when our whereabouts was discovered. I know not how long it was, but I
guess five or six weeks. Having nothing better to do, we often went to
the edge of the Red Rock, where we could overlook a part of the island
from behind the vantage of a boulder, and we sometimes saw the men
moving from place to place, taking care ourselves to keep out of their
sight, at least I took care, Billy being less prudent, so that more
than once I had to drag him down when he began to climb the boulder to
have a better view. Of course we could have been seen any day if the
men had climbed the mountain, but they never did this. I learnt
afterwards that they had scoured every accessible part of the island
for us, and after a time suspected that we were on the Red Rock, and
kept a watch on it, but saw never a sign of us until the day of which I
am now to tell.
[Sidenote: Discovery]
Our dog, Little John, seldom barked unless there was something to
trouble him, and we had taken care since we had been on the rock to
keep him as quiet as possible, so that the men might not discover us
through him. But it chanced one day that one of the pigs broke loose
from the place where we had tethered him, and began to run in a very
stupid fashion, not heeding in the least the danger of falling over a
crag and dashing himself to pieces. Little John no sooner saw the mad
antics of the creature than he set off in pursuit, barking furiously,
and Billy set off too with a shout, taking great enjoyment in the chase
after our period of idleness. He came up with the pig just as it had
arrived at the very edge of the plateau, and caught it, and at that
very moment I heard another shout, and looking over I saw two of the
men just at the edge of the wood near the rocky ledge of which I have
spoken before. It was plain that they had seen Billy, though he
dropped out of sight immediately he heard the shout, and they came
forward until they stood at the edge of the cliff, being separated from
the rock only by the narrow gap. "That's where the young devils are
hiding," I heard one of them say. "Didn't I say so, Bill?" Their
words came very clearly to me, for sailor men have not very dulcet
voices. "Hail them, Jack," says the other, and the first man put his
hands to his mouth and let forth a stentorian "Ahoy!" which might have
been heard a mile away. At first I paid no heed, but when he shouted
again I saw no good that could come of further concealment, so I
climbed up on to the boulder, being followed by Billy as soon as he had
put the pig back into safety.
"What do you want?" I cried down to them. You would have laughed to
see their faces. Our sudden appearance seemed to have nonplussed them,
for they stood staring blankly up at us, as not knowing what to say.
Then says one to the other, "Go and fetch Hoggett," and the fellow
immediately set off and disappeared into the wood, running towards the
hut. The other man stood on the same spot, gazing dumbly at us, and
never once offered to address us, and we sat down on the boulder, Billy
smiling and dangling his legs in the most careless way. Presently we
saw Hoggett and pretty near all the men coming through the wood, and
Hoggett had his musket, and I thought that they must have started
before the messenger came to them, or they could not have got to us so
soon; no doubt they had heard the shouting. Well, Hoggett comes along,
with Chick and Wabberley close behind him, and when he got to the edge
of the cliff below us (it was two or three hundred feet) he lifts up
his voice and cries out, "Hi, you Brent, you come ashore sharp now,
d'ye hear?" I thanked him very courteously for his invitation, but
said I was very comfortable where I was, upon which he cursed me
heartily, and cried out again, "You come sharp now, and no nonsense, or
I'll come and fetch you," winding up with that opprobrious word which I
had cured Billy of using. The threat was such an idle one that I
smiled at him, and Billy laughed heartily, and putting his thumb to his
nose, spread out his fingers in that gesture of derision which I have
observed small boys to use, and which I thought he should not have used
at his age, being at this time, as I reckoned, not far short of twenty
years old. What with my silence and Billy's mockery, Hoggett flew into
a terrible rage, and clapping his musket to his shoulder, he let fly at
me; but I was too far above him for him to take a good aim, he being
never used to fire except on the flat, and the slug struck the rock a
good many feet below us. Still, we did not know but he might have
better luck next time, so we got down off the boulder and disappeared
from sight, and sat there listening to the furious outcry the men made,
Hoggett in particular declaring he would flay us alive when he caught
us. The men talked together for some while, and then, when the sounds
ceased, we peeped over and saw them returning in a group whence they
had come.
