Chapter XVII: Strange Life on the Beautiful Island

Tom Talisker knew nothing for some time after this of the terrible tragedy that had taken place on the island. The place had once been a small penal settlement for political prisoners from Ecuador, the governor himself a suspect; but the men had revolted and slain both him and his family, and escaping on a raft or boat had gone no one knew whither, though in all probability to the bottom of the sea.

Such things as men landing from a passing ship, to rob and mayhap murder a few inhabitants of a lonely island, have happened many times and oft, and might happen again, Tom thought. He was determined, therefore, to be prepared. So he built a little outlook, well screened with trees, on the top of one of the highest hills, and here he or Brandy could go every morning to reconnoitre, with the aid of the telescope they had brought with them. They could from this vantage ground see passing ships, and if possible signal to them by smoke or otherwise; but if men came on shore who looked like cut-throats, it would be easy for them to hide in the forest.

The finding of the skeletons and their burial in the orange grove did not tend to raise the spirits of our hero; but as to Ginger Brandy, nothing on earth was calculated to depress that boy long. More than once next day, while they were busily engaged building their new hut not far from the ruins of the old settlement, though nearer to the orange grove, Brandy told Tom he was glad they had been cast away here, and that for his part he would be sorry if any ship found them and brought them away.

The building of the new villa, as they called it, was a work of time as well as art. First and foremost they had to transport all their stores to a tent of bamboo and plaintain leaves which they erected near the old settlement. This necessitated a great many journeys back and fore to the coast; and when night came at last, and they could no longer work, both were so tired that they fell sound asleep after supper, and did not awake until well into the morning.

Some cattle were browsing near, but they fled in wild alarm as soon as they saw human beings. One immense red-eyed fierce-looking bull at first showed fight, but finally retreated slowly towards the other end of the plain, growling ominously as he did so, and giving Tom clearly to understand that his presence here was an intrusion that he should one day resent. This bull had evidently been monarch of all he surveyed before Tom’s arrival, and now to be deposed was hard indeed to bear.

But how labour lightens the mind. Both Tom and his dusky companion were singing and laughing all day long as they worked away at the building of the villa.

It really was no child’s play, however, which they had taken in hand. All the uprights and transverse beams, the couples, &c., had to be made of trees cut down in the woods, and borne on the shoulders to the site they had chosen. Here they had to be deprived of their bark, for Tom knew better than leave any shelter in his house for venomous creepie-creepies. While he would be engaged at this bark-stripping Brandy would be busy cooking the one great meal of the day, namely, supper, which they discussed together by the camp fire and under the stars.

It took them three whole weeks to complete the building of the house, but when it was at last finished they had good cause indeed to be proud of their handiwork. It was certainly of no great size, nor was it of very showy pretentions. The couples that supported the grass roof came right down to the ground, as they had no iron nails big enough to affix it to the top of the plank walls. A couple of axes, a good saw, some hammers and chisels, were all the tools they possessed, and the nails had to be made of hard wood, the holes to receive them being bored by means of a piece of red-hot iron.

All their energies and all their ingenuity too was therefore taxed to make a complete job of this rustic dwelling.

“I tell you what it is, Brandy,” Tom said one day, “I thank my stars I had such a clever uncle when a boy. Our hermitage in the woods was built something in this fashion, and Uncle Robert taught me how to use not only the woodman’s axe and the carpenter’s saw, but the plasterer’s trowel as well.”

“Yes, sah,” replied Brandy; “and you mus’ tellee me mo’ ’bout dat same uncle after dinner, sah.”

That after-dinner hour or two by the camp fire was the most delightful of the whole twenty-four. Tom was the story-teller, and his powers of invention were so great that he never once found himself short of material for a good spicy tale of sea and land. All his adventures here and there, in many lands and round the world, were related to his companion with a hundred different verbal embellishments; and Brandy made a most excellent listener.

