An American Robinson Crusoe for American Boys and Girls Part 2

Robinson saw at a little distance what seemed to be a cleft or an opening in a huge rock. "If I could only get inside and find room to stay over night. The rock would protect me from rain, from the wind and wild animals better than a tree."

He long sought in vain for a place wide enough to allow him to get into the opening in the rock. He was about to give up, when he seized hold of a branch of a thorn tree growing on the side of the rock. He looked closer and saw that it grew out of the cleft in the rock. He saw, too, that at this point the opening was wider and that he had only to remove the tree in order to get in. "The hole shall be my dwelling," he said.

"I must get the thorn tree out so that I can have room."

That was easily said. He had neither axe nor saw, nor knife nor spade.

How could he do it? He had nothing but his hands. He tried to pull it out by the roots, but in vain. He wasn't strong enough.

"I must dig it out," said Robinson.

He scratched with his nails, but the earth was too hard. What should he do? He sought a stick with a fork in it and dug in the earth, but it was slow work. Then he found a clam-sh.e.l.l. He did better with it, but it was hard work, and Robinson was not used to hard work. The sweat ran down his face and he had often to stop and rest in the shade. The sun burned so hot and the rock so reflected the heat that he was all but overcome.

But he worked on. When evening came, he would sleep in the tree and next morning he would go at it again. On the third day the roots were all laid bare.

But the roots were fast in the clefts of the rock and he could not loosen it, try ever so hard. What would he not have given for an axe, or at least a knife. And yet he had never thought of their value when at home. He attempted to cut one root through with his clam-sh.e.l.l, but the sh.e.l.l crumbled and would not cut the hard wood.

He stood for a long time thinking, not knowing what next to do. He made up his mind that he must have something harder than the sh.e.l.l to cut with. Then he tried a stone with a sharp edge, but soon found he needed another one, however. He found one. Then he set the sharp one on the wood and struck it with the heavy one. In this way he slowly cut the roots in two.

On the fifth day there was yet left one big root, bigger than any of the others. Robinson got up early in the morning. He worked the whole day.

Finally it gave a crack and it, too, was broken.

Robinson had only now to remove the loose earth inside the cleft. He found the opening could be made large and roomy. It was choked up with dirt. He dug out enough to allow him room enough to make a place to lie down. "In the future," he thought, "I will take out all the dirt and then I shall be comfortable."

It was then dark and the moon shone bright in the heavens. Robinson gathered a heap of dry gra.s.s and made himself a safe bed. But as he lay there he saw the moonbeams s.h.i.+ning into his cave. He sprang up. "How easy," he thought, "for wild animals to creep in here upon me."

He crawled out and looked around. Not far from the cave he saw a large flat stone. With great trouble he rolled it to the opening of his cave, but before this the morning began to dawn. He went inside the shelter, seized the stone with both hands and rolled it into the opening till it almost closed it. "I have now a closed home. I can again stretch my legs. Wind and rain cannot get at me, nor wild animals."

X

ROBINSON MAKES A HAT

Refreshed and with renewed strength, Robinson awoke late the next morning, but he had a bad headache. The day before the hot tropic sun had beat down on his bare head, as he worked at his cave. He was so busy that he forgot to go into the shade from time to time in order to s.h.i.+eld himself from the scorching suns.h.i.+ne. He felt a new need.

"I must make me a hat," said Robinson to himself. "But how?" He had no straw, no thread and no needle. He looked around for a long time, but found nothing. The sun mounted even higher in the heavens, and shone hotter and hotter. He went to seek shelter at last in the deep shade of a nearby tall plant.

As he stood there he examined the plant more carefully. "Out of these leaves," he said, "I might make a hat." He climbed up the short stem of the plant and saw that it had not only leaves as long as himself, but between the leaves were big bunches of long, thin fruit, as thick as three fingers and similar in shape to a cuc.u.mber.

He plucked the leaves and fruit and was about to eat some of the fruit when he heard near him a light stir as of some animal. He rolled the leaves and fruit together and hastened back to the cave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BANANA TREE]

The bananas, for that is what the fruit proved to be, were sweet and refres.h.i.+ng. After he had eaten enough he set immediately about making his hat. He broke off a couple of reeds. He bent one into a hoop. But the hoop would not hold without thread. Sometimes it was too large and sometimes too small. But it must fit his head. He pulled up gra.s.s and bound its ends together, but the gra.s.s stalks were not strong enough. He hunted until he found a tree whose inner bark was soft and came out in long fibres. He bound his reed with this. This, too, made the hoop soft so that it did not hurt his head.

When the hoop was ready and fitted to his head he found the banana leaves could not be used. Their veins ran straight out from the midrib.

