Palm Tree Island

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

  OF A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN BILLY AND THE NARRATOR--OF ANENCOUNTER WITH A SHARK, AND THE BUILDING OF A CANOE

  We now began to consider ourselves as the possessors of considerablewealth, compared with our condition when we first came to the island.We had a fair estate, with none to dispute our title, at least, nonehad yet done so; a substantial and commodious house, by no means amansion, and very plainly furnished, but having the necessary things,to which we could add the others, and did. We had food, both of theanimal and vegetable kind, of our own breeding and growing, so that wewere always sure of its freshness. We looked abroad on our littledomain with a great deal of honest satisfaction, seeing our ownhandiwork in it, and being ever urged on to other achievements by whatwe had already done. This summer, for an instance, finding that ouryam plantation throve exceedingly, and needed hoeing because of thevery fertility of the soil, we made ourselves rakes and hoes, theformer of wood and bits of bone (these took us a long time), the latterof scallop shells bound with cords about crutched sticks. Then, whenthe yams were ripe, and we had to bring them to our house from theplantation, which was at some distance, we thought of making awheelbarrow, which also employed us for a good time, and was indeed oneof the most difficult jobs we took in hand, the want of nails being agreat hindrance. The body of it was made of wicker-work closelyplaited, and the wheel a disc of pottery, which answered very welluntil it broke in going over rocky ground, and then we had to carve outa wooden one, which was a very tiresome job. We made also a sort ofbench-table out of the stump of a tree, which we split down the middleby driving in flint wedges, and when we had split it we took one halfand planed the inside of it with scrapers, also of flint, and thenscoured it with sand, not being content until it was as smooth as asawyer's plank. It was on this that I drew the map I have mentionedbefore, using a mixture of charcoal and oil pressed from candle-nuts,and Billy was very proud when he saw BOBBIN'S BAY marked on it inpretty neat, big characters. We made also some rough stools andchairs, using always strong cords of cocoa-nut fibre in the place ofnails. Billy and I had a little difference about the stools, hepreferring them to be of three legs, and I of four, my reason beingthat the four-legged sort were the more stable, while his reason wasnothing but a contrariness of temper that sometimes seized him; inwhich frame of mind if I said I should like pork for dinner he wouldimmediately declare for chicken.

  Rake Head and Scallop-shell Hoe]

  Our Wheelbarrow]

  Our Table]

  [Sidenote: A Difference of Opinion]

  It was this that brought about the fight between us, which I think Imentioned before. We had just finished making our first stools, hisbeing three-legged, and he sang a trifle loud because he was finishedfirst, he being always more handy with his fingers than I was, exceptin delicate work and the making of pottery. He taunted me about myslowness, asking what was the good of bothering about four legs whenthree would do quite as well, and saying that he supposed I must haveone more than he, because he was only the son of a poor blacksmith ofLimehouse; and more to the same effect. Now this, I thought, was veryunjust, for I had never stood upon any difference in rank there mightbe between us; nor indeed did Billy as a rule allude to it, much lessexpress any discontentment, but called me "master" very simply andnaturally. What came over him this day I know not, but he sat on histhree-legged stool with a very gloomy face, grumbling and growlinguntil I could endure it no longer.

  My Chair; Billy's Stool]

  "For goodness' sake, Billy," I said, "leave me to my work. Go and getthe dinner ready, or something."

  "I won't," says he. "Why should I get your dinner? I ain't yourservant, though I ain't got a mad uncle what's got more money thanwits. Money! what's the good of money when you ain't got no sense forthe spending of it? Why, if it hadn't been for your uncle I'd 'a beenrich by this time, working for decent wages in London, instead ofsweating for nothing."

  "You're an ass," said I, as pleasantly as you please.

  "I may be an ass," says Billy, "but I'm blowed if I'm a silly ass, andthat's what _you_ are."

  [Sidenote: A Fight]

  And then I own I clean lost my temper, and, leaving my work, I went tohim and dealt him a blow that sent him and his stool to the ground.Whereupon he sprang to his feet, and came at me tooth and nail, as youmay say, butting me with his head, and grappling me, seeking to throwme by main force. He was very muscular, as I have said, and he camevery near to effecting his purpose with me; but I shook him off, andbeing longer in the arms than he, and possessor of a little morescience, I contrived to ward off his blows until he was pretty tired,and then dealt him a stroke which fairly knocked the wind out of him.He sat on the ground for some time looking about him in a dazed andstupid way, and presently, when he was somewhat collected, he said,"You give me a rare good 'un that time, master," and went oncheerfully: "You do look comical with your nose a-swelling."

