CHAPTER V.FISH-CURING.
On leaving the camp we had kept along the centre of the reef, and, before deciding to return, we had examined both sides to see if by any means we might manage to continue our road along the narrow beach; and in doing so we came upon pools of salt water which were literally alive with fish, and as we could see that the water was draining away through the sands, there could be little doubt that they would soon be left high and dry.
As soon as Tom Arbor saw them, he clapped his hands and said that here was a chance of laying in a good stock of provisions, and that it would be better to secure them before they went bad, and even before we thought of our catamaran.
We were puzzled as to how he meant us to proceed; but he said he had been shipmates with a Yarmouth lad on a previous voyage, and he had told him how herrings were prepared by salt and smoking, and that, even if we had no salt, we could smoke a good many, and so provide ourselves with a stock which would last us some time, and which would be a pleasant variety to the cocoanuts, which, so far as he saw, were the only vegetable products fit for food to be found.
We at once set to work at one pool and picked out a lot of fish, which we strung on our ramrods and carried back to camp with us. And after Tom had shown me and Bill how to clean and split them open, he set to work to prepare a number of thin, light rods out of the midribs of the leaves of the palms which had been blown down. On these he slipped the fish as soon as we had completed cleaning them, putting his rods in at one of the gills and out at the mouth of each of the fish; and when a rod was strung with fish about four inches apart, he put it on a couple of uprights planted in the ground, under which he lighted a fire, which he banked down with green leaves and damped cocoanut husks, so as to cause a dense smoke.
“There,” he said—“that will do after a fashion; but at Yarmouth, I’m told, they have houses to keep the smoke in. And now you, Bill, had better make a basket out of some of these leaves, and go and get some more fish, while Sam and I set to work to rig up some sort of a hut for us.”
I said, “Why should we have our hut here? Isn’t the other side of the reef bigger? It looks so.”
“Yes,” he said; “but don’t you see the palms over there waving in the breeze? It’ll soon be down on us. And that must be the trades setting in again; and they’ll blow for months and months without taking off. It’s only when there are storms for a time that they cease.”
“Why’s that, Tom?” I asked.
“I can’t rightly tell the reason, but so it is; and while they’re a-blowing there’ll always be a big surf tumbling on that side. And if ever it happen that we see a ship, and have to get off to her, it’ll be from this side that we shall have to make a start.”
Tom now chose four palm trees which had not been blown down, and telling me to get a couple of axes from among our stores, he and I set to work to cut them off as high up as we could manage by standing on the top of our beakers and the trade-chest.
The four trees stood at the corners of a space about twelve feet long by eight wide, and would, he said, make the main posts of the hut we were to build; and before Bill came back with his load of fish two of them had been cut at a height of six feet from the ground.
When Bill came back, he said,—
“Didn’t you say the Yarmouth folk used salt for their herrings?”
“Yes,” answered Tom. “Why do you ask?”
“Why, because I’ve found some. There’s a bit of rock stands up above the ground about a hundred yards away, and the top of it is fashioned like a basin, and in that there’s a lot of salt, though it’s wet now from last night’s rain.”
“That’s good news, anyway. Do you just go and get some.”
“All right!” answered Bill; and he soon returned with a couple of handkerchiefs filled with coarse, wet salt.
“Now, how do they put the salt into the fish and smoke ’em at the same time?” I asked. “We haven’t a harness-tub to put ’em in.”
“I don’t rightly know,” said Tom; “but I suppose if, when we’ve cleaned a fish out, we put some salt inside, and tie it up again with a strip of palm leaf before hanging it up to smoke, it’ll answer pretty well.”
We all now set to work cleaning the fish Bill had brought, and filled their insides with salt, and then hung them up as we had done the others; and when we had finished we found we had about forty unsalted and sixty salted, averaging over a pound weight each, most of them being a sort of rock cod.
With this Tom said we might be satisfied for the time, and that we should now get on with our hut as fast as we could.
The two remaining trees were soon cut, and just as I was going to jump down off the trade-chest, on which I had been standing (the trade winds had now reached our side of the reef), I saw something black floating in the middle of the lagoon, and looking steadily at it, I soon saw that it was our boat, but that from the way she was floating she must be half full of water.
“Hurrah!” I cried, “hurrah!”
“What’s up, mate?” said both of my companions in a breath.
“Why, there’s our boat a-coming back to us of her own accord,” I answered, pointing her out.
“That’s a providence,” said Tom. “We must keep an eye on her, that she don’t get drifted out through one of the entrances. Now, then, one must keep a watch on her; and as ’twas you, Sam, as first saw her, you do so. But you can keep your hands employed in making sinnet for lashings for the house out of the palm leaves.”
I was soon busy making sinnet, and keeping an eye on the boat, while from the sound of the axes I could hear that Tom and Bill were busy.
The boat drifted pretty rapidly across the lagoon, and seemed to be coming straight towards us until she came to within about two hundred yards of the shore, when she altered her direction and began to move quickly towards the entrance by which we had got into the lagoon.
I had been desirous of securing her without saying a word to my companions, but now I feared that I should be unable to do so, and called to them to come to my assistance. Seaman at once proposed to swim off to her, but Tom Arbor would not allow him, for fear of sharks, and said we had best go to the opening by which we had entered the lagoon, for she would be sure to drift there.
