Part 12 (2/2)

”This is quite true, I a.s.sure you,” I said. ”In the olden times, I say, when every great lord lived in his castle, there was a great ditch or trench all round it, to keep enemies away, for in those times lord often used to fight lord.”

”Like rats,” says Billy. ”Go on, master.”

”Well, that ditch was called a moat, and it could only be crossed by a drawbridge,” I said, ”that is, a bridge that was let down over it from the castle gateway; and so, when the bridge was up, and the moat filled with water, no enemy could get into the castle, and the people inside were safe.”

”And suppose they were,” says Billy, ”what's the good unless they'd got enough victuals inside to last 'em ever so long? If I was the lord outside I'd stop there till they either starved or came out and had a good fight.”

[Sidenote: Beginning a Moat]

I answered that no doubt that was what they did, and went on to say that if we continued our trench and made it wider and deeper, bringing it close against the walls of our castle, we might add very greatly to the strength of our position if ever the savages came to the island and we had to defend ourselves against them. As to the matter of food, I said that we had in the cavern below the castle as good a storehouse as we could wish for, and I resolved that we would start at once, or at least as soon as we had finished our canoe, to convey a great store of bread-fruit and yams, and salted pork and fish, into the cavern, for which purpose we should have to increase the number of our pots and pans. But since this storehouse would be of little use to us if we were driven out of the castle, Billy consented to help me to dig a moat, though he said it would take us ten years to finish it, if we made it deep enough and wide enough to be of any avail. And, indeed, we were not long in finding out, when we began the work, that it would take us a very great time, if not ten years; for to be of any defensive use the moat must be at least six feet deep and about twice as wide, and we were aghast when, at the end of a day's work with our spades, we saw the exceeding smallness of what we had achieved. I was minded to give up the attempt, though it always vexed me to leave a thing half done, and the partial excavation we had made gave an untidy appearance to the place which displeased me mightily. Moreover, the rains ceasing, and a season of dry weather ensuing, the ground became so much harder that we found our progress even slower than before, so that we did give it up, and went back very cheerfully to our canoe, which we had neglected all this time.

We had hollowed out the log sufficiently for our purpose, though when I looked at the clumsy product of our toil I had a great doubt whether we should be able to sail in it. It had none of the nice curves and shapeliness of a boat, and was the same at the one end as at the other, so that to talk of its prow cutting the water, or cleaving the waves, as fine writers say, would always have been ridiculous. However, we had first to bring it to the water, and that we found a prodigious task. The log, even hollowed out as it was, was much heavier than those we had used in building our hut, and all our pus.h.i.+ng and pulling did not avail to move it an inch. We tried the plan of the rollers, whereby we had brought the trees down the hill-side, and by levering up the end of the canoe we managed to slip one of our round poles beneath it, and then others, and when we had several in place, we shoved it and moved it a few feet towards the sea. But the weight of it was so great that the poles were driven into the sand, and so far from being rollers, there they stuck, and we had no means of removing them except by digging them out. This was a pretty check at the outset, and I do not think anything could have been more vexatious. Billy and I stood beside our ungainly vessel, cudgelling our brains for some means of moving it, and Billy said he wished the worst storm that ever was would spring up, so that the waves would come das.h.i.+ng up the beach to the cliffs, and so carry back the canoe into its rightful element.

”What makes water so strong, master?” he said, when he had uttered this prayer for a storm. ”The sea could lift this here ugly thing as easy as if it was a cork; but water ain't got no muscles, and it's muscles what does it.”

I could only answer that such was the nature of things, and that made me think how feeble even the strongest man is, and how a puff of wind or a wave of the sea can undo in a moment the labour of weeks and months. I might have said something of this to Billy, though he was always impatient of such talk, only he broke in upon my musing: ”Well,”

says he, ”I suppose we'll have to go and cut some more poles, and make a regular road of 'em down to the sea, and that'll take us a week or more.”

”Time doesn't matter to us,” I said.

”Oh, but it does,” cried Billy. ”Suppose Old Smoker took it into his head to go a-blazing? Suppose there was an earthquake? If we had the canoe afloat, we could lie off a bit until Old Smoker's temper was over.”

”But why suppose such things?” I said. ”Here have we been two years or more upon this island, and nothing has happened to harm us----”

”Except that ugly monster with the long legs,” says Billy, interrupting.

”True; and----” I began. But he interrupted again.

”And the shark,” says he, ”and the pig what tumbled me over, and the dogs what bit me. It's all very well for you to talk, master. Things ain't fair, that's all I've got to say. You don't get hurt, but I do.

Why, even fleas, now. We had a lot of fleas at home, but d'you think they hurt my mother-in-law? Not a bit of it. They plagued me awful, till I could screech; but my mother-in-law never felt 'em at all, and that wasn't fair, 'cause she was big and I was little--at least, not so big as her.”

I said it was true that Billy had suffered more mishaps than I, but perhaps my turn would come some day; meanwhile we had as yet discovered no way of moving the canoe, unless we tried Billy's plan of laying a kind of roadway of poles from the cliff to the sea, and we supposed we should have to do that, arduous as the work would be. We left it for that day, and for the next, too, being loath to begin a task we did not like; and then we saw another way of achieving our purpose, which I wonder we had not thought of before. We had rigged up over the hole in the floor leading to the cavern a sort of windla.s.s, by means of which we lowered provisions into our store-room, and it was when we were letting down a basketful of yams that the idea came into my head.

Could we by any means devise a windla.s.s which would give us a sufficient purchase to haul the canoe to the sea?

”'Course not,” said Billy, when I put it to him. I never knew Billy's like for the seeing of difficulties. ”Nothing but oaks would be strong enough.”

[Sidenote: Launching the Canoe]

But I was by no means satisfied that the plan was impossible, and I went down to the sh.o.r.e at low tide to look about me. I ought to say that the windla.s.s in the house was a very simple machine. We had stuck two young stout saplings into the ground, one on each side of the hole, having shortened their stems so that the fork where the lowest branches were stood about three feet above the earth. Across these forks we laid a short round pole for the drum of the winch, at one end of this we lashed two slighter poles for the handle, and about the drum we wound and unwound the rope by which we lowered things. Now it was quite certain that we could not move our heavy canoe unless we had a contrivance very much stronger than this, and the difficulty was that a windla.s.s for this purpose must be erected on the sand, and below low-water mark, or it would not bring the canoe to the water. There were certainly no trees of any kind growing in the sand, so that it seemed that any contrivance of the kind must be made there by our own hands.

But as I was walking along the beach, endeavouring to see my way through this difficulty, I observed a rock, not above three feet high, which had a deep jagged groove across the top of it, resembling in some degree the fork of a tree. I looked about for a companion rock near at hand, but all that I saw were flatter and much smaller, not one having any groove to match the other. But why should we not rig up, I thought, something that should serve as well? After a great deal of consideration I hit upon a plan, which Billy and I proceeded at next low tide to carry out. We got two stout poles, and drove them into the sand with the pummet, one across the other, so that the tops of them made a big letter V, the point of which was at the same height as the groove in the rock. We next laid a stout pole across from the V to the groove, smearing it at the resting-places very plentifully with fat, so that it would turn easily: this made a drum. Then we plaited a thick and long rope, and wound one end about the drum and knotted the other end to the nose of the canoe through a hole we made with our axes.

Last of all, we fastened a handle to the drum in the same way as we had done with the small windla.s.s in the hut.

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