CHAPTER THE TENTH

Our Pig-sty

We had had so little flesh-meat hitherto that we had not felt the lack of utensils, such as knives and forks; for bread-fruit needed nothing but our fingers, and eggs we always boiled hard. But now that we had the means of procuring flesh, I began to think of knives and forks and other things which we commonly use at home, though I have been told that our forefathers employed nothing but their fingers up to not so very long ago. Seeing that we should not be able for a few days to take up our work on the new hut, while Billy was recovering of his wounds, I thought it a fair opportunity to provide ourselves with articles of this sort if we could. We had no lack of material for handles, and it was not a very hard matter to shape a two-pronged fork of wood with the axe; but it was different with the knives, since we had nothing that would serve for blades except flints. However, by searching about the hillside I found several thin and fairly flat pieces of flint which we contrived to split still thinner and to sharpen by continually grinding them against the rocks, and when we had fixed them into handles which we made of the hollow shoots of a certain tree, we had knives, clumsy indeed, and not very sharp, but good enough to sever the limbs of the animals we killed for food, and also to part the meat into pieces when it was cooked.

Knives and Fork

Salt and Water

This same matter of meat put it into our heads to get salt for ourselves, and fresh water; for neither could we relish the food without the one nor quench our thirst without the other, cocoa-nut juice after pork having very disagreeable effects. We got water from the sea in some of the shallow pans that I had made, and found that by leaving these exposed the water in course of time evaporated, leaving a very rough and common kind of salt behind, and mixed with other substances. As for fresh water, we found when we boiled water from the lake, and allowed it to stand till it cooled and then poured it off, that it almost wholly lost the sulphurous taste, and we could drink it without hurt, which was a great comfort to us. We also put some of our pans out when rain fell, which happened pretty often, so that I have forgot to mention it; and with our fare thus enlarged, and being provided with conveniences that we had not dreamt of at first, our lot was much improved; and indeed we only wanted some means of replenishing our wardrobe to be set up for life.

Clay Pail, the Handle of a Tough Root, bound on with Shrunk Hide

What with one thing and another, I think near a month must have passed before we returned to our work on the big hut. There may be some who will blame us for this dilatoriness, and say that we ought to have continued on one task until it was finished; but I will say to them that if we had done so we might not only have fallen ill for want of change in our food, but we might have starved in the winter through not laying up a store; and besides, these critics have never been, I dare say, alone upon a desolate island. However, we did go back to our work, and the four corner posts being set up, as I have said, we had next to build the walls, which we did in the following manner.

The Hut

Between the corner posts, and about six inches apart, we planted strong poles about three inches across, leaving a gap on the side farthest from the lake, this being our doorway. On the outside of these upright posts we lashed a number of thicker logs, twice as thick indeed as the others, by means of creepers, laying the logs horizontally one upon another. This was only done with prodigious labour, as you may guess, all the poles and logs having to be felled and trimmed by us with our rude instruments, and if I had hitherto been able to keep count of the days, I should have clean lost it now, for we did not desist from our work until the walls were finished, and every day was like the one that went before and the one that came after. When the walls were finished, and it was a question of the roof, we deliberated for a little whether to make it flat, or to give it a pitch, like the roofs of cottages at home in England. What determined us was the discovery that water was beginning to ooze through the flat roof of our small hut; the rains becoming heavier and more frequent as we drew near to the winter season. Accordingly we gave a pitch of about four feet to our roof, thus forming a fair slope on each side to carry off the rain water. The framework of the roof was formed of bamboos lashed together, and resting on grooves which we cut with much toil in the tops of the wall posts. In order to keep out the rain we decided to thatch the roof over, and for this purpose we collected a great quantity of grasses and reeds from the borders of the lake. Billy told me that the thatched roof of a cottage belonging to his uncle at Plumstead was full of fleas, and as we did not desire to be visited by any such creatures we soaked our materials very thoroughly in the sulphurous water of the hot spring, thinking this would repel them, afterwards drying it in the sun. We need not have troubled ourselves in this matter, for during all the time we dwelt on the island we saw neither fleas nor any other noxious insect; indeed, the grasshopper was the only kind worth mentioning, and we grew to like their cheerful song in the evenings.

The thatching took a long time, neither of us having the least idea how to set about it, and I doubt not a true thatcher would have laughed at our botching and bungling; but we did as well as we could, and were mightily pleased with ourselves when the work was done. There only remained the door, and if it had not been for the wild pigs and dogs on the island we should never have troubled about a door at all, the climate being such, even in winter, which was now upon us, that we need never have closed our house to keep out the cold. But seeing that we should never be secure from molestation by these beasts without a door, we made one of stout logs lashed together, a little wider than the doorway, and since we could not hinge it, we contrived so that when we wished to close the hut at night or when we left it, we slid the door between the wall and two stout posts which we drove into the ground inside. As for a window, we did not need one, since we were up at dawn and abed with the dark, and had the doorway always open when we were in the hut during the daytime.

