Part 12 (1/2)
”We've got him and both the harpoons,” cries Billy, ”and the fish too, for he ain't had time to swallow him proper.”
We pa.s.sed a couple of lines round the monster's tail and dragged him to the sh.o.r.e, and there Billy immediately set to work to open him, and disgorged the fish of which we had been robbed. However, having no mind to eat what the shark had partly swallowed, I persuaded Billy to throw the fish into the sea, and Billy laughed at me finely afterwards, I a.s.sure you, when I was eating with great relish a shark-steak he had broiled for our supper.
”If you can eat the shark, master, why couldn't you eat the fish?” says he.
I own I could give him no answer except that my gorge rose at the thought of it, and this led me to consider of the strange inconsistencies of men in matters of food, as in other things. My aunt Susan would have been aghast at the idea of eating a snail, but she would eat a chicken which she had herself fed on snails; and when I mentioned this, Billy said that he didn't see any difference between eating a chicken full of snails and the snails themselves.
”Billy,” said I presently, ”I never thought I should see you eating worms.”
”Why, whenever did you see me do that, master?” says he; ”I never done it. I'd be sick.”
”But we had a chicken for dinner, and you may be sure it had eaten worms,” I said.
He began to see what I was driving at, and looked very grave for some minutes, as if endeavouring to probe the comparison. Then a broad grin spread over his face, and he said, ”I reckon the chicken eats worms for the same reason as we eat chickens, 'cause they're nice,” and I am sure he believed he had solved a very knotty problem.
[Sidenote: A Canoe]
It was partly this adventure with the shark, and partly our natural wish to circ.u.mnavigate the island, that set us on trying to make a boat. We had many times been sorry that we did not think of securing the boat of the _Lovey Susan_ which had been staved in on the beach, and therefore abandoned by the seamen, but which we might perhaps have patched up if we had hauled it away from the sea. Unhappily, neither Billy nor I had the least knowledge how to build a boat, nor if we had would our rude tools have availed us much, so that though the idea had come into our heads more than once, we had never done anything towards putting it in action, partly from this ignorance of ours, and partly because we had been so much occupied with other matters. Now that the notion had come back to us with more force, however, we determined to see what we could do in digging out the trunk of a tree to make a canoe, something like those we had seen from our look-out hill, though not near so large. Since we required it only to hold two, there was no reason to make it large, whereas there were many for making it small, for a large one would have needed a terrible amount of work, and if we could have made one, we might have had great difficulty in bringing it down to the beach and then in launching it. Yet we resolved that, though it should not be large compared with those that held twenty or thirty men, it should be of such a size as to ride the sea with fair stability, for we did not want a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l or any cranky thing.
For this purpose we chose a tree, of what name I know not, though I think it was a kind of pine, which grew on the slope above the sandy beach I have mentioned more than once. We chose it as much for its position as for the nature of its wood, for being on the slope we thought that we could more readily bring it down to the sea than if we felled a tree further from the sh.o.r.e. We felled it as we did the trees for our hut, with the aid of fire, and a notion came into my head by which we made a great improvement on our former rough method. Our difficulty had been to make a fire sufficiently large to burn away the trunk rapidly, and yet not so large as to burn or scorch the tree higher than was necessary. The idea that came into my head was to put a bandage about the trunk, and so keep the fire within bounds, and when we considered of the best material to use for this purpose, we decided that clay would be the most serviceable, because it would not only not burn itself, but it could be easily kept sodden. Having chosen our tree, therefore, we clapped a thick bandage of wet clay round the trunk about three feet from the ground, and lit a fire all round the tree, and let it burn very fiercely for a time, and then we raked it away and chipped off the charred wood with our axes; and having again wetted the clay, we kindled the fire again, so that it would burn away the fresh surface of wood that we had exposed. We continued thus until we had thus burnt and chipped away a deep incision all round the tree, and meanwhile we had debated whether we should make our canoe on the top of the slope (in which case we should let the tree fall on to a little patch of fairly level ground on the west side of it), or whether we should cause the tree to fall down the slope over the cliff on the western side, and so to the beach. Billy declared for the former course, saying that if we let the tree go over the cliff it would a.s.suredly be smashed, and the trunk once split would be useless for our purpose. In answer to this I said that, however vexatious it would be to have to fell another tree, how much more vexatious would it be if any mischance happened to our canoe when we had finished it and were bringing it down to the beach! In the one case we should have lost merely the time and labour of felling the tree; in the other, there would be the additional loss of the longer time and greater labour expended on the canoe. Billy agreed with this reasoning, so towards the finish we built all the fire on the land side of the tree, until with a little hauling and shoving it snapped off and toppled with a mighty crash over the cliff. We ran down to see what had happened to it, and though some of the larger branches had been broken off, the main trunk, so far as we could tell, was not hurt in the least.
