An American Robinson Crusoe for American Boys and Girls Part 4

One thing troubled Robinson very much. He could not sit comfortably while eating. He had neither chair nor table. He wished to make them, but that was a big job. He had no saw, no hammer, no auger and no nails.

Robinson could not, therefore, make a table of wood.

Not far from his cave he had seen a smooth, flat stone. "Ay," thought he, "perhaps I can make me a table out of stone." He picked out the best stone and built up four columns as high as a table and on these he laid his large, flat stone. It looked like a table, sure enough, but there were rough places and hollows in it. He wanted it smooth. He took clay and filled up the holes and smoothed it off. When the clay dried, the surface was smooth and hard. Robinson covered it with leaves and decked it with flowers till it was quite beautiful.

When the table was done, Robinson began on a chair. He made it also of stone. It had no back. It looked like a bench. It was uncomfortable to sit on. Robinson covered it with moss. Then it was an easy seat.

Table and chair were now ready. Robinson could not move them from one corner to another, nor when he sat on the chair could he put his feet under the table, and yet he thought them excellent pieces of furniture.

Every day Robinson went hunting and shot a rabbit, but the meat would not keep. At home they would have put it in the cellar. If only he had a cellar! He saw near his cave a hole in the rock. He dug it out a little with his mussel sh.e.l.l and found that it led back under a rock.

From much bending over in digging, Robinson's back, unused to severe toil, ached wretchedly. He decided to make a spade. With his flint he bored four holes in a great, round mussel sh.e.l.l. They formed a rectangle as long as a little finger and as wide. Through these holes he drew cocoanut fibre and bound the sh.e.l.l to a handle fast and strong.

With his spade he dug a hole so deep that he could stand in it upright.

Then he put in a couple of shelves made of flat stones. In this cellar he put his rabbit meat and his eggs. Then he laid branches over it and finally covered the whole with leaves.

XVIII

ROBINSON BECOMES A SHEPHERD

With his bow and arrow, Robinson went hunting every day. The rabbits soon learned to know him and let themselves be seldom seen. As soon as they saw him, they took alarm. They became timid and shy. One day Robinson went out as usual to shoot rabbits. He found none. But as he came to a great rock he heard from behind a new sound, one he had not heard before in the island. Ba-a-a, it sounded.

"A kid," thought Robinson, "like that with which I have so often played at home."

He slipped noiselessly around the rock and behold, really there stood a kid. He tried to call it, but the kid sought safety in flight. He hastened after it. Then he noticed that it was lame in one fore foot. It ran into some brush, where Robinson seized it by the horns and held it fast.

How Robinson rejoiced! He stroked it and fondled it. Then he thought, how could it come into this wilderness on this lonesome island? "Has your ship been cast upon the rocks too, and been broken to pieces? You dear thing, you shall be my comrade." He seized the goat by the legs, and no matter how it kicked, carried it to his cave.

Then he fetched quickly a cocoanut sh.e.l.l full of water and washed and bathed the goat's wounded leg. A stone had rolled down from the hill and had inflicted a severe wound on its left fore leg, or perhaps it had stepped into a crack in the rocks. Robinson tore off a piece of linen from his shirt, dipped it in water and bound it with shreds of the cocoanut upon the wound. Then he pulled some gra.s.s and moss and made a soft bed near the door of the cave. After he had given it water, it looked at him with thankful eyes and licked his hand.

Robinson could not sleep that night. He thought continually of his goat and got up time and again to see if it was safe. The moon shone clear in the heavens. As Robinson sat before the goat's bed he looked down on his new possession as lovingly as a mother on her child.

The next morning Robinson's first thought was, "I am no longer alone. I have a companion, my goat." He sprang up and looked for it. There she lay on her side, still sleeping.

As he stood and considered, the thought came to him that perhaps the goat had escaped from its keeper. There must then be some one living on the land. He quickly put on his shoes and his hat, took his parasol, and ran to the rock where he had found the goat.

He called, he sought, he peered about to see if some shepherd were there somewhere. He found nothing. He found no trace of man. There was no road, no bridge, no field, no logs, not even a chip or shaving to show that the hand of man had been there.

But what was that? In the distance ran a herd of goats over the rocks.

But no dog followed them and no shepherd. They ran wild on the island.

They had perhaps been left there by some ship. As he came home he noticed the goat sorrowfully. The bandage had become dry. The goat might be suffering pain. Robinson loosened the bandage, washed the wound again and bound it up anew. It was so trustful. It ran after him and he decided always to protect it.

"I will always be your shepherd and take care of you," he said.

XIX

ROBINSON BUILDS A HOME FOR HIS GOAT

But the goat was a new care. Wild animals could come and kill and carry Robinson's goat away while he slept, and if the goat got frightened while he was hunting it would run away.