I said we were abed with the dark, but we did not always sleep at once, and oftentimes lay talking, so that we knew pretty nearly all about each other before we had been many months on the island. Billy's life had been so hard before he ran away to sea that I believe he was more contented now than ever before, having got over his first fears of savages and starvation, and the old smoker, as he called the burning mountain. (This, I ought to say here, had not been violently active since we first came to the island, though we sometimes heard faint rumblings, and saw spurts of steam and water, but never so great as at first.) I was not near so contented as Billy, for my life had been very easy and comfortable at Stafford, and I remembered my kind friends there, and sometimes felt in the lowest deeps of misery when I thought I might never see them again. But when I reflected I saw that I ought to be thankful that I was not cast on a barren island, or among savages, and there was always a hope that some navigator might sail towards our island and spy our flagstaff, though we often vexed ourselves with the thought that a vessel might pass us in the night and we know nothing about it. I think by this time we had altogether forgotten the men of theLovey Susan, and did not in the least trouble ourselves to guess at what had become of them, though Billy did say once that he was sure they were eaten up by savages.

Clothes

Our large hut being finished, I thought we deserved another holiday, having never left working at it for many weeks, or perhaps months. But the very first day we purposed being idle, a great storm of rain overtook us as we roamed over the hills, and drove us back to our house for shelter. We were drenched to the skin, and our garments were so old and tattered that we thought they would fall to pieces when we stripped them off to dry them; and moreover, though the air was not cold, as we know cold in England, yet it was chilly sometimes, especially at night, and I feared sometimes when we got wet, that we should be seized with an ague. We began to consider whether we could not by some means contrive to make ourselves clothes, and I reminded Billy that we had made a kind of cloth for our flag out of the bark of the bread-fruit tree.

"Yes, but we ain't got no scissors," says he, "and there's a deal of cutting out to be done in making clothes. My mother—not my real mother, you know—used to make my breeches out of father's, and you should have seen her snipping at 'em, gnashing her teeth together all the time. We can't cut out with our axes, or them things you call knives."

This was true, but I suggested we might beat out the strips of bark till they became of the proper shape. Billy scoffed at this. "What about patterns?" he said. "She used to have paper things, and lay 'em on the cloth and cut round 'em, and you can't make sleeves without 'em, that I'm sure of. Besides, where's our needle and thread?"

"We've made thread out of the fibres of the cocoa-nut," I said, "and as for needles, couldn't we point some thin sticks, and try them?"

"We can try," says he, "but it won't be no good, and you've forgot all about thimbles."

We did try, and I was not very much surprised when we failed, for though we could point a stick with our flints, we had nothing with which we could pierce the eye, and we found that tying the thread to the end was by no means satisfactory. However, we did contrive to put a few patches into our breeches by sticking on some of the bread-fruit cloth, which was soft and brown, with the sticky stuff that came out of the bark when we beat it. I should mention that we were not able to use this stuff immediately, for it did not make the cloth adhere; but we found that if we left it for a day, it became hard, and being then heated in one of our pots over a fire, it turned into a very fair glue. Besides patching our breeches thus, we made ourselves long coats, or rather cloaks, for they had no sleeves, being simply a long piece of cloth with a hole in the middle, and though we laughed at each other a good deal when we put them on, they covered us from neck to heel, and were very useful in keeping off the rain. And while we were about this, we thought we might as well make hats too, if we could; and after many failures we managed to fashion some bonnets out of cocoa-nut leaves, which kept our heads dry, and when the summer came defended them from the sun's heat, and our necks too, for we stuck on flaps at the back.

Billy's Palm-leaf Hat

We had started a piggery, as I have mentioned. At first it was a great deal of trouble to us, for the dogs came yelping round the sty at night, and the wild pigs also tried to reach the two piglets we had captured, and we had to be constantly on the watch lest the walls of the sty should be broken through. However, these wild inhabitants of our island in course of time seemed to accept the piggery as part of the order of things, and left us in peace. But our troubles were started again when Billy all of a sudden conceived the notion of a poultry run. In the course of our second holiday, after our new hut was finished, we chanced to discover several nests of hens, which we had formerly sought for in vain, they being cunningly concealed or else very inaccessible. Domestic fowls do not seem in general to be very plentifully endowed with wits, but the fowls on our island, having to provide against the rapacity of rats and dogs and pigs, certainly had more intelligence than ordinary; and the hens were not particular about the comfort of their nests, so long as they could find a shelter—some secluded nook among the rocks where they could lay their eggs. Billy had said more than once that he would like to have a poultry run, but though we now and then found eggs, and once or twice managed to bring down a fowl with our arrows, which we roasted or boiled, we had never yet been able to catch one alive. They frequented mostly the little patch of woodland in the extreme west of the island, and there we sometimes saw them roosting in the upper branches of tall trees. It was near this spot that we found the nests I have mentioned, but the birds were very wary, and flew away at the first sign of our approach.

Fowling

It was clear that if we were to catch them, we must snare them in some way or other, and having not thought of making nets, which we might have done with cocoa-nut fibres—indeed, we did afterwards—we wondered whether the sticky substance that came from the bread-fruit bark might serve us as birdlime. We tried it, but we found that it hardened too quickly for our purpose; at least, that was how we explained our want of success; and we thought that if we mixed it with some other substance that would keep it moist the result might be different. We tried bread-fruit, and then shredded cocoa-nut, but neither was effectual; and then, almost as a last resource, we made the experiment with a nut that I have not before mentioned, because we had not found it of any use as food. It grew on a tall and very leafy tree, and the ground was at this time strewed with the olive-green fruits which had fallen, being over-ripe. We easily removed the outer covering, and within was a hard shell, something like a walnut, only smooth, and inside the shell was a whitish kernel, which we had found was not very palatable; but it was very oily, and we thought this, when pounded, might mix very well with our glue, as I may call it.[1] Accordingly we did this, and taking a quantity of the mixture to the spot which the fowls haunted, we smeared a fallen branch with it, and having spread some small pieces of baked bread-fruit as bait, we went among the trees to await the issue.

