Part 11 (1/2)
”As I have said before, the loss of Sunday much grieved the Dean. So, you see, we had nothing else to do but make one on our own account.”
”What, make a Sunday!” exclaimed William. ”I've heard of people making almost everything, even building castles in the air; but I never heard before of anybody putting up a Sunday.”
”Well, you see, we did the best we could. It is not at all surprising that we should have lost our reckoning in this way, seeing that the sun was s.h.i.+ning, as I have told you, all the time; and we worked and slept without much regard to whether the hours of night or day were on us. So we had good reason for a little mixing up of dates. In fact we could neither of us very well recall the day of the month that we were cast away. It was somewhere near the end of June, that we knew; but the exact day we could not tell for certain. We remembered the day of the week well enough, and it was Tuesday; but more than this we could not get into our heads; and so it seemed that there was nothing for us but to sink all days into the one long day of the Arctic summer, and nevermore know whether it was Sunday, or Monday, or Friday, or what day it was of any month; and if it should be Heaven's will that we should live on upon the island until the New Year came round, and still other years should come and go, we should never know New Year's day.
”But, as I was saying, about making a Sunday for ourselves. I did everything I could to refresh my memory about it. I counted up the number of times we had slept, and the number of times we had worked, and recalled the day when I first walked around the island; and I tried my best to connect all those events together in such a way as to prove how often the sun had pa.s.sed behind the cliffs, and how often it had shone upon us; and thus I made out that the very day I am telling you about proved to be Sunday,--at least I so convinced the Dean, and he was satisfied. And that's the way we made a Sunday for ourselves.
”So we resolved to do no work that day; and this was well, for we were very weary and needed rest.
”I need not tell you that we pa.s.sed the time in talking over our plans for the future, and in discussing the prospects ahead of us, and arranging what we should do. You see we had settled about Sunday, so that was off our minds; and after recalling many things which had happened to us, and things which had been done on the _Blackbird_, we finally concluded that we had found out the day of the month, and so we called the day 'Sunday, the second of July,' and this we marked, as I will show you, thus: On the top of a large flat rock near by I placed a small white stone, and this we called our 'Sunday stone'; and then, in a row with this stone, we placed six other stones, which we called by the other days of the week. Then I moved the white stone out of line a little, which was to show that Sunday had pa.s.sed, and afterwards, when the next day had gone, we did the same with the Monday stone, and so on until the stones were all on a line again, when we knew that it was once more Sunday. Of course we knew when the day was gone, by the sun being around on the north side of the island, throwing the shadow of the cliffs upon us.
”For noting the days of the month we made a similar arrangement to that which we had made for the days of the week; and thus you see we had now got an almanac among other things.
”'And now,' said the Dean, 'let us put all this down for fear we forget it.' So away the little fellow ran and gathered a great quant.i.ty of small pebbles, and these we arranged on the top of the rock so as to form letters; and the letters that we thus made spelled out
'JOHN HARDY AND RICHARD DEAN, CAST AWAY IN THE COLD, TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1824.'
”Now, when we came to look ahead, and to speculate upon what was likely to befall us, we saw that we had two months of summer still remaining; and, as midsummer had hardly come yet, we knew that we were likely to have it warmer than before, and we had now no further fears about being able to live through that period. In these two months it was plain that one of two things must happen,--a s.h.i.+p must come along and take us off, or we must be prepared for the dark time that must follow after the sun should go down for the winter; otherwise a third thing would certainly happen, that is, we should both die,--an event which did not, in any case, seem at all unlikely; so we pledged ourselves to stand by each other through every fortune, each helping the other all he could. At any rate, we would not lose hope, and never despair of being saved, through the mercy of Providence, somehow or other.
”Having reached this resigned state of mind, we were ready to consider rationally what we had to do. It was clear enough that, if we only looked out for a s.h.i.+p to save us, and that chance should in the end fail, we would be ill prepared for the winter if we were left on the island to encounter its perils. Therefore it was necessary to be ready for the worst, and accordingly, after a little deliberation, we concluded to proceed as follows:--
”1st. We would construct a place to shelter ourselves from the cold and storms. (In this we had made some satisfactory progress already.)
”2d. We would collect all the food we could while there was opportunity.
”3d. We would gather fuel, of which, as had been already proved, there was Andromeda (or fire-plant) and moss and blubber to depend upon. Of this latter the dead narwhal and seal would furnish us a moderate supply; but for the rest we must rely upon our own skill to capture some other animals from the sea; though, as to how this was to be done, we had to own ourselves completely at fault.
”4th. We would in some manner secure for ourselves warmer clothing, otherwise we would certainly freeze; and here we were completely at fault too.
”5th. We would contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others,--as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,--for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins for clothing, yet neither of us could think of any way to make a lamp.
”When we came thus to bring ourselves to view the situation, the prospect might have caused stouter hearts than ours to fear; but, as we had seen before, nothing was to be gained by lamentation, so we put a bold front on, firmly resolved to make the best fight we could.”
”A poor chance for you, I should think,” said Fred, ”and I don't see how you ever lived through so many troubles,”--while little Alice declared her opinion that ”the poor Dean must have died anyway.”
”A very bad prospect, indeed, my dears,” continued the Captain,--”very bad, I can a.s.sure you; but as it is a poor rule to read the last page of a book before you read the rest of it, so we will go right on to the end with our story, and then you will find out what became of the Dean, as well as what happened to myself.
”Well, as I was going to say, when Monday came, we set about our work, not exactly in the order which I have named, but as we found most convenient; and as day after day followed each other through the week, and as one week followed after another week, we found ourselves at one time building up the wall in front of the cave, then catching ducks and gathering eggs, then collecting the fire-plant, and then throwing moss up on the rocks to dry, and then cutting off the blubber and skins of the dead seal and narwhal.
”All of these things were carefully secured; and in a sort of cave, much like the one we were preparing for our abode, only larger, we stowed away all the fire-plant and dried moss that we could get. Then we looked about us to see what we should do for a place to put our blubber in,--that is, you know, the fat we got off the dead narwhal and the seal, and also any other blubber that we might get afterwards.
”When we had cut all the blubber off the seal and narwhal, we found that we had an enormous heap of it,--as much, at least, in quant.i.ty, as five good barrels full,--and, since the sun was very warm, there was great danger, not only that it would spoil, but that much of it would melt and run away. Fortunately, very near our hut there was a small glacier hanging on the hillside, coming down a narrow valley from a greater ma.s.s of ice which lay above. From the face of this glacier a great many lumps of ice had broken off, and there were also deep banks of snow which the summer's sun had not melted.
”In the midst of this acc.u.mulation of ice and snow we had little difficulty in making, partly by excavating and partly by building up, a sort of cave, large enough to hold twice as much blubber as we had to put into it. Here we deposited our treasure, which was our only reliance for light in case we invented a lamp, and our chief reliance for fire if the winter should come and find us still upon the island.
”After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: John Hardy and the Dean provide for the Future.]
”When we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may be sure our spirits rose very much.”