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- Herausgeber: Hesperus Press Ltd.
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Ralph, Jack and Peterkin find themselves the sole survivors of a shipwreck on a deserted coral island in the South Pacific. Although fate has led them to temporary safety, the three marooned lads are forced to carve out a life for themselves from what nature provides. They rapidly learn which fruit to eat, which animals to hunt, and which lagoons are best for bathing. Resourceful as they are, their desert island idyll is often disturbed and they face numerous terrifying threats - pirates, sharks, cannibalism and local tribes among them. Amidst all the chaos, the trio still face the riddle of how to engineer their rescue from their tropical exile. Following in Robinson Crusoe's footsteps, and yet with added adventure, Ballantyne's writing is a classic adored by previous generations of children and which deserves to be discovered all over again by a modern audience.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
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the coral island
r.m. ballantyne
contents
foreword
The adventure novel, usually but not exclusively written for boys, is a genre of fiction which has become almost extinct despite its great popularity in the nineteenth century, when it was a staple of literature. It’s a great shame for many of the most compulsive works of the time belong to this category and are every bit as crucial in the development of the novel form as their more poetic counterparts. It’s hard to imagine any library without a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe on its shelves. Or, for that matter, R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island.
Some of these books have since earned the rather undistinguished title of ‘crossover’ novel, a publishing term used to classify those rare works of fiction that appeal both to adults and children alike, a holy grail of sorts in publishing but one which is achieved more by chance than design. It is a word used by bookshops and media outlets but rarely employed by writers, unless they are of the most cynical disposition. In truth, all novels should be crossover; we do not write to exclude readers but to include them. We do not create stories that will be of interest to some; we hope that they will appeal to all.
In the 1850s, when Ballantyne’s most famous work was published, seafaring was a major occupation for people of all classes in Great Britain. The rich sent their young sons on board ships to serve as officers and to learn something of discipline and courage. They followed in their ancestors’ footsteps (or sea legs) and brought glory upon their family name. The poor saw it as a way to earn money to feed their wives and children; a couple of years at sea and home again with enough to survive on until the time came to make another voyage. The more unfortunate members of the working classes were often press-ganged into serving on board warships against their will but no one kicked up too much of a fuss; it was the way of the world, after all. The sea was there, it needed to be policed and traded upon. Britannia still ruled the waves and in order to keep doing so she had to keep the port at Southampton busy with a steady expulsion of their exiled young men.
Whatever the reason for ending up on a ship, the call of the sea was something that was often too much to resist for many young boys in the nineteenth century and so it is with the three young heroes at the centre of this novel, eighteen-year-old Jack Martin, fourteen-year-old Peterkin Gay and our narrator, fifteen-year-old Ralph Rover, who recalls his experiences on (and off) a coral island in the South Seas after a shipwreck as a great adventure in his life, a time when he learned the value of self-sufficiency, courage and friendship.
There is precious little prologue to The Coral Island. Ballantyne breaks every rule of writing in showing almost no interest in setting the scene – it reads as if the word exposition is an alien one to him – and the novel is all the better for it. We are quickly introduced to Ralph, to his family and circumstances, his own father’s history on the ocean and before the reader has time to settle in, the boy is away at sea, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, listening to the tales of veteran seamen and just as quickly lurching into disaster as the ship is destroyed in a storm. And we’re still only on page twenty-seven.
The novel is separated into two halves, which stand in stark contrast to each other, displaying Ballantyne’s varying gifts as a writer of descriptive prose detailing the natural world and an adventure storyteller. The first follows our three young heroes as they grow accustomed to life on the island, discovering the animals and plant life that share their space while adjusting to a careful diet of coconuts, yams and roast pork, whenever they can catch a pig. This section is filled with vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds and colours of the island, never more thrilling or intense than the account of the boys diving into the reefs to examine the corals and fish that reside in the Pacific Ocean or the wonderful and daring section where Jack and Ralph discover the Diamond Cave and risk their lives to explore its secrets.
It’s impossible for the reader not to be won over by the resilience of the boys. They don’t miss their families, they don’t grieve for their lost shipmates, they simply get on with things, all the time keeping up an unswervingly optimistic spirit. They left England, after all, to have an adventure and that is what they are having.
The second half, however, is where contemplation gives way to action. Filled with cannibals, savages, pirates, kidnaps, threats, fights and missionaries, it moves at a breakneck speed and is where the thrill of the adventure story really takes hold.