A Fowl-house

Billy was patient enough when work was a-doing, but he never could bide patiently, for which reason many holidays were not good for him. He ran so often to the edge of the wood to see if any birds were snared, that I am sure he was the cause why we had to wait so long, the birds taking alarm at his movements. At last I persuaded him to go with me back to our house, and when we returned after a long interval we suspected by the unaccustomed cackling we heard that our birdlime had proved successful; and so it was, for when we came to the branch, there was a fine hen fluttering her wings and cackling most lamentably, and also a kind of wood pigeon, which did not make near so much noise. Billy wrung the neck of the pigeon in an instant, saying it would make a tasty morsel for dinner, and then we tied the legs of the hen, and carried her home. But one hen does not make a poultry run, and it was a considerable time before we caught any more fowl, the fate of the first seeming to have warned the rest. However, we did succeed in catching four or five more at intervals, and we turned our small hut into a fowl-house, putting poles across for them to roost on. It is a strange thing, but after a little while the fowls, which had before scarce made a sound, began to cackle and crow just as the fowls do in England, and Billy said that finding they were now safe from their enemies, and fed regularly, they were much happier than before, and showed it by their singing. How that may be I know not, but I am inclined to think that they had better kept silence, for one morning after a night of wind and rain, during which we heard that strange sound we heard on our first night, we found the gate of our poultry run open and all the fowls gone, leaving only a great quantity of feathers scattered about, both inside and out. This told us pretty plainly what had happened, and if we needed assurance, we had it in the footprints in the sodden ground.

Our Small Hut turned into a Fowl-house

"'Tis them rampageous dogs, master," cried Billy in a fury. "The thieving villains! And one of the hens beginning to sit, too! I wish we could poison 'em."

"We can't do that," I said, "but we shall have to make war on them, or we shall never feel safe, either for our belongings or ourselves, for they attacked you, and I am pretty sure that if one of us was hurt and could not count on the help of the other he would soon be torn in pieces. We must teach them a lesson."

"Yes, but how?" says Billy. "They're such cowards that they won't stand still to be shot at."

"Nor would you, if you were a wild dog," I said. "I think we had better set a trap for them."

War on the Dogs

"Yes, and catch 'em alive oh!" says Billy, and we straightway began to consider of the kind of trap that would serve us best, Billy favouring a running noose, which seemed to me not very sure, so I proposed a pit covered over with branches and leaves. We tried this, and before we went to bed we put a good-sized piece of roast pork (Billy having shot a pig that day) on the covering of the pit, hoping that the dogs would be drawn to it by the smell and then would tumble into the pit, where we should find them in the morning. In the middle of the night we heard a yapping and yelping; but we did not get up, for one thing because it was dark and we could scarcely have seen to deal with our captives. However, in the morning we found the pork gone and also the dogs, and when we examined the pit we saw that some had fallen in but scrambled out again up the sides, though how they did it we never could tell, the hole being of a pretty good depth. This failure did not slacken our determination, and we soon thought of a more subtle trick, to which there was one drawback in the fact that we had no means of making a good torch, which seemed essential to it. We could, of course, have made a great blaze with our fire, which we had never let go out since we had first kindled it, except when a great rain put it out; but that would as like as not have defeated our own ends. However, it chanced that one evening we made a discovery which was useful to us in this particular, and much more afterward, as will appear.

I have mentioned the nut we pounded and mixed with glue to make our birdlime. Well, since we did not wish to use up too many cocoa-nuts or too much of our bread-fruit paste for feeding our two pigs, which were thriving wonderfully, we gave them these other nuts, which they appeared to like very well. On this evening I speak of, in replenishing the fire to cook our supper, we happened to throw into it two or three nuts which had got among the fuel, and we observed that they burned with a very bright flame, quite different from the flame of wood or cocoa-nut shells. We did not think any more of it for the moment, but when I lay in bed (I say bed, but it was only leaves and dried grass), our house being pitch-dark, I thought all of a sudden that perhaps we could make a candle of these nuts if we wished, though we had no need of a light, having nothing to read. I called out to Billy to know if he was awake, and telling him of my notion, he said, "What's the good?" which I remember he always did say when I suggested anything new. However, I resolved to see whether I was right, and next day I put two or three kernels together, and kindled them, and they burned with a light like a candle's, but with a rather offensive smell.

We at once set about making a torch, and finding that we had a difficulty in getting the kernels entire out of the shells, which were very hard, we thought of boiling them, and then found that the shells cracked with the slightest tap, so that the kernels came out whole. When we had some twenty of these kernels we skewered them together on a thin, hard stick, and so had a torch, and there being now no obstacle to the trick I purposed playing on the dogs, we took one of our pigs into the house, and surrounded the other with a kind of stout stockade inside the sty, and at nightfall we left the gate of the sty open, but contrived that we could easily close it by means of a rope which we carried into our house. We did not go to bed, but waited, holding our torch ready, with flint and tinder, and also a couple of the spears I have before mentioned, which, although rude weapons, were the fittest for the work in hand.

