cunning, and while some of them held the sow at bay, others rushed in
among the litter and carried off at least one of the piglets; the
mother, threatened on all sides, being unable to defend all her family.
After we had watched the scene for a little, Billy whispered to me, "I
say, master, you ain't a-going to let the dogs have all the pork?" I
agreed that we had as good a right to it as they, so we ran forward
shouting, and the dogs, which had seized enough of the litter to make a
very good meal, ran away with their booty, being plainly afraid that we
should attempt to take it from them.
When the sow spied us she knew that we were as dangerous enemies to her
family as the dogs; at least she guessed it, for she made a very savage
rush at Billy, who was nearest to her, and would have overthrown him
but that she was lame and he was nimble. We took counsel together what
we should do, having a mind to capture her and lead her to our
settlement by the lake, for we knew that the little ones would follow
her, and Billy had a great notion of starting a piggery. But we saw
that, her leg being broken, we should have great difficulty in leading
her over the hill, even if our united strength could pull her: yet we
did not like to leave her to the mercy of the dogs, which would
certainly worry her slowly to death, helpless as she was. Accordingly
we thought it best to kill her outright, and while Billy did this with
his axe, I easily caught two of the little ones, which remained near
their mother, and held them by the legs until Billy came to my
assistance, and then we tied their legs together with creepers, so that
they could not escape. Then Billy caught another one, and reached
after the fourth, which, however, had become alarmed and scampered
away, only to be snapped up by the dogs.
Now the question was, how should we bring the dead sow and the live
piglets to our hut by the lake?--for we had determined to eat the sow
and to keep the little ones alive. The sow was too heavy for one, or
even both of us, to carry over the steep and rocky hillside; the little
pigs were too small to be driven and must be carried. If we took the
sow and left the pigs, they would be seized by the dogs; while if we
took them and left the sow, there would be very little remaining of her
by the time we came back. We settled that I should carry the pigs
home, and bring back ropes for dragging the carcase, over which Billy
would keep guard; so I took a little squealing one under each arm, and
Billy slung the third to my back with a creeper, and I was about to
start when Billy said: "What if old father bacon hears their squeals
and comes after you?" In that case I should certainly have to drop one
of the pigs to wield my axe: my bow and arrows, of course, I could not
carry; but I must take the risk, and so set off, very well laden.
I came safely to our hut, and shut up the pigs inside (which was a
trouble to us afterwards, but there was no help for it at the time, we
having no other place in which to secure them), and then, taking some
of our ropes, I hastened back to Billy. But I had no sooner got to the
top of the slope above the lake than I heard the same barking and
yelping and snarling as before, and in the same direction. This made
me hurry my steps, and 'twas well I did so, for when I came upon the
scene, there was Billy by the sow, and the pack of dogs leaping with
great uproar about him, he having his back to a rock, and very manfully
wielding his axe to keep off the furious animals. The moment I saw
this I gave a great shout, having before observed that nothing was more
likely to scare these wild creatures, and rushed upon them, and seeing
me they turned tail and scampered away into the wood.
I found Billy in a very sad case. He told me that I had not long
departed when the dogs came creeping up, and then, being worked into a
frenzy by the sight and the scent of the carcase, and emboldened by
seeing only one instead of two boys, they had made a rush upon him. He
shot at them when he perceived that they were closing in, and I found
that one arrow had killed a dog, another was sticking in the ground,
and a third had broken against a spar of rock. Then he could no longer
shoot, because they were upon him, but he killed two with his axe, not
before he had been severely bitten about the legs, as he tried to
prevent them from mangling the sow, and indeed he was in very great
danger when I appeared to his rescue. The carcase had been so torn by
the dogs that I did not care to have anything more to do with it;
besides, Billy was so severely hurt, though he did not complain, that I
saw he could give me little help in dragging the carcase home; for
which reasons we decided to leave it to the dogs, and I only regretted
that we had not done so before. I was so anxious about Billy,
wondering whether his blood would be poisoned by the bite of the dogs,
that I forgot to pick up our bows and arrows until he reminded me of
them, and indeed he insisted on my gathering up two of those he had
shot, the third being broken, saying that we could not spare any now
that we had to reckon the dogs as our mortal enemies. Leaving the
carcase, then, which the dogs were at instantly, we returned to our
place, and then I bathed Billy's wounds with water from the lake, and
tore a great strip off my shirt to make bandages, for which Billy
blamed me, but what else could I do?
