Palm Tree Island Part 17

We afterwards discovered that Billy's guess was very near the truth, and for the better understanding of my story, I deem it convenient to relate here what we only learnt at a later time. The seamen of the _Lovey Susan_, when they left us on the island the first time, went away to the south-east, and by and by came to a small island, uninhabited as ours was, but pretty well furnished with fruit trees, and there they took up their abode, and for many months lived in plenty, their fare, in addition to the fruits, being fish and birds--when they could catch them--and pigs, of which there were a few.

They made simple gra.s.s huts for themselves, not taking the trouble to build substantial houses, and when this was done, they being not at all diligent, did nothing else but quarrel among themselves, and their laziness and improvidence in due time found them out. They lived very comfortably while their supplies of food lasted, but they hunted down the pigs until one day they were astonished to find there were no more; and as to fish, that was very plentiful at certain seasons and scarce at others, and during the time of plenty they did not trouble about curing any--at least, only two or three men did, one of whom was Mr.

Bodger, and these gave up doing it when they found that the others expected to share with them. But their princ.i.p.al food at all times was bread-fruit, because they got less tired of this than of cocoa-nuts and other fruits; yet they were so reckless that they consumed the fruit when it was ripe without any thought for the morrow, having no notion of preserving it. The season of bread-fruit being over, they subsisted on cocoa-nuts, but they being a score of ravenous men, and the island small, they had well-nigh consumed all the cocoa-nuts before the next bread-fruit ripened; thus they had at one time more than they could eat, and at another very short commons, and at these times they became very sour in temper, and there were constant bickerings and recriminations amongst them.

One day a fleet of canoes filled with savage warriors came to their island, and the savages having landed, there was a sharp fight betwixt them and the mariners, in which the latter came off victors by virtue of their firearms, though not without suffering considerable loss, two of them being killed and nearly all wounded. When we heard of this fight, Billy and me, we guessed that the savages were those we had seen one day from our watch-tower, though, of course, we could never prove it. Saving for this fight, the mariners were unmolested on their island; but in course of time the scarcity of food drove them to make voyages in search of islands that would afford better sustenance, which, however, they failed to discover. Then it was that one of them proposed that they should return to our island, which they knew from what they had seen of it to be fertile--at least, in parts--but they had so clear a recollection of the terrors of the volcano, especially Wabberley, who had been scalded the worst by the boiling water, that they were some time in making up their minds to the voyage, but did so at last. This was the occasion of their first visit to our island, when they discovered our hut, and were driven to panic and flight by our invention of an eruption. The boat being leaky, they had not ventured to lengthen their voyage, lest they should not be able to get back to their own island, where there was at least present security, and where they had left some of their number. Thither they returned, and lived there as best they could until the pinch of want again compelled them to set forth. Having seen from the slopes of our island the dim line on the western horizon betokening other land, they determined to sail thither; for though they suspected that their enemies the savages might have come thence, the bolder spirits among them thought it better to risk sudden death at the hands of savages than slow starvation on their island prison, especially as there was a chance that they might find friendly savages on some island or another.

Accordingly they did what they could to patch up their boat for the voyage, and set forth, all of them this time, for four being dead--two slain by the savages and two by disease--the boat would hold them all.

Their design was to touch at our island on the way for rest and refreshment, and see, also, whether there were still signs that it was inhabited, for on their former visit they believed that we had been driven away by fear of the volcano, so that they did not think of settling on the island themselves. But when they landed, and Hoggett saw that, so far from being scared away, we had remained--or, at any rate, returned--and improved our settlement, he was for capturing our hut and entering into possession of the island, and was deterred from attempting this design only by finding that we could defend ourselves and by the overruling of his companions when they found, on roaming over the island, that it was not near so fertile as they had supposed.

They did not discover our yam plantation, and feared that their case here would very soon be no better than it had been on their own island.

Accordingly they sailed away, westward, as I have said, to accomplish the purpose with which they had set forth.

