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

presented him with a Testament. Being a seriously-minded man, he had received the gift with gratitude, and carried it to sea with him. Afterwards, when he and poor Billy were enduring the miseries of the voyage in the whale-ship, Gaff got out the Testament, and, aided by Billy, tried to spell it out, and seek for consolation in it. He thus got into a habit of carrying it in his coat-pocket, and it was there when he was cast on the desert island.

Although, of course, much damaged with water, it was not destroyed, for its clasp happened to be a very tight one, and tended greatly to preserve it. When father and son finally took up their abode in the cavern, the former resolved to devote some time night and morning to reading the Testament. He could spell out the capital letters, and Billy had, before quitting home, got the length of reading words of one syllable. Their united knowledge was thus very slight, but it was quite sufficient to enable them to overcome all difficulties, and in time they became excellent readers.

The story of Christ’s redeeming love wrought its legitimate work on father and son, and, ere long, the former added prayer to the morning and evening reading of the Word. Gradually the broken sentences of prayer for the Holy Spirit, that light might be shed upon what they read, were followed by earnest confessions of sin, and petitions for pardon for Christ’s sake. Friends, too, were remembered; for it is one of the peculiar consequences of the renewal of the human heart that the subjects of this renewal begin to think of the souls of others as well as of their own. Unbelievers deem this presumptuous and hypocritical, forgetting that if they were called upon to act in similar circumstances, they would be necessarily and inevitably quite as presumptuous, and that the insulting manner in which the efforts of believers are often received puts hypocrisy out of the question.

Be this as it may, Gaff prayed for his wife and child at first, and, when his heart began to warm and expand, for his relatives and friends also. He became more earnest, perhaps, when he prayed that a ship might be sent to take them from the island, (and in making this and his other petitions he might have given an instructive lesson to many divines of the present day, showing how wonderfully eloquent a man may be if he will only strive after nothing in the way of eloquence, and simply use the tones and language that God has given him); but all his prayers were wound up with “Thy will be done,” and all were put up in the name of Jesus Christ.

To return from this digression. The inside of the cavern bore not less evidence of long-continued occupation than the outside. There was a block of wood which served father and son for a seat, which had two distinct and highly-polished marks on it. There was a rude table, whose cut, scratched, and hacked surface suggested the idea of many a culinary essay, and many a good meal. There was a very simple grate composed of several stones, which were blackened and whitened with soot and fire. There was no chimney, however, for the roof of the cave was so high that all smoke dissipated itself there, and found an exit no one knew how! In a recess there was a sort of small raised platform, covered with soft herbage and blankets of cocoa-nut fibre, on which, every night, father and son lay down together. The entrance to the inner cave, which formed a store-room and pantry, was covered with a curtain, so that the habitation with its rocky walls, earthen floor, and stalactite roof had quite a snug and cosy appearance.

Soon Billy returned with an armful of dry wood.

“Have ye got a light yet, daddy?”

Gaff, who had been endeavouring to produce a light by using his knife on a bit of flint for five or ten minutes, said he had “just got it,” and proved the truth of his assertion by handing his son a mass of smoking material. Billy blew this into a flame, and applied it to the wood, which soon kindled into a roaring fire.

“Now, then,” cried the Bu’ster, “where’s the spit? Ah! that’s it; here you go; oh dear, how you would yell just now, Mister Grumpy, if you were alive! It’s a cruel thought, but I can’t help it. There, now, frizzle away, and I’ll go clean up my dishes while you are roasting.”

No sooner had the pig been put on the spit, and the first fumes arisen, than there was a loud yell in the forest, followed immediately by the pattering of small feet, as if in tremendous haste.

“Aha! Squeaky, I knew you would smell out the supper double quick,” cried Billy with a laugh, as he looked towards the door.

“He never misses it,” said Gaff with a quiet smile. Next moment a small pig came scampering into the cave and rushed up to the fire, where it sat down promptly as if the sole object it had in view were to warm itself!

And this was indeed its only object, for that pig was passionately, ludicrously fond of the fire! It was a pet pig.

One day when Billy was out hunting, he had caught it in a somewhat singular fashion. He usually went out hunting with a bow and arrow of his own making, and was very successful in bringing down white doves, parroquets, and such creatures, but could make nothing of the pigs, whose skins were too tough for his wooden and unshod arrows. He let fly at them, nevertheless, when he got a chance.

Well, on the day referred to, Billy had shot nothing, and was returning home in a somewhat pensive mood when he heard a squeak, and at once fitted an arrow to his bow. A rush followed the squeak, and dreadful yells accompanied the rush—yells which were intensified, if possible, when Billy’s arrow went into an old sow’s ear after glancing off the back of one of her little ones.