[Sidenote: A Pig-sty]
Since we could not endure that the pigs should be with us in the hut
(they had been there too long already), we had to build a sty for them,
or rather I had to, for Billy tried very bravely to help me, but had to
give up after a short while. For some days he wore a very troubled
look, asking me whether I thought he would go mad; but he cheered up
wonderfully as the days passed and he did not take a dislike to water.
I made as good a sty as I could with logs and branches, tying up the
pigs inside so that they could not get away, but we were awakened in
the middle of the night by a loud squealing, and when I ran out I found
that the dogs had come and scratched away a part of the weak fence, and
I was only just in time to save the piglets from them. Since I could
do nothing to strengthen the sty in the darkness, I built a great fire
near it, and sat by it for the rest of the night, in no very agreeable
frame of mind, I assure you, and wishing that we had not brought the
pigs, for being wild they were scarce likely to thrive in captivity.
However, Billy was so set upon commencing swine-herd that I gave in to
him, and next day began to build another sty, somewhat farther from the
hut, and very much stronger, in which we put two of the pigs, killing
the third and roasting a part for our dinner, hanging the rest up in
the smoke of our fire to cure it. For roasting we made a tripod like
to those that gipsies have, and not having any metal we made it of
pottery ware, moulding the clay about three straight saplings.
[Illustration: Our Pig-sty]
We had had so little flesh-meat hitherto that we had not felt the lack
of utensils, such as knives and forks; for bread-fruit needed nothing
but our fingers, and eggs we always boiled hard. But now that we had
the means of procuring flesh, I began to think of knives and forks and
other things which we commonly use at home, though I have been told
that our forefathers employed nothing but their fingers up to not so
very long ago. Seeing that we should not be able for a few days to
take up our work on the new hut, while Billy was recovering of his
wounds, I thought it a fair opportunity to provide ourselves with
articles of this sort if we could. We had no lack of material for
handles, and it was not a very hard matter to shape a two-pronged fork
of wood with the axe; but it was different with the knives, since we
had nothing that would serve for blades except flints. However, by
searching about the hillside I found several thin and fairly flat
pieces of flint which we contrived to split still thinner and to
sharpen by continually grinding them against the rocks, and when we had
fixed them into handles which we made of the hollow shoots of a certain
tree, we had knives, clumsy indeed, and not very sharp, but good enough
to sever the limbs of the animals we killed for food, and also to part
the meat into pieces when it was cooked.
[Illustration: Knives and Fork]
[Sidenote: Salt and Water]
This same matter of meat put it into our heads to get salt for
ourselves, and fresh water; for neither could we relish the food
without the one nor quench our thirst without the other, cocoa-nut
juice after pork having very disagreeable effects. We got water from
the sea in some of the shallow pans that I had made, and found that by
leaving these exposed the water in course of time evaporated, leaving a
very rough and common kind of salt behind, and mixed with other
substances. As for fresh water, we found when we boiled water from the
lake, and allowed it to stand till it cooled and then poured it off,
that it almost wholly lost the sulphurous taste, and we could drink it
without hurt, which was a great comfort to us. We also put some of our
pans out when rain fell, which happened pretty often, so that I have
forgot to mention it; and with our fare thus enlarged, and being
provided with conveniences that we had not dreamt of at first, our lot
was much improved; and indeed we only wanted some means of replenishing
our wardrobe to be set up for life.
