The Girl Crusoes: A Story of the South Seas

by Oliver Optic

  "I don't see why not," said Mary. "I don't want to go there again,either, in case you were right."

  "Of course I was right," declared Tommy. "You aren't going to make outagain that I can't believe my own eyes!"

  "We'll try another direction," said Elizabeth, anxious to keep thepeace. "Let us go northward along the shore. We have never reallyexplored the coast of our island yet."

  Accordingly, after breakfast, they set out. There was a long stretchof beach strewn with boulders which had apparently fallen from thecliffs. These rose higher as they proceeded, and jutted out to withintwenty or thirty feet of high-water mark. By and by they reached apoint where the huge rocky obstacles made further progress impossible.Retracing their steps, they clambered with some difficulty up the faceof the cliff, and at last gained the high land above.

  All this time they moved very cautiously, careful to make no more noisethan they could help, and always on the look-out for danger. But thesilence was broken only by the chatter of birds, the warbling of ablackbird now and then, and the harsh screaming of the parrots in thewoods, that extended almost to the verge of the cliffs.

  "I should like to catch and tame one of those beauties," said Tommy."Perhaps I might teach him to talk, and that would be a change,wouldn't it?"

  "I am sorry we bore you," said Mary. "Wouldn't it be better to findyour savage and teach him how to keep up an amiable conversation?"

  "Don't be sarcastic; it doesn't suit you," said Tommy cuttingly, andagain Elizabeth had to intervene.

  "We came out to look for food," she said smoothly, "and I think we hadbetter not think of anything else."

  Mary and Tommy separated, and went off at a little distance bythemselves, looking among the trees and shrubs for fruits or berriesthat might seem edible. For a time none of the girls saw anything thatappeared promising, but presently Mary called out quite excitedly--

  "Here, Bess, I'm sure this is the breadfruit tree. Come and look."

  Then, frightened by the sound of her own voice, she suddenly becameaware of her indiscretion, and ran fleetly to join Elizabeth.

  "You idiot!" said Tommy in a fierce whisper, as she came up with theothers.

  They stood listening for a while, wondering whether Mary's exclamationhad attracted the attention of some inhabitant. But, reassured by theabsence of any sign of danger, they hastened to inspect the trees uponwhich Mary had lighted. Elizabeth noticed that Tommy, who would havedied rather than apologize, had slipped her hand into Mary's in tokenof regret for her sharp speech.

  They found themselves in the midst of a little grove of trees, aboutthe size of small oaks, but with much sparser foliage. Peeping outfrom among the long, indented leaves were several large round fruitswith a crinkly rind.

  "I know they are breadfruit," said Mary gleefully. "Don't you rememberthe pictures in that book of Captain Cook's voyages?"

  "Let's peel one and see how it tastes," said Tommy.

  "You wouldn't like it better than raw dough," said Mary. "It has to becooked first."

  "Bother! You know I don't like cooked fruit. It isn't a fruit at allif you can't eat it raw; it's a vegetable."

  Elizabeth smiled at this ingenuous distinction.

  "Let us take one each and go and try them," she suggested. "If theyare really anything like bread we shall enjoy them, I know."

  Laden with the fruits, they returned to their camp.

  "Pity the place is so far from home," said Mary. "We must have comemore than a mile, I should think."

  "If we are satisfied with our bread we might come again and gather agood load that will last some time," said Elizabeth.

  When they reached home they lost no time in stripping off the thin rindof one of the fruits, and found beneath it a white doughy substancesomething like new bread. Tommy could not forbear tasting it, in spiteof what Mary had said.

  "What horrid, nasty stuff!" she exclaimed, making a wry face. "It'slike--what is it like? Taste it, Bess."

  Elizabeth pinched off a very small piece and ate it.

  "It seems to me like sweetened flour with a smack of artichokes," shesaid. "I hope it is better cooked; scrape it all out, Mary, while Iget the oven ready."

  When the pulp was scraped out, Mary kneaded it into a flat cake and cutit into three equal portions. Elizabeth put them into the stone oven,and in about twenty minutes took them out, slightly browned, andsmelling somewhat of new bread. Allowing them to cool, the girls eachnibbled a little.