But Brandy himself had an accomplishment: he could sing. His voice was a sweet contralto; and, strange as it may seem, he always sung in good English, though we know he could not talk the language well. Tom taught him a great many songs he had never known before. So, what with story-telling and singing, the long dark evenings passed quickly enough away, and once they laid their heads down on their grass pillows they knew no more about the world until the sun rose once again.

Brandy was always first up, and Tom’s breakfast was waiting for him by the time he had come back from the lake, where he used to have his morning swim, much to the consternation of the half-wild ducks that floated there, and built their nests among the sedges.

When the hut was built it was plastered inside and out with a blackish clay, which finally grew as hard as cement. Then some rude seats were made, and a rough table, while all around the house a garden was trenched and inclosed with a plantation fence. All kinds of vegetables were planted or sown in this garden, and flowers from the woods and the valley planted in beds and borders, with climbing ones along the fence; but not along the walls. Tom knew better than that, for during their work in the woods he had come across some very awful-looking spiders, and other ugly crawling things that he wished to keep at as safe a distance as possible.

If Brandy was enamoured of his wild and lonely life, so was Black Tom, the cat. He was seldom at home from sunrise till sunset; but invariably put in an appearance at dinner-time, and kept up the old sea custom of sleeping in his master’s arms every night. Tom had come to love this honest cat so much, that he even doubted whether he would not as soon have lost Brandy himself as puss. If he happened to be half an hour late of an evening his master would even put dinner back till he came.

Black Tom one day proved himself a friend in need in a very remarkable manner.

All unconscious of danger Tom Talisker was coming singing to himself, gun on shoulder, across the plain, when out from the woods rushed that fiery-eyed bull. He was close on Tom before he knew what was about to happen. His rifle was unloaded. Instinct caused him to run, and he did his best while doing so to get a cartridge in.

On rushes the maddened brute, with tail erect and awful horned head at the charge. It seems as if nothing can save Tom. The cartridge will neither go in nor come out from where it has stuck. But at that moment something rushes past Tom which at first he can hardly see. It is his feline friend, and he springs at once on the bull’s head with a yell of anger and claws at his eyes. This is more than the bull has bargained for. He pauses and tosses his head wildly in the air, but the cat keeps firm hold.

At last the cartridge goes home, and Tom advances now. But where to fire is the difficulty. His aim must be a steady one, else he may kill his little protector.

Bang! at last, and the bull drops. Dead? Yes, dead; for the bullet has entered behind and below the ear, torn through the carotid artery, and lodged in the brain itself.

The cat comes singing up now and rubs himself against his master’s knee, and the two walk home together.

The very next day another huge black bull was seen to quietly possess himself of the dead monarch’s flock. Where he had come from Tom could not even guess, but the probability is he had been condemned to a life in the woods during his predecessor’s reign.

“Do cats go to heaben w’en dey dies, sah?” asked Brandy one evening as the three friends lounged near the camp fire.

“What makes you speak so, Brandy?”

“‘Cause, sah, I ’spects dat cat is one angel, sah. I ’spects some day he talk.”

“Well, I shouldn’t wonder a great deal. Indeed, I would not wonder at anything that happened in this strange island.”

It may be as well mentioned that never an evening did Tom lie down without reading a portion of the Bible that his mother had given him, and praying a simple but earnest little prayer for their own safety during the silent watches of the night, and for those who were far, far away in their homes beyond the sea.

No work was ever done on Sunday, and no stories told except those of Bible lands or the sweet old story of our salvation, which the negro boy was never tired listening to.

One evening, about three months after they had landed on the island, a terrible storm swept over it. The lightning seemed to set the very woods on fire, and to run along the ground in the awful rain. Next day the inland lake was a little sea, and acres of the forest had been levelled to the ground by the force of the gale.

When Brandy went out in the morning to prepare breakfast, a sorrowful lad was he; for the rain had completely drowned out the fire, and there were no matches.

He was not to be beaten, however; and so set to work to make fire in the usual way adopted by savages--piercing a hole in a piece of soft plank and twirling a pointed piece of very hard dry wood. It took him nearly an hour, however, to accomplish the feat.

