Chapter 7: The Pirate’s Warning

When the lad awoke it was quite dark in the house, but there was no sound of rain. He went to the door and looked out upon a fairly clear night. The storm was gone and he heard only a light wind rustling through palms. There was no thunder or beating surf in the distance. It was a quiet sky and a quiet island.

He went back and looked at the slaver. The man was asleep on his couch, but he was stirring a little, and he was hot with a fever. Robert felt pity for him, cruel and blood-stained though he knew him to be. Besides, he was the only human companion he had, and he did not wish to be left alone there. But he did not know what to do just then, and, lying down on the floor, he went to sleep again.

When he awoke the second time day had come, and the slaver too was awake, though looking very weak.

“I’ve been watching you quite a while, Peter,” he said. “You must have slept fifteen or sixteen hours. Youth has a wonderful capacity for slumber and restoration. I dare say you’re now as good as ever, and wondering where you’ll find your breakfast. Well, when I built this house I didn’t neglect the plenishings of it. Open the door next to you and you’ll find boucan inside. ‘Boucan,’ as you doubtless know, is dried beef, and from it, we got our name the buccaneers, because, in the beginning, we lived so much upon dried beef. Enough is in that closet to last us a month, and there are herds of wild cattle on the island, an inexhaustible larder.”

“But we can’t catch wild cattle with our hands,” said Robert.

The slaver laughed.

“You don’t think, Peter,” he said, “that when I built a house here and furnished it I neglected some of the most necessary articles. In the other closet, you’ll find weapons and ammunition. But deal first with the boucan.”

Robert opened the closet and found the boucan packed away in sheets or layers on shelves, and at once he became ravenously hungry.

“On a lower shelf,” said the slaver, “you’ll find flint and steel, and with them, it shouldn’t be hard for a wilderness lad like you to start a fire. There are also kettles, skillets, and pans, and I think you know how to do the rest.”

Robert went to work on a fire. The wood, which was abundant outside, was still damp, but he had a strong clasp knife and he whittled a pile of dry shavings which he succeeded in igniting with the flint and steel, though it was no light task, requiring both patience and skill. But the fire was burning at last and he managed to make in one of the kettles some soup of the dried beef, which he gave to the captain. The man had no appetite, but he ate a little and declared that he felt stronger. Then Robert broiled many strips for himself over the coals and ate ravenously. He would have preferred a greater variety of food, but it was better than a castaway had a right to expect.

His breakfast finished, he continued his examination of the house, which was furnished with many things, evidently captured from ships. He found in one of the closets a fine fowling piece, a hunting rifle, two excellent muskets, several pistols, ammunition for all the fire-arms and a number of edged weapons.

“You see, Peter, you’re fitted for quite an active defense should enemies come,” said the slaver. “You’ll admit, I think, that I’ve been a good housekeeper.”

“Good enough,” said Peter. “Are there any medicines?”

“You’ll find some salves and ointments on the top shelf in the second closet, and you can make a poultice for this hurt of mine. Between you and me, Peter, I’ve less pain, but much more weakness, which is a bad sign.”

“Oh, you’ll be well in a few days,” said Robert cheerfully. “One wound won’t carry off a man as strong as you are.”

“One wound always suffices, provided it goes in deep enough, but I thank you for your rosy predictions, Peter. I think your good wishes are genuinely sincere.”

Robert realized that they were so, in truth. In addition to the call of humanity, he had an intense horror of being left alone on the island, and he would fight hard to save the slaver’s life. He compounded the poultice with no mean skill, and, after bathing the wound carefully with freshwater from a little spring behind the hut, he applied it.

“It’s cooling, Peter, and I know it’s healing, too,” said the man, “but I think I’ll try to go to sleep again. As long as I’m fastened to a couch that’s about the only way I can pass the time. Little did I think when I built this house that I’d come here without a ship and without a crew to pass some helpless days?”

He shut his eyes. After a while, Robert, not knowing whether he was asleep or not, took down the rifle, loaded it, and went out feeling that it was high time he should explore his new domain.

In the sunlight, the island did not look forbidding. On the contrary, it was beautiful. From the crest of the hill near the house, he saw a considerable expanse, but the western half of the island was cut off from view by a higher range of hills. It was all in dark green foliage, although he caught the sheen of a little lake about two miles away. As far as he could see a line of reefs stretched around the coast, and the white surf was breaking on them freely.

