THE SPANISH GALLEON

THE
SPANISH GALLEON

BEING AN ACCOUNT
OF
A SEARCH FOR SUNKEN TREASURE IN THE
CARIBBEAN SEA
BY
CHARLES SUMNER SEELEY

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1891

Copyright,
By A. C. McClurg and Co.
a. d. 1891.

CONTENTS.

THE SPANISH GALLEON.

CHAPTER I.
THE ISLAND.

MY name is William Morgan, and I am a lineal descendant of that William Morgan who was a brother of the famous Welsh buccaneer, Henry Morgan. I mention this in no spirit of pride,—quite the contrary,—but because some may choose to trace in these adventures evidence of hereditary tendencies.

On the eighteenth day of August, 1886, as the sun was setting, I was floating in the Caribbean Sea. You may mark the place on the map as being approximately N. latitude 15°, and W. longitude 62° from Greenwich; or in other words, between one hundred and two hundred miles west of the French island of Martinique. A chest, well corded but partly filled with water, was all that kept my head above the surface. Without food or drink I had been floating thus since shortly after sunrise of the previous morning. At that time the sloop in which I was voyaging, capsized and sunk in a squall, drowning the negro captain and owner, and his son, who constituted the crew. In this little vessel I was bound for a small uninhabited island known as “Key Seven,” which was in plain sight when the disaster occurred. For two days and a night, without sleep or refreshment, I had been struggling to push the floating chest toward this land.

Now as the sun was just about to sink exactly behind the trees on the island, I was so near that the sound of the waves on the beach reached my ear. The tide would soon turn, and I must gain a foothold on the sand before the ebb got fairly under way, or continue the struggle another night. My hands and arms were sore in places from chafing in the salt water against the chest, every muscle ached, cramps and pains shot incessantly through every limb, my eyes were on fire, the wolf of hunger gnawed at my stomach, my lips and mouth and throat were parched and dry. The fever of utter exhaustion and fatigue drove delirious dreams and fancies through my aching brain. Still on, on, on, compelling the unwilling and rebellious muscles to their automatic work, made sickening to the very soul by long continued repetition, I fought until at last my feet rested on the bottom. One final struggle and the wave left me with the chest upon the beach. But it was not until the last ounce of energy had been expended, that I staggered and fell on the dry sand among the parched bladder-weed that streaked the shore. There I lay for half an hour, completely exhausted.

When I rose to secure the chest by dragging it a little way—a very little way—beyond the reach of the waves, the sun had just sunk, night with tropical suddenness had fallen on the scene, and the stars burst out in all their brilliancy in the clear dark vault of heaven.

Here then I was at last at the end of my voyage, but in what a plight. Food and drink and sleep I must have, and that speedily, or death would shortly claim me. It was starlight, but too dark to see more than the dim outlines of things. I lay down again on the warm dry sand and tried to think what was best to do; but I could not think, for my dry tongue rattled in my mouth and my head ached as though it would burst with every feeble throb of the heart.

As I lay with my face turned toward the sea, listening in despair to the soft, monotonous lip-lipping of the waves, varied at regular intervals by the long, foaming crash of the swell as it broke and swept up the sands, there came presently in the eastern sky a faint silvery glow, and the full moon stole up from out the glistening water until it shone full and broad, making a burnished path down to the shore at my feet. No doubt, this saved my life. In an hour it was almost as light as day. I untied my shoes, which I had fastened to the chest while swimming, put them on to guard my feet, and started in search of drinking-water. Fortunately it was close at hand. A little brook flowed down to the sea not more than forty rods to the north of my landing-place. Had I been in condition to remember anything, I should have known this fact, because while floating in the sea I noted this stream by the low foliage that marked its course near the beach, and longed for a draught of the water which I knew must be there. Stumbling along the sands, I reached the stream, and lying down, buried my face in the clear, sweet water, and drank until I could drink no more. This was possibly an imprudent thing to do. Indeed it was followed by dreadful nausea. But this did not hinder me from taking another draught, almost as deep as the first.

He who has not experienced real thirst can never know how delicious is pure, sweet water, taken when every fibre and pore of the body is suffering for it. Each capillary and duct seemed to expand, and the heart soon began to beat stronger and fuller as though under the lash of a stimulant. Though I had fancied food was what I needed most, it was really the water that my system demanded, and I felt at once so much stronger and better that a desire to sleep came upon me, the fever left my veins, and I felt as though I could wait until morning before breaking my fast.

On the way back to the chest I picked up half a dozen shell-fish of some bivalve species, on the sands at the edge of the surf, and ate them. They tasted sweet as a nut to me, but were probably of little nutritious value, and possibly more or less indigestible. But they brought no harm, and seemed partly to fill what void the water had left.

At the landing-place I drew and rolled the chest still farther up the beach, took off my wet clothing, spread it out to dry, and buried my body in the warm sand, putting the chest between me and the gentle wind which was breathing steadily and softly in from the sea. Exhausted as I was, the sense of bodily rest and warmth was delicious; but as is apt to be the case when one is over-fatigued, sleep did not come to my eyelids. I was free from pain with the exception of the smarting of the raw wounds on my hands and arms, and lay listening to the rustling of the breeze, the sound of the sea, and the lonesome call of a night bird or a small animal of some sort that occasionally broke the stillness.

I thought over my desperate situation; of the disastrous ending of the voyage, from which I had hoped so much; how and when, if ever, I could get off the island and back to civilization to take a fresh start,—for as to giving up the great object of the expedition, that thought was not once entertained either then or at any other time. But now without a boat or the many necessary appliances for carrying out my plans, I could not hope to accomplish that object, though I was upon the very island that I had travelled over a thousand miles to reach. It would be necessary to go back at least to Martinique, if not to New York, to obtain what I needed. Diving apparatus is not to be found everywhere. Besides the assistance of at least one person seemed absolutely necessary, and here I was alone. Yes, I must somehow go back and start over again,—that seemed clear. But how, and when? These questions were not easy to answer. Should I be able even to obtain food while a prisoner here, waiting such deliverance as chance might bring?

These and a thousand other thoughts passed through my mind while I lay looking at the stars as they paled before the silver shield of the moon. I thought of my plans so carefully laid, and now, at least for the time being, so utterly defeated. Thus I reviewed mentally the whole history of the enterprise I had undertaken. And perhaps this is a proper place to give the reader an account of what he will doubtless conceive to be the wildest scheme that ever was seriously contemplated. Listen, that you may judge.

On my twenty-first birthday, now only a few weeks past, I sailed from New York in one of the steamers plying to the Windward Islands, bound for Martinique and thence by country sloop to Key Seven, for the purpose of finding a Spanish galleon that sank in the open sea near that island, July 9, 1665, after a bloody battle with two vessels commanded by the buccaneer Welshman, Captain Henry Morgan. This galleon contained pieces of eight, gold and silver in bars and plate, and jewels, to the value of over three hundred thousand dollars. It had lain thus at the bottom of the sea, as I believed, for more than two hundred years. To find this sunken wreck and secure the treasure was the object of my expedition. How I succeeded in such a wild undertaking will appear hereafter.

Several years before, while I was at college, a desultory course of reading had awakened in me a deep interest in the early printed accounts of the lawless buccaneers and maroons who infested the waters and coasts of the Caribbean Sea, besieged and sacked the Spanish forts and cities, crossed the isthmus of Darien, and followed down the coast of South America, capturing the vessels and laying waste the towns of the Spaniards. Bartholomew Portuges, Brasiliano, John Davis, Francis Lolonois, and Henry Morgan, the brother of my ancestor, were noted leaders of these buccaneering crews and armies. Perhaps the last-named adventurer, who led the desperate expedition across the isthmus and captured the fortified city of Panama, was the most noted of all, as he was also not the least cruel, blood-thirsty, and avaricious. Fragmentary accounts by various authors, some of whom were actors in the scenes described, have been published in Dutch, French, Spanish, and English. So far as I could do so I had sought and studied these accounts. A translation into English, made more than a hundred years ago, of the most considerable Dutch and French accounts had enabled me to absorb them, and the numerous original reports of Spanish officials made to their government, and which are still preserved in the archives at Madrid, were rendered accessible to me by a fortunate circumstance.

Many years ago most of the documents bearing upon the history of America, from the time of Columbus down to the present century, had been collected and transcribed through the efforts of an American author whose charming histories have delighted all English readers. This mass of material had since its transcription been made use of by many others, and being in the charge of the college librarian, I obtained access to it. My enthusiasm may be imagined, when I say that in order to consult these transcriptions I actually learned to read Spanish. It was in one of these papers that I found the report of Don Josef Isabel del Velo y Campo, admiral of the Spanish fleet and at the time in command of the Spanish galleon La Magdalen. The admiral gave a full account of the loss of this galleon, of the desperate battle, of the tremendous bravery of the Spaniards under his command, and of his own escape with two others by swimming to the island of Trebucino near by. The vessel sank about a mile from the northern extremity of the island, bearing a little east of north from the point of rocks. The report was accompanied by an account of the cargo on board, as nearly correct as his memory and knowledge could serve him to give, and by a like statement of the money and treasure lost, concluding with a pious congratulation that if lost to Spain it at least had not fallen into the hands of Morgan and his murderous hereticos.

At the time of reading this report, it was to me a matter of idle wonder, to conjecture whether the noble galleon still held together at the bottom of the sea, and if the treasure was still there; to picture the many curious things that possibly lived and grew near the blackened and corroded silver and the untarnishable gold, the monsters of the sea that swam and crept over and about it, the seaweed, the sponge and the coral, the tides and the currents which swept by it, and the drowned sailors and cavaliers whose spirits possibly guarded it through the slow ages of decay and change.

Although I had looked up the island of Trebucino on the old charts, and had identified it as the bit of land now marked “Key Seven” on modern maps, yet at that time I had no thought of the possibility of recovering the treasure, much less of engaging in such a hair-brained enterprise myself. It was not until long afterward that the idea entered my mind of seeking the treasure, and then it was suggested by a serious misfortune that befell me.

Both my parents were dead, and I had no living relatives nearer than an uncle, my mother’s brother, who was my guardian, and who from time to time sent me money as I needed it. When my father died he left his estate, consisting of valuable farming lands in the beautiful Mohawk valley, heavily encumbered with debt. The money sent me for expenses at college came from a small property that had belonged to my mother. I had always looked forward to the day when, free from school life, I could undertake the management and control of my father’s farms, and return to live at the home farm, where I was born and where my early boyhood days were passed. The old Dutch-built brick house with its noble elms, the brook that ran through the meadow, so near that its murmur could be heard on still summer nights from my open bedroom window, the broad fields stretching up and down the valley as far as the eye could reach, the thousand acres under cultivation, and the thousand more of woodland and pasture, the sleek herds, the dairy, and all the joys of a farmer’s life, made up the picture which was ever in my mind. To live this life had been my ambition, and I had tolerated school only because I was told it would better fit me for the work.

But all my hopes were suddenly dashed by a letter from my uncle advising me to be economical and saving with my money, as there was only seven hundred dollars left of the fund devoted to my education, and the whole of which he would in six months turn over to me in one sum. He told me I was now old enough to be informed of my exact prospects. It was better, he said, I should know that my father’s estate would not sell for nearly enough to clear the mortgages on it, that it would require at least a hundred thousand dollars to meet and pay a debt due in three years. He offered to manage the property for me up to that time; but warned me that I could hope to realize but little from it, and that it would then have to go under the hammer. By this sad and unexpected news, my prospects in life were wholly changed. The thought of losing my old home and all the familiar surroundings was so dismal and distressing that I had no heart left to finish my college work. Could I not somehow get the necessary money to redeem the property? This thought came to me over and over. To get a hundred thousand dollars in the short space of three years! Alas! the accomplishment of such a feat must involve some extraordinary circumstances as well as great good-fortune. It was while thus cudgelling my brains in despair, that the idea of the Spanish galleon recurred to me. After weighing the whole matter coolly, and without any enthusiasm or prejudice, I concluded that there was a bare chance of raising this sunken treasure from the sea. I resolved to take that remote chance, and to spend my money and the three years, if necessary, in the endeavor.

It would be six months before I could get the seven hundred dollars that remained to me. This period I spent in planning and studying the enterprise, and in such physical preparation as I was able to make. Every day I visited the natatorium and gymnasium to practise swimming and to train and develop the muscles; so that when the six months had passed I was an expert swimmer and diver and my muscles were hard as steel. The money came duly to hand, and I left college at once for New York City.

There, after writing to my uncle that I was about to go on a voyage that might last three years, and bidding him an affectionate farewell, I bought such articles and appliances as I had determined would be necessary, and took passage for Martinique with exactly two hundred dollars in my pocket.

Then came, as we have seen, the wreck of the sloop, the drowning of my negro assistants, and my long struggle in the sea.

CHAPTER II.
THE FOOD SUPPLY.

THE sun was well up the eastern sky when I awoke in the morning, so numb and stiff that I could with difficulty unbury myself from the sand, the weight of which had almost stopped the circulation in some parts of the body. My clothing, which I had spread on the sand, had completely dried. After some chafing and rubbing I dressed myself and felt more comfortable than at any time since the loss of the sloop. The first thing to do was to get something to eat. I walked to the brook, bathed my face, and took a long drink of water, and began to be more and more impressed with the fact that the diet was thin. There were a number of cocoanut palms near by, growing within a few rods of the sea, and plenty of nuts on them, as could be plainly seen. But though I searched the ground with hungry glance I could find only one nut that had not been operated on by the land crabs, which are able in an ingenious manner to extract the contents through the three little eyes or holes in the shell. This one nut, the exterior husk of which had not been disturbed, I broke open by pounding it upon a rock, and found it to my bitter disappointment blackened, rancid, and quite unfit for food.

I had noticed a flock of gulls, or some species of shore birds, wheeling about and lighting and running on the beach near by. With a shotgun it would have been an easy matter to creep near and bag half a dozen at a shot. I watched them a little while and concluded that though it might prove a tough and unpalatable dish I must have one, or starve. It would be a good plan, I thought, to gather a dozen pebbles weighing three or four ounces apiece and try the effect of a shot into the thick of the flock from as near a point as I could reach. But as there would be no chance for more than one trial, I determined to fire the stones in a volley. To do this effectively I gathered some tough reeds and tied one to each stone until I had half a dozen stones so provided. By swinging these missiles at the end of the reeds they could be thrown a considerable distance with great velocity.

Trembling with expectation and excitement, I crept down toward the flock, keeping out of sight behind some rocks until I was as near as it was possible to go, when I let fly my volley of improvised slung-shots as well as I could direct them into the thickest of the birds. Running forward immediately, I found two lying on the sand struggling. One was hit squarely on the wing with a stone, and the other had a reed wound once around its neck. I secured both and wrung their necks. The idea at once occurred to me that the next time I had occasion to hunt gulls, I would contrive a bolas by tying a stone to each end of a cord; it seemed to me that this would prove even a more effectual instrument of destruction than the sling volley, as it would be almost certain to entangle one or more of the flock.

These birds were nearly as large as a guillemot, but of what species I do not know. As I had no fire to cook with, I immediately ate one of them raw. The other I cut into strips and shreds and laid them on a rock in the hot sun to dry. The experience of eating a raw unseasoned gull was such as to turn my thoughts forcibly to the necessity of some means for procuring both fire and salt. The salt would not be difficult to obtain, for if it could not be found somewhere along the shore or in the salt marsh near by, it would not be difficult to make some sort of a salt pan provided I could find clay or other impermeable soil with which to confine a shallow pool of sea water somewhere in the sunshine. The evaporation would speedily give the small quantity I should require.

In my vest pocket was a small metal match-box half full of matches, such as every smoker carries. But on examination it proved, as might be expected, that all the matches were wet and useless. Nevertheless when I got back to the landing-place, I laid them carefully out in the sun on a stone to dry, thinking that possibly one of them might be made to light.

I now turned my attention to the chest. This chest was one of four that contained my baggage; but which one of the four, or what this particular one contained, I could not conjecture. So I set about untying the rope wound around it, and soon had it free. There was fully forty feet of strong hempen halyard stuff in the line, and this in itself was a possession of value. The bunch of keys in my pocket enabled me without trouble to open the lock. When I raised the lid I found to my bitter disappointment that the chest contained those articles which would be of least value to me under the present circumstances. The contents consisted chiefly of books, stationery, sketching appliances, drawing tools and materials, and a photographic camera and outfit. Everything was, of course, soaked with water, and I hardly had the heart to take the things out to dry. The books and paper, as well as the photographic plates, were in a sad condition. The bellows of the camera came to pieces. I spread out the contents of the chest on the hot sand to dry, putting stones on such things as might blow away when they became dried. The lens of the camera I unscrewed, intending to use it as a burning-glass to start a fire, so that there might be no further need to eat raw gull. The burning-glass, which was of priceless value to me, and the rope were practically all the chest yielded that could be put to use, as I then supposed. The chest itself would of course be useful to me.

Eager to try the burning-glass, I collected some dry branches, leaves, and other fuel. In a ball or nest of dry grass, of the size of my two fists, I placed a little bunch of silky seed fibres collected from a weed. Upon this fibre I brought to bear the focus of the lens, concentrating the sun’s rays to an intense white spot, which almost immediately began to smoke with the heat. Presently the material commenced to burn, and I whirled the ball rapidly around through the air, whereupon the whole burst into a flame, which being placed among the fuel was speedily a roaring fire. In this manner I obtained fire as long as I remained on the island. As a mere matter of curiosity I tried some of the matches which had been laid out so carefully to dry, but, as might have been expected, not a single one would light. It was very fortunate, therefore, that I had the lens, as otherwise I should have been reduced to the necessity of rubbing sticks together in the manner of the savages, and probably without being able to get fire as they are said to do. Of course I did not need the fire to keep me warm, for the air was excessively hot. But it seemed so like a new-found friend that I built it high, and when there was a mass of embers, carefully covered them with sand and ashes that they might last and be ready for future use.

It was now nearly noon and my stomach became more clamorous than ever. I therefore cooked and ate the flesh of the other gull, which had been laid on the rocks to be cured. Although the flies had begun to attack the meat, it was, as yet, in no wise tainted, nor very dry. By dipping the pieces into the sea water I gave it, as I fancied, a perceptible flavor of salt. At any rate, though tough and a little rank in flavor, it tasted good enough and my only regret was that there was not more of it. I could perceive the gulls in great numbers flying about out at sea, but none on the shore, and concluded that they came to the land only at certain stages of the tide,—probably at low tide, when their food would be exposed.

Determined to lay in a store of provisions, I next turned my attention to the cocoanut palms and made another search for fallen nuts, but without any success, though I sought the whole length of the beach beneath the trees. It became quite evident that to get the nuts I should have to climb for them. As the nut-bearing trees were from fifty to seventy-five feet high, without a branch on their cylindrical stems from the base up to the feathery crown, the climb was likely to prove a difficult if not a dangerous task. However, selecting a palm with plenty of nuts on it, I made the attempt to “shin”—as the sailors call it,—up the stem. It was hard work, and the heat was so oppressive that I had to stop several times and rest on the way up and was very glad when I found myself at the top. I broke off and threw down a score of the nuts in all stages of ripeness, and then descended in safety.

The fruit of the cocoanut palm grows in clusters of a dozen to twenty nuts in each bunch, which hang immediately under the crown of leaves. Upon the trees they by no means present the globular hard-shelled appearance which is familiar to our eyes. Each nut is encased in a thick fibrous rind or husk; exteriorly this husk is of a sub-triangular form, about twelve inches long and six inches broad. Of the fibre of this exterior husk the well-known cocoanut matting is made, and also the coarse yarn called cöir; it is also used for cordage.

I carried the nuts to a shady place and stripped off the husk by means of a pointed piece of rock set upright in the ground. The smaller ones not yet entirely ripe were full of a sweet liquid, and the meat was soft enough to have been scooped out with a spoon; the older ones were also very good, not nearly so dry and hard as we find them in our northern markets. For the first time since the shipwreck I ate until my hunger was fully appeased. What the result of a long-continued diet upon such food would be I could not of course forecast, but it seemed probable that I need not starve while the nuts were plentiful. Those which were left from this meal I carried to the landing-place and laid them on the chest, where the land crabs would probably not get at them.

With this ample supply of food, presumably nutritious and certainly quite palatable, my anxiety was greatly relieved. Animal food I could probably obtain from time to time as the island appeared to abound with birds of various kinds, if I could have time to contrive some method of ensnaring or killing them. Then too there were doubtless fish to be caught, and probably turtle. In some of the islands, I knew, there were wild pigs, as it was a common thing for the people of Martinique to come to these small isolated islands on pig-hunting expeditions. I sincerely hoped that these animals might be found on Key Seven; for I felt quite confident of my ability to think of some plan for killing or capturing them. But there was no immediate need to go fishing or hunting for birds or pigs.

