the
island. There was no rain, but at first I thought there was, for the
spray from the ocean beat in my face and drenched me to the skin. It was
not rain, for it was salt to the taste. My shelter of boughs, and also
the high-smelling tub were blown away instantly, and with the dog under
me I fairly had all I could do to hold on. Above the roar of the wind,
the rattling of stones, and the din of the thunder, I could hear the
crash of falling trees and breaking boughs. Nor did the awful wind let
up for nearly half an hour, and I was quite worn out with the
apprehension and the struggle. If I lifted my face for an instant the
spray and sand and pebbles whipped with such violence against it that I
was glad to bury it close to the ground. Such awful storms I had heard
of, and even been witness to their effects after the event; but never
could I have had an adequate idea of the terrible reality without this
experience.
During the entire passage of the hurricane not a drop of rain fell, so
far as I could judge, though, as before stated, I was drenched with
spray. Gradually, with an occasional renewal of the blast, the wind went
down, and in an hour the stars were shining pure and serene in the dark
vault above.
The temperature had now fallen many degrees, and there was a cool,
steady wind from the north that chilled me through to the bone. Of
course I had no fire, and no means of procuring one, and the only relief
obtainable was such exercise as I could get by stamping about and
thrashing my arms until the blood was in rapid circulation. Sitting back
against the rock I dozed a little now and then, and waited impatiently
for the break of day, which seemed as though it never would come.
As soon as it was fairly light we started for home. The effects of the
hurricane were visible on every hand. Trees broken off, blown over, and
uprooted, green branches scattered here and there, the silvery under
sides of the leaves showing, and giving an air of disorder and
destruction by their unaccustomed appearance and tint, all marked the
hand of the destroyer. The central plateau seemed to have suffered most.
Here several great trees had been twisted until the trunks were a mass
of splinters, indicating that they had successively occupied the very
eye and centre of the rotary wind. Hurrying along rapidly we came down
to the lower land, and I was glad to observe much fewer signs of
destruction here. We came upon a dead pig, killed by a huge fallen limb,
and I pulled him out, as we were now nearly home, and dragged him along
with me for food.
When we reached the open beach I found plenty of evidence of the mighty
wind in the scattered palm leaves, boughs, and branches strewn along the
strand. In the distance I could see the ruins of my work-shed. The roof
was off, and lying down the beach a hundred yards or more in a heap at
the water’s edge. The boat, for which I felt specially anxious, was
hidden from view by a clump of water bushes that grew on the hither
bank of the creek. The mast I could see, and noted that an unnatural
tilt had been given to it. Dragging the dead pig I slowly made my way
along the sand. The house stood intact, my hammock still swung to the
frame-work of the shed. The top of a cocoanut palm, twisted off by the
wind and carried through the air, had brought up against the frame of
the shed and lodged there, while the nuts growing on it were scattered
about the ground, some of them as far as the water’s edge.
I went immediately to the boat and found it careened and sunk in the
shallow water of the creek, the upper gunwale just above the surface. At
the house the only damage done was a hole in the northeast corner of the
wall, caused by the end of a bough which had been driven through it and
was still sticking in the gap. The first thing I did was to build a
rousing fire in the chimney; then hanging my damp clothing up in front
of it to dry I went down for a bath in the creek, and to examine more
minutely the boat. When she was righted up and baled out with a gourd I
found she had suffered no injury whatever, being as tight as a bottle.
Nor would she have sunk except for an extra amount of ballast that
happened to be on board, as the air-tight compartments held perfectly.
But the sinking was doubtless the best thing that could have happened.
As soon as I could dress and get something for breakfast, I cut up the
pig and put part of it in salt, and then turned to with a will upon the
work of repairing the shed. The larger part of the material of the roof
was uninjured, and as the weather fortunately remained clear, by the
following night I had the roof on again in good shape and much stronger
than before, as with the aid of the axe I was able to cut a great
number of stout poles to add to the structure. When I had patched up the
hole in the wall of my house and cleared away the litter, most of the
signs of the hurricane had disappeared from my neighborhood.
The dampness of my house in wet weather, which was due to the walls
getting wet and soaking through with the driving rain, led me now to
undertake a new task. The clay used in the building of the boat would, I
thought, be sufficient in quantity to give the floor and the walls
inside and out a good coat, and this when once dry would make the
structure like an adobe building. I intended, moreover, to add an extra
thickness of thatch, put in a row of glass photograph plates toward the
sea for windows, make a good cedar door, to be hung on wooden hinges,
and add a wide veranda to the front, under which I might sit in the
evening.
