I spied all of a sudden two boats lying close together near a small
spit of land. I might have noticed them before but for being so busy
with the sail. Billy saw them too, and cried out that they were our
own boats, and was for steering instantly out to sea again, for he
would sooner have faced a tempest than Hoggett, or any other of the men
who had ill-used him. But even before I could answer him we were aware
of a strange trembling of the raft beneath our feet, in no wise like
the wonted heaving of the sea, and while we were in the article of
wondering what it might be, the raft seemed to sink under us, as if a
great gap had opened beneath it and it was falling through empty air.
I was in a terrible fright, and catched at my breath, but still keeping
my feet, and in a moment we heard a strange rushing behind us, and,
turning about, beheld a great wall of water bearing down upon us. With
one consent we flung ourselves on our faces, clutching at the ropes
that bound the raft together, and had barely got a grip of them when
the mountainous wave crashed upon us, and we were completely engulfed.
What happened to us then neither Billy nor I could ever perfectly tell,
though we talked about it often; but I must suppose that the raft was
rolled over and over, with us a-clinging to it. I had scarce got a
little breath into me again, after a greater space of time even than
when I had been sucked under at the sinking of our vessel, when the
return wave smote upon us, and we were hurled back, and while we were
still gasping after this, another green wall fell upon us from
seawards, though not so high as the first, and, its force being spent,
we found ourselves, sore bruised and breathless, on the landward side
of a small group of rocks of about seven or eight feet high, and not
above thirty yards from the beach. We had been carried clean over it,
and the raft, to which we had clung as by a miracle, was floating in
two or three feet of water. This we discovered afterwards, for we were
as near dead as any one could be, and, indeed, I wonder that we were
not killed outright, as we should have been beyond doubt but that the
raft prevented us from being dashed upon the ground. We had had
battering enough as it was, but coming to our senses, and very sick
from the water we had swallowed, we sprang off the raft and hauled it
ashore, Billy crying out that his feet, which were bare, were cut to
pieces on the beach, which was very hard and jagged, though I escaped
hurt, having my boots on.
We were immediately aware of a deep rumbling from the hill above, and
lifting our eyes, we beheld prodigious quantities of smoke or steam, we
could not tell which, belching from the top, and then a vast torrent of
water pouring down towards us, with steam rising from it in clouds. We
were near paralyzed with the sight, but recovered ourselves in time to
skip back to the rocks over which we had been cast, and clambered to
the top of them with what haste we might, Billy's feet being all red
with blood from the sharpness of the beach. The torrent spread out as
it flowed downwards, and, coming straight towards us, I was in a great
fear lest, even though we were perched up, we should not escape it, and
we were, indeed, on the point of casting ourselves into the sea. But I
was thankful we did not do it, for the stream did not rise higher than
within three feet of our perch, but dashed up a great shower of spray,
which was scalding hot. It also hurled our raft with great violence
against the rock beneath us, breaking off a good portion of it; but it
did not carry it out to sea, the rocks preventing it.
Then, as we looked up towards the summit of the hill, we saw a number
of figures, very small in the distance, hasting pell-mell downwards.
At first I thought they were savages, who had espied us, but within a
little I knew them for seamen of our crew. They ran at the edge of the
torrent, avoiding the clouds of steam, but this they could no longer do
when they came to where the water had spread over the beach, and we
heard them uttering very great yells of pain, as well from the scalding
water as from the jagged edges of the ground, their feet being unshod
save for one or two of them. They skipped from point to point,
endeavouring to find a safe way, and I recollected afterwards the
strange antics of Wabberley, who, being of a ponderous shape, was very
unfit for such feats of agility. The men gave no sign of having seen
us, but bore away towards their right and our left towards a small
tract of sand which, being protected by the slope of the hill, had not
been covered by the lava from the mountain top, for such I concluded to
be the constitution of the hard, blackish soil of which I have before
spoken.
The seamen who came first to the beach disappeared from our sight
behind a number of rocks like to those upon which we sat, and
immediately afterwards we heard loud cries of alarm proceeding from
that quarter. Those behind hasted on with even greater expedition than
before, and when they joined their comrades there arose a perfect
chorus of execration, which puzzled us a good deal, until, glancing
seaward beyond the rocks that hid the men from our sight, I descried
the nose of a boat, and shortly afterwards made out that it was empty.