I determined to find, if possible, some means of getting a supply of salt before I sought for flesh food of any kind. With this end in view, as the afternoon was still young, I began looking about for a suitable place to serve as a salt pan. I walked along the beach for a mile each way, but could find no suitable spot. The requirements were a shallow basin near the sea, with the bottom impervious to water, which should hold in a shallow depth at least five or ten barrels of water. There was plenty of rock of a coralline limestone variety, and an abundance of shells; and the idea occurred to me that I might burn a supply of lime and thus make a mortar or cement of slaked lime and sand. With this material it would be possible to construct just above high-water mark such a pan or cavity as I desired. If I used shells to make the lime, there would probably be no need of erecting a kiln, as heat enough could be attained in a large open fire, by building it of several alternate layers of dry wood and shells.

I immediately set about collecting shells with which the beach was most plentifully strewn in all directions. As I had nothing in which to carry them, I adopted the expedient of throwing them one at a time into heaps. This was very hard and fatiguing work, and it was four o’clock or later in the afternoon before I had gathered into about twenty different heaps the four or five bushels of shells which I thought enough for a burning. It still remained for me to collect the scattered heaps together, and gather the wood for fuel.

But it was high time now to stop work and prepare for the night. Some sort of sleeping-place must be contrived in the two or three hours of daylight that remained, for I had no fancy to try again the sort of couch I had last slept in. I went to the stream and drank a good draught of water, a welcome refreshment after my exertion in the hot sun. I then gathered a quantity of dry grass for a bed and carried it down to the sand near the landing-place, which seemed a sort of home to me, although I had resolved speedily thereafter to move my property nearer to the brook. The contents of the chest were now dry excepting the books, which presented a sad appearance. I gathered all of these things together and covered them up as well as I could with the focussing-cloth that belonged to the camera, piling stones around the edge to secure it. The empty chest I turned up on its side, hinges uppermost, and propped up the lid in a nearly horizontal position. This would afford me shelter for the upper portion of the body. Under the shelter thus improvised I piled the dry grass for a couch, and my sleeping-place was ready. I then gathered a fresh supply of fuel and built up a fire on the landward, which would presently be the leeward side of my shelter.

By the time these arrangements were all complete, the sun was setting. Tired out, I lay down and watched the fire, thinking over my situation and planning what to do and how to do it. No doubt, sooner or later some vessel would pass in sight or land on the island and take me off. It was not as though I were on a remote or inaccessible place; the native sloops and small vessels occasionally visited these islands for wood or turtle, or on pig-hunting expeditions, and I fancied it would not be long before an opportunity offered for my escape. In the meantime, while thus a prisoner, be the time long or short, it would be necessary to keep up my health and strength. For this purpose food and shelter were necessary, and occupation, too, that I might not brood over my situation and worry at the delay in my plans. There was likely to be plenty of occupation, however, in providing myself with the bare necessities of life. If there should be any spare time on my hands I would devote it to the construction of a boat, a raft, or a vessel of some other sort, with which to get away. But with only a pocket knife how could I expect ever to build a boat capable of navigating more than a hundred miles of sea? How could I carry fresh water enough to last during the voyage?

These problems were indeed difficult of solution. I ran over in my mind, as far as I could recollect them, all the different kinds of boats, canoes, kayaks, etc., known to primitive man. There was the ancient coracle, used by the old Britons, woven in basket fashion from willows and coated with clay or lined with a hide,—a thing good enough in an emergency to ferry one over a stream, but utterly useless to me. There was the canoe or pirogue, hollowed from a single tree-trunk,—called also the dugout. Possibly by the aid of fire I might with patience construct such a thing by months of hard work; and by adding an outrigger log or float, after the manner of the South-Sea islanders, such a canoe could possibly be rendered capable of navigating the sea in favorable weather. Then again there was the whole class of skin boats such as the Esquimaux use; the Greenlander’s kayak made of skins stretched over a framework, and “decked over” like a modern canoe. But how could I build a boat without tools to work with?

I lay thus for an hour or two watching the embers and thinking over one plan after another, until I felt inclined to sleep. When I turned over with my back to the fire, I could see along the beach where the moonlight glinted and sparkled on the sand and shells and pebbles, tinging each wave with liquid silver, as it ran up in graceful curves upon the sand.

I was looking on this scene of magic beauty with the soft fingers of sleep just ready to press down my eyelids when I saw what I thought was a rock just in the wash of the breakers, begin slowly to move. Was this a fancy or was it a fact?

I roused myself and watched the object intently. Yes, it was slowly moving out of the water upon the sand. I realized instantly that it was a turtle making for the sand in order to lay her eggs. Here was a good supply of meat which could be kept an indefinite time, to be obtained by the simple process of turning the creature on its back.

I watched the creature crawl slowly up in the moonlight until it was four or five rods from the water, and waited a minute to see if it would go further. Then I quietly reached for a piece of wood which might be used as a lever to help me turn it over, and ran as swiftly as I could for about three hundred yards so as to get between it and the sea. But the turtle did not seem to comprehend the situation, at least it did not move until I ran close up to it and thrust the stick beneath it. Then it began to walk away, and as it did so it rose up on its fins to such a height that my lever slipped and turned, and I could get no purchase on it. I immediately made up my mind that turtle are not to be turned with a lever. So dropping the stick, I seized the shell with both hands and with a mighty effort heaved the creature over on its back as skilfully as though I had been a veteran turtle-turner.

As soon as I had regained my breath, I scraped away the stones and sand until there was a level space around the turtle, so that it could not possibly work itself over again, and then contemplated my prize. It was a magnificent specimen of the hawk’s-bill variety of sea turtle, and would doubtless weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. Visions of turtle soup and steaks floated through my mind. But I could not afford to kill this great creature until I had salt with which to preserve the meat; otherwise I could not hope to consume a tenth of it before it would spoil.

Quite content with this piece of good-luck, I returned to my shelter and, lying down, kept watch for another such prize; but none came, and after an hour or two my eyelids grew heavy again,—and the glitter of the moonlight on the sand, and the ceaseless motion of the waves, seemed to mingle together in a swimming confusion, until I lost myself and the moonlit waves and shore together in a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER III.
HOUSE-BUILDING.

BRIGHT and early the next morning I awoke to what I felt must be a busy day. A plunge in the sea, a good bath in the brook, and a frugal breakfast of cocoanuts consumed but a few minutes of the time, which, being now practically my sole capital, must be expended with due regard to economy. The turtle was lying safe on its back, and as the sun would soon be very hot, my first care was to break off some shrubs and erect a shade for the creature. I should have been glad to pour a few buckets of sea water over it, but buckets were not among my present conveniences.

The first work on hand was of course the lime-burning. I found a great piece of bark, which I loosened from a fallen and partially decayed log, and used as a sort of tray on which to carry the separate heaps of shells to the spot where the burning was to be done. To economize time and labor, I concluded to burn the lime at the spot where I should subsequently want it. I selected for this purpose a flat piece of smooth sand free of stones and just above high tide, where the waves could not in ordinary weather wash into it. With my hands and pieces of bark I scooped out a basin about ten feet square and a foot in depth, throwing the sand up all around in a low bank. In this basin I piled dry wood and the shells in layers until the pile was five or six feet high.

This took me until noon, working hard every minute, with the perspiration streaming from every pore. Then I discovered that my fire was out. But I had no trouble to start another with the burning-glass, as the sun was shining fiercely and so directly overhead that I had to search for my shadow. Presently the great flames were roaring and leaping high in the air and casting out such a heat that I was glad to retire to the brook for a drink and a cocoanut lunch while waiting for the fuel to burn out.

As I rested in the shade, I employed myself in twisting or rudely spinning some cord out of the fibre of the cocoanut husks. I first pounded the husk between two stones until the fibre was reduced to a mass resembling coarse hemp, and then began to draw it out and twist it as one twists a hay band, only into a slenderer thread. As fast as it became twisted, I wound the thread on a short stick about six inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. With the cord wound smoothly on this stick, and a half-hitch taken around one end, I could roll the cord and stick between my hand and leg to give the twist necessary for the spinning operation, and at the same time use the other hand to manipulate the entangling fibres. By this simple process it was possible to produce the thread, or cöir, quite rapidly.

In about an hour and a half my great fire was burned to the ground, and as a result there lay in the shallow excavation a mingled mass of embers, ashes, lime, fragments of partly burned shells, wood, and charcoal. Of course the ground beneath was very hot, and I could not work among the embers and hot fragments. The tide was now beginning to come in, and I dug a trench from the pit to the sea, through which the water flowed till it quenched the fire and slaked the lime, and partly sinking in the porous sand, left: a muddy compound of lime, ashes, and sand, all over the bottom of the pit. I filled and plastered up the trench except a narrow gateway, cleaned out the sticks and fragments, and sprinkled dry sand over the mud, raking it well in and smoothing the surface as much as possible with the aid of sticks and a great clam-shell. It now remained for me only to let the cement or mortar set and dry, and then, I hoped, it would prove impervious to water.

There were still some hours of daylight, which could not be better employed, I thought, than upon the construction of some better shelter than the upturned chest had afforded. All day I had been turning over in my mind a plan for a hut or shanty that I fancied might be quickly and easily built. There was no telling how long the fair weather, which had now lasted for several days, might continue, and the utter wretchedness of existence if a storm should find me without a shelter was not to be patiently contemplated.

In gathering fuel near the edge of the forest I had noticed a great quantity of dead stalks standing six or seven feet high, straight as an arrow and perhaps an inch and a half in diameter except where they tapered at the top. The plant looked like some species of hibiscus. Any quantity of these stalks was to be had, and they were light yet strong enough for my purpose.

I selected a nice level piece of dry sand near the stream and fifty yards or so from the sea as a site for my proposed house. The shadow from a clump of cocoanut palms fell upon the spot for a part of the day, and near by was a bit of rock where I had sat at noon spinning cöir. Two young palms grew there about eight feet apart, the trunks of which would serve for the main supports of the structure. I hunted about in the forest until I found a reasonably straight stick, that would reach from one of these trees to the other, to serve as a ridgepole, and lashed it firmly to them with some of my cocoanut cord, about eight feet from the ground. Then I brought hibiscus stalks, taking care to cut their butts diagonally. They were easily severed by a single blow. These stalks I set upright in the sand; as firmly as possible, for the four walls of the hut, each wall consisting of two rows, the inner row being planted close together and the outer row parallel to it at a distance of about an inch and a half, the stalks of the outer row being separated from one another three or four inches.

When they were set up, which did not take long as I made no effort to drive them very firmly in the sand, I cut off the tops of the stalks forming the end walls to the shape that the roof was subsequently to take, and reduced the side walls to a common level. In the side next the sea I left an opening for a doorway. The space between the rows of stalks it was my intention to fill with dry grass laid horizontally, and to lay in at intervals stalks of hibiscus, finishing off the top of the walls with a good stout stalk of the same, laid in all around and lashed to both rows with cord. This, I thought, would make a reasonably stout and weatherproof wall, and so it subsequently turned out. But as night came on at this stage of the work, I could not complete even the walls of my hut before dark, and was fain to content myself with my bed under the chest.

I was awakened from a sound sleep by something crawling over me. Forgetful of where I was, I sprang up erect, and my head, coming violently in contact with the chest, overturned it, while I fell back half stunned with the blow. The moon had gone down and the stars were shining brightly, but there was not light enough to see anything distinctly except on the water, where a phosphorescent gleam lighted up the breaking waves with a pale greenish glow which ran in streaks along the surface.

As soon as I could collect my scattered senses and get upon my feet, I began to grope around in search of the cause of the disturbance. Presently a loathsome, warty, tuberculous land crab scuttled over my naked foot, and I could then make out literally hundreds of shadowy forms sidling over the sand. There was no more sleep for me that night, and I was glad to think from the appearance of the sky that it was not more than two hours before the dawn. As I had already been sleeping for eight or ten hours I felt rested, but was faint with hunger. Cocoanut no longer had an attraction for me, but as there was nothing else at hand I forced myself to eat enough to relieve my faintness. A good cup of coffee or even a bowl of hot soup would have seemed a fortune to me then, but I was obliged to be satisfied with a deep draught of water, which lay in my stomach sensibly cold and heavy. It was evident that there was no time to lose in getting more nutritious food than cocoanuts, if I was to keep my strength. This determined me to kill the turtle that very morning, without waiting for the slow operation of the salt pan even if it proved ready to fill with sea water that day; for the evaporation of such an amount of water might take several days before the residue was salt enough for brine. I went to look at the captive and found it as I had left it the day before.

I watched the eastern horizon patiently for signs of dawn. Finally a gray pale glow lit up the sky and slowly changed to a tender pink and primrose, then suddenly the golden rim of the sun shot up and daylight as suddenly took the place of night. The streaks and wreaths of mist that lay sleeping in the hollows of the waves floated away and dissolved.

It did not take me long to kill and dress the turtle, and to pack the meat, both callipash and callipee,—as the two sorts composing a turtle’s anatomy are termed,—into the upper shell and to cover it up with the breast plate. I now resolved to have some hot turtle soup.

Among the photographic apparatus were two shallow developing-trays, made of sheet iron and lined with porcelain. They were about an inch in depth and six by ten inches in their lateral dimensions. While these would serve well enough perhaps to stew or fry the meat in, they did not hold enough to make soup. There was, however, a large glass bottle holding a gallon, filled with a solution of hyposulphite of soda to be used as a fixing solution for photographic negatives. This I emptied and washed thoroughly with sand and water until it was perfectly clean. Cutting some of the meat into small fragments, I put them into the bottle until it was a third full, then filled it with equal parts of sea water and fresh water, as this proportion seemed to taste about salt enough. I then set the bottle in the hot ashes until the contents were warm, gradually moving it nearer and nearer the fire, until finally all was so hot that I no longer feared the heat would crack the glass; so, drawing out some embers, I set the bottle boldly upon them, where the water soon began to simmer and gently boil. In the mean time, I stewed some of the meat with sea water in a developing-tray for immediate consumption, and of this made a good breakfast.

After breakfast I examined the salt pan to see if the cement had set sufficiently, but found that the mortar was still somewhat friable and not hard though seemingly quite dry. I concluded, therefore, to let it harden for another twenty-four hours before putting it to the test; but to obtain a small supply of salt for immediate use I filled the two developing trays with sea water and set them on the fire to boil.

When these operations were fairly under way, I resumed the house-building. First I gathered a great quantity of coarse, dry grass in the bottom land of the creek and laid it in the walls in the manner already described. When this was completed to my satisfaction, I began the construction of the roof after the following fashion: From the ridgepole to the side walls I laid at intervals of six inches hibiscus-stalk rafters, securing them in place at both ends by hay bands twisted out of the dry, tough grass, the lower ends of the rafters projecting to form eaves. On these rafters and parallel to the ridgepole I tied in like manner other stalks, at intervals of six inches. Here was a light and reasonably strong framework ready to receive a thatching of grass or palm leaves, but I concluded that grass would be preferable as it would make a roof better calculated to resist the wind.

Night was now approaching, and as the weather seemed as settled as ever, the lack of the thatch would be no special hardship. I hurried therefore to drag my chest up to the house and arrange my bed of grass within the walls, guarding against another intrusion of the land crabs by means of a row of short hibiscus stalks across the doorway. The result of the day’s boiling of sea water in my developing-trays was something over a tablespoonful of salt. The soup which had been simmering all day in the bottle was delicious, and I made a hearty supper of part of it and some of the boiled meat. With the photographic apparatus were two chemist’s graduated glasses, one of eight and one of four ounces. These made capital drinking-cups. The larger one I used for that purpose, and into the smaller put the precious, hard-earned salt.

As I had no notion to go to bed with the sun, I cast about for something to occupy the two or three hours before bedtime, and concluded to fry up a store of turtle meat in my trays. By nine o’clock I had thus prepared fully twenty pounds of the meat, which I piled upon a pavement of clam-shells in one corner of the house. The land crabs being duly fenced out, I turned in and slept soundly all night.

In the morning I was up at break of day, and ate a breakfast of hot soup. Immediately after breakfast I began to thatch my roof. For this purpose I carefully cut bundles of the long, dry grass, and beginning at the eaves, laid a row, butts down, in a layer about three inches in thickness. On this, near the tops of the grass, I tied a stalk of the hibiscus; then another layer of grass, covering the first down two thirds of its length and covering also the hibiscus stalk; and so on, layer after layer, on both pitches of the roof, until the ridgepole was reached. At the comb of the ridge I finished all by bending down the grass at each side and securing it with a couple of the stalks, one at each side. I then heaped up the sand around the bottom of the walls on the outside, to give greater stability to the structure, and dug a ditch to prevent the water from flooding the interior if it should come down faster than the sandy soil could absorb it.

The next thing to make was some sort of door, and the planning and fashioning of this gave me occasion for no little thought and trouble. Finally, after trying other methods unsuccessfully, I rigged up a sort of rolling blind out of the stalks by cutting a number of them of a length a little greater than the width of the doorway and tying them close together by a cord at each end and one in the middle, so that the whole would be flexible like a curtain. This I hung over the doorway and attached a loop at each lower corner to secure it when it was down. When the door was to be opened this curtain could be rolled up and held in position by pulling a cord, or could be swung aside when ingress or egress merely was desired. Along the walls inside I made some rude shelves of hibiscus stalks, so that I might have my small possessions handy and safe.

I intended as soon as convenient to spin a good supply of cord and make a hammock to swing from one of the palm pillars to the other. In the mean time, as a temporary expedient for a bed, I laid a platform of hibiscus stalks in one corner, and covered them with a thick layer of grass. For ventilation and light, I cut under the projecting eaves four openings, or windows, into which, so sheltered, the rain would not be likely to drive. The chest answered for a seat or table as occasion required.

Here was a reasonably comfortable dwelling where I should be safe from the rain. And, indeed, it was completed none too soon, for even as I was sitting in the house on the chest, resting and contemplating my work, I heard the wind rustling among the palm leaves and was sensible of a darkening of the sky, which betokened a storm. The swaying of the two young palms which held the ridgepole at once warned me that the motion was likely to rack and weaken the whole structure. The tops of these two trees must come off at once. By hauling out the chest and using it as a scaffolding, I could reach the palm trunks at a point above the ridgepole; but when I tried to cut the tree with my knife, I found it would take too long to sever it. Therefore, the only way was to climb the slender trunk and break off its branches. One of the trunks bent so under my weight as to break short off above the ridgepole, dropping me on the sand, but without harm. The other one I succeeded in denuding of its crown of leaves.

The storm was coming up grandly from the southeast. The sea in that direction was of an indigo tint streaked with flashes of foam, and above hung a leaden mass of clouds with a touch of copper-color here and there, where the internal fires flashed and glowed. The wind sank to a perfect calm, and occasionally a great drop of rain fell warm as blood. I had brought all the contents of the chest up near the hut, and I now hurried to get them under the shelter. The fire was smouldering near by, and there was a good supply of wood piled near it. I hurriedly carried this into the house, and also four or five charred and ignited sticks, which I placed in the middle of the room on the sand together in such manner that they would smoulder slowly there and keep alight. The smoke might be an annoyance, but as soon as there was a draught of air, it would drift out through the ventilators, and I could keep to windward of it. Finally I ran out and dragged in my turtle shell with its store of meat, and put that also under shelter.

The calm still continued deathlike and dark. When all was under shelter and I had returned from the brook with my goblet filled with fresh water, I stood at the open door, looking at the sea. Suddenly, without any further warning, down came the rain in bucketfuls, falling in vertical lines,—such a shower as is rarely seen. The roof held tight, the water streaming from it like a cataract, but not a drop coming through to the interior. In about twenty minutes the rain as suddenly ceased. Looking out over the ocean, I saw on the surface a streak of blue-black water, parallel with the horizon and flecked with tiny streaks of white, advancing. The squall was coming. Hurriedly I unrolled my door-curtain and fastened it securely at the bottom. I was just in time. As the blast struck the house, the whole structure trembled and swayed, but held fast. I could hear the shrieking of the wind as it swept through the neighboring palms, and the occasional crash of a breaking stem mingled with the dashing rain which now drove violently against the roof and walls, and I thanked my good-fortune that this shelter was ready. This gale continued to blow until long after dark. Indeed it was still raging when I fell asleep, to dream of shipwrecks and hurricanes.