The rain still came every day or two now, though evidently the dry
season was fast approaching. The weather was too uncertain to venture
out any distance in the boat, and I therefore had plenty of time on my
hands to attend to my building and other schemes for domestic comfort.
As planned, I daubed the whole house, inside and outside, with a good
thick coat of the clay smoothed with the back of the shovel. On the
outside, to give a workmanlike finish, I lined the soft clay into blocks
and pointed the joints neatly. Then, with dry, pulverized clay and sand,
which I sprinkled with water, trampled with the feet and smoothed by
beating with the shovel, I produced a hard, smooth floor like that under
the shed. All around the edge of this floor I fitted a single row of
clam shells, and inside of this a second row of pink-mouthed tiger
shells, which formed a handsome border. I put in a narrow horizontal
window, of six panes side by side, at each side of the doorway, and
constructed a good door of split cedar, pinned together and hung on
wooden hinges to swing outward, and provided it with a latch. I then
doubled the thatch all over the house and put up a light porch in front
thatched with palm leaves, and built a floor for it the same as in the
house. At one end of this porch I constructed a little low shed with
walls and roof for the dog.
As there was still a great quantity of clay left I built an oven near
the house, as follows: upon a raised platform of poles erected about
three feet above the ground, and about three by four feet in extent, I
put a layer of sand and clay about four inches thick. This was the floor
of the oven. All around this floor I laid a wall of adobe bricks, made
of sand and clay partly dried. I then filled the interior with sand
heaped up in the form of an arch, and laid the adobe bricks over it,
daubing and plastering all the cracks. At the rear was a small clay
chimney, and at the front an opening for a doorway. When the clay had
well set and partly hardened, I raked out the sand through the doorway
and left the hollow clay structure standing. I then constructed an adobe
slab with which to close the doorway. In this oven I built a hot fire of
dry wood and kept it going all day, by which means the clay was partly
burned and the construction made entirely proof against the
wet,--though, for that matter, the adobe would have stood without such
treatment.
To utilize the heat left in the walls from the burning I had put a pot
full of beans on to boil, with a good chunk of salt pork. At night I put
the beans and pork in an earthen dish and set them in the oven, which
was still hot, and closed it up tight, covering the chimney and luting
the door slab with wet clay. In the morning, when I opened it, there
gushed out a delicious vapor, and the dish of beans and pork, brown and
crisp came forth hot and fit for a king.
One article I needed very badly was soap. I had tried to wash my
clothing several times, but it was quite filthy notwithstanding these
attempts. My entire wardrobe consisted of a heavy woollen shirt, a pair
of tough moleskin pantaloons, a home-made hat, and a stout pair of
shoes. Socks I had none, as the single pair I brought on shore were
entirely worn out. Latterly I had made a practice of going barefoot,
except on extended excursions through the jungle and over the rocks.
With plenty of wood ashes and pig fat at hand why should I not make
soap? I rigged up a leaching apparatus thus: in the bottom of a huge
gourd I pierced several holes, and laid over them a layer of grass so
that the ashes would not stop them up; then I filled the gourd with
alternate layers of grass and ashes to the top, and poured in fresh
water as long as it would absorb any. In a little while the lye began to
drip out of the holes into a vessel placed beneath to receive it. By
changing and renewing the ashes several times I finally collected a
kettle full of the lye. This I placed over the fire and boiled until it
had lost two thirds of its volume. Then I put into the boiling lye
strips and pieces of fat pork until it would dissolve no more, keeping
up the boiling slowly all the time. The result was a good article of
light colored soap of a jelly-like consistency. Its use both upon my
clothing and myself was a luxury indeed.
One day I burned some lime and mixed a whitewash, which with a
cocoa-husk swab I applied to the interior walls of the house, changing
them to a dazzling white and rendering the whole interior light and
cheerful; which was a great comfort on dark days when I was confined
there. Moreover, it gave the place an air of wholesomeness and neatness
that was very home-like. As a further improvement I made a bed of soil
at each end of the porch and transplanted some flowering vines and
creepers of several varieties; I also made a half-dozen hills in front
of the house, carrying and filling in these spots a quantity of rich
muck, and planted sweet potatoes that they might spread their vines over
the sand. The garden which I had made before the rains set in was now in
thriving condition, all the peas and beans being up and the potato-vines
in blossom.