We saw no more of them that day, or the next, but on the second day, in
the afternoon, when Billy got on the boulder to take a look round, he
called to me that he spied a raft coming towards us from the direction
of the cave, with Hoggett and half-a-dozen more aboard. I could see
that Billy was a little alarmed at this, for he always had a great
dread of Hoggett; but I told him not to be disturbed, for I was sure
from our vantage ground, and with our bows and arrows, we could easily
beat them off if they landed and tried to clamber up. "Things are
going well," I said to him. "They have actually begun to work at last,
and pretty diligently, too, to make that raft in less than two days."
"But what's the odds to us, master," says Billy, "if they have begun to
work? I think it's a very bad sign, I do." "We shall see," I said;
and Billy looked very much puzzled, for I had not told him my design in
its fulness, because I wished to get a certain assurance of its success
first.
[Sidenote: Invasion Fails]
It was soon plain that we should not be put to the trouble of defence,
and we had a hearty laugh at the coil in which the men soon found
themselves; for coming pretty close to the shore, they were caught in
the current which ran very swiftly through the narrow gap, and despite
the desperate efforts which they made with their paddles, the raft,
which is at all times a clumsy vessel, was swept along and twirled this
way and that, and the men were in such extremity of danger that they
ceased to gaze at us, and bent all their energies to prevent the raft
from being dashed against the rocks on either side and shivered to
atoms. They were carried right through the channel, and pretty nearly
to the natural archway, before they got the least control over the
raft, and even then they could only manage it enough to steer clear of
the sides of the arch, and so win to the open sea. By that time the
current had lost the most of its force, and we knew very well that if
they paddled out to the left, and made a sufficiently large circuit,
they might gain the north side of Red Rock, even with so clumsy a
vessel as theirs, and discover our landing-place. However, they had
been so greatly discomfited that I was not much surprised when, instead
of steering to the left, they allowed the raft to drift past the
promontory, and after a little while they disappeared from our sight,
having clearly determined to return to the place where they had
embarked.
But though this attempt had been so signal a failure, I saw very
clearly that we must not be content merely to smile and do nothing, for
if they were to take thought and go about the enterprise in a
reasonable way, they might very well come to our landing-place some
time, and then they might seize our canoe, a loss which we could not
contemplate without dismay. Accordingly, Billy and I spent the rest of
the afternoon in a very serious talk, the issue of which was that in
the middle of the night we descended the rock and launched the canoe,
in which we set off, and, rounding the archway, came opposite the lava
beach. This we examined as well as we were able by the light of the
stars, for there was no moon, but not perceiving what we sought, we
paddled on very quietly until Billy told me in a whisper that he spied
it on the sandy beach; and there, indeed, was the raft, drawn up above
high-water mark, and no one attending it--at least, no one that we
could see. We had talked over this point very anxiously, for if they
had set a guard over the raft our scheme would be brought to nought;
but we both agreed that it would be very unlike them to take this
precaution, and, besides, there was not a man of them who would consent
to undertake the office of night watchman so far from the hut while the
others were enjoying their repose; and so it turned out.
We passed on without landing, until we came to a sort of dell in the
cliff, where we knew there grew a great quantity of long grass and
rushes. We landed there, and having pulled up many armfuls of the
grass, which we did very easily, the soil being thin, we loaded it into
the canoe, and then returned to the place where the raft lay. For some
little while we waited, listening for any sound that might give token
of wakefulness among the men, but hearing nothing, we ran the canoe
lightly in shore, and having landed, we carried our grasses and laid
them beside the raft. Then we went on further until we came to a patch
of thick scrub, where we broke off a quantity of small branches, and
these we laid beside our other material, going and coming as quickly as
we could.
