consider of the kind of trap that would serve us best, Billy favouring
a running noose, which seemed to me not very sure, so I proposed a pit
covered over with branches and leaves. We tried this, and before we
went to bed we put a good-sized piece of roast pork (Billy having shot
a pig that day) on the covering of the pit, hoping that the dogs would
be drawn to it by the smell and then would tumble into the pit, where
we should find them in the morning. In the middle of the night we
heard a yapping and yelping; but we did not get up, for one thing
because it was dark and we could scarcely have seen to deal with our
captives. However, in the morning we found the pork gone and also the
dogs, and when we examined the pit we saw that some had fallen in but
scrambled out again up the sides, though how they did it we never could
tell, the hole being of a pretty good depth. This failure did not
slacken our determination, and we soon thought of a more subtle trick,
to which there was one drawback in the fact that we had no means of
making a good torch, which seemed essential to it. We could, of
course, have made a great blaze with our fire, which we had never let
go out since we had first kindled it, except when a great rain put it
out; but that would as like as not have defeated our own ends.
However, it chanced that one evening we made a discovery which was
useful to us in this particular, and much more afterward, as will
appear.
I have mentioned the nut we pounded and mixed with glue to make our
birdlime. Well, since we did not wish to use up too many cocoa-nuts or
too much of our bread-fruit paste for feeding our two pigs, which were
thriving wonderfully, we gave them these other nuts, which they
appeared to like very well. On this evening I speak of, in
replenishing the fire to cook our supper, we happened to throw into it
two or three nuts which had got among the fuel, and we observed that
they burned with a very bright flame, quite different from the flame of
wood or cocoa-nut shells. We did not think any more of it for the
moment, but when I lay in bed (I say bed, but it was only leaves and
dried grass), our house being pitch-dark, I thought all of a sudden
that perhaps we could make a candle of these nuts if we wished, though
we had no need of a light, having nothing to read. I called out to
Billy to know if he was awake, and telling him of my notion, he said,
"What's the good?" which I remember he always did say when I suggested
anything new. However, I resolved to see whether I was right, and next
day I put two or three kernels together, and kindled them, and they
burned with a light like a candle's, but with a rather offensive smell.
We at once set about making a torch, and finding that we had a
difficulty in getting the kernels entire out of the shells, which were
very hard, we thought of boiling them, and then found that the shells
cracked with the slightest tap, so that the kernels came out whole.
When we had some twenty of these kernels we skewered them together on a
thin, hard stick, and so had a torch, and there being now no obstacle
to the trick I purposed playing on the dogs, we took one of our pigs
into the house, and surrounded the other with a kind of stout stockade
inside the sty, and at nightfall we left the gate of the sty open, but
contrived that we could easily close it by means of a rope which we
carried into our house. We did not go to bed, but waited, holding our
torch ready, with flint and tinder, and also a couple of the spears I
have before mentioned, which, although rude weapons, were the fittest
for the work in hand.
It was not long before we heard the light patter of feet, and soon
after the squealing of our decoy. We waited a little, so as to give
our expected guests plenty of time to establish themselves, knowing too
that they would not be able to do any harm to the pig, and then we
pulled the rope, so closing the gate upon the intruders. Then I
kindled the torch, and holding it aloft in my left hand, I rushed out
with a spear in my right hand, and Billy armed in like manner. The sty
was a good way from the house, and before we got to it the dogs that
were outside, alarmed by the unwonted glare and by our shouts,
scampered away into the darkness, leaving their comrades howling and
yelping in the sty, and the pig squealing too in a terrible fright.
Having the prisoners now at our mercy, for they could not leap the
walls of the sty, we doomed them to instant execution, and when some of
them fled for refuge into the covered part of the sty, we took off a
portion of the roof, and so fell on them again, and did not desist
until we had killed every one. We left them there until the morning,
and then carried them forth, nine in all, and Billy insisted on
skinning them, saying that their coats would make fine mats for our
house-floor, which indeed they did when they had been well washed in
lake-water and dried in the open air. The vengeance we took had an
excellent deterrent effect on the rest of the pack, which no more
molested us, at least in that part of the island. We caught more fowls
to replace those that had been stolen, and captured the litter of
another sow, which we killed for food, and were happy in the thought
that by natural increase our fowls and pigs would in course of time
provide us with as much food as we needed, or even more. We kept the
hides of those we killed, though we had no immediate use for them.