He was not mistaken, for she grounded just at the inner end, and we were able to secure her without any risk, and tow her back to where our camp was.
“Now, lads,” said Tom, “we had better bail her out and haul her up on shore.”
We set to work to bail her out, but soon found that she leaked so much that it was hopeless to attempt it.
“She’s no use as she is,” I said. “We must get her up ashore and see what we can do to her.”
“That’s all very well, but how can we haul her up full of water?” answered both Bill and Tom in a breath.
“Why, where water comes in, it must be able to go out; and every bit we raise her out of the water, she will empty herself.”
“True; but we’re not strong enough to haul her up the weight she is now.”
“I have it!” I cried, after thinking a minute or two. “Let’s put a palm trunk against two of the uprights of the house, and bringing the cable to it, rig a Spanish windlass. And some of those small palms I see you’ve been cutting for ridge-poles and rafters will do for handspikes and rollers.”
My proposal was hailed with delight, and from the small palms, which were not more than three or four inches in diameter, we soon cut some levers and rollers, and essayed to heave the boat up. We found, however, that our utmost efforts would not move the boat when she was once solidly aground, and that, heave as we might, we only buried her bows in the sand.
After wasting our strength for about a quarter of an hour, we stopped to regain our breath, and walking down to the boat, Tom said he would pass the cable round her outside, so as not to bury her; and this being done we gave another heave, but with no better results than before.
“Seems to me,” I said, “these handspikes are too short.”
“That may be,” answered Tom, “but how are we to reach the tops of longer ones?”
“Why not bend the leadline or boat’s sheet on?” said Bill.
“Better still,” I answered. “We have the blocks of the sheet and halyards. We can reeve a jigger, and make it fast to the top of our lever, and the other end we’ll bring down to that palm there.”
This at last answered, and with each shift of our tackle we were able to haul the boat up about six inches, and in little more than an hour we had got her half out of the water, and altogether on rollers, and found that the water that remained in her no longer ran out. So we set to work and bailed her out, and then she was so much lighter that we were able to dispense with our purchase and long levers and use our short ones again, and before another hour was past we had her high and dry on the beach.
We now left her and set to work about our hut again, and lashing small palm trunks to the four corner-posts, we had the frame of our shanty pretty well up before the sinking of the sun warned us that it was time to prepare for the night.
We spread the torn sail over the weather side to protect us from the wind, and Bill went to the nearest pool to get some fresh fish for our supper, for we would not touch those we had put to smoke; and they were soon grilling on the embers, and furnished us with a capital meal, which we washed down with cocoanut milk.
Supper finished, we made our beds of leaves, and laid us down to sleep, thoroughly tired with our day’s work; but first of all Tom proposed that we should have prayers, and return thanks to God for the mercies shown to us; and this good custom once established, we never departed from it.
When we woke in the morning, Tom and Bill said they would thatch our hut, and that I, as the carpenter of the party, should examine the boat and see what I could do to repair her.
At first sight my task seemed nearly hopeless, for many of her planks were split, and her seams were open and gaping over all the fore part of her, and I had neither nails nor planks with which to mend her.
CHAPTER VI.A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION.
Tom and Bill went on with the hut, and rapidly thatched the roof and weather side, while I was trying, with the fibre of the husks of cocoanuts, to calk the seams and splits in the boat; but I found that instead of doing good I only did harm, for as I forced my extemporized oakum into the openings they gaped wider and wider, and I had to come to the conclusion that to repair a clincher-built boat by calking was beyond my power.
I came up to where my companions were at work, and told them of my failure, and said,—
“I’m afraid I can do nothing to the boat. I only make the leaks worse by calking.”
“Don’t be down-hearted, mate. We’ll have a look at her, and see if we can’t figure out a way to make her sea-worthy, for I don’t intend to live on this island all my days,” said Tom. “Now it’s about time to knock off work for an hour or so, and after we’ve had some food, we’ll all set to work to thatch the hut and have it finished before night.”
Accordingly we knocked off work, and while Bill went to get some fresh fish from a pool, Tom and I went to make up the fire by which we were smoking those we had prepared the day before.
In doing this we found that some coral and shells, which had been mixed up with the fuel, had been burnt, and when we touched it, it fell to pieces.
“Why, it’s lime,” said Tom. “Now that gives me an idea. In India and China I’ve seen lime and oil used for calking instead of pitch, and we’ll plaster the boat inside with the mixture, so as to keep out the water.”
“That’s very well,” I said, “but where’s the oil to come from?”
“Why, out of the cocoanuts. You know all the copra, as they call it, which we shipped in theGolden Fleeceis only dried cocoanut kernels, and all they use it for is to make oil.”
“Well, then, but we can’t get the oakum to hold in the boat, and all your oily mortar will crack out.”
“No doubt we’ll find a way. But come now, Bill has dinner ready, and after dinner we’ll finish the hut, and I daresay before long we’ll think of a way to patch the boat.”
That evening saw our hut, as far as the outside was concerned, pretty well finished, and we were able to sleep in it comfortably and warmly. Next morning, when Bill went to fetch our fish for breakfast, he brought back the unpleasant news that several of the pools were dry, and the fish dead and beginning to smell most unpleasantly.