[Sidenote: Making a Bonfire]
Our purpose, as you have guessed, was to burn the raft, so that we
should not have that to fear again, nor did I suppose the men would
make another, for it must have cost them many pangs to break through
their indolence to make this one, and if it were destroyed nothing
would persuade them to undergo the toil again. We knew, of course,
that the raft would be wet, at least on the under side, where it had
not been exposed to the sun after they beached it; but in order to
assist the fire we purposed to kindle, we had brought some of our
candle-nuts and some cocoa-nut shells and husks, which are highly
inflammable and would give a very fine blaze. But when we came to lift
the raft so as to push our fuel under it, we found that we could not in
any wise raise it, for it was bigger than we had supposed from seeing
it in the water, and would have needed five or six men to move it, I am
sure. However, we set to work to scrape a hollow in the sand beneath
it, or rather several hollows, in which we laid the fuel, and we heaped
on the top side also a good quantity of cocoa-nut husks. We had taken
the precaution to bring a smouldering torch with us, so that we should
not make a noise in striking a light; and after we had spied round very
carefully to make sure that we were not observed, we crouched down on
the seaward side of the raft and blew the torch into a flame, and then
thrust it into the fuel, first at one place and then at another. We
waited only long enough to see that the fires were fairly kindled, and
then we hastened at once to the canoe, and paddled out to sea for some
distance. The fire might blaze and burn itself out without being ever
seen by any of the men; but it was possible that some of them were
awake, and if they were they could not fail to observe the glow in the
sky, and then they would assuredly come over the hill to learn the
cause of it. It was for this reason that we drew off from the shore so
far that we should be outside the circle of light when the raft was
fully ablaze.
The night was calm and clear, and the sea so still that we were able to
keep the canoe at the same spot with but a touch of the paddles now and
then. It was some time before we saw any considerable flames; indeed,
we began to fear lest the wood of the raft were too damp to kindle
properly, and Billy whispered in my ear, "Don't I wish we had some
turps, or some of that pig fat we've got in our cellar. That would
make something like a blaze." However, I told him he must be patient,
and a little while after the flames burst from beneath the raft and
licked the sides, and we heard a mighty crackling, the wood being wet,
and at last a monstrous big flame and a thick column of smoke rose up
into the sky, and I could hardly restrain Billy from shouting in his
joy, he saying to me, in tones much above a whisper, that he had never
seen a bigger bonfire, even on Guy Fawkes day, and he thought it must
be something like the Fire of London. (I discovered afterwards, when I
had time to remember it, that Billy did not in the least know what the
Fire of London was, but knew only the phrase; and when I told him that
a great part of the city was burnt down in that historical calamity, he
asked me whether that was just another of my stories, like Robin Hood.)
It was indeed a very fine sight in the blackness of the night, the glow
lighting up the long slopes leading up from the beach, and being
reflected magnificently in the sea.
About half-an-hour, I should think, from the time when we first kindled
the bonfire, we saw some of the seamen hasting down the hill, and the
glow striking the barrels of the muskets which one or two carried, I
deemed it expedient to withdraw a little farther from the beach, though
in truth it was unlikely we could be seen. We lay to again, and
observed the men draw near to the fire, some standing about it
helplessly, one or two trying to scatter the fuel with the barrels of
their muskets; but they could no nothing, the great heat preventing
them from coming close enough, and besides, we saw Hoggett pull them
away, and heard him cry out to them that they were fools, because they
would only spoil the muskets and not put out the fire. And Ernulfus
himself could not, I am sure, have cursed us more comprehensively than
those seamen then did (you will find his curse in Mr. Sterne's
ingenious book), and not merely did they curse us, but they added
sundry strange extravagant threats of what they would do to us, some of
these things being so horrible that Billy wanted to answer them back,
only I prevented him, for besides being merely amused at these big
words from men who were perfectly impotent to harm us, I thought that
silence would work better for the further acting of my plans.