[Illustration: Clay Pail, the Handle of a Tough Root, bound on with
Shrunk Hide]
What with one thing and another, I think near a month must have passed
before we returned to our work on the big hut. There may be some who
will blame us for this dilatoriness, and say that we ought to have
continued on one task until it was finished; but I will say to them
that if we had done so we might not only have fallen ill for want of
change in our food, but we might have starved in the winter through not
laying up a store; and besides, these critics have never been, I dare
say, alone upon a desolate island. However, we did go back to our
work, and the four corner posts being set up, as I have said, we had
next to build the walls, which we did in the following manner.
[Sidenote: The Hut]
Between the corner posts, and about six inches apart, we planted strong
poles about three inches across, leaving a gap on the side farthest
from the lake, this being our doorway. On the outside of these upright
posts we lashed a number of thicker logs, twice as thick indeed as the
others, by means of creepers, laying the logs horizontally one upon
another. This was only done with prodigious labour, as you may guess,
all the poles and logs having to be felled and trimmed by us with our
rude instruments, and if I had hitherto been able to keep count of the
days, I should have clean lost it now, for we did not desist from our
work until the walls were finished, and every day was like the one that
went before and the one that came after. When the walls were finished,
and it was a question of the roof, we deliberated for a little whether
to make it flat, or to give it a pitch, like the roofs of cottages at
home in England. What determined us was the discovery that water was
beginning to ooze through the flat roof of our small hut; the rains
becoming heavier and more frequent as we drew near to the winter
season. Accordingly we gave a pitch of about four feet to our roof,
thus forming a fair slope on each side to carry off the rain water.
The framework of the roof was formed of bamboos lashed together, and
resting on grooves which we cut with much toil in the tops of the wall
posts. In order to keep out the rain we decided to thatch the roof
over, and for this purpose we collected a great quantity of grasses and
reeds from the borders of the lake. Billy told me that the thatched
roof of a cottage belonging to his uncle at Plumstead was full of
fleas, and as we did not desire to be visited by any such creatures we
soaked our materials very thoroughly in the sulphurous water of the hot
spring, thinking this would repel them, afterwards drying it in the
sun. We need not have troubled ourselves in this matter, for during
all the time we dwelt on the island we saw neither fleas nor any other
noxious insect; indeed, the grasshopper was the only kind worth
mentioning, and we grew to like their cheerful song in the evenings.
The thatching took a long time, neither of us having the least idea how
to set about it, and I doubt not a true thatcher would have laughed at
our botching and bungling; but we did as well as we could, and were
mightily pleased with ourselves when the work was done. There only
remained the door, and if it had not been for the wild pigs and dogs on
the island we should never have troubled about a door at all, the
climate being such, even in winter, which was now upon us, that we need
never have closed our house to keep out the cold. But seeing that we
should never be secure from molestation by these beasts without a door,
we made one of stout logs lashed together, a little wider than the
doorway, and since we could not hinge it, we contrived so that when we
wished to close the hut at night or when we left it, we slid the door
between the wall and two stout posts which we drove into the ground
inside. As for a window, we did not need one, since we were up at dawn
and abed with the dark, and had the doorway always open when we were in
the hut during the daytime.
I said we were abed with the dark, but we did not always sleep at once,
and oftentimes lay talking, so that we knew pretty nearly all about
each other before we had been many months on the island. Billy's life
had been so hard before he ran away to sea that I believe he was more
contented now than ever before, having got over his first fears of
savages and starvation, and the old smoker, as he called the burning
mountain. (This, I ought to say here, had not been violently active
since we first came to the island, though we sometimes heard faint
rumblings, and saw spurts of steam and water, but never so great as at
first.) I was not near so contented as Billy, for my life had been very
easy and comfortable at Stafford, and I remembered my kind friends
there, and sometimes felt in the lowest deeps of misery when I thought
I might never see them again. But when I reflected I saw that I ought
to be thankful that I was not cast on a barren island, or among
savages, and there was always a hope that some navigator might sail
towards our island and spy our flagstaff, though we often vexed
ourselves with the thought that a vessel might pass us in the night and
we know nothing about it. I think by this time we had altogether
forgotten the men of the _Lovey Susan_, and did not in the least
trouble ourselves to guess at what had become of them, though Billy did
say once that he was sure they were eaten up by savages.
