We had by this time been on the group eight months; and although, with
brief intervals spent in visits to the wreck, a sharp look-out for the
appearance of a sail in the offing had been maintained, nothing had been
sighted; and the disconcerting possibility now began to impress itself
upon me that if I continued to trust only to such an occurrence for our
deliverance we might spend _years_ waiting for that event. Most
fortunately, we had both thus far been blessed with perfect health; but
it seemed too much to expect that this immunity from sickness or
accident should continue indefinitely; and if both of us should chance
to fall sick at the same time, what would be the result? Something very
like panic seized me at the thought of such a possibility; I felt that I
had been culpably foolish in relying so implicitly, and for so long a
time, upon extraneous help; and the conviction forced itself upon me
that I must at once take steps to effect our own deliverance.
Yet what could I do? The first idea that had suggested itself to me
after the wreck of the brigantine was to build some sort of a craft in
which we could effect our escape to civilisation; but after considering
the matter I had come to the conclusion that such an undertaking would
be altogether beyond my powers, with only Billy to assist me. No doubt
I was helped to this conclusion by the conviction I then felt that
something would certainly heave in sight within the next month or two to
take us off. But with the lapse of time my confidence had insensibly
waned, and I had accordingly set to work to make our stay upon the group
as comfortable as might be. Now, however, I felt constrained to
reconsider my original conclusion; and as a preliminary I took pencil
and paper, drawing-instruments and scale, and proceeded to make
tentative sketches of such a craft as I considered essential to enable
us to make the voyage in safety and with a reasonable amount of comfort.
To insure these requirements I decided that the boat, whatever her
dimensions, must be fully decked, and that she must be powerful enough
to face and successfully battle with a whole gale of wind; also she must
be capable of being handled by Billy and myself. Taking these
requirements as a basis, I set to work upon my sketches.
The relative dimensions of the boat would be governed to a considerable
extent by her rig. A cutter-rigged craft is more powerful than any
other, but it is open to the objection that the mainsail--the cutter's
most important sail--is an awkward sail to handle in a sudden emergency,
if the craft happens to be short-handed, as we should be. I believed,
however, that this difficulty might be overcome by watchfulness and the
taking of timely precautions; therefore, after weighing the matter
carefully, I decided in favour of the cutter rig. Bearing all the above
requirements in mind, I set to work, and ultimately evolved a design for
a craft thirty feet long on the water-line by ten feet beam, and six
feet draught of water aft. To build a boat of these dimensions, with
only Billy to help me, was a sufficiently ambitious project; but I had
learned a good deal while building our existing boat; and, after all, I
felt sure that if I should need more manpower, Bowata would willingly
lend me some of his people. Also, realising that henceforth Billy and I
would be fully occupied in building the new boat, the thought occurred
to me that it was high time to secure such domestic help as would enable
us to give our whole time and thought to our work without troubling
about such matters as cooking, house-cleaning, and so on. Such help
could only be obtained through Bowata. I therefore decided to seize an
early opportunity to interview him upon the whole matter.
Meanwhile, however, now that I had at last determined to attempt the
building of a sea-going boat, I was all impatience to make a beginning;
and as I, further, came to the conclusion that the beginning--so far as
the framing of the keel, stem, and sternpost was concerned--must be made
aboard the wreck, where all the materials were at hand, we lost no time
in again removing ourselves, with all necessary goods and chattels, to
what remained of the _Yorkshire Lass_. Here I made a start by laying
out, full-size, in chalk, upon the after-deck, an accurate outline of
the keel, stem, and sternpost, which greatly facilitated my work. My
chief difficulty, I discovered, was to find bolts at once of the
required length and the necessary strength, since I could not possibly
make them; and this difficulty absorbed so much time that we spent
nearly a month on the wreck before the keel, stem, and sternpost were
framed together in readiness to be set up on the beach at Eden, where I
intended to do the remainder of the work.