All this, I say, we did not learn till a good while afterwards, and having set it down for the better understanding of those that read, I will now return to the place where I left our own story--like a child standing in a drawn circle and forbid to move till he is told. We were greatly rejoiced to find that our visitors had quite left us, and went with cheerful hearts about our work, a part of it on this day being the gathering together of our swine which we had released. Some came back of themselves; others had struck up acquaintance with some of the wild pigs that were still on the island, and appeared to be indisposed to return to civilization, though one did indeed come in what I thought was a shamefaced way above a week after all the rest, and him I called the prodigal son.

"The what son?" says Billy.

"The prodigal son," said I; and then I told him the story, which he heard with the same eagerness and pleasure as he heard all my stories, whether out of the Bible or out of profane history. When I came to that part where the wretched young man "would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat," Billy interrupted me, saying it was clear they did not feed their pigs half so well in that country as we did, and he warranted that Wabberley and the other seamen would be pleased enough if they got as good food as our pigs, for he persisted in believing (which turned out to be true) that the men were famis.h.i.+ng, and he went on to declare that he was sure they would come back again.

"For why?" says he. "Why, they know we've been here these ever so many years" (it was about four by my reckoning), "and living comfortable, and wherever they go they'll either have to work, which they hate, or to fight, which will be worse, for their powder and shot won't last for ever, and I wonder they've any left at all. They must have been uncommon careful of it."

I did not think that Billy's prediction would come true, for they had certainly found no great stores of food on our island, and if it was food they were seeking they would surely suppose that, though we were alive, we had no more than supplied our own needs. However, there is no folly in being prepared for anything that may befall, so Billy and I set ourselves to think very seriously again of what we should do if our hut were besieged closely for any considerable length of time. Our situation would not be pleasant, between exasperated besiegers on the one side and the terrible monsters on the other, and I set my wits to work very earnestly to see if I might devise some means whereby we might extirpate those hideous creatures and so clear a way to the sea.

To make an attack on them with our weapons held no great promise in it, for, as Billy said, they seemed to be terribly tough, and while we were disposing of one, others might cling around us and lug us to perdition.

Besides, the very sight of the monsters made our blood run cold, and Billy said he would sooner face a thousand stepmothers than one of them, though he thought he might prefer one monster to three Hoggetts.

[Sidenote: Experiments]

It was after the matter had been beating in my head for several days that the notion came to me to try how the fizzy rock would affect the creatures. We knew what dreadful choking fumes came from it when it was thrown into water, and it seemed to me not impossible that these fumes might dissolve in water and poison it, and 'twould then be only a question of getting a sufficient quant.i.ty to destroy the whole nest or lair of the monsters. Considering that it would be a very laborious matter to bring down to the cliffs enough of the rock for our purpose, we determined to make a trial of it first, and the creature we selected for the _vile corpus_ (which is pretty nearly all the Latin I remember) was one of those robber crabs which I think I have mentioned. We caught one on the sh.o.r.e, and put him into one of my pots, which we filled with water and then cast in one or two lumps of the rock. There was a great fizzing and spluttering, with dense and suffocating fumes, and when they had cleared off and it was safe for us to go to the pot, we found the crab perfectly black and quite dead, and when Billy took it out of the pot he declared that the water stung his hand. We were very well satisfied with this trial, and immediately set about collecting a great quant.i.ty of the poisonous stuff, bringing it down from the mountain in baskets which we slung at our backs, and heaping it up on the cliff just above the entrance to the cave. I proposed that we should carry it down to the sh.o.r.e, and convey it to the monsters' haunt in our canoe, but this Billy would not hear of for a moment, avouching that he would sooner be eaten by savages than hugged by the slimy arms of the beasts.

[Sidenote: Billy is Reflective]

We had been digging out the rock, and carrying it to the cliff, for a matter of two days when a terrible storm of rain came on in the night, and when we got up in the morning and went to the cliff, we saw that all the rock we had so toiled in collecting had spent itself, and left a black desolation all around the spot where it had lain. This gave us a great deal of annoyance, as much at our thoughtlessness as at the thing itself; but we did not give up our design, resolving rather to be the more careful in our preparations. It took us a very long time to a.s.semble as much material as we had before, because we had to dig deeper into the side of the mountain for it, and when we got it we covered it over very scrupulously, so that the rain could not touch it.

