The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn Part 9

The new bows and arrows being at length ready, Billy and I started for Cliff Island on a certain morning, for the purpose of presenting the weapons to their prospective owners. Upon our arrival we were received by the natives with their accustomed cordiality, and I at once handed over our gift to Bowata, the chief, who was profuse in his expressions of grat.i.tude. I had by this time acquired a sufficient grasp of their very simple language to enable me to make a pretty shrewd guess at their meaning when they spoke to me, and also to make myself fairly well understood by them, and I gathered from Bowata that the gift was singularly opportune, inasmuch as that the apes had of late, for some inexplicable reason, been unusually pertinacious in their raids upon the island; but that, thanks to my original gift, their attacks had been successfully withstood without loss of life on the part of the natives, the invading apes having all been slain before it was possible for them to effect a landing. The little fellow was immensely proud of those achievements--as indeed he might well be, considering that before the bow-and-arrow era every raid by the apes had resulted in the death of one or two natives and the more or less serious maiming of others; and so proud was he of the skill which he and his people had developed that he must needs set up a target, there and then, that I might witness a display of that skill. It now became apparent that Bowata was by no means devoid of shrewdness, for not only had he personally practised a.s.siduously at the target, but he had insisted that the petty chiefs who had been entrusted with bows should do the same; and, not content with that, he had chosen some two dozen other men, all of whom he had personally trained; so that when I turned up with my gift he had already about thirty men, every one of them a quite fairly expert bowman. I could not forbear a smile at this intelligence, imparted with the most perfect naivete, for it almost appeared as though the man had divined my intention to make this second gift.

And now occurred a rather remarkable coincidence; for while the display of native skill was in full swing the trumpets were sounded, giving warning of another approaching raid. The apes, it appeared, were heading for a point about half a mile to the westward of the spot where we were a.s.sembled, and toward that spot the archers, twenty in number, including those who had been entrusted with the new bows, set off at top speed, followed by their unarmed comrades, who merely delayed long enough to collect such blocks of coral and rock of suitable size as happened to be in their way. As for me, I announced my intention to attack the brutes from the boat, if I should be in time to intercept them; but Bowata delayed his departure long enough to beg me to allow him and his men to deal, unaided, with the enemy, as every victory gained by his people increased their confidence in themselves. But, he added, if any of the apes should escape and attempt to swim back to their own island, I should be rendering good service by destroying them on the way. The sound common sense of both these contentions I instantly recognised.

Keeping well off-sh.o.r.e, that we might be safely out of range of stray arrows, Billy and I arrived, in the boat, off the scene of the impending struggle, while the leading ape was still a good three hundred yards from the beach, and I was glad to see that the blacks were keeping cool and withholding their fire, instead of wasting their arrows by discharging them prematurely. The apes were swimming easily, and keeping so well together that it was only with difficulty I was able to count them. Billy and I were agreed that they totalled sixteen, which, if I had understood Bowata aright, was far and away the most formidable number that had ever been encountered; and I looked to our rifles and edged the boat in a little nearer the sh.o.r.e, to be ready for possible eventualities; then, as the first arrow was discharged, I brought the boat to the wind and hove her to.

That first shot was a miss; but the second shot scored, for I saw the leading ape shake his head angrily, and go through the motion of plucking an arrow from his neck; he swam a few yards farther, however; then he suddenly flung up his arms and rolled over in the water, motionless.

I was glad to see that the natives had a.s.similated the advice I had endeavoured, somewhat laboriously, to impart to them, to shoot singly at a selected mark, thus economising arrows, and promoting good shooting.

