Swiss Family Robinson Part 23

A most ludicrous scene awaited me when I reached the spot. They were dancing and shouting round and round a gra.s.sy glade, and I as nearly as possible followed their example, for in the centre, surrounded by a promising litter, lay our old sow, whose squeals, previously so alarming, were now subsiding into comfortable grunts of recognition.

I did not join my boys in their triumphal dance, but I was nevertheless very much pleased at the sight of the flourishing family, and immediately returned to the cart to obtain biscuits and potatoes for the benefit of the happy mother. Jack and Ernest meanwhile pushed further on, and brought back the sack of candleberries and the caoutchouc, and as we could not then take the sow with us, we left her alone with her family and proceeded to Falconhurst.

The animals were delighted to see us back again, and received us with manifestations of joy, but looked askance at the new pets.

The eagle especially came in for shy glances, and promised to be no favourite. Fritz, however, determined that his pet should at present do no harm, secured him by the leg to a root of the fig-tree and uncovered his eyes. In a moment the aspect of the bird was changed; with his sight returned all his savage instincts, he flapped his wings, raised his head, darted to the full length of his chain, and before anyone could prevent him seized the unfortunate parrot which stood near, and tore it to pieces. Fritz's anger rose at the sight, and he was about to put an end to the savage bird.

'Stop,' said Ernest, 'don't kill the poor creature, he is but following his natural instincts; give him to me, and I will tame him.'

Fritz hesitated. 'No, no,' he said, 'I don't want really to kill the bird, but I can't give him up; tell me how to tame him, and you shall have Master Knips.'

'Very well,' replied Ernest, 'I will tell you my plan, and, if it succeeds, I will accept Knips as a mark of your grat.i.tude. Take a pipe and tobacco, and send the smoke all round his head, so that he must inhale it; by degrees he will become stupefied, and his savage nature from that moment subdued.'

Fritz was rather inclined to ridicule the plan, but knowing that Ernest generally had a good reason for anything of the sort that he proposed, he consented to make the attempt. He soon seated himself beneath the bird, who still struggled furiously, and puffed cloud after cloud upwards, and as each cloud circled round the eagle's head he became quieter and quieter, until he sat quite still, gazing stupidly at the young smoker.

'Capital!' cried Fritz, as he hooded the bird, 'capital, Ernest; Knips is yours.'

Chapter 8

Next morning the boys and I started with the cart laden with our bundles of bamboos to attend to the avenue of fruit trees. The buffalo we left behind, for his services were not needed, and I wished the wound in his nostrils to become completely cicatrized before I again put him to work.

We were not a moment too soon; many of the young trees which before threatened to fall had now fulfilled their promise, and were lying prostrate on the ground, others were bent, some few only remained erect. We raised the trees, and digging deeply at their roots, drove in stout bamboo props, to which we lashed them firmly with strong broad fibres.

'Papa,' said Franz, as we were thus engaged, and he handed me the fibres as I required them, 'are these wild or tame trees?'

'Oh, these are wild trees, most ferocious trees,' laughed Jack, 'and we are tying them up lest they should run away, and in a little while we will untie them and they will trot about after us and give us fruit wherever we go. Oh, we will tame them; they shall have a ring through their noses like the buffalo!'

'That's not true,' replied Franz, gravely, 'but there are wild and tame trees, the wild ones grow out in the woods like the crab-apples, and the tame ones in the garden like the pears and peaches at home. Which are these, papa?'

'They are not wild,' I replied, 'but grafted or cultivated or, as you call them, tame trees. No European tree bears good fruit until it is grafted!' I saw a puzzled look come over the little boy's face as he heard this new word, and I hastened to explain it.

'Grafting,' I continued, 'is the process of inserting a slip or twig of a tree into what is called an eye; that is, a knot or hole in the branch of another. This twig or slip then grows and produces, not such fruit as the original stock would have borne, but such as the tree from which it was taken would have produced. Thus, if we have a sour crab tree, and an apple tree bearing fine ribston pippins, we would take a slip of the latter, insert it in an eye of the former, and in a year or two the branch which it would then grow would be laden with good apples.'

