第 11 页

Skirting the swamp, we in due time reached the north-western extremity of the lake and, still pushing on, arrived, quite unexpectedly, about an hour later, at the edge of a range of practically perpendicular cliffs, from which we looked down into a great basin-like depression some six miles long by about four miles wide. Its general shape was that of an oval with more or less deeply indented sides, and its longer axis ranged about North-West by North. Its western side was occupied by the lagoon which we had previously seen from the lip of the crater, and which we now found to be about three and a half miles long by about a mile and a half wide at its deepest part. The outer boundary of the lagoon was a coral reef, with a narrow opening in it at the point where the lagoon measured its widest.

The cliffs, upon the verge of which we stood, seemed to average about two hundred feet in height and, as I have said, were practically vertical. They were composed of grey rock, which Oldroyd suggested was probably limestone, and although the cliff-face was everywhere very rugged, it was much too steep to tempt us to essay the descent, even had we been disposed to do so. But we had no such disposition; for our first glance down into the basin showed us that it was inhabited, and that, too, by the savages whose presence on the island I had all along feared. At the base of the cliffs there was a sort of irregularly shaped plateau, about a mile wide at its widest part—which happened to be almost immediately below where we stood—tapering away to nothing at either extremity. This plateau was under cultivation, the greater part of it being devoted to Indian corn, while the remainder, consisting of perhaps one hundred acres, at its farther extremity, seemed to be under sugar cane. Beyond the outer extremity of the plateau the ground sloped gently away to a sandy beach; and this ground was cut up into some two hundred garden plots, planted apparently with vegetables and fruit trees of various kinds, while each plot had its own hut in the centre. Almost every plot had two or three workers on it—whom my telescope revealed to be women—while the small bare space around each hut constituted the playground of the children, these ranging in number from a solitary child to as many as half-a-dozen. Some of the huts seemed to have no children belonging to them. Some seventy or eighty canoes of varying sizes lay drawn up on the beach, while a score or so were dotted about the surface of the lagoon, the occupants seeming to be engaged in the rather difficult sport of spearing fish. Through my telescope I saw that these natives were light in colour, and seemingly very shapely of form, if one might judge by the women. What their features were like I could not make out.

“Ah!” I exclaimed. “There are the savages, sure enough. I could not believe that an island of this size could be without inhabitants. Now, the first point that we have to settle is: are those savages likely to be hostile to us, or friendly? If the latter, well and good; but if the former, it means trouble.”

“Sure!” agreed Oldroyd. “But how do you propose to do it?”

“Well,” said I, “we are both armed. What is to prevent our going down and opening a palaver with them?”

“I guess there are two or three objections to that,” returned Oldroyd. “First, how are you going to get down? Where is your road? I don’t see any. Next, to open a palaver successfully with savages, it is desirable to have presents to offer them—beads, brass wire, lengths of printed calico, knives and what not—and we have none. Next, supposing we should find a way down into that basin, like as not those squaws would take fright and bolt, screaming, to their huts or the beach, scare the men into rushing to their arms, and bring the whole crowd upon us, hot-foot and out to kill. Then what chance would we have? We could account for half a dozen of them, no doubt, but would that stop the rush? It might: but then again, it might not, and if it didn’t, you and I, Massey, would be simply overwhelmed and wiped out by force of numbers.

“No, I guess it is up to us to let those savages alone. Seems to me that the basin is their home and that they seldom or never leave it. The whole of its interior is cultivated, but I haven’t seen a sign of cultivation anywhere else about the island. Have you? No, I guess not. Very well, then; that seems to point to the conclusion that they either can’t or don’t want to leave the basin, that they seldom or never do; and that, even if they do, it is improbable that they venture so far as the tower. They seem to be satisfied with their old basin; let them keep it, and we’ll make use of the rest of the island. Perhaps neither party will ever encounter the other, and thus there will be peace. Besides, we shall have the pull of the savages, in that we know of their presence, and consequently shall be on the watch, while so long as they keep to the basin, they will not suspect our presence.”

There was something to be said in favour of this view; but, on the other hand, to adopt Oldroyd’s plan would be to leave ourselves continually in a state of suspense. Anyhow, I was determined not to return until I had subjected the cliff-face to a careful examination, to see whether any road out of the basin existed. If not, its absence would be a strong argument in favour of Oldroyd’s suggestion that the savages never left the basin; in which case it might be best for us to accept his plan, but, if we should find that there was a road, or even a practicable footpath up the face of the cliff, we must return to the others, report our discovery, and consult as to what steps should be taken to meet the situation.

