Relates how a Desert Island became a Rock of Good Hope,
and other Hopeful Matters which to be understood
must be read of.
"You now see," went on the Captain, when the story was again resumed,
"that the Dean and myself had by this time fallen into a regular course
of life. 'What cannot be helped,' said the Dean, 'we must make the best
of.'
"Being thus obliged to make the best of it, we became resigned; and here
let me say that even now I feel much surprised at the ease with which we
dropped into ways suitable to our new life. You have seen already how
one difficulty after another vanished before our patient efforts; and
now that we had a fire to warm us, and a hut to shelter us, we felt as
if we could overcome almost anything. So we gained great courage, and
were fast settling down to business, like any other people, feeling that
our lives were at least in no present danger.
"The Dean and I had a conversation about this time, which I will try to
repeat as nearly as I can. We were seated on the hillside overlooking
the sea to the west, attracted by what we at first took for a ship under
full sail, steering right in towards the island; but you can imagine how
great was our disappointment when we found that what we had taken for a
ship was nothing more than an iceberg looming up above the sea in a
misty atmosphere. This was the third time we had been deceived in that
manner. Once the Dean had come rushing towards me, shouting at the top
of his voice, 'The fleet! the fleet!' meaning the whale-ships; but he
might just as well have saved himself all that trouble, for 'the fleet'
proved to be only a great group of icebergs; but when I told him so he
would hardly believe it, until he became at last convinced that they
were not moving.
"You must know that these icebergs assume all sorts of shapes, and it
was very natural, since we were always on the lookout for ships, that
our imaginations should be excited and disturbed, and ready to see at
any time what we most wanted to see; nor were we at all peculiar in
this, as many people might tell you who were never cast away in the
cold.
"So it is not surprising that we should cry out very frequently 'A sail,
a sail!' when there was not a sail perhaps within many hundred miles of
us.
"Well, as I was going to say, the Dean and I sat upon the hillside
overlooking the sea, thinking the icebergs were ships, or hoping so at
least, until hope died away, and then it was that we fell to talking.
"'Do you think, Hardy,' asked the Dean, 'that any other ship than ours
ever did come this way or ever will?'
"'I'm afraid not,' said I; and I must have looked very despondent about
it, as in truth I was,--much more so than I would have liked to own.
"I had not considered what the Dean was about, for he was despondent
enough himself, and no doubt wished very hard that I might say something
to cheer him up a bit; but, instead of doing that, I only made him
worse, whereupon he seemed to grow angry, and in a rather snappish way
he inquired of me if I knew what I was.
"'No,' said I, quite taken aback. 'What do you mean?'
"'Mean!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Why, I mean to say,'--and he spoke in a
positive way that was not usual with him,--'I mean to say,' said he,
'that you are a regular Job's comforter, and no mistake.'
"I had not the least idea at that period of my life as to what kind of a
thing a Job's comforter was. I had a vague notion that it was something
to go round the neck, and I protested that I was nothing of the sort.
"'Yes, you are, and you know you are,' went on the Dean,--'a regular
Job's comforter,--croaking all the time, and never seeing any way out of
our troubles at all.'
"'I should like to know,' said I,--and I thought I had him there,--'how
I can see any way out of our troubles when there isn't any!'
"'Well, you can think there is, if there isn't,--can't you?' and the
Dean was ten times more snappish than he was before; and, having thus
delivered himself, he snapped himself up and snapped himself off in a
great hurry; but, as the little fellow turned to go away, I thought I
saw great big tears stealing down his cheeks. I thought that his voice
trembled over the last words; and when he went behind a rock and hid
himself, I knew that he had gone away to cry, and that he had been
ashamed to cry where I could see him.
"After a while I went to him. He was lying on his side, with his head
upon his arm. His cap had fallen off, and the light wind was playing
gently with his curly hair. The sun was shining brightly in his face,
and, sunburnt and weather-beaten though it was, his rosy cheeks were the
same as ever. But bitter, scalding tears had left their traces there,
for the poor boy had cried himself to sleep.
"His sleep was troubled, for he was calling out, and his hands and feet
were twitching now and then, and cruel dreams were weighing on his
sleeping, even more heavily, perhaps, than they had been upon his waking
thoughts. So I awoke him. He sprang up instantly, looking very wild, and
sat upon the rock. 'Where am I? What's the matter? Is that you, Hardy?'
were the questions with which he greeted me so quickly that I could not
answer one of them. Then he smiled in his natural way, and said, 'After
all, it was only a dream.'