The framework was much too big and heavy to be conveyed to Eden
otherwise than by towing; and as the whole trip was more or less a beat
to windward, the transport of it cost us two days, our arrival "home"
occurring so late in the afternoon that there was no time to attempt
anything further that day. But on the day following I sailed over to
Bowata's island and explained to him my requirements, finding him more
than eager to do anything and everything he could to oblige me. The
domestic question was very easily arranged, Bowata suggesting that I
should employ a man whom he could especially recommend, and who, with
his two wives, would be able to do everything required in that
particular direction; while as for labour for the building of the
cutter, he assured me I might have as many men as I wished, for as long
a time as I needed them. Nothing could be more satisfactory than this,
the only point I felt doubtful about being the domestic part of the
arrangement; but Billy settled this by undertaking to supervise the work
until the man and his wives should be trained to efficiency; and the
plan, when put into operation, worked excellently. The keel of the new
boat being now ready, the next thing was to set it up, accurately plumb,
longitudinally and transversely, upon the building blocks; and to do
this I obtained the loan of twenty natives for a day, for the keel, with
stem and sternpost attached, was much too heavy a mass of timber for
Billy and me to manipulate without assistance; and with their help the
work was most satisfactorily accomplished, they doing the manual work
under Billy's guidance while I supervised and directed the adjustments
that were frequently necessary. I next set up five stout moulds, one at
the midship section of the boat, with two aft and two forward of it,
giving the exact shape of the boat at those points, and to the moulds I
firmly attached several temporary wales and stringers, thus obtaining a
kind of skeleton giving an accurate idea of the form of the finished
boat. And when I had got thus far with my work and inspected the result
from various view-points, I was as much amazed at my own audacity in
attempting so ambitious an undertaking as I was gratified at the
appearance which it presented; for I saw before me the outline of a very
shapely, yacht-like little ship that, if I knew anything of such
matters, promised to be fast, weatherly, and a very fine sea-boat, quite
capable of taking care of herself when hove-to, even in a heavy gale of
wind. It was my intention to plank her upon the diagonal principle,
using three thicknesses of comparatively thin plank, for I had no means
by which to steam a single layer of planking of the necessary thickness
and so render it pliable enough to bend to the correct shape; while I
believed that by using thin plank I could bend it to shape unsteamed. I
am getting somewhat ahead of my yarn, however; for the progress outlined
above represented nearly three months' hard work, an appreciable
proportion of which had to be done a second time, owing to my
inexperience.
With the accession of our black helpers our domestic arrangements
flourished exceedingly, the only difficulty we experienced in connection
with them occurring during the first fortnight or three weeks after
their arrival, the trouble arising with Kit, who violently resented
their intrusion and had to be kept strictly tied up until he had learned
to understand that he must in nowise interfere with them. But even
after reaching this stage the natives had to be exceedingly careful how
they conducted themselves in his presence, for he never advanced farther
than the merest toleration of them, while when any of the other blacks
were on Eden, assisting me to build the cutter, it was absolutely
necessary to keep the beast closely confined to the house until they had
left.
I very soon made the discovery that had I been obliged to depend solely
upon the efforts of Billy and myself, I should have been compelled to
abandon the idea of building the cutter at a very early stage of the
operations. It was not so much that we found the work beyond our
strength--although in that respect we were often glad enough to have a
little additional help--but it was often necessary to have a plank or a
waling, or some such matter, held firmly in position at half a dozen
points or more at the same moment, while I fixed it; and it was on such
occasions that I welcomed the assistance of the natives. And as such
occasions occurred pretty frequently, it happened that I was kept _au
courant_ with everything of importance--and with a great deal that was
exceedingly unimportant--that occurred on Cliff Island. Thus I came to
know that, contrary to hope and expectation, the arming of the natives
with bows and arrows, with the resulting destruction of the raiding
apes, had been absolutely ineffective in checking the raids, which were
now occurring more frequently and in greater force than ever. It
appeared almost as though the brutes were possessed of sufficient
intelligence to understand that something had happened rendering it no
longer possible for attacks by small numbers to be successful, and that
they were strengthening their attacking forces accordingly, with the
evident determination to succeed ultimately at whatever cost. I was
greatly vexed to hear this, for it was evident that the existence of
such formidable beasts in the group constituted a growing menace to the
human life in it; and I was wondering how this menace was to be fought,
when Bowata and his people, without consulting me, made an attempt to
solve the problem, which, for a short time at least, seemed to be
crowned with success.
