BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY.
When we got inside we could at first see but little, for the thatched
roof, which had fallen in, had buried everything with a dusty brown
covering; so we set to work to clear this out, and see if it hid
anything that might be of value to us.
In one corner there was apparently a mound of these half-decayed leaves,
and we decided on commencing our work there; but judge of our horror
when, after removing a few armfuls, we came upon the skull of a man, and
then proceeding more carefully and reverently, we uncovered a skeleton
lying on a sort of bed-place, wrapped in blankets, which crumbled to
dust as we touched them.
“Poor fellow,” said Tom; “he must have died here alone, with none to
bury him. Let us do it now.”
Both Bill and I agreed with this, for we were too frightened by these
poor remains of mortality to go on with our search, and we gladly set to
work to clear away a space where with our knives and hatchets we could
dig a grave.
While we were thus occupied, Tom made a sort of mat of plaited palm
leaves, in which he carefully put the skeleton, and lashed it all up
with sinnet.
“I wonder who or what he was,” he said, as he came bearing his sad
burden to where Bill and I were at work, and had by this time dug the
grave to a depth of about three feet.
“That will do,” said Tom; “now get some palm leaves, and line the
whole.”
As soon as we had done this, we reverently laid the bundle containing
the skeleton in the grave, and covered it in, and then at Tom’s
suggestion we knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer.
By this time it was getting on toward sunset, and it was necessary to
prepare for our night’s lodging. While Tom went to see the boat properly
secured, I made a fire, and Bill acted as cook; and as in looking about
for fuel I had come upon a nest of eggs, we promised ourselves a feast,
and glad indeed were we to wash down the eggs with sweet, fresh water,
and to add to our meal some heads of Indian corn roasted in the ashes.
Next morning before daylight Tom woke Bill and me, and said, “Now be
quiet and come with me. I have marked where the fowls roost, and if we
come on them softly, we may secure some before they wake.”
Softly and stealthily we stole to the place Tom showed us, and there we
found the remains of a shed, under which there were a series of perches
on which some thirty or forty fowls were roosting.
As quietly as we could we seized on them, and tied their legs together;
but before we had secured more than a dozen, the rest were alarmed and
made their escape.
“Never mind, lads,” said Tom; “we’ll get the others another night. And
now, when we have had breakfast, we will go on with the examination of
the hut.”
It did not take us long to clear out the remainder of the thatch, and we
soon found that the hut had been built with great care and ingenuity.
The bed-place on which we had found the skeleton occupied one corner,
and under it was a seaman’s chest, in which we found some
carefully-patched clothes, and the tattered remains of a Bible, and the
fragments of a chart.
No name or anything to give a clue to their owner was to be found,
except that on the horn handle of a clasp-knife were cut “Jack” and a
couple of crosses. We also found a sailor’s ditty-bag, containing
needles and thread, palm for sewing, beeswax, and buttons.
Tom said he was glad indeed to find the Bible, for now he said we should
be able to read a chapter every night when we said our prayers; and the
chart he carefully examined to see if it might give a clue to our
whereabouts, and tell us if any inhabited islands existed within a
distance which we might reach in safety in our boat.
On the chart there was a cross made with a bit of charcoal, and from it
were drawn a series of lines in various directions, as if the unhappy
man whose remains we had buried had pored over it for many a weary hour,
and attempted to calculate some means of escape from his solitary island
home.
“Curious!” I said. “He must have tried to make a boat or something. But
see, there are a lot of islands away to the westward of that cross,
which I suppose means this island; I should think he might have tried
for them.”
“Wait a bit, mates,” said Tom; “we’ll find out more soon.”
And proceeding with our search in the middle of the room, we found a
table, which had fallen to the ground, made of some pieces of wood which
had evidently belonged to the companion of a ship, and stools of the
same material.
On the table we found written in charcoal letters, which could scarcely
be deciphered:—
“......cowar-s......left alone......no hope......ill
......heart-broken......money.”
What this meant we soon understood, all except the last. The man we had
buried had been deserted by his companions; but what was meant by money
we could not understand. Perhaps they had had money on the island, and
quarrelled about its division.
This we put carefully on one side, and then, proceeding with our search,
we found a fireplace made of wood, plastered with lime, and full of
wood-ashes, and on it were an iron pot and a frying-pan.
Scattered about we found cups made out of cocoanut shells, and a couple
of plates, which had been broken and cleverly cemented with lime on to
bits of wood.
“Evidently he did not die of starvation,” said Tom, “for he had fowls,
cocoanuts, and Indian corn; but now let us see what else there is on the
island, for I think we have pretty well seen everything in the hut.”
Leaving the hut, we passed through the clearing, and then through some
more palm trees, and soon emerged on the weather side of the island, on
which the surf was beating with relentless fury.
Here, half buried in sand or hidden by vegetation, we found scattered
about the wreckage of a schooner of about two hundred tons, which must
have been run plump on to the island.
Close to the beach we found another small hut, inside which were stowed
canvas, carpenter’s tools, and cordage; and close by we could see
several pieces of wood from the wreck, which had evidently been
fashioned into parts of a boat, and a pile of planks from the deck of
the ship, as well as several others of her belongings, all covered over
with the remnants of palm-thatching.
Whoever he was, the man had been trying to build a boat.
“I wonder what prevented him,” said Bill.
“What’s that sticking up there?” I asked, pointing to a piece of wood
among the undergrowth.
“Why, the handle of an adze,” answered Tom.
Looking at this, we soon found the reason why the unfortunate man had
desisted from his work, and probably the cause of his death.
The rusty iron of the adze had stuck deep in a plank, and lying by it
were some small bones, which it did not need any knowledge of anatomy to
see belonged to a human foot.
