Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  OF THE BUILDING OF OUR HUT, TO WHICH WE BRING MORE ENTHUSIASM THAN SKILL

  I have not said anything about the plan of our big hut, but it must notbe supposed that we began to work without any design. We often talkedabout it, and so made a general plan, though we forgot many things anddid not foresee others. What this plan was will be made clear as I goon: if I set it down here all in one place it would be like writing thesame thing twice over, which would be tedious.

  Having felled the four fairly large trees we designed for ourcorner-posts, the next thing was to bring them down from the wood tothe level plateau where we intended to build. We lopped off some ofthe branches and burnt off the rest, but then found that the trunkswere too heavy for us to drag, even though it was downhill. Thus wewere put to it to make rollers, which was not such a tedious matter asfelling the trees, for there were many young trees of a shape and sizefit for this use when we had taken off their branches. But when wecame to place the rollers under the first of our trunks we could not atfirst by any means do it, the tree being so heavy that the two of ustogether could not raise it an inch from the ground. How to get overthis difficulty puzzled us for some time; indeed, we might never havethought of a way but for what I may call an accident. We had gone downto the shore for our morning swim, and as we walked over the beach wespied a crab scuttling away under a small rock. Billy had felt agrudge against crabs ever since one had robbed him of his club: so hecries out, "We'll have this old crab for dinner, master," and with thathe takes his axe and prises up the rock, and then gives the crab agreat knock, which did it not the least harm, it being large with athick shell. However, he was not to be baffled, so, setting down therock again, he bids me watch it, and runs off to the wood, returningpresently with a long bit of creeper, in which he had made a loop ornoose at one end. This noose he slips over one of the claws of thecrab, and drew it tight, and then set off at a run, dragging the crabafter him.

  [Sidenote: A Crab]

  We ate the crab for dinner, and liked it very well, but the moreimportant matter was that seeing Billy prise up the rock gave me anotion of the right manner of moving our trees.

  "We must carry two rocks up to the wood," I said, "and cut two stoutpoles, and then I will show you how the trees can be moved."

  "'Tis desperate hard work, master," says Billy with a prodigious sigh."We don't get on very fast. I wish we could find a cave where we couldlive like that old Robinson Crusoe, without any building at all."

  "But he built all the same," said I.

  "But not without tools," says Billy.

  However, he agreed to my proposal, and we carried a rock between us,with a great deal of sweating, up to where the fallen trees lay, andthen Billy says, "Ain't we fools!" and showed me that we could save adeal of labour by fastening strands of creeper to the second rock, anddragging it up instead of carrying it in our arms. This being done wecut two stout poles, which took us a long time, and then, putting therocks one on either side of the first trunk, we took a pole each, and,resting them on the rocks, put the one end under the tree and pressedheavily on the other, and so contrived to lift the weight which ourunaided strength was quite unequal to. I do not mean that we had neverseen levers before, but we might never have thought of them unlessBilly had prised up the rock after that crab. The use of levers wasindeed a mystery to him, I mean the explanation of them, he saying thatwe were no stronger than before, and there was certainly no strength intwo dead poles, and when I reminded him of the pulleys and the windlasson board ship, which also helped to raise things, he said that poleswere not pulleys, nor a windlass neither, and he didn't see what thathad to do with it. However, there was the trunk lifted, and while Iheld it so with my pole, Billy slipped a roller under it, and workingthus from the end towards the middle, we brought the roller along bydegrees, and then found that we could slip the second roller under theother end without the help of the poles.

  Then, with much pushing and hauling, we set the trunk a-moving on therollers down the slope. It was still hard work enough, for where theearth was soft, the rollers sank into it under the heavy weight of thetree, and when we came to a part that was hard and pretty smooth, thetrunk set to a-rolling so fast that it almost ran away with us, andBilly, who was in front, was very nearly sent headlong down, whichwould have been very terrible if he had fallen plump into our grate.We brought the other three trunks down to our plateau in the same way,and thus had the four stout posts which we intended for the corners ofour house, though there was a great deal to be done to them before theycould be erected. They were about the same thickness, being sixteen oreighteen inches across, but not the same length, and we had first tomake them equal, which took us a long time; I think we were ten days atthe work. When we had finished it, the trunks were about fourteen feetlong, that being the height we had determined on for our house,allowing for some portion of the posts to be driven into the earth. Wedid not peel the bark off the trees, but left it on, thinking it woulddo no harm.

