West Wind Drift Part 17

3. Entrance to channel from the south.

4. Narrow strip of woodland from channel almost to river's mouth.

5. Strip of meadow-land clear of trees.

6. River.

7. Stretch of lowland leading down to the water.

8. Crest of hill from which observations were taken with range extending east and west.

9. Point of rocks with cypress trees.

10. b.u.t.tress-like west end of island.

11. Dense forest reaching to channel.

12. Rocky cape.

13. Level plateau, without trees.

14. Beach.

15. Penguins.

CHAPTER X.

After the second reading of the foregoing report, the first being in English, Percival requested his fellow explorers to verify the statements contained therein. This they did promptly. He then went on:

"I am delegated by Captain Trigger and the officers of this vessel, after a conference just concluded,--and of which you are all well aware,--to put before you as briefly and as clearly as possible the decision that has been reached. I may as well confess in the beginning that this decision is based on the recommendations of the party who went to the top of the mountain. It is out of the question for the people on board this vessel to go ash.o.r.e until further investigations have been made. For the present, we are all safe here on board the ship. We don't know what perils exist in the absolutely unexplored country that surrounds us. Additional parties are to be sent out to explore the island, especially the eastern section of it. There is no use mincing matters. We are confronted by a very plain situation. It is possible, even probable, that we are the first human beings ever to set foot on this land. If that be true, we are now so far out of the path of the few ships and steamers sailing these southern seas that there is small hope or chance of a speedy rescue. As a matter of fact, it isn't likely that we will be discovered until the island itself is discovered, if you see what I mean.

"There isn't the slightest chance that the ship we're now standing on will ever float again. Even if the engines could be put in order,--and that is possible, I am told,--the vessel cannot be raised. If anybody has been nursing that sort of hope, he may as well get rid of it.

It's no good. We are here to stay, unless help comes from the outside.

There's the plain English of it. We may have to live here on this island, like poor old Robinson Crusoe, for years,--for a great many years. I'm going to stop just a few seconds to let that soak into your brains. We've got to face it. We've got to make the best of it. It is not for Captain Trigger or me or any one else to say that we will not be taken off this island some time--maybe sooner than we think. Whaling vessels must visit these parts. That's neither here nor there. We've got our work cut out for us, friends. We've got to think of the present and let the future take care of itself. Now, here are the facts. We cannot remain on board this wreck. We've got to go to work, every man, woman and child of us. I don't know what can be cultivated on this island, but we've got to find out, and when we find out we've got to begin raising it. If we don't, my friends, we'll starve to death in a very short time.

And what's more, if we do not get out there and put up houses to live in, we'll freeze to death when winter comes along.

"According to calculations, winter is still five or six months away. We won't get it, I dare say, before next April or May. All you have to do is to take a look at all these trees around here to realize that we are a long way from the tropics. It gets as cold as blazes here in the dead of winter, I can tell you that. We've got to build homes. We've got to build a camp,--not a flimsy, half-way sort of camp, but a good, solid, substantial one, my friends. There is what you might call a minority report in regard to the situation. Captain Trigger asked me to speak for him and others who look at it as I do. Mr. Landover, who is, I understand, one of the leading bankers in the United States of America, contends that we are well enough off as we are, on board the Doraine, where we've got cabins and beds and shelter from the elements. He may be right. All I have to say to him is this,--I don't believe I mentioned it at this conference, Mr. Landover, simply because I'm one of those unhappy individuals who always think of the brilliant things I might have said when it's too late to say them,--all I have to say is this: if Mr. Landover and his supporters expect to sit snugly on this ship while the rest of us build houses and plant crops, and then conclude to come out and bone the rest of us for a square meal and a nice warm place to sleep, they are going to be badly fooled. We're all equal here. A couple of million dollars, more or less, doesn't cut any ice on this little island. What counts here is muscle and commonsense and a willingness to use both.

"A little while ago I asked Mr. Landover how much money he has with him.

He informed me that while it wasn't any of my business, he has about five hundred dollars in American money and a couple of hundred pesos besides, but that his letter of credit is still good for fifteen thousand. Mr. Nicklestick has about five hundred dollars in money, and so has Mr. Block and one or two others. They've all got letters of credit, express checks, and so forth, and I suppose there is a wheelbarrow full of jewellery on board this ship. Now, if money is to talk down here, I wish to state that the men and women from the steerage have got more real dough than all the first and second cabins put together. They haven't any letters of credit or bank accounts in New York, but there are a dozen men in the steerage who have as much as two or three thousand pesos sewed up inside their clothes. So far as I can make out, the only people who can afford to hire anybody to build a hut for them, and pay for it in real money, are the plutocrats from the steerage.