When I awoke early in the morning and looked out through the ventilator, I found that the wind had fallen to a moderate breeze and had veered around to the northeast, bringing a dense fog, and that a fine rain was falling with a settled appearance such as betokened a wet day. My first care was to look after my fire. It was almost out, and to rekindle it from the few smouldering sparks was a matter requiring very tender manipulation. But at last I had it going again, and my pans of turtle meat stewing and frying on a gentle blaze, that demanded to be watched constantly.

This was a good time to overhaul my stock of books to see what they were, and to find out whether the salt water had left them in condition for use. They were now perfectly dry, but the bindings were warped and loosened. The leaves were in many places stuck together, and yellow and brown leather stains had crept in about the margins. But they still held together and were legible. The books consisted of a dozen well-selected novels, a manual of photography, the United States Dispensatory, a student’s manual of botany, a school geology, and a German word-book. Looking over these books while I lay on my couch, with an occasional glance at the cooking, I passed the time very pleasantly all the morning.

At noon the rain still continued; so, not to be idle, I ran out and picked up some freshly fallen cocoanuts both to vary my diet and to obtain a supply of fibre for spinning. The whole afternoon was spent in preparing the fibre and spinning it into cord, and by night I had accumulated quite enough to make me a hammock. This, I resolved, should be my next task if the foul weather continued. The smoke from the smouldering fire was a source of great annoyance, by getting into my eyes. I determined to remedy this as soon as I could, by erecting a fireplace and chimney of some sort. But in the mean time I utilized this annoying guest as much as possible by hanging several sticks full of strips of the turtle meat in the peak of the roof, where the smoke collected thickest, that it might become partially cured. This, I hoped, would preserve it, as it had been lying in sea water in the shell; and so it proved. For after this smoking the meat dried without taint, and, as I subsequently found, made most excellent eating.

With melted turtle fat, a clam-shell, and a wick made of fibre, I improvised a light, and after it grew dark, fell to looking over my library until bedtime, the rain still pattering on the thatch when I retired. The next morning the weather was still boisterous, the rain driving and the heavy mists sweeping along the sea. The leaden clouds still hung low and dark. This day I spent indoors working at my hammock and varying the monotony by hanging up the last of the meat to smoke, looking over my books and wishing for fair weather. I finished the hammock, but could not use it on account of the smoke, and was obliged to sleep on my pallet as before. As the turtle fat was all gone and therefore no light was to be had, I turned in early and awoke in the morning at dawn. On going out I found the sky clear and the sun rising fair. All the foliage looked fresh and bright after the rain, and the birds were cheerfully singing in the forest. It was a glorious change, and my confinement in the house for two days gave added zest to it. This would be a good day for an exploring trip, and I thought I would spend it in such an expedition.

CHAPTER IV.
PIG-HUNTING.

AMONG the photographic appliances there was a sort of haversack or bag with a shoulder-strap, designed to contain plate-holders. This I emptied and stored with a supply of fried turtle meat and a small bottle of water.

About seven o’clock I started up the bed of the brook, as affording the easiest path by which to penetrate the forest that, coming down nearly to the beach, extended on each hand as far as I could see. To the south was a stretch of low land, perhaps twenty acres in extent, covered for the most part with grass, and in the lowest portion with reeds and rushes. Just as the brook emerged from the forest it was shadowed by a dense mass of tall canes. The grass I had used in the construction of my house was a coarse variety growing from two and a half to three feet in height. On the higher ground grew a slenderer variety with heavy seed heads, a sample of which I gathered as it seemed to resemble canary seed, and might serve as food. Great quantities of this grass grew thickly on the knolls and higher parts of the upland. The water deepened where I waded through the canebrake, and ran with a sluggish current. I gathered a great bundle of rushes, and laid them on the bank, intending to pick them up on my return. They would be useful in weaving me a substitute for a hat, a convenience which I lacked at that time.

Just at the farther border of the canebrake, there was a muddy place where pigs had evidently been wallowing, for I found thousands of tracks about. Here was a favorite resort for them, not above a quarter of a mile from my house; but I wasted no time then hunting for this game, as I had formed no plan for its capture.

One thing I wanted to find was a bed of clay, which could be put to many valuable uses, especially the building of a fireplace and chimney. There was reason to believe that plenty was to be had on the island, which was of volcanic formation, and moreover the water of the brook, swollen by the recent rain, was stained as though with clay.

As I neared the line of cliff and rocks that formed the central ridge or back-bone of the island, the course of the stream bent to the north, and the forest was interspersed with small open glades where the great butterflies floated across through the sunshine, the metallic satiny blue of their lustrous wings glancing in the light. A flock of parrots with green, red, and blue plumage were chattering and screaming noisily in the bordering trees, and an occasional little green lizard would dash along the fallen trunks or over the rocks like a flash of emerald light. In one of these glades I found a quantity of shrubs growing about ten feet high and loaded with berries about the size of pepper-corns. The outside of these berries seemed covered with a greenish white wax. The leaf was somewhat like the myrtle. A sample of this, and of several other varieties of vegetation which were strange to me, I gathered to take home for identification in my manual of botany. I may here state that this berry-bearing shrub turned out to be the wax myrtle (Myrica cerifera of the botanists), and that the waxy coating of the berries was what is known as bay-berry tallow. This wax can be readily collected by boiling the drupes and skimming it off as it rises to the surface of the water; and a bushel of the berries will yield from four to five pounds of the wax, which can be employed to make excellent candles.

Near the cliffs I came upon a fine bed of clay, and I was so delighted with this discovery that I immediately began casting about for means of transporting a good supply to my house. The bed was distant from the house, as nearly as I could judge, about two miles, and the labor of carrying such heavy material would be very great. The best plan would be to knock together a raft of dry wood and float the clay down stream as a cargo. Vines and creepers to serve as cordage to tie the dead wood together were abundant, nor did it take me long to collect the wood and fashion the raft. Indeed, the harder task proved to be the digging out of the tough clay, as the only implements I had for this purpose were pointed sticks. But I finally cut a sharp, heavy stake of hard wood, and by driving this into the clay, was able to pry off large chunks, and soon had a load ready. On the raft I laid some broad leaves and pieces of bark to serve as a deck, and on this placed the clay in a great heap, as much as the raft would carry in the shallow water. Tying a long creeper to the raft, by which to pull, guide, or hold it back, as the navigation might require, I started it off into the current, and wading in the shallow stream, followed it down, holding on to the line as it floated away. Barring an occasional grounding in the shallow places, my raft floated serenely along at a good pace, and soon reached port, where I unloaded the clay and drew out the raft to serve as firewood.

This was a good job well done, and I more than once regretted the time I had wasted in the lime-burning task, for had I found this clay sooner, a much better salt pan could have been made with it than with the mortar. This thought caused me to go and examine the salt pan. I found the mortar on the bottom dry and hard, so I opened the gate that the sea water might flow in at the next tide and fill it.

The first use to be made of the clay was in the building of a fireplace and chimney for the house. My plan was to build up the structure of sticks, cob-house fashion, and then chink and plaster it with a good coating of clay. Before this could be done, however, it would be necessary to put the clay through some pugging process by which it could be rendered soft and plastic. This I accomplished by trampling the clay with my naked feet, adding a sprinkling of water now and then, until I had a mass of soft, mortar-like consistency. Then on the outside of the house I built up the fireplace close against the wall, and carried the chimney up about a foot above the highest part of the roof, plastering the sticks inside thoroughly with the soft clay. When this was done I cut through the wall to the fireplace, and plastered clay on the jambs to make all tight. The hearth I formed of harder clay, well pounded down and mixed with the sand. If no wind came until the structure was dry, it would become hard and strong enough to resist anything short of a hurricane. That the drying might be more rapid, I immediately built a good fire in it, and was rejoiced to find the draught excellent and the effect of the bright firelight upon the interior quite pleasant and homelike. This work occupied the whole day.

In the evening I brought a good supply of clay into the house, and using the chest as a work-bench, busied myself until bedtime with moulding several vessels of different shapes and sizes for use in cooking and about the house. I fashioned a rude pot capable of holding about five gallons; a smaller one to hold a gallon or thereabouts; a water-jar with two handles by which it might be swung with a cord from the ridgepole, to contain drinking-water; and others of various shapes and sizes. All these I dusted over inside and out with dry sand and set aside where they might dry ready for burning.

That night I slept for the first time in my hammock, and the change was a comfortable one, though in the early morning hours I felt the need of some warm covering. For however hot the days might be, the nights on the island were always cool. However, when it got chilly I turned out and heaped the dry grass of my former bed into the hammock, and was soon warm enough.

In the morning, after setting my vessels out in the sun, I turned to the careful examination of all the samples of vegetation which I had collected, carefully looking them up in the Botany to find their names and properties, and also in the Dispensatory. The seed-bearing grass was undoubtedly canary grass. Besides this and the wax-bearing myrtle, the only other notable sample was a species of india-rubber-bearing artocarpus. As the canary grass was ripe, I thought I could not do better than to harvest a good supply of it at once. The whole of that day and the next were spent in gathering it and stacking it up near the house. The labor was very great, as my knife was a poor substitute for a sickle; but the necessity of some sort of farinaceous food spurred me on. I gathered in all a great stack ten feet in diameter and twelve feet high at the peak. This I thatched with grass, just as I had seen grain stacks thatched at home, that it might be protected from the wet. Great flocks of small birds were feeding upon this seed where it grew, and I trapped a dozen or more by unhinging the chest lid and using it propped up with a stick as a trap.

To try the character of the seed as food, I parched a pint of it over the fire and then crushed it in a great bivalve shell with a round stone into a coarse meal. This meal I mixed with water and salt, and it made a very good sort of cold gruel. This, with the birds broiled on the coals, made quite the best meal I had so far eaten on the island. The salt pan had already begun to yield salt, which was crystallizing along the edges as the water evaporated. The smoked turtle meat continued good, and I relished it very much. The weather remained fine from day to day, and I had strong hopes that a vessel might heave in sight at any moment. As a preparation for such a chance I laid a pile of wood ready to make a signal fire, and as a permanent signal selected an isolated palm-tree and denuding it of its leaves, tied a great stick across it near the top,—an arrangement which, I hoped, might attract the attention of a passing vessel should I fail to see it. Of material to make a flag I had nothing to spare except the square of black focussing-cloth belonging to the camera,—and this I needed every night as a covering, as it was all I had for that purpose.

As soon as my pots and other vessels were thoroughly dry I built a great pile of dry wood over them and set fire to it. I greatly feared some of them might crack with the heat, but fortunately they all came out in a serviceable condition though by no means very hard. Now that I had a large vessel in which water could be boiled, I bethought me of the wax berries and made several trips to gather a store of them. These I boiled in my large pot, and skimmed off the wax until I had collected fully forty pounds of it, the product of about ten bushels of the berries. Of this wax I made candles, or rather rushlights, by dipping dry rushes into the melted wax and letting it cool on them. When one coat of wax set I would dip the rush again, and so on, until each rush had four good coats. One of these candles would burn about four hours and give a good steady light without sputtering or guttering, though the rush wick required occasional snuffing. These lights were a great comfort to me at night, for I could read and do light work until bedtime without the necessity of keeping up a hot fire.

It was by candle-light that I made me a hat out of rushes as follows: Selecting about fifty of the cleanest and slenderest I could find, and all of about equal length, I tied them firmly together by a cord wound tightly around near the butts. Then I interwove stalks of the tough, heavy grass, spreading the rushes out into a conical shape until large enough to fit comfortably on my head. This was the body of the hat. The brim was produced in the same manner by bending out the ends of the rushes to a common horizontal plane and then interweaving the grass as before, finishing the edge of the brim with a grass selvage. This made a light, cool structure, sufficient to keep the sun off my head, and far more comfortable than the handkerchief I had worn wound about it as my sole head-covering up to this time.

Now that the salt pan was doing its work, and a supply of salt within a few days was considerably more than a mere possibility, I felt justified in endeavoring to obtain a store of meat. My mind turned to the turtle and the pigs, especially the latter; for if I could by any means capture a pig, there would be several weeks’ rations, at least, of fresh, salted, and smoked pork. Visions of broiled ham and bacon troubled my dreams. I made an effort to capture another turtle, watching the beach for the good part of a night; but I saw none. The next morning, I determined to go upon a regularly organized pig-hunt. The only method of capturing them was by means of a lasso or the bolas. The forty-foot line that came ashore around the chest would make an excellent lasso, and I rigged it at once with a slip noose. I also cut a hard-wood pole about eight feet in length, charred the end in the fire to harden it, and made it sharp for use as a lance. A bolas was contrived out of two stones tied, one at each end, to a stout cord six feet long. Thus accoutred, I struck off from the creek and made a détour through the dense jungle so as to force the game into the stream, or at least to be upon higher ground if they should prove to be in the mud, as I hoped would be the case. The labor of penetrating the dense scrub was very great, and the heat intense; not a breath of air could reach these fastnesses, and perspiration poured from me as though I were in a Turkish bath.

After a two-hours struggle I found myself nearing the place, and it became necessary to move with the greatest caution. Every few minutes I would stop and listen. Presently I could hear the murmur of the brook, and crawling along cautiously, I came to a fallen tree, the trunk of which reached quite to the stream. By following this down carefully, I came to a point where I could see the wallowing-place. There, sure enough, were the pigs, a score or more in number, mostly lying asleep and half buried in the mud. I studied the whole situation rapidly but thoroughly. It seemed probable from the lay of the ground that if something could frighten the animals from the other side, they would naturally rush under the fallen tree just below me. Indeed, there was a well-beaten track at this place going under the trunk, which was at this point about five feet from the ground, and the stream, the canebrake, and the dense jungle made this by far the easiest route for the pigs.

My plan was made instantly, thus: I would throw the bolas at a half-grown pig that was rooting about near the jungle on the farther side of the group, and take my chance of the herd coming this way when they broke. I unrolled my lasso and laid it ready for instant use, placed my lance where it could be grasped, and cautiously rising, that I might have free play, swung the bolas around twice and let it fly. Gyrating like twin planets, the stones sped fairly through the air, true to the mark; one passed under the pig, and the other swung behind him, wrapping the cords around the hind-quarters and legs, and bowling him over like a ten-pin. The little fellow set up a squeal, and then, whoof! whoof! with a grunt and a squeal, the whole herd sprang up, looked around, saw their overturned and struggling companion, and started directly toward my place of concealment. In the mean time I had crouched down out of view, and spread my noose ready for business. Underneath they ran squealing and snorting in great panic, and I let them pass as I had my eye on a great boar who was very deliberate in his movements and appeared to disdain undignified flight. He slowly advanced, however, champing his tusks until they frothed, and shaking his great head. I thought it best, in view of his great size and weight, to take a turn of the lasso around a limb and give it a hitch as a holdfast, as my own strength would not be enough to stop the brute. I had scarcely done this when his head came under the tree, and I swung the noose deftly over it as he emerged, and then hauled in the slack. The astonished beast sprang forward with a great bound and jerked the rope from my hands with such violence that I was thrown to the ground.

When I scrambled up I saw the rope tighten until it sung in the air like a bowstring, and then slacken again. I could not see the boar, as he was hidden in the long grass; but I seized my sharpened stick lance and ran toward where he ought to be. Suddenly the great brute emerged from the grass, facing me, and charged toward me, evidently bent on mischief, the flakes of froth flying from his tusks. There was no time to get out of the way, nor even get the lance around into position, and I thought I should speedily feel his sharp tusks. He was almost upon me before I could realize the situation. Just at this critical juncture I felt the lasso fly up under my feet, throwing me over backward, and I caught a glimpse of the boar as he turned a half-somersault and plunged down on his side. When he fell he was not two feet from me. The lasso had been doubled around a bush and had thus brought the desperate creature up just in time to save me. The lance was still in my grasp, and I got to my feet before my enemy could recover. Now it was my turn. Knowing he could not reach me on this side, I came close up to him as he was making the dirt fly with his legs in a vain endeavor to get up, and drove the sharpened stick with all my force and weight into his side, just back of the shoulder.

This ended the battle as the stick went half-way through him. Panting for breath and with the perspiration fairly running into my eyes, I turned away and left him to die in peace, and went to look after the pig, thinking I had been a great fool to tackle the boar at all. I found the pig still struggling with the bolas wrapped around him. I immediately determined to keep this one alive. To do this, I must get my lasso loose from the dying boar. When I went back I found him just kicking his last. With the lasso I secured the pig in such manner that he could not get away, and then removed the bolas and let him up, giving him very little rope as I had no mind to let him run into the brush and entangle himself. I then proceeded to flay the boar, cutting off the hams and choicer parts, and securing as much of the lard and fat as I was able. I carried this down the bed of the creek to the house. I then went back for the pig and endeavored to get him home alive; but I found it utterly impossible to do so, as the vicious, obstinate brute could not be made to go in any but the wrong direction. So I was finally obliged to haul him tight up against a tree and kill him.

I now had a great store of pork, and the next thing was to cure it. Salt was now the important thing, and I went to my salt pan to see what the prospect was. To my great satisfaction, I found the water all dried up, leaving a fine layer of glistening salt, thickest in the lower part of the basin and gradually thinning away to a mere frosting at the edges. It was quite dry and caked, so that there was no trouble to get it up from the bottom, and when I had heaped it together in the centre, there were, I should judge, over fifty pounds. This precious commodity I carried at once to the house so that it might be under shelter from the dew and rain.

I turned to at once to “dry-salt” the pork, rubbing each piece thoroughly on all sides, and piling the whole up in the now empty turtle shell with the breast plate weighed down on it with heavy stones. The only place where I could store this meat was in the single room of my house. But I determined to remedy this by building as soon as possible a lean-to at the back of the house, which I could use first as a smoke-house, and then as a storeroom for my provisions. The turtle meat, now perfectly cured, I stored temporarily in the chest.

That night I lay in my hammock in position to see the starlit ocean through one of the ventilators, and thought over my situation. I could not now complain of lack of food, for there was a supply sufficient to last me two months at least, and there was reason to suppose that it would not be at all difficult to replenish the store. In my porous earthen jar, slung at the head of my hammock in the cool air-current, and by its slow evaporation cooling the liquid contents, was pure, cool, sweet water to drink, and outside was a running brook from which to fill it as often as required. I could safely hope to support myself here as long as might be necessary. But as I had no desire to remain indefinitely a prisoner on this island, I began to turn my thoughts persistently upon the problem of building a boat to get away in. If in the mean time a vessel of some sort should heave in sight I was prepared to take advantage of the chance; and if none came I would still have my work started and no time unnecessarily lost.

Before I went to sleep that night I had planned a method of building a boat which I thought would be within the possibility of accomplishment, and had determined to begin work on the morrow.

CHAPTER V.
BOAT-BUILDING.

WHEN I roused the next morning the first thought that came to me was about the building of the boat. It would be necessary to have a shed to work under, large enough to contain a boat, both for shelter from the rain and for shade from the pitiless tropical sun. The building of such a shed was therefore the first task. As a suitable shipyard I selected the side of the stream on the sands of the sea-beach, and far enough above tide to be safe from a possible storm. Here I put up eight posts in the sand. To get these posts (for they had to be hunted for among the fallen wood), to carry them one or two at a time for a distance ranging from half a mile to a mile and a half, and to set them up in holes dug at the proper distances apart, was a whole day’s work, and left me only time to overhaul my dry-salting before bed-time. I went over each piece of meat, rubbing it again with salt, and turning it the other side up, and finished by putting the weights on again as before. This salting and turning every day would be necessary for about two weeks, and then the meat would be ready for the smoke-house, which I would endeavor in the meantime to get ready to receive it.

The next day I spent getting poles for rafters, and lashing them together to form the roof of my workshop. Then a rain storm set in and lasted three days, during which I was practically confined to the house, and busied myself indoors with making an easy chair out of a dry stick of cedar that split readily into straight pieces. It was a pleasure to work in this soft, straight-grained, fragrant wood, and I made a good, strong, comfortable arm-chair, dowelling and cording the parts together, and framing a sort of base for it so that it would stand firm on the sand floor. I could now sit and read with comfort, or look at the gray, rainy sea as it stretched its misty plane away before my door. It was at this time that I began to keep an irregular sort of journal, entering my thoughts and doings from time to time as the enforced semi-idleness of rainy weather prompted me. Besides pencils and pens there was paper enough in my stock, wet and stained and wrinkled though it had been, to last me indefinitely.