  [Sidenote: Choosing a Site]

  We marked out the lines of our house, on the level plateau near thelake, which was almost the only even spot on the island, and allowed usa space of about twenty feet square, which I thought was large enough,thinking besides of the great labour we should be put to if we tried tomake too big a house. But when it came to erecting our corner-posts wewere in a great quandary. The ground was pretty soft, and deeper thanat other parts of the island, which I guessed was due to the heavyrains washing earth down from the hill above. With spades or shovelswe might have dug holes to a considerable depth, and then slipped thetrunks in, and having thus disposed of a part of the dead weight ofthem, we might have raised them to an erect position with levers, or bypushing them up with our hands as men raise a long ladder. But with notools save our blunt axes we saw that such excavation would demandunconscionable toil, and besides, after we should have accomplished it,we should be hard put to it to make the earth around the timbersufficiently firm and compact; so we had to consider another way, whichgave us a great deal of trouble. Indeed, it baffled us for severaldays, in which, however, we were not idle, but occupied ourselves inother concerns.

  [Sidenote: A Flagstaff]

  One of these was the erecting of a signal-post. Although, when wetalked matters over--as we often did, both in the daytime andespecially at night before we fell asleep--when we talked things over,I say, we always concluded that there was little or no chance of beingrescued, and made our plans as if we were to remain on this island forthe rest of our lives; yet we thought it right to take our measures forattracting any friendly ship that might heave in sight. We must not,of course, attempt to raise any permanent signal, for such a thingwould beyond question be discovered by the savages of some neighbouringisland when going about in their canoes, and the last thing we couldwish was to bring savages into our peaceful domain. On the other hand,unless we had some means of signalling, a ship might easily pass us bybefore we could communicate with it, for the island was so small thatno vessel would heave to on the mere chance of finding water, since itsmost important river, if it had one, could not be more than a merebrook in size. Being thus decided that we ought to have some kind ofsignal ready, in such a case, we determined that nothing could bebetter than a flagstaff, even if we should never have a flag.

  As for the spot where to erect it, we had no difficulty in choosingthat; no better could be found than the wooded hill above the lava bed,whither we climbed every morning and evening to take our lookout. Atthe top of this hill, and somewhat apart from the rest of the trees,there stood a tree very straight and tall, overtopping the others, sothat it formed a very clear mark. Since our flagstaff was not to bepermanently in sight, it seemed best that we should have one that wecould take to pieces, and put together when it was necessary to hoistit, and I had already seen, at the edge of the lake, what I thoughtwould serve our purpose to a marvel. This was a cluster of trees, orrather shrubs, like what is called ba
mboo, the stalks being tough andhollow, with joints or knuckles here and there. We cut down three orfour of these stalks, choosing them all of different diameters, andhaving burnt out the pith inside them, for some distance from the top,we contrived to make a kind of telescope tube by fitting them together,it reaching a length of near thirty feet.

  This being made, we cut, in the top of the trunk of the tall, straighttree before mentioned, a groove large enough to form a socket for thebottom end of our flagstaff, and when we had fitted it to oursatisfaction, we ventured just before sunset to raise the staff, and itmade a sort of topmast to the tree, standing some twelve feet above thesummit.

  "This is prime," says Billy. "Now all we want is an ancient or apendant to fix to the top of it, and there you are."

  "We have nothing but our shirts," said I, "and those we cannot spare."

  "But we don't need to raise our flag until we see a ship over yonder,"says Billy, "and if we do see one I can strip off my shirt in no time."

  "But we can't fit the staff in no time," I replied, "and we mustpractise ourselves in that until we are very speedy in it."

  We did this accordingly, several evenings in succession, always atdusk, so that our proceedings should not be seen by sharp-eyed savages;and we found in a few days that we could fit the joints of the stafftogether, and set it up in its socket, in the space of five minutes, asnear as I could guess. We kept the several joints in the tree, so thatwe should not have the labour of hauling them from the ground everytime, fastening them to the boughs with strands of creepers.

