Part 5 (2/2)
”Bread will be the sooner done,” I said.
”But the taste of pork stays in the mouth longer,” says Billy.
It nearly came to a quarrel between us, as to which should be cooked first, meat or bread; but when we were in the heat of the argument we perceived that our fire was going out, and that brought us to our senses. We piled more sticks on it, and broken cocoa-nut sh.e.l.ls, and Billy, yielding to my desire for bread, went out into the wood and soon returned with two or three fine large fruits, weighing, I should think, about three pounds apiece. We had seen the native way of cooking this fruit, paring off the rough rind and baking the inner part, between the rind and the core, in an oven; but having no oven, though we promised ourselves to build one soon, we laid the fruits as they were on a red part of the fire, turning them about as you do chestnuts, and after a while we took them up and, having broken away the rind, ate the bread hot, and I do think I had never in my life before made such a hearty meal as I now did, though, to be sure, the bread had a slight flavour of burnt wood. However, we ate a good supper, and went to bed much happier than at any time since we first came to the island.
[Sidenote: Bread]
We made our breakfast in the same way when we awoke, but finding that it took some time to get a fire, we considered whether we could not keep it constantly alive, yet without needing to replenish it too frequently with fuel, which would have been a trouble, as well as a hindrance to our work. After some thought, we devised a kind of covered-in grate, which we built four-square of stones and pieces of rock, filling up the s.p.a.ces between them, where they did not fit, with the clayey earth I have before mentioned, which we moistened with water, fetched from the lake in half a cocoa-nut sh.e.l.l, and then worked with our hands into a kind of mortar. We made a cover to this grate with small boughs plaited with gra.s.s and smeared all over with earth, and at the bottom of the grate we left two small holes by which air might enter, not a great current, but enough to keep the fire smouldering without burning much fuel. This device answered our expectations very well. We found that by casting into the embers a quant.i.ty of dry brushwood, and blowing upon them, we could obtain a brisk fire in a very little time, and when we had no more need of it for the present, we laid on a heap of gra.s.s and twigs, not too dry, and shut down the lid, and so found that we could keep our fire alive for a whole day with no more tending. We discovered, moreover, that by making a second enclosure about our grate, and covering this in also, we had a very convenient oven, in which we could lay in the morning the bread-fruit we needed for our dinner, and at midday find it very well cooked, neither too much nor too little. I must not forget to say that our neighbours the dogs watched these proceedings very curiously, and the first time we left the grate they went to it, to investigate with their noses; but the stones being very hot, their noses were burnt, and they ran yelping away, and came to it no more except the first time we roasted some pig's flesh, and then, being in a perfect frenzy at the savoury smell, they scratched down the walls of our oven and ran away with our meat, hot as it was, so that we had none for dinner. At this Billy flew into a fine rage, I a.s.sure you, and we had to consider of some way of preserving our meat from these greedy maws, of which more in its place.
[Sidenote: Wood-cutting]
Having now fire at our command, we set about putting it to the use for which we had so greatly desired it, namely, the felling of trees for our big house. We kindled fires against the trunks of four trees of a fair size which we selected for our corner posts, at first setting the fire all round, until we saw both that the wind, which was fairly strong that morning, blew the flames all one way, and also that it would be more convenient to burn the tree on the opposite side from the direction in which we wished it to fall; then we put out the fires except on the windward side. We found it no easy matter to keep the flames at a just height, so that they did not burn more of the trunks than we desired. Every now and again we chipped away the charred wood with our axes, and so the fire ate deeper and deeper into the trees, and we cut deeper and deeper also, until by the close of this day the trees stood, as it were, but by a thread. We wished we had ropes, wherewith we might pull the trees to the ground, but having none we threw ourselves with great violence against the trunks, and so cast them all down but one, which we left for a little more burning on the morrow, and went to our hut very well satisfied with our day's work.
We were sitting at our supper when of a sudden Billy gave a jump and cried out, ”What if any savages have seen our smoke!” Our fires had given a good deal of smoke, especially the damper woods with which we fed them; but I said that even the nearest island was too far off for our smoke to be easily seen from it, and as for any savages who might be cruising in canoes, they would suppose it came from the mountain. I could not doubt that our island was an object of terror to the peoples of the neighbouring islands, and I said we ought to be thankful to G.o.d that it was so, since it was better to be lonely than to be made slaves, or eaten by cannibals. This comforted Billy, though he said that we had better use the driest woods we could find for our fires, so that the smoke would be less.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
OF THE BUILDING OF OUR HUT, TO WHICH WE BRING MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN SKILL
I have not said anything about the plan of our big hut, but it must not be supposed that we began to work without any design. We often talked about it, and so made a general plan, though we forgot many things and did not foresee others. What this plan was will be made clear as I go on: if I set it down here all in one place it would be like writing the same thing twice over, which would be tedious.
