Palm Tree Island Part 9

CHAPTER THE TENTH

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.

[Sidenote: Plantations]

So the winter pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Jug with Bent-wood Handle and Cup]

[Sidenote: 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 st.u.r.dy 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Brush Billy made, showing also the manner of it]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ONE DAY I FOUND HIM TRYING TO SHAVE WITH A FLINT."]

[Sidenote: 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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: 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 quant.i.ties 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 appet.i.tes, 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, "G.o.d 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.

[Sidenote: 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 circ.u.mstance 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 s.p.a.ce, so that we might cut a pa.s.sage 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 sh.o.r.e. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sage 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 circ.u.mference 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.

[Sidenote: 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 quant.i.ty 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.