  While on this matter of the flagstaff, I must say that it came into mymind one day that I had seen the native women making a kind of clothout of the bark of a tree, though I had not observed what tree it was.I thought we might contrive to make a pendant in the same way, andafter some trials of the bark of different trees we discovered that thebread-fruit tree was best fitted for our purpose, and by diligentlybeating with stones upon a broad strip of the bark, moistened withwater, we flattened and stretched it until it became a sort of thinfabric, which would serve for a flag, though a makeshift one. Buthaving made it, we could not at first devise a means of attaching it tothe staff, having no nails, or anything that could be used in theirstead. There did, indeed, come out of the bark as we bruised it, asticky substance which we hoped might serve as glue, but we found thatit was not sufficiently tenacious. However, after some thought I hitupon the device of stringing the flag on a strand of creeper, and thenknotting the ends of this about the pole.

  Our success in this particular gave us much contentment, and Billydeclared that now that we knew how to make cloth we must discover ameans of making needles and thread, so that we could patch our shirtsand breeches, which were already miserably rent and tattered. But thiswas too great a puzzle for us at the moment, though we solved itafterwards, as I shall tell in its place.

  [Sidenote: Pottery]

  Having started to tell some of the matters that occupied us while wewere pondering the means of setting up the posts of our house, I maymention here another notion that came into my head. We had used someof the clayey earth of the hill-side to fill the interstices of oursmall house, and being often at a loss for vessels in which to cook ourfood, and also to carry water--as yet we did not drink it much, forvery good reasons--I thought of trying to make some pots and pans. Ihad, to be sure, no turning wheel, nor could I make one, nor had I theprepared flints or the lead for glaze, such as were employed in myuncle's factory. But I had seen the native people making pottery onthe island at which we touched, and that being, so to speak, my ownline of business, I had taken more particular note of it than of anyother of their devices.

  Their manner was to put a piece of calabash, or some such thing, undera lump of clay, to make it turn freely, and then to turn it slowly, butvery deftly, by hand, fashioning thereby a vessel of such regular shapethat I am sure my uncle, could he have seen it, would scarce havebelieved it had not been thrown, as we say, on the wheel. Such vesselsthey first dried in the sun, then, when a group of them had beenmoulded, a fire was kindled round and over them, and so they werebaked. I had no calabash, but I tried my prentice hand with the halfof a cocoa-nut shell, and found it very serviceable. But what gave mea deal of trouble was the clay. When I had mixed a great lump of it,moistening it with water and pounding it with stones, and had moulded asort of porringer upon the shell at first, the vessel would not keepits shape, even so long as it took me to set it upon the ground to dry.After making several trials of it, and being always disappointed, I sawthat I must mix some other substance with the earth to give itconsistency. This was a thing that baffled me for days, since all ourscouring of the island did not bring to light any substance that wouldbe of use, and we had no means of grinding into powder the flints whichlay around in plenty. How strange is it that we may look afar for whatwe have at our very doors! All of a sudden it came into my head thatthe sand of the seashore, at the edge of the lava tract, which we trodevery day in going to bathe, might be the very substance I needed, andI found, when I came to try it, that it not only gave the clay theconsistency I desired, but added a glaze to it when I baked the firstvessel I made with it. I soon had a row of basins finished, not verycomely in shape, but serviceable, and all of a size; and Billy, havingheard me deplore that I had nothing larger than a cocoa-nut to mouldthem on, went a-prowling on the shore one day, and came staggering backwith a great dome-shaped stone, and when he set it down in front of me,"Oh, ain't I a fool!" says he.

  Billy's Plate and Mug]

  "What's the matter, Billy?" I asked. "'Tis the very thing I have beenwanting this long time."

  "I know it is, master," says he, "but what I don't know is why I wassuch a silly ass as to sweat myself a-carrying of it, when I might haverolled it on its edge."

  "Well, you won't do it again," I said, smiling at his woebegone look.

  "No, I take my davy I won't," says he.

  "What is 'davy'?" I asked, never having heard that expression before.