The three boys are very different but complement each other as fellow survivors on the island, each playing to his strengths and helping with the others’ weaknesses. Jack is a natural leader, fearless and knowledgeable, inspiring the trust and admiration of his two younger friends. Peterkin is the joker of the group, the youngest, unable to dive, barely able to swim, often unwilling to work and given to indolence (‘while you are gone I shall repose my weary limbs under the shelter of this bush’, he tells Jack and Ralph when they prepare to visit the Diamond Cave again, ‘and meditate on the changefulness of all things earthly, with special reference to the forsaken condition of a poor shipwrecked sailor boy!’) Ralph, however, represents the midpoint between the two. He looks up to Jack and looks out for Peterkin. He is brave, but not as experienced in the ways of the world as his older friend. He’s an eternal optimist, a boy who prefers sunrise to twilight, the wonder of a new day more thrilling to him than the memory of a closing one. He’s spiritual, a Christian, a boy who often thinks of home but never becomes downhearted at the prospect that he might never see it again. He refuses to wallow in self-pity or to give in to fear; instead he remains simply enchanted by the new world that has presented itself to him and determines to make the most of it.
The technique of employing a slightly naïve character to narrate the action of the novel is one which works well for Ballantyne; the things that Ralph sees and describes are new to him, he doesn’t always fully understand them, and of course most, if not all, will be new to the reader too. And so, through his eyes, we learn how a crab passes through a part of its life cycle by shedding one outer shell as another grows beneath, we witness the manner through which a whale breathes and expels water through its blowhole, and we learn the rudiments of how to build a raft from a few logs of trees and very little else. We also feel his sense of isolation and loneliness when he is separated from his two companions by pirates and finds himself, so accustomed to cheerful conversation, something of a pariah, ignored and abused, on board the pirates’ inhospitable ship.
The famous mutiny on board HMS Bounty some seventy years before the publication of The Coral Island informs some of the action. By the mid 1850s the feat of Captain William Bligh’s forty-seven day navigation of eighteen men from Tofua to Timor had passed into legend and the ship’s voyage to Tahiti to harvest breadfruit was familiar to all; the importance of the breadfruit on the coral island itself as sustenance for the three young heroes is referenced time and again.
But for all the charm of the descriptions and the freedom that the boys experience on the island, it is in the scenes of action that The Coral Island springs most vividly to life. As readers, perhaps we do not notice that we miss other human beings on the pages until the arrival of the warring Polynesians to spoil the boys’ independence and sovereignty of all they survey. The fighting that ensues between the factions – and then the sudden intervention of Jack, Ralph and Peterkin – is remarkable for its degree of violence and brutality. Having spent chapters submerged in the colourful depths of the ocean or chasing pigs around the beaches to comic effect, it’s a little startling to be faced with skulls being smashed to smithereens, fires being lit to roast parts of freshly killed natives and scenes of cannibalism that are as enthralling as they are disgusting.
Similarly, when Ralph is liberated against his will from the island and finds himself with no one but Bloody Bill to talk to on the deck of the pirates’ ship, it’s an episode which offers some relief from the claustrophobia of the island itself; the scene is tinged with the promise of more violence as the antagonism and mistrust between the pirates develops. And if the chapters featuring the missionaries and the spread of Christianity towards the end of the book perhaps feel, a century and a half later, a little dated, then this is the only part of the novel which suffers with the passage of time.
The Coral Island is very much a nineteenth-century novel. Boys like Ralph, Jack and Peterkin do not exist any more. However it is a novel that had a direct influence on one of the outstanding novels of the twentieth century, Lord of The Flies by William Golding (1954). Golding presents a similar situation – a group of boys stranded on a deserted island with no adults to guide them – and it is no coincidence that Golding’s main protagonist and antagonist are similarly named Ralph and Jack. The passage of a century between the two novels, and the reading of both novels one after the other, offers a perfect illustration of how the world has changed in the intervening years. Ralph and Jack in TheCoral Island are friends to the end and see nothing but good in each other and their isolated world; Ralph and Jack in Lord of the Flies are at war, an increasingly violent war, and the island they inhabit is a character itself, a subversive presence, one which threatens to destroy them. (And is it any coincidence that fifty years later again, in a different art form, the hero of the deserted island television mystery Lost is also named Jack?)
Ultimately, this form of novel has become an abandoned one. In an age where publishing categories are often difficult to decipher – adult, young adult, teen, middle-grade, children – the urge for a novelist to write a piece like this has become lost with the fear of being ghettoised into the wrong type of fiction and that’s a shame. The adventure novels of the nineteenth century – like this one, which collects the baton from Defoe and passes it to Golding – have survived for a reason: they’re so good.
– John Boyne, 2013
the coral island
r.m. ballantyne
preface
I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages.
One word more. If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.
Ralph Rover
chapter one
Roving has always been, and still is, my ruling passion, the joy of my heart, the very sunshine of my existence. In childhood, in boyhood, and in man’s estate, I have been a rover; not a mere rambler among the woody glens and upon the hilltops of my own native land, but an enthusiastic rover throughout the length and breadth of the wide wide world.