It was not long before we heard the light patter of feet, and soon after the squealing of our decoy. We waited a little, so as to give our expected guests plenty of time to establish themselves, knowing too that they would not be able to do any harm to the pig, and then we pulled the rope, so closing the gate upon the intruders. Then I kindled the torch, and holding it aloft in my left hand, I rushed out with a spear in my right hand, and Billy armed in like manner. The sty was a good way from the house, and before we got to it the dogs that were outside, alarmed by the unwonted glare and by our shouts, scampered away into the darkness, leaving their comrades howling and yelping in the sty, and the pig squealing too in a terrible fright. Having the prisoners now at our mercy, for they could not leap the walls of the sty, we doomed them to instant execution, and when some of them fled for refuge into the covered part of the sty, we took off a portion of the roof, and so fell on them again, and did not desist until we had killed every one. We left them there until the morning, and then carried them forth, nine in all, and Billy insisted on skinning them, saying that their coats would make fine mats for our house-floor, which indeed they did when they had been well washed in lake-water and dried in the open air. The vengeance we took had an excellent deterrent effect on the rest of the pack, which no more molested us, at least in that part of the island. We caught more fowls to replace those that had been stolen, and captured the litter of another sow, which we killed for food, and were happy in the thought that by natural increase our fowls and pigs would in course of time provide us with as much food as we needed, or even more. We kept the hides of those we killed, though we had no immediate use for them. Billy said he wished he could make a pair of boots, for the rough ground was very troublesome to his bare feet, and my boots were very much worn and, indeed, scarcely held together. But we knew nothing of bootmaking, and for some time did not attempt to provide ourselves with footwear, though afterwards we contrived to make some strange and uncouth foot-gloves: I can call them by no other name.

[1] This was clearly the candle-nut, of which more is said presently.—H.S.

OF THE NAMING OF OUR ISLAND—OF A FLEET OF CANOES, AND OF THE MEANS WHEREBY WE PREPARE TO STAND A SIEGE

We had now fairly established ourselves as the owners of the island, having a comfortable house, domestic animals, and a sufficient store of food, the only article in which we were lamentably deficient being clothes. The necessity we were under of working hard with our hands left us little time for commiseration, and I verily believe that we were in the main as cheerful and happy as we could have been anywhere. And now that the completion of our hardest tasks left us a little leisure, it came into our heads that we ought to give our property a name, or rather it was Billy that thought of it, he saying that since I was clearly king of the country, it was ridiculous not to be able to say what country it was.

"Call it Smoking Island," says he, "because of that old smoker up there."

To this I objected that it was not a pretty name, and besides, the mountain was not always smoking.

"Well then," he said, "call it Lonely Island, because it is lonely, and so are we."

To this I replied that a more cheerful name would suit me better, and suggested that we should call it Perseverance Island, since all our present comforts sprang from our persevering in the face of difficulties. But this Billy would by no means agree to, saying that it looked like bragging, and besides he hated the word perseverance, because he had to write it so many times on his slate at school, and it made him think of raps on the knuckles. He told me that he had been for a few months at a charity school, but he played truant so often that the master refused to have him any longer, at which he was very glad. After considering sundry other names, to which either Billy or I had some objection, we finally settled on Palm Tree Island, both because most of the trees of the island were palms, and because we got our first comfort, when we were deserted, from the cocoa-nut palms on the hill-side.

The general country being thus fitted with a name, we proceeded to name the several parts of it. The mountain we called simply The Mountain, though to Billy it was always Old Smoker; the slope leading up to the crater we called Rocky Hill, and the wood beneath Bread-fruit Wood. The big rock at the north-west corner was Red Rock, and the two smaller ones at the south-west were The Sentinels. And so we named various parts as we thought of it, not all at one time, and many of them not until I made my map, of which I may say more hereafter. I must mention, however, that Billy insisted on giving my name to the wood where we slept on our first night, and in my turn I gave his name to a sandy bay on the west of the island, and Billy was very proud when he spelt out Bobbin's Bay on the aforesaid map.

Plantations

So the winter passed away, not like the winter in England, for we had no frost or snow, nor did the leaves fall from the trees; the only true sign that it was winter was the absence of flowers and fruit on the trees; and even this was not the case with all of them, for the cocoa-nut palm bore its fruit all the year round, so that on the same tree there were nuts in all stages of ripeness, which I thought a very wonderful thing. We had a considerable amount of rain, and this became greater as we came into the spring season. We had kept for this season the yams which we saved from the pigs, as I related a while ago, and we now planted them, choosing two places, since we did not know on what soil they would thrive best, whether where we had found them, or near our house. We had kept the yams in one of our pans, and we guessed it was time to plant them because we saw sprouts growing out of them, as you sometimes see the eyes of a potato sprouting. We cut these sprouting parts off, keeping the other parts for boiling, and set them in the ground, some on the ground just below our house, the others in the glade where we had discovered them. Knowing that we stood no chance of getting a crop unless we defended the plants from the wild pigs, we put fences of hurdles (made of twigs and reeds) round our plantations, which were at first only a few yards square, and waited with what patience we might for the result. I will say here that the yams we planted near our house came to nothing, why I know not; but the others throve exceedingly, and though we had some trouble with the pigs, which broke down the fence more than once and did some damage, we got a very fair crop in the summer, which supplied us with mashed potatoes, as Billy said (for which we used dripping from the pigs we cooked), and also with seed for another sowing.