From the hill, he went back to the point at which he and the captain had been swept ashore, and, as he searched along the beach he found the bodies of all those who had been in the boat with them. He had been quite sure that none of them could possibly have escaped, but it gave him a shock nevertheless to secure the absolute proof that they were dead. He resolved he could find a way to bury them in the sand beyond the reach of the waves, but, for the present, he could do nothing, and he continued along the shore for several miles, finding its character everywhere the same, a gentle slope, a stretch of water, and beyond that the line of reefs on which the white surf was continually breaking, reefs with terrible teeth as he well knew.

But it was all very peaceful now. The sea stretched away into infinity the bluest of the blue, and a breeze both warm and stimulating came out of the west. Robert, however, looked mostly toward the north. Albany and his friends now seemed a world away. He had been wrenched out of his old life by a sudden and unimaginable catastrophe. What were Tayoga and Willet doing now? How was the war going? For him so far as real life was concerned the war simply did not exist. He was on a lost island with only a wounded man for company and the struggle to survive and escape would consume all his energies.

Presently he came to what was left of their boat. It was smashed badly and half buried in the sand. At first, he thought he might be able to use it again, but a critical examination showed that it was damaged beyond any power of his to repair it, and with a sigh, he abandoned the thought of escape that way.

He continued his explorations toward the south and saw groves of wild banana, the bushes or shrubs fifteen or twenty feet high, some of them with ripe fruit hanging from them. He ate one and found it good, though he was glad to know that he would not have to depend upon bananas wholly for food.

A mile to the south and he turned inland, crossing a range of low hills, covered with dense vegetation. As he passed among the bushes he kept his rifle ready, not knowing whether or not dangerous wild animals were to be found there. He had an idea they were lacking in both the Bahamas and the West Indies, but not being sure, he meant to be on his guard.

Before he reached the bottom of the slope he heard a puff, and then the sound of heavy feet. All his wilderness caution was alive in a moment, and, drawing back, he cocked the rifle. Then he crept forward, conscious that some large wild beast was near. A few steps more and he realized that there was more than one. He heard several puffs and the heavy feet seemed to be moving about in an aimless fashion.

He came to the edge of the bushes, and, parting them, he looked cautiously from their cover. Then his apprehensions disappeared. Before him stretched a wide, grassy savanna, and upon it was grazing a herd of wild cattle, at least fifty in number, stocky beasts with long horns. Robert looked at them with satisfaction. Here was enough food on the hoof to last him for years. They might be tough, but he had experience enough to make them tender when it came to the fire and spit.

“Graze on in peace until I need you,” he said, and crossing the savanna he found beyond, hidden at first from view by a fringe of the forest, the lake that he had seen from the crest of the hill beside the house. It covered about half a square mile and was blue and deep. He surmised that it contained fish good to eat, but, for the present, he was content to let them remain in the water. They, like the wild cattle, could wait.

Feeling that he had been gone long enough, he went back to the house and found the slaver asleep or in a stupor, and, when he looked at him closely, he was convinced that it was more stupor than sleep. He was very pale and much wasted. It occurred suddenly to Robert that the man would die and the thought gave him a great shock. Then, in very truth, he would be alone. He sat by him and watched anxiously, but the slaver did not come back to the world for a full two hours.

“Aye, Peter, you’re there,” he said. “As I’ve told you several times, you’re a good lad.”

“Can I make you some more of the beef broth?” asked Robert.

“I can take a little I think, though I’ve no appetite at all.”

“And I’d like to dress your wound again.”

“If it’s any relief to you, Peter, to do so, go ahead, though I think ‘tis of little use.”

“It will help a great deal. You’ll be well again in a week or two. It isn’t so bad here. With a good house and food, it’s just the place for a wounded man.”

“Plenty of quiet, eh Peter? No people disturb me during my period of convalescence.”

“Well, that’s a help.”

Robert dressed the wound afresh, but he noticed during his ministrations that the slaver’s weakness had increased, and his heart sank. It was a singular fact, but he began to feel a sort of attachment for the man who had done him so much ill. They had been comrades in a great hazard and were yet. Moreover, the fear of being left alone in tremendous solitude was recurrent and keen. These motives and that of humanity made him do his best.

