years" (it was about four by my reckoning), "and living comfortable,
and wherever they go they'll either have to work, which they hate, or
to fight, which will be worse, for their powder and shot won't last for
ever, and I wonder they've any left at all. They must have been
uncommon careful of it."
I did not think that Billy's prediction would come true, for they had
certainly found no great stores of food on our island, and if it was
food they were seeking they would surely suppose that, though we were
alive, we had no more than supplied our own needs. However, there is
no folly in being prepared for anything that may befall, so Billy and I
set ourselves to think very seriously again of what we should do if our
hut were besieged closely for any considerable length of time. Our
situation would not be pleasant, between exasperated besiegers on the
one side and the terrible monsters on the other, and I set my wits to
work very earnestly to see if I might devise some means whereby we
might extirpate those hideous creatures and so clear a way to the sea.
To make an attack on them with our weapons held no great promise in it,
for, as Billy said, they seemed to be terribly tough, and while we were
disposing of one, others might cling around us and lug us to perdition.
Besides, the very sight of the monsters made our blood run cold, and
Billy said he would sooner face a thousand stepmothers than one of
them, though he thought he might prefer one monster to three Hoggetts.
[Sidenote: Experiments]
It was after the matter had been beating in my head for several days
that the notion came to me to try how the fizzy rock would affect the
creatures. We knew what dreadful choking fumes came from it when it
was thrown into water, and it seemed to me not impossible that these
fumes might dissolve in water and poison it, and 'twould then be only a
question of getting a sufficient quantity to destroy the whole nest or
lair of the monsters. Considering that it would be a very laborious
matter to bring down to the cliffs enough of the rock for our purpose,
we determined to make a trial of it first, and the creature we selected
for the _vile corpus_ (which is pretty nearly all the Latin I remember)
was one of those robber crabs which I think I have mentioned. We
caught one on the shore, and put him into one of my pots, which we
filled with water and then cast in one or two lumps of the rock. There
was a great fizzing and spluttering, with dense and suffocating fumes,
and when they had cleared off and it was safe for us to go to the pot,
we found the crab perfectly black and quite dead, and when Billy took
it out of the pot he declared that the water stung his hand. We were
very well satisfied with this trial, and immediately set about
collecting a great quantity of the poisonous stuff, bringing it down
from the mountain in baskets which we slung at our backs, and heaping
it up on the cliff just above the entrance to the cave. I proposed
that we should carry it down to the shore, and convey it to the
monsters' haunt in our canoe, but this Billy would not hear of for a
moment, avouching that he would sooner be eaten by savages than hugged
by the slimy arms of the beasts.
[Sidenote: Billy is Reflective]
We had been digging out the rock, and carrying it to the cliff, for a
matter of two days when a terrible storm of rain came on in the night,
and when we got up in the morning and went to the cliff, we saw that
all the rock we had so toiled in collecting had spent itself, and left
a black desolation all around the spot where it had lain. This gave us
a great deal of annoyance, as much at our thoughtlessness as at the
thing itself; but we did not give up our design, resolving rather to be
the more careful in our preparations. It took us a very long time to
assemble as much material as we had before, because we had to dig
deeper into the side of the mountain for it, and when we got it we
covered it over very scrupulously, so that the rain could not touch it.
Billy remarked that of course, after our taking all that trouble, there
would be no more rain for a month, and he was right; but I pointed out
to him that we should have been very foolish if we had not taken these
precautions, and he said it was a pity you could not tell things
beforehand, adding, as if it had never struck him before, that you
never could tell what might have been, because all we knew was what
was. And then he was silent for a time, and when he spoke again, he
said: "Ain't it terrible, master, to think you never can catch a minute
what's gone?" Billy so seldom said anything of a reflective nature
that I looked at him in some alarm, with a kind of superstitious fear
that he was sickening for something; but I was relieved in a moment
when, in the same breath, he said: "It do make you eat hearty, though."