"Mr. Landover's letter of credit is good for fifteen thousand if he ever gets back to New York, but it isn't worth fifteen cents here. His life is insured for one million dollars, I am told. I don't know who the beneficiaries are, but, whoever they are, they are going to put in a claim for the million if he doesn't show up in New York pretty shortly.

He is going to be declared officially dead, and so are all the rest of us, after a reasonable time has elapsed. Now, I don't say that we are never going to be rescued. We may be found inside of a month. Some of us don't quite realize the fix we are in. Mr. Codge, the purser, was saying a little while ago that a lady from the first cabin nearly took his head off when he told her it was impossible to send a cable message to her people in Boston. A number of pa.s.sengers have already demanded that their pa.s.sage money be refunded.

"You have doubtless heard how I came to be on board this steamer. I am a stowaway. I have no standing among you. I haven't a penny in my pocket,--aside from a luck-piece that doesn't belong to me. I wanted to get back to the States so that I could carry a gun or something over in France. I wanted to fight for my country. I wasn't thinking very much about my life when I started for home and France, but I want to say that I'm thinking about it now. I don't intend to starve or freeze to death if I can help it. I am going to fight for my life, not for my country.

"This is no time to be sentimental. It is no time to sit down and pity ourselves or each other. G.o.d knows I am just as sorry for myself as you are for yourselves, but that isn't going to get me anywhere. We've got to work. That means all of us. It means the women as well as the men.

It means the women with soft, white hands and the men who never did a stroke of manual labour in their lives, just as much as it means the people who have never done anything else but work. Something will be found for every one of us to do, and, ladies and gentlemen, we will have to do it without whining.

"Captain Trigger is accountable for the cargo on board this ship.

Naturally he is opposed to our confiscating anything that has been entrusted to him for safe delivery. He takes a very sensible att.i.tude, however. He will officially protest against the removal of anything from the hold of his vessel, but he will not employ force to resist us when we begin to land stores, foodstuffs and all that sort of thing. He understands the situation perfectly.

"Now, here is what we will have to do. We must select a site for our camp,--or town, you may well say,--and we must build upon it without delay. That is to be our first step. Details will come later. There are over six hundred of us here. We represent a fair-sized village. We have mechanics, carpenters, farmers, surveyors, masons,--and merchants, to say nothing of cooks, housekeepers, and so on. The ship contains all sorts of tools to work with, canvas for temporary quarters, beds and bedding, cooking utensils,--in fact, we have everything that Robinson Crusoe didn't have, and besides all that, we've got each other. We are not alone on a desert island. We are, my friends, as well off as the Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock, and we are better off than the hardy colonists who laid the foundation for the country that flies that flag up there. Centuries ago bold adventurers set out to discover unknown lands. They were few in number and poorly equipped. But they ventured into the wilderness and built villages that grew to be cities.

They went through a thousand hardships that we will never know, and they survived.

"Captain Trigger and the others selected me to make this talk to you because I have had some practical experience in establishing and developing a camp, such as we will have to build. Experience has taught me one thing above all others: work, hard work of a constructive nature, is our only salvation. Unless we occupy ourselves from one day's end to another in good, hard, honest toil, we will all go mad. That's the long and the short of it. If we sat still on this boat for thirty days, doing nothing, we'd lose our minds. There isn't a man in this crowd, I am sure, who wouldn't work his head off to spare the women an hour of hardship. But the greatest hardship you women could possibly know would be idleness. There will be work for every one to do, and we can thank G.o.d for it, my friends. We will have to work for nothing. We will have to help each other. There is but one cla.s.s on this island at present, and that is the working cla.s.s.

"We've all got people at home waiting for us. By this time the whole world knows that the Doraine is three weeks overdue at Rio Janeiro, and that no word has been had from her. The ocean is being searched. Our friends, our relatives are doing everything in their power to get trace of this lost ship. You may depend on that. In a little while,--a few weeks, at best,--the ship will be given up for lost. We will be counted as dead, all of us. That's a hard, cruel thing for me to say, and I hate to say it,--but we've just got to realize the position we're in. It's best that we should look at it from the worst possible angle. I do not speak jestingly when I say that we may as well consider ourselves dead and forgotten. I am as full of hope and confidence as anybody and I am an optimist if there ever was one, but I don't work on the theory that G.o.d takes any better care of an optimist than He does of a pessimist.

