Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

  [1] Probably the screw-pine (_Pandanus odoratissimus_).--H.S.

  to pluck one of the blossoms when I felt a strange tickling about myankle, and immediately afterward a sharp pain like that of a gad-fly'sbite, only worse. I thought a scorpion or some such thing had bittenme, and turned myself a little, for the ledge on which I stood was toonarrow for great movements, and drew my leg back so that the reptileshould not sting me again. But I felt then as if my ankle had beencaught in a noose, which was being drawn constantly tighter, and Icould not free my leg from the grip, though I kicked as much as Idared. Looking down to see what was holding me, I was annoyed, yetrelieved at the same time, to find that my leg was caught in nothingworse, as it appeared, than a big brown, or rather brownish-purple,leaf, into which I supposed I had unwittingly put my foot. Yet Iwondered that a mere leaf could grip me so firmly, and as I took out ofmy belt the axe without which I never went abroad, intending to cut theimpediment away, my eye chanced to travel along the leaf towards itsfurthest extremity, where it was partly hidden by a cluster of fruit.

  And then I felt a shiver run down my spine like a trickle of coldwater, for there, beyond the cluster, I saw two horrid eyes, like aparrot's, gleaming in the midst of a big shapeless body, which I knewto be alive by its pulsations. I had never in my life seen or heard ofsuch a thing, and knew not what it was or whether it was dangerous orno; but the mere sight of it filled me with a sickening dread, and whenI saw the loathly monster drawing nearer to me, working its way, as itseemed, by the tentacles wherewith it had attached itself to the tree,and its body throbbing, I was as near overcome with sheer terror as anyman could be, so that I could not think, nor even cry out to Billy, whowas some few yards above me. All that I could do, and that was only byinstinct, was to resist the creature's pull, which had all butdislodged me from my narrow foothold.

  It was Billy's voice that roused me from this palsy of the mind. "Mypockets won't hold no more, master," he said, being quite ignorant ofwhat was passing beneath him. Then I cried out to him that a monsterwas attacking me, and at the same time I bent down and slashedfuriously with my axe upon the tentacle that gripped my leg, and turnedsick again when the axe-head encountered the slimy mass. But mystrokes, doubly redoubled, caused the monster somewhat to relax itsgrip, and immediately afterward a big jagged piece of rock, hurled byBilly, smote full upon it with a sickening thud, and rebounding fellwith a splash into the sea. The monster, as if stunned by the shock,loosened its hold on the branches to which, as we now saw, it hadanchored itself, and in a little while fell into the sea anddisappeared from our sight.

  "I CRIED OUT TO HIM THAT A MONSTER WAS ATTACKING ME."]

  "I never did see such a wicked villain," says Billy. "Why, master,you're as white as a sheet!" and, indeed, I was not far from swooning,the horror of that great beast being still upon me. Billy was not nearso much affected, not having felt the monster's grip nor seen closelyits baleful eyes; and I think Billy was a trifle scornful of the terrorI could not conceal, though afterwards he said he didn't wonder at myfeeling pretty bad. It was some little time before I was sufficientlyrecovered to attempt the upward climb; but, with Billy's help, Ipresently clambered to the top, and threw myself very thankfully on thegrass, never heeding Billy's lamentable outcry when he found that twoof the eggs he carried had broken in his pocket.

  This terrible encounter, and most happy escape, set me on thinkingfirst what a mercy it was I carried my axe, and then how perfectlydefenceless we were against any human enemy that might come against usarmed. I said to Billy that we must spend the rest of our holiday inmaking weapons, though when I spoke I had not the least notion of whatwe could make that would be of any avail. Billy was for making hugeclubs, and sticking pieces of flint into their knobby ends, which wouldbeyond doubt have proved very formidable weapons at close quarters;but, as I had told him already, we should be shot down with spears orarrows before we could come within reach of the enemy, and therefore wecould do nothing against them unless we made weapons like their own.Whereupon Billy declared for spears, since we had no strings for bows,and we spent a day cutting light poles for the shafts and in searchingfor sharp flints that might serve as the heads. But we had such adifficulty in fastening the heads on, and the spears were so exceedingrude and clumsy when made, that I despaired of ever making serviceabledefensive weapons of them, and being by no means satisfied that it wasbeyond our capacity to fashion bows and arrows, I seized occasion whileBilly was cooking our supper (which was baked bread-fruit and friedeggs, the latter stronger in flavour and not near so pleasant as hens'eggs, having a fishy taste)--I seized occasion, I say, to make a firsttrial for a bow-string, which Billy had very shrewdly perceived wouldbe the greatest difficulty.