It was the height of summer, and there had been a spell of some six
weeks of very hot, dry weather, when on a certain morning, as Billy and
I, with some natives, were at work upon the cutter, the lad directed my
attention to a thin cloud of light brownish-blue smoke rising in the air
beyond Cliff Island. There was a gentle easterly breeze blowing at the
time, sweeping the smoke away in the direction of West Island, and, as
we watched, the cloud rapidly increased in density, its colour darkened,
and, somewhat to my astonishment, it seemed to spread in an easterly
direction, or against the wind. It soon became clear that it was the
forest on Apes' Island that had caught fire; and it was equally evident
that, thanks to the long dry spell, and to the fanning of the easterly
breeze, the fire was spreading with great rapidity; for within twenty
minutes of the appearance of the first light film of smoke we were able
to see, over the eastern extremity of Cliff Island, the flames speeding
up the hill-side, toward the conical summit of the island, preceded by
so vast a volume of smoke that it completely veiled the hills of West
Island from our sight. While Billy and I stood watching the rapid march
of the flames, one of the natives, noticing our interest in the
spectacle, approached and informed us that Bowata and one of his sons,
determined to drive the apes off Apes' Island, had that morning crossed
Apes' Channel in the punt which I had given them, with the avowed
intention of setting the entire island on fire, beginning at its
northern extremity--in order to drive the apes away from that part of
the island from whence they were wont to start to swim the channel--and
thence working round the shore to the eastern extremity of the island,
hoping thus to drive the anthropoids in a westerly and southerly
direction, right away from Cliff Island. As Apes' Island was everywhere
densely covered with forest and undergrowth it was exceedingly probable
that, unless something unforeseen occurred to extinguish the fire, every
living thing upon it would be destroyed, except such creatures as might
essay to swim the Middle Channel and take refuge upon West Island.
But as the day progressed, and the fire advanced, spreading ever more
rapidly as great volumes of sparks were borne by the wind on ahead of
the main body of flame, kindling subsidiary fires in advance, I began to
doubt whether West Island would escape, remembering as I did that there
was a stretch of the Middle Channel which was little more than half a
mile wide, across which such a tremendous volume of sparks as now filled
the air might easily be wafted. Toward evening my anticipation in this
respect was verified, for upon ascending to the summit of our own peak
on Eden, at the conclusion of our day's work, we saw that not only was
the surface of Apes' Island an unbroken expanse of black, smoking ashes
and charred tree-stumps, but that the fire had leaped Middle Channel,
and practically the whole eastern side of West Island was a mass of
flame. The destruction of life would of course be enormous; but such
glimpses as had thus far been afforded us of the animal life upon the
group seemed to indicate that it was inimical to mankind; and if its
destruction involved that of the apes, it was not to be greatly
regretted.
I waited three days to allow the ashes to cool, and then, taking Billy
with me, sailed for the Middle Channel, running the boat ashore on Apes'
Island at a spot where a stream of fresh water discharged into the
narrowest part of the channel. Here we landed, and started to walk
eastward over and through ashes that were ankle-deep and in places still
unpleasantly hot. I was quite prepared to find evidences that the
destruction of animal life had been tremendous; but even so I was amazed
at the innumerable scorched and shrivelled carcasses of creatures that
had made their way to the water's edge and had there perished, probably
suffocated by the smoke because they had feared to take to the water.