  "Not half bad," said Tommy. "I suppose we'll get used to it, and likeit better. I never liked carrots when I was a child, and I do now. Ifwe only had some butter! Why aren't there any cocoanuts here, Iwonder? They have milk, haven't they? If we had some we might makesome butter out of the cream."

  At this the other girls laughed outright.

  "I'm afraid we shouldn't get much cream out of cocoanuts," saidElizabeth. "The milk is a sickly kind of juice, isn't it, Mary?"

  "Yes; I had some once, long ago, when Father took me to the fair atExeter. He knocked down the cocoanut at one of the shies. I didn'tlike the milk at all."

  "We must eat our bread without butter," said Elizabeth. "I do hope,though, that we shall find more bananas, for I'm sure I shall soon gettired of the breadfruit. We must try another part of the islandanother day."

  CHAPTER XI

  A TROPICAL STORM

  Two or three days passed without incident. The elder girls in theirheart of hearts were becoming convinced that the footprints must havebeen those of an animal; but Tommy had shown herself so touchy on thatpoint that they never told her what they thought. With the return oftheir confidence they began to think that they were punishingthemselves by neglecting to use the hut, and one night they ventured tosleep in it for the first time, lying on their grass mats, with pillowsof grass and dried leaves. They found their new quarters so much moreeasy and comfortable that they decided to use the boat no more as abedchamber, and thought they had been silly in not deserting it before.

  The hut was delightfully cool both by day and night. In the daytimethey always lifted the awning facing the sea; at night they let it downat first, getting ventilation by the space beneath the roof; but asthey became accustomed to their bedroom they left the opening uncoveredat night also. Before turning in they would sit cross-legged justwithin the hut, gazing, most often in silence, over the wide expanse ofsea, watching the stars as they came into the darkening sky, andthinking of their uncle and the friends at home. Uncle Ben wasscarcely ever mentioned among them now. They could not bear to thinkthat the dear old man was at the bottom of the sea, that could showsuch a smooth and smiling face, and yet behave like a treacherous,cruel monster. They scarcely ever dared to think of the future, forthough they seldom missed a visit to the cliffs, from which they couldlook far over the sea, and though their flag was still flying from thetree, they had almost lost hope of being rescued, and could only livefrom day to day, killing thought by various little activities.

  One day, for instance, Elizabeth suggested that as their hut was builtand furnished, and they had little to do except fish and prepare theirfood, they might make themselves some new hats. The idea was eagerlytaken up by the others. Each girl worked in her own way, plaitinglengths of thin grass, and Mary hit on a brilliant notion of makingbrims out of the large leaves from a kind of dwarf palm that grewplentifully in the neighbourhood. They fastened these together, andthen to the grass crowns, by threading them in and out with the veryfine tendrils of a creeper. When the hats were finished the girls hadwhat Tommy called a mutual admiration meeting, and felt very proud oftheir Dolly Vardens.

  A few days after the discovery of the breadfruit, they made a lengthyexcursion along the southern shore. Here the woods were a good dealdenser than in other parts, which was one reason why they had hesitatedto explore them. But the cliffs were much less lofty than those on thenorth, and the girls easily climbed them, and penetrated for a shortdistance into the fringing woods.

 
; They discovered several trees of kinds they had not seen before. Therewas one in particular that interested them by its fantastic shape; itwas so odd-looking that Tommy dubbed it the clown of the forest; thereal name, of which they were ignorant, was the pandanus. But thespecial reward of this expedition was the discovery of a thickplantation of bananas and oranges, quite equal to those they had seenon the dreaded eastern side of the ridge. They rushed upon the orangesthat bestrewed the ground, devoured several, and filled their pocketswith them. What with fish--they were expert fishers by this time--thebreadfruit, and this fresh storehouse, they felt no more anxiety aboutfood, and if only they could have lost their fear of possible wildneighbours they would have had nothing to trouble the serenity of theirhealthy life. But none of them was as yet ready to tempt fate again bycrossing the ridge, and Elizabeth at any rate knew that while thegreater part of the island was shut to them, they could never be quiteeasy in mind. She felt that the uncertainty was even harder to bearthan knowledge would have been.