"'What was it?' I asked. 'Tell me, Dean, what it was.'
"'O, it was not much, but you see it put me in a dreadful fright. I
thought a ship was steering close in by the land; I thought I saw you
spring upon the deck and sail away; and as you sailed away upon the
silvery sea, I thought you turned and mocked me, and I cursed you as I
stood upon the beach, until some foul fiend, in punishment for my wicked
words, caught me by the neck, and dragged me through the sea, and tied
me fast to the vessel's keel, and there I was with his last words
ringing in my ears, with the gurgling waters, "Follow him to your doom,"
when you awoke me. "Follow him to your doom!" I seem to hear the demon
shrieking even now, though I'm wide enough awake.'
"'I don't wonder at your fright, and I'm glad I woke you!' said I, not
knowing what else to say.
"'It all comes,' went on the little fellow, 'of my being angry with you,
Hardy'; and so he asked me to forgive him, and not think badly of him,
and said he would not be so ungrateful any more, and many such things,
which it pained me very much to have him say; and so I made him stop,
and then somehow or other we got our arms around each other's neck, and
we kissed each other's cheeks, and great cataracts of tears came tearing
from each other's eyes; and the first and last unkindness that had come
between us was passed and gone forever.
"'But do you really think,' said the Dean, when he got his voice
again,--'do you really think that, if a ship don't come along and take
us off, we can live here on this wretched little island,--that is, when
the summer goes, and all the birds have flown away, and the darkness and
the cold are on us all the time?'"
"'To be sure we can,' I answered; but, to tell the truth, I had very
great doubts about it, only I thought that this would strengthen up the
Dean; and as I had, by this time, made for myself a better definition to
Job's comforter than a something to go around the neck, I had no idea of
being called by that name any more.
"'I'm glad to hear you say that!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Indeed I am!'
"There was no need to give me such very strong assurance that he was
'glad to hear it,' for his face showed as plain as could be that he was
glad to hear me say anything that had the least hope in it.
"After this the Dean grew quite cheerful. Suddenly he asked, 'Do you
know, Hardy, if this island has a name?'
"Of course I did not know, and told him so.
"'Then I'll give it one right off,' said he; 'I'll call it from this
minute the Rock of Good Hope, and here we'll make our start in life.
It's as good a place, perhaps, to make a start in life as any other; for
nobody is likely to dispute our title to our lands, or molest us in our
fortune-making, which is more than could be said if our lot were cast in
any other place.'
"This vein of conversation brightened me up a little. Indeed, it was
hard to be very long despondent in the presence of the Dean's hopeful
disposition. There was much more said of the same nature, which it is
not necessary to repeat. It is enough for me to tell you that the upshot
of the whole matter was that we came in the end to regard ourselves as
settled on the island, if not for the remainder of our lives, at least
for an indefinite time, and we made up our minds that there was no use
in being gloomy and cast down about it. So from that time forward we
were mostly cheerful, and, though you may think it very strange, were
generally contented.
"This was a great step gained, and when we now came to make an inventory
of our possessions, we did it just as a farmer or merchant would do.
Being the undisputed owners of this Rock of Good Hope, we considered
ourselves none the less owners of all the foxes, ducks, eggs,
eider-down, dead beasts, dry bones, and whatsoever else there might be
upon it; and, besides this, we had a lien upon all the seals and
walruses and whales of every kind that lived in the sea,--that is, if we
could catch them.
"We now worked with even a better spirit than we had done before, for
the idea of being settled on the island for life seemed to imply that we
had need to look ahead farther than when our hopes of rescue had been
strong.
"And first we finished the hut in which we were to live,--doing it not
as if we were putting up a tent for temporary use, but as a man who has
just come into possession of a large property puts up a fine house on
it, that he may be comfortable for the remainder of his days.
"I have told you our hut was about twelve feet square, and that we had,
after much hard labor, succeeded in closing it up perfectly, and in
making it tight. Along the peak of it, where the two rocks came
together, there was a crack which gave us much trouble; but at length
we succeeded in pounding down into it, with the but-end of our narwhal
horn, a great quantity of moss or turf, and thus closed it tight.
