Ashton's first task was to range the island. It proved to be thirty
miles or so in length, but its only inhabitants were birds and beasts;
it was well watered, and full of hills and deep valleys.
In the latter were many fruit trees, and also vines and currant bushes.
There was one tree which bore a fruit larger than an orange, oval
shaped, and brown without and red within. This he dared not touch until
he saw the wild hogs eating it, lest it should be poisonous. Fruit was
his only food. He had no weapon to kill any animal, or the means of
cooking it when killed. One often reads of producing fire by friction,
but unless one has flint and steel this is very difficult. Some savages
only know the secret of it, and it is doubtful whether any white man has
ever succeeded in it. In Philip Ashton's island there were no matches.
He found tortoise eggs in the sand, which he dug up with a stick,
"sometimes a hundred and fifty of them at a time." These he ate, or
strung on a strip of palmetto and hung them in the sun. They were very
hard and tough, but he was glad to get them. Enormous serpents, twelve
and fourteen feet long, were numerous. When they were lying at full
length he often took them for "old trunks of trees covered with short
moss," and was much astonished when they opened their mouths and hissed
at him.
What annoyed him much more, however, were the "small black flies," which
harassed him in myriads. To escape them he longed to swim over to a
small "key," which, being without trees, and exposed to the wind, was
probably free from those pests. He was, however, a very indifferent
swimmer, and had no canoe nor the means of making one.
At last he hit on the idea of putting a piece of bamboo, which is as
hollow as a reed and light as a cork, under his chest and arms, and so
trusted himself to the sea.
Once the bamboo slipped from under him, and he was nearly drowned. At
another time a shovel-nosed shark struck him on the thigh, and but for
the shallowness of the water, "which prevented its mouth getting round"
at him, he would have perished miserably. Practice, however, soon made
him a good swimmer, and in spite of the sharks he swam over to the
little island daily to escape the flies.
He had built a hut, if it could be called such, by taking fallen
branches and fastening them by means of split palmetto leaves to the
hanging boughs. This sheltered him from the noonday sun and the heavy
night dews. The entrance of this hut "was made to look toward the sea,"
in hopes of rescue.
"I had had the approbation of my father and mother," he piously
reflects, "in going to sea, and I trusted it would please God in His
own time and manner to provide for my return to my father's house."
But in the mean time he endured frightful sufferings. His feet became
very sore from walking on "the hot beach, with its sharp, broken
shells," and sometimes, "though treading with all possible caution," a
shell on the beach or a stick in the woods would open an old wound,
inflicting such agony that he would fall down suddenly as if he had been
shot. Rather than risk any more such misery, he would sometimes sit for
a whole day, with his back against a tree, looking with tearful eyes for
the vessel that never came.
[Illustration: ASHTON PROTECTING HIMSELF FROM THE WILD-BOAR.]
Once, when faint from such injuries, a wild-boar ran at him. He could
not stand, but caught at the bough of the tree above him, and hung
suspended while the beast made his charge. "He tore away a portion of my
ragged trousers, and then went on his way, which I considered to have
been a very great deliverance."
These hardships, and the living almost entirely on fruit, brought him to
great extremities. He "often fell to the ground insensible," and thought
every night would be his last. He lost count of the days of the week,
and then of the month. The rainy season came on, and he grew worse.
At one time--as he judged in November--he saw a sight which, had he been
himself, would have filled him with joy. He beheld a small canoe
approaching the shore, with a single man in it. The spectacle excited
little emotion. "I kept my seat on the beach, thinking that I could not
expect a friend, and being in no condition to resist an enemy."
The stranger called out to him in English, and Ashton replied that he
might safely land, for that he was the only inhabitant of the island,
and as good as dead.
The whole incident is most curious, but the strangest fact of all is the
unenthusiastic terms in which our hero describes the matter. It is clear
he must have been almost at death's door. This stranger proved to be a
native of North Britain; Scotchmen were then so called. "He was well
advanced in years, and of a spare and venerable aspect, and of a
reserved temper.... He informed me he had lived two-and-twenty years
with the Spaniards, who now threatened to burn him, for what crime I did
not know. He had fled to the 'key' as an asylum, bringing with him his
dog, gun, ammunition, and also a small quantity of pork." Ashton goes on
to say that the stranger showed him much kindness, and gave him "some of
his pork."
On the third day after his arrival, the new-comer prepared to make an
excursion in his canoe to some of the neighboring islands for the
purpose of killing deer. Our hero, though much cheered by his society,
and especially by the fire, the means of kindling which the other had
brought with him, and by eating cooked food, was too weak and
sore-footed to accompany him. The sky was cloudless, and the man had
already come six-and-thirty miles in safety, so that their parting
seemed only a "good-day."
But it was final. A storm arose within the hour, in which his visitor
doubtless perished.
What is very singular, Ashton never had the curiosity to ask him his
name; and though our hero found himself so suddenly deprived of his
companion, and reduced to his former lonely state, he consoled himself
with the reflection that he was in far better circumstances than before.
He had "pork, a knife, a bottle of gunpowder, tobacco, tongs, and a
flint." He could now cut up a turtle and boil it.
Three months afterward another canoe came on shore, but without a
tenant. The possession of this vessel was a somewhat doubtful boon to
him. He rowed in it to another "key" miles away, where, having landed,
he lay down to sleep, with his face to the sea, as usual, and his back
to a tree.
"I was awakened by a noise of firing, and starting up beheld nine
piraguas [large canoes] full of men, all firing at me. I ran among the
bushes as fast as my sore feet would allow, while they called after me,
'Surrender yourself, O Englishman, and we will give you good quarter.'"
By their firing at an inoffensive man Ashton knew that they were
Spaniards, and guessed what was their idea of "good quarter." After
hiding in the woods for that night he returned to his little island the
next day, and to the hut of boughs, "which now seemed a royal palace to
me."
After nineteen months' residence alone on this spot, save for that
three days' visit from the stranger, Ashton was joined by seventeen
Englishmen, fugitives from Spanish cruelty. They were accustomed to
hardships and miseries, but "they started back in horror at the sight of
so wild, ragged, and wretched an object."
A spoonful of rum which they administered to him almost took away his
life, owing to his long disuse of strong liquors. They clothed and fed
him, and were very good to him, though "in their common conversation,"
as he naïvely remarks, "there was very little difference between them
and pirates."
Considering what he had gone through, one is inclined to wonder how Mr.
Philip Ashton could have been so very particular. He seems to have been
an honest, good man, and did not forget to express his earnest gratitude
to Providence when rescued at last by a British sloop driven near his
"key" by stress of weather. He arrived home at Salem in March, 1725,
having spent eight months on board a pirate ship, and nineteen on the
"key." "That same evening," he says, "I went to my father's house, where
I was received as one risen from the dead."
[Illustration: IN GRANDMAMMA'S CHAIR.]
[Illustration: "DIT UP, G'AN'PA!"]