Jug with Bent-wood Handle and Cup

Articles of Toilet

Though our great work in the building of our hut was finished (at least we thought it was) our days were by no means idle, for we had our animals to feed and our fences to keep in repair, and moreover we made more pots and pans, also arrows and spears, thread and rope. One thing that gave me much amusement was the brush that Billy made. Of course we had not been able to attend to our toilet since we came to Palm Tree Island, beyond bathing and washing our heads: I mean we could not brush our hair, which was now grown down to our shoulders for want of scissors, nor trim our finger-nails, though our hard work kept these pretty short. But on going down to the lake one sunny day to fetch water I saw my image reflected, and afterwards bemoaning my exceeding unkempt appearance, though in truth it mattered nothing, Billy took it into his head to make me, secretly, a brush and comb, which he presented to me with great glee. "There, old king," says he, for he sometimes called me king instead of master since we named the island, "there you are, and I hope you'll use 'em to keep your old majesty's head tidy." His manner of addressing me was not, you perceive, very reverential; but I will say this for Billy, that though he was very sturdy and independent of spirit, he was never insolent, being a gentleman in his nature, and so we were rather good comrades than anything else, and the talk of kings and so forth was mere fun and play-acting. I did use the brush and comb which he had made for me, but not, I confess, very often, and I cannot help thinking what a great number of things that we are accustomed to we could do without; indeed, though we had made ourselves knives and forks, we did not use them very much either and you might have seen us at dinner-time squat down on the floor of our house, with two mats of leaves in front of us, on one of which was our meat (pork, or a pigeon or fowl), on the other our yams or bread-fruit, boiled or baked, with a little heap of salt in the corner, and little clay mugs filled with cocoa-nut juice or water at the side. Then we would take a yam in one hand and a shank of pork, or a leg of fowl, in the other, dip them in the salt and take a bite, and then a bite of the yam, and so go through our meal very comfortably till only the bones were left. Afterwards we thought of making stools and chairs and a table, as much to employ our time as for any conveniency of them, and then we ate our meals again in the civilized way, though I own I thought it not a whit better nor much cleaner than the other, for we could always wash our hands.

The Brush Billy made, showing also the manner of it

Comb of Spines

I said that we could not cut our hair, but when it grew so long that it covered our shoulders, and Billy said I should soon be an old woman, we thought of shortening it by burning; so we each became barber in turn, holding the hair away from the head with Billy's comb, and then burning the ends away with a torch. Billy was much more hairy than I was, and though he was three years younger than me his cheeks and chin already showed signs of black whiskers and beard, and one day I found him trying to shave with a flint, having made soap by boiling fat with the ashes of wood; but he succeeded so ill, only making his chin raw, that he gave it up, and said he supposed he would have to look a fright.

"ONE DAY I FOUND HIM TRYING TO SHAVE WITH A FLINT.""ONE DAY I FOUND HIM TRYING TO SHAVE WITH A FLINT."

A Fleet of Canoes

One day, about a year after our first coming to the island, as we judged by the ripeness of the breadfruit, Billy went up Flagstaff Hill, as we called it, to take the survey which we never omitted, each of us doing it in turn, though we sometimes went together. I was moulding a new pan, when all of a sudden I heard a great shout from the hill-side above, and looking up I saw Billy leaping down towards me with a speed that seemed very dangerous, waving his arms and shouting, though in the distance I could not distinguish his words. My heart leapt into my mouth, as the saying is, for from his excitement I surmised that he had descried a sail at sea, and I thought he was calling to me to help him raise our signal. I ran towards him, and as we drew nearer to each other, I saw plainly on his face the marks of great agitation, and then in a breathless way he called the one word "Savages!" and I was instantly in a terrible fear lest they had landed on the island and were coming to attack us.

However, when we met, Billy told me that from the hill-top he had seen a fleet of canoes on the north side of the island, passing from west to east. They were filled with savages, though whether armed or not he could not tell, they being a good distance out at sea, nor was there anything to show whether they purposed landing. It came into my mind with a shock at that moment that we were very ill able to defend ourselves in case they should land and attack us, for we had very little provision in our hut, and if we took refuge there they might keep us shut up until we died of hunger, or thirst, which would be worse. I blamed myself very much for lack of prudence in not making provision for such an emergency, but the truth is that after spending so many months without seeing a human form we had become careless, and went from day to day as though there had been no human beings in the world except our two selves. However, it was too late to make up for this neglect now, if the savages did indeed land, and I saw that in that case we could only take to the woods and trust that our hut and plantations, being inland, might pass undiscovered. Accordingly I accompanied Billy back up the hill, and we went round the wood where our signal-tree was, to a place nearer the crater, whence we had a more extensive view.

"There they are!" cried Billy, pointing out to sea, and I saw eight or nine long canoes filled with brown men, who must have numbered near two hundred in all. But I saw with inexpressible relief that they had come past the Red Rock, and were proceeding steadily eastward, and knowing that there was no beach on the north side of the island where they might land, we had great hope that we should not be troubled with them. Keeping out of sight behind rocks, though indeed there was perhaps little danger of our being seen, we watched the fleet until it became no more than a speck on the eastern horizon, and then we went down to our hut, relieved of present danger, but by no means easy in mind about the future.

