"That's true," I said, "but we shall maybe be able to get some of them
by and by. At any rate, let us get the cocoa-nuts now, and we need not
trouble to take them all to the canoe. We will take just what we need,
and hide the rest in the undergrowth."
Accordingly we stripped the ripe fruit from all the trees at this spot;
there were only about half-a-dozen; and having concealed all the nuts
but two or three that we wanted for our own refreshment, we carried
these to the canoe, and paddled back to the Red Rock, where we broiled
some fish steaks for second supper, our work having made us hungry, and
so to sleep.
Next day we finished our lean-to, making walls and roof of the
trellis-work I have mentioned, and being very tired we went to sleep
without paying another visit to the island. I thought we were doing
very well, and the only thing that gave me any concern was our canoe,
for we had no very safe harbourage for it on the rock, and if a storm
came I was afraid the sea might wash it from the ledge on which it lay,
and then we should be in a lamentable fix. However, as we usually had
some warning of bad weather, in the low flying of seabirds and other
signs we had become used to observe, we determined at the first warning
to take the canoe into the cave and lie up there until the storm was
past. Of course we could not do this if the storm broke upon us
suddenly in the night, but in that matter we must simply trust to
Providence.
All necessary work on the Red Rock being done, we began to find time
hang somewhat heavy on our hands. Our asylum (as I may call it) was no
more than some two hundred feet square; at least, the habitable part of
it was no more: and having explored every get-at-able corner of it, and
finding nothing to reward us except a few seabirds' eggs, we had
nothing to do; and to lie about looking at each other was vastly
uninteresting. We clambered to the highest point, and there, under
cover of a craggy rock that overhung the island, we looked over the
domain from which we had been expelled, and I scarce think Adam himself
was more grieved at the loss of Eden than we were now. We could not
see our hut, but a great part of the island between it and the sea, to
the westward and southward, was open to our view, and of course the
mountain, and the long slope that ran downwards from the crater to the
archway. Once or twice we caught glimpses of the seamen as they roamed
the island, and then Billy's wrath and indignation knew no bounds, and
he pleaded with me to land and post ourselves behind trees, and shoot
the men with our arrows, but this of course I would not consent to,
having besides in my mind a better way of dealing with them. And I
bade Billy remember that they must be very uneasy at not lighting on
any traces of us, to which he replied scornfully, "Suppose they are,
what's the odds? They'll soon believe as how we are drownded, and then
they'll be jolly enough, using our things and all."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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