I am about to write a very curious history, as the reader will agree
with me when he has read this book. We have more than one narrative of
people being cast away upon desolate islands, and being left to their
own resources, and no works are perhaps read with more interest; but I
believe I am the first instance of a boy being left alone upon an
uninhabited island. Such was, however, the case; and now I shall tell
my own story.
My first recollections are, that I was in company with a man upon this
island, and that we walked often along the sea-shore. It was rocky and
difficult to climb in many parts, and the man used to drag or pull me
over the dangerous places. He was very unkind to me, which may appear
strange, as I was the only companion that he had; but he was of a morose
and gloomy disposition. He would sit down squatted in the corner of our
cabin, and sometimes not speak for hours,--or he would remain the whole
day looking out at the sea, as if watching for something, but what I
never could tell; for if I spoke, he would not reply; and if near to
him, I was sure to receive a cuff or a heavy blow. I should imagine
that I was about five years old at the time that I first recollect
clearly what passed. I may have been younger. I may as well here state
what I gathered from him at different times, relative to our being left
upon this desolate spot. It was with difficulty that I did so; for,
generally speaking, he would throw a stone at me if I asked questions,
that is, if I repeatedly asked them after he had refused to answer. It
was on one occasion, when he was lying sick, that I gained the
information, and that only by refusing to attend him or bring him food
and water. He would be very angry, and say, that when he got well
again, he would make me smart for it; but I cared not, for I was then
getting strong, whilst he was getting weaker every day, and I had no
love for him, for he had never shown any to me, but always treated me
with great severity.
He told me, that about twelve years before (not that I knew what he
meant by a year, for I had never heard the term used by him), an English
ship (I did not know what a ship was) had been swamped near the island
in a heavy gale, and that seven men and one woman had been saved, and
all the other people lost. That the ship had been broken into pieces,
and that they had saved nothing--that they had picked up among the rocks
pieces of the wood with which it had been made, and had built the cabin
in which we lived. That one had died after another, and had been buried
(what death or burial meant, I had no idea at the time); and that I had
been born on the island--(how was I born? thought I); that most of them
had died before I was two years old; and that then, he and my mother
were the only two left besides me. My mother had died a few months
afterwards. I was obliged to ask him many questions to understand all
this; indeed, I did not understand it till long afterwards, although I
had an idea of what he would say. Had I been left with any other
person, I should, of course, by conversation, have learned much; but he
never would converse, still less explain. He called me, Boy, and I
called him, Master. His inveterate silence was the occasion of my
language being composed of very few words; for, except to order me to do
this or that, to procure what was required, he never would converse. He
did, however, mutter to himself, and talk in his sleep, and I used to
lie awake and listen, that I might gain information; not at first, but
when I grew older. He used to cry out in his sleep constantly: "A
judgment, a judgment on me for my sins, my heavy sins! God be
merciful!" But what judgement, or what sin was, or what was God, I did
not then know, although I mused on words repeated so often.
I will now describe the island, and the way in which we lived. The
island was very small, perhaps not three miles round; it was of rock,
and there was no beach nor landing-place, the sea washing its sides with
deep water. It was, as I afterwards discovered, one of the group of
islands, to which the Peruvians despatch vessels every year to collect
the guano, or refuse of the sea-birds which resort to the islands; but
the one on which we were was small, and detached some distance from the
others, on which the guano was found in great profusion; so that
hitherto it had been neglected, and no vessel had ever come near it.