“Well,” said Tom, “we must clear them out, or we shall be killed by the smell. We shall have a regular pestilence. After breakfast we must set about that before anything else.”
We set out accordingly as soon as we could, and found that what Bill had said was only too true, and a most unpleasant day’s work we had throwing the dead fish into the sea; and we found that even in the pools where some water remained it was sinking so rapidly that the fish in them would soon die also.
As we sat round our fire that night, we were speaking of the necessity of going on with this disagreeable work, when Bill said, “Anyway, we might make a pond here of coral rocks, which would keep a good many in.”
“That’s right, Bill,” I answered. “Don’t you think so, Tom?”
“Surely; and we can’t do better than go on with it in the morning.”
Next morning, as soon as it was light, we set about looking for a spot where we could keep our fish, and before long we lighted on a small creek about twenty feet long by ten wide at the entrance, and in which the water was about six feet deep.
To close up the entrance with a pile of coral blocks thrown together loosely was not a difficult matter, and during the whole of the next week we were busy doing this and filling the pond or stew with live fish, salting and smoking others, and finishing our house, to which we contrived a door and windows, closed with frames made of the midribs of the palm leaves, on which were worked a matting of the fronds.
Our beds we made of the husks of dry cocoanuts, which we pounded with stones to loosen the fibre; and from the shells of the nuts we fashioned a number of utensils which we added to our scanty stock.
When this work was all finished, I asked Tom Arbor if he had thought of any means of repairing our boat, and he said “Yes,” and that now we could set about it as soon as we liked.
His plan, when he described it, was to make a coating all over the inside of the boat below the thwarts of cocoanut fibre mixed with lime and oil, and to keep it in its place by an inner lining of planks fashioned out of the trunks of the palms.
This idea seemed capital, and we had now to provide means for carrying it out.
During the whole time we had been drying our fish, of which we now had some two hundred pounds well cured and salted, and which, we found, made a pleasant change from those we took out of our stew, we had mixed coral and shells with the fuel, and had now a good stock of lime. The oakum from the husks of the cocoanuts we could easily make—indeed, by this time we had become so expert in preparing it that ambitious ideas of rope-making had entered our heads; but to secure the inner lining, and to provide the necessary oil for our cement, was a more difficult business.
We tried boiling bits of the copra, or dried kernel, in our pannikins, and soaking pieces in the shells of the turtles, which we had carefully preserved, but with but little success. Next we made a rude mortar by chopping a square hole in the side of a prostrate palm and pounding the copra in it; but the fibrous wood soaked up the oil as quickly as we pounded it out.
“Come, now, let’s put our considering-caps on again, and see what we can do,” said Tom.
At last I said,—
“I have it! Let’s make a square box, and plaster it inside with lime, and then fill it with the copra chopped as fine as we can in bags of palm leaves, and then squeeze it with a lever and purchase in the same way as we got the boat up, and let the oil run into the turtle shell and any empty cocoanuts we can muster.”
After several attempts, which were more or less unsuccessful, we managed to rig up a sort of press; and at the end of a fortnight we had enough oil for our purpose, and then set to work to split our planks for the lining. This was easy enough, as the trunks of the trees were easily divided; but when we had all our material ready, the question of securing the lining had to be faced.
From the bottom boards and stern and head sheets, which we had to take up to do our work thoroughly, we managed to get a good many nails, and out of the wood we made strips to run athwart ships over our planks of cocoanut; and these strips we shaved and nailed down in their places, and so at last managed to get the boat water-tight, and, as Tom said, much stronger, in case she ran on a rock, than she had ever been before.
“Now,” he said, “we will go for a voyage to the other side of the island; but first we will paint her over outside with lime and oil, so that the weeds won’t grow on her.”
This did not take us long, and when we had finished we launched her, and found to our delight that she was perfectly stanch; but when she was in the water, we found that we had put so much extra weight in her that she floated dangerously low.
“Oh,” said Tom, “that won’t do; if she shipped a sea now she would go down like a stone.”
“But, anyway, we can go to the other side of the lagoon, for there must be some pigeons there. We saw some the first day, and none have come near our hut, and I’m tired of fish and cocoanuts,” said Bill.
“No, I won’t run any risk,” said Tom. “I’ll deck her right in, except a well for our stores, and we can raise on her gunwale with a couple of good strakes of palm.”
“More work!” I answered. “And where are the nails to come from?”
“No nails wanted. We’ll lace ’em on India fashion,” said Tom, “and put a couple of half trunks round her as fenders.”
“That’s work enough, Tom. However, as you say it, done it must be; but I hope you’ll remember the carpenter.”
Tom laughed, and said it was but to be on the safe side, and that he intended to have the boat sea-worthy.
We got the boat moored in a little creek like that we had made into our fish pond, and for the next three days we were very busy with her, and got a strake of cocoanut plank about eight inches wide round her fore and aft.
When this was done, Bill and I at last prevailed on Tom to make the voyage to the weather side of the lagoon to see what might be found there.
Bill and I flew for our paddles as soon as Tom assented to our wish, and taking with us some smoked fish and a dozen of green cocoanuts to drink on our way, we started off, Bill and I paddling, while Tom was busy in the stern hammering and chopping at something which, as to paddle we faced forward, we could not see.