Having felled the four fairly large trees we designed for our corner-posts, the next thing was to bring them down from the wood to the level plateau where we intended to build. We lopped off some of the branches and burnt off the rest, but then found that the trunks were too heavy for us to drag, even though it was downhill. Thus we were put to it to make rollers, which was not such a tedious matter as felling the trees, for there were many young trees of a shape and size fit for this use when we had taken off their branches. But when we came to place the rollers under the first of our trunks we could not at first by any means do it, the tree being so heavy that the two of us together could not raise it an inch from the ground. How to get over this difficulty puzzled us for some time; indeed, we might never have thought of a way but for what I may call an accident. We had gone down to the sh.o.r.e for our morning swim, and as we walked over the beach we spied a crab scuttling away under a small rock. Billy had felt a grudge against crabs ever since one had robbed him of his club: so he cries out, ”We'll have this old crab for dinner, master,” and with that he takes his axe and prises up the rock, and then gives the crab a great knock, which did it not the least harm, it being large with a thick sh.e.l.l. However, he was not to be baffled, so, setting down the rock again, he bids me watch it, and runs off to the wood, returning presently with a long bit of creeper, in which he had made a loop or noose at one end. This noose he slips over one of the claws of the crab, and drew it tight, and then set off at a run, dragging the crab after him.
[Sidenote: A Crab]
We ate the crab for dinner, and liked it very well, but the more important matter was that seeing Billy prise up the rock gave me a notion of the right manner of moving our trees.
”We must carry two rocks up to the wood,” I said, ”and cut two stout poles, and then I will show you how the trees can be moved.”
”'Tis desperate hard work, master,” says Billy with a prodigious sigh.
”We don't get on very fast. I wish we could find a cave where we could live like that old Robinson Crusoe, without any building at all.”
”But he built all the same,” said I.
”But not without tools,” says Billy.
However, he agreed to my proposal, and we carried a rock between us, with a great deal of sweating, up to where the fallen trees lay, and then Billy says, ”Ain't we fools!” and showed me that we could save a deal of labour by fastening strands of creeper to the second rock, and dragging it up instead of carrying it in our arms. This being done we cut two stout poles, which took us a long time, and then, putting the rocks one on either side of the first trunk, we took a pole each, and, resting them on the rocks, put the one end under the tree and pressed heavily on the other, and so contrived to lift the weight which our unaided strength was quite unequal to. I do not mean that we had never seen levers before, but we might never have thought of them unless Billy had prised up the rock after that crab. The use of levers was indeed a mystery to him, I mean the explanation of them, he saying that we were no stronger than before, and there was certainly no strength in two dead poles, and when I reminded him of the pulleys and the windla.s.s on board s.h.i.+p, which also helped to raise things, he said that poles were not pulleys, nor a windla.s.s neither, and he didn't see what that had to do with it. However, there was the trunk lifted, and while I held it so with my pole, Billy slipped a roller under it, and working thus from the end towards the middle, we brought the roller along by degrees, and then found that we could slip the second roller under the other end without the help of the poles.
Then, with much pus.h.i.+ng and hauling, we set the trunk a-moving on the rollers down the slope. It was still hard work enough, for where the earth was soft, the rollers sank into it under the heavy weight of the tree, and when we came to a part that was hard and pretty smooth, the trunk set to a-rolling so fast that it almost ran away with us, and Billy, who was in front, was very nearly sent headlong down, which would have been very terrible if he had fallen plump into our grate.
We brought the other three trunks down to our plateau in the same way, and thus had the four stout posts which we intended for the corners of our house, though there was a great deal to be done to them before they could be erected. They were about the same thickness, being sixteen or eighteen inches across, but not the same length, and we had first to make them equal, which took us a long time; I think we were ten days at the work. When we had finished it, the trunks were about fourteen feet long, that being the height we had determined on for our house, allowing for some portion of the posts to be driven into the earth. We did not peel the bark off the trees, but left it on, thinking it would do no harm.
[Sidenote: Choosing a Site]
We marked out the lines of our house, on the level plateau near the lake, which was almost the only even spot on the island, and allowed us a s.p.a.ce of about twenty feet square, which I thought was large enough, thinking besides of the great labour we should be put to if we tried to make too big a house. But when it came to erecting our corner-posts we were in a great quandary. The ground was pretty soft, and deeper than at other parts of the island, which I guessed was due to the heavy rains was.h.i.+ng earth down from the hill above. With spades or shovels we might have dug holes to a considerable depth, and then slipped the trunks in, and having thus disposed of a part of the dead weight of them, we might have raised them to an erect position with levers, or by pus.h.i.+ng them up with our hands as men raise a long ladder. But with no tools save our blunt axes we saw that such excavation would demand unconscionable toil, and besides, after we should have accomplished it, we should be hard put to it to make the earth around the timber sufficiently firm and compact; so we had to consider another way, which gave us a great deal of trouble. Indeed, it baffled us for several days, in which, however, we were not idle, but occupied ourselves in other concerns.
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