CHAPTER XII.
It was at least a month after we had seen the footprint, and Mr. Crusoe had begun to forget it, or, at any rate, to stop talking about it, when one day he went out for a walk, and came back looking as white as a new cotton maintop-sail.
“Don’t be frightened, Friday,” he said to me, almost in a whisper, “but keep cool. The cannibals have come at last.”
“Where are they?” said I.
“Just where they always land—on the beach, where they held their horrid orgies the last time they were here.”
“Are there many of them?” I asked.
“There’s a whole big canoe full—at least twenty-five or thirty, and they’ve kindled a fire and are getting ready for their revolting feast.”
“Do they look hungry?”
“Very hungry indeed,” replied Mr. Crusoe. “The men are, most all of them, tall and thin, as if they hadn’t been fed for a week.”
“Are they armed?”
“Of course they are. Did you ever know cannibals to go on an excursion without their arms? They have clubs and wooden swords, and bows and arrows—and most likely the arrows are poisoned. We must fight and kill them, or they will kill us.”
Now I didn’t believe that the people who had landed on the island were cannibals, but it didn’t do to tell Mr. Crusoe so. He was very much excited, and his eyes were wilder than I had ever seen them before. I was very much afraid that he would try to fight the people before I could make him understand the difference between cannibals and a Sunday-school picnic. There’s a great deal of difference between them, for the picnic has, as a general rule, nothing but cold victuals and lemonade.
Mr. Crusoe made me collect all the guns together, and he examined them to see if they were loaded. All but the breech-loading rifles were loaded with powder only, for I had loaded them when he first told me about the footprint, and I had been very careful not to put any bullets or shot in them. But the breech-loaders and the pistols were made for copper cartridges, and I couldn’t prevent Mr. Crusoe from loading these himself.
Then Mr. Crusoe buckled two sword-bayonets around hiswaist, and put two big knives and eight revolvers in his belt. He made me carry the same load, besides a bag slung over one shoulder and filled with ammunition. Each of us carried four guns on each shoulder, and with this nice little load we started for the beach, where the cannibals were getting ready for dinner.
Anybody who has ever tried to carry a lot of oars on his shoulder without first lashing them together, knows how they will separate and spread out like a fan. Mr. Crusoe’s guns did the same thing. The two that were nearest to his head kept swinging up against his ears, and banging pretty hard against his head, and the others spread out so that he could not hold them. This worried him so much that he got angry, and threw the whole lot down on the ground. One of the guns went off, and a bullet hit Mr. Crusoe in the calf of the leg. He was more frightened than hurt, and after I had tied his leg up he found that he could limp without hurting himself very much. I had lashed my guns together, so that I could carry them easily enough, and I passed a lashing around his so that he could put them all on one shoulder. They were awfully heavy, but he staggered along until we got where we could see the cannibals through the bushes without their seeing us.
There were about twenty men and eight or nine women on the beach, and a nice little cutter yacht was lying at anchor near the shore. The people were all white, except two negro servants, and we were near enough to hear them talk, and know that they were English. They had started a big fire, and while two of them were cooking, the rest were standing about and talking.
Mr. Crusoe was terribly excited. He called the visitors “cannibals of the deepest dye,” and said that there were three or four prisoners on the yacht who would be brought ashore and killed as soon as the fire was ready. He laid all the guns side by side, and told me that as soon as we had fired them all we would rush out with our pistols and kill all the cannibals that might be left alive.
“I will shoot at the men on the right-hand side of the fire,” said Mr. Crusoe, “and you, Friday, will shoot at those on the left. We must be sure and kill every man we aim at, and we must treat the women just like the men, for they are just as strong and blood-thirsty. We’ll wait till they get pretty close together, and then we’ll begin.”
“HE CALLED THE VISITORS ‘CANNIBALS OF THE DEEPEST DYE.’”
“HE CALLED THE VISITORS ‘CANNIBALS OF THE DEEPEST DYE.’”
“HE CALLED THE VISITORS ‘CANNIBALS OF THE DEEPEST DYE.’”
I was dreadfully afraid that he would really shoot and kill somebody, and then that the rest of the picnickers would kill him before I could explain. I thought I would try oncemore to make him listen to reason before seizing him and taking his gun away from him. So I said, “Mr. Crusoe, we are perfectly certain to be killed and eaten if we fire at the cannibals now.”
“Why so?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, “now that I remember it, I forgot to put any bullets in the guns, and we have nothing to defend ourselves with except the two Remington rifles and the pistols.”
He looked awfully angry, and said that he believed that I had done it on purpose, and that I still had a hankering for human flesh, and wanted to join the cannibals. But I didn’t pay any attention to what he said, and told him that we ought to go back to the house and finish loading our guns.
This struck him as being a sensible idea; but he said that we would leave all the guns except the two rifles among the trees, and would go back and fetch the bullets, and load them where we were. I agreed to hide the guns where the cannibals couldn’t find them, and I did it by dropping them into a pool of water, and then we started to go back to the house.
By the time we reached the house Mr. Crusoe’s leg was hurting him so badly that he could hardly manage to walk,and I began to hope that he would give up the idea of going back to fight the cannibals; but no sooner had we got inside the house, and put up the bars against the door, so as to prevent the cannibals from coming in, than Mr. Crusoe picked up a bit of rope and jumped on me. He wasn’t a strong man naturally, but he had suddenly got so strong that I couldn’t do anything with him without hurting him, and that I was resolved not to do. In about a minute he had me tied hand and foot, and then he filled his pockets with bullets and got ready to go and fight all by himself.
Now Mr. Crusoe was a landsman, and of course he couldn’t make a knot that was worth anything. I lay perfectly still, to see what he was going to do, but I believed all the time that I could easily get my hands free.