“What are you making all that row about, Tom, old man?” asked Bill.
“Never you mind. You’ll see in good time,” he answered.
“Oh!” I cried; “Tom has an old head on young shoulders. I wonder his hair ain’t grey. He’s doing something good, you may be sure.”
When we left off paddling once or twice to open a cocoanut and drink its juice, Tom hid what he had been doing from us, and it was not until we landed on the weather part of the reef that we found what he had been doing, when he proudly loaded a musket he had brought with him with slugs, and firing, knocked over a couple of green pigeons.
Bill was so delighted with this that he begged to be allowed to pluck and cook them at once, saying he cared more for a roast pigeon than for all the discoveries we were going to make.
Leaving him intent on his culinary labours, Tom and I pushed on through the cocoanut trees, and after walking some fifty yards we came to a small mound or protuberance of a different sort of rock from the coral of which the rest of the island was composed, and from this gushed forth, more precious in our eyes than a gold mine or all the diamonds of Golconda, a tiny rill of crystal-bright water.
We both saw it at the same moment, and, rushing forward, drank, and bathed our hands and faces, and set up a great shout to call Bill to come to us.
So absorbed were we in the delight of finding this spring—for we had not the slightest hope of finding one on this reef—that it was not till after Bill, attracted by our shouts, had come up to us that we noticed the signs of man’s handiwork close to the spring.
On the ground we saw lying some troughs made of hollowed palm trunks, which had evidently once conveyed the waters of the spring to some place where they were required.
“Let us follow up these,” I said. “We may find something of use.”
“Not much likelihood,” said Tom. “Some poor shipwrecked man made these, and they have evidently not been used for years. He has either died or else got away.”
“Anyway, we can but look to see how he lived, and we may find something that will be of use,” I answered.
“Of course,” replied Tom; “we’ve come over to see the whole place, and we will look carefully about for anything that may be of use, only don’t raise your hopes.”
Hardly had he spoken when we heard the crowing of a cock.
“Hark!” cried Bill; “there’s fowls. There may be some one alive yet. Come along.”
We all pushed forward in the direction of the sound, and soon came upon a space which had once been cleared, but was now all covered with undergrowth, and in the midst of which stood a hut, the walls of which, being built of logs cut from the palms, still remained, but the thatched roof had fallen in.
Towards this we pushed our way, disturbing, as we did, several fowls, and noticing that among the tangled undergrowth there grew a good quantity of maize, and that evidently at one time this space had been cultivated.
Up the walls of the hut grew creepers, and the holes which had served as door and windows were thickly matted with them, so that we had to cut them away in order to effect an entrance.
CHAPTER VII.BILL MAKES A DISCOVERY.
When we got inside we could at first see but little, for the thatched roof, which had fallen in, had buried everything with a dusty brown covering; so we set to work to clear this out, and see if it hid anything that might be of value to us.
In one corner there was apparently a mound of these half-decayed leaves, and we decided on commencing our work there; but judge of our horror when, after removing a few armfuls, we came upon the skull of a man, and then proceeding more carefully and reverently, we uncovered a skeleton lying on a sort of bed-place, wrapped in blankets, which crumbled to dust as we touched them.
“Poor fellow,” said Tom; “he must have died here alone, with none to bury him. Let us do it now.”
Both Bill and I agreed with this, for we were too frightened by these poor remains of mortality to go on with our search, and we gladly set to work to clear away a space where with our knives and hatchets we could dig a grave.
While we were thus occupied, Tom made a sort of mat of plaited palm leaves, in which he carefully put the skeleton, and lashed it all up with sinnet.
“I wonder who or what he was,” he said, as he came bearing his sad burden to where Bill and I were at work, and had by this time dug the grave to a depth of about three feet.
“That will do,” said Tom; “now get some palm leaves, and line the whole.”
As soon as we had done this, we reverently laid the bundle containing the skeleton in the grave, and covered it in, and then at Tom’s suggestion we knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer.
By this time it was getting on toward sunset, and it was necessary to prepare for our night’s lodging. While Tom went to see the boat properly secured, I made a fire, and Bill acted as cook; and as in looking about for fuel I had come upon a nest of eggs, we promised ourselves a feast, and glad indeed were we to wash down the eggs with sweet, fresh water, and to add to our meal some heads of Indian corn roasted in the ashes.
Next morning before daylight Tom woke Bill and me, and said, “Now be quiet and come with me. I have marked where the fowls roost, and if we come on them softly, we may secure some before they wake.”
Softly and stealthily we stole to the place Tom showed us, and there we found the remains of a shed, under which there were a series of perches on which some thirty or forty fowls were roosting.
As quietly as we could we seized on them, and tied their legs together; but before we had secured more than a dozen, the rest were alarmed and made their escape.
“Never mind, lads,” said Tom; “we’ll get the others another night. And now, when we have had breakfast, we will go on with the examination of the hut.”
It did not take us long to clear out the remainder of the thatch, and we soon found that the hut had been built with great care and ingenuity.
The bed-place on which we had found the skeleton occupied one corner, and under it was a seaman’s chest, in which we found some carefully-patched clothes, and the tattered remains of a Bible, and the fragments of a chart.