Oldroyd agreed with me, and we set off on our tour of exploration, going first in a north-westerly direction, and taking care to expose ourselves as little as possible. Our examination was painstaking and thorough; not a bit of the cliff was skipped; and the result was that when the sun set we had accomplished less than a quarter of our task. This involved a night’s absence from our friends at the tower; but that did not matter, since the contingency had been foreseen and provided for. Allowing ourselves only just time enough to do it, we used the last quarter of an hour of daylight to retire into the forest far enough from the cliff-edge to prevent the possibility of the light or smoke of our fire being seen from the basin, and then went into camp for the night.

The following day was devoted in part to the examination of the remaining portion of the cliff-face, on no part of which did we discover anything resembling a path, much less a road; therefore, as our examination had been thorough, when we took what Oldroyd termed the “home trail” we did so with the fixed conviction that the savages never left their basin—unless in their canoes, by way of the passage through the reef—and that we therefore need not trouble as to the possibility of being interfered with.

Wending our way leisurely through the forest, on our return to the tower, a distant glimpse of which we were able to catch occasionally when we came upon an open space, we kept a sharp look-out for trees, the timbers of which might prove useful for bows, and we found several, from two or three of which we lopped branches suitable for experimenting with. We also touched again at the swamp, and cut a quantity of reeds of different dimensions, with the view of testing their usefulness for several purposes which suggested themselves. We had no difficulty in finding the long length of liana which we had cut, and which also was intended to experiment with, and this I coiled round my body, noting with much satisfaction the fact that it was as pliant as ever, while its weight was negligible. Our last call before reaching “home” was at the tobacco patch, where we spent a good hour or more gathering additional leaves and spreading them to dry.

The afternoon was well advanced when, at a distance of about a mile from the tower, we unexpectedly came upon the two girls of our party who, it appeared, were out on a little expedition on their own account, seeking fruit. They greeted us cordially enough, and turned back with us; but on this occasion Miss Anthea, for some reason, resumed her icy manner to me and attached herself to Oldroyd, leaving me Lucy Stroud. That, however, did not trouble me in the least, for Lucy was always genial, always ready to make the best of things, and always reliable, which was more than could be said of the other.

Nothing of importance had happened during our absence; unless it could be said to be important that the Doctor, after subjecting the tower and the ruins to a rigorous examination, had come to the conclusion that the tower—and probably some at least of the other buildings as well—had been connected with some religious cult, and that it would be well worth the labour of opening up if, as he strongly suspected, there were chambers underneath, which had become blocked and hidden by the débris of ages. They had indeed begun work that morning, the two seamen having undertaken to plait baskets of twigs, wherewith to remove the rubbish, while the Doctor and Mason were engaged in fashioning pickaxes out of certain giant thorns which we had noticed in the forest, on our way down from the mountain.

In this way we almost automatically became divided into three sets; the Doctor, Mason, and the two seamen forming one gang, devoted to the task of excavating the tower; Oldroyd and I another, whose duty it was to provide generally for the needs of the party; and the two girls, who undertook the domestic arrangements.

Oldroyd was keen upon the substitution of bows and arrows for shot guns in the provisioning of our larder, and before sunset, upon the day of our return from the Basin—as we decided to call the savages’ settlement—he had peeled two of the branches which he thought suitable for bows, and had hung them up to dry, while, at his suggestion, I dissected a short length of the liana and found it a tough, smooth, thin bark enclosing a number of threadlike but very strong ligaments embedded in pith. Then, also at Oldroyd’s suggestion, I took another length, stripped it of its bark, and set the pith with its enclosed fibres to steep in the river, to see what would happen. The next day, finding that the wood was soft and amenable to the knife, we both got to work, and by mid-day had whittled out a couple of very promising-looking bows, each about five feet in length. We hung them up to dry, hoping to increase their elasticity, which was nothing very wonderful to start with. Our next work was to make arrows out of our reeds, which we did by heading them with hard, sharp thorns, any quantity of which could be obtained in the forest. We also tried in the same way to make spears out of the larger reeds, and succeeded very well. An attempt to make blow pipes was a failure—or rather, I ought to say that our attempt to use them after making them was a failure, as neither of us seemed able to acquire the knack of driving the darts with energy enough to render them effective.