  [Sidenote: Making Arms]

  I tried first of all a very thin strand of a creeping plant, but thoughthat was tough enough, it was not at all elastic, so that I gave thatup at once. Next I bethought me of the fibres in the husks and leavesof the cocoa-nut, and wondered whether these could be woven into acord; and if any are surprised that I should so much as mention this,having seen cocoa-nuts, perhaps, only as they appear in our shops, Iwill explain that the nut itself is enclosed in a tough fibrous husk ofabout two inches in thickness, while the leaf is covered for two orthree feet of its length with a fibrous matting, very fine and strong,which acts as a kind of brace to the stalk and keeps it steadily fixedto the trunk. I had taken note of this fibrous substance, and, indeed,thought I remembered that the native people made thread of it; but whenI came to the actual experiment, I found that the thread so made was astough as you please, and it served us excellent well afterward in manyways, as will presently be seen, but it was quite lacking in thatspring without which a bow-string is impossible.

  Spearhead]

  I do not mean to say that I made all these discoveries while Billy wascooking the supper, but only that I began to make my trials then. Itwas, indeed, several days before we lighted on something that wassuited to our purpose, and that by a kind of accident. We had gone upthe mountain, as was our daily custom, to make our survey, and comingdown again we left our usual path, for no reason that I can remember,and came upon a patch of plants of a kind that we had not observedbefore. We had become by this time so knowing in the vegetation of ourisland, though quite ignorant of the names of the plants, that westopped to examine this new kind, and plucked some of it, which wepeeled as we went our way. It seemed to me that the bark of it had acertain stretch in its fibres, and when we got back to our hut wepulled the fibres out and twisted some of them together in the mannerof a cord, and fastened the ends of the string thus made to the ends ofa short pliable twig, and to our great joy, when I pulled the stringand released it suddenly, it shot back with a twang as like that of atrue cord as can be imagined. In my delight I cried out that I wouldbe Robin Hood and Billy should be Little John, which he took at firstto be an affront on his shortness of stature, he being eight inches ormore less than I was at that time; he grew afterwards till there was nomore than four inches betwixt us. But on my telling him what stories Icould remember of Robin Hood and his bold men in Lincoln green--FriarTuck and Maid Marion and the rest of the company--Billy, who had neverheard of any of these before, was greatly delighted, though he doubtedwhether they were quite so good marksmen as the stories said, andprofessed that of them all he would have preferred to be Friar Tuck,who had a nice taste in venison, just as Billy himself had in pork.However, he agreed to be Little John, reminding me very pertinentlythat we had not yet made our bows and arrows.

  I had already made up my mind as to the wood we should use for makingthe bows. It was that same red wood of which I have spoken once ortwice, and which, being flexible as well as hard, seemed to me thefittest for our purpose of all the woods in the island. Accordingly wechose two strong saplings of this tree growing to my own height, or alittle more, and having uprooted them, we cut off the branches andtwigs, peeled the bark off, and then pared them for three or fourinches in the centre,
so as we might grip them easily. This done, weshaved the ends as well as we could with our axes until they tapered,and about two inches from each end we burned a notch in which wepurposed fitting the strings. Thus with an easy day's work we had twofine bows, not very cunningly shaped, but strong and serviceable--atleast, we hoped so.

  Billy's Bow and Arrow]

  Billy took upon himself to make some arrows while I made the strings.For this purpose he chose some straight light shoots, about as thick asyour finger, peeled off the bark as we did with the saplings, andtrimmed them with his axe and other sharp stones, rubbing them alsowith sand, until they were wonderfully smooth. Billy was more patientin this work than I had ever seen him, and as each shoot was preparedhe held it up to his eye and looked along it as if to see whether itwere a trifle out of the straight, and if he thought so, he would ruband polish again until he was satisfied. He had near a dozen of theseshoots prepared by the time I had finished the strings for our twobows, and he then began to point the heads; but it appeared that he wasquite ignorant of the use of feathers, so while he was pointing theshafts I roamed about the woods in search of feathers, and found a goodnumber on the ground, and these we stuck on the tail end of the shaftsas I had seen them in pictures, for as for the actual things, I hadnever had them in my hand. This made me wish, and so did many othermatters, that I had given more heed to the construction of things, forbarring pottery and rabbit-hutches I was a perfect simpleton in usingmy hands. Of course, when the first arrow was finished, I tried itwith the bow, and found that it did not fly near so well as I hoped;nor did the second and third that we made, which was a great trouble tous. The flight of these arrows was neither far nor steady, and for along time we could not make out in the least why we had failed. It wasBilly that discovered the reason, though I believe it was more by guessthan by deduction.

