A MAN ON A DESERT ISLAND
"All right, all right!" shouted Captain Bannister, "we hear yer.
You needn't ahoy so much."
But the voice continued to shout "Ship ahoy!" at a great rate,
until the "Hoppergrass" drew slowly ahead, and we could see what
had been hidden by the sail.
A sand-bar stuck out of the water, right in the middle of the
river. Only a few feet of it showed, and the island which it made
was very small. It was so small that the man who was sitting on it
had his legs drawn up till his knees came right under his chin, so
as to keep his feet from getting wet. He was a young man, about
twenty years old. He had on white trousers and a pink shirt, and
he was slowly waving a white canvas hat. His hair was sandy, and
very much ruffled, and his big, pale blue eyes were wide open, as
though he were surprised about something.
"Ship ahoy!" he remarked again, but in an ordinary conversational
tone, this time.
Then he climbed to his feet,--carefully, so as to keep the steep
sides of his little, sand island from giving way, and letting him
down into the water. As soon as he was standing up straight he
raised one hand in the air, as if he were in a play, and said:
"Rescued at last!"
Then he turned toward us, and remarked: "Gentlemen, I thank you."
"You better wait till you're on board," said the Captain, "before
you begin thankin' us. I'll come about in a minute, an' then we'll
fetch yer in the tender."
Jimmy Toppan had already begun to pull the small boat alongside,
but before he could get into it, the young man called out: "That's
all right! I'll swim."
And he plunged into the water, and struck out toward us. Of course
he could not overtake a sail-boat, and we soon left him behind. He
kept on swimming, however, until his hat fell off. Turning around,
he picked up the hat, and jammed it on his head again. By this
time the Captain had put about, and started on a tack that brought
us near the swimmer. The young man came alongside, with a smile on
his wet face.
"Don't try to grab the boat," shouted the Captain, "get hold of
the tender!"
So the swimmer let us pass him, seized the side of the small boat,
and after one or two trials (which nearly upset the tender)
managed to climb in. He stood up in the stern, and raised his hand
toward the sky, again, as if he were "speaking a piece" in school.
"Safe! Safe, at last!" he cried.
At this instant the painter became taut; the small boat gave a
sudden jerk, and he went overboard again like a flash, head first.
Captain Bannister turned his head to see how the young man was
getting on. Of course the boat was empty.
"Where'n the nation has he got to, now?" exclaimed the bewildered
Captain.
We were all doubled up laughing, but we managed to gasp out: "He's
gone overboard again!"
"What's he done that for?"
"He--he--fell over!"
"Fell over? What'n the dickens did he do that for? Where is he,
anyhow?"
At this moment the sandy head, and astonished face came up, once
more, in our wake. He brushed the water out of his eyes, looked at
us, and began to smile again.
"Say, you!" shouted the Captain, "be you comin' on this boat, or
what be you goin' to do?"
The swimmer gasped.
"If you keep on at that rate," he called, "I'm probably NOT
coming. If you'll wait a bit, though, I'll--"
Here he swallowed a mouthful of water, and stopped speaking. He
waved one arm at us, however, and seemed to smile cheerfully.
"Well, I'll come back once more,--d'yer hear?" This from the
Captain. "An' when yer get aboard, STAY aboard, will yer?"
The "Hoppergrass" turned again, and the same performance was gone
through. The pink-shirted man climbed into the tender, but this
time he sat down cautiously in the stern, and waited for the
painter to become taut. It had not slackened however, so there was
no chance for another such accident as that which knocked him
overboard before. He watched the painter for a moment, and then
shook his fist at it.
"Fooled you that time, you old rope!"
Jimmy and Ed pulled the tender alongside, and the wet man stepped
gingerly aboard the "Hoppergrass." His clothes stuck tight to him,
and his shoes made a squshy sound, wherever he stepped. But he
insisted on shaking hands with us, all around.