As soon as the rain was over I took the first day to construct my provision and smoke-house, in order that I might store the meat in it. A doorway was cut from my living-room into this store-room, and I purposed fitting a tight door into it before smoking my pork. I busied myself after that on my work-shed until it was finished. This roof I covered with palm-leaves,—not leaves of the cocoanut-palm, but of the great, spreading fan-palm, a single one of which was often three or four feet in diameter. I had used these leaves in making my storehouse roof, and had secured a giant specimen in a horizontal position over my front door as a sort of porch, and to keep the sun out of the house when the door was open.

The work-shed when finished was about twenty-four feet long by ten feet wide, with a shed or single-pitch roof, at the upper side about eight feet, and at the lower side—which was toward the sea—about five feet from the ground. Underneath was the clean sand of the beach. I was now ready to begin the actual work of boat-building, and my first need was a supply of clay,—so great a quantity, in fact, as would take me several days of hard work to raft down the stream to the boat-shed.

You will see as I proceed what part this material was to play. After a great deal of labor, wading up and down the creek, digging, loading, rafting, and unloading, I at last accumulated a sufficient amount for my purpose in a great heap close to the boat-shed. I next proceeded to smooth the sand beneath the shed, and to compact it into a smooth, hard floor as follows: I took of perfectly dry clay several bushels in fragments, and crushed these to a fine dust; this dust I sprinkled evenly all over the sand floor to the depth of an inch or more, sprinkling and wetting the dust and the sand liberally with a bough dipped in the sea water. As the mixture grew dry I trampled it with my naked feet until it was smooth and firm, sprinkling a little dry sand on the surface and trampling it in. The result was a dustless, dry floor, hard enough to support my weight readily, and smooth enough for my purpose.

On this floor, with a stretched cord rubbed with charcoal, I marked, as carpenters do with a chalk line, a straight line twenty-one feet long or thereabouts; this was to be the length of the boat, and its centre line from stem to stern. Using the cord as a measure, I laid off at each side of this centre line, the horizontal outline of my proposed boat. The greatest breadth of beam I made about six feet, and tapered both the stem and the stern alike, after the manner of a whaleboat. At each end of the centre line I drove a stake upright, and notched the top to carry a guide line stretched from one to the other directly over the centre line. Then, with tempered clay, I marked the outline of the boat by building up a little wall about three inches in breadth and as many in height all around from stem to stern on both sides. The space inside this wall I filled with sand, sprinkled and compacted until it was level with the top of the wall. Then I added to the wall another course of clay and filled in again; and so kept on adding and filling and sloping in the wall, until I had a mound of clay-coated sand, shaped like a boat turned upside down.

This labor, simple as it sounds in statement, took me over a week, and before it was done I was interrupted by the necessity for setting my smoke-house in order for curing the hams and bacon. I built for the smoking a slow fire of bark, which required attention only once or twice each day. The clay form under the boat-shed I left to get dry and hard. It was my design, as I have no doubt you have already guessed, to use this clay form as a core or groundwork, upon which to shape my boat.

The next step was a most serious task; I had to procure a piece of timber for a keel, and shape it and fit to it two pieces, one at the stem, and one at the stern. The timber must be new and strong. There was absolutely no way to get this timber except by felling a tree which must be at least a foot in diameter. I could not hope to do this with a pocket knife except by an appalling amount of labor, and at the continual risk of breaking the blade; and, moreover, I did not want to subject this valuable instrument to any more wear than was absolutely necessary. I now carried it on my person tied securely to a lanyard as my most highly prized possession. But I thought I could manage to get down a tree by the aid of fire. Having selected the tree, I plastered the trunk with wet clay all around for a height of five or six feet, excepting a space of about two feet next the ground; then piled up dry fuel on the windward side and set fire to it. After an hour or two the trunk caught fire and slowly burned. I kept checking the fire from eating upward by dabbing wet clay on, until finally the tree burned through and fell. It was a much less difficult task to burn it in two at the proper length after it was once down.

This done, the next thing was to reduce the stick to the correct lateral dimensions, which should be ten inches by three or thereabouts. As there was no saw, adze, or axe to be had, this reduction could be done in no other way so easily as by splitting the trunk with hard-wood wedges. I made several and charred them in the fire, then sharpened them and drove four of them in a line into the wood of the trunk at equal distances apart. By judicious management, driving them little by little, one after another, the trunk was riven asunder, and a second split produced a piece of the right size when a little had been split off from each edge. The plank was not as smooth as if turned out by a saw mill; but it was strong and was smooth enough for my purpose. I dragged it down to the boat-shed, and went back to the log and split off in like manner a piece of suitable size to make the stem and stern posts. I set the keel timber up on edge on the clay mould, securing it temporarily with some lumps of clay until I could mark the correct length. The stem and stern posts I cut and halved on to the keel, pinning them on by pins.

The drill by means of which I bored the holes for the pins was fashioned by inserting a piece of sharp chalcedony splinter into a split stick and securely wrapping the stick with a piece of cord. This stick or shank, which was about two feet in length, carried a ball of dry clay of three or more pounds in weight, and mounted about six inches from the chalcedony point. Through the upper end of the shank was a hole passing through which was a cord secured at each end to a loose cross-stick about a foot long. By twisting this cord around the shank the movement up and down of the loose cross-stick would cause the drill to revolve first in one direction and then in the other, the momentum of the whirling ball of clay causing the apparatus to continue its motion far enough to rewind the cord. This device is much used by primitive peoples, and it certainly proved a most effective instrument to me; for without renewing the drill point I bored five holes at each end, through the keel piece and the uprights.

The gunwale I made by splitting cane into long, thin strips half an inch in width, and laying these in a bundle tied securely round every three or four inches with a wrapping of cord. By this means I produced a sort of stiff, untwisted cable. I secured the ends of these gunwale cables firmly to the stem and stern uprights by cord passed through holes. I next got a great store of a sort of long, slender-stemmed creeper, which I fancy must have been a species of climbing palm, though I am not sure; for there was no description of it in my books. The wood of this creeper was tough and exceedingly fibrous. Of it I proposed to make the ribs of the boat, setting them about three inches apart along the whole length of the boat. The creepers which I chose for this purpose were about half an inch in diameter, and smooth and uniform in size. Holes drilled through the keel piece close to the clay mould permitted the passage of these ribs over the mould from gunwale to gunwale, where they were fastened by being inserted in the mass of cane splints and securely tied there with several wrappings of cöir. Of course I had to stop this work from time to time to manufacture the necessary supply of cöir.

Such interruptions were a relief to me, and I would sit in the shade of the palms spinning away and thinking of my Mohawk Valley home, or gazing out upon the broad sea, where the perfect shading from deep blue to faint cobalt and fainter green, the long swell, and the transparent, curling breakers, the restless sea fowl, and the serene, cloud-flecked sky, formed a view of which I never tired. It is a mistake, it seems to me, to speak of the sea as a lonesome thing. Its ceaseless motion, its constant change of color and of mood, never exactly alike and yet never entirely unlike, all lend to it an indefinable charm. It may, indeed, be filled with solitude, but it also is filled with companionship for the solitary, as I learned then to realize.

The island was the home of an astonishing number of species of small birds; several different varieties of the parrot family flew from tree to tree in flocks; different kinds of finches, many of bright plumage, in great numbers haunted the bushes about the stream; larks, flycatchers, gorgeous scarlet tanagers, little wrens, and tiny humming-birds were very numerous. The bird that I took most interest in was a daring little fellow, perhaps some sort of wren, of a brownish color, specked with pearly white spots. This self-contained and self-satisfied little fowl had a habit of carrying his tail stuck straight up in the air and cocking his head to one side in a most comical manner. This species seemed quite fearless of me, and I often saw them come hopping up on the ground near to where I sat, as though bent on ascertaining what sort of creature I was. Scarcely bigger than a walnut, with a tiny “chirp, chirp,” these dainty creatures seemed to be introducing themselves politely to me, and deprecating any possible unfriendliness that might have arisen, or might thereafter arise between us on account of an occasional seed stolen from my stack. At one time I had the notion to capture one or more of these little birds and train them as pets; but their courage and confidence utterly disarmed me.

When all the vine ribs had been fitted to the boat the next thing was to apply an exterior sheathing. This also I constructed of the long smooth creepers, uniform in size and laid close together each piece extending the whole length of the boat. I secured the ends of these vines to the stem and stern pieces by setting them into a groove or rebate, and dowelling a piece of wood down firmly upon them. At intervals I sewed or tied the rib and plank vines together with strong thin cord. When this was done I had the form of a boat, but of course it would leak like a sieve, and moreover would be crank as a basket. The next thing was to procure some sort of gum or resin, with which to coat the whole structure and thus bind it all together and strengthen it, as well as to make it water-tight.

There were trees of the pine or fir species growing on the island, high on the rocky backbone. I could see them distinctly, and had little doubt that they would furnish me with at least some of the ingredients for a sort of pitch, that might be made to answer my purpose. Up to this time I had never ascended the precipitous rocks and cliffs which formed a miniature mountainrange running north and south through the centre of the island. Now I resolved to make the attempt and to ascertain definitely what could be found there in the way of pitch or resin, among the several species of evergreens. To ascend these cliffs and rocks through the thickets and tangled vines was no easy task. Giant beds of fern, fallen tree-trunks, jungles of thorny bush, barred the way apparently at all points. The most feasible route seemed to be up a chasm through which came a tinkling rivulet to join the stream, with many a fall and leap, boiling now, and now dashing in spray over the fern-embowered rocks. It was a hard, hot climb. The humming-birds, like flying jewels,—rubies, topazes, amethysts, lapis lazuli,—darted to and fro in a dozen varieties, pausing to hover over the deep, scarlet chalices of the trumpet flower. Far above in the clear, deep blue of heaven slowly swung a circling vulture on motionless wing, a mere speck against the light.

At last I reached the top, a sort of broken rocky plateau covered with trees among which were numerous evergreens. After a brief rest to recover breath, I examined some of the trees, and found to my great delight a species of pitch pine among them. The scaly, reddish bark was bedewed with tears of gum which I knew would with a little boiling or drying be converted into a hard resin. Without losing any time I went to work with my knife upon the trees. I bared a place of its bark on each of a dozen trunks, about three feet in height and six inches in width, and cut a notch at the bottom to collect the gum, scoring the bared place with cross cuts at intervals of a few inches. This occupied me until it was within two hours of sunset, and I dared stay no longer that day, for fear of being benighted on the way home.

Early next morning I returned with my lasso, an earthenware vessel, and my burning-glass. The wounded trees had already begun to yield a supply of sticky sap or gum, which I scraped down and collected in the earthen pot, until it was quite full. I placed this to melt and boil over a slow fire and proceeded to wound about a dozen more trees. That night I slept on the summit, and worked hard all next day collecting and boiling the resin, so that when I went the next night to the house I was able to carry with me twenty-five or thirty pounds of the material,—a hard, dark resin.

At this labor I spent about a week longer, sometimes going home at night, and sometimes sleeping on the rocks, until I had got together, as I thought, sufficient for my purpose. Now I wanted some grease to mix with the resin, and concluded to kill a pig for this purpose. I had to wait two days to find the herd, but finally succeeded in capturing a fine young porker, which yielded a good store of lard and fat, much more indeed than I needed for the pitch kettle, as well as a fine supply of fresh pork-chops and some meat for the smoke-house.

I melted the resin in my five-gallon pot, and added to it sufficient melted pig-fat, so that the pitch when cold would be quite stiff and hard, but not brittle. With this hot, tenacious pitch I payed the whole exterior of the boat with a good thick coat, penetrating and filling all the interstices. When this was hard and cold I tried to lift the boat from the clay core in order to turn it over. To my disgust I found that the pitch had stuck it fast to the core in a thousand places, so that it could not be moved. There was nothing to do, therefore, except to undermine the whole structure, dig the sand out, and take out the dry, hard clay from below, piece by piece,—an immense labor, as you may well conceive. But this was finally accomplished without injury to the boat. I found that the structure was entirely too flexible for practical navigation, and that it would be necessary to deck over the greater part, if for no other reason than to stiffen it. I decided to make an air-tight compartment at each end, extending about three feet, and carry a deck fore and aft over the entire boat, excepting a well hole in the middle, six feet long by three feet wide, which was to be surrounded by a washboard, or raised edge, about six inches in height. Having cleared away the débris, I turned my boat right side up.

I was very anxious to get this boat completed, and had been working hard at it every day for over a month. I wanted to know if it would at least float properly, and therefore labored from early dawn to dark without cessation. One night I had been restless and wakeful, and got up without appetite for parched seed and smoked meat. Fancying this was merely from excitement about the work, and from want of variety in diet, I concluded that the next day I would knock off work for a time and go fishing. But when I went down to the shed and got to work I felt tired and languid. There was a great pain in my head, chilly sensations ran up and down my back, and pains in the limbs and a general depression of spirits warned me of an approaching illness. Fearing a collapse I started for the house, when suddenly I grew faint and fell on the sand, and lay there for several hours, a fierce fever raging through me. An intense thirst stimulated my feeble energies to make one or two attempts to reach the house; but I failed and crawled back to the shed. Once I managed to reach the creek and get a drink, but it was preferable to suffer thirst, I thought, rather than make the attempt again. About sundown the fever left me, and though much weakened I felt well enough to get to the house, light a candle from the last sparks of my neglected fire, and turn into my hammock.

Evidently I was seized with some malarious disorder. Anxious to know what I could do for myself in the way of medicine, I got the Dispensatory and began a search for febrifuges. I could not hope to find Peruvian bark on the island as this region was, I conceived, out of its habitat. However, I made pencil notes of everything I could find mentioned as a febrifuge. Among other things I noted that it was customary in the Campagna near Rome for the fever-stricken inhabitants to make a sort of tea of sliced lemons, which was said to cure the Campagna fever. Now I remembered to have seen wild limes growing along the upper part of the creek, and thought if I could get strength enough to gather some the next day I would try an infusion of them.

That night I slept pretty well, and in the morning got up feeling fairly well. But warned by yesterday’s experience, I dreaded a recurrence of the chill and fever, either that day or the next. So I went immediately and gathered a quantity of the ripest of the limes. These I sliced thin with my knife and poured boiling water over them in a small vessel, and set them aside to steep. As soon as the infusion was cold I took a small sip to see what the effect would be. I found no bad consequences, and in an hour took another larger sip. This I kept up every hour all day, and did some work on the boat. That night I drank about a quart of hot water, and buried myself in a bed of dry grass in the house, with a small fire going. I was soon in a profuse perspiration, and after a while fell sound asleep and awoke in the morning hungry. Whether the lime tea checked the fever, or whether the attack was no more than a passing biliousness, I do not know. At any rate I soon recovered, and was not ill again while on the island.

I now resumed work persistently on the boat, and finally the air-tight compartments and decking, made like the rest of the vessel of vines coated with pitch, were done. I got some rollers under the boat and pushed it into the creek, where it floated true and buoyant as I could desire. Mooring it securely I got on board and found it stanch, and every way much better than I had hoped. To my great joy it did not leak a drop, though I had expected to have a great deal of patching to do.

My next task was to rig a mast and sail. The mast I had already brought down from the heights, in the form of a slender evergreen, trimmed and peeled of its bark. Nor was I long in stepping and rigging it with the necessary stays. The making of the sail was a much longer matter. I had given this question a great deal of thought, and while at work on the boat had carefully weighed several different devices, but had been unable to hit upon a feasible plan. Therefore I deferred it until the very last thing, fitting on a rudder and even making and burning a water jar and a cover for it to contain a supply of fresh water on board, before regularly beginning work on the sail. Finally, however, all was finished except the sail, and I was forced to the task. The best thing I could think of for the purpose was strips of bark woven on cord after the fashion in which some window blinds are made from wooden slats and cord; and as this could best be used with what I believe is termed a latteen rig, that is to say a single short mast in the centre of the boat, with a long yard suspended at its top and inclined upward from the bow aft, upon which the sail is hung, I changed my mast and stepped it to suit such a rig. Then I procured a long, slender, tapering pole for a yard. I found a tree with a smooth, flexible inner bark, and after a great deal of labor secured a sufficient quantity, cut in strips one and a half inches in width, and some of it as long as the boom. Then I spun a great quantity of cord, and tied doubled lengths of it to the boom at intervals of a foot. Then laying the boom down on the beach I placed a strip of the bark alongside it and tied it there with all the cords; by the side of that I added another a little shorter and tied it, and so on until I had built up a triangular sail of the bark strips attached to the boom by the cords, the strips running parallel with the boom. In order to make it hold the wind better, I punched holes in the edges of the bark strips, and tied the edges of adjacent strips together.

When I had this sail complete and rigged to the mast the wind was blowing away from the shore, and I had to wait until the next day to give it a trial. But I made everything ready, including food and water and a ballasting of stones, and on the next morning, the wind blowing quietly on shore, I went on board, cast off, and poled the craft out of the creek, watching a good chance to push her through the breakers at the bar. I got safely out, and hoisted the sail. For a moment she fell off and rose and sunk with the swell, but taking the wind fair, presently leaned down until the lee gunwale was nearly buried in the green water, and began to forge ahead rapidly, fairly sliding through the water, with the wake running away behind and a white curl of foam racing from the bow. I tried her on all tacks, on and off the wind, ratching and running before it, and found that the best point of sailing was on the wind. This was entirely satisfactory. So delighted was I with the operation of the boat that I tacked away in stretches of two or three miles until I had beat up a good league from the island, and then turned and ran before the wind straight for the creek, where I arrived safe, and moored the boat securely in her snug harbor.

The building of this boat had taken me three months; but it was at last finished, and offered me a means, at the first fair wind, of sailing away for Martinique or some adjacent island, a port which I could fairly expect to make in two or three days at farthest. I went to bed that night in a happier and more contented frame of mind than I had theretofore experienced on the island.

CHAPTER VI.
“DUKE 2D, PROPERTY OF H. SENLIS.”

AS the wind next day was in the wrong quarter, I set deliberately about lading my new boat, as far as my means went, with all the provisions and appliances that seemed necessary for the voyage. This was all done by noon, and I sat down idly to wait for a wind that should promise settled weather, and be in the right direction. The first, second, and third days passed without any prospect of change, and I grew very impatient. Things seemed to have lost their interest for me. The one idea of getting away drove all else out of mind. I walked to and fro along the beach like a caged animal, overhauled my cargo, added to it, changed the water in my storage jar, and did a hundred useless things. Still the breeze blew softly and steadily from the south of east,—a head wind, which would oblige me to ratch all the way to Martinique.

On the third night, as I was sitting out on the beach in the moonlight, I bethought me of the ancient rhyme of the mariner who, cursed by everlasting head winds, toiled on day by day only to be blown back night after night. There was plenty of time now to plan what I should do when I reached Martinique. Up to this time I had not thought it out very carefully. So to pass the dreary hours I began to go over the whole programme mentally. The more I thought about it, however, the less prospect could I see of getting at Martinique what appliances and assistance I wanted, even if I had possessed money enough. I should have to go clear back to New York to get another diving apparatus, and that of itself would consume the greater part of my funds.

When this conviction forced itself on my mind, I was aghast. Must I give up the search for the treasureship merely for lack of funds, after all my trouble and expense? I sprang up and began walking up and down the sand at the very edge of the breakers, like a wild man. Abandon my enterprise? Never, never! I would rather stay and die on the island than do that. Why not, indeed, stay on the island and take my chances. I had built a boat out of nothing, and why could I not contrive some means for at least finding the sunken galleon and locating it accurately? Then, with something definite in prospect, it would surely not be difficult to go to Martinique and there interest somebody else to furnish the necessary funds for the enterprise, and divide the proceeds. There seemed to be wisdom in this course, and I resolved to adopt it forthwith.

Even as I made this resolution a heavy cloud passed over the moon, a faint breeze stirred through the rattling palm-leaves, and putting up a moistened finger I found the wind had changed to the southwest; soon it began to increase, and in an hour there was a fine steady breeze blowing exactly from the best quarter for my voyage, if I had chosen to take advantage of it. I was thankful at that moment that it had not come sooner. I looked long and musingly upon the darkening water and it must have been nearly midnight when, after seeing carefully to the security of my boat, I turned into the hammock with a contented mind, and buoyed up by a firm resolve to succeed.