Billy remarked that of course, after our taking all that trouble, there would be no more rain for a month, and he was right; but I pointed out to him that we should have been very foolish if we had not taken these precautions, and he said it was a pity you could not tell things beforehand, adding, as if it had never struck him before, that you never could tell what might have been, because all we knew was what was. And then he was silent for a time, and when he spoke again, he said: "Ain't it terrible, master, to think you never can catch a minute what's gone?" Billy so seldom said anything of a reflective nature that I looked at him in some alarm, with a kind of superst.i.tious fear that he was sickening for something; but I was relieved in a moment when, in the same breath, he said: "It do make you eat hearty, though."

When we had heaped up on the cliff a good many hundredweights of the rock, we waited for the flow of the tide, and then, choosing a place where the cliff ran down very steep and straight to the mouth of the cave, we flung the stuff into the water between the mouth and the rocks where we first encountered the shoal of monsters. We watched eagerly to see what happened, and saw a vast number of bubbles come to the surface, and a certain quant.i.ty of smoke that floated away on the breeze, but not near such a smother as we had experience of, which made us hope that there was all the more poison in the water. There was a slight current at the foot of the cliffs, setting past the cl.u.s.ter of rocks towards the channel between Red Rock and the island. We walked along for a little s.p.a.ce, in the same direction as this current, to see if there was any sign on the surface of the water of our experiment having had any effect. For some little while we saw nothing, and had begun to believe that the monsters were proof against what we had fondly hoped was poison, when we observed some tentacles appearing above the water by the rocks, and also at the base of the cliffs, and by and by the palpitating bodies of the monsters themselves, crawling up as if the water did not very well agree with them. We pelted these creatures very hard with stones and lumps of the strange rock, and though we missed pretty often, yet we hit them pretty often too, and had lively satisfaction when we saw them loose their hold and tumble back into the water as soon as the rock began to fizz. But we could not see that any of them were killed, and had to conclude that the water about the rocks was too deep, and the current moved too fast, for our poisonous substance to work its full effect, and so we went back disappointed, with the problem of making a safe way through the tunnel to the sea as far from solution as ever it was.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH

OF THE END OF THE SEA MONSTERS; AND OF THE EVENTS THAT LED US TO RECEIVE THE CREW AS OUR GUESTS

We had failed to destroy the monsters from the cliff top, and I concluded that we must still fail, unless we could, find some means of attacking them in an enclosed s.p.a.ce, where there was no current to carry away the water as soon as it was rendered poisonous. It was Billy who suggested the plan which we ultimately found successful.

Though he had refused point blank to approach the cave in our canoe, he would not mind, he said, "having a go" at the monsters from the tunnel, for there at least we had dry land to run back to, whereas if the canoe were caught in the embrace of one of the large creatures there would be little chance for us. And since we had already learnt that the monsters came into the cave, as well as haunting the rocks outside, I agreed, when Billy suggested it, that even if we could not kill them outright we might make the water in the cave so exceeding noisome that they would depart thence and seek more savorous quarters. We saw great difficulties in the way, first, to the conveying a sufficiently great quant.i.ty of the rock to the cave; then the possibility of heavy rains falling before we had accomplished our task, with the consequent rise of the water in the lake and the flooding of the tunnel, which would not only render it a perilous place for us ourselves, but would use up, or decompose, as they say, the material we had collected before we got it to the proper place. As to the first difficulty, we were already so well accustomed to hard work of various kinds that we thought nothing of it; while for the matter of the rain we could only take our chance and resolve to be as philosophical as possible if all our labour was undone. With this in mind, we determined to collect the lumps of rock first of all in our hut, and not to begin to convey them through the tunnel until we had as much as we wanted: which accordingly we did, going backwards and forwards for many days between the hut and the spot on the mountain-side where we found an inexhaustible supply of the rock. When we had got together a sufficient quant.i.ty, we carried above two-thirds of it in baskets to the entrance of the cave, and very laborious it was, because the way was so rough and in places so narrow, and we barked our s.h.i.+ns and elbows pretty often. But it was done at last, and then we laid up a similar heap on the cliff, at the same spot as we had put it before.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Our Baskets]