"If you hadn't come just when you did," he remarked solemnly, "I
should have been devoured by sharks. Already I had noticed a black
fin circling about the island--I mean a LEAN, black fin,--or is it
a low, rakish, black fin? No; that's a craft,--a low, rakish,
black craft. It was a LEAN, black fin--"
Captain Bannister gave a great snort of disgust.
"SHARKS!" he exclaimed, "there aint no sharks in this river!"
"No? Well, probably you are more familiar with it than I am."
"Guess I ought to know something 'bout it," the Captain returned;
"I've been on it longer than most folks 'round here."
"On it LONGER, no doubt," said the young man, politely, "but have
you gone into it any deeper than I?"
The Captain smiled.
"Well, no; I guess not. You've got me there, all right."
The stranger perched himself on the house, and there was a
moment's silence until the Captain spoke again.
"But how in the nation did yer git on that there sand-bar, anyway?
Where'd yer come from?"
"I came from--what was the name of that place where I got off the
train? I thought I'd remember it,--I remembered it by gammon and
spinach--yes, that's it,--it's in that, somehow--"
' Rowley, Powley, Gammon and Spinach,--Heighho! says Anthony--'"
"Rowley!" we all exclaimed.
"That's it! that's it! Rowley. Think of living at a place so
famous as that! It sounds like great fun. But nobody does live
there. When I got off the train there was only one man in sight,
and he was standing on a wharf watching a steamboat go up the
river, or down the river, or whatever it is. That was MY boat,--I
was going to Duck Island in her. But she'd gone, and the man said
he'd let me take a canoe, for half a dollar, and I thought that
was very trusting of him, for how did he know I'd ever bring it
back? But he said I could leave it with a man named Pike, who
lives on Little Duck Island, and he'd get it tomorrow. So I gave
him half a dollar, and then I came away in the canoe. Aren't they
wabbly? I never was in one before."
"Did you paddle down here in a canoe? And you'd never been in one
before?"
"Yes. That is, I didn't do much with the paddle,--except push off
from the bank every now and then. The canoe seemed to come along
pretty well. How that river does twist! And it's very narrow,--I
should think the steamboat would stick."
The Captain opened his mouth helplessly, once or twice.
"Gosh sakes!" he said, "you warn't in no river. You was in
Pingree's Crik, or you wouldn't have got down here."
"I thought it seemed pretty narrow. But when I got out here--round
that corner--and came out where it's so much broader, I couldn't
make the canoe go at all, except backwards. The front end of her
kept swinging round, for the river was running the wrong way. At
last I ran right up on that island, and then I got out, for my
foot had gone to sleep. You see I hadn't dared to move, the canoe
wabbled so. And then I went to look at some critters that were
crawling around in the water,--they looked like tennis-racquets,
only their tails weren't quite big enough--"
"Horse-shoe crabs," said Ed Mason.
"I don't know what they were, but I got quite fascinated watching
them, and the first thing I knew the island had grown smaller--"
"The tide was coming in," explained Jimmy.
"But where is your canoe?" I asked him, "what have you done with
it?"
The astonished look came over the young man's face.
"Why, that's so! I wonder where it has gone?"
"Land o' libberty!" said the Captain, "don't yer know?"
"Why, yes, it floated off. While I was watching the tennis-racquet
animals it got loose, somehow--"
"Naturally," observed Captain Bannister, "seein' the tide was
risin', an' I don't s'pose yer pulled it up on the sand."
"And the first thing I knew it was quite a distance from the
island."
"Couldn't you have swum for it?" I demanded.
"Yes; but I didn't want to get all wet,--I--"
And then we all looked at his soaked clothes, and he laughed with
us.
"Somehow, I didn't think of that when you came along," he
admitted.
"But don't you really know where the canoe is?"