  "Why, don't you know that?" says he, opening his eyes very wide.

  "No. What is it?" I said.

  Then he scratched his head, and looked at the ground, and after a greatdeal of consideration says: "Well, master, I can't say, not to becertain, what a davy is; but suppose I said to you, 'I eat fortycocoa-nuts at a go,' and you said to me, 'You're a liar,' and I said,'I take my davy on it,' you'd have to believe me or else fetch me acrack on the nob: at least, that's what they do Limehouse way."

  This may seem a very trifling matter, and not worthy of setting down ina serious history; but I quote the words to show that we did not passthe days without discourse, from which indeed I for my part got muchentertainment.

  With the round stone which Billy brought me, and others we afterwardsdiscovered, I made several pots of different sizes, which we found veryuseful, more and more, indeed, as time went on. And as I became moredexterous with practice, the shape and fashion of the pottery likewiseimproved, so that I grew proud of my handicraft, and wished my unclecould have seen it. As for Billy, he was very jealous of my work, andlamented that he had not a forge and an anvil and the other implementsof a smith's calling, and he would show me what he could do; but as helacked these things, and so far as he could see was never like to havethem, he very sensibly employed himself in helping me, and in gettingand preparing our food, and the various materials needed for our house.I must not forget to mention, too, that it was Billy who first thoughtof using the red sap of the wood I have before spoke of, in giving adye to my pottery, which became thereby a bright red colour, verypleasing to the eye.

  Some of my Pottery]

  All this while we had been thinking very deeply of the matter of ourbig hut, and at last we hit upon a means of erecting the fourcorner-posts. First we drove the handle of one of the axes--the woodbeing hard and the earth soft, as I have said--for some distance intothe ground, and then having withdrawn it, we were able to drive intothe hole a somewhat thicker pole, the end of whi
ch we sharpened to apoint with our axes. Then we took the first of our corner-posts,sharpened the end of it in like manner, this costing us much labour,and charred the same end with fire, both to make the driving of it intothe earth easier, and to preserve it from rotting. The more seriousdifficulty, of raising the heavy post and driving it in, was solved inthe following manner. We made three long ropes by twining strands ofcreepers together, and these we tied very securely to the top of ourpost. Having made a hole in the earth, as aforesaid, to the depth ofabout four feet, we brought the pointed end directly over the hole, andthen raised the other end gradually with levers, propping it upcontinually, as we tilted it higher, with a pile of small logs andstones, which we increased moment by moment as required. I leave youto judge what a slow and tedious business this was.

  [Sidenote: Building under Difficulties]

  When by this means the top end of the post was raised to a considerableheight, the pointed end slid into the hole, though not straight; butthe post was now tilted sufficiently for us to get under it and heaveit up with our hands until it was fairly upright, and then the point ofit sank some little way into the hole, but not far. Then, while I heldit upright, Billy went to a distance of a few yards, and drove a wedgeof wood like a tent-peg into the ground, using for hammer a long stone;and this being done, he bound one of the three ropes (so I call them)firmly about it. He did likewise with two more tent-pegs and the twoother ropes, so that when he had finished, the post was held erect andstoutly supported by three ropes, the lower ends of which were soplaced as to be at the angles of what is called in the _Elements ofEuclid_ an equilateral triangle. This work took us a whole day,reckoning in the time for our meals.

  The next part of our design was to erect a scaffolding about the post.For this we chose and cut down stalks of the bamboo-like plant of whichwe had made our flagstaff. These we lashed firmly together withcreeper ropes--or rather Billy did it, he having a seaman's dexterityin such things; and driving their lower ends into the ground, wecontrived to construct a scaffolding four-square about the post, eachface of it about nine feet long, and carried up a little higher thanthe top of the post, so as to clear the ropes that held this inposition. The scaffolding being finished with a prodigious deal oflabour--for having no ladder we were obliged to make standing-places ofstones, which were very insecure; indeed, both Billy and I tumbled offthem more than once, and grew very angry at having to collect thestones and build them up again: the scaffolding being finished, I say,we made a light platform of straight branches upon the top of it, butnot quite covering it, so that the top of the post was not hidden.