We stayed until the fire was nearly burnt out, and then got us back to
the Red Rock, exceeding pleased at having destroyed the only means, as
we thought, whereby the seamen might come at us. Another week ran its
course, we remaining quiet in our habitation, cruising a little off the
north side in the twilight and early mornings, but not going again to
the island. We kept a look-out on it from the vantage ground of the
boulders, and once or twice caught glimpses of the men in the copse or
on the cliffs, but they did not come near to the rock again, and I own
I began to feel a little downhearted, for if they could eke out their
food much longer the bread-fruit season would come, and then my plan
would be ruined. Once or twice, too, we heard sounds as of chopping
wood in the copse, and we thought that the men were after all going to
build a raft, which did not give us any concern, for even if we could
not burn it, we could prevent them from getting a footing on our
fortress. However, it was not a raft, as we learnt one day. We were
sitting at our dinner one afternoon, and, as we always did (I forget
whether I have mentioned it), we had tied up Little John, who, though a
very good dog in many things, could never be taught to know the
difference between "mine" and "thine" at meal times, so that Billy said
he was afraid the beast would always be a heathen. He had reason
enough to know, after a little experience, that his turn to feed would
come after us and before the pigs, so that he was accustomed to stand
in perfect quietness while we ate; wherefore when on this afternoon we
heard him growling very deeply, and saw him strain at his leash, we
wondered what was amiss with him.
[Sidenote: A Bridge]
"I guess it's Hoggett," said Billy all of a sudden, and up he jumps and
runs to the boulder and peeps over. "Goodness alive, master!" he
called to me, in a low tone; "they've been and made a bridge!" I was
up in an instant, and springing to Billy's side I saw that the men were
dragging up the slope from the wood a long sort of hurdle, very like
our drawbridge, only longer and stouter. They were hauling it to the
edge, where the cliff approached within twenty feet of the ledge on Red
Rock, and if they should throw it over the gap, they would have an easy
passage-way from the island to our fortress, nor did I see any means of
preventing them, for while we were shooting at some of them with our
bows and arrows, the rest could come across; and though we should still
have the advantage of them, being above them and with good defences, I
did not like to think that it was even possible for them to get a
footing on our ground. The narrowest part of the gap was almost
directly below us, so that if we had some heavy stones we might hope,
by casting them down on the bridge, either to smash it, or to render
the passage so perilous that no man would venture to make it. Though
there were a great number of large rocks about us, there were none
small enough to be dislodged or hurled; but I remembered having seen a
number of loose stones in a fissure about half-way across our plateau,
and seeing that it would be some minutes before the men came to the gap
with the bridge, I bade Billy fetch as many of these stones as he could
carry in a basket, while I held the men at bay.
When he was gone about this, I fitted an arrow to my bow, and taking as
good aim as I could, I let fly at the foremost of the men, there being
eight of them carrying the bridge, four on each side. But not being
used to shoot downwards at so sharp an angle, I did not hit any of the
men, though the arrow stuck in the wicker-work near the end of the
bridge, and the arrival of this silent messenger (and yet eloquent)
made the men drop their burden and stand irresolute. Hoggett and
Pumfrey at once raised their muskets to the shoulder, but they could
see nothing to aim at, and though they must know, of course, that the
arrow had come through one of the many gaps above, they could not tell
which, and their ammunition was much too precious now to be wasted on a
chance shot. However, they still held their muskets ready, no doubt
hoping that I would show myself, and so give them a target; but finding
after a while that this hope was vain, they lowered their weapons, and
I heard Hoggett call to the others to take up the bridge again and make
haste to bring it to the gap. Then, knowing that they could hardly
raise their muskets again, take aim, and fire, before I could drop
under cover, I leapt up in full view of them all and cried in a loud
voice that I would shoot the first man of them that offered to cross
the gap. It was almost an error to do this, for Hoggett was pretty
near being too quick for me. Just as I sank down again behind the
boulder his musket flashed, and I heard the slug strike with a thud
against the rock. I moved a little away to another place, and saw
Hoggett making all haste to prime his weapon, while he shouted to the
others to rush forward with the bridge and fling it across the gap. At
this Joshua Chick, who was the only man that ever stood up against
Hoggett, cried in a fierce manner, "You come and lend a hand yourself,"
with an oath at the end; whereupon Hoggett, who did not want for
courage, flings his musket down and, shoving Chick aside, takes his
place at the bridge, and, roaring "Now!" the men forgot their fears,
and raised a seamen's cheer, and with a mighty heave flung the bridge
across the gap, having tied ropes to each end of it to prevent it from
falling into the gulf if they missed their aim.