They lay thick upon the ground, huddled together, as far as the eye
could reach to the right and left of the spot where we landed, and the
odour of burnt flesh was almost overpowering, while flies and birds
swarmed about them in legions. The remains were mostly so far consumed
as to be impossible of identification, but here and there we came upon
what, judging from the skull and teeth, had once been a creature of the
cat tribe, probably a leopard; while the skeletons of snakes--some of
them, from their dimensions, evidently pythons--were numerous. We also
came upon several carcasses of what I thought might have been boars;
but, if they were, the creatures must have been huge specimens of their
kind. There were also a few calcined skeletons of animals that must
have been as big as or bigger than a British dray-horse, but of very
different build. They did not suggest any animal with which I was
acquainted, and I was quite unable to put a name to them. We walked two
miles or more inland before turning back, but nowhere did I see anything
suggesting the destruction of so much as a solitary ape, at which I was
in nowise surprised, for I felt sure that the apes at least would be
able to keep well ahead of the fire, and make good their escape to West
Island. But West Island was, like Apes' Island, a fire-blackened ruin
as far as the eye could see, toward both the north and the south; and if
the fire had swept clean across the island to its western shore, it
would mean another holocaust, in which the apes also would be involved,
for there was no retreat, no sanctuary beyond West Island. It was too
late to push our investigations farther that day, but I resolved that on
the morrow I would see what the western side of West Island looked like.
Accordingly, eight o'clock in the morning of the following day found
Billy and me emerging from the North-west Channel into the lagoon, and
hauling round to the southward to skirt the western shore of West
Island.
We needed not to travel so far as this, however, to discover that at
least part of West Island had escaped the ravages of fire, for upon our
arrival off the south-western extremity of Cliff Island we saw that,
owing to the greatly increased width of the Middle Channel at that
point, the direction of the wind, and the peculiar configuration of the
island itself, an area which I roughly estimated at about a hundred
square miles, at its northern extremity, had been untouched by the
flames; and this area of forest, although probably little more than a
quarter of that of the whole island, would still afford cover for a good
many animals, had they the sense--or the instinct--to escape to it.
It was not until we had rounded the northern extremity of West Island
and had followed the west coast southward for a distance of about eleven
miles that we again came upon the ruin wrought by the flames, which, we
found, had swept right across the island, leaving the area above
referred to untouched, while to the southward, as far as the eye could
see, all was black ruin and desolation. At this point, too, signs of
the devastation wrought upon the animal life of the island began to
reveal themselves in the shape first of isolated carcasses, and then of
groups of the same, rapidly becoming more numerous and more crowded as
the boat glided along southward within a stone's throw of the beach.
As I was exceedingly anxious to discover whether or not the apes had
escaped the destruction that had overtaken the other creatures
inhabiting the two fire-stricken islands, we landed at various points
along the beach, and made short investigating excursions inland, coming
upon the remains of animals and reptiles of several different kinds--the
variety indeed was astonishing--including, I regretted to see, two or
three varieties of deer; and at length we found the half-consumed
carcasses of three apes, close together; but we found no more that day.
It was by this time drawing on toward sunset; accordingly we made sail
for the wreck of the brigantine, and took up our quarters aboard her for
the night.
Early on the following morning we resumed our inspection of West Island,
starting at the point where we had left off on the previous evening, and
on this day we came upon the remains of two more apes, several miles
apart. But although those five carcasses of apes were all that we
found, it was of course quite possible that there might have been many
more, for our excursions inland were necessarily of very limited extent.
To have made anything approaching a complete examination of the burnt
area would have been the work of weeks, rather than of days, and I was
indisposed to devote very much time to such an undertaking. Moreover,
the effluvium arising from so many rapidly decomposing carcasses was, of
itself, a sufficient deterrent.
But slight and limited as was our examination, it sufficed to prove that
the island must have literally swarmed with animal life, several species
of which were, as in the case of those found on Apes' Island, quite new
to me; and late in the day, having extended our walk to the crest of a
hill, we discovered that there was, a little south of the middle of the
island, a triangular-shaped lake, about six miles long by about five
miles broad at its western end, that had served to protect and preserve
a clump of forest about two miles long; and the sounds that proceeded
from it indicated that many animals had found sanctuary there. By the
time that we had completed our survey it was too late to think of
returning to Eden that day, so we again bore up for the wreck, spending
that night aboard her and returning to our own island on the day
following.