“I thank you, Peter,” said the wounded man. “You’re standing by me in noble fashion. On the whole, I’m lucky in being cast away with you instead of one of my own men. But it hurts me more than my wound does to think that I should have been tricked, that a man of experience such as I am should have been lured under the broadside of the sloop of war by an old fellow playing a fiddle and a couple of sailors dancing. My mind keeps coming back to it. My brain must have gone soft for the time being, and so I’ve paid the price.”

Robert said nothing but finished his surgeon’s task. Then he made a further examination of the house, finding more boucan stored in a small, low attic, also clothing, both outer and inner garments, nautical instruments, including a compass, a pair of glasses of power, and bottles of medicine, the use of some of which he knew.

Then he loaded the fowling piece and went back toward the lake, hoping he might find ducks there. Beef, whether smoked or fresh, as an exclusive diet, would become tiresome, and since they might be in for a long stay on the island he meant to fill their larder as best he could. On his way, he kept a sharp watch for game but saw only a small coney, a sort of rabbit, which he left in peace. He found at a marshy edge of the lake a number of ducks, three of which he shot, and which he dressed and cooked later on, finding them to be excellent.

Robert made himself a comfortable bed on the floor with blankets from one of the closets and slept soundly through the next night. The following morning he found the slaver weaker than ever and out of his head at times. He made beef broth for him once more, but the man was able to take but little.

“‘Tis no use, Peter,” he said in a lucid interval. “I’m sped. I think there’s no doubt of it. When that sloop of war lured us under her guns she finished her task; she did not leave a single thing undone. My schooner is gone, my crew is gone, and now I’m going.”

“Oh, no,” said Robert. “You’ll be better to-morrow.”

The man said nothing but seemed to sink back into a lethargic state. Robert tried his pulse, but could hardly feel its beat. In a half hour, he roused himself a little.

“Peter,” he said. “You’re a good lad. I tell you so once more. You saved me from the sea, and you’re standing by me now. I owe you for it, and I might tell you something, now that my time’s at hand. It’s really come true that when I built this house I was building the place in which I am to die, though I didn’t dream of it then.”

Robert was silent, waiting to hear what he would tell him. But he closed his eyes and did not speak for five minutes more. The lad tried his pulse a second time. It was barely discernible. The man at length opened his eyes and said:

“Peter, if you go back to the province of New York beware of Adrian Van Zoon.”

“Beware of Van Zoon! Why?”

“He wants to get rid of you. I was to put you out of the way for him, at a price, and a great price, too. But it was not intended, so it seems, that I should do so.”

“Why does Adrian Van Zoon want me to put you out of the way?”

“That I don’t know, Peter, but when you escape from the island you must find out.”

His eyelids drooped and closed once more, and when Robert felt for his pulse a third time there was none. The slaver and pirate were gone, and the lad was alone.

Robert felt an immense desolation. Whatever the man was he had striven to keep him alive, and at the last, the captain had shown a desire to undo some of the evil that he had done to him. And so it was Adrian Van Zoon who wished to put him out of the way. He had suspected that before, in fact, he had been convinced of it, and now the truth of it had been told to him by another. But, why? The mystery was as deep as ever.

Robert had buried the bodies of the sailors in the sand in graves dug with an old bayonet that he had found in the house, and he interred the captain in the same manner, only much deeper. Then he went back to the house and rested for a long time. The awful loneliness that he had feared came upon him, and he wrestled with it for hours. That night it became worse than ever, but it was so acute that it exhausted itself, and the next morning he felt better.

Resolved not to mope, he took down the rifle, put some of the smoked beef in his pocket, and started on a long exploration, meaning to cross the high hills that ran down the center of the island, and see what the other half was like.

In the brilliant sunshine, his spirits took another rise. After all, he could be much worse off. He had a good house, arms, and food, and in time a ship would come. A ship must come, and, with his usual optimism, he was sure that it would come soon.

He passed by the lakes and noted the marshy spot where he had shot the ducks. Others had come back and were feeding there now on the water grasses. Doubtless, they had never seen a man before and did not know his full destructiveness, but Robert resolved to have duck for his table whenever he wanted it.

A mile or two farther and he saw another but a much smaller lake, around the edge of which ducks also were feeding, showing him that the supply was practically unlimited. Just beyond the second lake lay the range of hills that constituted the backbone of the island, and although the sun was hot he climbed them, their height being about a thousand feet. From the crest he had a view of the entire island, finding the new half much like the old, low, hilly, covered with forest, and surrounded with a line of reefs on which the surf was breaking.