  I was already aware that something was amiss with that very prominentfeature, and I might have felt aggrieved at this allusion to it but forthe good-tempered manner in which Billy spoke. It was plain that hehad quite lost his ill-humour, and bore me no malice for the beating Ihad given him; indeed, he appeared to think of me all the more highlybecause of it. But I was exceeding vexed with myself for losing mytemper over such a trifle, and when we were sitting together by and by,bathing our wounds, I spoke very solemnly about it, saying that it wasnothing less than sinful, after the mercies that had been vouchsafed tous, our preservation from manifold dangers by land and sea, to give wayto our angry passions and fight each other with hate in our hearts.Billy heard me patiently for a while, and subdued his naturally jocundcountenance to a decent solemnity; but presently he burst forth with alaugh, and said, "Lor, master, how you do talk! What's a round offisticuffs and a black eye or two? I got a walloping and deserved it,and you and me will be all the better friends," which I believe we were.

  Our Fish-hooks]

  Our Gaff and Landing-net]

  [Sidenote: Fishing]

  Now that our heavy labours in building our hut and securing our supplyof food were over, we had leisure to indulge ourselves in lighter andmore sportive avocations. We practised diligently with our arrows atthe running man, and greatly improved ourselves in shooting: and wealso began to consider whether we could not catch some of the fishwhich came about the coast sometimes in great numbers, particularlywhere the water was deep and big rocks lay near the surface. Weusually had intimation of the arrival of a shoal of fish by theunwonted number of sea-birds we saw flying low and diving into the sea,and indeed gorging themselves. Billy said he had often fished fortiddlebacks in the ditches near his home, though he seldom caught any,and I myself had some angling in our country streams; and our onlydifficulty being hooks, for we had lines in plenty, made of that fibreof which I have spoken, we set our wits to work to invent hooks, Billysaying what a pity it was we hadn't even a bent pin. We did deviseafter a time hooks of various sizes, made out of the bones of smallbirds, and then nothing would satisfy us but we must have a gaff, whichwe made of tough wood hardened in fire and greased with pork fat, andalso a landing-net, which we made of fibres stretched basket-wise on aframe of bent wood. Armed with these implements, and with lines androds, and bits of shellfish for bait, we went down to the sea andfished from rocks that stood out of the water at low tide, and werelittle more than covered at high. We did not have very much success,the hooks being easily broken, and I remember one of the first fish wecaught made us very ill, so that for some time after we thought no moreof this addition to our food. But after a while we determined to tryagain, and it came into our minds that we had seen the natives of theisland we stayed on catching fish with spears, which manner we had notthought of at first, the hook and line being the English way.Accordingly we made some light wooden spears, or rather harpoons, andwith these in our hands we stood on the rocks until we saw fish thattook our fancy, and then flung our spears at them, as we
had seen thenatives do. We missed a great many times, for it was not often that wehad the chance to throw our spears perpendicularly straight, and exceptwhen we could, we were not able for a great while to take good aim,because we did not allow for that strange effect water has of makingthings appear to be in a different place from where they are.[1] Weshould have been in great danger of losing our spears had we notforeseen this want of success, and attached a thin line to each ofthem, which we held when we made our cast. After many disappointments,and diligent practice, we contrived to make the needful allowance forthe apparent bending of the harpoons, or rather their turning asidefrom the straight path as soon as they entered the water, and indeed webecame fairly dexterous, and could depend on getting a good basket offish whenever we chose. Our first experience having made us wary, wewere careful not to eat freely of any fish until we had proved whetherit was good for food, and the course of this proving was somewhatpainful to us, for we found that certain fish, even in the smallestportions, caused sickness and giddiness. But after a time we learnt toknow the wholesome from the unwholesome, and then we often had fish atour meals, broiled, baked, or boiled, and we cured a quantity, bothwith salt and with smoke, against the time when they should not be soeasily got.