They were adopting those tactics now, and the soundness of them was demonstrated by the fact that no less than five of the apes were put _hors de combat_ before the feet of any of them touched bottom and they started to wade ash.o.r.e. Then, indeed, as some half-dozen of the huge creatures upreared themselves simultaneously, revealing the whole of their bodies above the hips, the blacks betrayed signs of panic, a whole flight of arrows greeting the brutes. But if that indiscriminate discharge was indeed the result of panic it was nevertheless thoroughly effective, for every one of the monsters went down, either dead or too desperately wounded to be capable of further effort. The fate of their comrades, however, seemed in no wise to dismay or act as a deterrent to the survivors, who, five in number, pressed resolutely on and, finding bottom, rose in quick succession to their feet and proceeded to scramble ash.o.r.e, actually pa.s.sing between the bodies of their dead and dying companions, and noticing them only to thrust them roughly aside in their eagerness to get to grips with their enemies. But the latter were quite ready for them. The success of Bowata and his fellow archers, thus far, had inspired them with such confidence in themselves and their weapons that I believe not a man of them would have turned tail so long as a single arrow remained to them, and as the surviving apes advanced they were met by such a withering flight of arrows that not one of them lived actually to emerge from the water; and then, with yells of triumph, the victors rushed into the water and gave the _coup de grace_ to such of the apes as betrayed any signs of lingering life.

"Let draw the fore-sheet, Billy," said I. "We must go ash.o.r.e and congratulate our friends upon their victory."

As the boat grounded on the beach I saw that several of the natives were still in the water, busily engaged in retrieving arrows from the bodies of their victims; but I had a shrewd suspicion that many of the arrows shot had been hopelessly lost; and the suspicion suggested an idea upon which I acted later on. But for the moment my attention was fully occupied by Bowata and his people, who crowded round us, all talking at once, some of them excitedly relating particular incidents of the adventure, while others were striving to express their grat.i.tude to me for putting into their hands the means to defend themselves successfully against the most formidable raid that had ever been attempted by the apes.

On our way back to Eden I gave some consideration to the idea referred to above. It was this. Long as we had been on the group without sighting so much as the most distant glimpse of a sail, the hope was ever present that the day would eventually dawn when we should be rescued from our imprisonment, mild and even agreeable as it was in some respects; and when that day should arrive, what would happen to Bowata and his people? Who would continue to supply them with weapons of defence against their ferocious enemies? It was obvious that, from the moment of our departure from the group, they would be left entirely to their own resources; and to me it seemed that it would be only humane, if not my actual duty, to supply the means whereby it might be possible for them to replenish for themselves their supply of bows and arrows.

Now, how was this to be done? I could see nothing for it but to provide them with something in the nature of a boat wherein to navigate the channels, then to show Bowata where the wood for the bows and the shafts for the arrows could be obtained, and finally teach him and his people how to make bows and arrows for themselves. I fully realised that to present the savages with a boat might be a proceeding not altogether devoid of danger; for savages--even such apparently harmless savages as our neighbours--were apt to develop treacherous tendencies, and, once provided with a boat, it would be difficult to prevent them visiting our own particular island of Eden, when, if any of our possessions should chance to excite their cupidity, who could say what might happen? There was, of course, a way whereby this danger might be reduced to a minimum, and that was by so reducing the dimensions of the boat that she should be incapable of carrying more than two men at a time; and this I determined to do. As to material, there was plenty of such as I required to be obtained from the wreck, for I meant the boat to be of the simplest construction, being, in fact, nothing more than a miniature flat-bottomed Thames punt, to be propelled by a pair of paddles.

Having settled this matter to my satisfaction, I explained my intention to Billy that evening, as we sat together under the veranda discussing the events of the day by the light of a glorious full moon, with Kit sprawling as usual at my feet. My intention was to start next day with Billy for a trip to the wreck, where I proposed to remain until I had constructed the punt, which, I believed, could be done in something less than a week.

Starting immediately after breakfast, taking with us the carpenter's tool-chest, an ample supply of fruit and food, and of course Kit--who could not possibly be permitted to roam Eden at large and be deprived of our company for a whole week--the voyage was accomplished without incident, and we arrived at the wreck early in the afternoon. We found the old craft in every respect just as we had left her, excepting that her cabins, having been securely closed during our absence, were distinctly stuffy. This was soon remedied, however, by throwing back the companion slide and opening the skylight and all the scuttles, after which we filled in the remainder of the afternoon in making up the beds in the state-rooms and preparing generally for our week's sojourn. When all was done an hour or two of daylight still remained, which I utilised by preparing a sketch of my proposed punt. She was to be five feet long on her bottom, with a rising floor two feet long at each end, making her nine feet long over all, with a beam of four feet, and sufficient freeboard to enable her to carry two men safely in the tranquil waters of the inner channels. Being flat-bottomed, flat-sided, and square- ended, she was an easy model to build; there were no planks to be bent, and as the wreck afforded abundant material, and as we did not aim at such refinement of finish as was included in a coat of paint, we completed our task during the afternoon of the fifth day, even to putting her over the side into the water to "take up."