It was a wild, black night of howling storm, the night in which I was born on the foaming bosom of the broad Atlantic Ocean. My father was a sea captain; my grandfather was a sea captain; my great-grandfather had been a marine. Nobody could tell positively what occupation his father had followed; but my dear mother used to assert that he had been a midshipman, whose grandfather, on the mother’s side, had been an admiral in the royal navy. At any rate we knew that, as far back as our family could be traced, it had been intimately connected with the great watery waste. Indeed this was the case on both sides of the house; for my mother always went to sea with my father on his long voyages, and so spent the greater part of her life upon the water.
Thus it was, I suppose, that I came to inherit a roving disposition. Soon after I was born, my father, being old, retired from a seafaring life, purchased a small cottage in a fishing village on the west coast of England, and settled down to spend the evening of his life on the shores of that sea which had for so many years been his home. It was not long after this that I began to show the roving spirit that dwelt within me. For some time past my infant legs had been gaining strength, so that I came to be dissatisfied with rubbing the skin off my chubby knees by walking on them, and made many attempts to stand up and walk like a man; all of which attempts, however, resulted in my sitting down violently and in sudden surprise. One day I took advantage of my dear mother’s absence to make another effort; and, to my joy, I actually succeeded in reaching the doorstep, over which I tumbled into a pool of muddy water that lay before my father’s cottage door. Ah, how vividly I remember the horror of my poor mother when she found me sweltering in the mud amongst a group of cackling ducks, and the tenderness with which she stripped off my dripping clothes and washed my dirty little body! From this time forth my rambles became more frequent, and, as I grew older, more distant, until at last I had wandered far and near on the shore and in the woods around our humble dwelling, and did not rest content until my father bound me apprentice to a coasting vessel, and let me go to sea.
For some years I was happy in visiting the seaports, and in coasting along the shores of my native land. My Christian name was Ralph, and my comrades added to this the name of Rover, in consequence of the passion which I always evinced for travelling. Rover was not my real name, but as I never received any other I came at last to answer to it as naturally as to my proper name; and, as it is not a bad one, I see no good reason why I should not introduce myself to the reader as Ralph Rover. My shipmates were kind, good-natured fellows, and they and I got on very well together. They did, indeed, very frequently make game of and banter me, but not unkindly; and I overheard them sometimes saying that Ralph Rover was a ‘queer, old-fashioned fellow’. This, I must confess, surprised me much, and I pondered the saying long, but could come at no satisfactory conclusion as to that wherein my old-fashionedness lay. It is true I was a quiet lad, and seldom spoke except when spoken to. Moreover, I never could understand the jokes of my companions even when they were explained to me: which dullness in apprehension occasioned me much grief; however, I tried to make up for it by smiling and looking pleased when I observed that they were laughing at some witticism which I had failed to detect. I was also very fond of enquiring into the nature of things and their causes, and often fell into fits of abstraction while thus engaged in my mind. But in all this I saw nothing that did not seem to be exceedingly natural, and could by no means understand why my comrades should call me ‘an old-fashioned fellow’.
Now, while engaged in the coasting trade, I fell in with many seamen who had travelled to almost every quarter of the globe; and I freely confess that my heart glowed ardently within me as they recounted their wild adventures in foreign lands, the dreadful storms they had weathered, the appalling dangers they had escaped, the wonderful creatures they had seen both on the land and in the sea, and the interesting lands and strange people they had visited. But of all the places of which they told me, none captivated and charmed my imagination so much as the Coral Islands of the Southern Seas. They told me of thousands of beautiful fertile islands that had been formed by a small creature called the coral insect, where summer reigned nearly all the year round – where the trees were laden with a constant harvest of luxuriant fruit – where the climate was almost perpetually delightful – yet where, strange to say, men were wild, bloodthirsty savages, excepting in those favoured isles to which the gospel of our Saviour had been conveyed. These exciting accounts had so great an effect upon my mind, that, when I reached the age of fifteen, I resolved to make a voyage to the South Seas.
I had no little difficulty at first in prevailing on my dear parents to let me go; but when I urged on my father that he would never have become a great captain had he remained in the coasting trade, he saw the truth of what I said, and gave his consent. My dear mother, seeing that my father had made up his mind, no longer offered opposition to my wishes. ‘But oh, Ralph,’ she said, on the day I bade her adieu, ‘come back soon to us, my dear boy, for we are getting old now, Ralph, and may not have many years to live.’
