When we got inside we could at first see but little, for the thatched roof, which had fallen in, had buried everything with a dusty brown covering; so we set to work to clear this out, and see if it hid anything that might be of value to us. In one corner there was apparently a mound of these half-decayed leaves, and we decided on commencing our work there; but judge of our horror when, after removing a few armfuls, we came upon the skull of a man, and then proceeding more carefully and reverently, we uncovered a skeleton lying on a sort of bed-place, wrapped in blankets, which crumbled to dust as we touched them.
“Poor fellow,” said Tom; “he must have died here alone, with none to bury him. Let us do it now.”
Both Bill and I agreed with this, for we were too frightened by these poor remains of mortality to go on with our search, and we gladly set to work to clear away a space where with our knives and hatchets we could dig a grave.
While we were thus occupied, Tom made a sort of mat of plaited palm leaves, in which he carefully put the skeleton, and lashed it all up with sinnet.
“I wonder who or what he was,” he said, as he came bearing his sad burden to where Bill and I were at work, and had by this time dug the grave to a depth of about three feet.
“That will do,” said Tom; “now get some palm leaves, and line the whole.”
As soon as we had done this, we reverently laid the bundle containing the skeleton in the grave, and covered it in, and then at Tom’s suggestion we knelt down and said the Lord’s Prayer.
By this time it was getting on toward sunset, and it was necessary to prepare for our night’s lodging. While Tom went to see the boat properly secured, I made a fire, and Bill acted as cook; and as in looking about for fuel I had come upon a nest of eggs, we promised ourselves a feast, and glad indeed were we to wash down the eggs with sweet, fresh water, and to add to our meal some heads of Indian corn roasted in the ashes.
Next morning before daylight Tom woke Bill and me, and said, “Now be quiet and come with me. I have marked where the fowls roost, and if we come on them softly, we may secure some before they wake.”
Softly and stealthily we stole to the place Tom showed us, and there we found the remains of a shed, under which there were a series of perches on which some thirty or forty fowls were roosting.
As quietly as we could we seized on them, and tied their legs together; but before we had secured more than a dozen, the rest were alarmed and made their escape.
“Never mind, lads,” said Tom; “we’ll get the others another night. And now, when we have had breakfast, we will go on with the examination of the hut.”
It did not take us long to clear out the remainder of the thatch, and we soon found that the hut had been built with great care and ingenuity.
The bed-place on which we had found the skeleton occupied one corner, and under it was a seaman’s chest, in which we found some carefully-patched clothes, and the tattered remains of a Bible, and the fragments of a chart.
No name or anything to give a clue to their owner was to be found, except that on the horn handle of a clasp-knife were cut “Jack” and a couple of crosses. We also found a sailor’s ditty-bag, containing needles and thread, palm for sewing, beeswax, and buttons.
Tom said he was glad indeed to find the Bible, for now he said we should be able to read a chapter every night when we said our prayers; and the chart he carefully examined to see if it might give a clue to our whereabouts, and tell us if any inhabited islands existed within a distance which we might reach in safety in our boat.
On the chart there was a cross made with a bit of charcoal, and from it were drawn a series of lines in various directions, as if the unhappy man whose remains we had buried had pored over it for many a weary hour, and attempted to calculate some means of escape from his solitary island home.
“Curious!” I said. “He must have tried to make a boat or something. But see, there are a lot of islands away to the westward of that cross, which I suppose means this island; I should think he might have tried for them.”
“Wait a bit, mates,” said Tom; “we’ll find out more soon.”
And proceeding with our search in the middle of the room, we found a table, which had fallen to the ground, made of some pieces of wood which had evidently belonged to the companion of a ship, and stools of the same material.
On the table we found written in charcoal letters, which could scarcely be deciphered:—
“......cowar-s......left alone......no hope......ill ......heart-broken......money.”
What this meant we soon understood, all except the last. The man we had buried had been deserted by his companions; but what was meant by money we could not understand. Perhaps they had had money on the island, and quarrelled about its division.
This we put carefully on one side, and then, proceeding with our search, we found a fireplace made of wood, plastered with lime, and full of wood-ashes, and on it were an iron pot and a frying-pan.
Scattered about we found cups made out of cocoanut shells, and a couple of plates, which had been broken and cleverly cemented with lime on to bits of wood.
“Evidently he did not die of starvation,” said Tom, “for he had fowls, cocoanuts, and Indian corn; but now let us see what else there is on the island, for I think we have pretty well seen everything in the hut.”
Leaving the hut, we passed through the clearing, and then through some more palm trees, and soon emerged on the weather side of the island, on which the surf was beating with relentless fury.
Here, half buried in sand or hidden by vegetation, we found scattered about the wreckage of a schooner of about two hundred tons, which must have been run plump on to the island.
Close to the beach we found another small hut, inside which were stowed canvas, carpenter’s tools, and cordage; and close by we could see several pieces of wood from the wreck, which had evidently been fashioned into parts of a boat, and a pile of planks from the deck of the ship, as well as several others of her belongings, all covered over with the remnants of palm-thatching.
Whoever he was, the man had been trying to build a boat.
“I wonder what prevented him,” said Bill.
“What’s that sticking up there?” I asked, pointing to a piece of wood among the undergrowth.
“Why, the handle of an adze,” answered Tom.
Looking at this, we soon found the reason why the unfortunate man had desisted from his work, and probably the cause of his death.
The rusty iron of the adze had stuck deep in a plank, and lying by it were some small bones, which it did not need any knowledge of anatomy to see belonged to a human foot.