Leaving the wreck immediately after breakfast the next morning, with the punt in tow, we arrived at our anchorage in Eden Cove about half an hour before sunset, almost the whole of the pa.s.sage being a beat to windward, while the towage of the punt further r.e.t.a.r.ded our progress. We, however, found everything just as we had left it; and, although I think we enjoyed the little change involved in living on the wreck, we were glad to find ourselves once more "at home", particularly Kit, whose rambles had been restricted to the deck of the s.h.i.+p, and who displayed his delight at returning to the wider s.p.a.ces of Eden by starting off at full gallop the moment his pads touched the sand, rus.h.i.+ng out of sight and appearing no more until we reached the house, where we discovered the beggar squatted on the top steps of the veranda awaiting our arrival.

On the following morning, after breakfast, Billy and I got the boat under way and, with the punt in tow, sailed for Cliff Island. Running the boat in on the beach, we were quickly joined by Bowata, who informed us that four days earlier the apes, to the number of nine, had attempted another raid which, he proudly added, had been successfully repulsed, but at the expense of many lost arrows; and he hinted pretty broadly that a further gift of those very useful missiles would be highly appreciated. Whereupon I informed him that I intended to do even better than continue to furnish him and his people with bows and arrows--I was going to present them with means whereby they might procure the materials wherewith to make for themselves as many of those weapons as they pleased; and therewith I led him down to the beach and directed his attention to the punt.

Bowata looked at the craft and grunted his approval of her; but it was evident that he had not the remotest notion of how she was to be the means of providing him with bows and arrows; so, casting off her painter, Billy and I stepped into her and, paddling along close to the beach, showed the savage in a very practical manner how to handle her.

Next, landing Billy and taking Bowata into the punt with me, I handed him a paddle, and, first directing his attention to the manner in which I manipulated my own, invited him to try his hand. He proved an apt pupil, and within the hour was able to manoeuvre the punt single-handed.

Then, beaching the punt and securing her to a stake firmly driven into the beach, I invited Bowata and his son to enter the sailing boat, informing them that, having given them the means to navigate the channels, I now proposed to show them where to obtain the wherewithal from which to make as many bows and arrows as they desired.

The pair entered the boat with a distinct suggestion of trepidation; they could understand the punt, apparently, but they had evidently not yet grasped the fact that it was the wind that endowed the boat with mobility, and they seemed to regard her with distrust, as a magical craft that might as likely as not fly away with them, never to return.

They were under the impression, it presently appeared, that we intended to turn them adrift to s.h.i.+ft for themselves as best they could, but when I explained that Billy and I intended to go with them their fears vanished, and they seated themselves contentedly enough in the bottom of the boat in the places which I indicated. It was perfectly clear that not only they but also their fellow-savages regarded the expedition upon which we were embarking as a quite notable adventure, for they a.s.sembled in force to witness our departure, admiration and apprehension in about equal proportions being the dominant expressions upon the countenances of those we left behind us as the boat glided smoothly and rapidly away from the sh.o.r.e.

I took our guests, first of all, to West Island, upon which grew the trees from which I had obtained the wood found to be suitable for the making of bows; and, having directed Bowata's attention to the characteristic peculiarities of the trees, as distinguis.h.i.+ng them from others, I s.h.i.+nned aloft into one of them, carrying with me a small hatchet that had come from the wreck, and proceeded to lop off about a dozen suitable branches which, with an ample supply of thorns to form arrow-heads, were duly placed aboard the boat. Then, shoving off again, we proceeded by way of the North-west Channel round to Shark Bay, in North Island, where, running the boat into the swamp, we cut a goodly stock of reeds from which to make shafts for the arrows. These two tasks, including the time occupied in sailing from place to place and returning, occupied the entire day, so that it was already dusk when, having landed Bowata and his son, and our cargo of branches and reeds, we arrived back at our own island of Eden.

