Shifting Winds: A Tough Yarn by R. M. Ballantyne (best free ebook reader txt) 📖

Let us turn, now, to a very different region of the world from that in which the events just narrated took place.

It is an island of the sea. Nature has been bountiful to that island, for there is redundant verdure on every side. Paradise of old may have been something like it,—could not have been much better, physically, although it was so in a moral point of view. Yet, even in that aspect our island is superior to many others, for there are only two human beings upon it, and these are less sinful specimens of humanity than one usually meets with. They are peculiar, too.

One is an athletic middle-aged man, whose clothing is goat-skin, evidently home-made, and cut in sailor fashion. Magnificent shaggy locks fall in heavy masses from his head, lip, and chin. Robinson Crusoe himself could not have looked grander or more savage in outward aspect.

The other is a boy—a lad. He is a stout well-grown fellow, neither so tall nor so muscular as his companion, but giving promise that he will excel him in due time. In the matter of hair, his head exhibited locks if possible more curly and redundant, while the chin and lip are not yet clothed with young manhood’s downy shadow.

Both, the middle-aged man and the youth, have a pensive expression of countenance; but there is a gleam of fire in the eye of the latter, and a spice of fun about the corners of his mouth, which are wanting in his companion.

“Faither,” said the lad, rising from the rock on which they were seated, “what are ’ee thinkin’ on?”

“I’ve bin thinkin’, Billy, that it’s nigh five years sin’ we come here.”

“That’s an old thought, daddy.”

“May be so, lad, but it’s ever with me, and never seems to grow old.”

There was such a tone of melancholy in the remark of our old friend Gaff, that Billy forbore to pursue the subject.

“My heart is set upon pork to-day, daddy,” said the Bu’ster with a knowing smile. “We’ve had none for three weeks, and I’m gettin’ tired o’ yams and cocoa-nuts and crabs. I shall go huntin’ again.”

“You’ve tried it pretty often of late, without much luck.”

“So I have, but I’ve tried it often before now with pretty fair luck, an’ what has happened once may happen again, so I’ll try. My motto is, ‘Never say die.’”

“A good one, Billy; stick to it, lad,” said Gaff, rising. “And now, we’ll go home to supper. To-morrow we’ll have to mend the fence to keep these same wild pigs you’re so anxious to eat, out of our garden. The nets need mendin’ too, so you’ll have to spin a lot more o’ the cocoa-nut fibre, an’ I’ll have to make a fish-hook or two, for the bones out o’ which I made the last were too small.”

Father and son wended their way down the steep cliffs of the mountain at the foot of which was their cavern home.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Gaff in a low whisper, as they passed along the top of a precipice.

“Pigs,” said Billy with glee; “hold on now, daddy, and let me go at ’em.”

The Bu’ster was no longer the little boy whom I introduced to the reader at the commencement of this narrative. Five years’ residence in the desert island had made him such a strapping young fellow that he seemed much more fitted to cope with a lion than a wild pig! He was not indeed tall, but he was unusually strong.

Gaff sat down on a ledge of rock while Billy crept cautiously to the edge of the precipice and looked down.

A smile of satisfaction lit up the lad’s countenance as he beheld a big sow and six young pigs busily engaged in digging up roots directly below him. To seize a large stone and drop it into the centre of the group was the work of a moment. The result was in truth deadly, for the heavy stone hit one of the little pigs on the nape of the neck, and it sank to the ground with a melancholy squeak which proved to be its last.

The crash of the stone and the squeak of the pig caused the rest of the family to turn and fly from the fatal spot with porcine haste, filling the air as they ran with shrieks and yells, such as only pigs—and bad babies—know how to utter.

“Got him, daddy—Hooray!” shouted the Bu’ster, as he leaped up and ran by a circuitous route to the foot of the precipice, whence he speedily returned with the pig under his arm.

“A fat ’un, daddy,” he observed, holding it up by the tail.

“Capital!” said Gaff, pinching the pig’s sides, “we shall grub well for some days to come.”

“I should think so, daddy; why, we’ve more than we know what to do wi’; for, what with the crab-pies you made this mornin’, and the cocoa-nut soup and yams and dove-hash left fro’ yesterday’s dinner, an’ this little grumpy, we stand a good chance o’ aperplexy or somethin’ o’ that sort.”

“Was there many more o’ ’em, lad?”