Billy said he wished he could make a pair of boots, for the rough
ground was very troublesome to his bare feet, and my boots were very
much worn and, indeed, scarcely held together. But we knew nothing of
bootmaking, and for some time did not attempt to provide ourselves with
footwear, though afterwards we contrived to make some strange and
uncouth foot-gloves: I can call them by no other name.
[1] This was clearly the candle-nut, of which more is said
presently.--H.S.
CHAPTER THE TENTH
OF THE NAMING OF OUR ISLAND--OF A FLEET OF CANOES, AND OF THE MEANS
WHEREBY WE PREPARE TO STAND A SIEGE
We had now fairly established ourselves as the owners of the island,
having a comfortable house, domestic animals, and a sufficient store of
food, the only article in which we were lamentably deficient being
clothes. The necessity we were under of working hard with our hands
left us little time for commiseration, and I verily believe that we
were in the main as cheerful and happy as we could have been anywhere.
And now that the completion of our hardest tasks left us a little
leisure, it came into our heads that we ought to give our property a
name, or rather it was Billy that thought of it, he saying that since I
was clearly king of the country, it was ridiculous not to be able to
say what country it was.
"Call it Smoking Island," says he, "because of that old smoker up
there."
To this I objected that it was not a pretty name, and besides, the
mountain was not always smoking.
"Well then," he said, "call it Lonely Island, because it is lonely, and
so are we."
To this I replied that a more cheerful name would suit me better, and
suggested that we should call it Perseverance Island, since all our
present comforts sprang from our persevering in the face of
difficulties. But this Billy would by no means agree to, saying that
it looked like bragging, and besides he hated the word perseverance,
because he had to write it so many times on his slate at school, and it
made him think of raps on the knuckles. He told me that he had been
for a few months at a charity school, but he played truant so often
that the master refused to have him any longer, at which he was very
glad. After considering sundry other names, to which either Billy or I
had some objection, we finally settled on Palm Tree Island, both
because most of the trees of the island were palms, and because we got
our first comfort, when we were deserted, from the cocoa-nut palms on
the hill-side.
The general country being thus fitted with a name, we proceeded to name
the several parts of it. The mountain we called simply The Mountain,
though to Billy it was always Old Smoker; the slope leading up to the
crater we called Rocky Hill, and the wood beneath Bread-fruit Wood.
The big rock at the north-west corner was Red Rock, and the two smaller
ones at the south-west were The Sentinels. And so we named various
parts as we thought of it, not all at one time, and many of them not
until I made my map, of which I may say more hereafter. I must
mention, however, that Billy insisted on giving my name to the wood
where we slept on our first night, and in my turn I gave his name to a
sandy bay on the west of the island, and Billy was very proud when he
spelt out Bobbin's Bay on the aforesaid map.
[Sidenote: Plantations]
So the winter passed away, not like the winter in England, for we had
no frost or snow, nor did the leaves fall from the trees; the only true
sign that it was winter was the absence of flowers and fruit on the
trees; and even this was not the case with all of them, for the
cocoa-nut palm bore its fruit all the year round, so that on the same
tree there were nuts in all stages of ripeness, which I thought a very
wonderful thing. We had a considerable amount of rain, and this became
greater as we came into the spring season. We had kept for this season
the yams which we saved from the pigs, as I related a while ago, and we
now planted them, choosing two places, since we did not know on what
soil they would thrive best, whether where we had found them, or near
our house. We had kept the yams in one of our pans, and we guessed it
was time to plant them because we saw sprouts growing out of them, as
you sometimes see the eyes of a potato sprouting. We cut these
sprouting parts off, keeping the other parts for boiling, and set them
in the ground, some on the ground just below our house, the others in
the glade where we had discovered them. Knowing that we stood no
chance of getting a crop unless we defended the plants from the wild
pigs, we put fences of hurdles (made of twigs and reeds) round our
plantations, which were at first only a few yards square, and waited
with what patience we might for the result. I will say here that the
yams we planted near our house came to nothing, why I know not; but the
others throve exceedingly, and though we had some trouble with the
pigs, which broke down the fence more than once and did some damage, we
got a very fair crop in the summer, which supplied us with mashed
potatoes, as Billy said (for which we used dripping from the pigs we
cooked), and also with seed for another sowing.
