The Island Queen, R. M. Ballantyne [sight word readers .txt] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
Book online «The Island Queen, R. M. Ballantyne [sight word readers .txt] 📗». Author R. M. Ballantyne
“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 into it. There were plenty of nails in the wreck; with these he nailed the iron, through its own nail-holes, to the hard handspike, and, still further to secure it, he covered it with a little piece of flat wood, which he bound firmly on with some cordage made by his sister from cocoa-nut fibre. As the iron projected on both sides of the handle, it thus formed a double-edged axe of the most formidable appearance. Of course the edges required grinding down, but this was a mere matter of detail, to be accomplished by prolonged and patient rubbing on a stone!
Otto arrived triumphantly at the golden cave almost at the same moment with his brother, and they both laid their axes at the feet of the queen.
“Thanks, my trusty vassals,” she said; “I knew you would both succeed, and had prepared a royal feast against your return.”
“To which I have brought a royal appetite, your majesty,” said Otto.
“In truth so have I,” added Dominick.
There was a good deal of jesting in all this; nevertheless the trio sat down to supper that night highly pleased with themselves. While eating, they discussed, with much animation, the merits of the axes, and experienced no little difficulty in deciding which was the better tool. At last Pauline settled the matter by declaring that the iron axe, being the strongest, was, perhaps, the best; but as it was not yet sharpened, while Dominick’s was ready for immediate use, the flint axe was in present circumstances better.
“So then, being equal,” said Otto, “and having had a splendid supper, we will retire to rest.”
Thus, in devising means for increasing their comforts, and supplying their daily necessities, the days and weeks flew swiftly by.
An event was now pending over the castaway family which was destined to darken their bright sky, and interrupt them in the even tenor of their way.
Up to this time the interest, not to say delight, with which they went about their daily avocations, the fineness of the weather, and the romance of their situation, had prevented their minds from dwelling much on the flight of time, and if Pauline had not remembered the Sundays by conscientiously keeping a daily record with a pencil on a piece of bark, not one of them would have believed it possible that two months had elapsed since they were cast ashore.
The sanguine hope, too, which filled the breast of each, that a vessel would certainly pass by sooner or later and take them off, prevented their being disturbed by gloomy anticipations of a long exile, and it is probable that they would have gone on pleasantly for a much longer time, improving the golden cave, and exploring the reef, and developing the resources of what Otto styled the Queendom, without much caring about the future, had not the event above referred to come upon them with the sudden violence of a thunder-clap, terminating their peaceful life in a way they had never anticipated, and leading to changes which the wildest imagination could hardly have conceived.
That event was, indeed, the arrival of a ship, but it did not arrive in the manner that had been expected. It came in the dead of a dark night, when the elements seemed to have declared fierce war against each other, for it was difficult to say whether the roaring of the sea, the crashing of the thunder, or the flashing of the forked lightning was most tremendous.
A previous storm or two, of a mild type, having warned our trio that Paradise had not been quite regained, even in that lovely region, they had fitted something like a front, formed of wreckage, to the golden cave, and this had, up to that time, formed a sufficient protection against slight inclemencies of weather; but on this particular night the gusts of wind were so violent, and shook the front of their dwelling so much, that both Dominick and his brother found it impossible to sleep. Their sister, however, lay undisturbed, because she reposed in an inner chamber, which had been screened off with broken planks, and these not only checked draughts, but deadened sounds.
“I’m afraid our wall will come down,” said Dominick, raising himself at last on one elbow, and gazing at the wooden erection uneasily.
“Oh, let it come!” growled Otto, who had been so frequently checked while dropping into slumber that night that he was getting quite cross.
Not feeling quite so regardless of consequences, his brother Dominick arose and endeavoured to prop the weak part of the structure with an additional piece of timber.
He had accomplished his object, and was about to lie down again to rest, when a terrible cry was heard, which rose above the roaring of the storm. There seemed something so appalling in it, and at the same time so unaccountable in that solitary spot, that Dominick’s heart almost stood still for a moment with superstitious fear. Otto also heard the cry, and sat bolt upright, while drowsiness was effectually banished from his brain.
“Dom, did you hear that?” he asked in a solemn voice. “I should think I did,” replied his brother in a low tone. The cave being very dark, neither could see the other distinctly. They sat silent for a few moments, anxiously listening for a repetition of the cry.
“Move quietly, Otto,” said Dominick, as he crept towards their little door, “it evidently has not awaked Pina, and we may as well let her lie still till we find out what it is.”
“You’re not going out, Dom?” asked Otto, in anxiety.
“Yes, why not?”
“Be—because—it—it may be—be—something—awful!”
“It must be something awful, and that is just why I am going out. Come, you didn’t use to be a coward.”
This was touching the boy on a tender point. He was indeed by no means a coward when the danger he had to face was comprehensible and obvious, but when the danger happened to be incomprehensible, as well as invisible, his courage was not quite as high as might have been desired. The taunt of his brother stirred up his pride however. He rose and followed him in silence, with stern resolve and a quaking heart!
On issuing from their shelter the brothers had to lean heavily against the blast to prevent their being swept away. Seeking the shelter of a bush, they gazed around them, but saw nothing save a dim appearance of bending trees and scudding foam.
“The cry may have come from the beach; let’s go down,” said Dominick, leaving the shelter of the bush, and pushing forward.
“Better go back,” was on Otto’s lips, but he repressed the words and followed.
There was not light enough to enable them to see objects on land, but whatever chanced to be pictured against the dark sky became distinctly visible as a dark object. The old familiar wreck was therefore seen the moment they cleared the bushes that fringed the bay, but close to it was another object which was very unfamiliar indeed to their eyes. It accounted for the cry and caused a gush of
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