  Our Harpoons]

  One of the best fishing grounds about our coast was a spot just beyondthe little sandy beach at the south of the island, where it joined thelava tract, a number of jagged rocks there jutting out of the cliff.We were able to leap from one to another of these rocks until we cameto a somewhat larger one about fifty or sixty yards out to sea, towhich fish, both large and small, seemed to be marvellously attracted.This rock appeared to us to be shaped like a mushroom, having a broadtop rising a little in the middle, beneath which the fish lay, forforty winks, as Billy said. There was little rise and fall of thetide, but at flood the top of the rock was just awash, and it wascovered with marine plants and limpets, which caused us to be verycareful of our footing. Here we sometimes caught so great a quantityof fish that we had some trouble in carrying them ashore, so that wemade it a practice after a time, whenever we went to this rock, to takewith us a stout bag, made of a coarse broad grass that grew abundantlyon the shore of the lake; and we placed our catch in this, and then,instead of springing from rock to rock, which had some peril, we beingso laden, we attached a line to the bag, and hauled it ashore as soonas we reached the base of the cliff.

  We became, I say, fairly dexterous in course of time with our harpoons,which we lost now and again, in spite of all our care, when the fish wehad speared were big ones, and too strong for us to hold. Once,indeed, I was dragged right into the water, a great fellow suddenlysounding when I had driven my harpoon home; and that time I not onlygot a thorough drenching and several bruises through falling on therock, but lost fish, harpoon and line together. To prevent the likemishap from happening again, we accustomed ourselves to wind the end ofthe line about a spar of rock, so that if any fish proved too strongfor us, either the line snapped or the harpoon became disengaged. Ineither of these cases, to be sure, we lost the fish, and if the linesnapped we lost the harpoon as well; but we did have a security againstbeing drawn into the sea ourselves, which in itself would have been atrifle, seeing that we could both swim and thought nothing of awetting; but at certain seasons we had observed that sharks werenumerous off the coast, and we had a great dread of being snapped up byone of these monsters, so that at such times we were careful not to goabove our middle when we bathed.

  [Sidenote: A Shark]

  I remember very well one day, when we were on this mushroom rock, andthe fish being very plentiful, we remained on it longer than our wont,until, indeed, it was pretty nearly a foot deep in water. I had justharpooned a fine fellow near three feet long--a sort of cod from whichBilly promised to cut some fine steaks for broiling--and Billy with thegaff was helping me to land him, when all of a sudden I spied the finof a shark making straight towards us, and only a few yards away. Inanother moment the beast turned over and heaved itself clean out of thewater and half on to the rock, and snapped up the prize under our verynoses. I think we were first more angry than affrighted, Billy fumingagainst the impudent rogue that had snatched away what would have beena welcome addition to our larder. We had two or three spare harpoonsfloating in the shallow water behind us, and attached by their lines tothe spar of rock. These we seized, and just as the shark was jerkinghimself back into deep water we hurled our weapons at him, and werelucky to hit him before he sounded. In a moment the sea about us waslike a boiling caldron; we were swept off our feet by the lines, whichthe wounded shark was dragging crosswise over the rock, and before wecould recover our footing one of the lines, which was somewhat shorterthan the other, snapped. But the other held, and we saw that theshark, instead of plunging in a straight course away from the rock, washeading up the coast, and moving in a circle of which the line was theradius. We expected that this line also would snap in a moment, andthen we should have lost both our harpoons; but we were astonished byand by to see that there was less and less strain and movement in theline, until it ceased altogether.

  "THE BEAST HEAVED ITSELF CLEAN OUT OF THE WATER."]

  "I do believe we've killed him, master," says Billy. "Heave ho! we'llsoon see."

  Accordingly we hauled upon the line, and drew it in little by little,until we saw the body of the shark at its end quite motionless.

  "We've got him and both the harpoons," cries Billy, "and the fish too,for he ain't had time to swallow him proper."

  We passed a couple of lines round the monster's tail and dragged him tothe shore, and there Billy immediately set to work to open him, anddisgorged the fish of which we had been robbed. However, having nomind to eat what the shark had partly swallowed, I persuaded Billy tothrow the fish into the sea, and Billy laughed at me finely afterwards,I assure you, when I was eating with great relish a shark-steak he hadbroiled for our supper.

  "If you can eat the shark, master, why couldn't you eat the fish?" sayshe.