When we had heaped up on the cliff a good many hundredweights of the
rock, we waited for the flow of the tide, and then, choosing a place
where the cliff ran down very steep and straight to the mouth of the
cave, we flung the stuff into the water between the mouth and the rocks
where we first encountered the shoal of monsters. We watched eagerly
to see what happened, and saw a vast number of bubbles come to the
surface, and a certain quantity of smoke that floated away on the
breeze, but not near such a smother as we had experience of, which made
us hope that there was all the more poison in the water. There was a
slight current at the foot of the cliffs, setting past the cluster of
rocks towards the channel between Red Rock and the island. We walked
along for a little space, in the same direction as this current, to see
if there was any sign on the surface of the water of our experiment
having had any effect. For some little while we saw nothing, and had
begun to believe that the monsters were proof against what we had
fondly hoped was poison, when we observed some tentacles appearing
above the water by the rocks, and also at the base of the cliffs, and
by and by the palpitating bodies of the monsters themselves, crawling
up as if the water did not very well agree with them. We pelted these
creatures very hard with stones and lumps of the strange rock, and
though we missed pretty often, yet we hit them pretty often too, and
had lively satisfaction when we saw them loose their hold and tumble
back into the water as soon as the rock began to fizz. But we could
not see that any of them were killed, and had to conclude that the
water about the rocks was too deep, and the current moved too fast, for
our poisonous substance to work its full effect, and so we went back
disappointed, with the problem of making a safe way through the tunnel
to the sea as far from solution as ever it was.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH
OF THE END OF THE SEA MONSTERS; AND OF THE EVENTS THAT LED US TO
RECEIVE THE CREW AS OUR GUESTS
We had failed to destroy the monsters from the cliff top, and I
concluded that we must still fail, unless we could, find some means of
attacking them in an enclosed space, where there was no current to
carry away the water as soon as it was rendered poisonous. It was
Billy who suggested the plan which we ultimately found successful.
Though he had refused point blank to approach the cave in our canoe, he
would not mind, he said, "having a go" at the monsters from the tunnel,
for there at least we had dry land to run back to, whereas if the canoe
were caught in the embrace of one of the large creatures there would be
little chance for us. And since we had already learnt that the
monsters came into the cave, as well as haunting the rocks outside, I
agreed, when Billy suggested it, that even if we could not kill them
outright we might make the water in the cave so exceeding noisome that
they would depart thence and seek more savorous quarters. We saw great
difficulties in the way, first, to the conveying a sufficiently great
quantity of the rock to the cave; then the possibility of heavy rains
falling before we had accomplished our task, with the consequent rise
of the water in the lake and the flooding of the tunnel, which would
not only render it a perilous place for us ourselves, but would use up,
or decompose, as they say, the material we had collected before we got
it to the proper place. As to the first difficulty, we were already so
well accustomed to hard work of various kinds that we thought nothing
of it; while for the matter of the rain we could only take our chance
and resolve to be as philosophical as possible if all our labour was
undone. With this in mind, we determined to collect the lumps of rock
first of all in our hut, and not to begin to convey them through the
tunnel until we had as much as we wanted: which accordingly we did,
going backwards and forwards for many days between the hut and the spot
on the mountain-side where we found an inexhaustible supply of the
rock. When we had got together a sufficient quantity, we carried above
two-thirds of it in baskets to the entrance of the cave, and very
laborious it was, because the way was so rough and in places so narrow,
and we barked our shins and elbows pretty often. But it was done at
last, and then we laid up a similar heap on the cliff, at the same spot
as we had put it before.