Fortification

We knew not whether the fleet was going or returning, but whichever it was, I was surprised it had not put in at our island for rest and refreshment, for the nearest land to the west was at least twenty miles away, and on the east it could not be less, for we had seen but the dimmest line in that direction. Billy said the savages were without doubt afraid of the old smoker, and even though he was harmless at present, the island had a bad name, and so they would not land on it except under very great stress. This I devoutly hoped was the true explanation, for if it was, we had a reasonable hope that we should never have to deal with savage enemies. Yet the fright we had had determined us to do something to provide more efficiently for our safety, and the first thing we did was to make loopholes in the walls of our hut, so that if we were at any time forced to take refuge there, we might at least be able to make some resistance by shooting arrows at the enemy. Then we carried a great number of cocoa-nuts into the house, which would provide us both with meat and drink, and we determined to dig a hole in the floor when the bread-fruit was fully ripe, and store it with the pounded pulp as we had done outside. Then it came into my head of a sudden that, our hut being built wholly of logs and thatch, the enemy might easily set fire to it and burn us alive, and to hinder this we carried down great quantities of the clayey soil of which we made our pottery ware, and mixing it with sand and small stones, we made a kind of rough-cast with which we covered the whole of the outside of the hut, roof and all, so that we not only concealed the joints of the walls, but also, as I hoped, protected the hut from fire.

This work took us a long time, as you may guess, and before we had finished it, we saw the fleet again. One or other of us went up the hill several times a day to watch the eastern horizon, and on the third day, I think it was, after we first saw the canoes, a little after sunrise, I saw some tiny specks in the east, and recognizing them by and by for canoes I watched them with great anxiety. I feared lest we might have two enemies to deal with, the savages and the volcano, which had been rumbling for a day or two at intervals, and sending up puffs of steam or smoke, and we wondered whether there was going to be another eruption like that at the time of our first coming. As soon as I saw the canoes, I signalled for Billy to join me, and the moment we caught sight of them he cried: "Why, there's only six; there was eight or nine before," a fact which had escaped my notice. They were plainly heading straight for the island, and not in a course that would bring them past the north side with a good offing as before.

"I don't want to be eat," said Billy, going pale under his sun-tan; "but we can't fight over a hundred savages, can we, master?"

Before I could reply there was a loud rumbling beneath us, and being not a great way from the crater, we set off at a run, going down towards the Red Rock, there being no lava on this side. We had run barely twenty yards when a great puff of steam or smoke was shot up into the air for near two hundred feet, I should guess, and a shower of pumice stones fell around us. This frightened us so much that, forgetting all about the canoes, we did not stop running until we came to the edge of the cliff opposite the Red Rock, and then, there being no more signs of activity in the volcano, we were thinking of climbing up again to our watching-place when, to our great joy, we caught sight of the canoes making round the north side, and indeed bearing away northwards away from us.

"Three cheers for old smoker," cried Billy. "He's scared 'em away, sure as nuts, and they won't eat us after all."

We stood watching the canoes as they made their way very toilsomely against wind and current, and did not go down to our hut until they had quite vanished from sight. It was long past our usual dinner-time, I am sure, and as we had had no breakfast we were mighty hungry, and ate with very good appetites, having lost our fear; and taking up our mugs of cocoa-nut juice, and knocking them together in the way of folks drinking a toast, I cried out, "Here's to old smoker!" and Billy shouted, "God bless him!"

This happened, as I say, three days after our first alarm, and we did not cease from our efforts to put ourselves in a good posture of defence if we should ever again have reason to fear an attack. We had already made our hut fairly fire-proof, and cut loop-holes in the walls, these at varying heights, so that we might shoot down from a height upon the enemy at a distance, or on a level with them if they came to close quarters. Since a man behind walls is equal to at least three outside, I should think, we considered that we two, though hardly come to man's estate, could make a very good fight of it; our only trouble was the matter of water, for while we had no fears in the matter of food, we did not see how by any means we could store sufficient water in the hut, even if we filled all our pots and pans.

Sinking a Well

I was lying with Billy one evening outside our hut overlooking the lake, when the solution to this puzzle came all at once into my head. The ground behind the hut sloped pretty steeply down to the lake, the length of the slope being about twenty feet, and the vertical height about six feet—that is, between the floor of our hut and the usual surface of the water. For I must observe here, lest I forget it, that the depth of water in the lake varied very much at different seasons, being far greater after a period of rainy weather than in drought, the variation being at least equal to the height of a man. And in regard to this variation a circumstance caused us much wonderment, for though when the rains were heavy the lake rose very rapidly to a certain point, we observed that it never came higher than that point, no matter how long the rains continued. When I pointed this out to Billy he saw nothing to wonder at in it, saying that the lake must be just like the sea; for though it had rained hundreds and thousands of times since the beginning of the world, the sea had never drowned the world since the Flood, and it surely would have done so unless there was some hole at the bottom that opened when the sea was getting too full.

"That can't be," said I.

"Well, then, how is it?" says he. "You pour water into a cup, and it'll slop over presently. The lake's a cup, though a big one; why don't it slop over after all these rains if there ain't a hole in the bottom, as I say?"

"But it can't be in the bottom, Billy, or the lake would sometimes be drained quite dry," I said.