This made them easily torn, and besides, they were too large. They were not the best shape. He saw that leaves about a foot long with broad and tapering points would be best. He saw too, that if the leaves had their veins running parallel with the midrib they would be stronger. He made search and at length found leaves that seemed made for his purpose. They were thick and leathery and tapered from base to apex like a triangle.

He now proceeded with his hat-making. He would take a leaf and lay it on the ground with the base toward him. Then he laid the hoop on the base of the leaf, wrapped it around the hoop and fastened it with thorns. He did the same with the other leaves. The thorns were his pins. At last he pinned the tips of the leaves together at the top and the hat was ready. It looked just like a big cone, but it kept out the heat of the sun.

Robinson now had corn and bananas and when he was thirsty he drank a handful of water from the spring. He had been now nine days on the island. Every day he looked out on the sea until his eyes ached to see if he might discover a s.h.i.+p.

He could not understand why no s.h.i.+p came his way. "Who knows how long I must wait here?" said he sorrowfully. Then the thought came to him: "You will not be able to keep track of the days unless you write it down."

XI

ROBINSON'S CALENDAR

The matter of keeping track of time puzzled Robinson very much. It was getting more difficult every day to keep it in his memory. He must write down the days as they slip by, but where and how? He had neither pen, ink, nor paper. Should he mark every day with a colored stone on the smooth side of the huge rock wall within whose clefts he had dug out his cave? But the rain would wash off the record and then he would lose all his bearings. Then he thought of the beach, but there the wind and waves would soon also erase it.

He thought a long time. "I must find something," he said to himself on which to keep a record. "I must also know when Sunday is. I must rest one day in the week. Yes, I must find something," he said, "on which to write." And finally he found it. He chose two trees standing near each other and then sought for a small sharp stone, which he could make still sharper by striking it on another. When he had got this pen ready he cut into the bark of one tree:

_s.h.i.+pwreck, Sunday, 10th of September, 1875._

He made seven cuts in a row for the seven days in the week. The first cut was longer than the others. This was to represent the Sunday. At sundown every day he made a new cut in the bark.

The other tree he called the month tree. On its stem he was to cut a mark every time his week tree told him a month had pa.s.sed. But he must be careful, for the months were not of equal length. But he remembered that his teacher had once said in school that the months could be counted on the knuckles and hollows of the hand, in such a way that the long and short months could be found easily and he could tell in this way the number of days in each.

Robinson worked at enlarging his shelter a little every day. He was sorely at loss to find something in which to carry the dirt away from the entrance, or enough so that it would not choke up the opening. A large clam sh.e.l.l was all he could think of at present. He would carry the dirt to the entrance and some distance away, and then throw it.

Fortunately the ground sloped away rapidly, so that he needed a kind of platform before his door.

He was careful to open the cleft at some distance above the large opening. For the air was damp and impure in the shelter. But with the opening made high above, fresh air was constantly pa.s.sing into, and impure air out of, his cave. Light, too, was admitted in this way.

XII

ROBINSON MAKES A HUNTING BAG

Several days pa.s.sed with Robinson's hat-making and his calendar-making and his watching the sea. Every day his corn and bananas became more distasteful to him. And he planned a longer journey about the island to see if something new to eat could be found.

But he considered that if he went a distance from his cave and found something it would really be of little use to him. "I could eat my fill," he said, "but that is all. And by the time I get back to my cave I will again be hungry. I must find something in which I can gather and carry food." He found nothing.

"The people in New York," he said, "have baskets, or pockets, or bags made of coa.r.s.e cloth. Of them all, I could most easily make the net, perhaps, of vines. But the little things would fall out of the net. I will see whether I can make a net of small meshes."

But he soon saw that the vines did not give a smooth surface. He thought for a long while. In his garden at home his father had sometimes bound up the young trees with the soft inner bark of others. He wondered if he could use this. He stripped away the outer bark from the tree, which before had yielded him a fibre for his hat, and pulled off the long, smooth pieces of the inner bark. He twisted them together. Then he thought how he could weave the strands together. He looked at his s.h.i.+rt.

A piece was torn off and unravelled. He could see the threads go up and down. He saw that some threads go from left to right (woof), others lengthwise (the warp).

From his study of the woven cloth, Robinson saw he must have a firmer thread than the strips of bark gave alone. He separated his bark into long, thin strips. These he twisted into strands of yarn by rolling between his hands, or on a smooth surface. As he twisted it he wound it on a stick. It was slow, hard work. Of all his work, the making of yarn of thread gave him the most trouble. He learned to twist it by knotting the thread around the spindle or bobbin on which he wound it and twirling this in the air. He remembered sadly the old spinning wheel he had seen at his grandmother's house.

His next care was something to hold the threads while he wove them in and out. He had never seen a loom.