'Why, it disappeared around that point, just before I saw your
boat. I really ought to get it again, because Mr. Skeels--that's
the name of the man who owns it--isn't it great? I tried to make
up a poem about him as I came down the river, but I couldn't get
any farther than:
There was an old person named Skeels,
Who lived upon lobsters and eels,--
and he did look as if he lived upon lobsters and eels, too. Or
WITH them. Anyhow, he'll be down to Mr. Pike's tomorrow, asking
for the canoe. And my bag, and suit-case, and all my clothes are
in it, too. So I suppose I'll have to find it. Will it go out to
sea?"
"It can't," said the Captain, "not till the tide turns. We'll
overtake it 'fore long,--you see if we don't."
Sure enough, we did overtake it. We had hardly passed the point of
land when Jimmy Toppan, who spent most of his time standing in the
bow, peering ahead like Leif Ericsson discovering Vinland, sang
out that he had sighted the canoe. It had drifted into some eel-
grass, near the shore, and we had no trouble in getting it. Beside
the bags, there were in the canoe some large sheets of paper, torn
out of a sketch book. These were covered with pictures of the
horse-shoe crabs,--drawn in a very amusing fashion. One sketch
showed an old crab, wearing a mob-cap and sitting up in bed,
drinking tea.
The stranger was delighted to get his belongings. He promptly
changed his wet clothes for a bathing-suit, leaving the wet things
in the sun to dry.
"Now," he said, "I'm all ready to go overboard, but it will be
just like my luck not to fall over at all."
"You stay on the boat," said the Captain, decidedly; "I've rescued
you twice, and that's enough for one day."
"All right, Captain. Though I don't mind being in the water. It's
this desert island business that scares me most to death. There
was the question of food. The--what-do-you-call--'em crabs had
all gone away before you came, and I didn't think much of eating
them cold, anyway. I had a piece of chocolate--"
He laughed and jumped up.
"Here it is," he said, fishing it out from a wet trousers' pocket.
"I was going to divide it so as to have a piece for each day.
That's the way people do when they're shipwrecked, isn't it,
Captain?"
"So they say. Never had to come to that, myself."
"Well, I was stuck right off. For how did I know how many days I
was going to stay on the island? The books on shipwrecks don't say
anything about that. I didn't know whether to divide the chocolate
into five pieces or ten,--they'd have been pretty small, if I'd
had to have made it last for ten days. Do you think it would have
kept me alive for ten days, Captain?"
"I dunno," replied the Captain, "but I guess yer wouldn't have
stayed there so long as that. There'll be six foot of water on
that bar before noon, so yer wouldn't have found the settin' quite
so comfortable. Besides, some of them sharks of yours might have
et yer."
"Well, then," the young man returned, "it was lucky you came when
you did. The water was crowding me rather close. And now, what
shall I do? Will you give me a lift as far as Little Duck Island?
Or if you haven't got room enough, and I'll be in the way, why,
I'll get in Mr. Skeels' canoe again, and give you an exhibition of
wabbling."
He looked dismally toward the canoe, which we now had in tow
behind the tender. We all told the castaway that we would be glad
to have him stay with us.
"Plenty of sleepin' room on board," said Captain Bannister, "an'
you said you was goin' to Big Duck, didn't yer? You stay with us,
and we'll get yer there all right, tomorrer."
"Do you know many people on Duck Island, Mr. Daddles?" asked Ed
Mason.
The young man turned around.
"Where did you get that name?" he asked.
"It's on that card on your bag."
The owner of the bag examined the label.
"I know who put that on there," he remarked to himself, "well, I
... why ... no, I am going to the island, I suppose, to see a Mr.
Kidd. Relation of the pirate, I hope. He didn't say anything about
it in his letter. Whether he was related to Captain Kidd, I mean."
"You can find out tomorrer," said our skipper, "now we're headin'
for Pingree's Beach to see if we can get a mess of clams of old
man Haskell. Then we'll have dinner, and we can run over to the
inlet at Little Duck in an hour, any time this afternoon."