The next day Billy and I again sailed for Cliff Island, where, with an old sheath knife as a tool, I showed Bowata how to make bows and arrows, at the same time presenting him with the hatchet, the knife, and a quant.i.ty of cord from which to make bow-strings. We spent three days with the natives, supervising their work of making bows and arrows; and by the time that they had used up all the material with which I had supplied them, they had attained to a degree of proficiency that I felt would justify me in leaving them henceforth to their own devices.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

ISLANDS OF FIRE!

We had by this time been on the group eight months; and although, with brief intervals spent in visits to the wreck, a sharp look-out for the appearance of a sail in the offing had been maintained, nothing had been sighted; and the disconcerting possibility now began to impress itself upon me that if I continued to trust only to such an occurrence for our deliverance we might spend _years_ waiting for that event. Most fortunately, we had both thus far been blessed with perfect health; but it seemed too much to expect that this immunity from sickness or accident should continue indefinitely; and if both of us should chance to fall sick at the same time, what would be the result? Something very like panic seized me at the thought of such a possibility; I felt that I had been culpably foolish in relying so implicitly, and for so long a time, upon extraneous help; and the conviction forced itself upon me that I must at once take steps to effect our own deliverance.

Yet what could I do? The first idea that had suggested itself to me after the wreck of the brigantine was to build some sort of a craft in which we could effect our escape to civilisation; but after considering the matter I had come to the conclusion that such an undertaking would be altogether beyond my powers, with only Billy to a.s.sist me. No doubt I was helped to this conclusion by the conviction I then felt that something would certainly heave in sight within the next month or two to take us off. But with the lapse of time my confidence had insensibly waned, and I had accordingly set to work to make our stay upon the group as comfortable as might be. Now, however, I felt constrained to reconsider my original conclusion; and as a preliminary I took pencil and paper, drawing-instruments and scale, and proceeded to make tentative sketches of such a craft as I considered essential to enable us to make the voyage in safety and with a reasonable amount of comfort.

To insure these requirements I decided that the boat, whatever her dimensions, must be fully decked, and that she must be powerful enough to face and successfully battle with a whole gale of wind; also she must be capable of being handled by Billy and myself. Taking these requirements as a basis, I set to work upon my sketches.

The relative dimensions of the boat would be governed to a considerable extent by her rig. A cutter-rigged craft is more powerful than any other, but it is open to the objection that the mainsail--the cutter's most important sail--is an awkward sail to handle in a sudden emergency, if the craft happens to be short-handed, as we should be. I believed, however, that this difficulty might be overcome by watchfulness and the taking of timely precautions; therefore, after weighing the matter carefully, I decided in favour of the cutter rig. Bearing all the above requirements in mind, I set to work, and ultimately evolved a design for a craft thirty feet long on the water-line by ten feet beam, and six feet draught of water aft. To build a boat of these dimensions, with only Billy to help me, was a sufficiently ambitious project; but I had learned a good deal while building our existing boat; and, after all, I felt sure that if I should need more manpower, Bowata would willingly lend me some of his people. Also, realising that henceforth Billy and I would be fully occupied in building the new boat, the thought occurred to me that it was high time to secure such domestic help as would enable us to give our whole time and thought to our work without troubling about such matters as cooking, house-cleaning, and so on. Such help could only be obtained through Bowata. I therefore decided to seize an early opportunity to interview him upon the whole matter.

Meanwhile, however, now that I had at last determined to attempt the building of a sea-going boat, I was all impatience to make a beginning; and as I, further, came to the conclusion that the beginning--so far as the framing of the keel, stem, and sternpost was concerned--must be made aboard the wreck, where all the materials were at hand, we lost no time in again removing ourselves, with all necessary goods and chattels, to what remained of the _Yorks.h.i.+re La.s.s_. Here I made a start by laying out, full-size, in chalk, upon the after-deck, an accurate outline of the keel, stem, and sternpost, which greatly facilitated my work. My chief difficulty, I discovered, was to find bolts at once of the required length and the necessary strength, since I could not possibly make them; and this difficulty absorbed so much time that we spent nearly a month on the wreck before the keel, stem, and sternpost were framed together in readiness to be set up on the beach at Eden, where I intended to do the remainder of the work.