In the morning, as I was going down to the stream, I saw approaching along the sands a dog. Nothing could have been more astonishing to me than this sight. What could a dog be doing on this island? When and how did he get here? Where dogs are, there also are men. This dog could never have come here alone. The animal saw me as soon as I saw him, and came running up wagging his tail in the most friendly way, running around in half-circles, and barking with delight. I called him up and stroked his head. He was a fine black Gordon setter, with an intelligent high-bred appearance. Around his neck a chain collar bore a plate engraved “Duke 2d, property of H. Senlis.” “Duke, good Duke,” said I, “where is your master?” But the only answer Duke could make was a series of delighted contortions, jumps, and short barks. I went to the house and got some dried turtle-meat, which he ate voraciously, and seemed to call for more. When I had fed him all he seemed to demand he curled up on the sand as contentedly as though this was a long sought resting-place. With his head over one paw and one eye occasionally opening to look at me, he was the very picture of contentment and satisfaction.

As I sat eating my breakfast of parched-seed gruel and broiled bacon, and looking at the dog curled up on the sandy floor of my house, I speculated on the method of his arrival on the island. Was he shipwrecked like myself, or left by some hunting party? Was he here alone, or were those to whom he belonged still on the island; and if so where were they? The whole island was not above six or seven miles in length, and three or four in breadth. Yet the dense forest growth, the jungles and cane-brakes, the central ridge of precipitous rocks could easily conceal the presence of other people, especially if they were on the other side. At any rate I thought it high time for me to take a careful survey of the entire domain, and this, if for no other purpose, to satisfy my curiosity aroused by the startling advent of Duke 2d.

When I first saw the dog he was coming up apparently from the southern end of the island, and I concluded to start in that direction down the beach, and go as far as possible along the sea,—quite around the whole island if that were practicable. With this view I packed my haversack with provisions, and filled my large bottle with fresh water, and swung it by a cord under my arm. Taking my lasso and lance and burning-glass, I started down the beach. Duke followed or ran on before, as much pleased apparently as though we were on a gunning expedition. The beach extended south from my house for a distance of about three miles, and then terminated in a low, rocky shore covered with cactus and thorny shrubs. Beyond this the southernmost extremity of the island extended in a rocky headland, and there were some low rocks detached from the shore and covered at high tide, forming dangerous breakers, to which a navigator rounding the southern cape would wish to give a wide berth.

In the sand and among the rocks where the cactus grew I captured an armadillo. This harmless little creature, about the size of a sucking pig, was called to my attention by the dog, which had discovered it and seemingly did not know what to make of such a strange customer, covered with its curious, horny armor. Duke was sniffing and jumping back and barking, when I caught sight of the hindquarters of the armadillo just disappearing in the sand. The animal was burrowing itself out of sight with astonishing rapidity in the loose soil. At first I could not conceive what it was, as it appeared from the view I had more like some sort of a reptile than an animal. But I speedily recognized it, and pulled it bodily out of the tunnel it was excavating. The little fellow did not attempt to run away, but curled itself up into a ball with its head and feet tucked out of sight. Duke went up to it and turned it several times over with his paw, but evidently could have inflicted no injury upon it had he been minded to make the attempt. However, as roast armadillo is noted as a savory dish I speedily put an end to its life by inserting my knife blade between the joints of its armor, and it was added to our larder at once.

We now crossed over through the rocks to the west shore, which was formed, so far as I could see, of rocks and cliffs, which rose bolder and higher toward the north. The travelling along these cliffs was very bad, and at a break I descended to the narrow margin of sand and rocks at their feet, left bare by the receding tide. Here the walking was fairly good, and we made our way along at a good pace for a mile. Now the shore rose boldly up in a sheer cliff nearly a hundred feet in height, and the beach was little more than a mass of fallen rock. In a shallow indentation or bay we, or rather the dog, discovered bubbling up through the sand a spring of cold, pure water which must have been under the sea at high tide. There was also an abundance of small oysters attached to the rocks, and I ate of them for my lunch.

At this spring I refilled my water bottle and sat down to rest in the shade of the rocks. The dog seemed very uneasy for some reason, and thinking there might be some animal about, I got up and looked around. To my great alarm I soon discovered that the tide had risen so far as partly to submerge some of the rocks that were dry when I had passed a half-hour before. It would be no trifling matter to be caught in this place by the tide; but whether it were best to go on or go back I could not tell. However, as I knew the road behind me I determined to retrace my steps. I had not gone a quarter of a mile before I found that it would be impossible to pass in that direction. Whether it would be practicable to proceed in the other I could not foresee; it was so doubtful that I had no time to lose. So I hurried back again to the spring, where a margin of sand was still uncovered by the rising waves. Here I soon found that advance as well as retreat along the water was cut off. Above me frowned the perpendicular cliffs. The situation seemed full of desperate peril, and was grave enough in all reason.

I felt much as one might fancy a rat feels when the door of the trap snaps on him, and breathless he circles about and finds no exit. Duke was crouched down and shivering as with an instinct of apprehension. There was a sense of numb despair with it all—a sickening sense of giving up the fight, as though it were useless to strive against brutal ill fortune. Why did I ever come into this rat-trap? Now a man should not waste any time or thought on vain repinings, self indignation or accusation, under such circumstances, but turn his attention to the real question, and keep his eye fixed firmly and singly on the main chance. But it is not always easy to think when and of what you ought. Indeed, I found myself speculating as to how the end would come. Inch by inch the water would creep up. Duke would first be swept under, unless I chose to support him for a while. Then little by little I would be submerged, knees, middle, chest, shoulders, neck, chin, lips,—and then the final struggle. I cast my eyes up to see how far above my height the water would rise. The marks of high water were there plain on the cliff, and I calculated that I should be submerged at least eight feet at high water.

All along, the rock rose sheer up without a break to the very top. There was one place, however, where the cliff, undermined by the waves, had split off and fallen down, making a ledge about twenty-five or thirty feet above the water’s edge; but there seemed to be no way of climbing up to this ledge,—indeed it overhung the base. Upon it grew two or three small trees, and one of them leaned out over the sea. When my faculties once more began to assert themselves, it occurred to me that it might be possible to cast the end of my lasso over this projecting tree-trunk and thus perhaps haul myself up to the ledge hand over hand.

The conception of this idea was almost equivalent to its execution; I felt that I was saved. To one end of the lasso I tied a stone, and secured the other end firmly around the body of the dog. This stone I cast easily over the tree trunk, and swung the rope in such a manner that the weighted end would twist several times around the body of the rope. I pulled and tested it with my weight, and it held firm. Casting my lance up on the ledge, I climbed hand over hand up the rope, occasionally steadying myself with feet against the rock, until I had a firm grasp on the trunk and was safely on the platform. Leaning over I called to the dog, and when he came up close to the rock I spoke to him kindly to allay his fears, and then hauled him up. The platform was at least ten feet wide at the middle part, perhaps forty feet long, and tapered away to a mere ledge at each end. There was plenty of dry dead sticks and wood which had fallen down from above, and, as the afternoon sun shone hot and bright in the western sky, it was not long before I had kindled a fire with my burning-glass, and had spitted the armadillo for a roast.

I now sat and watched the sea rise and wash in breakers on the base of the cliff, and shuddered to think what would have been my fate but for the lasso and the timely aid it afforded me. I watched a glorious sunset wherein long bars of purple cloud edged with molten gold, and fleecy flakes of burning vermilion melted on a sky of gray-green light, over an ocean of dark blue shot with violet, and here and there tinted and gilded with crimson and gold from the red, flaming ball that was just dipping to the horizon. And far into the night I sat awaiting the rising of the moon, the novelty of the situation driving all inclination for sleep from me. Duke was a good companion, and inclined to sit out the company. He lay with his head on my knee, occasionally looking up into my face in a truly sociable and friendly manner.

About nine o’clock at night, there being then a dead calm, I heard distinctly the beat of a screw propeller, accompanied by the regular blowing at slow intervals of escaping steam. I looked all about for the vessel, and presently made out her mast-head light, like a star quivering on the horizon. Gradually it lifted above the water in the southern sky, and I knew it would pass me quite near at hand unless its course were changed. There were still some embers of my fire alight, and nothing would have been easier than to make a signal which doubtless would have been seen on board. But though I gathered the embers together instinctively, I took no step toward making the signal. She drew nearer and nearer, and finally passed along the coast not half a mile distant, trailing a long plume of smoke. So near was she at one time that in the starlight and upon the light of the sea I could distinguish her form and build, and conjectured that she was some ocean tramp, sliding along stern deep down, and nose cocked out of the water, looking for a cargo from port to port,—an iron steamer, such as are sent out by thousands now-a-days to wander over all the seas and oceans, and which, going from port to port, finally return to the home port, perhaps when it is time to lay their sides and ribs into the junk heap for old iron.

When the moon rose the steamer was a pale, gray spot at the end of a long stain of dark smoke far in the northern horizon. It finally disappeared, the smoke fading away and mingling with the faint mist-wreaths that stole up from the sea under the moonlight. I went to bed on the rock with Duke coiled up beside me, and slept until broad day. I found the water still too high for me to descend safely to the sand; the tide had apparently gone out and was coming in again. I did not much like the idea of descending again to the foot of the cliff if it could be avoided, because there was no telling whether I could safely proceed farther to the north; nor was I yet ready to go back home, for I intended, if possible, to make the complete circuit of the island.

Therefore I turned my attention to that portion of the cliff that rose above my ledge. After a careful scrutiny I concluded it would be possible to reach the top by climbing a tree that grew close to the rock. A narrow ledge could be reached from the upper limbs, and it led along the face of the rocks for a few steps to a sort of crack or chasm up which one might easily clamber to the top. I climbed down to the beach as soon as the water was low enough, and filled my bottle anew at the spring, Duke howling and barking all the time, as though in great distress at being deserted. I returned to the ledge, fastened the end of the lasso around the dog, and climbed up the tree with my lance, haversack, and water bottle. With some difficulty I reached the chasm safely, and proceeded to haul up the dog. From there the climbing was not difficult to the top.

Here was a considerable forest, similar to the growth on the central mountainous plateau of the island where I went for pitch. Indeed, as well as I could then see, and as afterward I found to be the case, this line of cliffs was connected with the central plateau by a ridge running east and west. There was a valley between the cliffs and the plateau, divided into two parts by this transverse ridge. The travelling through the woods on the cliff was not difficult, as there was very little undergrowth.

I made a discovery in this wood of several lofty trees which bore nuts of the triangular variety known as Brazil nuts. They grow enclosed in a hard outer casing like a small cannon-ball. One of these fell as I passed beneath the tree. If it had struck Duke or me there is no estimating the hurt that would have been occasioned. It fell fairly on a projecting root, and burst open, scattering the loose nuts about. I gathered a haversack full and filled my shirt and pockets, casting uneasy glances the while up into the trees in fear of a possible bombardment from above; nor did we linger long under those dangerous limbs.

Pushing along, as near the edge of the cliffs as possible, we came, near the middle of the island, north and south, to a well beaten path leading down toward the sea through a break in the cliffs. Duke immediately bounded down this path, and I followed him anxiously; for it did not look as though made by pigs, but rather as if trodden by human feet. The narrow gorge speedily widened out into a little bowl-shaped valley, open to the sea on one side, and on three sides walled in by the cliffs, which were hung with luxuriant vegetation,—a most lovely spot. A gently sloping sward extended nearly to the pebbly beach, and a little stream of clear water, which came frothing in haste down the glen, paused in a quiet sweep and curve through the meadow, the long grass bending over its narrow course, and dipping into the limpid surface, till finally it flowed down over a bed of bright-colored pebbles to the little bay in front. Here and there a wide-spreading tree cast a broad, purple shadow, and many flowers sent forth fragrance to the pure, warm air. It was truly a sylvan paradise.

What specially interested me, however, was the white gleam of canvas shining through the foliage. A tent was pitched near the stream. I called out to announce my presence, but nobody appeared, and going up to the structure, I found it vacant and deserted. The tent was made of a huge mainsail, stretched over a pole and secured to the ground by pegs. It evidently had been long deserted, perhaps a month; the rains had washed the ashes of a fire nearly all away. In the trunk of an adjacent tree stuck an axe, buried to the helve as though by a powerful hand. The metal was all covered with red rust, and so firmly imbedded in the gash that I could not release it until I had pounded it out with a stone. A further search disclosed a dish broken in half, a rusty case-knife, a hand-saw, an iron kettle, a frying-pan, which lay in the tent, and fragments of old newspapers and letters strewed about. In one corner were two blankets rolled loosely together and somewhat mildewed. I hauled these blankets and also an old topsail out of the tent, and spread them in the sun to dry.

Then I wandered about seeking some clew as to who had been here and how long since; but conjecture was idle. At the mouth of the creek there was a tree with the marks on it of a mooring line; and the trace of the line was still faintly visible on the earthy bank. The most probable supposition was that a party of pig-hunters had landed here, and for some reason had been suddenly called away. That they had left hurriedly was evident both from the standing tent and its contents, and also from the fact that a garden had been planted, which was now grown up to rank luxuriance. In this garden was a great quantity of yams and sweet potatoes, most of them just in a condition to be gathered; also peas and beans quite dry and ripe, and some Indian corn, the last still green. A rusty shovel and hoe were lying there just as they had been left. I made no scruple to help myself to what I wanted of this abundant harvest that chance had placed in my hand. It was not long before I had a fire built and the kettle on, and some of the yams and sweet potatoes boiling. These vegetables eaten hot, with salt and bacon, were to my unaccustomed palate more delicious than I can describe. Duke also ate of them ravenously.

About two o’clock in the afternoon, after packing up the new-found property in the tent as securely as I could, I hurried away to the north along the cliffs, anxious to reach home in order to get my boat and return for these treasures; for treasures indeed would this abundant supply of food as well as the other things be to me. About a quarter of a mile north of this little haven, which I named “Farm Haven,” the cliffs ran back from the sea, leaving a broad, smooth beach which gave an excellent road quite to the northern extremity of the island, excepting at one place where I was obliged to wade waist deep across the mouth of a deep indenting cove. At the northern end were isolated rocks, one of which rose boldly up to a height of fifty or sixty feet and was surrounded by the water even at low tide. After clambering over the rocks for an eighth of a mile I struck again the smooth, incurving beach that margined the eastern shore, and before dark reached home.

Everything about the house was just as I had left it, and the boat was gently heaving to the modified swell that penetrated in gentle undulations to its safe harbor in the creek. I sat long that evening enjoying the cool air, and speculating on the events of my journey. I had not found Duke’s master, but could account at least in some measure for his presence on the island; for he had been undoubtedly forgotten in the hurried departure of the party whose camp I had just visited.

CHAPTER VII.
THE WATER-GLASS.

THE morning broke fair with a gentle breeze from the west, which would enable me to make the run easily in a couple of hours. I put on board two light poles which might, if necessary, serve for oars, and rigged a couple of loops on the washboard at each side, through which to thrust them when they were to be used. After taking on board a supply of water, and food enough for several days in case I should chance to be blown out to sea, and not forgetting my lasso and burning-glass, I called Duke on board, hoisted the sail, and cast off. Out through the creek mouth, over the bar, and through its breakers slid the little craft, and as soon as we were fairly outside I bore up and ran straight for the north cape, with a fair beam wind. The fresh morning air, the dew still wet on the boat, the sun scarce a span above the sea, the cool, blue water sliding by, the breaking of the surf as it ran angling along the strand, all acted like a cordial to my spirits. Duke sat up in the bottom of the boat eyeing the whole proceeding with a critical air, hardly willing to yield an entirely unqualified approval, and yet not ready to advance any positive objection. I fairly burst into a laugh at his quizzical expression. He sprang up wagging his tail and came to me and laid his head on my knee, as much as to say, “It is all right, I see.”

Before reaching the cape I eased off a little with the intention of running approximately over the region where the sunken galleon was supposed to lie. The spot, according to the admiral’s account, was about a mile east of north from the rocky point, and I wanted to sound as far out in this direction as my forty-foot line would allow, if, as I hoped, there should chance to be any shallow that would allow me to reach bottom at all near the shore. The yellowish color of the water off the cape gave token of an extensive shoal in this direction, as did also the peculiar action of the swell, which seemed half inclined to break as it passed. With a stone tied to the line, I sounded as soon as I passed the cape, and found at two hundred yards from shore not over twenty feet of water. This depth increased very gradually until the full length of the line, forty feet or thereabouts, ran out at a distance of an eighth of a mile from the shore, showing that there was a long shoal or submerged spit extending out from the north end of the island.

As soon as I left the immediate vicinity of the shore, where the breakers stirred up the bottom, the water became beautifully clear and transparent, so that at my last sounding I saw, or fancied I saw, the gleam of the bright sand shining up from below. I now lowered the sail to test if there was any current running, but beyond a slight movement, I could detect nothing. I was now far enough from the cape so that I could take a slant to the southwest and easily clear the rocks. So I hauled up the sail and brought her head around. Soon we were spinning along the western shore, and in an hour were off the “Farm Haven,” toward which I turned, and running into the mouth of the little stream moored the boat safely and landed.

There was a busy day before me, and I lost no time in beginning work. First of all, I threw the ballast overboard to make room for a cargo of yams and potatoes. I next wove out of willow branches a rough basket, or rather a sort of shallow tray, to carry them to the boat. I dug and loaded fully five bushels of fine, clean sweet potatoes and a number of large yams, and the supply remaining in the ground would have filled my boat a half-dozen times. I next turned my attention to the dry peas and beans, and gathered about a bushel of each, besides a number of great scarlet pepper-pods. Then I took down the tent and put it aboard, as well as the axe, the shovel, the hoe, and the sail and blankets. I boiled a lot of yams for dinner, and this being over at about three in the afternoon, I called Duke and went up the gully path to the top and looked about a little to see what prospect there might be for a path over the island to the other side. In a straight east and west line the distance could not be over three and a half to four miles.

There was a ridge running back from the cliff to the central plateau, which I thought might afford an easy path, and I knew that once on this central plateau I could descend to the stream and so reach home. Having seen this much I returned to the boat, and casting off poled out as far as possible to get an offing. By short tacks I managed finally to get far enough to venture on my northern slant. But the sun was almost down when I rounded the north cape and started down the other shore.

Just as I came opposite the mouth of the creek, the wind died away, and I hastened to get out my rude poles and row into the harbor. This was a terrible task, and if the wind had not gone down I much doubt whether I could have done it at all until the tide turned. But at last we made the creek and moored the boat safely with its precious cargo. I was too tired that night to do more than unload the tools, blankets, canvas, and cooking utensils, leaving the vegetables on board till morning. That night being oppressively warm, I swung my hammock under the open work-shed, and lulled by the music of the breakers, slept soundly until broad day.

The first work on hand was the care of my cargo of potatoes. These with the beans and peas I carried up to the dark, dry store-room. Some of the potatoes I buried in the dry sand, to test its preservative properties. As a future provision I turned up with the spade a little patch of soil near the creek and planted half a dozen hills of yams and potatoes in a favorable spot, and a row of the beans and peas, guarding the latter from the birds with a layer of brush. This occupied the greater part of the day.

In the afternoon I drew a wire nail out of the chest, with which to make a fish-hook. The back of the axe formed a good anvil, and the shank of the hoe, the wooden handle being removed, did fairly well for a hammer. With these tools I fashioned the red-hot nail into hook form, using for tongs a pair of clam shells. I drew the point out sharp, bent the hook, and cut a barb over the edge of the axe. The head of the nail was left intact to secure the line. As this was my first effort at blacksmithing the hook was not perhaps as elegant as it might have been, but it looked as though it might work satisfactorily. For a line, I unlaid and retwisted some pieces of hempen rope that had formed reef points on the sail of the tent, and coated them well with candle-berry wax. I made a wooden float for a bob and fitted a stone for a sinker, so that by bed-time, my fishing-tackle was finished, together with a good hundred feet of stout line.

That night a rain set in, and it continued steadily for three days without ceasing, varying only between a violent downpour and a fine, driving mist from the northeast. I could not work out of doors in such weather; so, gathering a great quantity of cocoanut husks, I busied myself hour after hour spinning cöir. I wanted to make a good, strong, sounding-line at least a hundred fathoms long, and a line of equal length by which to anchor a buoy as a guide in the submarine search operations. Thus the time was by no means lost, though the confinement was exceedingly irksome. Duke made an occasional dash out into the wet, and once returned carrying in his mouth an armadillo rolled up tight in a ball, which afforded us a variation in diet.

But the sky finally cleared and I hastened out to try my fishing-tackle. Anchoring the boat just beyond the breakers at the mouth of the creek, I baited my hook with a shell-fish and cast it over, letting the line run slowly out as the hook sank toward the bottom, and then hauling it up and repeating the operation. Presently I got a tremendous bite, and drew in a fish that weighed about fifteen pounds. It was a red snapper, and proved most excellent eating. This was fishing enough for once, and I pulled to shore and set about cooking part of my prize. Soon the air was redolent with the odor of fried fish, and both Duke and I regaled ourselves with fish and potatoes, washing them down with pure, sweet water cool from the porous water-jar.