“Ay, five moloncholly brothers and sisters, an’ a hideously fat mother left to mourn the loss o’ this chap. I’ll be after them to-morrow. They won’t go far, for I’ve noticed that when pigs take a fancy to a spot they don’t leave it for a good while. Here we are at home, an’ now for a splendid roast. There’s nothin’ like grub when ye’re hungry.”

“’Xcept drink when ye’re dry,” observed Gaff.

“Of coorse, an’ a snooze when ye’re sleepy; but don’t let’s git too pheelosophical, daddy; it an’t good for digestion to argufy on a empty stummik. An’ I see ye wants me to argue, but I won’t do it; there now!”

It was one of Billy’s devices to keep himself and his father cheery in their prolonged exile, to pretend that he didn’t like to argue, and to stoutly assert that he would not do it, while at the same time he led his parent into all sorts of discussions.

On the present occasion, while he was engaged in preparing the pig for the spit, and his father was mending the handle of a fish-spear of his own fabrication, the discussion, or rather the conversation, turned upon the possibility of two people living happily all their days on a desert island.

Billy thought it was quite possible if the grub did not fail, but Gaff shook his head, and said it would be a blue look-out if one of them should get ill, or break his leg. Billy did not agree with this at all; he held that if one should get ill it would be great fun for the other to act the part of nurse and doctor, while the sick one would learn to value his health more when he got it back. As to breaking a leg, why, it was no use speculating how things would feel if that should occur; as well speak of the condition of things if both of them should break their necks.

The discussion diverged, as such discussions usually did, to home and its inmates, long before any satisfactory conclusion was come to, and it was brought to a close in consequence of Billy having to go out of the cave for firewood to roast the pig.

The cavern home had assumed a very different aspect from that which it presented when Gaff and his son took possession of it five years before. It now bore, externally and internally, the appearance of an old much-used dwelling. The entrance, which was an irregular archway of about ten feet in diameter, had been neatly closed up with small trees, over which strong banana leaves were fastened, so as to make it weather-tight. In this screen two holes were left—a small one for a door, and a still smaller one for a window. Both were fastened with a goat-skin curtain, which could be let down and fastened at night. In the daytime both door and window were always left wide-open, for the island on which our friends had been cast was one of a group of uninhabited islets, the climate around which is warm and delightful during the greater part of the year.

The ground outside of the cave was trodden by long use to the hardness of stone. The small vegetable garden, close to the right of the door, was enclosed by a fence, which bore evidence of having been more than once renewed, and frequently repaired. Some of the trees that had been cut down—with stone hatchets made by themselves—when they first arrived, had several tall and sturdy shoots rising from the roots. There was a flat stone deeply hollowed out by constant sharpening of the said hatchet. There was a rustic seat, the handiwork of Billy, that bore symptoms of having been much sat upon. There were sundry footpaths, radiating into the woods, that were beginning to assume the hardness and dimensions of respectable roads; while all round the place there were signs and symptoms of the busy hand of man having been at work there for years.

High up, on a mighty cliff that overlooked and almost overhung the sea, a rude flagstaff had been raised. This was among the first pieces of work that Gaff and his son had engaged in after landing. It stood on what they termed Signal Cliff, and was meant to attract the attention of any vessel that might chance to pass.

To Signal Cliff did Gaff and Billy repair each morning at daylight, as regularly as clockwork, to hoist their flag, made from cocoa-nut fibre; and, with equal regularity, did Billy go each night at sunset to haul the ensign down.

Many an anxious hour did they spend there together, gazing wistfully at the horizon, and thinking, if not talking, of home. But ships seldom visited that sea. Twice only, during their exile, did they at long intervals descry a sail, but on both occasions their flag failed to attract attention, and the hopes which had suddenly burst up with a fierce flame in their breasts were doomed to sink again in disappointment.

At first they had many false alarms, and frequently mistook a sea-gull in the distance for a sail; but such mistakes became less frequent as their hopes became less sanguine, and their perceptions, from practice, more acute. Sometimes they sat there for hours together. Sometimes, when busy with household arrangements, or equipped for fishing and hunting, they merely ran to hoist the flag; but never once did they fail to pay Signal Cliff a daily visit.

On Sundays, in particular, they were wont to spend the greater part of their time there, reading the New Testament.

It happened that, just before Gaff left Cove in the sloop of Haco Barepoles, Lizzie Gordon had