[Illustration: Jug with Bent-wood Handle and Cup]
[Sidenote: Articles of Toilet]
Though our great work in the building of our hut was finished (at least
we thought it was) our days were by no means idle, for we had our
animals to feed and our fences to keep in repair, and moreover we made
more pots and pans, also arrows and spears, thread and rope. One thing
that gave me much amusement was the brush that Billy made. Of course
we had not been able to attend to our toilet since we came to Palm Tree
Island, beyond bathing and washing our heads: I mean we could not brush
our hair, which was now grown down to our shoulders for want of
scissors, nor trim our finger-nails, though our hard work kept these
pretty short. But on going down to the lake one sunny day to fetch
water I saw my image reflected, and afterwards bemoaning my exceeding
unkempt appearance, though in truth it mattered nothing, Billy took it
into his head to make me, secretly, a brush and comb, which he
presented to me with great glee. "There, old king," says he, for he
sometimes called me king instead of master since we named the island,
"there you are, and I hope you'll use 'em to keep your old majesty's
head tidy." His manner of addressing me was not, you perceive, very
reverential; but I will say this for Billy, that though he was very
sturdy and independent of spirit, he was never insolent, being a
gentleman in his nature, and so we were rather good comrades than
anything else, and the talk of kings and so forth was mere fun and
play-acting. I did use the brush and comb which he had made for me,
but not, I confess, very often, and I cannot help thinking what a great
number of things that we are accustomed to we could do without; indeed,
though we had made ourselves knives and forks, we did not use them very
much either and you might have seen us at dinner-time squat down on the
floor of our house, with two mats of leaves in front of us, on one of
which was our meat (pork, or a pigeon or fowl), on the other our yams
or bread-fruit, boiled or baked, with a little heap of salt in the
corner, and little clay mugs filled with cocoa-nut juice or water at
the side. Then we would take a yam in one hand and a shank of pork, or
a leg of fowl, in the other, dip them in the salt and take a bite, and
then a bite of the yam, and so go through our meal very comfortably
till only the bones were left. Afterwards we thought of making stools
and chairs and a table, as much to employ our time as for any
conveniency of them, and then we ate our meals again in the civilized
way, though I own I thought it not a whit better nor much cleaner than
the other, for we could always wash our hands.
[Illustration: The Brush Billy made, showing also the manner of it]
[Illustration: Comb of Spines]
I said that we could not cut our hair, but when it grew so long that it
covered our shoulders, and Billy said I should soon be an old woman, we
thought of shortening it by burning; so we each became barber in turn,
holding the hair away from the head with Billy's comb, and then burning
the ends away with a torch. Billy was much more hairy than I was, and
though he was three years younger than me his cheeks and chin already
showed signs of black whiskers and beard, and one day I found him
trying to shave with a flint, having made soap by boiling fat with the
ashes of wood; but he succeeded so ill, only making his chin raw, that
he gave it up, and said he supposed he would have to look a fright.
[Illustration: "ONE DAY I FOUND HIM TRYING TO SHAVE WITH A FLINT."]
[Sidenote: A Fleet of Canoes]
One day, about a year after our first coming to the island, as we
judged by the ripeness of the breadfruit, Billy went up Flagstaff Hill,
as we called it, to take the survey which we never omitted, each of us
doing it in turn, though we sometimes went together. I was moulding a
new pan, when all of a sudden I heard a great shout from the hill-side
above, and looking up I saw Billy leaping down towards me with a speed
that seemed very dangerous, waving his arms and shouting, though in the
distance I could not distinguish his words. My heart leapt into my
mouth, as the saying is, for from his excitement I surmised that he had
descried a sail at sea, and I thought he was calling to me to help him
raise our signal. I ran towards him, and as we drew nearer to each
other, I saw plainly on his face the marks of great agitation, and then
in a breathless way he called the one word "Savages!" and I was
instantly in a terrible fear lest they had landed on the island and
were coming to attack us.