  "It won't bear us, that I'm sure," says Billy, when we had made theplatform.

  "Try," said I. "You are lighter than me: you go first."

  Billy clambered on to the platform very nimbly, and though thescaffolding trembled and swayed so that I thought to see it instantlycollapse, it did no such thing, and I ventured to climb up on the otherside and join Billy. I was much more clumsy than he was, and prettynearly lost my balance, but managed to steady myself, and then we bothstood on the platform, and found that it bore the weight of us bothvery well.

  The next thing was to haul up the implement which, after muchconsideration, we had devised for driving in the post. 'Twas a massystump of a tree, which, both together, we could heave about two feetabove the ground--such a thing as resembled in some sort the big woodenpummet which road-menders use for hammering down the cobbles in thestreets, though our pummet had no handle either at the top or the side,but must be heaved up by main force from the bottom. We tied it manytimes round with our creeper ropes, and, having mounted again on to theplatform, we began to haul. But the weight of the pummet, and ourheaving, and the being both on one side of the platform, was too muchfor our frail support; the scaffolding fell apart, down we toppledheadlong after the pummet, and the strain upon the sustaining ropesbeing too great, one of them snapped, and down came the post, fallingvery luckily in the opposite direction from us, or we might have beenkilled, or at least had our heads broken.

  Billy fairly howled with disappointment at this overthrow of our hopes,and let forth many of the ugly words which he had learnt, either atLimehouse or aboard the _Lovey Susan_. Indeed, it was a most vexatiousaccident, for the labour of a good many days was undone in a moment,and we had to begin over again, both to erect the corner-post and toconstruct a scaffolding. Billy, who was like a child in some things,declared and vowed he would work no more on the big hut. "I take mydavy I won't," says he. "What's the good? Here's another big holetore in my breeches. Why should you and me work like slaves when thereain't no call for it, victuals growing free? And as for lodgings, thesmall hut is good enough for me. We don't want a castle when thereain't no one here but dogs and pigs; and I tell you what it is, master,we don't eat enough pork, and I wish we had some onions;" and so hetalked on, and I said nothing, for I knew he would grumble until he wastired, and then readily take up his work again. So in fact it proved,for after a day's idleness, or rather change, we spending the day inhunting for eggs, we set to work to weave more ropes and put togetheranother scaffolding, which when we tried it stood very steady, evenwhen we hauled up the pummet. With this pummet we drove thecorner-post into the earth inch by inch, lifting it with our hands (itwas as much as we could do) and then letting it fall plump on the headof the post. 'Twas terribly slow work, and hard too, and we thoughtour backs would break across the middle, they ached so much, only wehad to pause in the driving every now and then to let down ourplatform, in proportion as the post went deeper into the ground, andthis of course took a great while. However, we drove the post at lastto the depth of four feet, and then Billy was just as elated as beforehe had been cast down, for the post stood so massive and solid that itseemed nothing short of an earthquake could move it; and that wasstrong enough for us, for against an earthquake, if it came, of coursewe could do nothing. Having succeeded with our first post, we did nottake quite so long about erecting the other three; but it was near sixweeks, I should think, before we got all four in position, I mean sixweeks after we had felled the trunks, they having then to be pointedwith our rude axes, and the scaffolding having to be built up afreshwith the same care for the fourth post as for the first.

  When we had the four posts up we were very well satisfied with ourhandiwork, but desperately weary, for we had stuck to it day after daywithout respite except to get our food and perform the other articlesof our regular life--bathing, and going up to our watch-tower, as wecalled it, and so forth. Accordingly I said to Billy that we wouldtake a week's holiday before we made the walls of our house, on whichBilly sighed very heavily.

  "Why, don't you want a holiday?" I asked him.

  "'Course I do, master," says he, "but how can you have a holidaywithout any beer?"

  He then told me that when his father took a holiday, he drove to somecountry part near London--Islington, or maybe Hampstead--and spent theday in playing skittles and drinking beer. This put a notion into myhead, and the first day of our holiday we played skittles with someshort posts set up in the sand on the beach, bowling at them withcocoa-nuts. 'Twas as good a sport as we could devise at that time,though we soon came to invent a better, as you shall hear.