No name or anything to give a clue to their owner was to be found, except that on the horn handle of a clasp-knife were cut “Jack” and a couple of crosses. We also found a sailor’s ditty-bag, containing needles and thread, palm for sewing, beeswax, and buttons.
Tom said he was glad indeed to find the Bible, for now he said we should be able to read a chapter every night when we said our prayers; and the chart he carefully examined to see if it might give a clue to our whereabouts, and tell us if any inhabited islands existed within a distance which we might reach in safety in our boat.
On the chart there was a cross made with a bit of charcoal, and from it were drawn a series of lines in various directions, as if the unhappy man whose remains we had buried had pored over it for many a weary hour, and attempted to calculate some means of escape from his solitary island home.
“Curious!” I said. “He must have tried to make a boat or something. But see, there are a lot of islands away to the westward of that cross, which I suppose means this island; I should think he might have tried for them.”
“Wait a bit, mates,” said Tom; “we’ll find out more soon.”
And proceeding with our search in the middle of the room, we found a table, which had fallen to the ground, made of some pieces of wood which had evidently belonged to the companion of a ship, and stools of the same material.
On the table we found written in charcoal letters, which could scarcely be deciphered:—
“......cowar-s......left alone......no hope......ill ......heart-broken......money.”
What this meant we soon understood, all except the last. The man we had buried had been deserted by his companions; but what was meant by money we could not understand. Perhaps they had had money on the island, and quarrelled about its division.
This we put carefully on one side, and then, proceeding with our search, we found a fireplace made of wood, plastered with lime, and full of wood-ashes, and on it were an iron pot and a frying-pan.
Scattered about we found cups made out of cocoanut shells, and a couple of plates, which had been broken and cleverly cemented with lime on to bits of wood.
“Evidently he did not die of starvation,” said Tom, “for he had fowls, cocoanuts, and Indian corn; but now let us see what else there is on the island, for I think we have pretty well seen everything in the hut.”
Leaving the hut, we passed through the clearing, and then through some more palm trees, and soon emerged on the weather side of the island, on which the surf was beating with relentless fury.
Here, half buried in sand or hidden by vegetation, we found scattered about the wreckage of a schooner of about two hundred tons, which must have been run plump on to the island.
Close to the beach we found another small hut, inside which were stowed canvas, carpenter’s tools, and cordage; and close by we could see several pieces of wood from the wreck, which had evidently been fashioned into parts of a boat, and a pile of planks from the deck of the ship, as well as several others of her belongings, all covered over with the remnants of palm-thatching.
Whoever he was, the man had been trying to build a boat.
“I wonder what prevented him,” said Bill.
“What’s that sticking up there?” I asked, pointing to a piece of wood among the undergrowth.
“Why, the handle of an adze,” answered Tom.
Looking at this, we soon found the reason why the unfortunate man had desisted from his work, and probably the cause of his death.
The rusty iron of the adze had stuck deep in a plank, and lying by it were some small bones, which it did not need any knowledge of anatomy to see belonged to a human foot.
Evidently the unfortunate creature had chopped off a part of his foot while engaged in fashioning a piece of wood, and had managed to get back to his hut to die.
“Poor fellow,” said Bill and I in a breath; “he never could have built a craft here, and launched her through that surf.”
“No,” answered thoughtful Tom Arbor, “but he may have intended to build her on the other side, and only shaped the parts here, so as to have less weight to carry or drag across; but, anyway, his death is our good fortune, for we can deck and rig our boat for sea-going from what is here. If I mistake not we need it, for there’s never an island on that chart within three hundred miles of us; and if there are any nearer, they’re likely but places like this, with ne’er a living soul aboard of them.”
“Well, what do you intend to do?” I asked.
“Why, rig up this hut again, and then get all our belongings over to this side; and then deck our boat, and rig her with something easier to handle than a dipping lug.”
“All right; but now we must look after the fowls we caught; they’ll be hungry and thirsty.”
We soon made our way back to the hut; and as many of its rafters were still sound, it did not take us very long to put a roof on that would keep out the sun and all ordinary rain. Bill was off to make a coop for the fowls that we had caught.
This done, we set steadily to work, and after getting all the things that we had left at our first camp to this place, where we were blessed with water, we again hove our boat up on shore; and now, having wood and materials, Tom and I laboured to make a real trustworthy craft, while Bill was told off to look after the fowls, and remove the undergrowth from the clearing, being careful not to injure the maize, which we trusted would furnish us with a supply of food for our intended voyage.
First of all, Tom and I made a deep false keel to our craft, which we named theEscape; and as we could not through bolt it to the keel, we put planks on either side of keel and false keel, and overlapping both, and nailed all solidly together.
This being done, we fixed a head knee in a similar manner; and then having given theEscapea thorough good coating of lime and oil, we launched her again, lest she should get too heavy for us to manage.
This naturally had taken us some days, and Tom and I had laboured from morning to night at her, only coming to the hut for meals, which Bill had always ready for us.
Bill, the evening that we had got theEscapeafloat, said, “You two fellows must think me a precious lazy hound not to come and help you more than I have. Now the boat’s afloat, I want you to come with me to-morrow to see what I have been doing.”
“Why, catching fowls, clearing out the water-troughs, making up the pool they lead into afresh, and all manner of things,” I said.
“That’s not all. I have had time to hunt about, and if you’ll come with me to-morrow, I’ll show you something.”