I will not take up my reader’s time with a minute account of all that occurred before I took my final leave of my dear parents. Suffice it to say, that my father placed me under the charge of an old messmate of his own, a merchant captain, who was on the point of sailing to the South Seas in his own ship, the Arrow. My mother gave me her blessing and a small Bible; and her last request was, that I would never forget to read a chapter every day, and say my prayers; which I promised, with tears in my eyes, that I would certainly do. Soon afterwards I went on board the Arrow, which was a fine large ship, and set sail for the islands of the Pacific Ocean.
chapter two
It was a bright, beautiful, warm day when our ship spread her canvas to the breeze, and sailed for the regions of the south. Oh, how my heart bounded with delight as I listened to the merry chorus of the sailors, while they hauled at the ropes and got in the anchor! The captain shouted – the men ran to obey – the noble ship bent over to the breeze, and the shore gradually faded from my view, while I stood looking on with a kind of feeling that the whole was a delightful dream.
The first thing that struck me as being different from anything I had yet seen during my short career on the sea, was the hoisting of the anchor on deck, and lashing it firmly down with ropes, as if we had now bid adieu to the land for ever, and would require its services no more.
‘There, lass,’ cried a broad-shouldered jack-tar, giving the fluke of the anchor a hearty slap with his hand after the housing was completed – ‘there, lass, take a good nap now, for we shan’t ask you to kiss the mud again for many a long day to come!’
And so it was. That anchor did not ‘kiss the mud’ for many long days afterwards; and when at last it did, it was for the last time!
There were a number of boys in the ship, but two of them were my special favourites. Jack Martin was a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered youth of eighteen, with a handsome, good-humoured, firm face. He had had a good education, was clever and hearty and lion-like in his actions, but mild and quiet in disposition. Jack was a general favourite, and had a peculiar fondness for me. My other companion was Peterkin Gay. He was little, quick, funny, decidedly mischievous, and about fourteen years old. But Peterkin’s mischief was almost always harmless, else he could not have been so much beloved as he was.
‘Hallo! youngster,’ cried Jack Martin, giving me a slap on the shoulder, the day I joined the ship, ‘come below and I’ll show you your berth. You and I are to be messmates, and I think we shall be good friends, for I like the look o’ you.’
Jack was right. He and I and Peterkin afterwards became the best and stanchest friends that ever tossed together on the stormy waves.
I shall say little about the first part of our voyage. We had the usual amount of rough weather and calm; also we saw many strange fish rolling in the sea, and I was greatly delighted one day by seeing a shoal of flying fish dart out of the water and skim through the air about a foot above the surface. They were pursued by dolphins, which feed on them, and one flying fish in its terror flew over the ship, struck on the rigging, and fell upon the deck. Its wings were just fins elongated, and we found that they could never fly far at a time, and never mounted into the air like birds, but skimmed along the surface of the sea. Jack and I had it for dinner, and found it remarkably good.
When we approached Cape Horn, at the southern extremity of America, the weather became very cold and stormy, and the sailors began to tell stories about the furious gales and the dangers of that terrible cape.
‘Cape Horn,’ said one, ‘is the most horrible headland I ever doubled. I’ve sailed round it twice already, and both times the ship was a’most blow’d out o’ the water.’
‘An’ I’ve been round it once,’ said another, ‘an’ that time the sails were split, and the ropes frozen in the blocks, so that they wouldn’t work, and we wos all but lost.’
‘An’ I’ve been round it five times,’ cried a third, ‘an’ every time wos wuss than another, the gales wos so tree-mendous!’
‘And I’ve been round it no times at all,’ cried Peterkin, with an impudent wink of his eye, ‘an’ that time I wos blow’d inside out!’
Nevertheless, we passed the dreaded cape without much rough weather, and, in the course of a few weeks afterwards, were sailing gently, before a warm tropical breeze, over the Pacific Ocean. Thus we proceeded on our voyage, sometimes bounding merrily before a fair breeze, at other times floating calmly on the glassy wave and fishing for the curious inhabitants of the deep – all of which, although the sailors thought little of them, were strange, and interesting, and very wonderful to me.
At last we came among the Coral Islands of the Pacific, and I shall never forget the delight with which I gazed – when we chanced to pass one – at the pure, white, dazzling shores, and the verdant palm trees, which looked bright and beautiful in the sunshine. And often did we three long to be landed on one, imagining that we should certainly find perfect happiness there! Our wish was granted sooner than we expected.
One night, soon after we entered the tropics, an awful storm burst upon our ship. The first squall of wind carried away two of our masts; and left only the foremast standing. Even this, however, was more than enough, for we did not dare to hoist a rag of sail on it. For five days the tempest raged in all its fury. Everything was swept off the decks except one small boat. The steersman was lashed to the wheel, lest he should be washed away, and we all gave ourselves up for lost. The captain said that he had no idea where we were, as we had been blown far out of our course; and we feared much that we might get among the dangerous coral reefs which are so numerous in the Pacific. At daybreak on the sixth morning of the gale we saw land ahead. It was an island encircled by a reef of coral on which the waves broke in fury. There was calm water within this reef, but we could only see one narrow opening into it. For this opening we steered, but, ere we reached it, a tremendous wave broke on our stern, tore the rudder completely off, and left us at the mercy of the winds and waves.
