W. L. Alden

“ Crusoe, for he didn’t understand that by saying what I did I meant to say that his grandfather didn’t tell the truth about his great feat with two guns and a goat-skin umbrella. For you can’t make me believe that any man could carry a gun on each shoulder, and at the same time carry an umbrella in both hands, weighing about as much as a spare top-gallant mast, and spreading as much surface to the wind as a main-royal. ”

“ I answered; “you wear shoes.”
“Friday, now steady yourself and don’t be frightened. Be calm, like me. That footprint, Friday, was made by a woman’s shoe.”
“Then there was a woman in it,” I exclaimed. “Shoes don’t walk around by themselves, that ever I heard of.”
“Don’t talk rubbish,” cried Mr. Crusoe, getting angry. “There couldn’t be a woman here—at least a white woman; such a thing was never heard of. No; that shoe was worn by a cannibal, and I feel perfectly sure that the cannibals come to this island and have their horrid feasts here.” ”

“ Mr. Crusoe was not a very modest man. In fact, he thought he knew everything, and he tried to tell me how the canoe ought to be rigged. I couldn’t keep him from talking, but I went ahead all the same and rigged the boat as she ought to have been rigged: with a leg-of-mutton sail forward and a jigger aft, just big enough to jam her on a wind. Mr. Crusoe wanted very much to have her fitted with a rudder, because his grandfather fitted a canoe with a rudder, though I knew just as well as if I had seen his canoe that no rudder ever made her steer. ”

“ I didn’t mean to abandon him for good and all, but I expected to fall in with a ship, and then the captain would steer for the island and take Mr. Crusoe off. He could live for a while very comfortably by himself, for that was what his grandfather did before he engaged Friday to live with him. The more I thought of escaping alone, the more I liked the idea. I had given Mr. Crusoe every chance to come with me, and I was even ready to carry him off against his will, but when a man is as obstinate as he was, what can you do? ”

“ But one day he tried to tell me what a ship was like. He called it a “big canoe,” and I never heard any man talk such nonsense as he did when he described how a ship is rigged. I really couldn’t stand it, so I said, “You no talkee sense. Gimme rest; you makee me tired,” and I got up and left him. After that he didn’t talk to me any more about ships.
Another thing that bothered me was that Mr. Crusoe would make me tell him all sorts of yarns about my country. He didn’t mean America, nor yet Ireland, but some heathen country not far from our island, where he maintained that I used to live. ”

“ Then I remembered what he had told me about the way in which his grandfather had introduced himself to Friday by shooting a cannibal who was hungry, and was chasing Friday so as to catch him and put him on the coals.
When I came where Mr. Crusoe was he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good fellow! poor fellow! your enemies are killed and you are safe now.” He couldn’t have been kinder if I had been a dog; and when he took me by the hand and led me back to the house, and made me lie down and drink another cup of coffee, I was pretty well satisfied to be Friday. ”

“ I was going to set the ensign as a signal of distress, so that some vessel can see it, and come and take us off.”
“That’s just as bad,” said Mr. Crusoe. “You are getting tired of this place, and want to get away from me. You’re an ungrateful boy. There’s hardly another boy living who wouldn’t be glad to be shipwrecked on Robinson Crusoe’s own island, and yet you can’t appreciate it, and want to get away.”
“But, Mr. Crusoe,” I said, “we must get away from here some time, you know, and we never will unless some ship comes and takes us off.” ”

“ Crusoe became very much discouraged about his crockery, and I am sure that he was awfully sorry that he had broken it all up. When he thought how comfortable he used to be with good clothes to wear and nice crockery, it stands to reason that he must have wished that he hadn’t been so foolish as to destroy them all. But he wasn’t the kind of man to admit anything of the kind. All he did was to undress and go to bed, and have me bring his meals to him. He said he was sick, and perhaps he thought he was, but it is my opinion that he stayed in bed because he was sick of wearing goat-skin clothes. ”

“ I never saw a woman that was dangerous yet, except my uncle Peter’s wife, and she wasn’t dangerous unless she had a poker or a rolling-pin in her hand, and there wasn’t a poker or a rolling-pin on the whole island for any woman to lay hold of.
Mr. Crusoe said that one woman wasn’t generally so very dangerous, but that if the woman was a cannibal, and had a gang of other cannibals with her, all armed with war clubs and wooden swords, and awfully hungry, we were liable to be attacked any minute, and killed and roasted. ”

“ Mr. Crusoe was sick so long that I had to give up watching him all night; so I used to give him a double dose of medicine at bedtime, and then let him sleep the rest of the night. In spite of all my care, he didn’t seem to get any better. He was crazy all the time, and never seemed to notice that I was taking care of him. But I felt sure that the right medicine must be in that medicine-chest, and that if I stuck to it long enough I would find it. I was a little afraid, however, that he would starve to death, for he wouldn’t eat a thing except canned peaches and canned lobster. ”