'But,' asked Ernest, 'where did the slips of good fruit come from, if none grow without grafting?'

'From foreign countries,' I replied. 'It is only in the cold climate of our part of the world that they require this grafting; in many parts of the world, in more southern lat.i.tudes than ours, the most luscious fruit trees are indigenous to the soil, and flourish and bear sweet, wholesome fruit, without the slightest care of attention being bestowed upon them; while in England and Germany, and even in France, these same trees require the utmost exertion of horticultural skills to make them bring forth any fruit whatever.

'Thus, when the Romans invaded England they found nothing in the way of fruit trees but the crab-apple, nut bushes, and bramble bushes, but by grafting on these, fine apples, filberts, and raspberries were produced, and it was the same in our own dear Switzerland--all our fruit trees were imported.'

'Were cherries, father? May we not even call cherries Swiss? I always thought they grew nowhere else.'

'I am afraid we cannot even claim cherries as our own, not even the name of them; they are called cherries from Cerasus, a state of Pontus, in Asia, whence they were brought to Europe by Lucullus, a Roman general, about seventy years before Christ.

'Hazelnuts also come from Pontus; walnuts, again, came originally from Persia. As for grapes, they are of the greatest antiquity. We hear, if you remember, of Noah cultivating vines, and they have been brought from one place to another until they now are to be found in most parts of the civilized world.'

'Do you think all these trees will grow?' asked Fritz, as we crossed Jackal River and entered our plantation at Tentholm. 'Here are lemons, pomegranates, pistachio nuts, and mulberries.'

'I have little doubt of it,' I replied, 'we are evidently within the tropics, where such trees as these are sure to flourish.

'These pines, now, come from France, Spain, and Italy; the olives from Armenia and Palestine; the figs originally from the island of Chios; the preaches and apricots from Persia; plums from Damascus in Syria, and the pears of all sorts from Greece.

'However, if our countries have not been blessed in the same way with fruit, we have been given wisdom and skill, which has enabled us to import and cultivate the trees of other lands.'

We thus talked and worked until every tree that required the treatment was provided with a stout bamboo prop, and then, with appet.i.tes which a gourmand might well have envied, we returned to Falconhurst.

I think my good wife was almost alarmed at the way we fell upon the corned beef and palm-cabbage she set before us, but at length these good things produced the desired effect, and one after another declared himself satisfied. As we sat reclining after our labour and digesting our dinner we discussed the various projects we had in contemplation.

'I wish,' said my wife, 'that you would invent some other plan for climbing to the nest above us; I think that the nest itself is perfect, I really wish for nothing better, but I should like to be able to get to it without scaling that dreadful ladder every time; could you not make a flight of steps to reach it?'

I carefully thought over the project, and turned over every plan for its accomplishment.

'It would be impossible, I am afraid,' said I, 'to make stairs outside, but within the trunk it might be done. More than once have I thought that this trunk might be hollow or partly so, and if such be the case our task would be comparatively easy. Did you not tell me the other day that you noticed bees coming from a hole in the tree?'

'Oh, yes,' said little Franz, 'and I went to look at them and one flew right against my face and stung me, and I almost cried, but I didn't.'

'Brave little boy,' said I. 'Well, now, if the trunk be sufficiently hollow to contain a swarm of bees, it may be for all we can tell hollow the greater part of its length, for like the willow in our own country it might draw all its nourishment through the bark, and in spite of its real unsoundness retain a flourishing appearance.'

Master Jack, practical as usual, instantly sprang to his feet to put my conjecture to the proof. The rest followed his example, and they were all soon climbing about like squirrels peeping into the hole, and tapping the wood to discover by sound how far down the cavity extended.

They forgot, in their eagerness, who were the tenants of this interesting trunk. They were soon reminded of it, however, for the bees, disturbed by this unusual noise, with an angry buzz burst out and in an instant attacked the causers of the annoyance; they swarmed round them, stung them on the hands, face, and neck, settled in their hair, and pursued them as they ran to me for a.s.sistance.