‘It’s all over with us now, lads,’ said the captain to the men; ‘get the boat ready to launch; we shall be on the rocks in less than half an hour.’
The men obeyed in gloomy silence, for they felt that there was little hope of so small a boat living in such a sea.
‘Come boys,’ said Jack Martin, in a grave tone, to me and Peterkin, as we stood on the quarterdeck awaiting our fate; ‘Come boys, we three shall stick together. You see it is impossible that the little boat can reach the shore, crowded with men. It will be sure to upset, so I mean rather to trust myself to a large oar, I see through the telescope that the ship will strike at the tail of the reef, where the waves break into the quiet water inside; so, if we manage to cling to the oar till it is driven over the breakers, we may perhaps gain the shore. What say you? Will you join me?’
We gladly agreed to follow Jack, for he inspired us with confidence, although I could perceive, by the sad tone of his voice, that he had little hope; and, indeed, when I looked at the white waves that lashed the reef and boiled against the rocks as if in fury, I felt that there was but a step between us and death. My heart sank within me; but at that moment my thoughts turned to my beloved mother, and I remembered those words, which were among the last that she said to me – ‘Ralph, my dearest child, always remember in the hour of danger to look to your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He alone is both able and willing to save your body and your soul.’ So I felt much comforted when I thought thereon.
The ship was now very near the rocks. The men were ready with the boat, and the captain beside them giving orders, when a tremendous wave came towards us. We three ran towards the bow to lay hold of our oar, and had barely reached it when the wave fell on the deck with a crash like thunder. At the same moment the ship struck, the foremast broke off close to the deck and went over the side, carrying the boat and men along with it. Our oar got entangled with the wreck, and Jack seized an axe to cut it free, but, owing to the motion of the ship, he missed the cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling in the surf, and all the sailors tossed into the foaming waves. Then I became insensible.
On recovering from my swoon, I found myself lying on a bank of soft grass, under the shelter of an overhanging rock, with Peterkin on his knees by my side, tenderly bathing my temples with water, and endeavouring to stop the blood that flowed from a wound in my forehead.
chapter three
There is a strange and peculiar sensation experienced in recovering from a state of insensibility, which is almost indescribable; a sort of dreamy, confused consciousness; a half-waking half-sleeping condition, accompanied with a feeling of weariness, which, however, is by no means disagreeable. As I slowly recovered and heard the voice of Peterkin enquiring whether I felt better, I thought that I must have overslept myself, and should be sent to the masthead for being lazy; but before I could leap up in haste, the thought seemed to vanish suddenly away, and I fancied that I must have been ill. Then a balmy breeze fanned my cheek, and I thought of home, and the garden at the back of my father’s cottage, with its luxuriant flowers, and the sweet-scented honeysuckle that my dear mother trained so carefully upon the trellised porch. But the roaring of the surf put these delightful thoughts to flight, and I was back again at sea, watching the dolphins and the flying fish, and reefing topsails off the wild and stormy Cape Horn. Gradually the roar of the surf became louder and more distinct. I thought of being wrecked far far away from my native land, and slowly opened my eyes to meet those of my companion Jack, who, with a look of intense anxiety, was gazing into my face.
‘Speak to us, my dear Ralph,’ whispered Jack, tenderly, ‘are you better now?’
I smiled and looked up, saying, ‘Better! why, what do you mean, Jack? I’m quite well.’
‘Then what are you shamming for, and frightening us in this way?’ said Peterkin, smiling through his tears; for the poor boy had been really under the impression that I was dying.
I now raised myself on my elbow, and putting my hand to my forehead, found that it had been cut pretty severely, and that I had lost a good deal of blood.
‘Come, come, Ralph,’ said Jack, pressing me gently backward, ‘lie down, my boy; you’re not right yet. Wet your lips with this water, it’s cool and clear as crystal. I got it from a spring close at hand. There now, don’t say a word, hold your tongue,’ said he, seeing me about to speak. ‘I’ll tell you all about it, but you must not utter a syllable till you have rested well.’
‘Oh! don’t stop him from speaking, Jack,’ said Peterkin, who, now that his fears for my safety were removed, busied himself in erecting a shelter of broken branches in order to protect me from the wind; which, however, was almost unnecessary, for the rock beside which I had been laid completely broke the force of the gale. ‘Let him speak, Jack; it’s a comfort to hear that he’s alive, after lying there stiff and white and sulky for a whole hour, just like an Egyptian mummy. Never saw such a fellow as you are, Ralph; always up to mischief. You’ve almost knocked out all my teeth and more than half choked me, and now you go shamming dead! It’s very wicked of you, indeed it is.’