On our way back I touched at Cliff Island and had a chat with Bowata,
relating to him the result of our trip of inspection. I told him that
we had seen very few dead apes, and hazarded the conjecture that the
brutes, retreating before the flames on their own island, had swum the
Middle Channel to West Island, on the northern and unburnt portion of
which they might have established themselves. But when he suggested
that this portion also of the island should be set on fire, to make
assurance doubly sure, I very strongly demurred, pointing out that, even
if my conjecture should be correct, the unburned forest would doubtless
be swarming with animal life other than that of the apes, and that it
would be a very great pity to destroy it all in order to effect the
extermination of the apes, unless such a drastic measure should prove to
be imperatively necessary.
After the little break following upon the firing of Apes' Island I
returned with enthusiasm to work upon the cutter, and in the course of a
month used up all the available material which I had thus far
accumulated, necessitating another visit to the wreck to obtain more. I
collected as large a quantity as I believed I could conveniently handle,
and, forming it into a raft, took it in tow for transport to Eden. The
passage, that under ordinary conditions could easily be accomplished in
a single day, occupied _five days_, and was, I think, the toughest job I
had ever undertaken in my life, the raft being so deadly sluggish in
movement that it was impossible to tow it to windward; and finally I
found myself compelled to kedge it more than half the way. But I was
glad when I had at length brought it safely into the cove and anchored
it there, for I now had enough material to carry on with for at least
four months. I estimated that another raft of equal size would suffice
to complete the cutter, and, notwithstanding the difficulties that I had
just encountered, I felt strongly inclined to return forthwith to the
wreck and procure a sufficiency for all future needs; but I was very
tired after my labours, and I finally persuaded myself to postpone the
task for a while--to my subsequent intense regret.
The anniversary of the wreck of the _Yorkshire Lass_ arrived and passed.
We had been a whole year on the group, and, so far as we knew, not a
solitary sail of any description had come within sight of the islands
during the whole of those twelve months. It was an astounding,
incomprehensible fact; I had never really anticipated such a
possibility. With the passage of each day, each week, each month, I had
said to myself--with gradually waning assurance certainly--"It cannot be
long now before a craft of some sort comes along to take us off," until
the moment when it suddenly dawned upon me that if we were ever to
escape, it must be through our own efforts--my own especially. This
conviction now came upon me with overwhelming force; my hopes of
deliverance by means of some extraneous agency suddenly sank to zero,
and I began to work with such febrile energy that it presently drew from
Billy a steadily growing flood of remonstrance.
I had by this time expended so much of my material that I was in the
very act of preparing for another visit to the wreck to obtain more when
poor Billy fell sick of some sort of a fever. Within three hours of his
seizure he became delirious and was so extremely violent that--he being
by this time a strong sturdy boy--I was obliged to at once drop
everything else to look after him and see that he did not injure himself
during the more severe paroxysms. Of course I had long ago taken the
precaution to secure possession of the ship's medicine-chest, with its
accompanying book of instructions; but the latter afforded me little
help, for I could find in it no case the symptoms of which quite
corresponded with those of my patient, and I was therefore compelled to
rely very much upon my own judgment, and upon the instructions for the
treatment of fevers in general. A liberal administration of quinine
seemed to constitute the most hopeful form of treatment, and luckily we
possessed an ample supply of the drug. I accordingly dosed Billy with
it for close upon sixty hours, when the delirium ceased and the poor boy
sank into a semi-stupor of exhaustion, which enabled one of the native
women to relieve me by watching at the patient's bedside. I had by this
time been without sleep for two nights and more than three days, and I
was therefore glad enough to be free to retire to my own room to rest
for an hour or two. Arrived there, I removed my boots and then, without
troubling to remove further clothing, flung myself upon my bed and
instantly sank into complete oblivion.