corner, and having seen no living things except birds and small
animals, we began to be pretty sure that we were the only human beings
upon it. This, while it put away from us the present fear of being
slain by savages, or despitefully used, yet brought home to us the full
meaning of our loneliness. We sat down on the cliff, and looking over
the sea, which stretched away without any sign of land, nor even the
sail of a ship, we gave ourselves up to gloomy meditation. I knew that
but few ships ever ventured into this southern ocean, and the chance
that any ship would sight this tiny island was very small indeed.
Still less was it likely that a vessel would draw in so close as to
observe any signal that we might make. I remembered how Alexander
Selkirk had lived four years on his desolate island before a friendly
ship hove in sight, and that island was near the mainland, whereas ours
was in the midst of a vast ocean, remote as well from populous lands as
from the track of merchant ships. It seemed to me that we were doomed
to a lifelong imprisonment, and though I had before bid Billy to be of
good cheer, I was now myself utterly cast down, as one without hope.
Being thus a prey to wretchedness I sat with my head in my hands, not
heeding the heat of the sun, which was now beating fiercely down upon
us, until I felt very sick and dizzy, and then I got up and looked for
Billy, who had disappeared. But he had only gone into the wood to find
food, it being nigh dinner-time. He came back and told me that there
was nothing but bread-fruit, and that we could not eat, so we had to
make our way to the cocoa-nut wood, which we did by descending to the
beach and climbing up the slope as before. In going along the beach
Billy picked up two or three shell-fish which he called clams, the
purple kind, not the larger sort, which were very heavy; indeed, one of
them would have made a meal for a family. We saw, too, several crabs
of a very large size, some above two feet long; and Billy, idly poking
his cudgel into a hole beside a rock, he could not draw it back, and
when he peeped in to see what held it, he cried out that it had been
seized by a great crab, and though he pulled very hard, he could not
draw it out. When we came to our wood we ate cocoanuts and quenched
our thirst with the juice, Billy striking them open with the sharp
flint he had in his pocket; but I could not forbear wondering how we
were to live without fresh water, of which we had seen none but what
was in the lake, and that was a medicine we were by no means inclined
to. Having appeased our hunger and thirst we were too listless to walk
any more, and too miserable to talk to each other, and so we laid
ourselves down and fell asleep.
[Sidenote: Weapons]
When I awoke I saw that Billy had been fashioning for himself a new
club in place of that which had been seized by the robber crab, only
this time he had made a better one. Having observed that the sharp
flint, of which I have before spoken, had two notches on its blunt
side, he had conceived the notion of binding it to his club, and so
using it as an axe-head. At first he was much exercised, as he told
me, how to fasten the two together, and sighed for some iron-wire, or
at least some stout cord; but glancing around he spied a creeping plant
with very long and slender tendrils, which he proved to be very tough,
and breaking off some lengths of this with his flint, he had nearly
finished binding the flint to his club.
"What d'ye think of that, master?" says he, very proud of his
achievement. I told him it was a villainous, murdering instrument, and
asked him what he purposed doing with it. "Why," says he, "fight, to
be sure. It would kill a savage, or even a lion." At this I laughed,
saying that we had seen no lions or other wild beasts, and as for
savages, if we encountered them they would certainly shoot him with
their arrows or pierce him with spears before ever he was near enough
to strike them with his club. But he answered stoutly that a club was
better than bare fists, and an axe than a club, and as for its
ugliness, he would like to see me make a prettier one, on which I said
no more.
[Illustration: Billy's Axe]
I had fallen into a doze again, when I was suddenly awakened by Billy,
who shook me by the shoulder and when I sat up, pointed through the
trees to a little open space at the edge of the wood. I looked and saw
a number of little pigs--strange little creatures, with heads very much
too large for their bodies--grubbing in the ground with their snouts,
and a monstrous big sow near by. Billy springs up, and whispers he
will catch one of the piglets, and then he starts off and begins to
steal quickly through the wood towards the family group. I got up on
my feet to follow him, and seizing the club that lay nearest, found
that I had taken Billy's instead of my own, he having taken mine in his
excitement. Billy had just arrived at the open space when, being very
simple in his nature, he gave a great shout, and instantly the pigs set
off scampering away, with him hot-foot after them. However, he had
gone but half-way across the clearing when I saw a great boar with
monstrous curved tusks charging from the left-hand side. Billy caught
sight of the beast just in time, and turning about, he brought my club
down upon the beast's head very sharply; but it was not heavy enough to
do any great mischief, and, indeed, though it caused the boar to turn a
little aside, it did but increase its fury. The beast wheeled about,
and rushed upon Billy, who, though he smote it again, was carried off
his feet and lay sprawling, the club being struck from his hand as he
fell.