"Well, it is, pretty nearly," he replied, but I would not admit that, for though the water subsided slowly after the rains had ceased, it had never sunk so low as to let us see the bottom. At low water we hunted all round the lake to see if we could find an outlet through which the water ran away, but we saw none, and remained in our puzzlement for a good while longer.

However, I was beginning to tell of the notion that came into my head as we lay that evening above the lake. Being so little distant from it, I thought, why should we not sink a well in the floor of the hut, and connect it with the lake by a pipe?

"What's the good?" says Billy, when I put the question to him. "For one thing, the water won't run up into the hut without a pump; at least, I've never seen water run uphill yet; and then, as soon as any savages come, you may be sure they'll spy it, and then where are you?"

I said that as for the latter point, we should, of course, take care to show no sign outside of what we had done; and as for the former, I did not despair of finding some way to raise the water to our level, even if we could not make a pump. Billy talked till it was dark about the difficulties of what I proposed—the difficulty of digging a hole, of preventing the earth from falling in, and so forth—until you would have thought he was the poorest-spirited creature that ever lived; but that was only Billy's way, and I often observed that he was never so active and eager, aye, and never so hopeful too, as after he had been talking in this gloomy manner. At any rate, next day he set to work with me to make a trial of my notion.

It happened that, the weather having been dry for a good while, the water was now low, indeed, within a foot of the lowest point to which we had ever known it to sink, which was favourable to our plan; for it was necessary that our pipe should enter the lake below the water's surface, even in the driest weather, and moreover if the latter had been full, we should have found it very troublesome, and perhaps impossible, to do as I shall now relate. This was nothing less than to dam up the water of the lake for a little space, so that we might cut a passage through the side of it towards our hut. To make this dam we felled a number of logs and dragged them down to the bed of the lake, where we arranged them in the shape of a great V, the point of the V being out in the lake, the ends resting on the shore. We lashed the logs together very firmly, and coated them with clay, and so made a dam which we found to answer very well. Of course we had to bale out the water which was first between the arms of the V, and Billy grumbled as we did this, saying that he was sure there would be a heavy rainstorm, and all our work would be for nothing; but in this he turned out a false prophet, since we had no rain at all for many days.

Spade cut out of a log

When the inside of the V was dry, its floor was about three feet below the level of the water outside of it; and within that dry space we could work very comfortably at making a cutting through the bank towards the hut. To do this we had to make spades, which we fashioned out of hard wood as well as we could with our axes, and they served our purpose excellently well, though they would not have done so had not the earth been soft; if it had been rocky, I know not what we should have done. With these spades we began to cut away a portion of the sloping bank of the lake, continuing till we had, as it were, taken a slice or a wedge off it, up to within about three yards of our hut. This took us two whole days, for the earth, though soft compared with rock, was pretty compact, and our clumsy tools made us sigh often, and sweat too.

Having come, as I say, to within ten feet or so of our hut, I thought we might then give over digging and endeavour to pierce a way to a point directly beneath the centre of the floor, or at least near enough as that we might sink a shaft to meet it. We surveyed the position for some little while, so as to take our bearings, as Billy said: and then, having got a pretty good notion of the course our proposed passage should take, we shoved into the earth, horizontally, a pole we had sharpened to a point, and when we found we could push it in no further, we drew it out and gave it another mighty shove, directing it in such a way as we thought would bring it midway between the two corner posts, though of course several feet below the floor. We found after a time that, though we tried to drive the pole straight, nevertheless it deflected somewhat towards the right; and when we pulled it out to give it another shove, it met with some obstacle, which I was afraid might be the bottom part of one of our posts, though I could not conceive how we had gone so far out of our reckoning. But with a little more pushing the pole, being in a certain degree flexible, went past the obstacle, so that if this was one of the posts, it had not been met squarely in the middle. The pole being now wholly in the earth except just enough of it to hold by, we judged that we had driven it as far as was needful, and mighty glad of it we were.

Leaving the pole in the earth, we set about boring in the floor of our hut, not beginning midway between the door-posts, as we should have done if we had encountered no obstacle, but a little to one side. We proceeded here in the same manner as we had done in the bank of the lake, using a sharp-pointed pole, only we drove it down in a vertical direction; but we soon found that this would not effect our purpose, as indeed we might have known before if we had thought about it, for it was necessary that we should make a clean hole, which could not be done by driving in a pole. After considering of it, we determined to get a large piece of bamboo stalk, at least five inches across, and to drive that into the earth with the pummet we had used in building the hut. This we did, and placing the bamboo (a piece about three feet long) in the hole we had already begun to drive, we dealt it several heavy blows with the pummet, by this means driving it into the ground, and at the same time forcing some earth up into its hollow interior. Then we took the bamboo out, and carrying it outside the hut, poked all the earth out of it, and when it was empty, put it once more into the hole, and smote it again as before. This was a very tedious business, for as the hole went deeper we had to use a longer piece of bamboo, and when we had near finished the bamboo broke in the middle, and we had to dig to a depth of three feet or more around the hole before we could reach the lower portion to pull it out again, at which Billy was very wroth, because the excavation had to be filled in again, so as to bring the floor to its former level. However, we continued until the hole was seven or eight feet deep, at which depth we thought we should come to the pole we had driven through the bank; but it would have been scarcely less than a miracle if we had bored the hole to the exact spot, and we had indeed to enlarge its circumference until it measured full thirty inches across, and not till then did we come to the pole. When we did strike this we were both very joyful, for we had been working at it for four full days, and had yet got but a very little way in our design.

