CHAPTER II.
I woke up about five o’clock the next morning. It was a beautiful day. The wind had all died down, and the sea where the wreck was lying was as smooth as New York Bay. We were stranded close to the shore of a lovely island, and in the opposite direction I could see the surf breaking on a reef that seemed to surround the island about a mile from the shore, everywhere except towards the south, where there was an opening about half a mile broad. The island seemed to be covered with trees that grew close down to the shore, and at the northerly end there was a high hill that was shaped like a sugar-loaf. I could not see any signs that the island was inhabited, and the wreck lay so close to the beach that I could have swum ashore without the least trouble.
I let Mr. Crusoe sleep while I split some dry wood from the door of the captain’s room and started a fire in the galley. I found coffee, and pilot-bread, and a lot of cold roast lamb in the steward’s pantry, and when I woke up Mr.Crusoe, I told him that the best breakfast he ever heard of was ready for us in the cabin. We had china plates to eat off of, and a mahogany table and arm-chairs, and I found a newspaper and put it by Mr. Crusoe’s plate, so that he could read the news at breakfast, as rich people on shore always do.
Mr. Crusoe braced up after breakfast, and found that he could walk pretty well. He was in first-rate spirits, and said the island was the very one where his grandfather lived. “He landed,” said Mr. Crusoe, “just about where we are now, and he had his house just by the side of that hill.”
“Then we can move right into his house and live there, can’t we?” said I.
“Of course we can,” Mr. Crusoe replied. “Only, you see, it must be awfully out of repair by this time. And then I think it very likely that Will Atkins and his gang burnt it before they left the island; for they must have left it or we would see some signs of them. I never did believe in that fellow’s reformation myself, although my dear grandfather did.”
“Well,” said I, “we’ll go ashore anyway and see. If you’ll help me, Mr. Crusoe, we’ll build a raft.”
“My grandfather built a raft, and we’ll do everything that he did. Only he didn’t have you to help him. I don’tknow what to do about that,” he continued, looking puzzled—“I can’t drown you now, but you see yourself, Mike, that everybody ought to have been drowned except me.”
“You can drown me after we get ashore, if you like,” I said; “I don’t care much, I’m sure.” You see I felt a little aggravated that Mr. Crusoe should stand there and tell me I ought to have been drowned; but then I didn’t begin to know at that time how aggravating he could be. But he was a good man for all that.
The first thing I did was to chop away the bulwarks amidships, where the spare spars were lashed. Then I made a line fast to half a dozen of the spars and launched them overboard. Then I went overboard myself and lashed them together, and laid planks over them. A good part of the spars that had gone overboard where we first struck were still alongside, but they were so mixed up with the rigging that I didn’t try to use them.
“Now you want to cut a spare top-mast into three lengths and add them to your raft,” said Mr. Crusoe.
I never supposed that he knew what a top-mast was, but it seems he did, and the spare top-mast was just what the raft needed to make it float high enough out of the water. However, I afterwards found out that he got the idea ofusing a spare top-mast out of his grandfather’s book of travels.
The raft was now big enough, and we were all ready to load it.
“Now we want to take nothing ashore with us this first trip except things that we can’t get along without,” said I.
“We must take,” said Mr. Crusoe, just as if he was reciting a lesson out of a book, “three seamen’s chests broken open and filled with bread, rice, Dutch cheeses, dried goat’s flesh, and a little corn, besides some bottles of rum, the carpenter’s chest, two shot-guns, two pistols, two rusty swords, three barrels of gunpowder, and a bag of shot. I’ll help you look for them. That was my grandfather’s first load.”
“And it isn’t going to be our first load,” I answered. “Where’s our goat’s flesh? and what do we want of three barrels of gunpowder?”
Mr. Crusoe came and looked straight in my face with his wonderful bright eyes, and said, “Mike, we’ll take exactly what I said. You can take anything else you want to take, but you’ll never go ashore if you show a want of respect to my sainted grandfather.”
Well, I didn’t want to hurt Mr. Crusoe’s feelings, so I said I would do what he wanted. I couldn’t find any driedgoat’s flesh, but Mr. Crusoe found a ham, and said that it was goat’s flesh, and I didn’t contradict him. We couldn’t find any barrels of gunpowder either, though we found one small keg of it.
The raft was big enough to carry a great deal more than Mr. Crusoe put on it, so, after he was satisfied, I got together two barrels of flour, a barrel of sugar, a bag of coffee, two breech-loading rifles, a lot of cartridges, Mr. Crusoe’s trunk, the captain’s chest, and the medicine-chest. Then I found two long oars and a big coil of rope, not much larger than signal halyards, and put them aboard the raft and shoved off.
The water was so shallow that we poled the raft along with the two oars very easily. I meant to land on the beach, but Mr. Crusoe said we must keep away to the right, and land a little way up a creek that we would find just there. As Mr. Crusoe seemed to know all about the island, I did as he said, and presently we saw the entrance of a little creek, and a short distance from the mouth we found a beautiful place to land.