Indeed, the other islands were not to be seen from it except on a very
clear day, when they appeared like a cloud or mist on the horizon. The
shores of the island were, moreover, so precipitous, that there was no
landing-place, and the eternal wash of the ocean would have made it
almost impossible for a vessel to have taken off a cargo. Such was the
island upon which I found myself in company with this man. Our cabin
was built of ship-plank and timber, under the shelter of a cliff, about
fifty yards from the water; there was a flat of about thirty yards
square in front of it, and from the cliff there trickled down a rill of
water, which fell into a hole dug out to collect it, and then found its
way over the flat to the rocks beneath. The cabin itself was large, and
capable of holding many more people than had ever lived in it; but it
was not too large, as we had to secure in it our provisions for many
months. There were several bed-places level with the floor, which were
rendered soft enough to lie on, by being filled with the feathers of
birds. Furniture there was none, except two or three old axes, blunted
with long use, a tin pannikin, a mess kid, and some rude vessels to hold
water, cut out of wood. On the summit of the island, there was a forest
of underwood, and the bushes extended some distance down the ravines
which led from the summit to the shore. One of my most arduous tasks
was to climb these ravines and collect wood, but fortunately a fire was
not often required. The climate was warm all the year round, and there
seldom was a fall of rain; when it did fall, it was generally expended
on the summit of the island, and did not reach us. At a certain period
of the year, the birds came to the island in numberless quantities to
breed, and their chief resort was some tolerably level ground--indeed,
in many places, it was quite level with the accumulation of guano--which
ground was divided from the spot where our cabin was built by a deep
ravine. On this spot, which might perhaps contain about twenty acres or
more, the sea-birds would sit upon their eggs, not four inches apart
from each other, and the whole surface of this twenty acres would be
completely covered with them. There they would remain, from the time of
the laying of the eggs, until the young ones were able to leave the
nests and fly away with them. At the season when the birds were on the
island, all was gaiety, bustle; and noise, but after their departure it
was quiet and solitude. I used to long for their arrival, and was
delighted with the animation which gladdened the island, the male birds
diving in every direction after fish, wheeling and soaring in the air,
and uttering loud cries, which were responded to by their mates on the
nests.
But it was also our harvest time; we seldom touched the old birds, as
they were not in flesh, but as soon as the young ones were within a few
days of leaving the nests, we were then busy enough. In spite of the
screaming and the flapping of their wings in our faces, and the darting
their beaks at our eyes, of the old birds, as we robbed them of their
progeny, we collected hundreds every day, and bore as heavy a load as we
could carry across the ravine to the platform in front of our cabin,
where we busied ourselves in skinning them, splitting them, and hanging
them out to dry in the sun. The air of the island was so pure that no
putrefaction ever took place, and during the last fortnight of the birds
coming on the island, we had collected a sufficiency for our support
until their return on the following year. As soon as they were quite
dry they were packed up in a corner of the cabin for use.
These birds were, it may be said, the only produce of the island, with
the exception of fish, and the eggs taken at the time of their first
making their nests. Fish were to be taken in large quantities. It was
sufficient to put a line over the rocks, and it had hardly time to go
down a fathom before anything at the end of it was seized. Indeed, our
means of taking them were as simple as their voracity was great. Our
lines were composed of the sinews of the legs of the man-of-war birds,
as I afterwards heard them named; and, as these were only about a foot
long, it required a great many of them knotted together to make a line.
At the end of the line was a bait fixed over a strong fish-bone, which
was fastened to the line by the middle; a half-hitch of the line round
one end kept the bone on a parallel with the line until the bait was
seized, when the line being tautened, the half-hitch slipped off and the
bone remained crossways in the gullet of the fish, which was drawn up by
it. Simple as this contrivance was, it answered as well as the best
hook, of which I had never seen one at that time. The fish were so
strong and large, that, when I was young, the man would not allow me to
attempt to catch them, lest they should pull me into the water; but, as
I grew bigger I could master them. Such was our food from one year's
end to the other; we had no variety, except when occasionally we broiled
the dried birds or the fish upon the embers, instead of eating them
dried by the sun. Our raiment, such as it was, we were also indebted to
the feathered tribe for. The birds were skinned with the feathers on,
and their skins sewn together with sinews, and a fish-bone by way of a
needle. These garments were not very durable, but the climate was so
fine that we did not suffer from the cold at any season of the year. I
used to make myself a new dress every year when the birds came; but by
the time that they returned, I had little left of my last year's suit,
the fragments of which might be found among the rocky and steep parts of
the ravine where we used to collect firing.
Living such a life, with so few wants, and those periodically and easily
supplied, hardly varied from one year's end to another, it may easily be
imagined that I had but few ideas. I might have had more, if my
companion had not been of such a taciturn and morose habit; as it was, I
looked at the wide ocean, and the sky, and the sun, moon, and stars,
wondering, puzzled, afraid to ask questions, and ending all by sleeping
away a large portion of my existence. We had no tools except the old
ones, which were useless--no employment of any kind. There was a book,
and I asked what it was for and what it was, but I got no answer. It
remained upon the shelf, for if I looked at it I was ordered away, and
at last I regarded it with a sort of fear, as if it were a kind of
incomprehensible animal. The day was passed in idleness and almost
silence; perhaps not a dozen sentences were exchanged in the twenty-four
hours; my companion always the same, brooding over something which
appeared ever to occupy his thoughts, and angry if roused up from his
reverie.