The Spanish Galleon - Charles Sumner Seeley

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that they might last and be ready for future use.

      It was now nearly noon and my stomach became more clamorous than ever. I therefore cooked and ate the flesh of the other gull, which had been laid on the rocks to be cured. Although the flies had begun to attack the meat, it was, as yet, in no wise tainted, nor very dry. By dipping the pieces into the sea water I gave it, as I fancied, a perceptible flavor of salt. At any rate, though tough and a little rank in flavor, it tasted good enough and my only regret was that there was not more of it. I could perceive the gulls in great numbers flying about out at sea, but none on the shore, and concluded that they came to the land only at certain stages of the tide—probably at low tide, when their food would be exposed.

      Determined to lay in a store of provisions, I next turned my attention to the cocoanut palms and made another search for fallen nuts, but without any success, though I sought the whole length of the beach beneath the trees. It became quite evident that to get the nuts I should have to climb for them. As the nut-bearing trees were from fifty to seventy-five feet high, without a branch on their cylindrical stems from the base up to the feathery crown, the climb was likely to prove a difficult if not a dangerous task. However, selecting a palm with plenty of nuts on it, I made the attempt to “shin”—as the sailors call it—up the stem. It was hard work, and the heat was so oppressive that I had to stop several times and rest on the way up and was very glad when I found myself at the top. I broke off and threw down a score of the nuts in all stages of ripeness, and then descended in safety.

      The fruit of the cocoanut palm grows in clusters of a dozen to twenty nuts in each bunch, which hang immediately under the crown of leaves. Upon the trees they by no means present the globular hard-shelled appearance which is familiar to our eyes. Each nut is encased in a thick fibrous rind or husk; exteriorly this husk is of a sub-triangular form, about twelve inches long and six inches broad. Of the fibre of this exterior husk the well-known cocoanut matting is made, and also the coarse yarn called cöir; it is also used for cordage.

      I carried the nuts to a shady place and stripped off the husk by means of a pointed piece of rock set upright in the ground. The smaller ones not yet entirely ripe were full of a sweet liquid, and the meat was soft enough to have been scooped out with a spoon; the older ones were also very good, not nearly so dry and hard as we find them in our northern markets. For the first time since the shipwreck I ate until my hunger was fully appeased. What the result of a long-continued diet upon such food would be I could not of course forecast, but it seemed probable that I need not starve while the nuts were plentiful. Those which were left from this meal I carried to the landing-place and laid them on the chest, where the land crabs would probably not get at them.

      With this ample supply of food, presumably nutritious and certainly quite palatable, my anxiety was greatly relieved. Animal food I could probably obtain from time to time as the island appeared to abound with birds of various kinds, if I could have time to contrive some method of ensnaring or killing them. Then too there were doubtless fish to be caught, and probably turtle. In some of the islands, I knew, there were wild pigs, as it was a common thing for the people of Martinique to come to these small isolated islands on pig-hunting expeditions. I sincerely hoped that these animals might be found on Key Seven; for I felt quite confident of my ability to think of some plan for killing or capturing them. But there was no immediate need to go fishing or hunting for birds or pigs.

      I determined to find, if possible, some means of getting a supply of salt before I sought for flesh food of any kind. With this end in view, as the afternoon was still young, I began looking about for a suitable place to serve as a salt pan. I walked along the beach for a mile each way, but could find no suitable spot. The requirements were a shallow basin near the sea, with the bottom impervious to water, which should hold in a shallow depth at least five or ten barrels of water. There was plenty of rock of a coralline limestone variety, and an abundance of shells; and the idea occurred to me that I might burn a supply of lime and thus make a mortar or cement of slaked lime and sand. With this material it would be possible to construct just above high-water mark such a pan or cavity as I desired. If I used shells to make the lime, there would probably be no need of erecting a kiln, as heat enough could be attained in a large open fire, by building it of several alternate layers of dry wood and shells.

      I immediately set about collecting shells with which the beach was most plentifully strewn in all directions. As I had nothing in which to carry them, I adopted the expedient of throwing them one at a time into heaps. This was very hard and fatiguing work, and it was four o’clock or later in the afternoon before I had gathered into about twenty different heaps the four or five bushels of shells which I thought enough for a burning. It still remained for me to collect the scattered heaps together, and gather the wood for fuel.

      But it was high time now to stop work and prepare for the night. Some sort of sleeping-place must be contrived in the two or three hours of daylight that remained, for I had no fancy to try again the sort of couch I had last slept in. I went to the stream and drank a good draught of water, a welcome refreshment after my exertion in the hot sun. I then gathered a quantity of dry grass for a bed and carried it down to the sand near the landing-place, which seemed a sort of home to me, although I had resolved speedily thereafter to move my property nearer to the brook. The contents of the chest were now dry excepting the books, which presented a sad appearance. I gathered all of these things together and covered them up as well as I could with the focussing-cloth that belonged to the camera, piling stones around the edge to secure it. The empty chest I turned up on its side, hinges uppermost, and propped up the lid in a nearly horizontal position. This would afford me shelter for the upper portion of the body. Under the shelter thus improvised I piled the dry grass for a couch, and my sleeping-place was ready. I then gathered a fresh supply of fuel and built up a fire on the landward, which would presently be the leeward side of my shelter.

      By the time these arrangements were all complete, the sun was setting. Tired out, I lay down and watched the fire, thinking over my situation and planning what to do and how to do it. No doubt, sooner or later some vessel would pass in sight or land on the island and take me off. It was not as though I were on a remote or inaccessible place; the native sloops and small vessels occasionally visited these islands for wood or turtle, or on pig-hunting expeditions, and I fancied it would not be long before an opportunity offered for my escape. In the meantime, while thus a prisoner, be the time long or short, it would be necessary to keep up my health and strength. For this purpose food and shelter were necessary, and occupation, too, that I might not brood over my situation and worry at the delay in my plans. There was likely to be plenty of occupation, however, in providing myself with the bare necessities of life. If there should be any spare time on my hands I would devote it to the construction of a boat, a raft, or a vessel of some other sort, with which to get away. But with only a pocket knife how could I expect ever to build a boat capable of navigating more than a hundred miles of sea? How could I carry fresh water enough to last during the voyage?

      These problems were indeed difficult of solution. I ran over in my mind, as far as I could recollect them, all the different kinds of boats, canoes, kayaks, etc., known to primitive man. There was the ancient coracle, used by the old Britons, woven in basket fashion from willows and coated with clay or lined with a hide—a thing good enough in an emergency to ferry one over a stream, but utterly useless to me. There was the canoe or pirogue, hollowed from a single tree-trunk—called also the dugout. Possibly by the aid of fire I might with patience construct such a thing by months of hard work; and by adding an outrigger log or float, after the manner of the South-Sea islanders, such a canoe could possibly be rendered capable of navigating the sea in favorable weather. Then again there was the whole class of skin boats such as the Esquimaux use; the Greenlander’s kayak made of skins stretched over a framework, and “decked over” like a modern canoe. But how could I build a boat without tools to work with?

      I lay thus for an hour or two watching the embers and thinking over one plan after another, until I felt inclined to sleep. When I turned over with my back to the fire, I could see along the beach where the moonlight glinted and sparkled on the sand and shells and pebbles, tinging each wave with liquid silver, as it ran up in graceful curves upon the sand.

      I was looking on this scene of magic beauty with the soft fingers of sleep just ready to press down my eyelids when I saw what I thought

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