Tom and Bill went on with the hut, and rapidly thatched the roof and weather side, while I was trying, with the fibre of the husks of cocoanuts, to calk the seams and splits in the boat; but I found that instead of doing good I only did harm, for as I forced my extemporized oakum into the openings they gaped wider and wider, and I had to come to the conclusion that to repair a clincher-built boat by calking was beyond my power. I came up to where my companions were at work, and told them of my failure, and said,—
“I’m afraid I can do nothing to the boat. I only make the leaks worse by calking.”
“Don’t be down-hearted, mate. We’ll have a look at her, and see if we can’t figure out a way to make her sea-worthy, for I don’t intend to live on this island all my days,” said Tom. “Now it’s about time to knock off work for an hour or so, and after we’ve had some food, we’ll all set to work to thatch the hut and have it finished before night.”
Accordingly we knocked off work, and while Bill went to get some fresh fish from a pool, Tom and I went to make up the fire by which we were smoking those we had prepared the day before.
In doing this we found that some coral and shells, which had been mixed up with the fuel, had been burnt, and when we touched it, it fell to pieces.
“Why, it’s lime,” said Tom. “Now that gives me an idea. In India and China I’ve seen lime and oil used for calking instead of pitch, and we’ll plaster the boat inside with the mixture, so as to keep out the water.”
“That’s very well,” I said, “but where’s the oil to come from?”
“Why, out of the cocoanuts. You know all the copra, as they call it, which we shipped in the Golden Fleece is only dried cocoanut kernels, and all they use it for is to make oil.”
“Well, then, but we can’t get the oakum to hold in the boat, and all your oily mortar will crack out.”
“No doubt we’ll find a way. But come now, Bill has dinner ready, and after dinner we’ll finish the hut, and I daresay before long we’ll think of a way to patch the boat.”
That evening saw our hut, as far as the outside was concerned, pretty well finished, and we were able to sleep in it comfortably and warmly. Next morning, when Bill went to fetch our fish for breakfast, he brought back the unpleasant news that several of the pools were dry, and the fish dead and beginning to smell most unpleasantly.
“Well,” said Tom, “we must clear them out, or we shall be killed by the smell. We shall have a regular pestilence. After breakfast we must set about that before anything else.”
We set out accordingly as soon as we could, and found that what Bill had said was only too true, and a most unpleasant day’s work we had throwing the dead fish into the sea; and we found that even in the pools where some water remained it was sinking so rapidly that the fish in them would soon die also.
As we sat round our fire that night, we were speaking of the necessity of going on with this disagreeable work, when Bill said, “Anyway, we might make a pond here of coral rocks, which would keep a good many in.”
“That’s right, Bill,” I answered. “Don’t you think so, Tom?”
“Surely; and we can’t do better than go on with it in the morning.”
Next morning, as soon as it was light, we set about looking for a spot where we could keep our fish, and before long we lighted on a small creek about twenty feet long by ten wide at the entrance, and in which the water was about six feet deep.
To close up the entrance with a pile of coral blocks thrown together loosely was not a difficult matter, and during the whole of the next week we were busy doing this and filling the pond or stew with live fish, salting and smoking others, and finishing our house, to which we contrived a door and windows, closed with frames made of the midribs of the palm leaves, on which were worked a matting of the fronds.
Our beds we made of the husks of dry cocoanuts, which we pounded with stones to loosen the fibre; and from the shells of the nuts we fashioned a number of utensils which we added to our scanty stock.
When this work was all finished, I asked Tom Arbor if he had thought of any means of repairing our boat, and he said “Yes,” and that now we could set about it as soon as we liked.
His plan, when he described it, was to make a coating all over the inside of the boat below the thwarts of cocoanut fibre mixed with lime and oil, and to keep it in its place by an inner lining of planks fashioned out of the trunks of the palms.
This idea seemed capital, and we had now to provide means for carrying it out.
During the whole time we had been drying our fish, of which we now had some two hundred pounds well cured and salted, and which, we found, made a pleasant change from those we took out of our stew, we had mixed coral and shells with the fuel, and had now a good stock of lime. The oakum from the husks of the cocoanuts we could easily make—indeed, by this time we had become so expert in preparing it that ambitious ideas of rope-making had entered our heads; but to secure the inner lining, and to provide the necessary oil for our cement, was a more difficult business.
We tried boiling bits of the copra, or dried kernel, in our pannikins, and soaking pieces in the shells of the turtles, which we had carefully preserved, but with but little success. Next we made a rude mortar by chopping a square hole in the side of a prostrate palm and pounding the copra in it; but the fibrous wood soaked up the oil as quickly as we pounded it out.
“Come, now, let’s put our considering-caps on again, and see what we can do,” said Tom.
At last I said,—
“I have it! Let’s make a square box, and plaster it inside with lime, and then fill it with the copra chopped as fine as we can in bags of palm leaves, and then squeeze it with a lever and purchase in the same way as we got the boat up, and let the oil run into the turtle shell and any empty cocoanuts we can muster.”