My diet was now varied and healthful enough; but I lacked one article of
food that I longed for and felt the need of more and more every
day,--and that was bread, the staff of life. Parched-seed gruel was a
very poor substitute indeed, and at last I got so hungry for a taste of
bread that I determined to make some out of the Indian corn.
So one day I made a basket and started across the island to bring home a
supply of the corn. All the way over I kept a good lookout for a
suitable gritty stone, that could be used to grind the corn, and found
several that I thought might answer the purpose fairly well; but one
sample--being a slab of grit-stone having a rough, pocked surface with
small hard bits of chalcedony interspersed throughout--was so superior
in quality to all the rest that I concluded I could do no better if I
sought the island over. This slab, which was quite as much as I could
carry, I laid against a tree where I could easily find it, and went on
my way to “Farm Cove.” I had not been here since the great storm, and
was surprised to see how quickly and fully all traces of the hurricane
had disappeared. The corn was all right, the husks had fully dried, and
the heap lying on the rocks had not suffered from the rains. I filled my
basket,--a good bushel,--and immediately came home, returning forthwith
for the slab of grit-stone. Duke treed another raccoon, which we
captured by cutting down the tree, and then with our plunder and the
stone we managed to get home at nightfall.
The next day it began again to rain in intermittent showers; raining and
shining alternately, as in the April weather of northern latitudes.
After building a fire and heating up the oven and putting in the raccoon
to bake, with some yams for dinner, I went to work on my stone slab.
First I broke off a good piece the full width of the slab in length, and
about six inches in width to use as a grinder. With the back of the axe
I hammered and dressed this as smooth as I could. Then I went at the
slab itself, pounding it with the axe and breaking it at the edges until
it was formed into a reasonably smooth, rectangular shape two feet long
by one foot in width. I now sprinkled the face of the slab with wet sand
and water, and placing it in an inclined position, rubbed the grinder up
and down upon it, feeding on fresh sand and water from time to time, as
it lost its cutting properties.
This was slow, hard, tedious work, and the progress made was so gradual
that it called for all my will to keep at it. Perseverance, however,
will finally conquer most obstacles, and this was a mere question of
muscle and will-power struggling against a hard grit-stone. The stone
was fated finally to yield; but it took me two days of hard work to get
it into the right shape. All this for a piece of corn bread, and the
bread not yet forthcoming.
When finished the slab had a smooth, gritty surface slightly incurved
from end to end, and the grinder designed to lie across it had its
corners rounded smoothly off.
I set to work now to grind my corn as follows: The slab was propped up
at a slight angle on a piece of canvas; on this slab the corn, a handful
at a time, was sprinkled and then ground by rubbing the grinder up and
down over it. As it became pulverized the meal would gradually drift
down on to the canvas, the coarser particles rolling away to the edge of
the heap, only to be scraped up and ground over again. This was, as you
may imagine, tedious work. When I had accumulated about four quarts of
meal, I felt that I had enough of grinding for once.
Now commenced the first act of bread-making proper. In a gourd I mixed
about a pint of the meal with warm water and a little salt, and set it
in a warm place over night, that it might have a chance to ferment. This
was to be my yeast. In the morning the contents of the gourd were in a
state of incipient fermentation, and I went out and fired up the oven to
be ready for the grand final act. While the oven was heating I mixed up
the rest of the meal with salt and water, and added the fermented meal
to it, mixing the whole to a consistency such that it could readily be
stirred. This I set near the fire in an earthen pan, and watched it from
time to time. In about two hours it began to rise slightly, and the oven
being fully ready I clapped the pan in and closed it up to bake. In an
hour I opened the oven and took out a fragrant panful of nicely browned,
light, and crumbling corn bread, as a reward for all my labors. Perhaps
it was not so good as a skilled bread-maker might have produced, but it
was sweet and delightful to me, and well repaid all my trouble, and both
Duke and I rejoiced over it with our broiled bacon.
After this experiment bread-making was a regular thing. Sometimes I
simply stirred up the raw meal with a little salt and water and baked it
on the back of a shovel before the open fire,--hoe-cake fashion,--to be
eaten brown and hot; but I generally made raised bread by the process
which I have described, sometimes adding a modicum of pork fat for
shortening.