Part 36 (1/2)

Directly after breakfast, Hazel took his ax and some rope from the boat, and went off in a great hurry to the jungle. In half an hour or so he returned, dragging a large conical shrub, armed with spikes for leaves, incredibly dense and p.r.i.c.kly.

”There,” said he, ”there's a vegetable porcupine for you. This is your best defense against that roaring bugbear.”

”That little tree!” said Helen; ”the tiger would soon jump over that.”

”Ay, but not over this and sixty more; a wall of stilettos. Don't touch it, please.”

He worked very hard all day, and brought twelve of these p.r.i.c.kly trees to the bower by sunset. He was very dissatisfied with his day's work; seemed quite mortified.

”This comes of beginning at the wrong end,” he said; ”I went to work like a fool. I should have begun by making a cart.”

”But you can't do that,” said Helen, soothingly; ”no gentleman can make a cart.”

”Oh, surely anybody can make a cart, by a little thinking,” said he.

”I wish,” said Helen, listlessly, ”you would think of something for me to do; I begin to be ashamed of not helping.”

”Hum! you can plait?”

”Yes, as far as seven strands.”

”Then you need never be unemployed. We want ropes, and shall want large mats for the rainy weather.”

He went to the place where he had warned her of the snakes, and cut a great bundle of long silky gra.s.s, surprisingly tough, yet neither harsh nor juicy; he brought it her and said he should be very glad of a hundred yards of light cord, three ply and five ply.

She was charmed with the gra.s.s, and the very next morning she came to breakfast with it nicely prepared, and a good deal of cord made and hanging round her neck. She found some preparations for carpenter's work lying about.

”Is that great log for the cart?” said she.

”Yes! it is a section of a sago-tree.”

”What, our sago?”

”The basis. See, in the center it is all soft pith.” He got from the boat one of the augers that had scuttled the _Proserpine,_ and soon turned the pith out. ”They pound that pith in water, and run it through linen; then set the water in the sun to evaporate. The sediment is the sago of commerce, and sad insipid stuff it is.”

”Oh, please don't call anything names one has eaten in England,” said Helen, sorrowfully.

After a hasty meal, she and Mr. Hazel worked for a wager. Her taper fingers went like the wind, and though she watched him, and asked questions, she never stopped plaiting. Mr. Hazel was no carpenter, he was merely Brains spurred by Necessity. He went to work and sawed off four short disks of the sago-log.

”Now what are those, pray?” asked Helen.

”The wheels--primeval wheels. And here are the linchpins, made of hard wood; I wattled them at odd times.”

He then produced two young lime-trees he had rooted up that morning and sawed them into poles in a minute. Then he bored two holes in each pole, about four inches from either extremity, and fitted his linchpins; then he drew out his linchpins, pa.s.sed each pole first through one disk, and then through another, and fastened his linchpins. Then he ran to the boat, and came back with the stern and mids.h.i.+p thwarts. He drilled with his center-bit three rows of holes in these, two inches from the edge.

And now Helen's work came in; her gra.s.s rope bound the thwarts tight to the horizontal poles, leaving the disks room to play easily between the thwarts and the linchpins; but there was an open s.p.a.ce thirteen inches broad between the thwarts; this s.p.a.ce Hazel herring-boned over with some of Helen's rope drawn as tight as possible. The cart was now made. Time occupied in its production, three hours and forty minutes.

The coachmaker was very hot, and Helen asked him timidly whether he had not better rest and eat. ”No time for that,” said he. ”The day is not half long enough for what I have to do.” He drank copiously from the stream; put the carpenter's basket into the cart, got the tow-rope from the boat and fastened it to the cart in this shape: A, putting himself in the center. So now the coachmaker was the horse, and off they went, rattling and creaking, to the jungle.

Helen turned her stool and watched this pageant enter the jungle. She plaited on, but not so merrily. Hazel's companions.h.i.+p and bustling way somehow kept her spirits up.

But, whenever she was left alone, she gazed on the blank ocean, and her heart died within her. At last she strolled pensively toward the jungle, plaiting busily as she went, and hanging the rope round her neck as fast as she made it.