[Sidenote: End of the Monsters]

When all things were in readiness, we went along the tunnel one day, carrying torches in our hands, until we came to the place where we had put our heap of rock, at the brink of the pool. Now that the moment for our great enterprise was come, we were in a fever, I a.s.sure you, both from the importance of what we had taken in hand to do, and from our shuddering horror of the monsters. We held our torches above our heads, searching the cave for signs of them, expecting every moment to see the hideous tentacles emerge from the black water at our feet, and fancying we saw these dreadful enemies on all the rocks that strewed the floor of the cave. "What are we waiting for?" says Billy in an awful whisper, and seeing that certainly nothing was to be gained by delay, we stuck our torches into crevices in the wall, and then with two great heaves cast the pieces of rock into the water, and retreated instantly into the tunnel to escape the choking fumes that arose. We had to go a good way before we felt ourselves to be in safety from them, and indeed it promised to be so long before we could venture to go down to the cave again that we thought we might as well return to our hut and run down to the cliff, to see if any of the creatures had been driven forth. Accordingly we made great haste, and when we came to the cliff and looked over, we saw first several of the smaller creatures floating at the mouth of the cave, and quite dead as far as we could tell; but immediately afterwards there came slowly swimming out a huge monster that far exceeded in size and ugliness that which had seized me on that day when we climbed down the cliff for eggs.

Whether it was the same that had nearly caught Billy I know not, because we never saw that clearly; but we were perfectly amazed at the hugeness of it, being as big round as my aunt's round table in the parlour, and its tentacles stretching on all sides like the roots of an immense oak. Though we were far above it, and in safety, we shuddered when we beheld it, and our cheeks became pale; I saw that Billy's did, and he told me afterwards that I was as white as a ghost. We both felt beyond measure thankful that we had been so mercifully preserved from falling a prey to this terrible giant, which could have crushed the life out of us in a few minutes.

The monster swam slowly along until it came to the rocks I have before mentioned, and there it heaved itself up until the greater part of it was out of the water. "He's going to sit there till he's got the stink out of his nose," said Billy, "and then he'll go back, and all our work's thrown away." I feared that it would be as Billy said, and saw that we should have no security unless the monster were driven clean away or else killed outright. We took up some of the lumps of rock we had collected on the cliff and hurled them at the creature, but it had so lodged itself that we could hit nothing but its tentacles, and our missiles seemed to do them no hurt. If the creature would only expose its body, a great round bag of jelly as it seemed, we might shoot arrows into it and perhaps find a mortal spot. I bade Billy run back to the hut to fetch our bows and arrows while I still kept the monster in sight, and when he returned with them, we hurled pieces of rock just beyond where the creature lay, on the seaward side of it, hoping that the fumes would drive it from its perch towards us, so that we might take a fair aim. And that is what happened, for the monster after a little s.h.i.+fted its posture, and moved slowly away from the poisonous fumes that beset it, back towards its old haunt in the cave. "Now we've got him," says Billy, in great excitement. "You shoot better than me, master; you have a go at him while I keep on flinging the rock t'other side of him, to keep him on the move." Accordingly I shot arrow after arrow at the great central ma.s.s, as fast as I could fit them to the bow, while Billy flung stone after stone just beyond it.