[Sidenote: Clothes]
Our large hut being finished, I thought we deserved another holiday,
having never left working at it for many weeks, or perhaps months. But
the very first day we purposed being idle, a great storm of rain
overtook us as we roamed over the hills, and drove us back to our house
for shelter. We were drenched to the skin, and our garments were so
old and tattered that we thought they would fall to pieces when we
stripped them off to dry them; and moreover, though the air was not
cold, as we know cold in England, yet it was chilly sometimes,
especially at night, and I feared sometimes when we got wet, that we
should be seized with an ague. We began to consider whether we could
not by some means contrive to make ourselves clothes, and I reminded
Billy that we had made a kind of cloth for our flag out of the bark of
the bread-fruit tree.
"Yes, but we ain't got no scissors," says he, "and there's a deal of
cutting out to be done in making clothes. My mother--not my real
mother, you know--used to make my breeches out of father's, and you
should have seen her snipping at 'em, gnashing her teeth together all
the time. We can't cut out with our axes, or them things you call
knives."
This was true, but I suggested we might beat out the strips of bark
till they became of the proper shape. Billy scoffed at this. "What
about patterns?" he said. "She used to have paper things, and lay 'em
on the cloth and cut round 'em, and you can't make sleeves without 'em,
that I'm sure of. Besides, where's our needle and thread?"
"We've made thread out of the fibres of the cocoa-nut," I said, "and as
for needles, couldn't we point some thin sticks, and try them?"
"We can try," says he, "but it won't be no good, and you've forgot all
about thimbles."
We did try, and I was not very much surprised when we failed, for
though we could point a stick with our flints, we had nothing with
which we could pierce the eye, and we found that tying the thread to
the end was by no means satisfactory. However, we did contrive to put
a few patches into our breeches by sticking on some of the bread-fruit
cloth, which was soft and brown, with the sticky stuff that came out of
the bark when we beat it. I should mention that we were not able to
use this stuff immediately, for it did not make the cloth adhere; but
we found that if we left it for a day, it became hard, and being then
heated in one of our pots over a fire, it turned into a very fair glue.
Besides patching our breeches thus, we made ourselves long coats, or
rather cloaks, for they had no sleeves, being simply a long piece of
cloth with a hole in the middle, and though we laughed at each other a
good deal when we put them on, they covered us from neck to heel, and
were very useful in keeping off the rain. And while we were about
this, we thought we might as well make hats too, if we could; and after
many failures we managed to fashion some bonnets out of cocoa-nut
leaves, which kept our heads dry, and when the summer came defended
them from the sun's heat, and our necks too, for we stuck on flaps at
the back.
[Illustration: Billy's Palm-leaf Hat]
We had started a piggery, as I have mentioned. At first it was a great
deal of trouble to us, for the dogs came yelping round the sty at
night, and the wild pigs also tried to reach the two piglets we had
captured, and we had to be constantly on the watch lest the walls of
the sty should be broken through. However, these wild inhabitants of
our island in course of time seemed to accept the piggery as part of
the order of things, and left us in peace. But our troubles were
started again when Billy all of a sudden conceived the notion of a
poultry run. In the course of our second holiday, after our new hut
was finished, we chanced to discover several nests of hens, which we
had formerly sought for in vain, they being cunningly concealed or else
very inaccessible. Domestic fowls do not seem in general to be very
plentifully endowed with wits, but the fowls on our island, having to
provide against the rapacity of rats and dogs and pigs, certainly had
more intelligence than ordinary; and the hens were not particular about
the comfort of their nests, so long as they could find a shelter--some
secluded nook among the rocks where they could lay their eggs. Billy
had said more than once that he would like to have a poultry run, but
though we now and then found eggs, and once or twice managed to bring
down a fowl with our arrows, which we roasted or boiled, we had never
yet been able to catch one alive. They frequented mostly the little
patch of woodland in the extreme west of the island, and there we
sometimes saw them roosting in the upper branches of tall trees. It
was near this spot that we found the nests I have mentioned, but the
birds were very wary, and flew away at the first sign of our approach.