I now set about the construction of an apparatus by the aid of which I hoped to be able to make a reconnaissance of the bottom of the shallow sea, where the sunken galleon was supposed to lie. I went out with my axe to the upland and cut down a fine cedar tree. This I split until I procured four rough but slight slabs, an inch thick and about a foot in width, sawing them to a length of about three feet. I pinned these securely together in the form of a rectangular tube a foot in diameter and three feet long, and in one end of the tube fitted a tight cedar bottom. In this bottom I cut an aperture just large enough to receive one of my glass photograph plates, five inches by seven, and after cleaning off the sensitive gelatine coating securely fitted it in place like a window. With melted pitch I payed freely all the joints and seams, so that the structure was perfectly water-tight, and then blackened the wood on the inside with a mixture of pulverized charcoal and hot wax, so that it would reflect no light.

Before this was finished the rains set in again and continued for a whole week. I concluded that the annual rainy season must now be at hand. For though the sky would occasionally clear for a day or part of a day, the showers were so frequent that the house grew damp and unwholesome, and I was obliged to air it every day with a rousing fire in the fireplace, the heat of which drove me to seek shelter under the work-shed. The weather was so uncertain that I did not dare to venture out in the boat further than a few hundred feet, and then with a line fast to the shore; this I occasionally did for the purpose of fishing, and always with good luck, catching the red snappers, rock cod, and various other varieties, all of which found their way to the larder.

It was on one of these occasions that I tried my new-made contrivance, the water-glass. When the closed end of this was submerged over the side of the boat, by looking in at the open upper end I could plainly see the bottom and the fish swimming about my hook. Of course I was very anxious to try the apparatus in deeper water to ascertain how far the vision could penetrate. But the weather would not render it possible without too great risk. The value of such a device would depend entirely upon the clearness and depth of the water. I knew from written accounts that the sponge fishers use a similar contrivance,—frequently a wooden bucket with a pane of glass in the bottom, which they call a “sponge glass,” and with which they search for sponges and conch shells in the Bermudas, employing it with perfect success, in clear water, even at a considerable depth. The sponge glass enables the operator to overcome the surface agitation and reflection of the water, just as a thin transparent sheet of ice sometimes renders the bottom of a deep pond visible to a skater.

One morning, when there was an almost perfect calm, I noticed on the surface of the sea a long streak extending from a point about half a mile from shore away toward the eastern horizon until it was lost in the distance. This appearance was so curious and inexplicable that after gazing at it for a while, both from the beach and from the top of a palm, I finally rowed the boat out to it, and found that it was muddy water, with leaves, grass, and vegetation floating in it, and a great number of cocoanuts bobbing about among the other fragments and detritus. It looked precisely as though the contents of some slack water lagoon connecting with the sea had been suddenly swept out by a freshet or some extraordinary current. Among the floating matter were innumerable sea beans, as they are called,—a sort of nut or seed that is sometimes used as an ornament for watch chains,—also little scarlet, egg-shaped seeds, like those that are picked up in such quantities on the Florida beaches. But there was no sea-weed with the other detritus. This mass of matter slowly travelled along the surface and by the next day was out of sight. I suppose to a more skilled observer the phenomenon might have proven a valuable aid in determining the set of the currents, or other natural facts worthy of note.

While out on this excursion I several times tried the water-glass, but found the sea so charged with matter and so cloudy and milky that I could see but indistinctly and to no great depth. This, however, did not discourage me, as I knew the water was likely to change in this respect from week to week.

There came upon the island at this time great numbers of pelicans. They would light on the beach in large flocks, and sit there for hours, apparently resting from a long flight; then all together, as by a concerted signal, they would rise and in an irregular body wing their way to the south. Duke took great delight in hunting these birds, and would watch by the hour for their arrival. As soon as a flock appeared in the northern sky he would prick up his ears, all attention, and wait until, circling about, they alighted. Then he would begin a deliberate attempt to stalk them, creeping along, belly to the ground, until nearly up to them, then making a bold rush, but always without success, the birds on such occasions merely rising and circling to another resting-place. He would come in after this sport wet with the rain and panting with exertion, and appeared to look with reproach at my lack of interest in the game, as though he would say, “Where is your gun, you idle fellow?” But I had no use for pelicans. Indeed, I still had too vivid a remembrance of the peculiar flavor of gull meat to hanker after fish-eating birds of any sort, as food. The white crane, or heron, and the beautiful pink and white ibis also made their appearance occasionally in flocks; but they were so shy and difficult to approach that I could never get within a hundred yards of them.

Penetrating one morning, in spite of the drizzling rain, to a part of the forest just under the rocky plateau, I came upon some trees about thirty or forty feet in height having flowers variegated with purple, yellow, green, and red, and bearing at the same time fruit in the form of great gourds. This I found was what is known as the calabash tree (Crescentia cujete). I collected a number, of different sizes, and carried them home through the rain. The hard, wood-like shells could readily be cut with the knife and saw, yet they were strong and tough. With this raw material, already partially shaped to hand, I set about making various kinds of vessels,—domestic and culinary utensils, a water-bottle to carry on my tramps and excursions, etc. With four great gourds lashed together I constructed a buoy for subsequent use in my marine explorations, and with a number of small ones I made a life-preserver as a part of my boat equipment. It was a great comfort to have a dish to eat from once more. Indeed, I had often regretted that I did not bring with me the two halves of the broken dish which I had seen at the “Farm Haven.” My two developing-trays with their deep sides had proved but inconvenient substitutes; besides, they were generally kept for other uses. Taken altogether there was no single vegetable product of the island that contributed more to my comfort than the calabash tree.

As I now had plenty of canvas I concluded to rig my boat anew and change it from the awkward latteen rig to that of a sloop with mainsail and jib. The want of a needle and thread to sew the sails was a great drawback, but I made shift to use an awl made out of a leg of a compass belonging to my drawing instruments, and for thread a slender cord made of cöir. I rigged the jib with a traverse so that it needed no special attention except to be hauled aft when I went about, and the mainsail with a gaff and throat halliards, that it might be lowered by the run upon emergency; I also provided both jib and mainsail with three rows of reef points, that I might show little or much canvas, as the slate of the wind should require. With axe and saw and knife I fashioned a good pair of cedar oars, light and strong, and fitted thole-pins in the gunwales to receive them; I put a pair of thole-pins in the stern for sculling, and had a spare oar for use in case of breakage.

The weather continued stormy, with rain nearly every day, and frequently for several days together without cessation. I passed most of the time under the boat-shed, and generally slept there at night, as the climate was very mild and warm notwithstanding the rains. Moreover, I had now two blankets to sleep in at night, and lay quite warm and comfortable in my hammock. The house I used as a kitchen, dining-room, store-room, and library. It was quite impossible to read elsewhere at night, for the candle could not be kept alight in the open-sided shed. I read all the books through deliberately, including the German Word-book. I would lie in my swinging hammock by the hour during the day-time and read even the Dispensatory faithfully through while the rain pattered on the roof, with an occasional “swish, swish,” as the eddying wind drove it with greater or less violence against the house. That I should find the dry details of a Dispensatory sufficiently interesting to make the continuous reading of them even endurable expresses well the desperate dulness of my lonesome surroundings. Duke slept much, and I envied him his capacity for slumber. He would lie in a dry spot and snooze for fifteen minutes at a time, get up and gape and stretch, then lie down and shiver and drop to sleep with one eye open, and so alternating pass the day. Sometimes I would practice on him with German words from the Word-book, which he understood, so far as I could see, quite as well as English. At any rate, when I spoke he wagged his tail, and thus demonstrated that he was a good fellow and not disposed in any degree to criticise or find fault with the personal peculiarities or the language of a friend.

At last one clear, bright morning, when the birds were noisily rejoicing and the butterflies were out in their gala dresses, I undertook an expedition by land to the “Farm Haven.” The creek was swollen deep with the rains, so that I could not conveniently travel up the bed. Therefore I made my way north along the beach for a mile, and struck west through the jungle at the most open place I saw. By an occasional use of the axe I forced a path through to the rocks, which happened here to be low, and speedily gained the central plateau. At the point where I mounted the rocks I found great quantities of ripe whortleberries growing on low bushes, and of large size and exquisite flavor. I ate my fill of these and pressed on along the plateau looking for the connecting ridge. The walking was not bad on this upland, as there was no tangled mass of undergrowth, and the trees grew well apart. The ridge was not difficult to find and proved easily passable, so that I made shift to reach the cliffs long before noon.

Being near them I went to the Brazil-nut trees and gathered a peck or more of the nuts, filling my haversack quite full as well as my pockets. Duke here chased a little animal which I fancied must be what is called an agouti; but as he did not catch him I could not know positively. However, this persistent hunter soon after managed to tree an animal which I had no difficulty in recognizing as the familiar raccoon. I had no idea until I saw this specimen that this plantigrade was to be found in the Caribbean islands. There was, however, no mistaking the identity of the species. It was undoubtedly a genuine “coon.” The silver-tipped fur, the pointed snout, the barred tail all spoke in favor of a true descent and a perfect relationship with the animal which I had so often hunted on moonlight nights in the woods at home. It was an undoubted “case of coon.” When I found him he was in a slender sapling, with Duke barking below. I laid the axe to the trunk and speedily felled it to the ground. Duke seized his victim before he could recover, and shook him as a terrier would a rat. Running to his assistance I speedily put an end to the combat with my knife, and bagged the game. Here was material for a feast, for I well knew by experience that roast coon is a morsel fit for an epicure.

Farm Haven looked beautifully fresh from the rains. I found the garden still more choked with weeds, and the potatoes mostly gone to seed. I gathered a few to roast in the embers for my dinner, but most of them had begun to decay. The Indian corn was ripe, and I took this occasion to gather it all, a good heap of perhaps ten bushels, which I carried little by little to a sheltered nook under the rocks and piled up without removing the husks. I started a good fire to roast some corn and potatoes. After dressing the coon I swung it by a cord in front of the fire where it was slowly turned by the twist of the cord first in one direction and then in the other, requiring only an occasional twirl to keep it going.

While the dinner was cooking, Duke and I looked about the valley to see what could be found. We went over to the north of the mouth of the rivulet among some willows, to gather a few wands for basket-making. As soon as we reached the other side of the stream I noticed a strong stench as of decayed animal matter. The source of this smell was soon disclosed in a great heap of oysters. Great bivalves, some of them eight or more inches across, lay rotting in a pile on the pebbly shore. All about were heaps of open shells and decayed shell-fish. It occurred to me at once that I had chanced upon the headquarters of a pearl fishery; and this accounted most satisfactorily for the encampment, but not for the hurried departure of the campers. There was at least a ton of unopened oysters lying in the rotting drying-heap, and I determined to examine them as soon as we had finished dinner.

CHAPTER VIII.
BREAD-MAKING.

THERE was a wooden tub lying near the oyster heap, which I conjectured was for holding water in which to open and separate the oysters in the examination for pearls. I filled this tub at the stream and set it in the shade of the willows. Then, with bared arms, and nostrils plugged with leaves, I began the disgusting task of examining the oysters carefully one by one. The second oyster I opened contained fifteen little seed pearls not much larger than a grain of mustard seed. Then I drew blank after blank in the lottery, until I had opened perhaps fifty shells. Then a great prize came out in the shape of a beautiful pear-shaped pearl of the size of a small hazel-nut, rainbow tinted and lustrous as a moon-lit cloud. Thus it went with varying fortune all the afternoon, until the heap was exhausted and I had collected two hundred and fifty seed pearls, ninety-seven small pearls, and a hundred and sixteen larger ones, some of them of great lustre and beauty. What the value of these pearls would prove to be I had no means of estimating, but it doubtless would be considerable. I tied them carefully in my handkerchief and put them in my pocket. The smell of the decayed shell-fish is something frightful to remember, and after I had finished and washed myself thoroughly in the stream it still seemed to cling to me and to permeate everything in the neighborhood. Why I had not noticed this awful stench on my first visit was strange to me, and must have been due to the course of the wind at that time.

When I had finished this loathsome task it was so late that I concluded to stay all night at the cove instead of trying to go home. If the weather kept clear there would be no great hardship in sleeping on the grass for one night. The sun set, however, with an angry red glow amid a mass of heavy clouds portending foul weather. Moreover, as the night fell there was an oppressive calm, and the heat was intense. So threatening was the aspect of the weather that had I been at all sure of being able to find my way in the darkness, I should have certainly attempted to get home even after the sun had set. There was no shelter if it should rain, and I was at my wits’ end how to contrive a place to pass the night. What a fool I had been not to notice the approaching storm in time to get to my comfortable house. The best provision I was able to make was to gather some grass and willow-boughs and take them under an overhanging rock, where I cut with the axe in the dark some limbs and boughs and made a sort of lean-to. This I supplemented with the tub turned up toward the quarter whence the rain would most probably come, and Duke and I crept into this sorry nest to await events.

One event came without waiting, and that was a powerful stench from the unlucky tub. But as I had endured this already for nearly half a day, I concluded it would, by familiarity, become less and less offensive. I could not go to sleep, but lay there turning and tossing on my uncomfortable couch and watching the weather.

The calm continued until near midnight, when a cool breeze sprang up and swept down the gorge and out to sea. I thought this indicated that the storm was about to pass around and away; but the heavy rumble of thunder out at sea, growing louder and sharper, and becoming almost continuous, and the constant play of lightning, quickly dissipated this notion. I looked out with awe at this tremendous electric display.

The breeze fell presently, and I looked out and saw coming in from the sea a coppery red mass of cloud glowing as though it contained a furnace. Instinctively I crouched down behind the rock beside the dog, who was shivering with fear, and grasped the corners of a huge fallen fragment. With a dreadful, screeching roar, mingled with a din of thunder such as I am utterly unable to describe, and can liken to nothing I ever heard before or since, the hurricane burst upon the island. There was no rain, but at first I thought there was, for the spray from the ocean beat in my face and drenched me to the skin. It was not rain, for it was salt to the taste. My shelter of boughs, and also the high-smelling tub were blown away instantly, and with the dog under me I fairly had all I could do to hold on. Above the roar of the wind, the rattling of stones, and the din of the thunder, I could hear the crash of falling trees and breaking boughs. Nor did the awful wind let up for nearly half an hour, and I was quite worn out with the apprehension and the struggle. If I lifted my face for an instant the spray and sand and pebbles whipped with such violence against it that I was glad to bury it close to the ground. Such awful storms I had heard of, and even been witness to their effects after the event; but never could I have had an adequate idea of the terrible reality without this experience.

During the entire passage of the hurricane not a drop of rain fell, so far as I could judge, though, as before stated, I was drenched with spray. Gradually, with an occasional renewal of the blast, the wind went down, and in an hour the stars were shining pure and serene in the dark vault above.

The temperature had now fallen many degrees, and there was a cool, steady wind from the north that chilled me through to the bone. Of course I had no fire, and no means of procuring one, and the only relief obtainable was such exercise as I could get by stamping about and thrashing my arms until the blood was in rapid circulation. Sitting back against the rock I dozed a little now and then, and waited impatiently for the break of day, which seemed as though it never would come.

As soon as it was fairly light we started for home. The effects of the hurricane were visible on every hand. Trees broken off, blown over, and uprooted, green branches scattered here and there, the silvery under sides of the leaves showing, and giving an air of disorder and destruction by their unaccustomed appearance and tint, all marked the hand of the destroyer. The central plateau seemed to have suffered most. Here several great trees had been twisted until the trunks were a mass of splinters, indicating that they had successively occupied the very eye and centre of the rotary wind. Hurrying along rapidly we came down to the lower land, and I was glad to observe much fewer signs of destruction here. We came upon a dead pig, killed by a huge fallen limb, and I pulled him out, as we were now nearly home, and dragged him along with me for food.

When we reached the open beach I found plenty of evidence of the mighty wind in the scattered palm leaves, boughs, and branches strewn along the strand. In the distance I could see the ruins of my work-shed. The roof was off, and lying down the beach a hundred yards or more in a heap at the water’s edge. The boat, for which I felt specially anxious, was hidden from view by a clump of water bushes that grew on the hither bank of the creek. The mast I could see, and noted that an unnatural tilt had been given to it. Dragging the dead pig I slowly made my way along the sand. The house stood intact, my hammock still swung to the frame-work of the shed. The top of a cocoanut palm, twisted off by the wind and carried through the air, had brought up against the frame of the shed and lodged there, while the nuts growing on it were scattered about the ground, some of them as far as the water’s edge.

I went immediately to the boat and found it careened and sunk in the shallow water of the creek, the upper gunwale just above the surface. At the house the only damage done was a hole in the northeast corner of the wall, caused by the end of a bough which had been driven through it and was still sticking in the gap. The first thing I did was to build a rousing fire in the chimney; then hanging my damp clothing up in front of it to dry I went down for a bath in the creek, and to examine more minutely the boat. When she was righted up and baled out with a gourd I found she had suffered no injury whatever, being as tight as a bottle. Nor would she have sunk except for an extra amount of ballast that happened to be on board, as the air-tight compartments held perfectly. But the sinking was doubtless the best thing that could have happened.

As soon as I could dress and get something for breakfast, I cut up the pig and put part of it in salt, and then turned to with a will upon the work of repairing the shed. The larger part of the material of the roof was uninjured, and as the weather fortunately remained clear, by the following night I had the roof on again in good shape and much stronger than before, as with the aid of the axe I was able to cut a great number of stout poles to add to the structure. When I had patched up the hole in the wall of my house and cleared away the litter, most of the signs of the hurricane had disappeared from my neighborhood.

The dampness of my house in wet weather, which was due to the walls getting wet and soaking through with the driving rain, led me now to undertake a new task. The clay used in the building of the boat would, I thought, be sufficient in quantity to give the floor and the walls inside and out a good coat, and this when once dry would make the structure like an adobe building. I intended, moreover, to add an extra thickness of thatch, put in a row of glass photograph plates toward the sea for windows, make a good cedar door, to be hung on wooden hinges, and add a wide veranda to the front, under which I might sit in the evening.

The rain still came every day or two now, though evidently the dry season was fast approaching. The weather was too uncertain to venture out any distance in the boat, and I therefore had plenty of time on my hands to attend to my building and other schemes for domestic comfort. As planned, I daubed the whole house, inside and outside, with a good thick coat of the clay smoothed with the back of the shovel. On the outside, to give a workmanlike finish, I lined the soft clay into blocks and pointed the joints neatly. Then, with dry, pulverized clay and sand, which I sprinkled with water, trampled with the feet and smoothed by beating with the shovel, I produced a hard, smooth floor like that under the shed. All around the edge of this floor I fitted a single row of clam shells, and inside of this a second row of pink-mouthed tiger shells, which formed a handsome border. I put in a narrow horizontal window, of six panes side by side, at each side of the doorway, and constructed a good door of split cedar, pinned together and hung on wooden hinges to swing outward, and provided it with a latch. I then doubled the thatch all over the house and put up a light porch in front thatched with palm leaves, and built a floor for it the same as in the house. At one end of this porch I constructed a little low shed with walls and roof for the dog.

As there was still a great quantity of clay left I built an oven near the house, as follows: upon a raised platform of poles erected about three feet above the ground, and about three by four feet in extent, I put a layer of sand and clay about four inches thick. This was the floor of the oven. All around this floor I laid a wall of adobe bricks, made of sand and clay partly dried. I then filled the interior with sand heaped up in the form of an arch, and laid the adobe bricks over it, daubing and plastering all the cracks. At the rear was a small clay chimney, and at the front an opening for a doorway. When the clay had well set and partly hardened, I raked out the sand through the doorway and left the hollow clay structure standing. I then constructed an adobe slab with which to close the doorway. In this oven I built a hot fire of dry wood and kept it going all day, by which means the clay was partly burned and the construction made entirely proof against the wet,—though, for that matter, the adobe would have stood without such treatment.

To utilize the heat left in the walls from the burning I had put a pot full of beans on to boil, with a good chunk of salt pork. At night I put the beans and pork in an earthen dish and set them in the oven, which was still hot, and closed it up tight, covering the chimney and luting the door slab with wet clay. In the morning, when I opened it, there gushed out a delicious vapor, and the dish of beans and pork, brown and crisp came forth hot and fit for a king.

