CHAPTER IX.
Contains a Recovery, a Discovery, and a Disappointment.
"And now," said the Captain, "what was the young man doing, when weknocked off the other day, after the storm?"
William, whose memory was always as good as his words were ready, saidhe was "just going to sleep."
"True, that's the thing; and I went to sleep and slept soundly, I cantell you. And this you may well enough believe when you bear in mind howmuch I had passed through since the last sleep I had on board theship,--for since then had come the shipwreck, the saving of the Dean andcarrying him ashore, the walk around the island, besides all the anxietyand worriment of mind in consequence of my own unhappy situation and theDean's uncertain fate.
"More than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the shipwreck, and if Itell you that I slept full twelve hours, without once waking up, youmust not be at all surprised.
"When I opened my eyes again, we were in the shadow of the cliffs oncemore; that is, the sun had gone around to the north again. The Dean wasalready wide awake. When I asked him how he was, he said he felt muchbetter, only his head still pained him greatly, and he was very thirstyand hungry.
"I got up immediately, and assisted the Dean to rise. He was a littledizzy at first, but after sitting down for a few minutes on a rock herecovered himself. Then I brought him some water in an egg-shell todrink. And then I gave him a raw egg, which he swallowed as if it hadbeen the daintiest morsel in the world. 'It's lucky, isn't it,' said he,'that there are so many eggs about?' After a moment I observed that hewas laughing, which very much surprised me, as that would have beenabout the last thing that ever would have entered into my head to do.'Do you know,' he asked, 'what a very ridiculous figure we are cutting?Look, we are all covered over with feathers. I have heard of peoplebeing tarred and feathered, but never heard of anything like this. Let'spick each other.'
"Sure enough we were literally covered over with the down in which wehad been sleeping, and when I saw what a jest the poor Dean, with hissore head, made of the plight we were in, I forgot all my own troublesand joined in the laugh with him.
"We now fell to work picking each other, as the Dean had suggested, andwere soon as clean of feathers as any other well-plucked geese.
"By this time the Dean's clothes had become entirely dry; so eachdressed himself in the clothes that belonged to him, and then we startedover to the nearest brook, where we bathed our hands and faces, dryingthem on an old bandanna handkerchief which I was lucky enough to have inmy pocket. I had to support the Dean a little as we went along, for hewas very weak; but in spite of this his spirits were excellent, and whenhe saw, for the first time, the ducks fly up, he said, 'What a greatpair of silly dunces they must take us for,--coming into such a place asthis.'
"After we had refreshed ourselves at the brook, and eaten some moreeggs, we very naturally began to talk. I related to the Dean, moreparticularly than I had done before, the events of the shipwreck and ourescape, and what I had discovered on the island, and then made someallusion to the prospect ahead of us. To my great surprise, the Dean wasnot apparently in the least cast down about it. In truth, he took itmuch more resignedly, and had a more hopeful eye to the future, than Ihad. 'If,' said he, 'it is God's will that we shall live, he willfurnish us the means; if not, we can but die. I wouldn't mind it half somuch, if my poor mother only knew what was become of me.' Thisreflection seemed to sadden him for a moment, and I thought I saw a tearin his eye; but he brightened up instantly as a great flock of duckswent whizzing overhead. 'Well,' exclaimed he, 'there seems to be no lackof something to eat here anyway, and we ought to manage to catch itsomehow, and live until a ship comes along and takes us off.'
"The Dean took such a hopeful view of the future that we were soonchatting in a very lively way about everything that concerned ourescape, and here I must have dwelt largely upon the satisfaction which Itook in rescuing the Dean, for the little fellow said: 'Well, I supposeI ought to thank you very much for saving me; but the truth is, all theagony of death being over with me when you pulled me out, the chiefbenefit falls on you, as you seem so much rejoiced about it; but I'll begrateful as I can, and show it by not troubling you any more. See, I'malmost well. I feel better and better every minute,--only I'm sore hereon the head where I got the crack.'
"To tell the truth, in thinking of other things, I had neglected, orrather quite forgotten, the Dean's wounded head; so now, my attentionbeing called to it, I examined it very carefully, and found that it wasnothing more than a bad bruise, with a cut near the centre of it abouthalf an inch long. Having washed it carefully, I bound my bandannahandkerchief about it, and we once more came back to consider what weshould do.