[Illustration: Our Baskets]
[Sidenote: End of the Monsters]
When all things were in readiness, we went along the tunnel one day,
carrying torches in our hands, until we came to the place where we had
put our heap of rock, at the brink of the pool. Now that the moment
for our great enterprise was come, we were in a fever, I assure you,
both from the importance of what we had taken in hand to do, and from
our shuddering horror of the monsters. We held our torches above our
heads, searching the cave for signs of them, expecting every moment to
see the hideous tentacles emerge from the black water at our feet, and
fancying we saw these dreadful enemies on all the rocks that strewed
the floor of the cave. "What are we waiting for?" says Billy in an
awful whisper, and seeing that certainly nothing was to be gained by
delay, we stuck our torches into crevices in the wall, and then with
two great heaves cast the pieces of rock into the water, and retreated
instantly into the tunnel to escape the choking fumes that arose. We
had to go a good way before we felt ourselves to be in safety from
them, and indeed it promised to be so long before we could venture to
go down to the cave again that we thought we might as well return to
our hut and run down to the cliff, to see if any of the creatures had
been driven forth. Accordingly we made great haste, and when we came
to the cliff and looked over, we saw first several of the smaller
creatures floating at the mouth of the cave, and quite dead as far as
we could tell; but immediately afterwards there came slowly swimming
out a huge monster that far exceeded in size and ugliness that which
had seized me on that day when we climbed down the cliff for eggs.
Whether it was the same that had nearly caught Billy I know not,
because we never saw that clearly; but we were perfectly amazed at the
hugeness of it, being as big round as my aunt's round table in the
parlour, and its tentacles stretching on all sides like the roots of an
immense oak. Though we were far above it, and in safety, we shuddered
when we beheld it, and our cheeks became pale; I saw that Billy's did,
and he told me afterwards that I was as white as a ghost. We both felt
beyond measure thankful that we had been so mercifully preserved from
falling a prey to this terrible giant, which could have crushed the
life out of us in a few minutes.
The monster swam slowly along until it came to the rocks I have before
mentioned, and there it heaved itself up until the greater part of it
was out of the water. "He's going to sit there till he's got the stink
out of his nose," said Billy, "and then he'll go back, and all our
work's thrown away." I feared that it would be as Billy said, and saw
that we should have no security unless the monster were driven clean
away or else killed outright. We took up some of the lumps of rock we
had collected on the cliff and hurled them at the creature, but it had
so lodged itself that we could hit nothing but its tentacles, and our
missiles seemed to do them no hurt. If the creature would only expose
its body, a great round bag of jelly as it seemed, we might shoot
arrows into it and perhaps find a mortal spot. I bade Billy run back
to the hut to fetch our bows and arrows while I still kept the monster
in sight, and when he returned with them, we hurled pieces of rock just
beyond where the creature lay, on the seaward side of it, hoping that
the fumes would drive it from its perch towards us, so that we might
take a fair aim. And that is what happened, for the monster after a
little shifted its posture, and moved slowly away from the poisonous
fumes that beset it, back towards its old haunt in the cave. "Now
we've got him," says Billy, in great excitement. "You shoot better
than me, master; you have a go at him while I keep on flinging the rock
t'other side of him, to keep him on the move." Accordingly I shot
arrow after arrow at the great central mass, as fast as I could fit
them to the bow, while Billy flung stone after stone just beyond it.
He cried out in amazement when the arrows clean disappeared in the
creature's body, and yet it moved, and he asked me in a whisper whether
I didn't think it was the devil himself, and so couldn't be killed,
except by God. But I bade him continue his throwing, and I shot at
least a dozen arrows, I think, before I thought the creature moved more
slowly, as if it had suffered some injury; and it being then close up
against the cliff, directly below us, I said to Billy that we would
topple down on it the whole of the lumps that were left, and see if
that would not deal the finishing stroke. This we did, casting over
above a hundred-weight of the stuff, some of which struck the creature,
and the rest fell with great hissing and smoking into the water around
it. The stench almost overpowered us even at the height we stood, and
we withdrew for a little, but returning and peering over we saw the
monster floating without any motion, and its tentacles curled up most
strangely around it. "I do believe he's dead, the villain!" cried
Billy joyously; and though we stood watching for some time longer,
there was no motion in the beast, at least no motion of its own, for we
saw that it gradually drifted on the current towards the Red Rock; and
then we hastened away across that part of the island until we came to
the point opposite the ledge, where we could look down into the narrow
race between; and we had not been there long when the monster,
perfectly inert, was swept around the corner and through the channel,
and so carried along past the north side of the island until we lost
sight of it, and knew that we should see it no more.