  Billy's Scraper for rounding Arrow Shafts]

  "Why, master," he said, "I do believe 'tis all along o' those sillyfeathers you've been and gone and stuck in, so that the tail's heavierthan the head."

  I saw that there might be something in Billy's notion, so we first ofall tried the experiment of making one of the arrows taper towards thetail; and when we found that it certainly flew from the bow much betterthan the others, I thought of improving still further by fitting stoneheads to the shafts. We split up some pieces of flint, and using aflat corner of the lava tract as a kind of anvil, Billy chipped away atsome of the smaller pieces with a heavy lump of the rock containingiron until we had a little heap of flakes shaped something like a leaf.Some of these we lashed to shallow grooves in our shafts by means ofpieces of the string I had made; others we drove into clefts in the topof the shafts; and when we came to try these new-tipped arrows on thebow, we found that they flew very much better than any that we had madebefore.

  By the time we had furnished ourselves with the bows and a dozen arrowsour week's holiday was past, and we ought by rights to have gone backto our work on the house. But arrows were not made merely to be lookedat, nor to be shot off only for fun, as Billy said, and he was bent onemploying our new weapons in the useful work of providing food. We hadhad nothing but bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and eggs, and pork twice, eversince we had been on the island, which I reckoned to be now a matter ofthree or four months or so, and I own I agreed with Billy that weshould be none the worse of a more frequent change of diet. Of late wehad seen very little of the wild pigs, being so much busied with ourbuilding work and pottery, and other things; but the dogs were frequentspectators of our proceedings, though not so constantly as at first,finding no profit in them, I suppose. However, we now set off with ourbows and arrows, fiercely bent on slaughter.

  We tramped for a good long time across the island before we discovereda herd of pigs in a little open space beyond a wood. They weregrunting, as pigs do, and poking their snouts into the ground as if insearch of food, though I doubted whether they would find anything fitto eat, even for them, which are not particular, as everybody knows.We crept up very stealthily to the edge of the open space, so that theydid not perceive us, and then, selecting the two nearest animals, welet fly our shafts both at the same moment. The arrows flew veryswiftly from the bows, but clean over the pigs, so that we did not hitone of them, and the twang of the bow-strings being very audible, thepigs instantly took fright, and scampered away, all but one old boar,as he seemed, who stood with his snout lifted, grunting very loud, asif angry with being disturbed.

  "I'll have a shot for old father bacon," says Billy, fitting an arrowto the string, and taking aim as well as he could, he shot it; buthaving seen that his first shot went too high, he aimed the second toolow, and it stuck in the ground a yard or so in front of the solitaryboar. And then Billy flew into a mighty rage, I assure you, for theboar marched up to the arrow, sticking out of the earth, and sniffed atit with very loud grunts for a moment, and then snapped it up and brokeit in two. "There's half-a-day's work spoiled," cried Billy, who wasalready angry enough at having missed his mark twice, and he rushedout, calling the boar by many very unseemly names. The beast was takenby surprise, and instantly turned tail and scampered after the rest ofthe herd, with Billy at his heels, and me not far behind, forremembering the scrape that Billy had fallen into once before, I didnot like to let him go out of my sight. And so we pursued those pigsfor above half-an-hour, I should think, and never came within fiftyyards of them, nor getting any chance to take a shot at them, becausethey were never still. We gave it up when we were thoroughly weary,and were going back to our hut, much disappointed of our expected meat,when Billy remembered that we had left two arrows where we had firstencountered the pigs.

  "We must go back for 'em," says he, shaking his fist in the directionwhither the pigs had fled. "They are easier shot than made, and easierbroke than shot, drat it; but I'll make 'em porkers pay for leading usthis dance, see if I don't."