He cried out in amazement when the arrows clean disappeared in the creature's body, and yet it moved, and he asked me in a whisper whether I didn't think it was the devil himself, and so couldn't be killed, except by G.o.d. But I bade him continue his throwing, and I shot at least a dozen arrows, I think, before I thought the creature moved more slowly, as if it had suffered some injury; and it being then close up against the cliff, directly below us, I said to Billy that we would topple down on it the whole of the lumps that were left, and see if that would not deal the finis.h.i.+ng stroke. This we did, casting over above a hundred-weight of the stuff, some of which struck the creature, and the rest fell with great hissing and smoking into the water around it. The stench almost overpowered us even at the height we stood, and we withdrew for a little, but returning and peering over we saw the monster floating without any motion, and its tentacles curled up most strangely around it. "I do believe he's dead, the villain!" cried Billy joyously; and though we stood watching for some time longer, there was no motion in the beast, at least no motion of its own, for we saw that it gradually drifted on the current towards the Red Rock; and then we hastened away across that part of the island until we came to the point opposite the ledge, where we could look down into the narrow race between; and we had not been there long when the monster, perfectly inert, was swept around the corner and through the channel, and so carried along past the north side of the island until we lost sight of it, and knew that we should see it no more.

For several days after this some of this family of monsters were cast up dead on the sh.o.r.e, together with a great quant.i.ty of fish of all kinds, so that we were in no doubt of the efficacy of this remarkable mineral. Indeed, Billy startled me by saying one night, just as I was going to sleep, "I say, master, what a fine thing that stuff would be for doing away with mother-in-laws and Hoggetts and such!" I told him this was a horrible notion, and he owned that it was, and he supposed it would be murder and he would be hanged for it. "But," says he, "suppose Hoggett and that lot come back and fight us, and we kill one or two of 'em--and we can't be sure our arrows won't go straight--would that be murder, eh?" I replied that I thought it was justifiable to kill a man if fighting in self-defence. "Well then," says he, "I don't understand it, not a bit. You kill a man when he's shooting at you, and might kill you if you ain't first, and that ain't murder; but if you kill him with fizzy rock, so that he don't have a chance to kill you, that _is_ murder. What do you make of that, now?" I own I could make nothing of it (though perhaps I might nowadays), but said he had better go to sleep; and he cast that up at me afterwards, saying that whenever he wanted things explained I told him to go to sleep because I couldn't think of what to say, which was not true in general, though it was on that occasion.

But to return to my story. We found that we had killed or driven away all the noxious creatures which had made their home in the cave, and since we took care to fumigate the cave at intervals, we were never troubled with them again. The having a direct and safe outlet from our hut to the sea was a great source of satisfaction to us, for now if at any time we should be hard pressed above, we could very easily make our escape and so free ourselves from immediate danger. To this end we brought our canoe round from the nook where we had kept it on the other side of the island, and having taken it into the cave, we made what you may call a dock for it by piling some rocks together above high-water mark, behind which we could lay it up without much fear that it would be discovered if any one should enter the cave from the sea.

[Sidenote: Daily Tasks]

After this we resumed our normal way of life, going about our daily business with a regularity which no new alarm interfered with for a very long time. We were accustomed to measure the time, so far as we did it at all, by the bread-fruit season, calling it summer while this fruit was ripening, and winter when we had plucked it all, for we were always careful to lay up a good store of it, both for ourselves and our animals. Our pigs and our poultry throve very well, so that we had to enlarge their dwellings; and I will say here, in case I forget it, that by devoting some part of our time to hunting, we came very near to exterminating both the wild pigs and the dogs; and we found that as they grew less, the wild fowls increased mightily, because of their greater security. We did not put ourselves to any trouble to molest them, both because they were still difficult to approach, and because we had enough of our domestic poultry to supply our own wants. We had discovered that these fowl were exceeding fond of a kind of small grain that grew near our yam plantation, and to which we had given little heed because it was no use for our own food. But seeing that our fowls liked it, we began to cultivate it, and kept a good quant.i.ty of it stored in the cellar beneath our hut. We kept there also a large supply of our other foods--yams, bread-fruit, cocoa-nuts, smoked pork and fish, and so forth; and also all our spare implements which we had not in constant use, namely arrows, fish-hooks, pots and pans, in short all the things we had made, keeping in the hut itself only those things which we used constantly, and enough food for the day. I do not know whether I have mentioned one use to which we put our fowls. We kept the feathers of those we killed, and also those that fell in the moulting time, and in fights, for they did fight sometimes; and having cleaned these as well as we could we stuffed them into pillow-cases made of leaves, and so had comfortable rests for our heads at night.