It was with difficulty that we got rid of the angry insects, and were able to attend to the boys. Jack, who had been the first to reach the hole, had fared the worst and was soon a most pitiable sight, his face swelled to an extraordinary degree, and it was only by the constant application of cold earth that the pain was alleviated. They were all eager to commence an organized attack upon the bees at once, but for an hour or more by reason of their pain they were unable to render me much a.s.sistance.

In the meanwhile I made my arrangements. I first took a large calabash gourd, for I intended to make a beehive, that, when we had driven the insects from their present abode, we might not lose them entirely. The lower half of the gourd I flattened, I then cut an arched opening in the front for a doorway, made a straw roof as a protection from the rain and heat, and the little house was complete.

Nothing more however could then be done, for the irritated bees were still angrily buzzing round the tree. I waited till dark, and then when all the bees had again returned to their trunk, with Fritz's a.s.sistance I carefully stopped up every hole in the tree with wet clay, that the bees might not issue forth next morning before we could begin operations.

Very early were we up and at work. I first took a hollow cane, and inserted one end through the clay into the tree; down this tube with pipe and tobacco I smoked most furiously.

The humming and buzzing that went on within was tremendous; the bees evidently could not understand what was going to happen. I finished my first pipeful, and putting my thumb over the end of the cane, I gave the pipe to Fritz to refill. He did so and I again smoked. The buzzing was now becoming less noisy, and was subsiding into a mere murmur. By the time I had finished this second pipe all was still; the bees were stupefied.

'Now then, Fritz,' said I, 'quick with a hammer and chisel, and stand here beside me.'

He was up in a moment, and, together, we cut a small door by the side of the hole; this door however, we did not take out, but we left it attached by one corner that it might be removed at a moment's notice, then giving the bees a final dose of tobacco smoke, we opened it.

Carefully but rapidly we removed the insects, as they clung in cl.u.s.ters to the sides of the tree, and placed them in the hive prepared for their reception. As rapidly I then took every atom of wax and honey from their storehouse, and put it in a cask I had made ready for the purpose.

The bees were now safely removed from the trunk, but I could not tell whether, when they revived from their temporary stupor, they might not refuse to occupy the house with which I had presented them, and insist on returning to their old quarters. To prevent the possibility of this occurrence I took a quant.i.ty of tobacco, and, placing it upon a board nailed horizontally within the trunk, I lighted it and allowed it to burn slowly that the fumes might fill the cavity.

It was well I did so, for, as the bees returned to consciousness, they left their pretty hive and buzzed away to the trunk of the tree. They seemed astonished at finding this uninhabitable, and an immense deal of noisy humming ensued. Round and round they flew, backwards and forwards between the gourd and tree, now settling here and now there, until, at length, after due consideration, they took possession of the hive and abandoned their former habitation to us the invaders of their territory. By the evening they were quite quiet, and we ventured to open the cask in which we had stored our plunder.

We first separated the honey from the honeycomb and poured it off into jars and pots; the rest we then took and threw into a vessel of water placed over a slow fire. It soon boiled and the entire ma.s.s became fluid. This we placed in a clean canvas bag, and subjected to a heavy pressure. The honey was thus soon forced out, and we stored it in a cask, and, though not perhaps quite equal to the former batch in quality, it was yet capital. The wax that remained in the bag I also carefully stored, for I knew it would be of great use to me in the manufacture of candles. Then after a hard day's work we turned in.

The internal architecture of the tree had now to be attended to, and early the following morning we prepared for the labourious task. A door had first to be made, so at the base of the trunk we cut away the bark and formed an opening just the size of the door we had brought from the captain's cabin, and which, hinges and all, was ready to be hung.

The clearing of the rotten wood from the centre of the trunk occupied us some time, but at length we had the satisfaction of seeing it entirely accomplished, and, as we stood below, we could look up the trunk, which was like a great smooth funnel, and see the sky above.