  I own I could give him no answer except that my gorge rose at thethought of it, and this led me to consider of the strangeinconsistencies of men in matters of food, as in other things. My auntSusan would have been aghast at the idea of eating a snail, but shewould eat a chicken which she had herself fed on snails; and when Imentioned this, Billy said that he didn't see any difference betweeneating a chicken full of snails and the snails themselves.

  "Billy," said I presently, "I never thought I should see you eatingworms."

  "Why, whenever did you see me do that, master?" says he; "I never doneit. I'd be sick."

  "But we had a chicken for dinner, and you may be sure it had eatenworms," I said.

  He began to see what I was driving at, and looked very grave for someminutes, as if endeavouring to probe the comparison. Then a broad grinspread over his face, and he said, "I reckon the chicken eats worms forthe same reason as we eat chickens, 'cause they're nice," and I am surehe believed he had solved a very knotty problem.

  [Sidenote: A Canoe]

  It was partly this adventure with the shark, and partly our naturalwish to circumnavigate the island, that set us on trying to make aboat. We had many times been sorry that we did not think of securingthe boat of the _Lovey Susan_ which had been staved in on the beach,and therefore abandoned by the seamen, but which we might perhaps havepatched up if we had hauled it away from the sea. Unhappily, neitherBilly nor I had the least knowledge how to build a boat, nor if we hadwould our rude tools have availed us much, so that though the idea hadcome into our heads more than once, we had never done anything towardsputting it in action, partly from this ignorance of ours, and partlybecause we had been so much occupied with other matters. Now that thenotion had come back to us with more force, however, we determined tosee what we could do in digging out the trunk of a tree to make acanoe, something like those we had seen from our look-out hill, thoughnot near so large. Since we required it only to hold two, there was noreason to make it lar
ge, whereas there were many for making it small,for a large one would have needed a terrible amount of work, and if wecould have made one, we might have had great difficulty in bringing itdown to the beach and then in launching it. Yet we resolved that,though it should not be large compared with those that held twenty orthirty men, it should be of such a size as to ride the sea with fairstability, for we did not want a cockle-shell or any cranky thing.

  For this purpose we chose a tree, of what name I know not, though Ithink it was a kind of pine, which grew on the slope above the sandybeach I have mentioned more than once. We chose it as much for itsposition as for the nature of its wood, for being on the slope wethought that we could more readily bring it down to the sea than if wefelled a tree further from the shore. We felled it as we did the treesfor our hut, with the aid of fire, and a notion came into my head bywhich we made a great improvement on our former rough method. Ourdifficulty had been to make a fire sufficiently large to burn away thetrunk rapidly, and yet not so large as to burn or scorch the treehigher than was necessary. The idea that came into my head was to puta bandage about the trunk, and so keep the fire within bounds, and whenwe considered of the best material to use for this purpose, we decidedthat clay would be the most serviceable, because it would not only notburn itself, but it could be easily kept sodden. Having chosen ourtree, therefore, we clapped a thick bandage of wet clay round the trunkabout three feet from the ground, and lit a fire all round the tree,and let it burn very fiercely for a time, and then we raked it away andchipped off the charred wood with our axes; and having again wetted theclay, we kindled the fire again, so that it would burn away the freshsurface of wood that we had exposed. We continued thus until we hadthus burnt and chipped away a deep incision all round the tree, andmeanwhile we had debated whether we should make our canoe on the top ofthe slope (in which case we should let the tree fall on to a littlepatch of fairly level ground on the west side of it), or whether weshould cause the tree to fall down the slope over the cliff on thewestern side, and so to the beach. Billy declared for the formercourse, saying that if we let the tree go over the cliff it wouldassuredly be smashed, and the trunk once split would be useless for ourpurpose. In answer to this I said that, however vexatious it would beto have to fell another tree, how much more vexatious would it be ifany mischance happened to our canoe when we had finished it and werebringing it down to the beach! In the one case we should have lostmerely the time and labour of felling the tree; in the other, therewould be the additional loss of the longer time and greater labourexpended on the canoe. Billy agreed with this reasoning, so towardsthe finish we built all the fire on the land side of the tree, untilwith a little hauling and shoving it snapped off and toppled with amighty crash over the cliff. We ran down to see what had happened toit, and though some of the larger branches had been broken off, themain trunk, so far as we could tell, was not hurt in the least.