"I must tell you here, while we are on the subject of moss, and since I
have spoken about it so often, that the moss grew on our island, as it
does in all Arctic countries, with a richness that you never see
here,--moss being, in truth, the characteristic vegetation of the Arctic
regions. In the valley fronting us there was a bed of it several feet
thick. Its fibres were very long,--as much, in some places, as four
inches,--all of a single year's growth; and as it had gone on growing
year after year, you will understand that there was layer after layer of
it. In one place, at the side of the valley to the right as we went down
towards the beach, it seemed to have died out after growing for many
years; and when we discovered this, we were more rejoiced than we had
been at any time since starting the fire; for the moss, being dead, had
become dry and hard, and burned almost like peat, as we found when we
came to try it in our fireplace; and when we added to it a little of our
blubber, it made such a heat that we could not have desired anything
better. Indeed, it made our hut so warm that we could leave the door and
window both open until the weather became colder.
"One thing which gave us great satisfaction was the immense quantity of
the dead moss which was in this bed,--so much, indeed, that, no matter
how long we should live there, we could never burn up the hundredth part
of it. At first there had not appeared to be much of it, but it
developed more and more, like a coal mine, as we dug farther and farther
into it.
"Our fireplace was therefore, as you see, a great success; but we were,
after a few days, most unexpectedly troubled with it. Thus far the wind
had been blowing only in one direction; but afterwards it shifted to the
opposite quarter, driving the smoke all down into the hut, and
smothering us out. Neither of us being a skilful mason, we could not
imagine what was the matter; but finally it occurred to us, after much
useless labor had been spent in tearing part of it down and building it
up again, that it was too low, being just on a level with the top of the
hut; so we ran it up as much higher as we could lift the stones, which
was about four feet, and after that we had no more trouble with it.
"Having succeeded so well with our arrangements towards keeping up a
fire, we next fitted up a bed, as the storms now began to trouble us,
and we found, when we were driven away from the grass, and were obliged
to sleep inside of the hut, that it was a very hard place to sleep,
being nothing but rough stones, which made us very sore, and made our
bones ache.
"The first thing we did now was to build a wall about as high as our
knees right across the middle of the hut, from side to side; then,
across the space thus enclosed in the back part of the hut, we built up
another wall about three feet high,--thus, you see, making two divisions
of it.
"One of these divisions we used as a sort of store-room or closet,
levelling the bottom of it with flat stone, of which we had no
difficulty in getting all we wanted. We also covered the front part of
the hut with stones of the same description, thus making quite a smooth
floor. It was not large enough, as you will see, to give us much trouble
in keeping it clean. Of the second division, in the back part, we made
our bed, by first filling it up with moss, then covering the moss over
with dry grass.
"Having given up all hope of a ship coming after us, we now gave up
watching for one; and we went to sleep together on our new bed, lying on
the dry grass, and, as before, covering ourselves over with my large
overcoat. We found it to be more comfortable than you would think, and
altogether better than anything we had yet had to sleep on. But we came
near losing our fire by it, as the last embers were just dying out when
we awoke from this our first sleep in the hut.
"But this bed did not exactly suit our fancy, and, seeing the necessity
for some better kind of bedclothes, our wits were once more set to
working, in order to discover something with which to fasten together
the duck-skins that we had been saving and drying, and of which we had
now almost a hundred. We had spread them out upon the rocks, and dried
them in the sun; for we had seen that, if we could only find something
with which to sew them together, we might make all the clothing that we
wanted.
"The eider-duck skin is very warm, having, besides its thick coat of
feathers, a heavy underlayer of soft warm down, which, as I told you
before, the ducks pick off to line their nests with. The skins are also
very strong, as well as warm.
"Now, however, as at other times since we had been cast away, good
fortune came to us; and we had scarcely begun seriously to feel the need
of sewing materials before they were thrown in our way, as if
providentially. It happened thus:--
"In cutting the blubber from the dead narwhal, we had quite exposed the
strong sinews of the tail, without, however, for a moment imagining that
we were preparing the way to a most important and useful discovery.
After a while this sinew had become partially dried in the sun, and one
day, while busy with some one of our now quite numerous occupations, I
was much surprised to see the Dean running towards me from the beach,
and was still more surprised when I heard him crying out, 'I have it, I
have it!'