The framework was much too big and heavy to be conveyed to Eden otherwise than by towing; and as the whole trip was more or less a beat to windward, the transport of it cost us two days, our arrival "home"

occurring so late in the afternoon that there was no time to attempt anything further that day. But on the day following I sailed over to Bowata's island and explained to him my requirements, finding him more than eager to do anything and everything he could to oblige me. The domestic question was very easily arranged, Bowata suggesting that I should employ a man whom he could especially recommend, and who, with his two wives, would be able to do everything required in that particular direction; while as for labour for the building of the cutter, he a.s.sured me I might have as many men as I wished, for as long a time as I needed them. Nothing could be more satisfactory than this, the only point I felt doubtful about being the domestic part of the arrangement; but Billy settled this by undertaking to supervise the work until the man and his wives should be trained to efficiency; and the plan, when put into operation, worked excellently. The keel of the new boat being now ready, the next thing was to set it up, accurately plumb, longitudinally and transversely, upon the building blocks; and to do this I obtained the loan of twenty natives for a day, for the keel, with stem and sternpost attached, was much too heavy a ma.s.s of timber for Billy and me to manipulate without a.s.sistance; and with their help the work was most satisfactorily accomplished, they doing the manual work under Billy's guidance while I supervised and directed the adjustments that were frequently necessary. I next set up five stout moulds, one at the mids.h.i.+p section of the boat, with two aft and two forward of it, giving the exact shape of the boat at those points, and to the moulds I firmly attached several temporary wales and stringers, thus obtaining a kind of skeleton giving an accurate idea of the form of the finished boat. And when I had got thus far with my work and inspected the result from various view-points, I was as much amazed at my own audacity in attempting so ambitious an undertaking as I was gratified at the appearance which it presented; for I saw before me the outline of a very shapely, yacht-like little s.h.i.+p that, if I knew anything of such matters, promised to be fast, weatherly, and a very fine sea-boat, quite capable of taking care of herself when hove-to, even in a heavy gale of wind. It was my intention to plank her upon the diagonal principle, using three thicknesses of comparatively thin plank, for I had no means by which to steam a single layer of planking of the necessary thickness and so render it pliable enough to bend to the correct shape; while I believed that by using thin plank I could bend it to shape unsteamed. I am getting somewhat ahead of my yarn, however; for the progress outlined above represented nearly three months' hard work, an appreciable proportion of which had to be done a second time, owing to my inexperience.

With the accession of our black helpers our domestic arrangements flourished exceedingly, the only difficulty we experienced in connection with them occurring during the first fortnight or three weeks after their arrival, the trouble arising with Kit, who violently resented their intrusion and had to be kept strictly tied up until he had learned to understand that he must in nowise interfere with them. But even after reaching this stage the natives had to be exceedingly careful how they conducted themselves in his presence, for he never advanced farther than the merest toleration of them, while when any of the other blacks were on Eden, a.s.sisting me to build the cutter, it was absolutely necessary to keep the beast closely confined to the house until they had left.

I very soon made the discovery that had I been obliged to depend solely upon the efforts of Billy and myself, I should have been compelled to abandon the idea of building the cutter at a very early stage of the operations. It was not so much that we found the work beyond our strength--although in that respect we were often glad enough to have a little additional help--but it was often necessary to have a plank or a waling, or some such matter, held firmly in position at half a dozen points or more at the same moment, while I fixed it; and it was on such occasions that I welcomed the a.s.sistance of the natives. And as such occasions occurred pretty frequently, it happened that I was kept _au courant_ with everything of importance--and with a great deal that was exceedingly unimportant--that occurred on Cliff Island. Thus I came to know that, contrary to hope and expectation, the arming of the natives with bows and arrows, with the resulting destruction of the raiding apes, had been absolutely ineffective in checking the raids, which were now occurring more frequently and in greater force than ever. It appeared almost as though the brutes were possessed of sufficient intelligence to understand that something had happened rendering it no longer possible for attacks by small numbers to be successful, and that they were strengthening their attacking forces accordingly, with the evident determination to succeed ultimately at whatever cost. I was greatly vexed to hear this, for it was evident that the existence of such formidable beasts in the group const.i.tuted a growing menace to the human life in it; and I was wondering how this menace was to be fought, when Bowata and his people, without consulting me, made an attempt to solve the problem, which, for a short time at least, seemed to be crowned with success.