After several attempts, which were more or less unsuccessful, we managed to rig up a sort of press; and at the end of a fortnight we had enough oil for our purpose, and then set to work to split our planks for the lining. This was easy enough, as the trunks of the trees were easily divided; but when we had all our material ready, the question of securing the lining had to be faced.
From the bottom boards and stern and head sheets, which we had to take up to do our work thoroughly, we managed to get a good many nails, and out of the wood we made strips to run athwart ships over our planks of cocoanut; and these strips we shaved and nailed down in their places, and so at last managed to get the boat water-tight, and, as Tom said, much stronger, in case she ran on a rock, than she had ever been before.
“Now,” he said, “we will go for a voyage to the other side of the island; but first we will paint her over outside with lime and oil, so that the weeds won’t grow on her.”
This did not take us long, and when we had finished we launched her, and found to our delight that she was perfectly stanch; but when she was in the water, we found that we had put so much extra weight in her that she floated dangerously low.
“Oh,” said Tom, “that won’t do; if she shipped a sea now she would go down like a stone.”
“But, anyway, we can go to the other side of the lagoon, for there must be some pigeons there. We saw some the first day, and none have come near our hut, and I’m tired of fish and cocoanuts,” said Bill.
“No, I won’t run any risk,” said Tom. “I’ll deck her right in, except a well for our stores, and we can raise on her gunwale with a couple of good strakes of palm.”
“More work!” I answered. “And where are the nails to come from?”
“No nails wanted. We’ll lace ’em on India fashion,” said Tom, “and put a couple of half trunks round her as fenders.”
“That’s work enough, Tom. However, as you say it, done it must be; but I hope you’ll remember the carpenter.”
Tom laughed, and said it was but to be on the safe side, and that he intended to have the boat sea-worthy.
We got the boat moored in a little creek like that we had made into our fish pond, and for the next three days we were very busy with her, and got a strake of cocoanut plank about eight inches wide round her fore and aft.
When this was done, Bill and I at last prevailed on Tom to make the voyage to the weather side of the lagoon to see what might be found there.
Bill and I flew for our paddles as soon as Tom assented to our wish, and taking with us some smoked fish and a dozen of green cocoanuts to drink on our way, we started off, Bill and I paddling, while Tom was busy in the stern hammering and chopping at something which, as to paddle we faced forward, we could not see.
“What are you making all that row about, Tom, old man?” asked Bill.
“Never you mind. You’ll see in good time,” he answered.
“Oh!” I cried; “Tom has an old head on young shoulders. I wonder his hair ain’t grey. He’s doing something good, you may be sure.”
When we left off paddling once or twice to open a cocoanut and drink its juice, Tom hid what he had been doing from us, and it was not until we landed on the weather part of the reef that we found what he had been doing, when he proudly loaded a musket he had brought with him with slugs, and firing, knocked over a couple of green pigeons.
Bill was so delighted with this that he begged to be allowed to pluck and cook them at once, saying he cared more for a roast pigeon than for all the discoveries we were going to make.
Leaving him intent on his culinary labours, Tom and I pushed on through the cocoanut trees, and after walking some fifty yards we came to a small mound or protuberance of a different sort of rock from the coral of which the rest of the island was composed, and from this gushed forth, more precious in our eyes than a gold mine or all the diamonds of Golconda, a tiny rill of crystal-bright water.
We both saw it at the same moment, and, rushing forward, drank, and bathed our hands and faces, and set up a great shout to call Bill to come to us.
So absorbed were we in the delight of finding this spring—for we had not the slightest hope of finding one on this reef—that it was not till after Bill, attracted by our shouts, had come up to us that we noticed the signs of man’s handiwork close to the spring.
On the ground we saw lying some troughs made of hollowed palm trunks, which had evidently once conveyed the waters of the spring to some place where they were required.
“Let us follow up these,” I said. “We may find something of use.”
“Not much likelihood,” said Tom. “Some poor shipwrecked man made these, and they have evidently not been used for years. He has either died or else got away.”
“Anyway, we can but look to see how he lived, and we may find something that will be of use,” I answered.
“Of course,” replied Tom; “we’ve come over to see the whole place, and we will look carefully about for anything that may be of use, only don’t raise your hopes.”
Hardly had he spoken when we heard the crowing of a cock.
“Hark!” cried Bill; “there’s fowls. There may be some one alive yet. Come along.”
We all pushed forward in the direction of the sound, and soon came upon a space which had once been cleared, but was now all covered with undergrowth, and in the midst of which stood a hut, the walls of which, being built of logs cut from the palms, still remained, but the thatched roof had fallen in.
Towards this we pushed our way, disturbing, as we did, several fowls, and noticing that among the tangled undergrowth there grew a good quantity of maize, and that evidently at one time this space had been cultivated.
Up the walls of the hut grew creepers, and the holes which had served as door and windows were thickly matted with them, so that we had to cut them away in order to effect an entrance.