"It seemed to me that the Dean was always having something, and I was
more than ever curious to know what it was this time.
"He had been down to the beach, and, observing some of the dried sinew,
had begun to tear it to pieces; and in this way he found out that he
could make threads of it, and he immediately set off to tell me about
it. We at once went together down to the beach, and, cutting off all
that we could get of this strong sinew, we spread it upon the rocks,
that it might dry more thoroughly.
"In a few days the sun had completely dried and hardened a great
quantity of this stuff; and we found that, when we came to pick it to
pieces, we could make, if we chose, very fine threads of it,--as fine
and as strong as ordinary silk. This was a great discovery truly, as it
was the only thing now wanting, except some cooking utensils, to
complete our domestic furniture. As for the latter, it was some time
before we invented anything; but thus far we had been occupied with what
seemed to be more important concerns. Over on the opposite side of the
island I found some stones of very soft texture; and, upon trying them
with my knife, I discovered that they were precisely the same kind of
stones that I had often found at home, and which we there called
soapstone. Upon making further search there proved to be quite an
extensive vein of it; and since I knew that in civilized countries
griddles are made out of soapstone, I concluded at once that other kinds
of cooking utensils might be made as well. Accordingly I carried to our
hut several pieces of it, and there they lay for a good while, until I
could find leisure to carve some pots and other things out of them.
"Thus you see we were getting along very well, steadily collecting those
things which were necessary as well for our comfort as our safety. If
the island on which we had been cast away was barren and inhospitable,
it was none the less capable, like almost every other land, in whatever
region of the earth, of furnishing subsistence to men.
"When we saw what we could do with the sinew of the narwhal, we
immediately set about preparing some bedclothes for ourselves. This we
did by squaring off the duck-skins with my knife, and then sewing them
tightly together. Thus we obtained, not only a soft bed to lie upon, but
a good warm quilt to cover us.
"This done, we went back to the cooking utensils, which you may be sure
we were very much in need of. Out of a good large block of soapstone, by
careful digging with the knife, we soon made quite a good-sized pot,
which was found to answer perfectly. We could now change our diet a
little,--at least, I should say, the manner of cooking it; for while we
could before only fry our ducks and eggs on flat stones, when we got the
pot we could boil them. This gave us great pleasure, as we were getting
very tired of having but one style of food; still I cannot say that
there was so very much occasion for being over-glad, as at best it was
only ducks and eggs, and eggs and ducks, like the boy you have heard of
in the story, who had first mush and milk, and then, for variety, milk
and mush.
"So one day the Dean said to me, 'Hardy, can't we catch some of these
little birds,--auks you call them?' 'How?' said I. 'I don't know,' said
he; so we were just as well off as we had been before. But this set us
to thinking again; and the birds being very tame, and flying low, it
occurred to us that we might make a net, and fasten it to the end of our
narwhal horn, which we had thus far only used while making our hut.
Luckily for us, the Dean--who, I need hardly say, was a very clever boy
in every sense--had learned from one of the sailors the art of
net-making; and out of some of the narwhal sinew he contrived, in two
days, to construct quite a good-sized net. And now the difficulty was to
stretch it; but by this time our inventive faculties had been pretty
well sharpened, and we were not long in finding that we could make a
perfect hoop by lashing together three seal ribs which we picked up on
the beach; and, having fastened this hoop securely to the narwhal horn,
we sallied forth to the north side of the island, where the auks were
most abundant.
[Illustration: Changing the Diet again.]
"Hiding ourselves away among the rocks, we waited until a flock of the
birds flew over us. They flew very low,--not more than five feet above
our heads. When they were least expecting it, I threw up the net, and
three of them flew bang into it. They were so much stunned by the blow,
that only one of them could flutter out before I had drawn in the net;
and the Dean was quick enough to seize the remaining two before they
could escape. This, being the first experiment, gave us great
encouragement, as it was more successful than we had ventured to hope.
We went on with the work, without pausing, for several hours, looking
upon it as great sport, as indeed it was; and since it was the first
thing we had done on the island that seemed like sport, the day was
always remembered by us with delight.
"So now you see we had begun to mingle a little pleasure with our life;
and this was a very important matter, for you know the old saying, 'All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'"