While Peterkin ran on in this style, my faculties became quite clear again, and I began to understand my position. ‘What do you mean by saying I half choked you, Peterkin?’ said I.
‘What do I mean? Is English not your mother tongue, or do you want me to repeat it in French, by way of making it clearer? Don’t you remember –’
‘I remember nothing,’ said I, interrupting him, ‘after we were thrown into the sea.’
‘Hush, Peterkin,’ said Jack, ‘you’re exciting Ralph with your nonsense. I’ll explain it to you. You recollect that after the ship struck, we three sprang over the bow into the sea; well, I noticed that the oar struck your head and gave you that cut on the brow, which nearly stunned you, so that you grasped Peterkin round the neck without knowing apparently what you were about. In doing so you pushed the telescope – which you clung to as if it had been your life – against Peterkin’s mouth –’
‘Pushed it against his mouth!’ interrupted Peterkin, ‘say crammed it down his throat. Why, there’s a distinct mark of the brass rim on the back of my gullet at this moment!’
‘Well, well, be that as it may,’ continued Jack, ‘you clung to him, Ralph, till I feared you really would choke him; but I saw that he had a good hold of the oar, so I exerted myself to the utmost to push you towards the shore, which we luckily reached without much trouble, for the water inside the reef is quite calm.’
‘But the captain and crew, what of them?’ I enquired anxiously.
Jack shook his head.
‘Are they lost?’
‘No, they are not lost, I hope, but I fear there is not much chance of their being saved. The ship struck at the very tail of the island on which we are cast. When the boat was tossed into the sea it fortunately did not upset, although it shipped a good deal of water, and all the men managed to scramble into it; but before they could get the oars out the gale carried them past the point and away to leeward of the island. After we landed I saw them endeavouring to pull towards us, but as they had only one pair of oars out of the eight that belong to the boat, and as the wind was blowing right in their teeth, they gradually lost ground. Then I saw them put about and hoist some sort of sail – a blanket, I fancy, for it was too small for the boat – and in half an hour they were out of sight.’
‘Poor fellows,’ I murmured sorrowfully.
‘But the more I think about it, I’ve better hope of them,’ continued Jack, in a more cheerful tone. ‘You see, Ralph, I’ve read a great deal about these South Sea Islands, and I know that in many places they are scattered about in thousands over the sea, so they’re almost sure to fall in with one of them before long.’
‘I’m sure I hope so,’ said Peterkin, earnestly. ‘But what has become of the wreck, Jack? I saw you clambering up the rocks there while I was watching Ralph. Did you say she had gone to pieces?’
‘No, she has not gone to pieces, but she has gone to the bottom,’ replied Jack. ‘As I said before, she struck on the tail of the island and stove in her bow, but the next breaker swung her clear, and she floated away to leeward. The poor fellows in the boat made a hard struggle to reach her, but long before they came near her she filled and went down. It was after she foundered that I saw them trying to pull to the island.’
There was a long silence after Jack ceased speaking, and I have no doubt that each was revolving in his mind our extraordinary position. For my part I cannot say that my reflections were very agreeable. I knew that we were on an island, for Jack had said so, but whether it was inhabited or not I did not know. If it should be inhabited, I felt certain, from all I had heard of South Sea Islanders, that we should be roasted alive and eaten. If it should turn out to be uninhabited, I fancied that we should be starved to death. ‘Oh!’ thought I, ‘if the ship had only stuck on the rocks we might have done pretty well, for we could have obtained provisions from her, and tools to enable us to build a shelter, but now – alas! alas! we are lost!’ These last words I uttered aloud in my distress.
‘Lost! Ralph?’ exclaimed Jack, while a smile overspread his hearty countenance. ‘Saved, you should have said. Your cogitations seem to have taken a wrong road, and led you to a wrong conclusion.’
‘Do you know what conclusion I have come to?’ said Peterkin. ‘I have made up my mind that it’s capital – first rate – the best thing that ever happened to us, and the most splendid prospect that ever lay before three jolly young tars. We’ve got an island all to ourselves. We’ll take possession in the name of the king; we’ll go and enter the service of its black inhabitants. Of course we’ll rise, naturally, to the top of affairs. You shall be king, Jack; Ralph, prime minister, and I shall be –’
‘The court jester,’ interrupted Jack.
‘No,’ retorted Peterkin, ‘I’ll have no title at all. I shall merely accept a highly responsible situation under government, for you see, Jack, I’m fond of having an enormous salary and nothing to do.’
‘But suppose there are no natives?’