However, when we met, Billy told me that from the hill-top he had seen
a fleet of canoes on the north side of the island, passing from west to
east. They were filled with savages, though whether armed or not he
could not tell, they being a good distance out at sea, nor was there
anything to show whether they purposed landing. It came into my mind
with a shock at that moment that we were very ill able to defend
ourselves in case they should land and attack us, for we had very
little provision in our hut, and if we took refuge there they might
keep us shut up until we died of hunger, or thirst, which would be
worse. I blamed myself very much for lack of prudence in not making
provision for such an emergency, but the truth is that after spending
so many months without seeing a human form we had become careless, and
went from day to day as though there had been no human beings in the
world except our two selves. However, it was too late to make up for
this neglect now, if the savages did indeed land, and I saw that in
that case we could only take to the woods and trust that our hut and
plantations, being inland, might pass undiscovered. Accordingly I
accompanied Billy back up the hill, and we went round the wood where
our signal-tree was, to a place nearer the crater, whence we had a more
extensive view.
"There they are!" cried Billy, pointing out to sea, and I saw eight or
nine long canoes filled with brown men, who must have numbered near two
hundred in all. But I saw with inexpressible relief that they had come
past the Red Rock, and were proceeding steadily eastward, and knowing
that there was no beach on the north side of the island where they
might land, we had great hope that we should not be troubled with them.
Keeping out of sight behind rocks, though indeed there was perhaps
little danger of our being seen, we watched the fleet until it became
no more than a speck on the eastern horizon, and then we went down to
our hut, relieved of present danger, but by no means easy in mind about
the future.
[Sidenote: Fortification]
We knew not whether the fleet was going or returning, but whichever it
was, I was surprised it had not put in at our island for rest and
refreshment, for the nearest land to the west was at least twenty miles
away, and on the east it could not be less, for we had seen but the
dimmest line in that direction. Billy said the savages were without
doubt afraid of the old smoker, and even though he was harmless at
present, the island had a bad name, and so they would not land on it
except under very great stress. This I devoutly hoped was the true
explanation, for if it was, we had a reasonable hope that we should
never have to deal with savage enemies. Yet the fright we had had
determined us to do something to provide more efficiently for our
safety, and the first thing we did was to make loopholes in the walls
of our hut, so that if we were at any time forced to take refuge there,
we might at least be able to make some resistance by shooting arrows at
the enemy. Then we carried a great number of cocoa-nuts into the
house, which would provide us both with meat and drink, and we
determined to dig a hole in the floor when the bread-fruit was fully
ripe, and store it with the pounded pulp as we had done outside. Then
it came into my head of a sudden that, our hut being built wholly of
logs and thatch, the enemy might easily set fire to it and burn us
alive, and to hinder this we carried down great quantities of the
clayey soil of which we made our pottery ware, and mixing it with sand
and small stones, we made a kind of rough-cast with which we covered
the whole of the outside of the hut, roof and all, so that we not only
concealed the joints of the walls, but also, as I hoped, protected the
hut from fire.
This work took us a long time, as you may guess, and before we had
finished it, we saw the fleet again. One or other of us went up the
hill several times a day to watch the eastern horizon, and on the third
day, I think it was, after we first saw the canoes, a little after
sunrise, I saw some tiny specks in the east, and recognizing them by
and by for canoes I watched them with great anxiety. I feared lest we
might have two enemies to deal with, the savages and the volcano, which
had been rumbling for a day or two at intervals, and sending up puffs
of steam or smoke, and we wondered whether there was going to be
another eruption like that at the time of our first coming. As soon as
I saw the canoes, I signalled for Billy to join me, and the moment we
caught sight of them he cried: "Why, there's only six; there was eight
or nine before," a fact which had escaped my notice. They were plainly
heading straight for the island, and not in a course that would bring
them past the north side with a good offing as before.
"I don't want to be eat," said Billy, going pale under his sun-tan;
"but we can't fight over a hundred savages, can we, master?"