[Illustration: "THE BEAST WHEELED ABOUT, AND RUSHED UPON BILLY."]
[Sidenote: Billy has a Fall]
When I saw the unhappy posture of my companion, I ran towards him as
fleetly as ever I could, being in a terrible fright lest the boar
should rend him with its tusks before I could come up with him. My
very speed incommoded me when, coming to the spot where Billy lay on
the ground, with the boar over him, I brought the flint-headed club
down upon the beast's skull, for the blow was not near as straight and
heavy as it might have been had my rush not been so headlong. However,
it served to make the boar turn round to spy at its new adversary; and
having now come to a standstill and collected myself, I dealt it such a
blow behind the ear, with a full swing of the club, that it fell over
sideways, and I did not observe that it made any movement after. I
picked Billy up, and saw with great trouble that the boar had rent a
great hole in his breeches and made a gash in his leg, which was
bleeding very freely. "That's nothing, master," says he, when I asked
him if he was much hurt; "but what d'ye say about my ugly murdering axe
now? Ain't it a good one?" he asked triumphantly. "Wouldn't it kill a
lion or a savage?" I owned that it had proved a very serviceable
instrument indeed, and said that I would certainly make one like it for
myself; but first I begged Billy to bathe his wounded leg in the lake,
which he did, and in a little the bleeding stopped, and we went back to
the wood, Billy declaring that he would certainly make fire in the
native fashion, and we should have pork for supper. But when we got
back to the dead boar, we found it already surrounded by a pack of
dogs, which were tearing its flesh very gluttonously. They snarled and
growled savagely when we essayed to drive them away, and knowing that
it is an ill matter to part a dog from his bone, I did not think it
prudent to provoke the rage of such a fierce regiment, though Billy
cried out valorously that he would fight them all sooner than allow
them to eat his pork. However, he gave in to my entreaty, vowing that
he would have pork to eat before many days were past, and as for the
dogs, he would teach them a lesson, that he would.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
OF OUR SEARCH FOR SUSTENANCE AND SHELTER; WITH VARIOUS MATTERS OF MORE
CONSEQUENCE TO THE CASTAWAY THAN EXCITEMENT TO THE READER
This little adventure with the pigs was, I verily believe, the means of
saving us from the lethargy into which we had like to have been cast by
brooding on our solitude. The knowledge that there were on our island
animals that might be formidable, and were certainly good for food,
proved to us at once the necessity of being watchful, and of setting
our wits to work to devise a means of cooking. And a thing that
happened the same night showed to us that if we were to make the best
of our situation, and have any comfort in our solitary life, we must
take some measures for our shelter.
[Sidenote: A Storm]
This event was nothing less than a violent storm of wind and rain which
sprang up suddenly in the middle of the night. We had returned to our
first shelter, the make-shift hut, or rather lean-to, which we had
constructed of boughs and leaves around a great tree. The wind broke
this down utterly, scattering the materials of it far and wide, and the
rain drenched us to the skin, or I should say, soaked us to the bone,
we having no garments but our shirts and breeches. That night was the
most miserable of all my life, I assure you. We huddled together for
shelter under the thickest trees, listening to the howling of the wind,
and sometimes hearing great crashing noises that made us fear almost to
remain under shelter at all, lest the trees should fall upon our heads
and kill us. Never a wink of sleep had we that night, and when
daylight came, we staggered forth from the wood, two shivering
miserable mortals, who would have given the world for a roaring fire
and a hot posset to comfort us.
We needed not to climb trees for our breakfast, for the wind had
strewed the ground with cocoanuts, and had indeed uprooted many trees,
one of which had narrowly missed the very spot where we had lain. As
we ate our food, very wretched, we considered how we were to construct
some sort of hut, in case another storm should visit us. There was
timber in plenty, but neither Billy nor I had any knowledge of sawyers'
or carpenters' work; nor if we had should we have been much better off,
having no tool save the rough axe of Billy's fashioning. Necessity,
they say, is the mother of invention, and so it proved in our case, as
will be seen more fully hereafter.