“ They were the very worst kind of cannibals. It’s bad enough for a man to be a cannibal and to eat his fellow-man, but when he deliberately washes him down with baked beans and fresh peaches it shows a cold-blooded deliberation that is unspeakably revolting. Never let me hear you trying to defend cannibals again, or I shall think that you have not yet got over your hankering after forbidden meat. I recollect that it was some time before my grandfather could get his man Friday to see the wickedness of cannibalism. ”

“ Crusoe, “I can’t really say they are.”
39“Then,” said I, “you see we haven’t found the kind of stakes that your grandfather used, for if we had they’d have sprouted months ago.”
“That’s so,” said Mr. Crusoe, in a gloomy sort of way.
“Then we might as well give up building a fence. We’ve got a house now that nobody can get into, and what we want to do is to cut down the trees and bushes around the house, so that the hannibals can’t hide in them and shoot at us,” I said.
“Cannibals, boy; not hannibals,” exclaimed Mr. Crusoe. ”

“ So I said, “Mr. Crusoe, we are perfectly certain to be killed and eaten if we fire at the cannibals now.”
“Why so?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, “now that I remember it, I forgot to put any bullets in the guns, and we have nothing to defend ourselves with except the two Remington rifles and the pistols.”
He looked awfully angry, and said that he believed that I had done it on purpose, and that I still had a hankering for human flesh, and wanted to join the cannibals. But I didn’t pay any attention to what he said, and told him that we ought to go back to the house and finish loading our guns. ”

“ All around the place there were scattered empty tin cans and pieces of broken china. I picked up some of the cans and showed them to Mr. Crusoe. One was labelled “Boston Baked Beans,” and another “Fresh Peaches,” and another “Oxtail Soup.”
Mr. Crusoe looked as if he was going to faint away. “Now,” he said, “perhaps you will believe that the cannibals have been here. This is the very spot where they held their horrible feasts. The sight of that loathsome can of baked beans turns my stomach. If the wretches come here again we must kill every one of them. It will be a noble deed. ”

“ I had knocked up a bunk, that stood about a foot from the ground inside of the tent, to sleep in; but Mr. Crusoe wouldn’t sleep in a bunk, but slept on a mattress, with nothing between it and the ground but a half-inch plank. He had given up his notion that he mustn’t sleep on a mattress, but I suppose he bargained with his conscience by not sleeping in a bunk.
Soon after sunset the wind began to blow from the southward, and by the time we turned in, which was generally about half-past seven, because we had nothing to do after supper, there was a pretty stiff breeze. ”

“ Monroe learned how to handle the boat very quickly, and we used to take watch and watch; that is, he would steer for about four hours, and then he would take a rest for four 146hours. I never had a better time than I had in that canoe. We had plenty to eat, just work enough to keep us busy, and a good seaworthy boat under us. If I could have got rid of my goat-skin clothes I should have been perfectly happy; but when those clothes got wet, as they did almost every day, they were as stiff as planks, and felt as if they were full of sharp nails. ”

“ Things were pretty damp in our house, but there was not much of anything that was really spoiled. The guns and all the iron tools were rusted, and the mattresses and blankets were soaking, but a little bright sunshine made them all right. Mr. Crusoe’s cave had caved in again, and was now spoiled for good; but as we did not intend to live in the house any longer, Mr. Crusoe didn’t take much interest in the cave. He said that we would live in our country-house, and keep the first house for a fort and a place to sleep in now and then. ”

“ Mr. Crusoe had been sick eighteen days, when one afternoon, about four o’clock, I saw a sail. She was a brig, and was just hull down on the horizon and standing to the northward. I hurried up to the top of the hill and lighted my bonfire so that she could see the smoke of it. I had kept a tin can full of kerosene in the middle of the bonfire, so that it would blaze nicely whenever the kerosene caught fire, as it was sure to do almost as soon as the bonfire was lighted. ”

“ Spaniards are all very well in their own country, I suppose, but they are the most useless kind of sailors. Indeed, you can’t make sailors of them if you try your very best. I tried to tell Mr. Crusoe that if we filled the island up with a lot of Spaniards they would eat up all the provisions, and then grumble for more, but he wouldn’t listen to me.
We had plenty of wood for the timbers and planking of a large boat, and we two together could have built it in a short time, but that wouldn’t suit Mr. Crusoe. He said we must cut down a big tree and hollow it out, so as to make a canoe. ”

“ I don’t believe in looking too far ahead, and a good night’s sleep, with no turning out to come on deck in the middle of the night, and with a good breakfast waiting for you, and nobody to set you at work, is a good enough prospect for me. So I rolled myself up in my blanket, with a good soft mattress under me, and a real feather pillow under my head, and was asleep inside of five minutes. ”

“ As the weather looked settled, we agreed to take the next day for building a house instead of going to the wreck. Mr. Crusoe went to the hill on the north end of the island, and found the place where his grandfather used to live. It was a little level spot at the foot of the hill, where the rock rose up straight for about twenty feet.
“We’ll pitch a tent right against the rock,” said he, “and we’ll surround it with a fence made by driving stakes into the ground close together, and then we’ll dig a cave in the rock so as to have a cellar.” ”