For several days after this some of this family of monsters were cast
up dead on the shore, together with a great quantity of fish of all
kinds, so that we were in no doubt of the efficacy of this remarkable
mineral. Indeed, Billy startled me by saying one night, just as I was
going to sleep, "I say, master, what a fine thing that stuff would be
for doing away with mother-in-laws and Hoggetts and such!" I told him
this was a horrible notion, and he owned that it was, and he supposed
it would be murder and he would be hanged for it. "But," says he,
"suppose Hoggett and that lot come back and fight us, and we kill one
or two of 'em--and we can't be sure our arrows won't go straight--would
that be murder, eh?" I replied that I thought it was justifiable to
kill a man if fighting in self-defence. "Well then," says he, "I don't
understand it, not a bit. You kill a man when he's shooting at you,
and might kill you if you ain't first, and that ain't murder; but if
you kill him with fizzy rock, so that he don't have a chance to kill
you, that _is_ murder. What do you make of that, now?" I own I could
make nothing of it (though perhaps I might nowadays), but said he had
better go to sleep; and he cast that up at me afterwards, saying that
whenever he wanted things explained I told him to go to sleep because I
couldn't think of what to say, which was not true in general, though it
was on that occasion.
But to return to my story. We found that we had killed or driven away
all the noxious creatures which had made their home in the cave, and
since we took care to fumigate the cave at intervals, we were never
troubled with them again. The having a direct and safe outlet from our
hut to the sea was a great source of satisfaction to us, for now if at
any time we should be hard pressed above, we could very easily make our
escape and so free ourselves from immediate danger. To this end we
brought our canoe round from the nook where we had kept it on the other
side of the island, and having taken it into the cave, we made what you
may call a dock for it by piling some rocks together above high-water
mark, behind which we could lay it up without much fear that it would
be discovered if any one should enter the cave from the sea.
[Sidenote: Daily Tasks]
After this we resumed our normal way of life, going about our daily
business with a regularity which no new alarm interfered with for a
very long time. We were accustomed to measure the time, so far as we
did it at all, by the bread-fruit season, calling it summer while this
fruit was ripening, and winter when we had plucked it all, for we were
always careful to lay up a good store of it, both for ourselves and our
animals. Our pigs and our poultry throve very well, so that we had to
enlarge their dwellings; and I will say here, in case I forget it, that
by devoting some part of our time to hunting, we came very near to
exterminating both the wild pigs and the dogs; and we found that as
they grew less, the wild fowls increased mightily, because of their
greater security. We did not put ourselves to any trouble to molest
them, both because they were still difficult to approach, and because
we had enough of our domestic poultry to supply our own wants. We had
discovered that these fowl were exceeding fond of a kind of small grain
that grew near our yam plantation, and to which we had given little
heed because it was no use for our own food. But seeing that our fowls
liked it, we began to cultivate it, and kept a good quantity of it
stored in the cellar beneath our hut. We kept there also a large
supply of our other foods--yams, bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, smoked pork
and fish, and so forth; and also all our spare implements which we had
not in constant use, namely arrows, fish-hooks, pots and pans, in short
all the things we had made, keeping in the hut itself only those things
which we used constantly, and enough food for the day. I do not know
whether I have mentioned one use to which we put our fowls. We kept
the feathers of those we killed, and also those that fell in the
moulting time, and in fights, for they did fight sometimes; and having
cleaned these as well as we could we stuffed them into pillow-cases
made of leaves, and so had comfortable rests for our heads at night.
We used to take advantage of rainy days to patch our clothing, which
was by this time, as you may guess, the strangest motley that could be
seen; and besides the overcoats I have mentioned before, we made
ourselves leggings of raw hide, of which also we made covers for our
chairs.
So another season passed over us. We were as happy as any two men
could be in like circumstances, I believe; we enjoyed perfect health,
and had discovered for ourselves what great pleasure comes from simply
_doing things_. We had quite given up any thought of being rescued or
ever seeing our native land again, and though there were times when I
at least pined for the dear ones at home, I was always inestimably
thankful for Billy's companionship, but for which I do not think I
could have supported the loneliness.