“Shall we, Tom?” I asked. “I want to think about our ship before we go on with her.”
“Perhaps one day won’t matter. What is it you’ve found, Bill?”
“Never you mind until I show it you.”
It was accordingly agreed that we should the next morning go and see what Bill had to show, and not to ask him to say what it was beforehand.
Early in the morning Bill woke us, and gave us a good breakfast of eggs, roast maize, and a grilled fowl; and when we had finished he said, “Come along, and see what I have to show you.”
First he took us to the spring, and showed us how he had patched up the troughs, cleared out a basin, and lined it with turtle shells, into which the water fell, and which was large enough to take a bath in. Here we all enjoyed a thorough good wash, and sat in turn under the end of the trough from which the water fell into the basin.
Bill soon got tired of being here, and said, “If I’d thought that you would have been so long here, I’d have brought you here last night; now bear a hand, and come on.”
Getting out of the water, we dried ourselves with cocoanut fibre, and putting on our clothes we went on with Bill a short way, until he brought us to a shed he had made for the fowls, which he had enclosed with leaf mats; and here he said he had all the fowls on the island except two or three, and that some hens were laying regularly, while others were sitting on their eggs.
“Certain you’re a regular farmer,” said Tom.
“Wait a bit; I’ll show you if I’m a farmer. Come along here a bit farther.” And following him along, he brought us to a clearing about twice as large as that where our hut stood, and which, like it, had been at one time planted with maize; but here the maize had been stronger than the weeds, and Bill having torn up all the latter, there was to be seen enough Indian corn, nearly ripe, to have loaded theEscapetwice over.
“Well, you are a farmer, surely!” exclaimed both Tom and myself.
“You may say that, but you haven’t seen all yet.”
“What! Not yet?”
“Not by a long chalk. I think the fellow whose hut we have lived up there by himself, and the others down here. Come along, and I’ll show you some more good-luck.”
“You see here,” he said, when we had gone other three hundred yards; “the reef’s cut nearly in two by the sea, and they’ve made a stiff fence right across. And, look; you see they’ve brought the water right down here too. Now over this fence there’s three or four huts, or what was huts; and what d’ye think there is there?”
“Sure we can’t tell. Anything to say what the wreck was, or anything?”
“Not a word or a line, not a scrap of paper; but there’s five graves, and there’s been somewhere about eight or so got away.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Why, by counting the bunks in the huts, to be sure. But, there; you won’t guess what else there is. There’s a turtle-pond, some half-dozen big turtles in it, and there’s pigs.”
“Pigs! Are you sure?” said Tom.
“Sure as eggs is eggs,” answered Bill.
“Can we catch any?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Bill. “I daresay we can if we likes; but I seed some as fat as butter, and an old sow with a lot of young uns. But that ain’t all; there’s something else.”
“What is it? Tell us at once.”
“Do you remember the writing on the table, and that we couldn’t find out what ‘money’ meant?”
“Certainly; but what’s that got to do with what you found?”
“Why, I’ve found the money, and a mighty lot there be, I can tell you. Gold guineas—thousands of them!”
CHAPTER VIII.A NARROW ESCAPE.
“Nonsense, lad,” said Tom. “No craft that sailed these waters ever had thousands of guineas aboard of her, seeing as how there isn’t no use for money in these here parts. All the trade is with beads and iron and such like.”
“Maybe so; but the money’s here, and I found it. It seems as if the man who lived up in our hut, he were separated from his mates, and that he had the money one time.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Why, it seems as if he had hidden it under the fireplace, for there’s a hole under it which would hold the box I’ve found down here; and that they who took it went off in a hurry—maybe saw a sail, and left him and the money behind.”
“Well, where is this money? Come along and let us see it.”
“Why, down in the biggest of them huts there, in a box tied up with cord; but it’s rotted, and the money tumbled out at the sides.”
“There was the box, tied together with string.”Page 76.
“There was the box, tied together with string.”Page 76.
We at once got over the fence, which we could easily see had been built to keep the pigs within bounds, and followed Bill to where there were standing the remains of some huts, which, as he said, had been cleared of what would give any clue as to who the occupants had been; but there, under one of the bed-places, wasthe box, as Seaman had described it, wrapped up in a piece of sail-cloth, tied together with island-made string, and the coverings being more than half rotten, the contents had burst out, and partly rolled, on the ground.
Curious, though the money was safe, and I am sure a roast sucking pig would have been of much more use to us than all the gold that ever was coined, it was to this money we first turned our attention, and agreed that nothing should be done until it was safely stowed away—money that had lain for years untouched and uncared for.
We pulled out the box, and emptied the coins still remaining in it into a heap on the ground, and added to them those which had fallen out, and to our eyes the pile of gold and silver seemed a mound of inexhaustible wealth.
However, we had divided the gold from the silver, and counted it out as nearly as we were able, for there were coins of various nations mixed up with the guineas of which Bill had spoken. We found that there was about twelve hundred pounds—a sum far larger than could have been expected to be found on board a trader in the South Seas.
As soon as we had counted out our money, we began to talk of how we could stow it away; and after much discussion we decided on carrying it to the hut where we were living, and putting it in the dead seaman’s chest.