After breakfast the first thing that Billy did was to try his axe on
one of the big fallen trees. He was able after very great labour--I
taking my turns when he was tired--to lop some of the branches off, but
the flint was so much blunted by it that we saw it would serve us
little longer. Accordingly we set off up the mountain-side to find
other flints of which to make axe-heads, and on this little expedition
we were followed by the pack of dogs, which watched our proceedings as
if they took a great interest in them, but always remained at a
reasonable distance. By midday we had collected a fair number of
sharp-edged flints, small and big, and Billy having made me an axe like
his own--he would not let me do it, saying that he was sure he could
make a better one than me--we felt a deal more comfortable both in body
and mind, being satisfied that we should not lack tools, though rough,
and our clothes being dried with the sun. Indeed, we found the sun
rather oppressive, especially upon our bare heads, and we wished very
heartily that our hats had been spared to us; coats we could do without
in the daytime, though they would have been a great solace o' nights.
[Sidenote: Plans]
Having thus furnished ourselves with axes, we had to determine the site
for the hut we purposed building, and we talked very seriously about
this when we had eaten our dinner.
"One thing is sure," says Billy; "we must build it a good way from the
old smoker" (so he called the mountain, above which we observed that a
cloud of steam had again gathered, though it had been clear yesterday).
If remoteness from the mountain had been the only point to be
considered, we might have been content with the wood in which we had
made our lean-to; but after our experience in the storm we did not
regard it as suitable for a permanent habitation when it might be
shattered any day or night. It was certain we could not build on those
parts of the island that were bare rock, for we could not by any means
dig foundations in it, and a hut without foundations, in an exposed
place, might be carried away in a hurricane, and hurled into the sea,
and we in it. And then it came into my mind that if we built too high
upon the island, our dwelling might be spied by the savages of the
neighbouring islands of which I have spoken, for we could not doubt
that they were inhabited, and the people would certainly put to sea
sometimes in their canoes. This set me on thinking that it would be
well to make our dwelling less a house than a fortress, in which we
could take refuge in case savages should at any time land upon our
island. It seemed to me, then, that we ought to seek for a remote
spot, very hard of access, and bethinking me of such a spot which I had
seen in our course towards the north-east, I had almost resolved to
choose that spot when I recollected all at once that there was no water
in that neighbourhood, which was a very serious matter. Indeed, this
lack of water gave us much concern, for as yet we had found none but
what smacked of brimstone, and Billy said that we didn't need
physicking every day, nor yet every week. We spent the rest of that
day, therefore, in roaming over the island once more in search of fresh
water, and made a more thorough exploration of the western end, in
which the vegetation was wilder than in the other woodland parts.
There was never a spring that we could see, and we should have had our
search for nothing but for a discovery that Billy made. He had climbed
a bare and very rough hillock, just beyond a patch of wood at the
south-west corner of the island, and I saw him suddenly stoop, and when
he rose to the erect posture he held something white in his hand, and
began to caper with every token of delight. Then he came running down
towards me, and shouted a word that sounded like "aig! aig!" which
puzzled me exceedingly, until when he came close to me and opened his
hand I saw what was certainly the likest to a hen's egg that I had ever
beheld, and concluded that "aig!" was the manner of calling it at
Limehouse. I could scarce believe it was indeed a hen's egg, for we
had seen no fowls save those I have mentioned before, nor had we heard,
amid the noises of the island, the clarion voice of any cock; yet it
was like nothing else, and Billy declared with great positiveness that
there must be roosters, as he called them, on the island, whose eggs
would form an agreeable addition to our fare.
[Sidenote: Eggs]
He was not by any means cast down when I said that we had no fire for
cooking, avouching that he had sucked 'em raw many a time, but added
that this being the first egg we had found, it belonged by right to me
as king of the island (so he called me in sport), and he would at once
set about making a fire, as he had often said he would do, and roast it
for me, we having no pan for boiling. When he spoke of boiling, I
remembered all of a sudden the spring of hot water we had seen on the
other side of the mountain, and thought it might very well serve to
cook the egg; so we made all haste to that spot, Billy saying that if
the water would cook an egg, it would also cook pig, and boiled pork
was very good, though not so good as roast. We came to the spring, and
laid the egg in the bottom of a cup-shaped hollow through which it
flowed, and having neither watch nor sand-glass, Billy set himself
patiently to count the seconds as well as he could, saying that the egg
must not be overdone nor underdone, but boiled just proper.