It was the height of summer, and there had been a spell of some six weeks of very hot, dry weather, when on a certain morning, as Billy and I, with some natives, were at work upon the cutter, the lad directed my attention to a thin cloud of light brownish-blue smoke rising in the air beyond Cliff Island. There was a gentle easterly breeze blowing at the time, sweeping the smoke away in the direction of West Island, and, as we watched, the cloud rapidly increased in density, its colour darkened, and, somewhat to my astonishment, it seemed to spread in an easterly direction, or against the wind. It soon became clear that it was the forest on Apes' Island that had caught fire; and it was equally evident that, thanks to the long dry spell, and to the fanning of the easterly breeze, the fire was spreading with great rapidity; for within twenty minutes of the appearance of the first light film of smoke we were able to see, over the eastern extremity of Cliff Island, the flames speeding up the hill-side, toward the conical summit of the island, preceded by so vast a volume of smoke that it completely veiled the hills of West Island from our sight. While Billy and I stood watching the rapid march of the flames, one of the natives, noticing our interest in the spectacle, approached and informed us that Bowata and one of his sons, determined to drive the apes off Apes' Island, had that morning crossed Apes' Channel in the punt which I had given them, with the avowed intention of setting the entire island on fire, beginning at its northern extremity--in order to drive the apes away from that part of the island from whence they were wont to start to swim the channel--and thence working round the sh.o.r.e to the eastern extremity of the island, hoping thus to drive the anthropoids in a westerly and southerly direction, right away from Cliff Island. As Apes' Island was everywhere densely covered with forest and undergrowth it was exceedingly probable that, unless something unforeseen occurred to extinguish the fire, every living thing upon it would be destroyed, except such creatures as might essay to swim the Middle Channel and take refuge upon West Island.

But as the day progressed, and the fire advanced, spreading ever more rapidly as great volumes of sparks were borne by the wind on ahead of the main body of flame, kindling subsidiary fires in advance, I began to doubt whether West Island would escape, remembering as I did that there was a stretch of the Middle Channel which was little more than half a mile wide, across which such a tremendous volume of sparks as now filled the air might easily be wafted. Toward evening my antic.i.p.ation in this respect was verified, for upon ascending to the summit of our own peak on Eden, at the conclusion of our day's work, we saw that not only was the surface of Apes' Island an unbroken expanse of black, smoking ashes and charred tree-stumps, but that the fire had leaped Middle Channel, and practically the whole eastern side of West Island was a ma.s.s of flame. The destruction of life would of course be enormous; but such glimpses as had thus far been afforded us of the animal life upon the group seemed to indicate that it was inimical to mankind; and if its destruction involved that of the apes, it was not to be greatly regretted.

I waited three days to allow the ashes to cool, and then, taking Billy with me, sailed for the Middle Channel, running the boat ash.o.r.e on Apes'

Island at a spot where a stream of fresh water discharged into the narrowest part of the channel. Here we landed, and started to walk eastward over and through ashes that were ankle-deep and in places still unpleasantly hot. I was quite prepared to find evidences that the destruction of animal life had been tremendous; but even so I was amazed at the innumerable scorched and shrivelled carca.s.ses of creatures that had made their way to the water's edge and had there perished, probably suffocated by the smoke because they had feared to take to the water.