Now my mind was firmly made up that no man should cross the gap if I
could help it, and recognizing that Hoggett was the men's leader, and
that without him they would scarce attempt anything, I took steady aim
at him, not intending to kill him, for I had another fate in store for
him, but to hit the arm by which he held the bridge. I was by this
time a pretty good marksman at a target, whether stationary or the
running man, but the necessity of aiming down-hill clean put me out, so
that instead of hitting Hoggett's arm, my arrow pierced the calf of his
leg. He let forth a terrible curse, and, loosing his hold on the
bridge, clapped his hand to his leg and pulled out the shaft, then sat
down upon the ground and began to bind up the wound with a strip torn
from his shirt. The moment of my hitting him was the same moment when
the bridge was thrown across the gap, and I hoped that it would fall
from the men's hands into the channel, but it had been well aimed and
fell plumb on the ledge. However, when the men saw Hoggett wounded,
and pretty badly, to judge by his language, they drew back, none of
them caring to be the first to venture on the bridge and to encounter
an arrow from above. Hoggett roared to them to go on, but every man
looked at other to lead the way. He cried to Wabberley, but Wabberley
was much in the rear; and then to Chick, but Chick was not on this
occasion obliging; indeed, I observed him, being a small man, hiding
himself from Hoggett's gaze behind Wabberley's more massive frame, and
Wabberley trying in his turn to put Chick in front of him. This
backwardness on the part of the men inflamed Hoggett to an excess of
rage, and he swore that as soon as he had bound up his leg he would
cross that bridge and teach those young (here a very bad word) that he
was not going to be played with no more.
While he was still tying up his wound Billy staggered up with the
biggest basket slung over his back, filled with five or six jagged
lumps of rock weighing, as I guessed, about a dozen pounds apiece. He
was panting very much, but asked, "Where's Hoggett?" and when I told
him in a word that the bridge was thrown across and Hoggett intending
to invade us, he cried, "I'll show him!" and immediately slung the
basket off his back, and seizing one of the stones, hurled it over the
plateau to the bridge below, and when he did so I peeped through a
crevice to see what was the issue. The missile struck the ledge about
two yards from the end of the bridge, and then bounding off, fell into
the gap, but we did not hear the splash as it entered the water,
because the sea itself made a pretty loud noise as it raced through the
narrow channel. The men shrank back when they saw the stone, fearing
no doubt lest another should light on the head of some one, and they
were less inclined than ever to pay heed to the words of Hoggett, who
had roared himself perfectly hoarse. I told Billy what I had seen, and
bade him try again, and the second stone he cast, heavier than the
first, plunged into the gap without striking either the bridge or the
ledge. Of course both these shots had been made pretty much by
guesswork, Billy hurling them over without exposing himself, and only
able to judge the general direction. When I told him the result of the
second cast, he waited a moment or two, to recover breath and to wipe
the sweat from his brow; and then he took up another big stone, and
jumped to the very edge of the plateau, where there was no cover at
all, and setting his teeth, put all his strength into the throw. The
bridge was a pretty good target, being not less than three feet wide,
and Billy's aim was so true that the stone hit the bridge not far from
the further end, causing it to jump so much that it lay very awkwardly
askew across the gap, threatening indeed to slip into the sea. At this
Hoggett jumped up and rushed to the bridge to pull it back into its
former place; but meanwhile I had taken another stone and, doing as
Billy had done, flung it with all my might, and it fell about the
centre of the bridge, making it jump again just as Hoggett was stooping
to clutch it. Billy was at my side instantly with another stone, and
he aimed this time exactly at the further end of the bridge, purposing,
as he told me, to hit this and Hoggett too, and he succeeded so well
that the seaman, bold as he was, started back as the missile sprang up
and almost struck his head. Before he could recover himself I had
hurled another stone down, and I had the satisfaction of seeing this,
falling a little sideways on the bridge, which was already shifted from
its first position, shake the end of it clean off the cliff, and though
Hoggett, braving all things, leapt forward and caught at the rope, he
was too late; the bridge fell into the gap, and we heard quite plainly
the splashing sound it made as it came to the bottom.
[Sidenote: The Enemy Retreat]