HOW ROBINSON TRAINED FRIDAY
Whilst the man slept, Robinson went out to milk his goats, at which
work the savage, having waked in about half an hour, found him, and
running up, threw himself on the ground near Robinson’s feet, one of
which he again raised as before, and placed on his head. At the same
time he made every kind of sign of gratitude and submission.
In a little while Robinson began to speak to him, and to try to teach
him things. First, he made him understand that his name was to be
‘Friday,’ (that being the day of the week when Robinson had saved him
from a horrible death). Then he taught him the meaning of ‘Yes,’ and
‘No,’ and to call Robinson, ‘Master.’
Friday showed great quickness in learning. He seemed to be happy
and contented, and free from trouble, except that the clothes which
Robinson made him wear gave him at first great discomfort, for in those
warm parts of the world the natives are not used to clothes, but always
go about naked. And perhaps they are healthier so, for when rain comes,
they can cover their skin with cocoa-nut oil, and the wet then runs
off their bodies without chilling them, and they do not catch cold by
wearing damp clothes. Sometimes they make drooping girdles of the broad
leaves of the banana, which are two or three feet long, and wear these
round their waists; and sometimes, for ornament, they stick crimson
flowers behind their ears, or hang them round their necks. But other
clothes they have none to wear.
And indeed such things would only be in the way, for the natives who
live on the coasts often pass nearly whole days swimming in the warm
sea. They are never afraid of sharks, for they swim so well and so fast
that often they are able to kill the sharks, diving under them, and
stabbing them in the belly with a knife.
Even the very little children swim almost before they can walk, and
whole families go out for a day in the sea, as children and their
parents in England might go for a picnic. One of their games, when a
heavy swell is rolling in, toppling over in cataracts of foam as the
waves reach the shallower water near the shore, is to swim out, diving
through the broken water, and taking with them a light plank. On this,
when they have got beyond where the seas break, they mount, and come
rushing in on the crest of the great waves, shrieking with laughter
when any one is upset. It is glorious fun, they think.
The day following that on which Robinson had saved Friday, they went
out together to see if there were any signs of the cannibals still
being on the island, but it was evident that they had gone away without
troubling about the two men whom Robinson had killed. Round the place
where their fire had been, were horrible remains of bodies, pieces of
flesh half eaten, or charred by the fire, skulls, hands, and bones
of legs and feet. Friday made Robinson understand that these were the
remains of three prisoners who had been brought over along with him, to
be feasted on.
Robinson’s blood ran cold as he looked, and the horror of the sight
made him sick and faint. He ordered Friday to collect all the bodies
and other remains, and to build a fire to burn them, which Friday very
cheerfully did. To him it was no great matter, for, of course, all his
life he himself had been a cannibal, and he was quite used to such
scenes. Indeed, when they passed the spot where the two men had been
buried in the sand, Friday pointed it out to Robinson, and gave him to
understand that he meant to come back, and dig up and eat the bodies.
This filled Robinson with disgust and rage, and he let Friday know that
he would be severely punished, perhaps killed, if ever such a thing was
done by him.
For some time Robinson did not trust Friday, and did not allow him
to sleep in the same part of his castle with himself, but kept him at
night in a little tent outside the fence. Every night he drew up the
ladder, so that if Friday ever should attempt to get over, he would be
sure to make noise enough to wake Robinson. Other precautions also he
took, but soon he found that they were not needed. Friday was quite
faithful. And he was never sulky nor lazy, but always merry, and ready
to do anything that Robinson told him. And as time went on, Robinson
did not doubt that if there should ever be need for it, Friday would
risk his life to save his master.
At first when they went out in the woods together, Friday was terrified
each time that Robinson’s gun was fired. He had never seen anything put
into it, and it was more than he could understand how things could be
killed merely by the noise and the flash of fire. It seemed to him that
the gun was some sort of evil spirit that might do him harm, and it was
long before he could be brought to touch one of them, though when he
was alone Robinson often heard him talking to them. Afterwards, when he
could speak English better, and knew more about guns, he told Robinson
that he used to ask them not to kill him.
One thing that Robinson could never teach Friday was to eat salt with
his food. Salt is a thing that the cannibals do not use, and some
of them, to this day, go so far as to say that they do not care to
eat a white man, because he is too salt. A native of their own race,
they think, is much sweeter, though of course they eat only men of a
different tribe whom they may capture during one of their wars. But the
only form in which they take salt is as sea water, and that they use as
medicine, drinking it in large quantities till it makes them sick.
Robinson asked Friday if his tribe ever came to this island, and Friday
said that they did, and that he himself had often come over; and he
told Robinson that on one visit he and his friends had eaten more than
twenty men. His tribe, he said, was very strong, and fought well. Thus
they took more prisoners, and used the island oftener than the other
tribes, and it seemed that the far side of the island, where Robinson
had seen so many remains of feasts, was the part that Friday’s tribe
held as their own. Sometimes other tribes used another island for their
feasts.