We used to take advantage of rainy days to patch our clothing, which was by this time, as you may guess, the strangest motley that could be seen; and besides the overcoats I have mentioned before, we made ourselves leggings of raw hide, of which also we made covers for our chairs.

So another season pa.s.sed over us. We were as happy as any two men could be in like circ.u.mstances, I believe; we enjoyed perfect health, and had discovered for ourselves what great pleasure comes from simply _doing things_. We had quite given up any thought of being rescued or ever seeing our native land again, and though there were times when I at least pined for the dear ones at home, I was always inestimably thankful for Billy's companions.h.i.+p, but for which I do not think I could have supported the loneliness.

[Sidenote: A Chase]

It was towards the middle of the winter season, that is, when we were just beginning to think of planting our yams, when, going up one morning to our watch-tower, a task we never once omitted, I spied a number of dark objects on the sea to westward, which I very soon discovered to be canoes filled with savages. They were approaching our island, and I thought at first they might pa.s.s us by as the fleet had done before; but as they drew nearer I observed that there was a s.h.i.+p's boat among them, or rather ahead of them, and with white men aboard, and when I had watched for a little while I could not doubt that the canoes were chasing the boat and were very near overhauling it. Indeed I saw them spread out as if to envelop it, but then there was a shot fired and I saw the smoke hover over the boat, and the canoes paused in their course, and the boat drew away from them, only, however, to be pursued again as soon as it was out of shot range. I counted ten canoes, and each held, as I reckoned, above twenty men; the white men, whom I had already guessed to be the seamen of the _Lovey Susan_, being no more than about fifteen or sixteen.

Billy was not with me on the watch-tower, it being his turn to cook the dinner; but seeing that it would be an hour or maybe more before the boat and the canoes could reach the island, I made great haste back to our hut, and acquainted Billy with what I had seen. "I hope the savages will catch 'em," says he at once, but agreed with me that we must prepare ourselves to meet a greater danger than any that had yet fallen to our lot, for we could not doubt that so great a horde of savages would easily overcome our few countrymen if they landed, and then, if they found our hut, they would most likely turn their attack upon us. Indeed, it seemed to me that our only chance of safety lay in the annihilation of the seamen before they could leave the sh.o.r.e, for we did not suppose that the savages would come inland into the island of the burning mountain, unless they had great provocation or incitement to it. All that we could do was to let the pigs loose again, and take up the drawbridge from our moat, which latter, however, we did not do until we had been to the cliff to see whether the boat was indeed making for our island. When we got there we found the crew at that moment landing, in the desperate haste of men frantic with fear, and after we had seen the first of them scrambling up the cliffs where they were easiest to climb, we ran back to our hut very quickly, pulled up the drawbridge, and set up and barricadoed the door. We had seen that the first of the canoes was but a few yards from the sh.o.r.e, and from the fierce outcries and war-whoops of the savages we knew that they were resolved upon blood.

I considered with myself whether we ought to lend a.s.sistance to the men of our colour; but when I thought of the way in which they had treated us, and indeed reckoned up the heavy score we had against them, I could not believe that their quarrel with the savages was any affair of ours, and so resolved to let them fight it out between them. And when the seamen began to appear on the top of the cliffs, and made straight for our hut, I saw that the fight would after all perhaps not be so one-sided as we had first imagined, for several of the men had muskets, and muskets were greatly superior to any weapons the savages carried, besides the fear they inspired in ignorant b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The seamen, I say, made straight for our hut, and I counted sixteen of them; Chick was ahead of all the rest, he being a little man and light of foot; but Wabberley, big as he was, was not far behind, being as craven a soul as ever I saw; and then came the rest in a group. When they reached the edge of the moat, and found there was no means of getting across it save by leaping down and scaling the opposite side, which would have taken a long time, they were in a great stew, and some began to run frantically up and down to see if there was not some spot where the crossing was easier. But Hoggett came to the part opposite our doorway, and cried out in a most affecting voice, "Master Brent, Master Brent, sir, let us in, sir, for mercy's sake, or we shall all be murdered, sir."