One article I needed very badly was soap. I had tried to wash my clothing several times, but it was quite filthy notwithstanding these attempts. My entire wardrobe consisted of a heavy woollen shirt, a pair of tough moleskin pantaloons, a home-made hat, and a stout pair of shoes. Socks I had none, as the single pair I brought on shore were entirely worn out. Latterly I had made a practice of going barefoot, except on extended excursions through the jungle and over the rocks. With plenty of wood ashes and pig fat at hand why should I not make soap? I rigged up a leaching apparatus thus: in the bottom of a huge gourd I pierced several holes, and laid over them a layer of grass so that the ashes would not stop them up; then I filled the gourd with alternate layers of grass and ashes to the top, and poured in fresh water as long as it would absorb any. In a little while the lye began to drip out of the holes into a vessel placed beneath to receive it. By changing and renewing the ashes several times I finally collected a kettle full of the lye. This I placed over the fire and boiled until it had lost two thirds of its volume. Then I put into the boiling lye strips and pieces of fat pork until it would dissolve no more, keeping up the boiling slowly all the time. The result was a good article of light colored soap of a jelly-like consistency. Its use both upon my clothing and myself was a luxury indeed.

One day I burned some lime and mixed a whitewash, which with a cocoa-husk swab I applied to the interior walls of the house, changing them to a dazzling white and rendering the whole interior light and cheerful; which was a great comfort on dark days when I was confined there. Moreover, it gave the place an air of wholesomeness and neatness that was very home-like. As a further improvement I made a bed of soil at each end of the porch and transplanted some flowering vines and creepers of several varieties; I also made a half-dozen hills in front of the house, carrying and filling in these spots a quantity of rich muck, and planted sweet potatoes that they might spread their vines over the sand. The garden which I had made before the rains set in was now in thriving condition, all the peas and beans being up and the potato-vines in blossom.

My diet was now varied and healthful enough; but I lacked one article of food that I longed for and felt the need of more and more every day,—and that was bread, the staff of life. Parched-seed gruel was a very poor substitute indeed, and at last I got so hungry for a taste of bread that I determined to make some out of the Indian corn.

So one day I made a basket and started across the island to bring home a supply of the corn. All the way over I kept a good lookout for a suitable gritty stone, that could be used to grind the corn, and found several that I thought might answer the purpose fairly well; but one sample—being a slab of grit-stone having a rough, pocked surface with small hard bits of chalcedony interspersed throughout—was so superior in quality to all the rest that I concluded I could do no better if I sought the island over. This slab, which was quite as much as I could carry, I laid against a tree where I could easily find it, and went on my way to “Farm Cove.” I had not been here since the great storm, and was surprised to see how quickly and fully all traces of the hurricane had disappeared. The corn was all right, the husks had fully dried, and the heap lying on the rocks had not suffered from the rains. I filled my basket,—a good bushel,—and immediately came home, returning forthwith for the slab of grit-stone. Duke treed another raccoon, which we captured by cutting down the tree, and then with our plunder and the stone we managed to get home at nightfall.

The next day it began again to rain in intermittent showers; raining and shining alternately, as in the April weather of northern latitudes. After building a fire and heating up the oven and putting in the raccoon to bake, with some yams for dinner, I went to work on my stone slab. First I broke off a good piece the full width of the slab in length, and about six inches in width to use as a grinder. With the back of the axe I hammered and dressed this as smooth as I could. Then I went at the slab itself, pounding it with the axe and breaking it at the edges until it was formed into a reasonably smooth, rectangular shape two feet long by one foot in width. I now sprinkled the face of the slab with wet sand and water, and placing it in an inclined position, rubbed the grinder up and down upon it, feeding on fresh sand and water from time to time, as it lost its cutting properties.

This was slow, hard, tedious work, and the progress made was so gradual that it called for all my will to keep at it. Perseverance, however, will finally conquer most obstacles, and this was a mere question of muscle and will-power struggling against a hard grit-stone. The stone was fated finally to yield; but it took me two days of hard work to get it into the right shape. All this for a piece of corn bread, and the bread not yet forthcoming.

When finished the slab had a smooth, gritty surface slightly incurved from end to end, and the grinder designed to lie across it had its corners rounded smoothly off.

I set to work now to grind my corn as follows: The slab was propped up at a slight angle on a piece of canvas; on this slab the corn, a handful at a time, was sprinkled and then ground by rubbing the grinder up and down over it. As it became pulverized the meal would gradually drift down on to the canvas, the coarser particles rolling away to the edge of the heap, only to be scraped up and ground over again. This was, as you may imagine, tedious work. When I had accumulated about four quarts of meal, I felt that I had enough of grinding for once.

Now commenced the first act of bread-making proper. In a gourd I mixed about a pint of the meal with warm water and a little salt, and set it in a warm place over night, that it might have a chance to ferment. This was to be my yeast. In the morning the contents of the gourd were in a state of incipient fermentation, and I went out and fired up the oven to be ready for the grand final act. While the oven was heating I mixed up the rest of the meal with salt and water, and added the fermented meal to it, mixing the whole to a consistency such that it could readily be stirred. This I set near the fire in an earthen pan, and watched it from time to time. In about two hours it began to rise slightly, and the oven being fully ready I clapped the pan in and closed it up to bake. In an hour I opened the oven and took out a fragrant panful of nicely browned, light, and crumbling corn bread, as a reward for all my labors. Perhaps it was not so good as a skilled bread-maker might have produced, but it was sweet and delightful to me, and well repaid all my trouble, and both Duke and I rejoiced over it with our broiled bacon.

After this experiment bread-making was a regular thing. Sometimes I simply stirred up the raw meal with a little salt and water and baked it on the back of a shovel before the open fire,—hoe-cake fashion,—to be eaten brown and hot; but I generally made raised bread by the process which I have described, sometimes adding a modicum of pork fat for shortening.

CHAPTER IX.
THE GALLEON FOUND.

THE severe rains gradually ceased, until sunshine was the rule and rain the exception. I did not expect a season of absolute dryness, for in this locality rain prevails to some extent throughout the whole year, so that the vegetation rarely suffers from drought.

One morning, the sky being clear and a gentle breeze blowing from the southwest, Duke and I went aboard the boat,—which by the way, I had named the “Mohawk”—and started for a trial of the water-glass. We were soon on the ground, a mile to the north of the cape. Lowering the sails I put the glass over the side, with very little hope of success as the water seemed to have a cloudy appearance. It proved to be in such a condition that I could not see the bottom at all. I then put up the sail and ran in nearer the shore to where the depth was about thirty feet. Here I could see the sand and rocks and shells on the bottom very distinctly, and noted that there were streaks and veins of the murky water running through the more transparent portion.

Finding that nothing could be done in the way of investigation until the water became clearer, I stood out to the west until by a single tack I could make Farm Cove, intending to bring back a cargo of corn and some yams and potatoes. I found a few bushels of yams still in good condition, and noted with pleasure that many of the potatoes left in the ground had sprouted and the vines had already acquired quite a growth. With spade and shovel I turned to heartily, and cleared away the luxuriant growth of weeds which threatened to choke this volunteer crop. Then I loaded in my corn and started back, reaching home in time for supper.

The next two days I devoted to planting a patch of corn, hardly expecting to remain long enough upon the island to enjoy it, but thinking it wise to provide for an uncertain future. On the third day I went out again to try the water-glass, but the water was still lacking in transparency and there was nothing to do except to wait.

But while returning I thought of a thing that would be very useful to me in future expeditions, and that was to set up on the northern cape something which might serve as a guide to me in future operations. I had no compass and was obliged to guess the direction blindly by the sun. Now the Spanish admiral, when he reported that the galleon bore east of north from the point of rocks, and about a mile therefrom, probably spoke, as to direction at least, from actual observation of the compass, as a sailor would; for nobody knows better than a sailor the impossibility of guessing at direction without a guide. Indeed, the sailor, when he comes on deck, turns instinctively to the compass to orient himself and correct his sense of direction, because the course of the vessel may have changed half a dozen times during a watch below, without his knowledge. To one on board a vessel the parts fore and aft, starboard and port, below and aloft, have a fixed relation to each other, and one is apt to get a set impression as to direction from this fixed relation of familiar objects. Thus I have heard of an old sailing-master who was on board the same vessel for twenty years, and who declared that, no matter where the ship might be or upon what course, it always seemed to him that the head of his bunk lay to the north; that when at sea the most distressing thing to him was that the sun never rose in the same quarter two mornings in succession; and that it never rose in the east except on Long Island, where he was born.

As to the accuracy of the estimated distance—one mile—that, to be sure, was a much more uncertain quantity; though officers of war vessels are, and were then, well trained to estimate distances on the water, as otherwise they could not determine the range of their cannon and arms. Altogether I had every reason to suppose, barring variations in the compass and individual errors, that the location assigned was reasonably accurate. At any rate I decided to start my investigation with the assumption that the assigned location was accurate, and to work from the designated point as a centre; it would then be easy, as I proceeded, to allow for error in all directions without the chance of multiplying it in any particular direction.

In my little box of drawing-tools was a small brass protractor—a semi-circle divided into one hundred and eighty degrees, with half-degree marks. This would be convenient in the work I was about to do, though not absolutely necessary, as in its absence I could have easily constructed one that would answer my purpose. The first thing to do was to establish a true north and south line. That night the stars shone brightly, and I easily found the pole star by the pointers in the Great Bear, or “Dipper.” In the sand at the north cape I drove an upright stake made of a stout cane. Then taking another straight piece I placed it in a notch on top of the upright and sighted along its length adjusting it until it pointed straight at the north star. To secure it in this position I drove a short notched stake at the butt of the inclined cane and tied the cane firmly to both. I was now sure that the two uprights were in a true north and south direction from each other, and the work for that night was finished, as the remainder could be better done by daylight.

The next thing I wanted was a standard of measurement; unfortunately my drawing instruments did not contain the usual ivory rule. But this did not occasion me much uneasiness, as I hoped to be able to deduce the standard inch by a comparison of my belongings. If I once got the true inch it would be easy to get from that the foot, the yard, the rod, the mile. I had my photograph plates as one guide; these I had every reason to suppose were cut quite accurately to the dimensions of five inches by seven. Then there was the brass protractor. It is true there were no inches marked on this; but the workman who made it would naturally follow some standard, and the chances were very great that the diameter of this instrument would be found to be an exact multiple of the inch, and as I conjectured, exactly four inches. To test this matter I laid the protractor on the short side of one of the plates, and taking the difference between the two found, as I had expected, that this difference was one fifth of the width of the plate, and one seventh of its length. This proved satisfactorily to my mind that the plate was accurate in dimensions, that is to say, five by seven inches, and that the difference between the length of the straight side of the protractor and the width of the plate was the standard inch. From this starting-point I constructed a foot measure, and cut me a light pole exactly a rod in length.

Returning now to the cape where my north and south direction rod was fixed, I proceeded to set a peg, which to avoid confusion we will designate as A, in the sand in a prolongation of the line, and with the protractor got the true east by north, marking this line by a second peg. Then I turned about and marked a line which made an angle of one hundred and twenty degrees with the east by north line, and which would lead down the beach.

I now proceeded to plant in the sand three poles about fifteen feet in height: one at the central point A, one in a prolongation of the east by north line, which pole we will call B, and the third in a prolongation of the angle line down the beach, which latter pole we will call C. The next thing was the measurement of a base line from the pole A, through C down the beach for a mile. This I did as accurately as I could with my rod measure; but it was a sort of work highly conducive, as you may imagine, to the backache, especially as I went over it three times to eliminate as much error as possible, taking the average of the three measurements. Nor was the third measurement completed much before it was time to go home.

Only one thing now remained to be done, and this I did the next morning. At the end of the mile line on the beach I erected a tall pole, which we will call D, and from it as a centre laid off a line thirty degrees from the base to intersect the east-by-north line or its prolongation, and marked the direction by a second tall pole which we will call E. Now, according to a simple problem in trigonometry, it will be seen that if I should sail out in my boat east of north from the cape, guiding myself by the two poles A and B, when I had brought the poles D and E into line having A and B in line at the same time, I should be a mile away from A in a true east-of-north direction.

Although I now went out every day to try the water, it did not grow clear. Finding the guide-poles barely visible, especially the more distant pair, I mounted a gourd on the top of each one, after which I had no further difficulty in seeing them. As it was some little trouble to take the bearings constantly, I rigged a buoy and anchored it at the spot where theoretically the galleon lay. I found the water about sixty feet deep; and the buoy—a large gourd attached to a line with a stone for an anchor—floated easily on the swell, with eighty feet of line. After this buoy was anchored I took down the guide-poles, marking their places with pegs, in case I should require to use them again. This I did out of a superabundance of caution, not that I believed any one else than myself—had there been any one else—could have read the riddle they told to me.

Every day for three weeks I went out to the shoal near the buoy and examined the water. It was getting gradually clearer; but had it not been for my recollection of the first visit made, before I had the water-glass, and of the appearance of the water at that time, I should have doubtless given up the attempt in despair. The remembrance, however, of the clear water, and the gleam through it of yellow sand, was not to be forgotten, and it kept up my hopes to the last.

The weather grew oppressively hot, and there came on one day a terrific thunder-storm followed by a gale of wind from the northeast which lasted two days and was followed in turn by fair weather, with a gentle southwest wind. When I went out again I found the water quite clear. I was very impatient to test the glass, so much so that I would not wait to make any trials until I had reached the neighborhood of the buoy. Here I lowered the sails and put the glass over.

I could see the bottom quite plainly. It was of clean sand and strewed with shells. Here and there was a fragment of sea-weed, sponge, or other ocean growth. A shoal of silver-sided mackerel dashed by, and numerous strange fishes came into view. One sort there was with long streamers extending from the tail, and a body banded with rainbow hues. I looked long and intently at the strange panorama unfolded to my view, and found when I raised my head that the boat had drifted half a mile to the northeast of the buoy. Then I hoisted the sail and ratched back beyond the buoy, and drifted again, with the glass over the side, watching the bottom for signs of the galleon. This manoeuvre I repeated as long as there was light enough to see. I found that I could not see the bottom after four in the afternoon, nor before nine in the morning.

I spent three days at this work without any success, and then found that I was going at times over ground that I had already searched, for I began to identify objects as having been already seen. Especially did I recognize a huge conch-shell with a clam-shell wedged in the mouth. It was necessary therefore to devise some systematic method of search, or I should simply be hunting over and over the same ground. So I adopted the plan of gridironing, so to speak, a territory of a mile square, after the following fashion: I made me an extra buoy and anchored it at an arbitrary point about a half-mile south of the centre buoy. Taking this as a starting-point I drifted a mile before the wind to the northeast; then ratching back to the starting-point I lifted the buoy and carried it a hundred feet to the northwest, and drifted again down another parallel line, and so on.

The wind held steadily in the southwest, fortunately, day after day, and after a week’s hard work I came nearly on a line with the central buoy; but no signs of a wreck, or even a mound where one might be buried in the sand. On the eighth day of this systematic search the weather seemed about to change. A huge bank of clouds lay low in the southwest, and I hardly knew whether to venture out or not. But as it would in all probability take some hours for the storm to brew, I set forth and made one drift with my usual success, then returned and started for the second.

When I was about half-way down on the second drift I found the wreck. There was no doubt about it. The hulk lay there very slightly buried in the sand, a great, black mass careened a little to port, and the bows somewhat higher than the stern. Strange to say, it was not further than twenty rods from my central marking buoy, and about due north from it. I immediately dropped overboard my reserve buoy, composed of four large gourds attached to a strong line, and having a hundred-pound rock for an anchor, and watched to see that the anchoring-stone dropped just beside the hull.

At last I had found it! Here beneath me in sixty feet of water lay the Spanish galleon, exactly where the admiral so long ago had reported her to have sunk. His report being so far verified, it would also prove true in respect to the treasure contained within her ancient ribs.

A darkening of the sea and sky warned me that there was no time to waste in dreaming over my discovery. The storm which had been coming would now soon be here. I therefore hoisted sail and turned my back on the galleon. It was none too soon. Indeed, before I made the creek the wind had risen to such a height that I had to lower the sails and double reef them, and then went into the creek gunwale under, with the white spume and froth flying clear over the boat. But a miss is as good as a mile. I got safely in and cooked me a noble dinner of corn bread and baked pork and beans in honor of the day’s glorious event.

Duke and I sat in the open porch that afternoon, sheltered from the wind and rain, resting contentedly after the long strain of hard work which had kept me on the keen jump every day from dawn until dark since the search began. The wind blew strongly, with occasional gusts of driving rain, and I feared the storm might shift my buoys, or tear them loose and carry them away; but I could locate the central buoy again by the sights already taken, if it should go, and from that the spot could easily be found. But I hoped for better results, as the main buoy, which marked the wreck, had plenty of line, and moreover, was strong and buoyant. I wished this one might last, for with the anchor lying close beside the sunken hull, it seemed to me a sort of claim stake. I determined, as soon as the weather would permit, to rig a buoy which would outride the storms, and anchor it securely over the wreck. As is usual with the heavier winds and gales in this locality, the wind before nightfall began to veer around to another quarter, getting before sunset quite around into the north, and by nine o’clock settling down in the northeast, exactly the opposite quarter from its starting-point, with fine rain and mist.

Having located the galleon, I had now done all I had intended to do before leaving the island, except to mark the location more securely, if that proved necessary; and I was therefore impatient to get away in my boat for Martinique or some other civilized port where I could get the necessary assistance and diving-apparatus. Of course I must now wait for settled weather and a favorable wind as I had once before had to do. But this time I hoped most sincerely that I should not be kept waiting as long as before, for with little to do the time would hang heavily on my hands. The bare thought of getting back once more to civilization made my heart beat faster, and stirred my very soul.

The northerly wind was chill, and the air so moist that I built a cheerful fire in the chimney and drew my chair up in front of it, closed the door, lighted a candle, and tried to read, Duke snoozing on the floor at my feet in front of the hearth.

But although I sat thus until midnight, I could not read. I watched the embers fall and die away hour after hour, thinking over the days spent on the island, the trials and the labor, the mistakes and the successes, and the strange outcome. That I should have actually found the galleon seemed now upon cool reflection little less than a miracle. That some of the hundreds of professional wreckers and divers who make a regular business of seeking out such things on the faintest clues should not have run across the Spanish admiral’s report and sought and found the wreck and removed the treasure seemed a strange thing to me now. Why had not the Spanish government done this long ago? Then the horrible idea entered my mind that perhaps they had already done so. Or if not, perhaps an expedition designed for that purpose might even now be on its way, and might arrive when I had left the island. If so, they would speedily pick up my buoy, and I should return to find the treasure gone.

All these and a thousand such distempered fancies tortured me into a state bordering on frenzy. To have the treasure almost in sight and yet to lose it would be too much for human nature to bear. I would remove my buoy, erase every mark and take my chances of picking up the clue. But after all, how foolish that would be. The treasure lies there safe, and has lain there many, many years, and this frantic fear coming at so late a day is the height of folly.

Then my mind would wander away to plans for conducting my negotiations: how I should seek out a man whom I could trust, and how I should present matters to secure his aid and co-operation. How should I get the money? Ah, there were the pearls! I would sell them and possibly raise money enough myself. But would I dare offer these pearls for sale? Would not their possession excite the cupidity of others and cause them to follow me back to the island and come upon me in the midst of the work of securing the treasure?

And so my fancies came and went, until at last, overpowered by fatigue, I fell fast asleep in my chair, and was wakened an hour or two before break of day by Duke’s cold nose against my hand. Whereupon I sensibly went to bed and to sleep.

CHAPTER X.
THE CASTAWAYS.

IT was now the month of May and I had been about nine months a prisoner on the island. If all went as well as I hoped, I might be at home before the end of a year with money enough to redeem the dear old farm.

The morning was gray and gloomy, the wind still driving gusts of rain from the northeast, and the breakers yellow with sand rolling in on the beach, and dashing up fragments of weed and long streamers of bladder plant. There was a strong salt smell in the nostrils that such weather brings on the seashore; the gray, leaden clouds hung low and heavy over a dark, indigo sea, whitened far and near with foaming crests, like manes of racing steeds; the foliage gleamed silvery gray as the leaves were swept by the wind; and the willows along the creek bent until they dipped their slender branches in the stream. Occasionally a parrot or other long-tailed bird could be seen tossed and buffeted in an attempt to fly from one tree to another, frequently giving up the struggle and fairly drifting away to be lost among the foliage.

Notwithstanding the wet, I went about getting stores into the boat and preparing for the voyage. I filled half a dozen two-gallon gourds with water, and stopped them with well waxed wooden plugs, stowing them carefully in the bottom of the boat with due regard to her trim. Then I put on board the remainder of the dried turtle-meat, and set a ham on the fire to boil. I made two pans of bread, and put them, with pork, beans, yams, and potatoes, in the oven to bake. This food would all keep well. In addition I parched and ground up two or three quarts of seed for cold gruel. Everything was stowed away, and the boat in readiness by three o’clock in the afternoon.