We burnt off the top and the remaining branches, both Billy and I tending our separate fires, of which we had many, so that the work was made much lighter than it would have been if every single branch had needs be lopped with a clumsy axe.
Having thus got a log of wood clear of branches, and, as I reckoned, about fifteen feet long, we peeled off the bark, and set to work to hollow out the vessel. It was plain that this would be a work of long time, for the trunk was about three feet thick, and I do not know how many months we might have been about it if we had not brought fire again to the aid of our axes. We found that we could save time by allowing fires to smoulder for long periods in the top of the log, which we wished to hollow out; and by starting these fires at intervals, we found that when we had chipped away the charred wood beneath the first, the wood beneath the second was ready to be chipped away also, and so on all down the log. Billy and I were thus employed the whole livelong day, and many days in succession, in building and removing fires, and chipping away the charred wood, by which means we gradually dug deeper and deeper into the heart of the log, rejoicing as we saw it, by almost insensible degrees, receiving the semblance of a canoe.
The tree had fallen, as I said, over the cliff on to the sandy beach, and we were in some trouble of mind lest a high sea, or peradventure a violent storm, should carry our canoe away before it was finished. It lay a little above high-water mark, it is true; but for our greater security we moored it, when we left work upon it, by means of ropes to some heavy rocks, which we trusted would preserve it from any such untoward event. And it was indeed lucky we did so, for when we had been for some weeks (as I guessed) at the work--not continuously, for we had many other things to attend to--one night a violent storm got up, with great fury of wind and rain, and also some rumbling in the mountain, which made us feel very uneasy; and when we went down in the morning, the storm having ceased, to see what had happened to our canoe, we found that it had been lifted and tossed about by the sea, being indeed half full of water; but mercifully the waves had not dashed it against the rocks at the base of the cliff, or it would a.s.suredly have been shattered, or at least very much damaged.
This was the first really great storm we had had since our big hut was built, and the result of it, especially as it was followed by a period of rainy weather, was to make us leave work on our canoe before it was finished, and turn our hands to another task. Our hut, as I have said before, was built on a little level tract, above and below which the ground sloped, on the one side towards the cliffs, on the other to Brimstone Lake, as we called it, from its medicinal water. The slope above the hut was gradual, indeed, but it was a real slope all the same, and during this period of heavy rain the water swept down in a wide torrent from the heights, flowing past and through the hut, which was flooded, and very uncomfortable. We suffered in this way, Billy and I, more than our fowls, for they had poles to roost on. As for the pigs, we did not trouble about them, and I do think that the more sodden the ground the happier they were. We did our best, in dry intervals, to make our walls watertight, but could not wholly succeed in this, for the doorway faced the upper slope, and we could not by any means make the door fit so closely as to keep out the water. Since the floor of our hut was thus sodden, we could not sleep on it, but had to make our bed on the bench table, and very hard it was.
[Sidenote: Cutting a Trench]
It was a day or two before we thought of any means of curing this very disagreeable state of things, but then, all of a sudden, a notion came to us--whether first to Billy or to me I do not remember--of digging a trench round the hut, with outlets opening into the lake. We set about this at once, finding the earth easy to work, even with our rude spades, because it was so sodden, and after two or three days' work we had made a shallow trench about the upper end of the hut, shaped like a half-circle, so that when the rain-water fell down the slope it would be intercepted by the trench, and so carried into the lake. We observed again, at this time, that though the amount of water that flowed into the lake was very much greater than we had ever known before, yet the surface never rose above the certain level of which I have already spoken, and we were still very much puzzled to know, at least I was, how the surplus water was carried off; Billy saying that it didn't matter to us, and we shouldn't be any better off if we did know. My way of looking at things was different, and I own I felt a great curiosity always to learn the reasons and causes of matters which were not easy to understand. Yet it was, after all, little more than an accident which brought about the discovery of this matter, and of that I doubt not I shall tell in its place.
[1] A rather long-winded allusion to refraction.--H.S.
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
OF OUR ENTRENCHMENTS; OF THE LAUNCHING OF OUR CANOE, AND THE DEADLY PERIL THAT ATTENDED OUR FIRST VOYAGE
While we were busy making the trench to keep the rain from our hut, another notion came all of a sudden into my mind, which, in a kind of merry sport, I at once made known to Billy.
”We will make a moat about our castle, Billy,” said I.
”What's a moat, and where's our castle?” says he, leaning on his spade, and looking all around.
”Why, every Englishman's house is his castle, as they say,” I answered, ”and as to a moat, you must know, Billy, that in the olden times----”
”The times of Robin Hood or Robinson Crusoe?” says he; ”for if it is I don't believe a word of it.”