"Yes, 'tis 'Master Brent, sir,' 'Please, sir, would you be so kind, sir!' now," says Billy with a sneer.

"If you please, sir," begins Hoggett again, almost echoing Billy's mockery, "the savages are right on our heels, sir, and we're Christians, and you wouldn't see us all slaughtered like pigs, sir."

"Why shouldn't I?" I cried through a loophole. "What reason can you give why we should interfere?"

Here Wabberley cried out in terror that the savages were coming, and we saw several dusky forms appear in the distance. Hoggett, who was not without a certain courage, and coolness too, turned to the men and bade them post themselves behind the pigsties and fowlhouse, and let the savages have one shot to daunt them, but not more, from which I guessed they were very short of powder and shot. Almost in the same breath he continued his pleading with me, and I own he sickened me when he declared he repented of the wrong he had done, and if I would only let him in, like a "kind Christian gentleman," he would fetch and carry for me all the rest of his days. I think I might have yielded if he had not been so abject, which I did not need Billy's mockery to tell me was mere feigning; but I resolutely refused, and then we saw Hoggett in his true colours again, for the savages beginning to close round, he gave a glance at them and then poured out upon me the most horrible vituperation and foulest language I ever heard from the lips of any man, and then ran to join his comrades who were ensconced behind our outbuildings.

[Sidenote: A Fight with Savages]

The savages came on in a pretty compact body, brandis.h.i.+ng spears and clubs, many of them having bows and arrows, and all looking exceeding fierce, their skins being tattooed in strange and hideous patterns, their hair bushed up like a thatch supported on what seemed to be a row of shark's teeth. There was much shouting and gesticulating among them, and from the manner of their pointing I guessed that they were mighty surprised at the sight of our hut and its surroundings, and indeed they came to a halt at some little distance from the moat, and seemed to be deliberating what course to follow; and all the time the seamen, who had regained something of their courage now that they were behind cover, closely watched them, but never offered to fire. The clamour of the savages increased to a wondrous degree, and I believed they must be working up their courage to charge, and presently the group widened out until it was near a half-circle in shape, and then the naked warriors, near two hundred in number, rushed forward with most furious whoops, their leader being a man of great stature and especial intricacy of tattooing. They had come within about eighty yards of the seamen when I heard Hoggett give the word to fire, and there were instantly several shots, but not so many shots as muskets, by which I saw that there was shortness of ammunition, as I suspected.

The half-dozen shots, however, were enough to bring the savages to a pause, not because of any damage done among them, for the muskets of those days were not near so good as the rifles which I hear some of our men carried of late in Spain; but because of the noise and smoke, which are as terrifying to savage people as they are to animals. When the seamen had fired they began instantly to put in fresh charges, and the savage chief stirred his people up to attack again; but I observed that some of them had already drawn back, in fear of the muskets. However, others, though they did not advance further, stood their ground and began to discharge arrows and spears, which at first did no hurt at all, because the seamen were pretty well hidden; which seeing, the savages spread out so as to encircle the outbuildings, and then began to discharge their weapons again, the white men no longer being all sheltered. What shrieks of joy there were when the savages observed that one or two of their missiles had got home! Taking new courage from the sight, they surged forward with blood-curdling yells, and had come within about fifty yards of the pig-sty when Hoggett again gave the word to fire, and this time they hit one or two of the savages, and again brought them to a halt.

"I don't think much of them for fighters," said Billy, who had been watching these proceedings very eagerly through his loophole. "Why don't they rush in while the rascals are priming their guns? They're just a lot of donkeys, that's what they are."