The next scheme to which Oldroyd and I turned our attention was that of testing the capabilities of the lake as a source of fish supply. Two things were necessary for this, a raft and fishing tackle, the first of which had still to be constructed, while the fishing tackle was down at the big lagoon, aboard our boat; we therefore decided to commence operations by making the journey to the lagoon for the fishing lines, and, incidentally, obtaining a supply of salt-water fish; and after gathering a supply of fruit to last our companions for the day, we set off. The journey to and from the lagoon was accomplished without incident, and in a shorter time than hitherto, now that we knew the way; and about mid-afternoon we returned to the camp by the tower, carrying two fishing lines, and an abundant supply of salt-water fish which was much appreciated that night when it was served up for dinner.

On the following day Oldroyd and I set off for the swamp, taking the tobacco patch on our way and spending a couple of hours there, plucking tobacco leaves, laying them out to dry, and turning over those previously plucked, which Oldroyd declared were curing satisfactorily. Upon leaving the tobacco patch we began to look-out for the tough lianas, a quantity of which we cut and carried with us to the lake beach, where we deposited them. Then we went on to the swamp and cut as many of the biggest reeds as we could carry, repeating the process until we had accumulated what we considered a quantity sufficient for our purpose. This done, we began the construction of a raft, laying the reeds side by side until we had a row of them about eight feet wide by twelve feet long, which we bound together in the form of a mat, with the lianas, doubling the latter and passing them under and over each reed until we had the whole held compactly together. Having completed one mat, we began another, precisely similar, except that this time the dimensions were reversed, the second being eight feet long by twelve feet wide. Then we placed the second mat crosswise on top of the first, lashed the two firmly together, and found that we had a light, strong and easily handled raft, capable of supporting not only our two selves, but two more like us. That completed our day’s work; but we returned next day, and, following the plan adopted by Wilkinson and Dartnell when making the paddles for their raft, we made a similar pair, thus completing our outfit for the navigation of the lake. Being anxious to test our novel craft at once, and having brought our fishing lines with us and some bait, we launched and pushed off into deep water, when, as a reward for our pains, we soon had a dozen of as fine trout as one need wish to see. We should probably have continued had we not received a scare. Oldroyd and I were fishing from opposite sides of the raft, and had our lines down, when my companion felt the tug which told him that he had hooked another fish. He began to haul in his line, and presently saw the squirming shape of the fish on his hook, with a frequent silvery flash which told him that the creature was doing its best to shake itself free from the barb in its jaws. Then, when the captured trout was within ten feet of the surface, Oldroyd was startled by seeing a great yellowish-green shape—which he solemnly declared was at least ten feet long—dash at the captured trout and snatch it off the line, carrying away trout and hook together, and giving such a tremendous jerk to the line that the American was all but dragged off the raft into the water. The water of the lake was translucent, permitting objects to be seen even at considerable depth. Oldroyd therefore had a clear, though only momentary view of the robber, a giant pike, he assured me. And when the thing happened we were discussing whether there remained time to indulge in a swim before returning to the beach! Needless to say we abandoned the idea, and took care to give our friends warning to the same effect.

When we got back to camp, we found that the two girls had made a discovery of considerable value. Finding themselves with spare time upon their hands, they had gone off for a ramble in the forest, in the course of which their attention had been attracted toward certain objects hanging from the branches of some of the trees. They were cocoons, a few of which they brought back with them. Lucy, who as a child had kept silkworms, soon assured herself that they had stumbled upon a prize worth having, for upon proceeding to unwind one of the cocoons she found a veritable silk, finer and stronger even than that of the silkworm, and of a beautiful creamy white colour, several yards of which she had already wound upon a bobbin cut by Mason from one of our useless reed blow pipes. The Doctor, too, was interested in a mild way in the discovery, although he could scarcely be persuaded to think or speak of anything but his projected excavation of the ruins, and what he hoped to learn therefrom. But he happened casually to mention that he had often, as a child, watched his grandmother manipulating a spinning wheel, whereupon Mason, who had a genius for mechanics, first extracted a description of the wheel, and then vowed that he would make one like it. He succeeded, too, after some three weeks of arduous labour, during which the Doctor was plunged into the depths of despair owing to the defection of his chief assistant and the consequent delay in the work of excavation.