Evidently the unfortunate creature had chopped off a part of his foot while engaged in fashioning a piece of wood, and had managed to get back to his hut to die.
“Poor fellow,” said Bill and I in a breath; “he never could have built a craft here, and launched her through that surf.”
“No,” answered thoughtful Tom Arbor, “but he may have intended to build her on the other side, and only shaped the parts here, so as to have less weight to carry or drag across; but, anyway, his death is our good fortune, for we can deck and rig our boat for sea-going from what is here. If I mistake not we need it, for there’s never an island on that chart within three hundred miles of us; and if there are any nearer, they’re likely but places like this, with ne’er a living soul aboard of them.”
“Well, what do you intend to do?” I asked.
“Why, rig up this hut again, and then get all our belongings over to this side; and then deck our boat, and rig her with something easier to handle than a dipping lug.”
“All right; but now we must look after the fowls we caught; they’ll be hungry and thirsty.”
We soon made our way back to the hut; and as many of its rafters were still sound, it did not take us very long to put a roof on that would keep out the sun and all ordinary rain. Bill was off to make a coop for the fowls that we had caught.
This done, we set steadily to work, and after getting all the things that we had left at our first camp to this place, where we were blessed with water, we again hove our boat up on shore; and now, having wood and materials, Tom and I laboured to make a real trustworthy craft, while Bill was told off to look after the fowls, and remove the undergrowth from the clearing, being careful not to injure the maize, which we trusted would furnish us with a supply of food for our intended voyage.
First of all, Tom and I made a deep false keel to our craft, which we named the Escape; and as we could not through bolt it to the keel, we put planks on either side of keel and false keel, and overlapping both, and nailed all solidly together.
This being done, we fixed a head knee in a similar manner; and then having given the Escape a thorough good coating of lime and oil, we launched her again, lest she should get too heavy for us to manage.
This naturally had taken us some days, and Tom and I had laboured from morning to night at her, only coming to the hut for meals, which Bill had always ready for us.
Bill, the evening that we had got the Escape afloat, said, “You two fellows must think me a precious lazy hound not to come and help you more than I have. Now the boat’s afloat, I want you to come with me to-morrow to see what I have been doing.”
“Why, catching fowls, clearing out the water-troughs, making up the pool they lead into afresh, and all manner of things,” I said.
“That’s not all. I have had time to hunt about, and if you’ll come with me to-morrow, I’ll show you something.”
“Shall we, Tom?” I asked. “I want to think about our ship before we go on with her.”
“Perhaps one day won’t matter. What is it you’ve found, Bill?”
“Never you mind until I show it you.”
It was accordingly agreed that we should the next morning go and see what Bill had to show, and not to ask him to say what it was beforehand.
Early in the morning Bill woke us, and gave us a good breakfast of eggs, roast maize, and a grilled fowl; and when we had finished he said, “Come along, and see what I have to show you.”
First he took us to the spring, and showed us how he had patched up the troughs, cleared out a basin, and lined it with turtle shells, into which the water fell, and which was large enough to take a bath in. Here we all enjoyed a thorough good wash, and sat in turn under the end of the trough from which the water fell into the basin.
Bill soon got tired of being here, and said, “If I’d thought that you would have been so long here, I’d have brought you here last night; now bear a hand, and come on.”
Getting out of the water, we dried ourselves with cocoanut fibre, and putting on our clothes we went on with Bill a short way, until he brought us to a shed he had made for the fowls, which he had enclosed with leaf mats; and here he said he had all the fowls on the island except two or three, and that some hens were laying regularly, while others were sitting on their eggs.
“Certain you’re a regular farmer,” said Tom.
“Wait a bit; I’ll show you if I’m a farmer. Come along here a bit farther.” And following him along, he brought us to a clearing about twice as large as that where our hut stood, and which, like it, had been at one time planted with maize; but here the maize had been stronger than the weeds, and Bill having torn up all the latter, there was to be seen enough Indian corn, nearly ripe, to have loaded the Escape twice over.
“Well, you are a farmer, surely!” exclaimed both Tom and myself.
“You may say that, but you haven’t seen all yet.”
“What! Not yet?”
“Not by a long chalk. I think the fellow whose hut we have lived up there by himself, and the others down here. Come along, and I’ll show you some more good-luck.”
“You see here,” he said, when we had gone other three hundred yards; “the reef’s cut nearly in two by the sea, and they’ve made a stiff fence right across. And, look; you see they’ve brought the water right down here too. Now over this fence there’s three or four huts, or what was huts; and what d’ye think there is there?”
“Sure we can’t tell. Anything to say what the wreck was, or anything?”
“Not a word or a line, not a scrap of paper; but there’s five graves, and there’s been somewhere about eight or so got away.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Why, by counting the bunks in the huts, to be sure. But, there; you won’t guess what else there is. There’s a turtle-pond, some half-dozen big turtles in it, and there’s pigs.”
“Pigs! Are you sure?” said Tom.
“Sure as eggs is eggs,” answered Bill.
“Can we catch any?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Bill. “I daresay we can if we likes; but I seed some as fat as butter, and an old sow with a lot of young uns. But that ain’t all; there’s something else.”
“What is it? Tell us at once.”
“Do you remember the writing on the table, and that we couldn’t find out what ‘money’ meant?”
“Certainly; but what’s that got to do with what you found?”
“Why, I’ve found the money, and a mighty lot there be, I can tell you. Gold guineas—thousands of them!”