"I will have to make me a little yard in front of my cave," he said, "for my goat to live in." But from whence must come the tools? He had neither hatchet nor saw. Where then were the stakes to come from? He went in search of something. After hunting for a long time he came upon a kind of thistle about two feet higher than himself, having at its top a red torch-like blossom. There were a great many of them.

"Good!" thought Robinson. "If I could only dig up enough of them and plant them thick around the door of my cave, I would have just the thing. No one could get at me, nor at the goat, either. The thorns would keep anything from creeping through, peeping in or getting over."

So he took his mussel-sh.e.l.l spade and went to work. It was pretty hard, but at length he succeeded in laying bare the roots of quite a number.

But he could not drag them to his cave on account of the thorns sticking in him. He thought a long time. Finally, he sought out two strong poles or branches which were turned up a little at one end and like a sled runner. To these he tied twelve cross-pieces with bark. To the foremost he tied a strong rope made from cocoa fiber. He then had something that looked much like a sled on which to draw his thistle-like brush to his cave. But for one day he had done enough. The transplanting of the thistles was hard work. His spade broke and he had to make a new one. In the afternoon he broke his spade again. And as he made his third one, he made up his mind that it was no use trying to dig with such a weak tool in the hard ground. It would only break again.

"If I only had a pick." But he had none. He found a thick, hard, sharp stone. With it he picked up the hard earth, but had to bend almost double in using it. "At home," he thought, "they have handles to picks."

The handle was put through a hole in the iron. He turned the matter over and over in his mind, how he might put a hole through the stone.

But he found no means. He searched out a branch with a crotch at one end. He tied the stone to this with strong cocoa fiber and bark. How his eye glistened as he looked at the new tool! Now he began to work. He first loosened up the earth with his pick, then he dug it out with his spade and planted in a high thistle. Many days he had to work, but finally one evening the hedge was ready. He had a row in a semi-circle in front of his cave. He counted the marks on his calendar tree. The day on which he had begun to make his hedge he had especially marked out.

He had worked fourteen days.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBINSON'S TOOLS]

He had completed his hedge with the exception of a small hole that must serve for a door. But the door must not be seen from without.

As Robinson thought, it came to him that there was still place for two thistles on the outside. He could easily get in, but the entrance was difficult to find from the outside.

Robinson looked on his hedge from without. It was not yet thick enough.

For this reason he planted small thistles between the larger ones. With the digging them out and transplanting them he was a whole week longer.

Finally, the hedge and the yard were ready. Now Robinson could rest without fear and sleep in his cave, and could have his goat near him all the time. It delighted him greatly. It ran after him continually like a dog. When he came back from an absence, it bleated for joy and ran to meet him as soon as he got inside the hedge. Robinson felt that he was not entirely alone. He had now a living being near him.

XX

ROBINSON GETS READY FOR WINTER

There was one thing that troubled Robinson greatly. "What will become of me when the winter comes? I will have no fire to warm me. I have no clothing to protect me from the cold, and where shall I find food when snow and ice cover all the ground and when the trees are bare and the spring is frozen? It will be cold then in my cave; what shall I do? It is cold and rainy already. I believe this is harvest time and winter will soon be here. Winter and no stove, no winter clothing, no winter store of food and no winter dwelling. What shall I do?"

He considered again the project of making fire. He again sought out two pieces of wood and sat down and rubbed them together. The sweat rolled down his face. When the wood began to get warm, his hand would become tired, and he would have to stop. When he began again the wood was cold.

He worked for an hour or two, then he laid the wood aside and said, "I don't believe I can do it. I must do the next best thing. I can at least get warm clothing to protect me from the rain and snow." He looked down at his worn, thin clothing, his trousers, his shirt, his jacket; they had become so thin and worn that they were threadbare.

"I will take the skins of the hares which I have shot and will make me something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed a knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece of wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre. His stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite well. But what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines would do. "But they are hardly strong enough," he thought. He pulled the sinews from the bones of the rabbit and found them hard. Maybe he could use them. He found fish skeletons on the seash.o.r.e and bored a hole in the end of the small, sharp rib bones. Then he threaded his bone needle with the rabbit sinews and attempted to sew, but it would not go. His needle broke. The skin was too hard. He bored holes in the edge of the pieces of skin and sewed through the holes. This went very well.

He sewed the skins together with the hair side inward, made himself a jacket, a pair of trousers, a hat, and finally covered his parasol with rabbit skin, for the rain had already dripped through the leaves of it.

All went well, only the trousers did not fit. He loosened them and puckered them to no purpose. "Anyway," he thought, "I am now well protected from the cold, when it does come."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBINSON IN HIS NEW SUIT]