Without doubt it was one of the two boats we had seen laid up on the
beach, and a wave had carried it out to sea, and it was this had
provoked the cries we had heard. But I did not see the second boat,
and wondered why the men did not put off in this to pursue the truant
instead of spending their breath in vain outcries. When some little
while had passed, and the boat was still drifting out, none pursuing
it, I was taken with a great curiosity to see what the reason might be,
and descended from my perch to creep towards them, taking care as I
went to haul our raft to a safe place on the beach. As for Billy, he
refused to budge, saying that he would not go a foot nearer to the men,
because he was sure they would do him a mischief, a thing which I could
by no means believe, their minds being taken up with other matters.
However, he would not come, so I left him there, and went on alone.
It being my purpose to see without being seen--at least, until I knew
what mind the men bore towards us--I went softly, and coming to the
rocks beyond which they were, I peeped round one of them with great
caution. And then I understood both why they did not pursue the boat
and why they had let out so lamentable an outcry. The second of the
two boats had a great hole stove in her bottom, without doubt by that
huge wave which had well-nigh struck the breath out of us. The men
were at their wits' end what to do, for the other boat was drifting
further and further from the shore, and was at this time, as I
reckoned, at least a hundred yards distant. One of them, as I looked,
cried out that he would swim out to it; otherwise they were undone, for
they were in peril of being boiled or burnt alive; and he plunged into
the water and made a stroke or two. But immediately afterwards another
of the men cried out that he saw the fin of a shark, at which the first
man--his name was Pumfrey, and he was the ship's carpenter--instantly
turned about and swam for the shore, splashing most vehemently with his
arms and legs and bellowing like a bull, as much to frighten away the
shark as from fear.
Seeing this their last hope of recovering the boat altogether dashed
away, the seamen did nothing but walk to and fro in great agitation of
mind, letting forth the most dreadful curses that ever I heard. As for
Mr. Bodger, whom I spied among them, he sat down on a rock, being a
timorous creature, as I have before said, and setting his face in his
hands, groaned and sighed in pitiful fashion, as did those that were
sick and wounded among them. It came into my mind--what I had not
thought of before--that Billy and me, being partners with them in their
unhappy situation, were no better able than they to leave this terrible
place, at least with any prospect of success, for I knew very well that
our raft would be a poor vessel for any voyage. And since it appeared
to be our doom to live or die with them, I saw no benefit that could
arise from any attempt to hide our presence. Accordingly I walked
round the rock into their midst. It was Wabberley that spied me first,
and when he saw me his jaw dropped and his face went green, as having
beyond doubt believed me to be now at the bottom of the sea. He
uttered a strange cry, which the others hearing, they looked towards
him, and at the same instant beheld me, and after a sudden brief
silence came running at me, demanding with the greatest eagerness how I
had come ashore. When I told them, on a raft, they shouted for joy,
and Hoggett catching me roughly by the arm, cried to me to say where
that same raft was, or he would dash my head against the rocks. I
answered that there was no need of threats or violence, for the raft
lay but a short distance away, and he might perhaps use it to overtake
the boat, and at the same time I pointed to the further rocks. Without
more ado he set off at a run, and spying Billy still sitting upon the
rock he asked whether we had the captain and Mr. Lummis also with us.
But he did not wait for an answer, running very swiftly until he came
to the place where our raft lay, the other men following him in a crowd.
When he saw what a poor shattered thing the raft was, he broke out
again into cursing, thinking that it would be useless for his purpose,
as indeed it might have been, he being a very ponderous man. But then
bethinking himself he catched hold of Billy, and, Joshua Chick coming
up, swore that Billy and he, being of no great weight, should go on the
raft and pursue the boat, which, as we now perceived, had come into the
current that had nearly carried us past the further extremity of the
shore. Billy cried out that he would not go, but Hoggett took him by
the middle, and when Chick had launched the raft, he threw the boy
fairly on to it, bidding Chick fling him into the sea if he made any
bones about it. And then, wrenching up two of the planks of the broken
boat to serve as paddles, he gave them to the boatswain and Billy, who
thereupon began to ply them with the utmost vigour.