"Of course, the first thing we thought of and talked about was how weshould go about starting a fire; next in importance to this was that weshould have a place to shelter us. So far as concerned our food anddrink, our immediate necessities were provided for, as we had the littlerivulet close at hand, and any quantity of eggs to be had for thegathering, and we set about collecting a great number of them at once;for in a few days we thought it very likely that most of them would havelittle ducks in them, as, indeed, many of them had already. Anotherthing we settled upon was, that we would never both go to sleep at thesame time, nor quit our present side of the island together; but one ofus would be always on the lookout for a ship, as we both thought that,since our ship had come that way, others would be very likely to, thoughneither of us had the remotest idea in the world as to where we were,any more than that we were on an island somewhere in the northern sea.
"But the fire which we wanted so much to warm ourselves and cook ourfood,--what should we do for that? Here was the great question; andfire, fire, fire, was the one leading idea running through both ourheads;--we thought of fire when we were gathering eggs, we talked offire when, later in the day, we sat upon the rocks, resting ourselves,and we dreamed of fire when we fell asleep again,--not this time,however, under the eider-down where we had slept before, but on thegreen grass of the hillside, in the warm sunshine, under my overcoat,for we had turned night into day, and were determined to sleep when thesun was shining on us at the south, and do what work we had to do whenwe were in the shade.
"Every method that either of us had ever heard of for making a fire wasremembered and talked over; but there was nothing that appeared to suitour case. I found a hard flint, and by striking it on the back of myknife-blade I saw that there was no difficulty in getting any number ofsparks, but we had nothing that would catch the sparks when struck; sothat we did not seem to be any better off than we were before; and, as Ihave stated already, we fell asleep again, each in his turn,--'watch andwatch,' as the Dean playfully called it, and as they have it onshipboard,--without having arrived at any other result than that ofbeing much discouraged.
"When we had been again refreshed with sleep, we determined to make astill further exploration of the island; so, after once more eating ourfill of raw eggs, we set out. The Dean, being still weak and his headstill paining him very much from the hurt, remained at the lookout. Hecould, however, walk up and down for a few hundred yards without losingsight of the only part of the sea that was free enough of ice to allow aship to approach the island. After a while he came to where I haddiscovered the dead seal and narwhal lying on the beach, when upon myfirst journey round the island. I had told him about them, as indeed Ihad of everything I had seen, and he was curious to try if he could notcatch a fox; but his fortune in that particular was not better thanmine.
"For myself, I had a very profitable journey, as I found a place amongthe rocks which might, with some labor in fixing it up, give us shelter.I was searching for a cave, but nothing of the sort could I come across;but at the head of a little valley, very near to where I left the Dean,I discovered a place that would, in some measure at least, answer thesame purpose. Its situation gave it the still further advantage, that wecommanded a perfect view of the sea from the front of it.
"I have said that
it was not exactly a cave. It was rather a naturaltent, as it were, of solid rocks. At the foot of a very steep slopethere were several large masses of rough rocks heaped together,evidently having one day slid down from the cliffs above, and afterwardssmaller rocks, being broken off, had piled up behind them. Two of theselarge rocks had come together in such a manner as to leave an open spacebetween them. I should say this space was ten or twelve feet across atthe bottom, and, rising up about ten feet high, joined at the top likethe roof of a house. The rocks were pressed against them behind, so ascompletely to close the outlet in that direction. I climbed into thisplace, and was convinced that if we had strength to close up the frontentrance with a wall, we should have a complete protection from theweather. But then, when I reflected how, if we did seek shelter there,we should keep ourselves warm, I had great misgivings; for then came upthe question of all questions, 'What should we do for a fire?'
"Although this place was not a cave, yet I spoke to the Dean about it assuch, and by that name we came to know it; so I will now use the term,inappropriate though it is. I also told the Dean about some other birdsthat I had discovered in great numbers. They were very small, and seemedto have their nests among the rocks all along the opposite side of theisland, where they were swarming on the hillside, and flying overhead ineven greater flocks than the ducks. I knew they were called 'littleauks,' from descriptions the sailors had given me of them.