‘Then we’ll build a charming villa, and plant a lovely garden round it, stuck all full of the most splendiferous tropical flowers, and we’ll farm the land, plant, sow, reap, eat, sleep, and be merry.’
‘But to be serious,’ said Jack, assuming a grave expression of countenance, which I observed always had the effect of checking Peterkin’s disposition to make fun of everything, ‘we are really in rather an uncomfortable position. If this is a desert island, we shall have to live very much like the wild beasts, for we have not a tool of any kind, not even a knife.’
‘Yes, we have that,’ said Peterkin, fumbling in his trousers pocket, from which he drew forth a small penknife with only one blade, and that was broken.
‘Well, that’s better than nothing; but come,’ said Jack, rising, ‘we are wasting our time in talking instead of doing. You seem well enough to walk now, Ralph, let us see what we have got in our pockets, and then let us climb some hill and ascertain what sort of island we have been cast upon, for, whether good or bad, it seems likely to be our home for some time to come.’
chapter four
We now seated ourselves upon a rock and began to examine into our personal property.
When we reached the shore, after being wrecked, my companions had taken off part of their clothes and spread them out in the sun to dry, for, although the gale was raging fiercely, there was not a single cloud in the bright sky. They had also stripped off most part of my wet clothes and spread them also on the rocks. Having resumed our garments, we now searched all our pockets with the utmost care, and laid their contents out on a flat stone before us; and, now that our minds were fully alive to our condition, it was with no little anxiety that we turned our several pockets inside out, in order that nothing might escape us. When all was collected together we found that our worldly goods consisted of the following articles:
First, A small penknife with a single blade broken off about the middle and very rusty, besides having two or three notches on its edge. (Peterkin said of this, with his usual pleasantry, that it would do for a saw as well as a knife, which was a great advantage.)
Second, An old German-silver pencil case without any lead in it. Third, A piece of whipcord about six yards long. Fourth, A sailmaker’s needle of a small size. Fifth, A ship’s telescope, which I happened to have in my hand at the time the ship struck, and which I had clung to firmly all the time I was in the water. Indeed it was with difficulty that Jack got it out of my grasp when I was lying insensible on the shore. I cannot understand why I kept such a firm hold of this telescope. They say that a drowning man will clutch at a straw. Perhaps it may have been some such feeling in me, for I did not know that it was in my hand at the time we were wrecked. However, we felt some pleasure in having it with us now, although we did not see that it could be of much use to us, as the glass at the small end was broken to pieces. Our sixth article was a brass ring which Jack always wore on his little finger. I never understood why he wore it, for Jack was not vain of his appearance, and did not seem to care for ornaments of any kind. Peterkin said ‘it was in memory of the girl he left behind him!’ But as he never spoke of this girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our backs. These last were as follows:
Each of us had on a pair of stout canvas trousers, and a pair of sailors’ thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and a red Kilmarnock bonnet or nightcap, besides a pair of worsted socks, and a cotton pocket-handkerchief, with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson printed on it, and a Union Jack in the middle. Peterkin had on a striped flannel shirt – which he wore outside his trousers, and belted round his waist, after the manner of a tunic – and a round black straw hat. He had no jacket, having thrown it off just before we were cast into the sea; but this was not of much consequence, as the climate of the island proved to be extremely mild; so much so, indeed, that Jack and I often preferred to go about without our jackets. Peterkin had also a pair of white cotton socks, and a blue handkerchief with white spots all over it. My own costume consisted of a blue flannel shirt, a blue jacket, a black cap, and a pair of worsted socks, besides the shoes and canvas trousers already mentioned. This was all we had, and besides these things we had nothing else; but, when we thought of the danger from which we had escaped, and how much worse off we might have been had the ship struck on the reef during the night, we felt very thankful that we were possessed of so much, although, I must confess, we sometimes wished that we had had a little more. While we were examining these things, and talking about them, Jack suddenly started and exclaimed –
‘The oar! we have forgotten the oar.’
‘What good will that do us?’ said Peterkin; ‘there’s wood enough on the island to make a thousand oars.’
‘Ay, lad,’ replied Jack, ‘but there’s a bit of hoop iron at the end of it, and that may be of much use to us.’