Evidently the unfortunate creature had chopped off a part of his foot
while engaged in fashioning a piece of wood, and had managed to get back
to his hut to die.
“Poor fellow,” said Bill and I in a breath; “he never could have built a
craft here, and launched her through that surf.”
“No,” answered thoughtful Tom Arbor, “but he may have intended to build
her on the other side, and only shaped the parts here, so as to have
less weight to carry or drag across; but, anyway, his death is our good
fortune, for we can deck and rig our boat for sea-going from what is
here. If I mistake not we need it, for there’s never an island on that
chart within three hundred miles of us; and if there are any nearer,
they’re likely but places like this, with ne’er a living soul aboard of
them.”
“Well, what do you intend to do?” I asked.
“Why, rig up this hut again, and then get all our belongings over to
this side; and then deck our boat, and rig her with something easier to
handle than a dipping lug.”
“All right; but now we must look after the fowls we caught; they’ll be
hungry and thirsty.”
We soon made our way back to the hut; and as many of its rafters were
still sound, it did not take us very long to put a roof on that would
keep out the sun and all ordinary rain. Bill was off to make a coop for
the fowls that we had caught.
This done, we set steadily to work, and after getting all the things
that we had left at our first camp to this place, where we were blessed
with water, we again hove our boat up on shore; and now, having wood and
materials, Tom and I laboured to make a real trustworthy craft, while
Bill was told off to look after the fowls, and remove the undergrowth
from the clearing, being careful not to injure the maize, which we
trusted would furnish us with a supply of food for our intended voyage.
First of all, Tom and I made a deep false keel to our craft, which we
named the _Escape_; and as we could not through bolt it to the keel, we
put planks on either side of keel and false keel, and overlapping both,
and nailed all solidly together.
This being done, we fixed a head knee in a similar manner; and then
having given the _Escape_ a thorough good coating of lime and oil, we
launched her again, lest she should get too heavy for us to manage.
This naturally had taken us some days, and Tom and I had laboured from
morning to night at her, only coming to the hut for meals, which Bill
had always ready for us.
Bill, the evening that we had got the _Escape_ afloat, said, “You two
fellows must think me a precious lazy hound not to come and help you
more than I have. Now the boat’s afloat, I want you to come with me
to-morrow to see what I have been doing.”
“Why, catching fowls, clearing out the water-troughs, making up the pool
they lead into afresh, and all manner of things,” I said.
“That’s not all. I have had time to hunt about, and if you’ll come with
me to-morrow, I’ll show you something.”
“Shall we, Tom?” I asked. “I want to think about our ship before we go
on with her.”
“Perhaps one day won’t matter. What is it you’ve found, Bill?”
“Never you mind until I show it you.”
It was accordingly agreed that we should the next morning go and see
what Bill had to show, and not to ask him to say what it was beforehand.
Early in the morning Bill woke us, and gave us a good breakfast of eggs,
roast maize, and a grilled fowl; and when we had finished he said, “Come
along, and see what I have to show you.”
First he took us to the spring, and showed us how he had patched up the
troughs, cleared out a basin, and lined it with turtle shells, into
which the water fell, and which was large enough to take a bath in. Here
we all enjoyed a thorough good wash, and sat in turn under the end of
the trough from which the water fell into the basin.
Bill soon got tired of being here, and said, “If I’d thought that you
would have been so long here, I’d have brought you here last night; now
bear a hand, and come on.”
Getting out of the water, we dried ourselves with cocoanut fibre, and
putting on our clothes we went on with Bill a short way, until he
brought us to a shed he had made for the fowls, which he had enclosed
with leaf mats; and here he said he had all the fowls on the island
except two or three, and that some hens were laying regularly, while
others were sitting on their eggs.
“Certain you’re a regular farmer,” said Tom.
“Wait a bit; I’ll show you if I’m a farmer. Come along here a bit
farther.” And following him along, he brought us to a clearing about
twice as large as that where our hut stood, and which, like it, had been
at one time planted with maize; but here the maize had been stronger
than the weeds, and Bill having torn up all the latter, there was to be
seen enough Indian corn, nearly ripe, to have loaded the _Escape_ twice
over.
“Well, you are a farmer, surely!” exclaimed both Tom and myself.
“You may say that, but you haven’t seen all yet.”
“What! Not yet?”
“Not by a long chalk. I think the fellow whose hut we have lived up
there by himself, and the others down here. Come along, and I’ll show
you some more good-luck.”
“You see here,” he said, when we had gone other three hundred yards;
“the reef’s cut nearly in two by the sea, and they’ve made a stiff fence
right across. And, look; you see they’ve brought the water right down
here too. Now over this fence there’s three or four huts, or what was
huts; and what d’ye think there is there?”
“Sure we can’t tell. Anything to say what the wreck was, or anything?”
“Not a word or a line, not a scrap of paper; but there’s five graves,
and there’s been somewhere about eight or so got away.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Why, by counting the bunks in the huts, to be sure. But, there; you
won’t guess what else there is. There’s a turtle-pond, some half-dozen
big turtles in it, and there’s pigs.”
“Pigs! Are you sure?” said Tom.
“Sure as eggs is eggs,” answered Bill.
“Can we catch any?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Bill. “I daresay we can if we likes; but I seed
some as fat as butter, and an old sow with a lot of young uns. But that
ain’t all; there’s something else.”
“What is it? Tell us at once.”
“Do you remember the writing on the table, and that we couldn’t find out
what ‘money’ meant?”
“Certainly; but what’s that got to do with what you found?”
“Why, I’ve found the money, and a mighty lot there be, I can tell you.
Gold guineas—thousands of them!”