[Sidenote: Asylum]

But I saw that this second halt of the savages was only as a gathering up of strength, for they were now frenzied, as well with delight at the wounding of two of the white men as with anger at the damage done among themselves. Even before the seamen had had time to charge their guns again I saw the rush beginning, and I could not doubt that this time the savages would overwhelm the little company of white men, or at least do terrible execution among them. And in that moment my mind was made up for me, as it were without my consent to it, though I believe I must have felt in my inmost heart that it would be a crime to stand neutral while men of my own colour were butchered before my eyes.

However that may be, certain it is that all of a sudden I ran very fast to the door and pulled it open, and then bidding Billy come after me and bring his bow and arrows, I caught up the drawbridge, threw it across the moat, and leapt over, calling to Hoggett to bring his men into our hut as quickly as might be. The sight of me suddenly sallying forth seemed to strike the savages with amazement, for they paused in the middle of their onset, and thus gave time to the seamen, not only to finish their priming, but also to make steps in retreat towards the hut; and as they came, Wabberley being first--as might be expected--Hoggett and Pumfrey and two or three more of the braver sort formed themselves into a rearguard, covering the retreat with their levelled muskets. However, before the second of the wounded men had come over the drawbridge the savages got the better of their astonishment and rushed on with horrible yells, whereupon I ranged myself alongside of Hoggett and the rest, calling to Billy to come too, and wondering why he had not yet joined me. Then we shot all together, the men with their muskets and I with bow and arrow, but I could not see what the effect of our shots was, partly because of the smoke, and partly because the savages were now such a wild mob that everything was confused. But in a moment I saw the big chief leaping with great strides before his men, who were close at his heels and no more than thirty yards from the moat. The seamen were helpless, for they had fired their pieces and could not recharge them in time; but I plucked another arrow from my quiver, and fitting it to my bow took as good aim as I could at the chief; and thankful I was that I had had a good deal of practice at what Billy called our guy, for when I let fly the arrow it sped very true, and struck the savage in the left side of his chest, just below the shoulder joint, and he fell upon his face, though I knew by his howling that he was not dead. The fall of their leader fairly daunted the rest of the savages, and they halted, and we seized this breathing s.p.a.ce to get all the men across the moat, and then I caught up the drawbridge and ran behind the men into the hut, and we had got the door into its place by the time the savages came to the moat. When they saw that they were baulked they let forth the most astonis.h.i.+ng cries I ever heard in my life, like the yelping of dogs rather than the cries of men; and while some carried their chief away, others ran round towards the lake side of the hut to see if there was any door there, or any weak spot there or at the other sides where they might attack us.

And then, looking through a loophole, I saw seven or eight prostrate forms on the ground, the victims of the seamen's muskets.

The hut was very dim inside, all the light being what came through the loopholes, we never having made a window: but little as it was it was enough for Hoggett, and one or two more, to see to charge their pieces, and putting these through loopholes in different sides of the hut, they fired and so scattered the savages, who ran swiftly out of gun-shot.

We saw them meet together a good distance off, towards the cliff, and one of the seamen said they were holding a parliament, and he hoped they had punishment enough and would make up their minds to go back to their own island.

[Sidenote: What I Owe Billy]

Observing that the seamen were very intent on watching these proceedings, I turned to find Billy, to ask him why he had not come out with me when I bade him, for I thought his backwardness was due either to cowardice or to flat disobedience, and I was as much astonished at the one as at the other. I could not find him at first, for the hut was pretty well packed, and indeed the air already began to be foul and oppressive; but I did find him, and when I asked him in some heat what he meant by it, he took me by the arm and whispered in my ear, "Why, you forgot we hadn't covered over the hole into the cellar, and I reckoned we didn't want 'em to know about that, at least not yet a bit." And then I shook him by the hand and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, and when he said in great surprise, "Why, master, that's nothing," I did not dare to tell him the unkind thoughts that had come into my mind, for I was sure he would have been very much hurt by them. Certainly it would have been a terrible calamity if the men had discovered our secret chamber, and I dare say 'tis due only to Billy's presence of mind in that matter of hastily covering over the shaft that I am alive to pen these lines to-day.