We watched them as they went further and further from the shore, the
seamen shouting with excitement, and even laying wagers one against
another, though, being bereft of everything save their weapons and some
few articles that were in the boat, it seemed to me great folly. And
when after a long chase the boat was overhauled near the archway in the
red rock of which I have spoken, they fell into a perfect ecstasy of
joy, clapping each other on the back and shouting like frantic people.
We saw Chick baling out the boat, Billy helping him, and as they were a
long while doing this, it was plain that she held a great quantity of
water and would most likely have foundered in no long time. Whilst
they were at this work of baling, the raft floated away, and neglecting
it they began to pull back to the beach. But they had not taken many
strokes before we saw them turn again, and the men around me burst
forth into horrible execrations, supposing in the first moment (so base
of mind were they, as well as witless) that Chick was purposing to row
away and desert them. But I told them that Billy had only remembered
the raft, and so it proved, for they rowed after it, and having catched
it up, fastened it by a rope to the boat's stern and so headed again
towards the shore.
While they were yet some distance off, the ground beneath our feet
trembled and we heard a great rumbling, and the sea was mightily
troubled, whereupon the men fell into their panic again, fearing that
an earthquake would swallow them ere ever they got clear away. They
cried in great terror to Chick to haste, and while the boat was yet
some fathoms' length from the beach, Wabberley and two or three more
dashed into the sea, and wading out, scrambled into the boat, with such
violence that they were not very far short of overturning it. Which
seeing, all the rest of the seamen rushed to do likewise, Hoggett and
some others carrying all the articles that were in the broken boat, and
then I saw that the boat, being the smaller of the two, could not
possibly contain us all, and indeed the men saw that too, and there was
such a fight to win places that I thought the boat would fill with
water and sink. As for me, I stood watching in a kind of amazement,
now in the mind to rush towards the boat with the others and fight for
a place, now deeming it better to wait until I saw to what issue things
came.
[Sidenote: Abandoned]
All this time Mr. Bodger had remained by my side, no doubt expecting
that he as an officer would be given a place as of right. But now
there came a mighty roar from the mountain; more terrible than any we
had yet heard, and I saw belching out of it not merely steam and water,
but smoke of a lurid darkness, the sky above becoming perfectly black
with a shower of ashes shot forth from the top, intermixed with fire.
At this the fight about the boat waxed still more violent, and Mr.
Bodger, darting from my side, sprang out into the sea. Then I saw
Hoggett fling Billy out of the boat, and three or four of the weaker
men who had been beaten from it mounted on to the raft, upon which also
Mr. Bodger scrambled in his desperate haste. The men upon it, finding
it likely to sink with the weight of them all, thrust him back again
into the water, and I heard him scream with terror when, striving to
regain his place, and clinging desperately to the edge of the raft,
they beat upon him with their fists and sought to loosen his hold. He
was on the point of being cast off when Hoggett, in the boat, which now
stood some little way off, shouted "Take him aboard, you fools; we may
want him," and they did as he said, though grumbling, one of them
saying that Hoggett was safe himself, and had taken mighty great care
not to overload _his_ craft.
And then, as Billy came out of the water towards me, and I saw both the
boat and the raft moving away, and knew that we were to be left alone
on this dreadful shore, with the volcano vomiting forth fire--then, I
say, I was shaken out of the amazement which had held me, and being
perfectly frantic with terror, I rushed into the water, thinking
nothing of Billy or aught else than my own safety. With desperate
strokes I swam after the boat, shouting to the men to take me aboard.
She was moving but slowly, being greatly overladen, and having the raft
in tow, so that I was able to overtake the latter. But the men cried
that there was no room on it, and commanded me roughly to sheer off,
and when I still clung to it, one lifted the plank that had been used
as a paddle, and aimed a furious blow at my head. The violence of his
movement causing the raft to sink towards one side, he failed of his
brutal design, yet not wholly; for the plank as it descended grazed the
side of my head, inflicting such a cut that I was well-nigh stunned,
and was forced to loose my hold. I tried to set to swimming again, but
my strength was gone from me, and in my daze I might have gone to the
bottom if Billy had not swum after me. With his help I was able to
reach the shore, and when we stood up on the dry land and saw that the
seamen had beyond doubt abandoned us, we flung ourselves down on our
faces, in all the misery of wild despair.