Two months passed away, making five months in all since the foundering of the _’Liza Ann_, but all that time they had never seen a passing ship. True, they spent only a part of the day at the outlook; but the view was so extensive that had a vessel been anywhere within a radius of twenty miles or more they would have discried it.

All the food, consisting chiefly of biscuits and tinned meats which they had taken from the ship, had long since been finished; but this was a small matter so long as their ammunition held out. Of this, however, Tom was now unusually careful; and for ordinary purposes of hunting they used bows and arrows, and soon became very accomplished marksmen indeed.

They also paid frequent visits to the sea-shore, and, embarking in their dinghy, caught fish. As to fruit and vegetables, these were abundant; so that on the whole they wanted for nothing.

Salt, by the way, was at first wanting, till Tom thought of the old-fashioned plan of placing seawater in shallows or rocks. When it evaporated it left a crust of saline matter, and this had to do duty as a relish.

And now with constant hard work in the forest their clothes began to get somewhat ragged, and also their shoes; so Tom had to learn two new trades, those of shoemaker--or rather cobbler--and tailor. As for Ginger Brandy, he dispensed entirely with the use of shoes, and almost entirely with clothes even. He told Tom that he was not afraid of the sun spoiling _his_ complexion.

“But, O marster,” he added, “_you_ is getting redder ebery day. Bymeby you turn brown, den black, and den dere will be two niggah boys. Aha! Your ole moder won’t know you, sah, when you goes home.”

“Home, Brandy!” said Tom with a sigh. “Heigh-ho! I begin to think we will never, never see home any more.”

Yes, Tom had sighed. It was the first sigh for liberty; for albeit the wild free life the two Crusoes led now was very enjoyable, there were times when, do as he might, he could not prevent thoughts of home from crowding into his mind.

But he could not help thinking also how happy he was to have such a faithful companion as Ginger Brandy. To be quite alone on such an island as this at night and all the livelong day would, he thought, have driven him out of his mind.

The silence was irksome by day, although then there were the songs of birds and the loud hum of insect life; but at night hardly a hush was to be heard, except now and then a strange eerie cry in the forest that only served to make the solitude feel more deep and awful.

They were several miles inland, and yet every night the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks fell distinctly on their ears, and all night long till sunrise awakened once more the voices of the woods and glens.

There grew a tree with a tall, slim, even stem not far from the hut, and every Saturday afternoon Tom cut a notch thereon, and thus kept count of time. One day he reckoned these up. There were thirty-eight in all! He started. He could hardly believe it. But it was true nevertheless. They had been over eight long months on the island!

And the time had gone quickly enough by. Tom could not say he was unhappy. There was something in the very air they breathed which had seemed to brew contentment, and make the days fly quickly past.

Birds and beasts too became very tame. Wild ducks even came in flocks to the water’s edge to be fed, and the new bull was such a gentlemanly fellow that he used to lead his cows towards the hut to be milked. The mocking-birds would sit on the fence at sundown and sing low and sweetly till darkness fell, and moon or stars shone out.

But I have something still more wonderful to relate. Those elephantic tortoises that came almost every day to look for their favourite food in the valley--a species of sweet and esculent cactus--grew so tame at last that they no longer drew in their necks or even hissed when Tom or Brandy approached, which they never did without an armful of something for them to eat.

They had their regular beaten tracks to or from the high plateau where the Crusoes lived. When upon these they turned neither to the right hand nor to the left, but went steadily though slowly on to their journey’s end.

Well, Brandy and Tom soon fell upon a plan to take advantage of this. If they wanted to go towards the beach they would turn a monster in that direction on his beaten pathway, then mount his back and be hauled away. If the monsters they squatted on felt disinclined to move, they had only to strike two on the shell and off they waddled.

This was glorious fun, and only had one drawback--the tortoises seldom moved at a quicker pace than two miles an hour; but as time was no object to either Tom or Brandy, it did not make much difference in the long run. They were always good to their strange steeds and never attempted to ride back to the valley, and it is to be hoped the tortoises appreciated their goodness.