  We burnt off the top and the remaining branches, both Billy and Itending our separate fires, of which we had many, so that the work wasmade much lighter than it would have been if every single branch hadneeds be lopped with a clumsy axe.

  Having thus got a log of wood clear of branches, and, as I reckoned,about fifteen feet long, we peeled off the bark, and set to work tohollow out the vessel. It was plain that this would be a work of longtime, for the trunk was about three feet thick, and I do not know howmany months we might have been about it if we had not brought fireagain to the aid of our axes. We found that we could save time byallowing fires to smoulder for long periods in the top of the log,which we wished to hollow out; and by starting these fires atintervals, we found that when we had chipped away the charred woodbeneath the first, the wood beneath the second was ready to be chippedaway also, and so on all down the log. Billy and I were thus employedthe whole livelong day, and many days in succession, in building andremoving fires, and chipping away the charred wood, by which means wegradually dug deeper and deeper into the heart of the log, rejoicing aswe saw it, by almost insensible degrees, receiving the semblance of acanoe.

  The tree had fallen, as I said, over the cliff on to the sandy beach,and we were in some trouble of mind lest a high sea, or peradventure aviolent storm, should carry our canoe away before it was finished. Itlay a little above high-water mark, it is true; but for our greatersecurity we moored it, when we left work upon it, by means of ropes tosome heavy rocks, which we trusted would preserve it from any suchuntoward event. And it was indeed lucky we did so, for when we hadbeen for some weeks (as I guessed) at the work--not continuously, forwe had many other things to attend to--one night a violent storm gotup, with great fury of wind and rain, and also some rumbling in themountain, which made us feel very uneasy; and when we went down in themorning, the storm having ceased, to see what had happened to ourcanoe, we found that it had been lifted and tossed about by the sea,being indeed half full of water; but mercifully the waves had notdashed it against the rocks at the base of the cliff, or it wouldassuredly have been shattered, or at least very much damaged.

  This was the first really great storm we had had since our big hut wasbuilt, and the result of it, especially as it was followed by a periodof rainy weather, was to make us leave work on our canoe before it wasfinished, and turn our hands to another task. Our hut, as I have saidbefore, was built on a little level tract, above and below which theground sloped, on the one side towards the cliffs, on the other toBrimstone Lake, as we called it, from its medicinal water. The slopeabove the hut was gradual, indeed, but it was a real slope all thesame, and during this period of heavy rain the water swept down in awide torrent from the heights, flowing past and through the hut, whichwas flooded, and very uncomfortable. We suffered in this way, Billyand I, more than our fowls, for they had poles to roost on. As for thepigs, we did not trouble about them, and I do think that the moresodden the ground the happier they were. We did our best, in dryintervals, to make our walls watertight, but could not wholly succeedin this, for the doorway faced the upper slope, and we could not by anymeans make the door fit so closely as to keep out the water. Since thefloor of our hut was thus sodden, we could not sleep on it, but had tomake our bed on the bench table, and very hard it was.

  [Sidenote: Cutting a Trench]

  It was a day or two before we thought of any means of curing this verydisagreeable state of things, but then, all of a sudden, a notion cameto us--whether first to Billy or to me I do not remember--of digging atrench round the hut, with outlets opening into the lake. We set aboutthis at once, finding the earth easy to work, even with our rudespades, because it was so sodden, and after two or three days' work wehad made a shallow trench about the upper end of the hut, shaped like ahalf-circle, so that when the rain-water fell down the slope it wouldbe intercepted by the trench, and so carried into the lake. Weobserved again, at this time, that though the amount of water thatflowed into the lake was very much greater than we had ever knownbefore, yet the surface never rose above the certain level of which Ihave already spoken, and we were still very much puzzled to know, atleast I was, how the surplus water was carried off; Billy saying thatit didn't matter to us, and we shouldn't be any better off if we didknow. My way of looking at things was different, and I own I felt agreat curiosity always to learn the reasons and causes of matters whichwere not easy to understand. Yet it was, after all, little more thanan accident which brought about the discovery of this matter, and ofthat I doubt not I shall tell in its place.

  [1] A rather long-winded allusion to refraction.--H.S.