  One day their peaceful existence was rudely disturbed, not by man, butby nature. The island was visited by a storm of quite extraordinaryviolence. The air had been for some time very oppressive, and thegirls, feeling incapable of any exertion, were resting in the hut, whenthere came a sudden hot blast of wind straight in from the sea. Theylooked out. Vast lurid clouds were piling up; in a few seconds, itseemed, the sky became black, and huge waves broke over the reef,sending up mountains of spray. The wind tore through the woods,increasing every moment in fury. One terrible blast ripped the slighthut to fragments, and the girls had no sooner extricated themselvesfrom the heap of tattered mats and broken canes that covered them, thana flood of rain poured upon them. They rushed away to the lee-side ofa hillock, trying in vain to find shelter from the storm, and coweringin terror as they heard peals of thunder, and then a tremendous crashas the tempest uprooted some great tree and dashed it to the ground.

  Mary was always terror-stricken in a thunderstorm, and she clunghalf-fainting to Elizabeth, who clasped her close in a motherlyembrace. Tommy, on the other hand, was perfectly fearless. She gazedat the boiling sea, and watched the lightning with a sort of fascinatedadmiration. She was almost sorry when the storm blew itself out aftertwo hours of fury, and the sky cleared as rapidly as it had darkened.

  "How lovely!" she said, dripping wet as she was. "Poor old Mary!"

  Mary, indeed, was quite overcome, and it was some time before she wasable to walk away. The tempest had left ruin in its track.

  "The boat!" cried Elizabeth, suddenly remembering the little vessel,which, though it had been drawn up higher than when they slept in it,she feared might have been washed away. "We must leave you for alittle, Mary. Walk about if you can, and let the sun dry your things."

  Then she raced down to the shore with Tommy, and was horrified todiscover that the boat had disappeared. The girls scanned the sea,which was still rough, but there was not a sign of it. They ran alongthe beach northward, hoping that the boat might have been cast up, andwere rejoiced to find it about a quarter of a mile away, bottom upwardson a spit of sand. It was some distance from the sea, which, though ithad evidently come much higher than usual, had now receded to within alittle of high-water mark. The girls managed to right the boat, onlyto find, of course, that the oars were missing.

  "How silly we were not to bring the oars into the hut along with theboat-hook!" cried Elizabeth. "The boat is perfectly useless withoutthe oars, and we can't make new ones."

  "Perhaps the tide will wash them up," said Tommy. "Help me up thisrock, Bess; I'll see if they are in sight."

  Mounted on the rock she scanned the surface, and after a time sawsomething bobbing up and down about a hundred yards out, and some wayto the south of where she stood.

  "There it is, I believe," she cried. "The sea is getting calmer now;shall I swim out for it?"

  "You mustn't think of it," said Elizabeth. "I dare say the sea is fullof sharks. I saw a fin yesterday when we were fishing."

  "And you didn't tell me! I should love to see a real live shark."

  Elizabeth smiled inwardly at this.

  "But we must get the oar somehow, Bess. One would be better thannothing. And quickly, too. See, the tide is running out fast. And ifthe oar gets into the current that flows past the reef, it is good-byefor ever."

  "I don't see how we can. We haven't a paddle of any kind. Theboat-hook's no good. Wait, though; I wonder if we could get a branchof a tree. Stay here and keep the oar in sight while I run and look."

  She ran up the cliff-side, which was covered with vegetation. Thesmall trees had withstood the storm better than the large ones. Somewere cracked and broken, but others had merely bent to the blast, whilethe ground was strewn with the more massive trunks, and withinnumerable small branches and twigs. In a little while she came to atree that had two boughs forming a fork, in shape like a boy'scatapult. Catching hold of this, and straining upon it, Elizabethmanaged to break it off; it had occurred to her that the fork mightform the skeleton of a paddle. But time was too precious for her toattempt to make it by herself alone, so she ran with it to Mary.

  "Quick, Mary," she cried. "Pull yourself together. We have found theboat, but the oars are gone, and one is floating out to sea. Help meto make a paddle, so that we can go after it. Get some creepers andsome leaves as quickly as you can. I'll show you what I mean."

  There was no lack of material close at hand, and they were soon busilyat work making a sort of criss-cross lattice-work upon the fork, whichthey notched at intervals with their knives, to give holding to thetendrils. Having rapidly made their framework, they laid the leaves onit, and bound these on with more creepers. Before they had finished itas Elizabeth would have liked, they heard Tommy's shrill voice calling--

  "Quick, Bess, the oar's going out fast."