The Dean makes provision for a change of diet.]
"'But look here what I've got,' exclaimed the Dean, with an air oftriumph, as soon as I came up with him. 'See this big duck!'
"The fellow had actually caught a duck, and in a most ingenious manner.Seeing the ducks fly off their nests, the happy idea struck him that, ifhe could only contrive a trap, or 'dead-fall,' he might catch them whenthey came back. So he selected a nest favorable to his purpose, andthen piled up some stones about it, making a solid wall on one side ofit; then he put a thin narrow stone on the other side, and on this hesupported still another stone that was very heavy. Then he took from hispocket a piece of twine which he was fortunate enough to have, and tiedone end of it to the thin narrow stone, and, holding on to the otherend, hid himself behind some rocks near by. When the duck came back toher nest, he jerked the thin narrow stone away by a strong pull on thetwine string, and down came the heavy stone upon the duck's back. 'Youshould have heard the old thing quacking,' said he, evidently forgettingeverything else but the sport of catching the bird: 'but I soon gave herneck a twist, and here we are ready for a dinner, when we only find away to cook it. Have you discovered any way to make a fire yet?'
"I had to confess that on the subject of fire I was yet as ignorant asever.
"'Do you know,' continued he, 'that I have got an idea?'
"'What is it?' said I.
"'Why,' replied he, 'you told me something about people making fire witha lens made of glass. Now, as I was down on the beach and looked at theice there, I thought, why not make a lens out of ice,--it is as clear asglass?'
"'How ridiculous!' said I; 'but suppose you could, what will you set onfire with it?'
"'In the first place,' he answered, 'the pockets of my coat are made ofsome sort of cotton stuff, and if we could only set fire to that,couldn't we blow a blaze into the fire plant, as you call it? See, I'vegathered a great heap of it.' And sure enough he had, for there was apile of it nearly as high as his head, looking like a great heap of dryand green leaves.
"The idea did not seem to me to be worth much, but still, as it was theonly one that had been suggested by either of us, it was at least worthyof trial; so we went down to the beach, and, finding a lump of ice abouttwice as big as my two fists, we began chipping it with my knife intothe shape we wanted it, and then we ground it off with a stone, and thenrubbed it over with our warm hands until we had worn it down perfectlysmooth, and into the shape of a lens. This done, we held it up to thesun, relieving each other as our hands grew cold; but without anysuccess whatever. We tried for a long time, and with much patience,until the ice became so much melted, that we could do nothing more withit, when we threw it away, and the experiment was abandoned as hopeless.
"Our disappointment at this failure was as great as the Dean's hopes hadbeen high. The Dean felt it most, for he was, at the very outset,perfectly confident of success. Neither of us, however, wished to ownhow much we felt the failure, so we spoke very little more together, butmade, almost in silence, another meal off the raw eggs, and, being nowquite worn out and weary with the labors and anxieties of the day, wepassed the next twelve hours in watching and sleeping alternately in thebright sunshine, lying as before on the green grass, covered with theovercoat. We did not even dare hope for better fortune on the morrow. Wehad, however, made up our minds to struggle in the best manner we couldagainst the difficulties which surrounded us, and mutually to sustaineach other in the hard battle before us. Whether we should live or diewas known but to God alone, and to his gracious protection we once morecommended ourselves; the Dean repeating a prayer which he had learnedfrom a pious and careful mother, who had brought him up in the fear ofHeaven, and taught him, at a very early age, to have faith in God'sendless watchfulness.
"And now, my children," concluded the Captain, "I have some work to doin my garden, to-day, so we must cut our story short this time. When youcome to-morrow, I will tell you what next we did towards raising a fire,besides many other things for our safety and comfort."
* * * * *
So the party scattered from the "cabin,"--the Captain to his work, andthe children to play for a while with the Captain's dogs, Port andStarboard, out among the trees; and to talk with Main Brace, whom theyfound to be the most singular boy they had ever seen; after which theywent to the Captain to say "Good evening" to him, and then ran brisklyhome,--William eager to write down what he had heard, while it was yetfresh upon his memory, and all of them to relate to their parents, overand over again, what this wonderful old man had been telling them, andwhat a dear old soul he was.