[Sidenote: Fowling]
It was clear that if we were to catch them, we must snare them in some
way or other, and having not thought of making nets, which we might
have done with cocoa-nut fibres--indeed, we did afterwards--we wondered
whether the sticky substance that came from the bread-fruit bark might
serve us as birdlime. We tried it, but we found that it hardened too
quickly for our purpose; at least, that was how we explained our want
of success; and we thought that if we mixed it with some other
substance that would keep it moist the result might be different. We
tried bread-fruit, and then shredded cocoa-nut, but neither was
effectual; and then, almost as a last resource, we made the experiment
with a nut that I have not before mentioned, because we had not found
it of any use as food. It grew on a tall and very leafy tree, and the
ground was at this time strewed with the olive-green fruits which had
fallen, being over-ripe. We easily removed the outer covering, and
within was a hard shell, something like a walnut, only smooth, and
inside the shell was a whitish kernel, which we had found was not very
palatable; but it was very oily, and we thought this, when pounded,
might mix very well with our glue, as I may call it.[1] Accordingly we
did this, and taking a quantity of the mixture to the spot which the
fowls haunted, we smeared a fallen branch with it, and having spread
some small pieces of baked bread-fruit as bait, we went among the trees
to await the issue.
[Sidenote: A Fowl-house]
Billy was patient enough when work was a-doing, but he never could bide
patiently, for which reason many holidays were not good for him. He
ran so often to the edge of the wood to see if any birds were snared,
that I am sure he was the cause why we had to wait so long, the birds
taking alarm at his movements. At last I persuaded him to go with me
back to our house, and when we returned after a long interval we
suspected by the unaccustomed cackling we heard that our birdlime had
proved successful; and so it was, for when we came to the branch, there
was a fine hen fluttering her wings and cackling most lamentably, and
also a kind of wood pigeon, which did not make near so much noise.
Billy wrung the neck of the pigeon in an instant, saying it would make
a tasty morsel for dinner, and then we tied the legs of the hen, and
carried her home. But one hen does not make a poultry run, and it was
a considerable time before we caught any more fowl, the fate of the
first seeming to have warned the rest. However, we did succeed in
catching four or five more at intervals, and we turned our small hut
into a fowl-house, putting poles across for them to roost on. It is a
strange thing, but after a little while the fowls, which had before
scarce made a sound, began to cackle and crow just as the fowls do in
England, and Billy said that finding they were now safe from their
enemies, and fed regularly, they were much happier than before, and
showed it by their singing. How that may be I know not, but I am
inclined to think that they had better kept silence, for one morning
after a night of wind and rain, during which we heard that strange
sound we heard on our first night, we found the gate of our poultry run
open and all the fowls gone, leaving only a great quantity of feathers
scattered about, both inside and out. This told us pretty plainly what
had happened, and if we needed assurance, we had it in the footprints
in the sodden ground.
[Illustration: Our Small Hut turned into a Fowl-house]
"'Tis them rampageous dogs, master," cried Billy in a fury. "The
thieving villains! And one of the hens beginning to sit, too! I wish
we could poison 'em."
"We can't do that," I said, "but we shall have to make war on them, or
we shall never feel safe, either for our belongings or ourselves, for
they attacked you, and I am pretty sure that if one of us was hurt and
could not count on the help of the other he would soon be torn in
pieces. We must teach them a lesson."
"Yes, but how?" says Billy. "They're such cowards that they won't
stand still to be shot at."
"Nor would you, if you were a wild dog," I said. "I think we had
better set a trap for them."
[Sidenote: War on the Dogs]