The Island Queen, Robert Michael Ballantyne [best books to read for women .txt] 📗

piece about a foot in length.

"Now, Otto, my boy, you split that into four pieces, and sharpen the end of each piece, while I cut off another foot of the bamboo."

"But what are you going to do with these bits of stick?" asked Otto, as he went to work with a will.

"You shall see. No use in wasting time with explanations just now. I read of the plan in a book of travels. There's nothing like a good book of travels to put one up to numerous dodges."

"I'm not so sure o' that," objected the boy. "I have read _Robinson Crusoe_ over and over, and over again, and I don't recollect reading of his having made use of pegs to climb trees with."

"Your memory may be at fault, perhaps. Besides, Robinson's is not the only book of travels in the world," returned Dominick, as he hacked away at the stout bamboo.

"No; but it is certainly the best," returned Otto, with enthusiasm, "and I mean to imitate its hero."

"Don't do that, my boy," said Dominick; "whatever you do, don't imitate. Act well the part allotted to you, whatever it may be, according to the promptings of your own particular nature; but don't imitate."

"Humph! I won't be guided by your wise notions, Mr Premier. All I know is, that I wish my clothes would wear out faster, so that I might dress myself in skins of some sort. I would have made an umbrella by this time, but it never seems to rain in this country."

"Ha! Wait till the rainy season comes round, and you'll have more than enough of it. Come, we've got enough of pegs to begin with. Go into the thicket now; cut some of the longest bamboos you can find, and bring them to me; six or eight will do--slender ones, about twice the thickness of my thumb at the ground."

While Otto was engaged in obeying this order, his brother returned to the signal-tree.

"Well done, Pina," he said; "you've made some capital cordage."

"What are you going to do now, brother?"

"You shall see," said Dominick, picking up a heavy stone to use as a hammer, with which he drove one of the hard, sharp pegs into the tree, at about three feet from the ground. We have said the peg was a foot long. As he fixed it in the tree about three inches deep, nine inches of it projected. On this he placed his foot and raised himself to test its strength. It bore his weight well. Above this first peg he fixed a second, three feet or so higher, and then a third about level with his face.

"Ah! I see," exclaimed Otto, coming up at that moment with several long bamboos. "But, man, don't you see that if one of these pegs should give way while you're driving those above it, down you come by the run, and, if you should be high up at the time, death will be probable--lameness for life, certain."

Dominick did not condescend to answer this remark, but, taking one of the bamboos, stood it up close to the tree, not touching, but a few inches from the trunk, and bound it firmly with the cord to the three pegs. Thus he had the first three rounds or rungs of an upright ladder, one side of which was the tree, the other the bamboo. Mounting the second of these rungs he drove in a fourth peg, and fastened the bamboo to it in the same way, and then, taking another step, he fixed a fifth peg. Thus, step by step, he mounted till he had reached between fifteen and twenty feet from the ground, where the upright bamboo becoming too slender, another was called for and handed up by Otto. This was lashed to the first bamboo, as well as to three of the highest pegs, and the operation was continued. When the thin part of the second long bamboo was reached, a third was added; and so the work progressed until the ladder was completed, and the lower branches of the tree were gained.

Long before that point, however, Otto begged to be allowed to continue and finish the work, which his brother agreed to, and, finally, the signal flag was renewed, by the greater part of an old hammock being lashed to the top of the tree.

But weeks and months passed away, and the flag continued to fly without attracting the attention of any one more important, or more powerful to deliver them, than the albatross and the wild sea-mew.

During this period the ingenuity and inventive powers of the party were taxed severely, for, being utterly destitute of tools of any kind, with the exception of the gully-knives before mentioned, they found it extremely difficult to fashion any sort of implement.

"If we had only an axe or a saw," said Otto one morning, with a groan of despair, "what a difference it would make."

"Isn't there a proverb," said Pauline, who at the time was busy making cordage while Otto was breaking sticks for the fire, "which says that we never know our mercies till we lose them?"

"Perhaps there is," said Otto, "and if there isn't, I don't care. I don't like proverbs, they always tell you in an owlishly wise sort o' way what you know only too well, at a time when you'd rather not know it if possible. Now, if we only had an axe--ever so small--I would be able to fell trees and cut 'em up into big logs, instead of spending hours every day searching for dead branches and breaking them across my knee. It's not a pleasant branch of our business, I can tell you."