They lay thick upon the ground, huddled together, as far as the eye could reach to the right and left of the spot where we landed, and the odour of burnt flesh was almost overpowering, while flies and birds swarmed about them in legions. The remains were mostly so far consumed as to be impossible of identification, but here and there we came upon what, judging from the skull and teeth, had once been a creature of the cat tribe, probably a leopard; while the skeletons of snakes--some of them, from their dimensions, evidently pythons--were numerous. We also came upon several carca.s.ses of what I thought might have been boars; but, if they were, the creatures must have been huge specimens of their kind. There were also a few calcined skeletons of animals that must have been as big as or bigger than a British dray-horse, but of very different build. They did not suggest any animal with which I was acquainted, and I was quite unable to put a name to them. We walked two miles or more inland before turning back, but nowhere did I see anything suggesting the destruction of so much as a solitary ape, at which I was in nowise surprised, for I felt sure that the apes at least would be able to keep well ahead of the fire, and make good their escape to West Island. But West Island was, like Apes' Island, a fire-blackened ruin as far as the eye could see, toward both the north and the south; and if the fire had swept clean across the island to its western sh.o.r.e, it would mean another holocaust, in which the apes also would be involved, for there was no retreat, no sanctuary beyond West Island. It was too late to push our investigations farther that day, but I resolved that on the morrow I would see what the western side of West Island looked like.

Accordingly, eight o'clock in the morning of the following day found Billy and me emerging from the North-west Channel into the lagoon, and hauling round to the southward to skirt the western sh.o.r.e of West Island.

We needed not to travel so far as this, however, to discover that at least part of West Island had escaped the ravages of fire, for upon our arrival off the south-western extremity of Cliff Island we saw that, owing to the greatly increased width of the Middle Channel at that point, the direction of the wind, and the peculiar configuration of the island itself, an area which I roughly estimated at about a hundred square miles, at its northern extremity, had been untouched by the flames; and this area of forest, although probably little more than a quarter of that of the whole island, would still afford cover for a good many animals, had they the sense--or the instinct--to escape to it.

It was not until we had rounded the northern extremity of West Island and had followed the west coast southward for a distance of about eleven miles that we again came upon the ruin wrought by the flames, which, we found, had swept right across the island, leaving the area above referred to untouched, while to the southward, as far as the eye could see, all was black ruin and desolation. At this point, too, signs of the devastation wrought upon the animal life of the island began to reveal themselves in the shape first of isolated carca.s.ses, and then of groups of the same, rapidly becoming more numerous and more crowded as the boat glided along southward within a stone's throw of the beach.

As I was exceedingly anxious to discover whether or not the apes had escaped the destruction that had overtaken the other creatures inhabiting the two fire-stricken islands, we landed at various points along the beach, and made short investigating excursions inland, coming upon the remains of animals and reptiles of several different kinds--the variety indeed was astonis.h.i.+ng--including, I regretted to see, two or three varieties of deer; and at length we found the half-consumed carca.s.ses of three apes, close together; but we found no more that day.

It was by this time drawing on toward sunset; accordingly we made sail for the wreck of the brigantine, and took up our quarters aboard her for the night.

Early on the following morning we resumed our inspection of West Island, starting at the point where we had left off on the previous evening, and on this day we came upon the remains of two more apes, several miles apart. But although those five carca.s.ses of apes were all that we found, it was of course quite possible that there might have been many more, for our excursions inland were necessarily of very limited extent.

To have made anything approaching a complete examination of the burnt area would have been the work of weeks, rather than of days, and I was indisposed to devote very much time to such an undertaking. Moreover, the effluvium arising from so many rapidly decomposing carca.s.ses was, of itself, a sufficient deterrent.

But slight and limited as was our examination, it sufficed to prove that the island must have literally swarmed with animal life, several species of which were, as in the case of those found on Apes' Island, quite new to me; and late in the day, having extended our walk to the crest of a hill, we discovered that there was, a little south of the middle of the island, a triangular-shaped lake, about six miles long by about five miles broad at its western end, that had served to protect and preserve a clump of forest about two miles long; and the sounds that proceeded from it indicated that many animals had found sanctuary there. By the time that we had completed our survey it was too late to think of returning to Eden that day, so we again bore up for the wreck, spending that night aboard her and returning to our own island on the day following.