  I agreed that our arrows, made with such toil, were much too preciousto be wasted, and we went back to the place where we had shot them, notfinding it by any means easy to light on the spot again.

  "We shall have to practise, Billy," I said on the way; "we can't expectto be good marksmen all at once."

  "I s'pose we can't," says Billy ruefully; "we do have to have three orfour goes at a thing afore we does it proper. But I did want somepork."

  Coming at length to the open space, we searched for a good time beforewe found the two arrows; but as I was stooping I made a discovery thatquite banished my disappointment and more than made amends for our longtramp. The pigs, as I said, had been grubbing the ground vainly, as Ihad thought; but I now saw that it was not so, for there before me laya long round root as big as a man's head, and of a dark brown colour,which I immediately recognized as a yam. I called Billy to come andsee it, and remembering that we had ate some that time we sojourned onthe island, and found them very like potatoes when boiled and mashed,but sweeter, we were exceedingly pleased, and Billy at once said thatwe must certainly make some pork sausages to go with our mashedpotatoes.

  "Provided the pigs have left us any to mash," said I, for I now sawthat they had grubbed the ground pretty thoroughly, and though wesearched it for some time, we did not find above six yams, which wecarried back to our hut, and boiled one of them for dinner. Unless weshould find another plantation of them on the island, which I scarcelyhoped for, it seemed that our supply would be soon exhausted; but itthen came into my mind that we might plant some of those that we had,and so grow them for ourselves. We knew nothing about the season forplanting, nor the right kind of soil for them, but supposed they wouldbe something like potatoes in their nature as well as in their taste,and so determined to eat no more of them for the present, but to keepthem until such time as seemed fitting for planting.

  This question made us think of times and seasons, which, living fromday to day as we did without concern for the morrow, we had not yettroubled ourselves about. It was summer when we first came to theisland, and we were now, as I guessed, about the end
of autumn, thoughthere was little in the weather to show it, nor very much, so far as wecould tell, in the varying length of day and night. But the nearapproach of winter came upon my mind with a kind of shock. We knew notwhat the winter was like in these latitudes, nor whether we should beafflicted with severe cold; but we could tell from the ripeness of thefruits of the island that they would not hang much longer upon thetrees; indeed, some had already fallen; and I began to wonder what weshould do for food in the winter. We had discovered that thebread-fruit, when plucked, remained good for three or four days, if therind was not pierced; but we had never kept any for a longer time, andI was not a little dismayed as I thought of the straits we should beput to if we could not preserve the food in some way.

  Billy reminded me that the native people with whom we had dwelt for afortnight had given us a bread-fruit pudding, which was delicious. Iasked him whether he had seen it made, and he said that he had not, butit looked uncommon like batter pudding when it was baked, and indeed Iremembered it was just such a rich brown colour as well-cooked batter.I had many a time seen my aunt Susan make batter, and though we hadneither milk nor flour, we had eggs, and it seemed to me at least worththe trial to attempt a batter of bread-fruit. Accordingly we took twolarge bread-fruits, very ripe, and having cut away the rind andrejected the core, we put the white pulpy part into one of my earthenvessels, and pounded and worked it with a thick stick until it lookedvery like a thick batter. Billy meanwhile had beat up an egg, and whenwe added this to the other, and mixed it, Billy cried out it remindedhim of pancake day, when his stepmother always made two thick pancakesfor herself and his father, and he had a thin one if there was any leftover. Since all the earthen vessels I had made were round-bottomed,and we had nothing at all resembling a frying-pan, we were thinking ofboiling the mixture, and hoped it would not burn, being so thick, whenBilly asked why we shouldn't bake it. I pointed out that we had nobaking tins, and without something to hold it the batter would indeedbecome as flat as a pancake; but Billy was equal to this difficulty.

  "I've seen my mother--she ain't my real mother, 'course--put a piece ofgreasy paper round a dough-cake before she popped it in the oven, andit came out all right, only a bit burnt sometimes, and then, my eye,didn't she make a row!" When I said that we had no paper, he at oncereplied, "But we've got leaves, and I don't see why a leaf of a leaf,as you may call it, shouldn't be as good as a leaf of paper, or better,the name being such." This appeared to me to be quite a good notion,so we got some leaves and wrapped some of our batter in them, makinglittle oblong parcels about four inches long and two broad, and thesewe put into our oven, which I have before mentioned, and when we tookthem out and removed the leaves, we found our cakes to be of a finebrown colour, and they smelled exceeding good and tasted better: infact, we had made the bread-fruit pudding we had so much liked before,only ours was richer by the addition of the egg.