There was but little sign of an abatement or change in the weather. I felt curious to know if my buoy still held, and as there was yet time before dark to go up to the north cape by way of the beach and return, I called Duke and started along the strand. About half-way there we came upon the carcass of a magnificent silver-sided tarpon,—a huge fish somewhat like a sea-bass,—that would have weighed probably two hundred pounds. It was dead when cast ashore, and so of course unfit for food. A flock of gulls were quarrelling and fighting over it, and as we approached they arose and filled the air in a great cloud. After we passed by they circled around, wind-buffeted, and settled again on their food, covering the beach, and hovering in a seething, hungry, struggling crowd about the fish, which must have been a rare feast for them.

I picked up a beautiful and perfect specimen of the fragile shell of the pearly nautilus, thin as paper, fluted and corrugated with lovely regularity, and tinted like the shaded petals of a blush rose. Rarely beautiful, divinely perfect, this sample of nature’s handiwork, cast up by the foaming, angry breakers amid the brown tangle of the shore and the foul-smelling ocean-weeds, seemed like a poem, a hymn in praise of nature’s God. I put the delicate and perfect structure carefully in my bosom to carry away as a memento of my island home.

We reached the cape, and I clambered up the highest rock from which I could obtain a clear outlook, and found my buoy all right, rising and falling with the swell, now submerged, and now reappearing, evidently tugging at its anchor-rope, and securely held thereby.

I thought how peacefully slept the ancient hulk beneath all this turbulence. Undisturbed by wind or wave it lay there slowly changing its tough timbers of Andalusian oak back into the elements from which they sprang. I thought, too, of the indestructible gold that lay buried there, waiting the fulness of time for its reappearance in the active life of man; how long the years had been since it had felt the grip of avarice or slid freely from the fingers of charity.

Suddenly I saw away upon the rim of the sea in the northeast, in the very eye of the wind, the white glint of a small sail. The mist, the waves, and the changing rain hid it momently, and then it would gleam out again a white spark among the gray. I watched it intently for a quarter of an hour, and made out that it must be a small schooner-rigged boat hove to with jib and close reefed mainsail, drifting bodily before the wind, and rolling in a frightful manner. The mainmast had been broken off at the top, and on the foremast, half-masted, fluttered a red flag. I made out clearly, presently, that the craft was merely a half-decked boat similar to my own, though perhaps of somewhat larger size, and I thought I could see somebody on board, but could not distinguish clearly. But of course, if it was hove to, there would be some one on board, as such a condition of the canvas would not be likely to occur by accident in a boat fortuitously adrift. If the wind held in the present quarter, the boat was certain to drift on to the island, and that too in a short time. It would not take above two hours and a half for it to reach the breakers, unless it could run before the wind and thus make a course to avoid the island. Very soon indeed, the island would be a lee shore, and an exceedingly dangerous one. I marvelled greatly that they did not seem to see this danger.

There was but one thing I could do, and that was the preparation of beacon-fires to guide them into the creek mouth, the only harbor on the east coast of the island. With this in view I hurried as fast as possible down the beach to the house, and laid two fires, one on each side of the creek mouth, heaping up the dry wood from my store in such a manner that it would make a great blaze, and getting all in readiness to light as soon as the sun went down. The wind was appreciably less, and I believed was gradually decreasing. Moreover, it had now stopped raining, and I could see the boat more distinctly.

An hour before sunset I thought it would be possible to go out with my own boat under double-reefed canvas, and intercept the stranger. Something was undoubtedly wrong on board of her, otherwise she would not be allowed thus to drift to leeward without control, with the island in plain sight. If there should prove to be no one on board, I might possibly be able to save the boat, which could hardly fail to prove better than my own. On the other hand, should there be some one on board, I might render valuable assistance. I determined forthwith to make the attempt. So I lighted my fires and got on board.

It was no easy matter to run my boat out over the bar in the teeth of a half-gale of wind; and I did not accomplish it without getting completely wet through, as I was obliged to tail on behind and push her out through the breakers until I was immersed to my neck in salt water, and then clamber in over the stern and haul aft the main sheet with the sail flapping and thundering as though determined to burst loose. However, I soon got her under control and was gliding along close hauled on the starboard tack, with the spray, as she pitched nose down, flying as high as the gaff, and raining down on the deck in bucketfuls.

The sun was about an hour high as I left the creek, and the strange boat in plain sight about a mile and a half dead to windward. I could easily get to windward of her in a single tack, by standing well off shore on the first slant.

When I came up near enough to hail I did so, and got no response. Getting to windward I wore and ran down quite to the boat, and letting both sheets go, loosened the halliards and lowered the mainsail, and brought my own boat close up along side. For the moment my own sail hid the vessel and I could not see what was before me. But now I looked and saw lying in the stern sheets what seemed to be the corpse of an old, gray-haired man of perhaps seventy years, the head held by a girl of eighteen or thereabouts.

I never shall forget the look that was on her face. Pale, drawn, with dishevelled hair, and dark circles around her beautiful eyes, she gazed at me without a word.

“Do you know,” cried I, “that you are drifting on to the beach and will be among the breakers in half an hour?”

For answer she pointed to her dry lips.

“Is it water you want?”

She nodded. I hastily cast a line on board and lashed the two vessels together, where grinding they rose and fell with the waves, and then seizing a gourd of water made my way to the girl. She would not drink herself until after I had poured some water into the mouth of the old man, who though perfectly helpless was still alive, and swallowed the water as fast as I gave it to him. Then I held the mouth of the heavy gourd to her own lips until I thought she had drunk enough. She gripped it with both hands, and I had to force it away from her. It was a pitiful sight.

But there was no time to lose, for we were fast drifting into the breakers, and it was absolutely necessary to get the boats before the wind and get steerage way on, or we should be on shore and dashed to pieces by the rollers. I sprang forward and loosened the main sheet of the strange boat, unlashed the helm which was tied amidships, and she paid off at once handsomely.

The sun was now quite down, but my two beacon-fires burned brightly, and I steered straight for them. Finding my own boat alongside had a tendency to bring us around to the wind, I put the helm into the girl’s hand and bade her hold it just so, and jumping on to my own boat lowered the jib, that was still set, cast off the lashing, and hitching a line forward made her fast to tow. I then hauled up and got on board the other boat again, and let my own boat drop behind us. Now I found no difficulty in steering, though my own boat would yaw and pull a little, first one way and then the other.

We were soon close to the bar, and I felt no little apprehension as to what might happen when we actually encountered the huge roller which broke every few moments there. But there was no help for it; we must take our chances, one of which—and not the least probable—was that the first boat might ground and the one in tow come crashing in on top of us. Fortunately,—for it was pure good-luck,—we struck a roller just at the right moment which lifted us over the bar as it broke. The tow-line snapped in twain as we were on the crest, and my own boat shot alongside like a waterfowl and passed us, both boats riding into the creek alongside of each other, the red glare of the beacon-fires at either hand lighting up the scene like the last act of a sensational drama.

As soon as we were fairly in the creek I jumped overboard, the water not being above my chest, and beached both the boats safely. The girl still sat holding the old man’s head, and had not spoken a word. But she followed my motions with her eyes, and I could easily read therein that she was grateful enough for my exertions, and appreciated the danger we had escaped.

The old man could apparently neither speak nor move. An ashen pallor lay on his countenance, and one side of his face, especially one corner of his mouth, was drawn down and distorted,—a sufficient indication, had I understood it, that he was suffering from a stroke of paralysis. From his clothing, which was soaked with spray, I could easily see that he was a clergyman.

I helped the girl out, partly carrying her as she could scarcely stand, and then attempted to lift out the old man. He was a heavy, strongly built man, weighing all of two hundred and fifty pounds. A heavy, helpless man is about as awkward a burden as one can imagine. Limp and yielding he could not be picked up except by the middle, and he was so lying in the boat that it was impossible for me to get a good hold of him in such position as to exert my strength. His clothing, all soaked with rain and salt water, clung to him, and must have chilled his poor helpless body through. If he was to live at all it was absolutely necessary to get him warm and dry right speedily.

Meantime the poor girl stood shivering in her equally wet garments, looking on anxiously at my efforts. Finally she spoke: “I think if you will turn him across the boat, you may be able to lift his head and shoulders up here,”—placing her hand on the gunwale. “Have courage, dear father, he will be gentle with you.”

A wan flicker, somewhat like the wrecked ghost of a smile, seemed to pass over the old man’s distorted face at the words of the girl, the first I had heard her utter. It was idle to expect any help from her, as she could scarcely stand, and was in fact partly supporting herself with her hands on the boat. Following the daughter’s suggestion, I moved her father around until he lay thwartships, and then placing my feet on the gunwale and seizing him under the arms pulled him bodily up until his head and shoulders were out of the boat. Then jumping overboard I managed to get him fairly on my back, his back to my own with my two hands under his armpits. Though I accounted myself pretty strong, and the hardy life on the island had by no means diminished my muscular power, this lift was the very limit of my strength. With bare feet fairly gripping the yielding sand, and the water above my knees, I managed to stagger through it to the shore and up to the work-shed, where I sank on my knees and lowered him to the ground. The girl followed us. I turned to her as soon as my breath came, and said, “Go and stand by the fire, you are chilled almost to death. I shall be able to get your father into the house and into a warm, dry bed, where I can change these wet clothes.”

“I can be of some help, can I not?” said she with a piteous look. “Oh, sir, be careful and gentle with him, I beseech you.”

“No, I can manage better alone, and you need to warm yourself,” said I, and without waiting longer I stooped to the old man again, and now with much greater ease managed, by putting my arms around him, to lift him and carry him to the house, where I laid him down on the floor, and immediately went to the beacon-fire near which the girl was seated. I secured two half-burned pieces of wood, and returning to the house built a rousing good fire in the chimney, and lighted a candle. Then as rapidly as I could do so I stripped off his clothes and rolled him in a dry blanket on a couch of grass.

“Are you more comfortable now?”

For answer came the abortive flicker, as of a throttled smile, and he closed and opened his eyes once or twice as though assenting.

“Can’t you speak at all?”

A sort of struggle seemed to come over his face; then he closed his eyes and held them shut for a moment. It then dawned upon me that the man was suffering from a paralytic stroke. Up to this time, without giving the matter any particular attention, I had thought that perhaps he was merely suffering from chill and exhaustion, and several times during my tremendous struggle with his weight it had been on my tongue to urge him to exert himself for his own sake. Now the awful nature of his condition, his utter helplessness, the mental torture he must have endured and be yet enduring, came upon me and must have shown itself in my face; for as he looked at me he closed his eyes again in the same manner as before. There he lay swathed in the blanket, his intelligence intact, perfectly able to see all that went on around him, and to realize his situation and condition, doubtless also fully alive, so far as sensation went, to every pain and discomfort, and yet utterly unable to stir hand or foot or speak a word. Even distorted as his face was, there was the stamp of a noble, generous nature upon it, and a venerable benevolence yet shone forth from every feature. What a terrible fate was this. I was moved to deepest pity by the contemplation of it.

I placed my hand upon his forehead and said gently, “Be assured and rest easy now. I will go and bring your daughter here and see that she is made comfortable. Here are food and shelter for you both, and you are most heartily welcome to it and to my best assistance.”

I found the daughter sitting on the sand before the fire, her wet garments already steaming from the heat. I told her that her father was as comfortable as it was possible to make him, and that she had better go to him and see if she could not get off some of her wet garments. In the mean time I would get some food warm for them both.

“For pity’s sake,” said she in a tremulous and vibrant voice, “let me have some water. We have been three days without water except what you gave us.”

Without waiting to reproach myself for not doing sooner what I should have known from personal experience was the thing to do, I ran to my boat and got a gourd full and held it for her to drink. I then went with her to the house and gave the old man a long drink.

The girl then said to me that on board there was a trunk containing her clothing, and that she would be glad if she could have it; that as there were several chests and trunks stowed under the deck forward, I would know hers by such and such marks and peculiarities. I went down and got the trunk, and moreover took out a chest and another trunk, which I put under the work-shed, bringing her trunk up to the house. I had afterward to be again called to get it open for her, as the key could not be turned by her slender fingers.

Getting out of my boat a pan of baked pork and beans, I proceeded to extemporize a hot soup by mashing up some of the beans and adding half of a pepperpod and some water, and setting the preparation on the fire to come to a boil. This made a good hot porridge soup, and did not take long in preparation. When it was ready I went up to the house with the kettle and knocked at the door; it was opened by the girl, her dress changed for a dry one and much of the distress seemingly gone from her pale, beautiful face.

“Here,” said I, “is some hot bean porridge for your father and you; and here are a couple of cocoanut-shells from which to eat it. I will take some for myself down at the shed.”

“But,” replied she, “we cannot drive you out of your house, sir; why do you not come here and eat with us?”

“Very well, if you like,” said I. “There will be some corn-bread also and plenty of water to drink.”

We ate heartily of the soup and bread, the old man taking only the soup.

I then brought up my hammock and swung it as low down as possible for the girl, and took back the mainsail, that had once formed a tent at Farm Cove, to use for my own bed at the shed. I explained as well as I could how she should sleep in the hammock, and gave her one of the blankets. She assured me she had often slept in a hammock and thought she could manage it. She was then about to explain how she and her father came to be adrift in the boat; but I stopped her by saying, “No, let us wait until to-morrow. You are both exhausted and need sleep and rest. You shall tell me all about it in the morning.” And then I wished them both good-night.

“Good-night, and God bless you, sir, for your kindness,” answered the girl.

When I reached the shed, built up a fire close by, and lay down it was after nine o’clock, and as the wind had gone down, and the rain was over, it was not so chilly as to make wet garments especially dangerous, though sufficiently disagreeable. However, rolled up in the sail with my feet to the fire, I soon felt warm enough to sleep. The rescue of the two people on the island seemed likely to prove at least a temporary hindrance to the execution of my plans; for I could not see how it was possible, for a few days at least, to leave the island, as the old man was in no condition to undertake such a voyage in an open boat, and probably would not survive it. Indeed, that the hardships which he had already undergone had not killed him was a sufficient matter for wonder. No, I could not leave these people now, and at present, for days and perhaps for weeks, it would be impracticable and cruel to attempt to carry him away either in my boat or his own. Doubtless, if I were to suggest departure, they would agree to it, and undertake the voyage; but I saw it would be little less than murder. However, if he should be no better in a week or two, then, provided he still retained his present vitality, it might be wise to attempt to get him where a physician could see him.

It was no use repining over this enforced delay. Humanity, and the commonest sense of duty to my fellows, demanded that I should stand by these helpless ones so long as they stood so absolutely in need of my aid. The food question, which had long since ceased to trouble me, might now, by reason of the increase in the number of mouths to fill, become something to require considerable exertion, planning, and thought. The weak spot in the larder was likely to be the supply of breadstuffs and vegetables. There would be no lack of pork and fish. Judging from the appearance of several boxes and gunny sacks on board the strangers’ boat, there was a supply of food there which might be relied upon to tide over any present necessity that might arise, though my own supply was still considerable.

Then too I must rig up as soon as possible in the house, perhaps by hanging a curtain which could be temporarily drawn at night, a place of privacy for the girl. At night the old man would require somebody to watch him more or less, or at least be near him. I could not expect his daughter to take this all upon herself, as that would be physically impossible. How to manage about this puzzled me considerably. For a short stay of a week or two I did not like to go to the considerable trouble of enlarging my house, and yet the requirements of the situation seemed actually to demand three separate rooms.

At last, as a compromise, I hit upon the idea of cutting down the back wall of the house, between the house proper and the lean-to addition wherein my provisions were stored, and which had been used upon occasion as a smoke house. The provisions could be stored if necessary on board the boats, or under the work-shed. And a wide doorway cut between the two compartments would, with a curtain dividing the larger one, give me the necessary room. I myself would take as my sleeping-place the added room, and by arranging a couple of bunks, the thing would be done.

CHAPTER XI.
ALICE AND HER FATHER.

THE next morning, when shortly after dawn I awoke from a sound, refreshing sleep, my clothes were dried upon me, the storm had passed, and there was promise of a calm, clear day. Raking together the few coals that remained, I soon had my fire burning brightly, and then went down to look at the two boats lying in the creek. The stranger I found had the name “Alice” painted on either bow. The “Alice” proved upon closer examination a much larger boat than the “Mohawk.” She was fully four feet longer, and much broader and deeper. A flush deck extended aft from the bows about one third of her whole length, and as in my own boat, was carried clear aft at each side of a well which was protected by an upright washboard. She was provided with an iron centre-board, hinged at the forward end on a pivot. A very considerable rise or sheer fore and aft indicated that she would be pretty safe in heavy weather and high seas. There was a good boat’s-compass swung in gimballs, and mounted near the after part of the well, where it would be in sight of the steersman, and an extinguished lantern lying near it, as though to be used when needed, for a binnacle light. The boat was very strongly built, and evidently intended as a sea-going craft. An oiled tarpaulin, buttoned over pins on the washboard, partly covered the well-hole forward, and evidently could be drawn over the whole opening in case of heavy seas.

Of course I was much interested in the examination of the boat, and in the minutest detail of her construction and condition, as I expected when I came to leave the island to use her instead of my own boat, an exchange of vessels greatly to my advantage. On the deck just forward of the foremast a water cask had been lashed. The two hollowed skids nailed to the deck were still there in place. There was a ringbolt let into the deck at each side originally, designed to take the cask lashings. One of these ringbolts was pulled through the deck and the water cask was gone. This condition told the story almost as plainly as words. A heavy sea had struck the port bow and coming on board had washed away the cask, tearing out the bolt. The tarpaulin had saved the vessel from filling.

I looked to the mooring-lines to see that both boats were secure, and then waded over the creek to a place above the willows, where there was a clear, bright-bottomed pool, sheltered from view and well adapted for the fresh-water bath which I needed. Here, too, was a gourd of soap, placed there on former occasions for the bath.

I was in the very midst of the soap-and-water refreshment when I saw on a log at the bank and among the leaves what I took for the head of a huge python or boa constrictor. A hideous head, thrust out toward me through the foliage, bright eyes gleaming like jewels, a wrinkled, pouchy throat,—the unmistakable reptilian characteristics,—caused a shiver of horror to pass through me for a moment. My first impulse was to fly and leave my clothing on the bank. Up to this time I had not seen a single snake, great or small, venomous or harmless, on the island. Backing and edging slowly away, I soon reached a point where I could plainly see that my terrible snake had feet, Ah! it was nothing more nor less than an iguana, a great, harmless species of lizard that loves to haunt the banks of the streams; not only harmless but edible, a delicate morsel for an epicure, hunted as zealously as the Marylanders seek for diamond-back terrapin.

Instantly from fancying myself the hunted I became the hunter. I had tasted iguana-stew at Martinique, and had a distinct recollection of the delicate white meat, with a flavor apparently compounded of those of spring chicken, green turtle, and frogs’ legs.

The reptile remained perfectly motionless, with the exception of a sort of regular waving of the folds of the pouched throat. I quietly lowered myself into the water and went a few rods down stream to the boats, where I got a strong cord and a stout ten-foot cane pole. I made a running noose in the cord and hung it upon the pole. With this apparatus I returned and found the lizard still pumping slowly away with his throat, in precisely the same place and attitude. Slowly and cautiously I waded up at one side, until I was distant the length of the pole, and then by infinite degrees advanced the noose, watching the pumping in the wrinkled throat, until the loop was fairly over the head, but of course without touching the reptile.

Just then the pumping action abruptly stopped. But I did not wait for him to be off. On the contrary, I hauled aft on my line like lightning, the noose closed around the ugly neck and jerked a fifty-pound iguana splashing into the creek. As I had no mind to feel his sharp claws, I drove the end of the pole into his mouth and thus between cord and pole held him firmly in the water. He swam like a fish, but he was too securely caught to get away. I dragged him up to the bank where my clothing lay, and getting hold of my knife dispatched him; then I hurriedly clothed myself and cleaned the iguana, taking off the skin and cutting him up ready for the pot. And in fifteen minutes a good portion of him was in my iron kettle and on the fire.

Though snaring big lizards is not perhaps within the strict limits of what may properly be called true sport, still I must say that for real excitement, eager earnestness of pursuit, and genuine pleasure at the capture, I have never experienced before nor since anything approaching the hunter’s joy excited by this morning’s pot hunt for an iguana.