We carried our cargo ashore and piled it up together, and started back to the ship for another load. The tide was coming in, and it was hard work to pole the heavy raftagainst it, so I went ashore on the beach opposite to where the wreck lay, and made one end of my rope fast to a tree, and coiled the rest down on the raft. The rope was long enough to reach from the shore to the wreck, and when, after we had got to the wreck, I made the other end of the rope fast in the main channels, I had a line by which I could haul the raft back and forth without any trouble.
That is, I could have done it, only Mr. Crusoe objected because his blessed old grandfather had not known enough to do the same thing, although, according to Mr. Crusoe’s account, his grandfather’s wreck lay nearer the shore than ours did. However, he agreed to let me haul the raft up close to the beach, but he wouldn’t let me land there, and insisted that we should pole the raft around to the creek.
For the second load Mr. Crusoe said that we must take a grindstone, a dozen hatchets, three crow-bars, seven muskets, and a roll of sheet-lead. There were only two hatchets on board the ship, and neither a grindstone nor a roll of sheet-lead, though what he wanted of sheet-lead I never knew. He was quite angry when he found that he couldn’t load up the raft with grindstones and lead, and said that if he ever got back to New York he would sue the owners of the ship for not supplying her with proper provisions.
I put the two hatchets, three crow-bars, and seven rifles—for we had no muskets—on the raft, and then I loaded it with useful things. I put two more barrels of flour, a barrel of beef, and a barrel of pork in the middle of the raft, and piled up a hundred tin cans of preserved meat and vegetables around them. Then I got some pots and pans from the galley, and some China plates and cups, and some knives and forks, from the steward’s pantry, for now that I had got out of the forecastle, I meant to live like a gentleman. I took all the captain’s clothes, and wanted to get the clothes belonging to the men, but I could not get at the chests because the forecastle was full of water. Last of all, I put four mattresses, four pillows, and a pile of sheets and blankets on the top of the barrels, and we then had about all the raft would carry.
Mr. Crusoe grumbled a little, for he said his grandfather never brought mattresses, or dishes, or canned provisions ashore, and that he did not think it was right for us to do it. I said, “Now just look here, Mr. Crusoe; I suppose your grandfather was a very nice man, and you may be sure that he would have brought canned provisions ashore only they weren’t invented when he was alive.”
That seemed to strike him as a good idea, and he said,“Well, perhaps you’re right, Mike, about the canned things; but we’ve no right to bring mattresses with us, and I’ll die before I’ll sleep on one of them.”
I wanted to tell him that the only reason his grandfather did not take a mattress ashore with him was that he didn’t have sense enough to be trusted alone on an island; but of course I didn’t say so. Why, that ridiculous old man never thought to take so much as a teakettle with him, as I afterwards found out; though, luckily, Mr. Crusoe did not think of it until a week or two after we had begun to live on the island.
While we were poling up the creek, Mr. Crusoe, not being a sailor-man, managed to run one end of the raft ashore in a shallow place, and the cargo came near sliding off into the water. He was just as pleased as he could be. “It’s all right, Mike, it’s all right,” he kept on saying. “My grandfather ran his raft ashore in just the same way, and we had to do it too. Now, we’ll wait for the tide to rise a foot higher, and then we’ll be afloat again.”
“‘IT’S ALL RIGHT, MIKE. MY GRANDFATHER RAN HIS RAFT ASHORE IN JUST THE SAME WAY.’”
“‘IT’S ALL RIGHT, MIKE. MY GRANDFATHER RAN HIS RAFT ASHORE IN JUST THE SAME WAY.’”
“‘IT’S ALL RIGHT, MIKE. MY GRANDFATHER RAN HIS RAFT ASHORE IN JUST THE SAME WAY.’”
We should have been in a nice scrape if the tide had been falling, but as it was rising, I knew the raft would float after a while. But I was not going to stay on it and do nothing for an hour or two, so I waded ashore and swam out to theship. The wreckage of the main-mast was still floating alongside, although most of the other spars had gone adrift while the ship was on the reef. I cut the wreckage clear of the ship, and then by standing on it, and hauling in the line that I had made fast to the shore, I got the whole lot close up to the beach, and carried a rope from it to a tree, so that it could not go adrift again unless it should come on to blow a gale.
By the time I got back to the raft it was afloat again, and we soon got the cargo ashore. It was about time for dinner, and I built a fire, fried some of the ham that Mr. Crusoe would call dried goat’s flesh, and brought a jug of water from the creek about half a mile farther up, where the water was fresh. We had a very good dinner, and Mr. Crusoe did not find any fault with the plates, though he would occasionally grumble a little to himself about the mattresses.
We were too tired to make another trip to the wreck that day, and Mr. Crusoe’s ankle that was sprung still hurt him so much that he said he must lie down a while. He wouldn’t lie on a mattress, but he lay on the sand in the shade, and we both went to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.