Presently Mr. Crusoe came and stood over me with one of his pistols in his hand. He said that he thought he ought to kill me to keep me from joining the cannibals, but on the whole he had decided to let me live until after he had either driven the cannibals away or had been killed himself. He was very sorry, so he said, to find that I could not be trusted, but he supposed that I had been a cannibal so long that I really could not get over my depraved taste. Then he shouldered both of the rifles and started for the beach.
As soon as he was gone I tried to get my hands loose, but found that I couldn’t do it. Some way or other Mr. Crusoe had contrived to tie a knot that wouldn’t slip. After getting my wrists sore by trying to pull them out of the lashing, I resolved to roll over and over till I could reach the place where we had built the fire for breakfast, and see if I could find a live coal, and set the lashing on fire with it. But I remembered that I had eight revolvers in my belt, and I didn’t dare to roll on them for fear they would go off.
Then I thought that if I could turn over on my face, and manage to get up on my knees, I could shuffle over to the fireplace. I rolled over gently, though the revolvers cut into my side a good deal, and then scrambled on to my knees; but as soon as I tried to move away from the place where Mr. Crusoe had left me, I found that he had made the end of the rope that was around my ankles fast to one of the timbers of the house, and I couldn’t possibly get at it to unfasten it.
I tried in every way I could think of to get loose, but I couldn’t do it. My hands were tied together so closely that I couldn’t use them to loosen the rope around my feet; and I could not get out my knife, for it was on my left side out of reach. After twisting myself into all sorts of knots, andwearing all the skin off of my wrists and ankles, I finally gave it up, and lay down on my back to rest.
I waited a long while to hear the sound of Mr. Crusoe’s rifle, but as I didn’t hear it, I made up my mind that he had given up the idea of fighting, or that perhaps the visitors had caught him, and convinced him that they were not cannibals. But if they had done that they certainly would have come up to the house to find me; so I waited, expecting every minute to see them come in the door.
You may not believe it, but I actually fell asleep while I was lying there on the floor, and when I woke up the sun was shining straight in the door, as it always did just before sunset. I forgot about being tied, and tried to jump up in a hurry, but I remembered what was the matter when the rope tripped me up, and I fell with my head against the side of the house.
I was so tired of being a prisoner that I was a little reckless, and I managed to pull a pistol out of my belt and began firing at the rope that tied my feet to the timbers of the house. I fired five times, and then, by great good-luck, I happened to hit the rope, and to cut it so nearly in two that I was able to break it.
I could now roll all around the house if I wanted to, butmy hands and feet were still tied fast together. The fire was out by this time, I was very sure, but I knew where there was a box of matches stuck between two planks, about a foot above the floor, and I rolled over towards them, taking the chances that the pistols would go off. The pistols hurt me a good deal as I rolled over on them, but I reached the match-box at last, and found it empty.
Then I was discouraged, for I felt sure that something had happened to Mr. Crusoe, and there I was, a prisoner, and unable to help him. I had tried every way I could think of to get rid of the ropes, but had failed, and besides I was very tired, and my wrists were very raw.
I thought the fire must be out, but still I resolved to get over to it and see if I could find a live coal. I rolled over about twenty times before I reached the place where we always made the fire, and you ought to have seen the black-and-blue places that the pistols made all around my waist.
I stirred up the ashes for a while, and couldn’t find a live coal till, all of a sudden, I found the hair on the outside of my goat-skin trousers was on fire. I had rolled directly on to a piece of wood that was still burning, and for once I was glad that I had on goat-skin trousers that couldn’t burn,instead of cotton or linen trousers that would have blazed up and roasted me.
It did not take me very long to find the live coal and to press the rope that was around my hands close against it, and in the course of ten minutes or so the rope was burned through, and my hands were loose. Then I got out my knife, and cut away the rope that held my feet, and I was free again. I had a few little burns on my hands, but I have often wondered since then how it happened that some one of the pistols didn’t happen to get heated against a hot coal and go off, and shoot three or four bullets through me.
It was now just about sunset, and in the latitude where we were it used to grow dark almost as soon as the sun went down. I started on a run towards the beach to find Mr. Crusoe, and presently I found him lying as if he was dead on the ground.
He had plainly fallen down, for his rifles were scattered all around just where he had dropped them. He was just as if he was dead, and his face was as white as a sheet. He was warm, however, and I did not think he was dead; so I ran back to the house and got some brandy, and poured a little of it—not more than half a tumblerful—down histhroat. This revived him, and he opened his eyes and managed to say that he rather thought he had been a little faint.
Seeing that he was alive, I left him for a few minutes while I hurried down to the beach to see if the picnickers were there, intending to ask them to come and help me; but they had been gone a long time, for their boat was out of sight. So I went back to Mr. Crusoe, and asked him if he thought he could walk to the house.
He said he thought he could, but that he would like to have me look at his leg first, for he believed it had been bleeding again. I took out my knife and contrived, after a lot of hard work, to cut a piece out of his trousers just where the bullet had entered, and I found that the poor man had bled nearly to death. This time I tied up his leg so tight that it couldn’t bleed any more, and then I picked Mr. Crusoe up and carried him home. He weighed very little, but he kept telling me that I was not strong enough to carry him, and that I must let him walk or I would burst a blood-vessel.
I laid him on his bed and prized his goat-skin clothes off, and covered him up with blankets, for luckily he had had sense enough not to burn up our bedclothes. Then I cookedhim a good hot supper, and before very long he was asleep. But he kept moaning and tossing in his sleep, and I could tell by the feeling of his hands that he had a fever. So I sat by the side of him all night, which was easy enough, since I must have slept two or three hours that afternoon.