"We will give it four minutes, master," says he, "instead of three,
'cos we ain't sure the water is on the boil, not what you would call
real boiling."
Accordingly, the four minutes being expired (though I think he missed
count when just past a hundred and fifty), he took out the egg and,
breaking the shell at one end, gave it to me to taste, which I did, but
instantly spat it out of my mouth, and cast the egg down upon the
rocks, bespattering them with white and yellow. I told Billy with much
spluttering that the egg was addled, and indeed the taste of it was
very foul, and remained in my mouth a long time, till, having returned
to our wood, I cured it with a copious draught of cocoa-nut juice, the
acid of which was very grateful. Billy was much cast down at this
unfortunate beginning of his cookery, and wanted to go instantly and
kill a sucking-pig; but since it was already growing late, and would be
dark ere he could go and come and finish cooking, even if he found a
pig at once and caught it without trouble, I persuaded him to return
with me to the wood, where we had to rig up another shelter for the
night, in place of the one that had been shattered by the storm.
I will say here that we found more eggs afterwards, always in places
that were hard to get at--on ledges in the land side of the cliffs, and
in hollows of rocky eminences; and though we for some time saw no fowls
and were much puzzled in consequence, we discovered by and by that they
roosted high up in the trees, and concluded that they did this to take
refuge from the rats and dogs, and kept silence for the same reason.
There were very few of them on the island, their broods being no doubt
much preyed upon when young and unable to fly.
I had almost forgot to mention a strange discovery we made while we
were yet on the mountain. It chanced that Billy, prodding the ground
with his axe, dislodged a lump of rock which rolled down into the
spring, and had no sooner touched the water than it set up a great
hissing noise, and we saw a cloud of dirty yellow smoke rise up from it
into the air, with such a horrible stench that we choked and coughed,
and ran away to some distance until the fizzing and smoking ceased. I
had never seen or heard of the like before, and as for Billy, he said
that Old Smoker was worse than he thought him, carrying such poisonous
stuff in his inside. This made us careful how we trod, for we did not
know but there might be rocks of other kinds, which might "go off," as
Billy said, when we touched them. However, we did not find any such,
and we almost forgot about the fizzy rock, as Billy called it, until a
time came when we discovered a use for it.
[Sidenote: The First Hut]
To come back to the matter of our house. Having sought in vain for a
suitable site in the rougher parts of the island, we went down next day
to the lake-side, where we should at least be within reach of water,
though unpalatable. We found that the lake was very much swelled with
the recent heavy rains, and the water was not near so clear as
formerly, though it was much less nauseous to the taste, and we had a
good drink of it without suffering any ill effects. This quite
determined us in our choice, for we supposed that it would rain very
frequently, as in England, so that the lake would be constantly
replenished and the sulphurous character of its water be thus
qualified. We found in course of time that rain did not fall near so
often as in England, though usually much heavier; and that the effect
on the lake was not quite so great as we expected, at least in regard
to the taste, for the many rills and rivulets that carried water from
the high parts of the island ran over sulphurous soil, some of which
they washed down into the lake.