[Sidenote: A Chase]
It was towards the middle of the winter season, that is, when we were
just beginning to think of planting our yams, when, going up one
morning to our watch-tower, a task we never once omitted, I spied a
number of dark objects on the sea to westward, which I very soon
discovered to be canoes filled with savages. They were approaching our
island, and I thought at first they might pass us by as the fleet had
done before; but as they drew nearer I observed that there was a ship's
boat among them, or rather ahead of them, and with white men aboard,
and when I had watched for a little while I could not doubt that the
canoes were chasing the boat and were very near overhauling it. Indeed
I saw them spread out as if to envelop it, but then there was a shot
fired and I saw the smoke hover over the boat, and the canoes paused in
their course, and the boat drew away from them, only, however, to be
pursued again as soon as it was out of shot range. I counted ten
canoes, and each held, as I reckoned, above twenty men; the white men,
whom I had already guessed to be the seamen of the _Lovey Susan_, being
no more than about fifteen or sixteen.
Billy was not with me on the watch-tower, it being his turn to cook the
dinner; but seeing that it would be an hour or maybe more before the
boat and the canoes could reach the island, I made great haste back to
our hut, and acquainted Billy with what I had seen. "I hope the
savages will catch 'em," says he at once, but agreed with me that we
must prepare ourselves to meet a greater danger than any that had yet
fallen to our lot, for we could not doubt that so great a horde of
savages would easily overcome our few countrymen if they landed, and
then, if they found our hut, they would most likely turn their attack
upon us. Indeed, it seemed to me that our only chance of safety lay in
the annihilation of the seamen before they could leave the shore, for
we did not suppose that the savages would come inland into the island
of the burning mountain, unless they had great provocation or
incitement to it. All that we could do was to let the pigs loose
again, and take up the drawbridge from our moat, which latter, however,
we did not do until we had been to the cliff to see whether the boat
was indeed making for our island. When we got there we found the crew
at that moment landing, in the desperate haste of men frantic with
fear, and after we had seen the first of them scrambling up the cliffs
where they were easiest to climb, we ran back to our hut very quickly,
pulled up the drawbridge, and set up and barricadoed the door. We had
seen that the first of the canoes was but a few yards from the shore,
and from the fierce outcries and war-whoops of the savages we knew that
they were resolved upon blood.
I considered with myself whether we ought to lend assistance to the men
of our colour; but when I thought of the way in which they had treated
us, and indeed reckoned up the heavy score we had against them, I could
not believe that their quarrel with the savages was any affair of ours,
and so resolved to let them fight it out between them. And when the
seamen began to appear on the top of the cliffs, and made straight for
our hut, I saw that the fight would after all perhaps not be so
one-sided as we had first imagined, for several of the men had muskets,
and muskets were greatly superior to any weapons the savages carried,
besides the fear they inspired in ignorant breasts. The seamen, I say,
made straight for our hut, and I counted sixteen of them; Chick was
ahead of all the rest, he being a little man and light of foot; but
Wabberley, big as he was, was not far behind, being as craven a soul as
ever I saw; and then came the rest in a group. When they reached the
edge of the moat, and found there was no means of getting across it
save by leaping down and scaling the opposite side, which would have
taken a long time, they were in a great stew, and some began to run
frantically up and down to see if there was not some spot where the
crossing was easier. But Hoggett came to the part opposite our
doorway, and cried out in a most affecting voice, "Master Brent, Master
Brent, sir, let us in, sir, for mercy's sake, or we shall all be
murdered, sir."
"Yes, 'tis 'Master Brent, sir,' 'Please, sir, would you be so kind,
sir!' now," says Billy with a sneer.
"If you please, sir," begins Hoggett again, almost echoing Billy's
mockery, "the savages are right on our heels, sir, and we're
Christians, and you wouldn't see us all slaughtered like pigs, sir."
"Why shouldn't I?" I cried through a loophole. "What reason can you
give why we should interfere?"