As we were on our way back with it, just before we came to the fence, we saw some of the pigs of which Bill had told us, and I managed to catch a little squeaker to carry it back for our dinner; but its cries alarmed the mother, who came after us in hot haste, and if we had not been on the fence when she came up she would doubtless have made us pay for kidnapping her offspring. As it was, she caught hold of my trousers in her mouth, and would have hauled me back on top of her if, luckily, they had not been rather rotten and given way, Mrs. Pig falling back with a piece of tarry trousers in her mouth, while I tumbled over on the other side of the fence, by no means sorry to get off so cheaply.
The pigling I had caught I had chucked over before, so all the efforts of the old sow to rescue her darling child from its fate were fruitless, and we soon had him stewing in the iron pot.
Whilst he was cooking, we spoke of the money we had found, and what we should do with it, and puzzled our heads to know where the schooner had come from, and what nation she belonged to.
We thought she was English by the Bible and chart, but the money puzzled us more than enough; so at last we agreed not to bother ourselves about where it came from any more, and began to build castles in the air of buying or building a ship, of which Tom Arbor should be captain, and Bill Seaman and myself the two mates.
Whilst we were yarning away, Bill suddenly said, “I forgot something I found by the box the money was in. Look here!” and he pulled out of the breast of his shirt a small leather bag tied up carefully. “See,” he said, as he undid it and poured out the contents; “there’s a lot of pretty beads; pity they haven’t holes in ’em, or we might string ’em.”
“Well, they are pretty,” said both Tom and myself, as we eagerly bent over the little heap of shining balls; “but ’tis a pity they’re not of a size and true shaped. I suppose they’re some of the beads the natives wouldn’t have to do with. Never mind, we can keep them; there were none like them among the trade aboard of theGolden Fleece.”
The little bag had its contents restored to it, and was stowed away in the chest with our money, and we then all concluded it was time for bed.
By dint of hard work and manœuvring Tom and I, at the end of ten days more, had got our boat raised and decked forward and aft, leaving only an open space amidships in which we could lie down; and in this we also built a cemented fireplace similar to the one we had found in the dead man’s hut. Outside the boat we had also fastened a great, bolster-like fender of cocoanut fibre, which we served over with string made of the same material, the whole being thoroughly soaked in a mixture of cocoanut oil and hog fat; for Bill, while we were acting as shipwrights, had been farming and hunting to make provision for our voyage, and as we said we wanted grease, he had boiled down the remains of two porkers, of which he had salted part to furnish us with meat.
The only question now remaining was to rig our little ship, and this gave rise to endless discussion. At first we decided on keeping her mizzen as it was, and altering the torn dipping lug into a jib and standing lug; but we soon saw that she was now so much deeper and heavier that this would scarcely move her except in very heavy weather.
After much trouble we managed, by fitting her with a bowsprit and using up all that was not rotten of the canvas we had found on the island, to give her a suit of sails for going on a wind, and made a huge mat of palm leaves for a square-sail to be set in running.
All being completed, we packed on board under her fore and aft decks a stock of provisions, consisting of dried and salted pig, turtle flesh, smoked fish, and maize; while, besides our beakers, we had hundreds of cocoanut shells full of water, and on deck we had a coop of a dozen fowls.
All being prepared, our stock, according to our calculations, being enough to last us for at least a couple of months, we paddled theEscapeout of the lagoon, and, making sail to a fresh trade wind which blew on our beam, we steered in the direction of the nearest island marked on the chart.
Though we had been now a long time on the island, and had found a refuge there from starvation or a still more dreadful death by thirst, we quitted it without regret, and launched forth on our voyage into the unknown.
As to setting our course, at first we had an idea by the sun by day, and we had learned aboard of theGolden Fleecethat when the Southern Cross was vertical it was always due south; but I do not suppose we were ever accurate within two or three points either way of south-west, which we aimed at, and mostly by keeping the wind abeam.
TheEscapemade very good weather and steered easily, but, notwithstanding the size of her patchwork sails, she did not go fast through the water. “Never mind, lads,” said Tom, when Bill and I complained of this; “it’s better than a leaky corner of the forecastle of theFleeceto sleep in.”
“Yes,” I said, “and there ain’t no mate to boot us or bos’n to rope’s-end us here either.”
“Ay, and more than that,” cried Bill, who was superintending the boiling of our pot, in which was a piece of beautiful pork and some maize, “our tucker here ain’t mouldy, weevilly biscuit and salt junk that’s more fit for sole leather than food for humans.”
“Well done, cobbler,” was our answer, and we put up patiently with the slowness of our progress when we considered how much better off we were than we had ever been aboard of theGolden Fleece.
The first day and night and all the next day passed away without our seeing anything save porpoises, which gambolled around, looking, as they always do to my mind, the happiest of created beings, flying-fish, and silver-winged gulls. But about the middle of the second night Bill, who had the watch, called out, “Rouse up, mates; whatever is that?”
Tom and I were awake in a second, and looking ahead as he told us, we saw a sight which all the fireworks ever made by the ingenuity of man could not have equalled. High up in the heavens, blotting out the stars, was a dense, black cloud, which seemed to be supported on a pillar or fountain of fire, and from the cloud were raining down masses of matter white-hot, red-hot. While we were looking, indeed before we had properly cleared our eyes of sleep, we heard a tremendous noise, louder than a thousand claps of thunder, and the breeze which had been carrying us steadily along suddenly ceased.