[Illustration: Our Flint Scraper for Sharpening Axes]
Being set on building a substantial house, or rather fortress, as I
said, we saw that with our rude tools it would take us a very long
time, and so we first took in hand to make a small hut which would
shelter us while the other was a-building. This we determined to place
at the edge of the wood above the lake, and we found much material in
the trees which had been uprooted in the storm, and in young straight
saplings which we could either pull up, the soil being thin, or cut
down with our stone axes. These axes of ours soon became blunt, but we
found a means to sharpen them by whetting on the hard rocks by the
shore, and it became our constant practice to begin each day with
bathing in the sea, and then sharpening our axes, which sharpened our
appetites also, I do assure you. Having got a sufficiency of these
slender poles for our walls, we stuck them in holes which we made with
our axes, and held them together with tendrils of the creeping plants
that grew very plentifully in the woods. We thus made walls about ten
feet high, about a space twelve feet square, and it was not until the
walls were up that we began to consider of how to put a roof to them,
having no ladders nor any means of mounting to such a height. This
made us see how needful it was to take thought beforehand, though we
never succeeded in foreseeing all the difficulties that we should meet
with, and I suppose no one ever did. All we could do about this roof
of ours was to carry up small rocks from the shore, and pile these one
on another until we made a stand high enough for us to lay saplings
from wall to wall. Since it was clear that this roof would protect us
but little, the rain being able to come through the interstices, we put
up stands of rocks inside the hut, and supported on these we made shift
to weave grasses and creepers among the poles, finding it very hard
work, and very long too, we having to take the stands down and build
them up again as we moved from place to place in the hut. As for the
walls, we filled up the interstices in them with earth from the
hill-side above us, which we found to be of a clayey sort, and soon
hardened in the sun, though after a little it began to crack and
crumble. We carried this earth in our hands, a very troublesome and
slow manner of doing it, but we had no vessels, nor did we at that time
think of making any.
This hut took us above a week in building, at least I think so, for
after the first day or two we neglected to take any account of the
passage of time. It was a poor sort of thing when finished, and could
not have stood against a hurricane; but the weather was very fair, and
besides, the place we had chosen was not near so much exposed as our
first habitation, on higher ground. We hoped it would serve us until
we should have made our proposed fortress, and the building of it was
exceeding useful to us, for it took up, with the getting and eating of
our food, every minute of the daytime, and by keeping our thoughts
busy, as well as our hands, hindered us from dwelling on our loneliness.
I had almost forgot to mention two or three things: first, that every
morning and evening one or other of us went up the mountain-side, to a
spot whence we had sight of the sea all around, to spy whether a sail
was visible. The second thing is, that Billy went out one day, and
brought back a little sucking-pig, which he had killed with his axe.
We cut off its hinder legs, and carried them to the hot spring, and
found that they cooked very well; and though the meat had a slight
savour of brimstone, it was vastly more agreeable than the salt junk we
were used to have aboard ship. Indeed, Billy said that it only wanted
pease-pudding to make a meal fit for a king, and he ran all the way to
the wood and back again to fetch a bread-fruit, to see if that, when
boiled, would supply the place of pease; but the fruit only boiled to a
pap, and when Billy tasted it, he declared that it spoiled the flavour
of the pork, so we ate the meat by itself.
[Sidenote: Failure]
This failure made Billy determine again to try his hand at making fire,
which we had no time for when building our little hut. He picked up a
straight twig, that seemed to promise well for his purpose, and
sharpening his flint axe, he peeled the twig and cut it so as to make a
stick about a foot long, one end of which he brought to a point. But,
finding the wood too soft for the use to which he designed it, he went
prowling about to discover a tree hard enough, testing them with his
axe, and after a long search, lighted upon a tree that was very hard,
and whose sap was of a blood-red colour.[1] Having cut a stick of
this, he sharpened one end to a point, and then took two chunks of
wood, one of a soft kind, the other of the new-discovered tree, which
we called redwood, and in each of these chunks he made a little hollow,
one in the soft wood for the sharp end of the stick, the other for the
blunt. Then, fitting the stick into these hollows, he gave me all
three pieces of wood to hold, and while I held them tightly clamped
together, he began to twirl the stick between his hands as fast as he
could, as he had seen the savages do, though often they used a
bowstring. He continued this for a good while, until his hands, hard
as they were, grew sore and his face was running with sweat; but
whether that the wood was damp, or that Billy was not dexterous enough,
I know not, only that there was never a sign of smouldering, though the
wood was hot when we felt it. Billy insisted that I should take a
turn, which I did, and twirled the stick even faster, I believe, than
he did, though not so long; but it was all no good, and at last we
threw the wood from us, concluding that if we were to obtain fire, it
must be in some other way. I do not mean that we never tried the
native way again: we were not so easily discouraged; we tried more than
once in the intervals of doing other things, and I think that with
perseverance we might have succeeded at last, only it was not
necessary, as will be seen hereafter.
[Sidenote: Building Materials]
This failure, though it annoyed us at the time, was of use to us,
inasmuch as it set us on noticing