On our way back I touched at Cliff Island and had a chat with Bowata, relating to him the result of our trip of inspection. I told him that we had seen very few dead apes, and hazarded the conjecture that the brutes, retreating before the flames on their own island, had swum the Middle Channel to West Island, on the northern and unburnt portion of which they might have established themselves. But when he suggested that this portion also of the island should be set on fire, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, I very strongly demurred, pointing out that, even if my conjecture should be correct, the unburned forest would doubtless be swarming with animal life other than that of the apes, and that it would be a very great pity to destroy it all in order to effect the extermination of the apes, unless such a drastic measure should prove to be imperatively necessary.

After the little break following upon the firing of Apes' Island I returned with enthusiasm to work upon the cutter, and in the course of a month used up all the available material which I had thus far acc.u.mulated, necessitating another visit to the wreck to obtain more. I collected as large a quant.i.ty as I believed I could conveniently handle, and, forming it into a raft, took it in tow for transport to Eden. The pa.s.sage, that under ordinary conditions could easily be accomplished in a single day, occupied _five days_, and was, I think, the toughest job I had ever undertaken in my life, the raft being so deadly sluggish in movement that it was impossible to tow it to windward; and finally I found myself compelled to kedge it more than half the way. But I was glad when I had at length brought it safely into the cove and anch.o.r.ed it there, for I now had enough material to carry on with for at least four months. I estimated that another raft of equal size would suffice to complete the cutter, and, notwithstanding the difficulties that I had just encountered, I felt strongly inclined to return forthwith to the wreck and procure a sufficiency for all future needs; but I was very tired after my labours, and I finally persuaded myself to postpone the task for a while--to my subsequent intense regret.

The anniversary of the wreck of the _Yorks.h.i.+re La.s.s_ arrived and pa.s.sed.

We had been a whole year on the group, and, so far as we knew, not a solitary sail of any description had come within sight of the islands during the whole of those twelve months. It was an astounding, incomprehensible fact; I had never really antic.i.p.ated such a possibility. With the pa.s.sage of each day, each week, each month, I had said to myself--with gradually waning a.s.surance certainly--"It cannot be long now before a craft of some sort comes along to take us off," until the moment when it suddenly dawned upon me that if we were ever to escape, it must be through our own efforts--my own especially. This conviction now came upon me with overwhelming force; my hopes of deliverance by means of some extraneous agency suddenly sank to zero, and I began to work with such febrile energy that it presently drew from Billy a steadily growing flood of remonstrance.

I had by this time expended so much of my material that I was in the very act of preparing for another visit to the wreck to obtain more when poor Billy fell sick of some sort of a fever. Within three hours of his seizure he became delirious and was so extremely violent that--he being by this time a strong st.u.r.dy boy--I was obliged to at once drop everything else to look after him and see that he did not injure himself during the more severe paroxysms. Of course I had long ago taken the precaution to secure possession of the s.h.i.+p's medicine-chest, with its accompanying book of instructions; but the latter afforded me little help, for I could find in it no case the symptoms of which quite corresponded with those of my patient, and I was therefore compelled to rely very much upon my own judgment, and upon the instructions for the treatment of fevers in general. A liberal administration of quinine seemed to const.i.tute the most hopeful form of treatment, and luckily we possessed an ample supply of the drug. I accordingly dosed Billy with it for close upon sixty hours, when the delirium ceased and the poor boy sank into a semi-stupor of exhaustion, which enabled one of the native women to relieve me by watching at the patient's bedside. I had by this time been without sleep for two nights and more than three days, and I was therefore glad enough to be free to retire to my own room to rest for an hour or two. Arrived there, I removed my boots and then, without troubling to remove further clothing, flung myself upon my bed and instantly sank into complete oblivion.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

WE EXTERMINATE THE APES.

I was aroused to consciousness by the flash of a dazzling light upon my closed eyelids, accompanied by the crash of a terrific clap of thunder.

Opening my eyes I discovered that the room was in opaque darkness-- showing that I must have been allowed to sleep at least eight hours; but even as I swung my feet to the floor and started to grope for my boots, while the reverberations of the thunder-clap still rumbled and echoed in the distance, there came another blinding flash of lightning, instantly followed by a deafening crash of thunder; and, getting my bearings by the illumination of the lightning, I started to my feet and, forgetting my boots, rushed to Billy's bedside, apprehensive of what might be the effect of the storm upon him.