Billy ran after them in wild despair, for he knew that the shot was thrown away. One of the pigs had sprained its ankle, apparently, for it could only run on three legs. This pig fell behind; Billy ran after it, overtook it, fell upon it, and almost crushed it to death—a fact which was announced by an appalling shriek.

The mother turned and ran to the rescue. Billy gathered up the pig and ran for his, (and its), life. It was a hard run, and would certainly have terminated in favour of the sow had not the greater part of the chase been kept up among loose stones, over which the lad had the advantage. In a few minutes he descended a steep cliff over which the bereaved mother did not dare to run.

Thus did Billy become possessed of a live pig, which in a few weeks became a remarkably familiar and fearless inmate of the cavern home.

Billy also had a pet parroquet which soon became tame enough to be allowed to move about at will with a cropped wing, and which was named Shrieky. This creature was a mere bundle of impudent feathers, and a source of infinite annoyance to the pig, for, being possessed of considerable powers of mimicry, it sometimes uttered a porcine shriek, exciting poor Squeaky with the vain hope that some of its relations had arrived, and, what was far worse, frequently imitated the sounds of crackling fire and roasting food, which had the effect of causing Squeaky to rush into the cave, to meet with bitter disappointment.

“Now, Squeaky,” said the Bu’ster, hitting the pig on its snout with a bit of firewood, “keep your dirty nose away from yer cousin.”

Squeaky obeyed meekly, and removed to another spot.

“Isn’t it a strange thing, daddy, that you and I should come to feel so homelike here?”

“Ay, it is strange,” responded Gaff with a sigh, as he laid down the hook he was working at and glanced round the cavern. “Your mother would be astonished to see us now, lad.”

“She’ll hear all about it some day,” said Billy. “You’ve no notion what a splendid story I’ll make out of all this when we get back to Cove!”

It was evident that the Bu’ster inherited much of his mother’s sanguine disposition.

“P’raps we’ll never git back to Cove,” said Gaff sadly; “hows’ever, we’ve no reason to complain. Things might ha’ bin worse. You’d better go and haul down the flag, lad. I’ll look arter the roast till ye come back.”

“The roast’ll look after itself, daddy,” said the Bu’ster; “you look after Squeaky, however, for that sly critter’s always up to mischief.”

Billy hastened to the top of Signal Cliff just as the sun was beginning to descend into the sea, and had commenced to pull down the flag when his eye caught sight of a sail—not on the far-off horizon, like a sea-gull’s wing, but close in upon the land!

The shout that he gave was so tremendous that Gaff heard it in the cave, and rushed out in great alarm. He saw Billy waving a shred of cocoa-nut cloth frantically above his head, and his heart bounded wildly as he sprang up the hill like a stag.

On reaching the flagstaff he beheld the vessel, a large full-rigged ship, sailing calmly, and, to his eye, majestically, not far from the signal cliff.

His first impulse was to wave his hand and shout. Then he laid hands on the halliards of the flag and gave it an extra pull to see that it was well up, while Billy continued to stamp, cheer, yell, and wave his arms like a madman!

Only those who have been long separated from their fellow-men can know the wild excitement that is roused in the breast by the prospect of meeting with new faces. Gaff and Billy found it difficult to restrain themselves, and indeed they did not try to do so for at least ten minutes after the discovery of the ship. Then a feeling of dread came suddenly upon the former.

“Surely they’ll never pass without takin’ notice of us.”

“Never!” exclaimed Billy, whose sudden fall of countenance belied the word.

Gaff shook his head.

“I’m not so sure o’ that,” said he; “if she’s a whaler like the one we came south in, lad, she’ll not trouble herself with us.”

Billy looked very grave, and his heart sank.

“My only consolation is that she looks more like a man-o’-war than a whaler.”

“I wish we had a big gun to fire,” exclaimed Billy, looking round in perplexity, as if he half hoped that a carronade would spring up out of the ground. “Could we not make a row somehow?”

“I fear not,” said Gaff despondingly. “Shoutin’ is of no use. She’s too far-off for that. Our only chance is the flag.”

Both father and son stood silent for some moments earnestly gazing at the ship, which was by this time nearly opposite to their flagstaff, and seemed to be passing by without recognising the signal. This was not to be wondered at, for, although the flag was visible enough from landward, being well defined against the bright sky, it was scarce perceptible from seaward, owing to the hills which formed a background to it.

“I know what’ll do it!” exclaimed Billy, as he leaped suddenly to one side. “Come along, daddy.”

A few yards to one side of the spot on which the flagstaff was reared there was a part of the precipice which sloped with a steep descent into the sea. Here there had been a landslip, and the entire face of the cliff was laid bare. At the top of this slope there was a great collection of stones and masses of rock of considerable size. At various points, too, down the face of the steep, masses of rock and débris had collected in hollows.

Billy now went to work to roll big stones