  We were very well pleased with this, but I own I was still betterpleased two or three days after, for I then came upon a portion of thebatter which we had left uncooked in the pot and forgotten, and foundthat it was perfectly sweet and good, being not in the least offensiveeither in taste or smell. It then came into my head all of a suddenthat if the bread-fruit pulp would keep good for days even when exposedto the air, it might keep good for weeks and months if kept from theair, and thus all our anxiety about our winter food would be removed.When I suggested this to Billy he shook his head, saying, "We used tokeep potatoes in a cellar, but then they had their jackets on, and I'venever heard tell of fruits keeping. You can't keep an apple, 'causeI've tried, only I ate it afore it was quite rotten." But I wasdetermined to make the experiment, though having no cellar or otherconfined space I was at first at a loss how to form a large enoughreceptacle for our store. After considering of it for some time I hada notion of digging a hole in the ground and lining it with potteryware, but to this Billy said that we might use leaves and so save a lotof time. So we dug a hole, not very deep, and lined it well with largethick leaves, and into it we poured a great quantity of the bread-fruitpulp that we had mashed--not mixing it with eggs, of course--and thenwe covered it over with leaves, and put heavy stones on the top, andwaited for a week to see what came of it.

  [Sidenote: Archery]

  While we were waiting the result of our experiment at storage wepractised very diligently with our bows and arrows, and I observed thatBilly was pitting himself against me, though he did not say so, atleast not then, but he told me afterwards that he meant to try whetherLittle John could not beat Robin Hood. At first we chose broad treesfor our targets, but we found after a time, when we began to be able tohit them, that our arrows were very much blunted against the bark,which made us think of devising a target, for the arrows took so longto shape that it was important to us they should not be injured. Thismaking of a target gave us no trouble, for we had only to stretchleaves across a light framework made of twigs; and to mark the centreof it, for what I believe is called the bull's-eye, we smeared a circlewith the sticky substance which, as I have said, came out of the barkof the bread-fruit tree when we beat it to make our flag, and thensprinkled the sticky circle with sand, which stood out, light incolour, against the dark green of the leaves.

  We set up this target at varying distances, which we made greater as wegrew more proficient, and we found that our arrows took no hurt fromstriking against it, passing through the leaves, indeed, so that we hadto make another target by and by; but not very soon, because it wassome time before either of us hit the target at all, and as for abull's-eye, we thought we should never do it. Indeed, when we hadpractised for about a week, Billy declared that he was sure there neverwas a Robin Hood (he had made the same declaration before aboutRobinson Crusoe), and he thought the tales about these two heroes musthave been invented by the same liar, because the one was Robin and theother Robinson. When I said that was impossible, because Robin Hoodlived five or six hundred years before Crusoe was heard of, Billy said'twas no matter; the stories of both were all pure fudge, and hewouldn't believe until he saw it that any one could ever hit thebull's-eye at a greater distance than ten yards. It chanced that ourtarget was thirty yards away at that moment, and fitting an arrow tothe bow, I let it fly without any nice calculation, and Billy wasfairly dumfoundered, and so was I, when we saw the arrow sticking inthe circle of sand, a little to the right of the exact centre. For amoment Billy looked foolish; then he flushed, and turning truculentlyto me he said, "I lay you a dollar you don't do it again, not in tenshots." This put me on my mettle, and it did not occur to either of usthat we had no dollars nor any such thing; but I fired my shots oneafter another with the most careful aim I could, and missed the targetaltogether six times, and the other times only grazed the outer rim.Whereupon Billy began to caper, and said I owed him a dollar, and apretty fine Robin Hood I was, with more of that boyish sort of talk,which made me angry, and I flung down my bow, intending, I own, topunch Billy's head. When he saw this, he flung down his bow also, andsquared himself, and put up his fists in such a remarkable way, callingto me to come on, that I could not keep from laughing, and then helaughed too, and so we were friends again at once. This was the firsttime things got so near to a fight with us, and though we had littledisagreements that are not worth mentioning, we never fought but onceall the time we were on the island, and of that I must tell in itsplace, if I think of it.