It troubled Robinson’s mind greatly to hear what Friday had to say
about this custom, but by little and little, as the weeks went past,
he got him to see how horrible a thing it was to eat human flesh. From
this beginning, Friday gradually came to be in his habits more like
a white man, and teaching him was a great joy to Robinson, who found
the years after Friday’s arrival the happiest of all that he had lived
on the island. Not only had he now help in his work, but he had some
one to talk to, for want of which, during the weary years when he was
alone, he had almost forgotten his own tongue.
When they began easily to understand each other, Robinson asked Friday
how far it was from the island to his country, and if the canoes were
not often lost whilst crossing. Friday said there was no danger, and
that no canoes were ever wrecked; that always in the morning the
wind and the current set one way, and the other in the afternoon.
This Robinson thought must have something to do with the tides, but
afterwards he learned that the change of wind was only the difference
between the sea breeze and the land breeze, which blow time about,
morning and evening, in those parts. The change in the current was due
to the in-draft and out-draft of a great river, off whose mouth the
island lay.
Friday told Robinson much about his country, and about his people, who
he said were Caribs. And a great way ‘beyond the moon,’ by which he
meant to the west, he said that white men lived who had beards such as
Robinson wore. These white men, he said, had killed very many natives,
from which Robinson fancied that they must be Spaniards, who about that
time were very cruel to the people whose countries they had taken.
Robinson asked if Friday could tell him how he might get over to where
the white men lived, and Friday said it would be very easy, if they
had a big canoe. And again Robinson began to make plans and to hope to
escape from the island. He showed Friday the boat in which he and the
crew had tried to land from the wreck, the remains of which still lay
high up on the shore, out of reach of the waves of any but a very high
tide, or of a storm worse than common. Friday looked long at it without
speaking, till Robinson asked what he was thinking of.
Then he said that he had once before seen such a boat, but for some
time he could not make Robinson understand where, or when, he had seen
it. Robinson thought he meant that a ship had been driven ashore on the
coast, and that the boat, perhaps, had come from her. But presently
Friday spoke of the men who had been in the boat, and whom he and his
people had pulled out of the sea. He counted on his fingers to make
Robinson understand that there had been seventeen of them.
‘Where are they now?’ Robinson asked; and Friday said they still lived
with his tribe.
This put new ideas into Robinson’s head, for he thought that probably
these men might have belonged to the ship whose guns he had heard, and
to which he had afterwards gone out in his boat as she lay on the reef.
Friday said that his people had given the men food, and had not hurt
them.
‘Why did they not kill and eat them?’ asked Robinson; and again Friday
assured him that they ate men only whom they took in war.
It was some time after this that Robinson and Friday chanced to be on
the high hill at the east end of the island. The day was cloudless and
very clear, with a light breeze rippling the water, just such a day as
that on which, years ago, Robinson had seen land, far over the sea.
Friday gazed long in that direction, and then began to jump and dance,
pointing to the dim blue coast. ‘There my country! See! There my people
live!’ he said, his eyes sparkling with joy, and an eager light on his
face.
After this, for a time Robinson was not easy in his mind about Friday.
He had little doubt that if he could get back to his tribe, he would
soon forget all he had been taught, all that Robinson had done for
him, might even return, perhaps, with a hundred or two of his friends,
and kill and eat his master. But in this Robinson was very unjust to
Friday, who had no such thoughts in his mind as those of which he was
suspected.
And this Robinson soon found out. One day, as they walked up the same
hill, he asked if Friday would not be glad to be once more in his own
land.
‘Yes,’ said Friday; ‘very glad.’
‘Would you eat men’s flesh again?’
‘No, never,’ said Friday, shaking his head very much.
Then Robinson asked why he did not go back. It was too far to swim,
said Friday. Robinson said he would give him a boat, and Friday said,
very well, he would go if Robinson came too.
‘But your people will eat me,’ said Robinson.
‘No, no,’ Friday answered; ‘you good to me. They good to you.’
Robinson had then more than half a mind to go, for if he could join the
other white men, he thought there would be a better chance to build a
boat big enough to sail in to England.
So he took Friday to the place where he kept the small canoe he had
made, and quickly he found that he was a very much better boatman than
Robinson himself, and could make her go through the water nearly twice
as fast as Robinson was able to do.
But when Robinson asked if they might try to go over in that boat,
Friday’s face fell. She was too small, he said. Robinson then showed
him the first boat he had built, and which had been lying on the sand
now for more than twenty-two years. That, Friday said, was big enough.
But the heat of the sun by this time had so warped and cracked her
that, even if they could have got her into the sea, she would not have
floated.
Then Robinson told Friday that he would build him a bigger boat, and
send him home in it, but that he himself would remain on the island
alone, as he had been before.
The poor lad’s feelings were hurt at this, and he asked, ‘Why you angry
mad with Friday? Suppose master go, Friday go! Suppose master no go,
Friday no go!’ And he brought a hatchet, and said, ‘You kill Friday;
not send him away.’ Robinson was much touched by this devotion, and
afterwards always had perfect faith in him.