“Whatever can that be?” I cried. “A ship blown up?”
“A ship!” answered Tom. “No ship that ever floated could give a sight like that, nor a clap neither. That’s a burning mountain. I’ve heard as there be some in these parts.”
Clap succeeded clap, but though all wonderful, none of them equalled in intensity of the sound the first one, while the fountain of fire leaped up and down in the most marvellous manner.
“Look out, boys; be smart and shorten sail,” said Tom. “I’ve heard as how there be great waves after one of these blows-up, and we must keep our craft bows on if so be as we are not to be swamped.”
Sail was shortened as quickly as we could, and our well covered over with the canvas to prevent us being swamped; and then Tom told us to lash ourselves to the deck, and get our paddles out, while he got the oar over the stern, so as to be ready to twist the boat in any direction.
Scarcely were we ready when we heard a low, moaning sound, and soon saw a wall of water of appalling height sweeping rapidly towards us. We worked frantically at oar and paddles, and fortunately it met us bows on; but so steep was the wave that we could not rise properly to it, and for what seemed an appalling time we were buried in the water. Would our boat free herself and rise again, or would she sink under the weight, and drag us down with her to the depths of the ocean?
Such were the thoughts which passed through my mind, and, I doubt not, through the minds of my companions; but they were answered by our emerging from the wave with our gunwale broken, but otherwise uninjured. Our decks proved stanch, and though the weight of water had beaten the sails down into the well, which was full, the boat still floated.
“Quick! you two unlash yourselves, and bail for your lives, for there’ll be some more of these waves, and if she meets them half water-logged as she is, down to Davy Jones’s locker we go,” cried Tom.
Bill and I did not need any second bidding to obey Tom’s order, while he straightened the boat in the direction the wave had struck, and we bailed away for dear life.
Before we were half clear we heard the same sort of sound as had heralded the first wave, and again we were struck and half buried by the water; but the wave was not so high as the first, and we came through at the cost only of having to bail out more water.
Each successive wave, for there were a dozen, was smaller and smaller, and at last the sea became smooth again, and the trade winds blew once more; while from the burning mountain, instead of a fountain of fire and sparks, we could only see the rosy reflection of flames on rolling masses of white smoke.
We soon repaired our damage, and made sail with, as far as we could see, no real harm done save that the coop with our fowls in it had been washed away, and the wood we had for our fire was so damp that it would not light, and we had to make our breakfast of raw pork and uncooked Indian corn.
When the sun rose, we hung up our clothes to dry, and found that we could still see the column of smoke, though not the reflection of the flames.
Tom steered steadily for this smoke, and when we asked if we were not running into danger by steering for the volcano, he comforted us by saying that after such a blow-up as we’d seen there could be no other for some time; and, as he understood, these burning mountains were always in the centre of a group of islands, and we should be sure to find inhabitants, and maybe a schooner or ship trading for sandalwood, bêche de mer, and copra, in which we could get a passage to China, Australia, or New Zealand.
Though the trade winds blew fresh and the sun was shining, the whole air seemed to be full of a sort of brown haze; and we found that our decks, sails, clothes, hair, in fact everything, were covered with a fine, brown dust, which settled down on us, and in such quantities that we had to keep on shovelling it overboard or we should have sunk under its weight.
All day we sailed on in the direction of the smoke, and at night we again saw it lighted up by the reflection of the fire beneath. We were tired and weary, and though we took it in turns to steer and look out, the helmsman often found his head bobbing down on his chest. But in the middle of the night we were all frightened out of our sleepiness by the boat striking some hard substance.
“What’s up?” cried Tom, as he came out of the well, where he and I had been sleeping. “What have you run into, Bill?”
Bill was as much startled as we were, and as the bumps were repeated, we concluded it would be best to shorten sail and wait for daylight, though we at once sounded, in case we might be near any land, but found no bottom, though we bent every available bit of rope on to our leadline.
When the sun rose we saw a strange sight indeed, for the whole surface of the sea was covered with floating masses of stone, through which we had to make our way, two of us standing in the bow to fend off the lumps as we got close to them.
“Well, in all my born days I never sailed a boat among a lot of paving-stones ’afore,” said Tom. “I suppose they was blowed up out of the mountain.”
This made us laugh, but the work of shoving off the floating pumice stone from the boat was very severe, and we had several times to shorten sail while we rested from the labour; but by the middle of the afternoon the pieces began to get fewer and fewer, and before sunset the surface of the sea was clear of them, and we could steer our course without let or hindrance.
In the middle watch, under the smoke, I saw (it was my watch) what looked like a black mass streaked with threads of fiery gold. And when I was relieved by Tom, he told me that that must be the side of the fiery mountain; and sure enough when I awoke after daylight, there, right ahead of us, towered a great mountain out of the sea, crowned by a mass of smoke.
Near the top the mountain was black and bare, but lower down its sides were clothed with forests, through which the liquid fire poured out of the crater had cut broad gashes.
Tom, who was steering, was heading away so as to pass to the north of the island, which we were rapidly doing; and Bill was lacing some palm-leaf mats together to set as a square-sail, a task in which I at once joined him.