Before I could reply there was a loud rumbling beneath us, and being
not a great way from the crater, we set off at a run, going down
towards the Red Rock, there being no lava on this side. We had run
barely twenty yards when a great puff of steam or smoke was shot up
into the air for near two hundred feet, I should guess, and a shower of
pumice stones fell around us. This frightened us so much that,
forgetting all about the canoes, we did not stop running until we came
to the edge of the cliff opposite the Red Rock, and then, there being
no more signs of activity in the volcano, we were thinking of climbing
up again to our watching-place when, to our great joy, we caught sight
of the canoes making round the north side, and indeed bearing away
northwards away from us.
"Three cheers for old smoker," cried Billy. "He's scared 'em away,
sure as nuts, and they won't eat us after all."
We stood watching the canoes as they made their way very toilsomely
against wind and current, and did not go down to our hut until they had
quite vanished from sight. It was long past our usual dinner-time, I
am sure, and as we had had no breakfast we were mighty hungry, and ate
with very good appetites, having lost our fear; and taking up our mugs
of cocoa-nut juice, and knocking them together in the way of folks
drinking a toast, I cried out, "Here's to old smoker!" and Billy
shouted, "God bless him!"
This happened, as I say, three days after our first alarm, and we did
not cease from our efforts to put ourselves in a good posture of
defence if we should ever again have reason to fear an attack. We had
already made our hut fairly fire-proof, and cut loop-holes in the
walls, these at varying heights, so that we might shoot down from a
height upon the enemy at a distance, or on a level with them if they
came to close quarters. Since a man behind walls is equal to at least
three outside, I should think, we considered that we two, though hardly
come to man's estate, could make a very good fight of it; our only
trouble was the matter of water, for while we had no fears in the
matter of food, we did not see how by any means we could store
sufficient water in the hut, even if we filled all our pots and pans.
[Sidenote: Sinking a Well]
I was lying with Billy one evening outside our hut overlooking the
lake, when the solution to this puzzle came all at once into my head.
The ground behind the hut sloped pretty steeply down to the lake, the
length of the slope being about twenty feet, and the vertical height
about six feet--that is, between the floor of our hut and the usual
surface of the water. For I must observe here, lest I forget it, that
the depth of water in the lake varied very much at different seasons,
being far greater after a period of rainy weather than in drought, the
variation being at least equal to the height of a man. And in regard
to this variation a circumstance caused us much wonderment, for though
when the rains were heavy the lake rose very rapidly to a certain
point, we observed that it never came higher than that point, no matter
how long the rains continued. When I pointed this out to Billy he saw
nothing to wonder at in it, saying that the lake must be just like the
sea; for though it had rained hundreds and thousands of times since the
beginning of the world, the sea had never drowned the world since the
Flood, and it surely would have done so unless there was some hole at
the bottom that opened when the sea was getting too full.
"That can't be," said I.
"Well, then, how is it?" says he. "You pour water into a cup, and
it'll slop over presently. The lake's a cup, though a big one; why
don't it slop over after all these rains if there ain't a hole in the
bottom, as I say?"
"But it can't be in the bottom, Billy, or the lake would sometimes be
drained quite dry," I said.
"Well, it is, pretty nearly," he replied, but I would not admit that,
for though the water subsided slowly after the rains had ceased, it had
never sunk so low as to let us see the bottom. At low water we hunted
all round the lake to see if we could find an outlet through which the
water ran away, but we saw none, and remained in our puzzlement for a
good while longer.
However, I was beginning to tell of the notion that came into my head
as we lay that evening above the lake. Being so little distant from
it, I thought, why should we not sink a well in the floor of the hut,
and connect it with the lake by a pipe?
"What's the good?" says Billy, when I put the question to him. "For
one thing, the water won't run up into the hut without a pump; at
least, I've never seen water run uphill yet; and then, as soon as any
savages come, you may be sure they'll spy it, and then where are you?"
I said that as for the latter point, we should, of course, take care to
show no sign outside of what we had done; and as for the former, I did
not despair of finding some way to raise the water to our level, even
if we could not make a pump. Billy talked till it was dark about the
difficulties of what I proposed--the difficulty of digging a hole, of
preventing the earth from falling in, and so forth--until you would
have thought he was the poorest-spirited creature that ever lived; but
that was only Billy's way, and I often observed that he was never so
active and eager, aye, and never so hopeful too, as after he had been
talking in this gloomy manner. At any rate, next day he set to work
with me to make a trial of my notion.