“ I put two more barrels of flour, a barrel of beef, and a barrel of pork in the middle of the raft, and piled up a hundred tin cans of preserved meat and vegetables around them. Then I got some pots and pans from the galley, and some China plates and cups, and some knives and forks, from the steward’s pantry, for now that I had got out of the forecastle, I meant to live like a gentleman. I took all the captain’s clothes, and wanted to get the clothes belonging to the men, but I could not get at the chests because the forecastle was full of water. ”

“ It was warm weather, but that didn’t prevent Mr. Crusoe from loading himself and me with about a thousand pounds of luggage. He carried in a belt around his waist a sword, a saw, a hatchet, and two revolvers. Then he lashed on his shoulders a basket holding two blankets and a lot of provisions, and he carried a shot-gun on one shoulder and a rifle on the other. He made me carry another load just like his own, and he grumbled because he did not have an umbrella to keep the sun off.
We started early in the morning to climb the big hill, at the foot of which we built our first house. ”

“ He laid all the guns side by side, and told me that as soon as we had fired them all we would rush out with our pistols and kill all the cannibals that might be left alive.
“I will shoot at the men on the right-hand side of the fire,” said Mr. Crusoe, “and you, Friday, will shoot at those on the left. We must be sure and kill every man we aim at, and we must treat the women just like the men, for they are just as strong and blood-thirsty. ”

“ He said that sand was about the same thing as glass, and that we could melt sand and pour it into moulds, and have elegant glass dishes. But he could never get his fire hot enough to melt the sand. Besides, I knew very well that sand wasn’t glass, for there never were broken windows and tumblers enough in the whole world to make as much sand as there was on the island.
We had rather hard work to get along with no crockery except tin cans. We could use them well enough for cups and things to hold soup, but we couldn’t cut up meat on the bottom of a tin can as if it was a plate. ”

“ Crusoe would sigh, and say that if we only had a boat we would set sail and find the Spaniards, and bring them to the island. Once he said, “We had better make a canoe, Friday, and have it all ready, so that when your father comes we can send him in it to bring the Spaniards here.”
I was so astonished to hear him say that my father was coming that I almost spoke English to him; but I recollected in time that I was Friday, so I only said, “What you meanee?”
“Your father, my poor Friday,” he answered, “is a very old savage, and he has been captured by the enemy. ”

“ I don’t think that three or four cocoa-nuts would hurt anybody, but you can’t eat many more at one time without running the risk of being twisted all up into a Turk’s-head knot.
Mr. Crusoe insisted that we must build a country-house in the valley. I had had about enough of building houses, and I told him so, but it didn’t make any impression on him. His grandfather had a country-house in that very valley, and so we must have one. I suppose if his grandfather had happened to have a broken leg anywhere on the island, we should have had to break one of our legs in the same place. ”

“ Crusoe,” said I, “it isn’t wrong to eat baked beans, that ever I heard of. A man who eats baked beans isn’t a cannibal, for I was shipmates once with a chap from Boston, and he told me that nobody in Boston ever had anything to eat except baked beans. And I know the Boston 102people are not cannibals, for the M’Intyres used to live there, and they are as decent people as ever lived.”
“Can’t a Frenchman or a Spaniard eat baked beans?” asked Mr. Crusoe. “And when they do eat baked beans, is that any proof that they are not Frenchmen or Spaniards?” ”

“ I think that if a man is cast away all alone it is his duty to set an example to other people that may be cast away after him, instead of doing the wrong thing every chance he gets.
60Mr. Crusoe wasn’t satisfied with what he had done in making clothes. He said that we must have goat-skin umbrellas, and carry them over our heads to keep the sun off. I took the liberty of telling him that since he was a landsman it was all right for him to carry an umbrella, but that it would be a disgrace to a sailor to carry one, so he agreed to let me live without an umbrella. ”

“ Crusoe would insist on instructing me, as he called it. He would make me 68sit down by him and listen while he told me that there was more of the world than the island where we were, and there were great nations of white people who built ships and railroads and all sorts of things; just as if I didn’t know all about it a great deal better than he did, who had never been on board a ship but once. However, I had to listen respectfully, and I used to remember that, after all, it was easier to sit still and let a man talk than it was to work hard either afloat or ashore. ”

“ With a half deck fore and aft, a good mast and sail, and a steering-oar, she would be fit to cross the Pacific Ocean with a dozen people in her.
After dinner, when, as a rule, a man is more reasonable than at other times, I took Mr. Crusoe to the beach and 80showed him the boat. Do you think he was pleased? Not much. He said I had no right to launch the boat; that his grandfather’s memory was insulted by it, and that it was our duty to leave the canoe to rot on shore, and to make a smaller one that we could launch easily. ”