‘Very true,’ said I, ‘let us go fetch it,’ and with that we all three rose and hastened down to the beach. I still felt a little weak from loss of blood, so that my companions soon began to leave me behind; but Jack perceived this, and, with his usual considerate good nature, turned back to help me. This was now the first time that I had looked well about me since landing, as the spot where I had been laid was covered with thick bushes which almost hid the country from our view. As we now emerged from among these and walked down the sandy beach together, I cast my eyes about, and, truly, my heart glowed within me and my spirits rose at the beautiful prospect which I beheld on every side. The gale had suddenly died away, just as if it had blown furiously till it dashed our ship upon the rocks, and had nothing more to do after accomplishing that. The island on which we stood was hilly, and covered almost everywhere with the most beautiful and richly coloured trees, bushes, and shrubs, none of which I knew the names of at that time, except, indeed, the coconut palms, which I recognised at once from the many pictures that I had seen of them before I left home. A sandy beach of dazzling whiteness lined this bright green shore, and upon it there fell a gentle ripple of the sea. This last astonished me much, for I recollected that at home the sea used to fall in huge billows on the shore long after a storm had subsided. But on casting my glance out to sea the cause became apparent. About a mile distant from the shore I saw the great billows of the ocean rolling like a green wall, and falling with a long, loud roar, upon a low coral reef, where they were dashed into white foam and flung up in clouds of spray. This spray sometimes flew exceedingly high, and, every here and there, a beautiful rainbow was formed for a moment among the falling drops. We afterwards found that this coral reef extended quite round the island, and formed a natural breakwater to it. Beyond this the sea rose and tossed violently from the effects of the storm; but between the reef and the shore it was as calm and as smooth as a pond.
My heart was filled with more delight than I can express at sight of so many glorious objects, and my thoughts turned suddenly to the contemplation of the Creator of them all. I mention this the more gladly, because at that time, I am ashamed to say, I very seldom thought of my Creator, although I was constantly surrounded by the most beautiful and wonderful of His works. I observed from the expression of my companion’s countenance that he too derived much joy from the splendid scenery, which was all the more agreeable to us after our long voyage on the salt sea. There, the breeze was fresh and cold, but here it was delightfully mild; and, when a puff blew off the land, it came laden with the most exquisite perfume that can be imagined. While we thus gazed, we were startled by a loud ‘Huzza!’ from Peterkin, and, on looking towards the edge of the sea, we saw him capering and jumping about like a monkey, and ever and anon tugging with all his might at something that lay upon the shore.
‘What an odd fellow he is, to be sure,’ said Jack, taking me by the arm and hurrying forward; ‘come, let us hasten to see what it is.’
‘Here it is, boys, hurrah! come along. Just what we want,’ cried Peterkin, as we drew near, still tugging with all his power. ‘First rate; just the very ticket!’
I need scarcely say to my readers that my companion Peterkin was in the habit of using very remarkable and peculiar phrases. And I am free to confess that I did not well understand the meaning of some of them – such, for instance, as ‘the very ticket’; but I think it my duty to recount everything relating to my adventures with a strict regard to truthfulness in as far as my memory serves me; so I write, as nearly as possible, the exact words that my companions spoke. I often asked Peterkin to explain what he meant by ‘ticket’, but he always answered me by going into fits of laughter. However, by observing the occasions on which he used it, I came to understand that it meant to show that something was remarkably good, or fortunate.
On coming up we found that Peterkin was vainly endeavouring to pull the axe out of the oar, into which, it will be remembered, Jack struck it while endeavouring to cut away the cordage among which it had become entangled at the bow of the ship. Fortunately for us the axe had remained fast in the oar, and even now, all Peterkin’s strength could not draw it out of the cut.
‘Ah! that is capital indeed,’ cried Jack, at the same time giving the axe a wrench that plucked it out of the tough wood. ‘How fortunate this is! It will be of more value to us than a hundred knives, and the edge is quite new and sharp.’
‘I’ll answer for the toughness of the handle at any rate,’ cried Peterkin; ‘my arms are nearly pulled out of the sockets. But see here, our luck is great. There is iron on the blade.’ He pointed to a piece of hoop iron, as he spoke, which had been nailed round the blade of the oar to prevent it from splitting.
This also was a fortunate discovery. Jack went down on his knees, and with the edge of the axe began carefully to force out the nails. But as they were firmly fixed in, and the operation blunted our axe, we carried the oar up with us to the place where we had left the rest of our things, intending to burn the wood away from the iron at a more convenient time.
‘Now, lads,’ said Jack, after we had laid it on the stone which contained our little all, ‘I propose that we should go to the tail of the island, where the ship struck, which is only a quarter of a mile off, and see if anything else has been thrown ashore. I don’t expect anything, but it is well to see. When we get back here it will be time to have our supper and prepare our beds.’
‘Agreed!’ cried Peterkin and I together, as, indeed, we would have agreed to any proposal that Jack made; for, besides his being older and much stronger and taller than either of us, he was a very clever fellow, and I think would have induced people much older than himself to choose him for their leader, especially if they required to be led on a bold enterprise.
Now, as we hastened along the white beach, which shone so brightly in the rays of the setting sun that our eyes were quite dazzled by its glare, it suddenly came into Peterkin’s head that we had nothing to eat except the wild berries which grew in profusion at our feet.