[Illustration: "ONE LIFTED THE PLANK ... AND AIMED A FURIOUS BLOW AT
ME."]
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
OF CLAMS AND COCOA-NUTS AND SUNDRY OUR DISCOVERIES; AND OF OUR
REFLECTIONS ON OUR FORLORN STATE
I think I lay for a time in a kind of lethargy, for I was perfectly
unconscious of anything that might be happening about me, and it seemed
to me that my mind was a total blank. Whether it was the heat of the
sun, which had mounted well-nigh to the zenith, or the pangs of hunger
that roused me, I know not; but when I did arise I was aware of a
prodigious aching in my inwards, which was very natural, seeing that I
had not eaten for sixteen or twenty hours. And then I discovered that
Billy had risen first; indeed he told me that he had not lain long,
being not near so much overcome as I was, his harder life having
indurated as well his feelings as his skin. When I beheld him he was a
hundred yards or more away, sitting on a low flat rock, and eating with
a great appearance of relish. Seeing me get to my feet, he called to
me to come and eat likewise, and when I reached his rock I found a
great array of shells beside him, some broke apart and empty, others
still closed up.
[Sidenote: Clams and Cocoa-nuts]
"They ain't bad, master," he said, for so he commonly called me, "but
they do make a body uncommon dry."
I was amazed, and indeed almost angry, because he seemed so
comfortable, not reflecting that after the dog's life he had led aboard
the _Lovey Susan_ his present posture was, at least, one of ease and
security, the mountain having done no harm as yet. My gorge rose when
I saw him take out the slimy inhabitants of the shells and eat them
raw; I had never eaten shell-fish at all, much less uncooked, and for
all my famishment my stomach refused this sort of food. The horror of
our situation smote upon my mind: here were we, little more than boys,
left on a strange shore with no food but what we could pick up, no
clothes but what we stood in--and they were but shirt and breeches, for
the coats we had used as a sail had been washed from the raft when the
great wave struck us--and no implements or tools of any kind, not so
much as a jack-knife. As yet we knew nothing of the land whereupon we
had been cast, though I guessed it must be an island, but whether large
or small, peopled or desolate, fertile or barren, all remained to be
discovered. The sum of our knowledge was that we were at the foot of a
burning mountain, and that was a very terrible thing to contemplate.
The thought of it drew me to look aloft at the summit, where there
still hung a cloud of steam, though not so large as before, and the
fire and smoke had ceased, but a stream of hot water was still flowing
down the side, yet not in a great volume.
The sky was now very clear, and my head being uncovered, I found the
heat of the sun very discommoding, and withal my throat was parched,
and I had a great thirst, though Billy's must have been greater after
the salt things he had been eating. When he saw me turn from them with
loathing, he got up and said that we had better find a spring of fresh
water, so we walked along the hard beach, going to the right hand with
the design to ascend to the woods above, where I thought we might find
a spring, and certainly shelter from the sun. Billy groaned as the
sharp edges cut his bare feet; nevertheless he would not suffer me to
go alone, for which I was sorry, for when we had gone a little way we
came to some cliffs, which rose up so straight and forbidding that we
did not think fit to scale them, at least until we had sought an easier
way. Accordingly we went back again, crossing the stream of hot water,
which was now only trickling, and so continued until the lava ended at
the strip of sandy beach. I was now minded to strike up from the
shore, but was a little timid of approaching so near the course of the
hot flood, not knowing but that we might meet another torrent and
suffer a scalding. But, having come to the end of the sand, we arrived
at more cliffs, which, though not so high as the first, were no less
steep, so that we had to make a choice between scaling them and
ascending by the lava slope. Taking counsel with Billy, I determined
to venture on this latter, hoping that before we had gone far, we might
find a means of reaching the woods either on the right hand or the left.