"It will require months, maybe years, for us to construct a ship, and even then it will not be big enough to transport all of us. The most we can hope for is a craft that will be stout enough to go out and bring help to the rest of us. I am trying, at Captain Trigger's suggestion, to convince you that we can't build a ship, that we can't expect to get away from this island by our own endeavours, unless we go about it in the proper and sensible way. That means, first of all, that we must safeguard ourselves against time. We've got to live and we've got to keep our strength.

"Mr. Landover has made a very generous proposition. He agrees to give a hundred thousand dollars to any boat's crew that will take one of these lifeboats and make port somewhere. He fails to mention the compensation they are to receive if they never make port. He forgets that this big ship floundered around for a good many days without sighting anything but water. He would have been perfectly safe in offering a hundred million dollars, because he would never be called upon to pay it. I understand, however, that his offer still stands.

"Tomorrow morning surveying parties will be sent ash.o.r.e to look for a possible site for our town. Volunteers will undertake this work. As soon as possible thereafter a temporary camp will be set up, and practically every one on board will be moved from this ship. Captain Trigger and a few chosen men will remain on board. It is his wish, ladies and gentlemen. He is the captain of the Doraine. He will not leave her. We are all here today, and alive, because Captain Trigger would not leave his ship. We owe our lives to him. This is not the time to propose three cheers for the gallant master of the Doraine. It is not the time to cheer for anybody or for anything. We do not feel like cheering.

We've done all the praying that is necessary, we've offered up all the thanksgiving that the situation calls for, so now we've got to roll up our sleeves and go to work."

He, stepped down from the gun-platform. There were no cheers. Every voice was stilled, every face was set. Many seconds pa.s.sed before there was even the slightest stir among those who had listened so intently.

Then the few English-speaking people from the steerage began to whisper hoa.r.s.ely to their bewildered companions.

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I.

The warm, summer season was well-advanced in this far southern land before the strenuous, tireless efforts of the marooned settlers began to show definite results.

Some six weeks after the stranding of the Doraine, staunch log cabins were in course of completion along the base of the hills overlooking the clear, rolling meadow-land to the north and east. Down in the lowlands scores of men were employed in sowing and planting. The soil was rich.

Farmers and grain-raisers among the pa.s.sengers were unanimously of the opinion that almost any vegetable, cereal or fruit indigenous to Argentina (or at the worst, Patagonia), could be produced here.

Uncertainty as to the duration of the warm period, so vital to the growing and maturing of crops, was the chief problem. No time was to be lost if there were to be harvests before the cold and blighting weather set in.

It was extremely doubtful if the spring and summer seasons combined covered more than five months in this lat.i.tude. a.s.suming that the climate in this open part of the world was anything like that of the Falkland Islands, the rainy season was overdue. Midwinter usually comes in July, with the temperature averaging between 35 deg. and 10 deg.

above zero over a period of four or five months. At the time of the wreck, the thermometers were registering about 70 deg. during the day, and dropping to 50 deg. or thereabouts after nightfall. This would indicate that spring was fairly well-advanced, and that midsummer might be figured on as coming in January. It was now the end of November. Warm weather probably would last until February or March. Possibly they would be too late with their planting, but they went about it speedily, determinedly, just the same.

All of them had had crop failures before. All of them had seen the labour of months go for naught in the blight of an evening's frost, or the sweep of a prairie fire. So here on this virgin isle, in soil whose sod had never been turned, they sowed from the bins of the slumbering ship. Wheat and oats and flax, brought from the Argentina plains; potatoes, squash and beet-root; even beans and peas were tried, but with small hope. And there were women ready to till the soil and work the gardens, women to draw the strangely fashioned ploughshares as willing beasts of burden, to wield the hoe and spade, and to watch for the cherished sprout that was to glorify their deeds.

The ring of the ax resounded in the forest; the clangour of hammer and nail, the rasp of the saw, the clatter of timber went on from dawn to dusk,--for there was no eight-hour law in this smiling land, nor was there any other union save that of staunch endeavour, no other Brotherhood except that of Man. There was never a question of wage, never a dispute as to hours, never a thought of strike. Every labourer was worthy of his hire,--and his hire was food!