"But you have the variety of hunting," said his sister, "and that, you know, is an agreeable as well as useful branch."

"Humph! It's not so agreeable as I used to think it would be, when one has to run after creatures that run faster than one's-self, and one is obliged to use wooden spears, and slings, instead of guns. By the way, what a surprising, I may say awful, effect a well-slung stone has on the side of a little pig! I came upon a herd yesterday in the cane-brake, and, before they could get away, I slung a big stone at them, which caught the smallest of the squeakers fair in the side. The sudden squeal that followed the slap was so intense, that I thought the life had gone out of the creature in one agonising gush; but it hadn't, so I slung another stone, which took it in the head and dropt it."

"Poor thing! I wonder how you can be so cruel."

"Cruel!" exclaimed Otto, "I don't do it for pleasure, do I? Pigs and other things have got to be killed if we are to live."

"Well, I suppose so," returned Pauline, with a sigh; "at all events it would never do to roast and eat them alive. But, about the axe. Is there no iron-work in the wreck that might be fashioned into one?"

"Oh yes, sister dear," returned Otto, with a short laugh, "there's plenty of iron-work. Some crowbars and ringbolts, and an anchor or two; but do you suppose that I can slice off a bit of an anchor in the shape of an axe as you slice a loaf?"

"Well no, not exactly, but I thought there might be some small flat pieces that could be made to do."

"What is your difficulty," asked Dominick, returning from a hunting expedition at that moment, and flinging down three brace of fowls on the floor of the golden cave.

When the difficulty was stated, he remarked that he had often pondered the matter while lying awake at night, and when wandering in the woods; and he had come to the conclusion that they must return to what was termed the stone period of history, and make their axes of flint.

Otto shook his head, and thought Pina's idea of searching the wreck till they found a piece of flat metal was a more hopeful scheme.

"What do you say to trying both plans?" cried Pauline, with sudden animation. "Come, as you have voluntarily elected me queen of this realm, I command you, Sir Dominick, to make a flint axe without delay, and you, Sir Otto, to make an iron one without loss of time."

"Your majesty shall be obeyed," replied her obedient subjects, and to work they went accordingly, the very next morning.

Dominick searched far and near for a flint large enough for his purpose. He found several, and tried to split them by laying them on a flat stone, upheaving another stone as large as he could lift, and hurling it down on them with all his might. Sometimes the flint would fly from under the stone without being broken, sometimes it would be crushed to fragments, and at other times would split in a manner that rendered it quite unsuitable. At last, however, by patient perseverance, he succeeded in splitting one so that an edge of it was thin and sharp, while the other end was thick and blunt.

Delighted with this success, he immediately cut with his knife, a branch of one of the hardest trees he could find, and formed it into an axe-handle. Some of Pauline's cord he tied round the middle of this, and then split it at one end, using his flint for the purpose, and a stone for a hammer. The split extended only as far as the cord, and he forced it open by means of little stones as wedges until it was wide enough to admit the thick end of his flint axe-head. Using a piece of soft stone as a pencil, he now marked the form of the flint, where it touched the wood, exactly, and worked at this with his knife, as patiently as a Chinaman, for several hours, until the wood fitted the irregularities and indentations of the flint to a nicety. This of itself caused the wood to hold the flint-head very firmly. Then the wedges were removed, and when the handle was bound all round the split part with cord, and the flint-head enveloped in the same, the whole thing became like a solid mass.

Gingerly and anxiously did Dominick apply it to a tree. To his joy his axe caused the chips to fly in all directions. He soon stopped, however, for fear of breaking it, and set off in triumph to the golden cave.

Meanwhile Otto, launching the raft, went on board the wreck to search for a suitable bit of iron. As he had said, there was plenty on board, but none of the size or shape that he required, and he was about to quit in despair when he observed the flat iron plates, about five inches square and quarter of an inch thick, with a large hole in the centre of each, which formed the sockets that held the davits for suspending the ship's boats. A crowbar enabled him, after much trouble, to wrench off one of these. A handspike was, after some hours' labour, converted into a handle with one side cut flat. Laying the plate on this, he marked its exact size, and then cut away the wood until the iron sank its own thickness