When we had gone a good way up, very toilsomely, I saw with great
thankfulness a slope to our left hand, which seemed to lead away from
the barren lava to living soil. We struck up this and found ourselves
by and by on a mossy plateau, on which Billy danced, so joyful was he
at feeling so soft a carpet beneath his feet. The wood was just beyond
us, not above a hundred yards away. When we came to it we were pretty
well blown, and exceeding hot, having never rested nor even looked back
since we left the beach. But now we bethought us to turn and gaze over
the sea, having some hope--at least I had--that the seamen might even
at the last have repented and put back to take us off. We saw the boat
indeed, but it was a mere speck, and the raft we could not see at all,
being in doubt whether it had sunk, or whether it was only the distance
that made it invisible. But far beyond the boat, we saw a dark line
which a landsman might have supposed to be a cloud, but which we, our
eyes being accustomed to ranging over wide spaces, knew at once to be
land. It did not seem likely that the seamen could yet have discovered
it, since it had escaped us when we were at the sea level; I considered
it to be a happy chance for them that they had directed their course so
truly, though when I said so to Billy, he said he hoped they would find
the land full of cannibals, who would cook and eat them all, and
Hoggett first. This mention of cannibals set up an apprehensiveness in
my mind, and I was chary of entering the wood, lest we came upon
savages, but Billy said very sturdily, that savages or no savages, he
must drink, and so went on among the trees, with me close at his heels.
We looked about us eagerly, both for water and for fruits wherewith to
stay our hunger: but as for the former we saw none, and for the latter,
though we saw many plants bearing berries, and some trees with fruits
hanging upon them, we did not recognize at first any that we had seen
on the island where we recruited, and durst not, hungry as we were,
attempt anything strange lest they should be poisonous, and our first
meal prove our last. At one point we were startled by a small animal
leaping across our path, and Billy, crying it was a rabbit, without
thinking dashed after it, a very useless thing to do; but it had this
good result, that, tumbling headlong over something, he picked himself
up ruefully, and then shouted with delight, the obstacle being a large
cocoa-nut which had fallen from a tree. We were in a quandary at first
how to break it open, having no knife or other tool to pierce the husk;
but Billy bethought him of the buckles on our belts, and taking these
off, we cut and scraped at the husk until we came to the inner nut, and
then broke this open by hammering it very hard against the tree-trunk,
finding it the more easily breakable because it was over ripe; and
though we lost some of the liquid thereby, there remained enough to
furnish us with a very refreshing draught.
While I was digging my teeth ravenously into the kernel, Billy shinned
up the stem, which was straight like the mast of a ship, to obtain some
more of this precious fruit. Having cast down two or three at my feet,
he cried out that he was going to the masthead to take a look round.
He went almost to the very top, and when he came down, told me that the
hill we were on was not the highest in the island, the highest being
the mountain, whose peak was still covered by the cloud of steam; but
except what might be hidden by this mountain, he could see all the rest
of the island, which by his reckoning could not be above two miles
long. He told me of the high red rock which we had seen through the
archway as we approached the land, and which lay now on our right hand.
On the left he discovered a little bay, with a strip of yellow sand,
though he could not tell how wide this was because of the cliffs.
Beyond the bay the land went to a point, and beyond this again, some
distance out in the sea, were two red rocks, not very large, standing
up like the posts of a gate, or, as I thought when I myself saw them,
like sentinels. All the country to the left of the burning
mountain--that is, to the west--was covered with vegetation, either
woods or grasses, which I was very glad to hear, since there was
promise of food, at least of the vegetable kind. I concluded that the
streams of lava cast forth by the mountain had flowed only towards the
beach at which we had landed, or at any rate had flowed no other way
for a long time, since otherwise the land could not have been so
fruitful. I asked Billy anxiously whether he had seen any wild beasts,
or any sign of the habitation of men; but he said that he had seen
neither the one nor the other, but only some birds, at which I was
vastly relieved.
We sat for some while appeasing our appetites, scarcely speaking, for
Billy was not a talkative boy, and I was still too much under the
oppression of our lonely situation. All at once I set up a laugh, at
which Billy stopped munching at his cocoa-nut and looked at me in
astonishment.
"Oh, Billy," I said, "if you had catched that rabbit, what could we
have done with it?"
"Why, eat it, to be sure," says Billy. "I like rabbit meat."