  Elizabeth jumped up, carrying the odd-looking paddle, which Tommy saidwas like a lacrosse stick. The oar was now out of sight, though Tommycould point to the spot where she saw it last. They launched the boat,and using the paddle as a stern-oar, Tommy employed all the skill shehad gained by paddling the dinghy to and from the shore at Southampton.The paddle was a very poor thing; it bent a good deal, and some of thetendrils became loose, and hung about it like the string of an oldcricket bat. But there was no time to stop and repair it, or the oar,which they now saw clearly, would drift past the reef and utterlybeyond reach.

  Elizabeth began to grow a little anxious in case they should findthemselves adrift by and by with nothing better than the makeshiftpaddle, which would certainly not last more than a very short time.That would be a calamity indeed, for they might be carried far out tosea, and there was Mary alone on the island. But Tommy was working soenergetically that the distance between the boat and the oar was fastlessening, and Elizabeth, raising herself in her seat, suddenly caughtsight of the second oar not far beyond the first.

  "Let me take your place, Tommy," she said. "You must be tired."

  "Not a bit. Besides, we'll lose time if we change, and perhaps upset.Stay where you are, Bess; I'll get that oar in a minute, and then we'llsoon have the other one."

  A few more strokes brought the boat within reach of the oar, andElizabeth, bending over, drew it up. Then Tommy left the stern andboth sat on the thwarts, pulling towards the second oar, which theyovertook in a few seconds.

  "We'll keep the paddle as a memento," said Elizabeth. "But look! Whata terrible distance we are from the shore! Mary will be half frantic."

  "It's lucky that we are inside the reef," said Tommy. "Already I canfeel the current quite strong. We shall have to pull hard to get outof it!"

  By this time Tommy was rather tired, but she would not give in. It wasa long pull back, and at first it seemed impossible to draw the boatout of the current that was rapidly bearing it northward. But havingnow two good oars, they succeeded presently in getting back into calmerwater. Then, turning the boat's head southward, they rowed more gent
lyalong the shore, and at last reached their own little harbour, whereMary was awaiting them.

  "I _am_ thankful you have got back safely," she cried. "When I saw yougoing so far I nearly went mad for fear you couldn't return."

  "We must take care it never happens again," said Elizabeth. "We'lldrag the boat up much higher this time, and if we tie the painter to arock, or to a tree if there's one near enough, we needn't be anxious,and we'll certainly keep the oars in the hut."

  "My dears, we haven't a hut," said Tommy. "We be three poormariners--vagabonds, homeless, ragged and tanned. Who was that oldking who sat himself down in a lonely mood to think, and watched aspider spin its web over and over again, and thought he couldn't let aspider beat him and at last beat all his enemies? Oh, dear, that'smade me out of breath. Robert Bruce, wasn't it, Mary?"

  "Yes; Mrs. Hemans wrote the poem. 'Bruce and the Spider,' it's called."

  "I don't care who wrote it, only we've got to spin our web again. Oh,'Will you walk into my parlour?' said the spider to the fly. 'Please'm, where's the parlour?' says the fly. There, I'm a lunatic, but Ifeel so jolly at having caught those runaway oars. I say, are you dry?I am. That's one advantage of living in a tropical climate; if you getsoaked you don't have to shiver while your things are dried at thefire. 'Homeless, ragged and tanned, who so contented as I?'" she sang,and Elizabeth, noticing the high spirits of her wild young sister,hoped that there wouldn't be a reaction, and that Tommy was not goingto be ill.

  CHAPTER XII

  ALARMS AND DISCOVERIES

  Contemplating the ruins of the hut they had built up with so much care,the girls felt a very natural chagrin. You have seen a child who haserected a fine house of bricks fly into a rage when the structuretopples by its own weight, or at least look utterly woebegone, andleave the scattered bricks lying where they fell. Elizabeth Westmacottand her sisters felt very much the same disinclination to begin again.The site was a picture of disorder. Portions of the matting had beenblown right away; other portions in shreds and tatters had foundresting-places among the foliage of the surrounding trees and shrubs.Some of the canes of the roof dangled from the boughs, others litteredthe ground amid a tangle of creepers and leafage. No one could havesupposed that only a few hours before the same place had been a modelof neatness.