A Surprising Discovery

We went back now to the lake-side, and using bamboos as we had done in the hut, but with longer and larger stems, we made little by little a sort of tunnel about five inches wide running to the well we had sunk. We then sank this latter a few inches below its former level, so as to make a kind of cistern or reservoir for the water when it should flow in from the lake; and in order that the water might not run away through the soft earth, we let down a quantity of clay with which to line the bottom, intending to bake it with fire after we had rammed it until it became hard and tight. Billy took this work of ramming, performing it with a long and stout pole, which he lifted high and then brought down with great force, he always delighting to show the strength of his muscles. However, he had just made a stroke of particular power, when the beater pole slipped from his hands and he fell flat on his face over the top of the well. He was on his feet again in an amazing short time, and I laughed as he ran to the door, holding his nose, I thinking he was running to the lake to bathe it. But in a moment I was aware of a very evil smell which came without a doubt from the well we had sunk, and it was so powerful, and also noisome, that I very quickly beat a retreat too, and joined Billy outside the hut.

"I'm poisoned," says Billy, spluttering and spitting on the ground. "What did you do it for, master? I said as how 'twould be no use."

"You're a Job's comforter," said I, somewhat tartly, such a speech as Billy's only sharpening the edge of adversity, to my thinking.

"You're another," says Billy, who did not in the least know what I meant, his acquaintance with the Bible being at that time, I fear, very slight. "There's the bottom knocked out of the well, and dead men's bones below, that's what it is."

It did come into my head for a minute that we might have opened up some grave, or at least a place where human folk had been overtaken and buried by lava from the mountain; but I soon gave this up, for the earth was soft, and not a whit like lava, and as for a grave, no one would have dug it so deep down in the earth. I was just as much vexed as Billy was at this untoward event, but I think I was even more curious to learn what was beneath our unlucky well, and I went back soon into the hut, intending to examine the place. However, the evil smell was so overpowering that I was fain to seek the open air again, and it was some time, an hour or two, maybe, before the air became clear enough for us to enter the hut with any comfort. Bethinking myself that the clearing of the air showed that there might be nothing very terrible below, the foul smell being due to the sudden release of air long imprisoned, I got a length of our rope, and let it down with a stone on the end until it touched the bottom, which we found to be twice as deep as before; and when I did this, I perceived another thing which seemed to me mighty strange, which was nothing less than a current of air passing up through the well. There was, it is true, a passage now between the lake-side and the hut, but we had felt no current when the connection was first established, and yet we could not conceive of a current coming from the very bowels of the earth. Billy declared, in something of a fright, that we had got down to the roots of the mountain, whence came the steam and the hot water; but I answered that this was plainly absurd, the current of air that we felt being perfectly cool, though not very fresh.

I thought we might let down a torch into the well, whereby we should perhaps be able to see something of what was below. Accordingly we kindled a torch of kernels and let it down at the end of a rope, and very evilly it smelled, I assure you. We observed that the flame flickered a great deal until it descended to the first bottom of our well, or perhaps two or three feet deeper; then the torch burnt more steadily, but the flame did not rise straight up, but seemed to be swayed a little to either side, and I could not help thinking, by the look of it, that it was burning in a greater space than when it was in our narrow well-shaft. Considering of some means of proving whether this was so or not, I could at first see none, short of enlarging the shaft until one of us could descend it, which indeed neither Billy nor I was disposed to attempt. It was next day when an idea came into my head, and that was occasioned by my seeing the spring-back of Billy's bow when he shot at the running man, at which we exercised ourselves now and again, seeing that we might have real men to shoot at some day. The spring of the bow, I say, gave me a notion, and taking a flexible strip of wood of the same tree, I tied one end of it to a long pole, and then bent it double, not fastening it in that position, but inserting it thus bent into the shaft, the sides of which prevented it from springing back. Then I lowered the pole, and the bent piece of wood scraped the sides of the well until it reached what had been the bottom and a little beyond it; but then, as I still let down the pole, the bent wood sprang loose, like as Billy's bow did, which showed very plainly that the shaft was much wider below.

This discovery perplexed, nay, disquieted us. For one thing, it was a mercy that we had not lighted on this hollow chamber, for such it must be, when we were driving in the posts for our hut, for then we might have broken our necks. As yet we were ignorant of the extent of this open space, though we knew its depth, nor could we tell whether it in any way endangered the firmness of the hut. Billy said that if he had known there was such a cellar beneath us he would not have lifted a hand to help me build, and I own that if we had discovered it when we were beginning to build, I should have assuredly chosen another situation. But after spending so many months of hard work in putting up our hut, I was very loath to leave it now and begin all over again, though it was a staggering thought that at any moment of the day or night we might sink, and the hut too, and maybe be cast into another hole, for we could not tell but that the second bottom might give way like the first. Moreover, even supposing that our hut was no less safe than before, all the labour that we had been put to in devising a means of supplying ourselves with water from the lake had gone for nought. I think this was the heaviest blow we had had since we took up our abode on the island, and for a time we stood stock-still, contemplating the dark hole that was the grave, so to speak, of our hopes.

Back to Index Next