The breeze was still light, and the "Hoppergrass" made only fair
progress. Soon we were out of the river, and entering Broad Bay.
The sun was high by this time, the air cool and pleasant.
Everything seemed so clear and fresh, that it made us think the
land a poor place in comparison with the water. How hot and dusty
the streets of the town must be at this same minute! We felt sorry
for the people who had to stay there. We had only the clean white
hull of the boat between us and the sparkling water of the bay.
Toward the sky the great white sail of our boat soared up, like
the wing of a giant sea gull, and we went forward as easily and
smoothly as one of the gulls who were gliding through the air, and
dipping to the water a few hundred yards ahead of us. The grass
covered river-banks were far astern now, and the only land ahead
was some low sand-dunes and beaches, hardly to be seen in the
distance.
"Here goes the chocolate," said Mr. Daddles, tossing it overboard,
"once it might have saved my life, but I don't care for it now.
Chocolate flavored with salt-water is pretty poor stuff."
Then he commenced turning over his clothes, which were spread out
in the sun on top of the cabin.
"What made yer say p'r'aps this feller named Kidd was a relation
of the pirate?" asked Captain Bannister. "You'd heard 'bout
Fishback Island, hadn't yer?"
"No, I never heard the name, even."
"What about Fishback Island, Captain?" asked Ed Mason.
"You never heard all them yarns, an' all that diggin' that went on
over there?"
"No, I never heard of it," Ed replied, "are there pirates there?"
"Of course not," said Jimmy Toppan scornfully, "there aren't any
pirates anywhere, now."
"Aren't there?" the Captain inquired. He slacked the sheet a
little, and made it fast with great deliberation. "You better not
be too sure of that, cos' I know where there's plenty of 'em."
"Around here?" I inquired.
Captain Bannister chuckled.
"No, not very near this place. In the China Sea."
"Have you ever seen any of them?"
"A whole junk full of 'em."
"What did they do?"
All four of us spoke at once. Mr. Daddles seemed to be as much
interested as the rest of us.
"Well, they tried to ketch us. But they couldn't. That was all
there was to it, then. But I see six of 'em 'bout a month later in
Hong Kong."
"In Hong Kong! What were they doing there?"
"They was havin' their heads cut off, by a feller with a long
sword. Anyway, I guess they was some of the same crew that chased
us in the junk, cos' they was took by a man-of-war in 'bout the
same place."
"How did they like having their heads cut off?" asked Mr. Daddles.
"Well, yer can't tell 'bout a Chinaman. They didn't seem to mind
it much. They get used to it, yer see."
"Somehow," said Mr. Daddles, "a Chinese pirate doesn't seem like
the real thing to me."
"That's so," I agreed. I came and sat down with the Captain and Ed
Mason in the cock-pit. "I always think of a pirate as a man with a
black beard, and--"
"A red sash around his waist," put in Ed Mason.
"All stuck full of pistols and things," added Jimmy.
"Guess that kind has all died off," said the Captain.
"All except Black Pedro," remarked Mr. Daddles.
"Never heard of HIM."
"Never HEARD of him?" This in a tone of great surprise. "You never
heard of him either?" said Mr. Daddles, turning to each of us
boys, one after the other. "What have your parents been doing to
let you grow up in ignorance? I'll have to tell you about him,--
he's the very last of the pirates."
"Where does he hang out?" asked the Captain.
"On Rum Island or Alligator Key,--I'm not sure which. The accounts
vary."
The Captain looked at Mr. Daddles in a quizzical fashion. "I guess
you've got a yarn," said he,--"why don't yer let us have it?"
Mr. Daddles was perched on the cabin, swinging his bare legs over
the cock-pit. The Captain was at the wheel, as usual, with his
eyes fixed on the water ahead of us, part of the time, but now and
then raised to look at Mr. Daddles. The latter had a serious,
almost mournful expression on his face, as he told the story of
the last of the pirates.