Chapter XIV

I got Mr. Crusoe a little fried pork and some canned peaches, for I thought he must be well enough to eat the pork, but he wasn’t. He finished the peaches, however, and then he said, “Will you kindly tell me where I am?”

“You’re on the island, Mr. Crusoe, but you’ve been sick for a good while.”

“I must have been,” he replied, looking at one of his arms, and smiling to see how thin it was. “But what island do you mean? not Blackwell’s Island, I hope?”

“It’s your grandfather’s island. Don’t you remember about our being wrecked here?”

“Well, since I don’t remember ever having gone on board a ship, I naturally don’t remember being wrecked,” he answered. “And then I never heard before that my grandfather had an island. May I ask whereabouts this island is?”

“I only wish I knew,” I replied. “It’s somewheres in the South Pacific; that’s all I know about it.”

“Have you ever been in a lunatic asylum, my young friend?” asked Mr. Crusoe, after thinking for a minute or two; “or is this place an asylum?”

“I don’t know anything about asylums, Mr. Crusoe,” said I. “This island is a coral island, and not an asylum—that is, as far as I know.”

“I’ll only ask one more question,” said he. “Tell me why you call me Mr. Crusoe?”

“Because that’s your name.”

“That will do,” he answered. “I’ll try to sleep a little now. I thought my name was Robert H. Monroe, but I suppose I was wrong.”

Mr. Crusoe turned over, after trying two or three times, which showed that he was stronger than he had been, and presently went to sleep.

What he said worried me very much; because if he didn’t know his own name, or where he was, he must be crazy still. I had half a mind to tie his hands and feet together again, but he was so weak that it didn’t seem to be worth while.

The next time he woke up it was after sleeping about ten hours, and he looked much brighter. I got him something more to eat, and after he had eaten it he began to talk. The first thing he wanted was that I should tell him all about our being shipwrecked.

He listened quietly, and when I had finished he asked me my name. I told him it was Michael Flanagan, though he had generally called me Friday.

“‘I MUST HAVE HAD A BRAIN-FEVER, MICHAEL,’ SAID HE.”
]

“I must have had a brain-fever, Michael,” said he; “and, so far as I can see, you have saved my life and taken care of me. If we can ever get back to America again you will find out whether I am grateful or not. But please tell me what made you think my name was Crusoe?”

“Because you said so, sir,” I replied. “Don’t you remember how you told me that your grandfather, old Mr. Robinson Crusoe, lived on this island, and how you were bound to do exactly everything that he did?”

“If I was crazy enough to do that, I must have been a nice companion for you. Never mind, though; I’ve got my senses back again now, and as soon as I get stronger we’ll find some way to escape from here.”

“Then wasn’t your grandfather’s name Robinson Crusoe?” asked I. “Are you quite sure, sir?”

“Perfectly sure,” said he. “My grandfather was a sensible old gentleman, who never set his foot on a ship.”

“Then, sir,” said I, “if you please, you’ll kindly let me say that the Robinson Crusoe you used to talk about must have been the worst old idiot that ever lived, and if I had only known that he wasn’t your grandfather I’d have taken you away from here months ago.”

“How long have we been here?” asked Mr. Monroe.

“Well, sir, you used to keep a sort of log by making scratches on a post, and according to that we’ve been here about two hundred and fifteen years. According to my reckoning we’ve been here about a year and two months.”

“And in all that time you haven’t seen a soul except one crazy man?”

“Oh yes,” said I, “there were a lot of Sunday-school picnickers came here about a month ago, but they didn’t see us. You said they were cannibals, and you wanted to shoot them.”

“I must have been a nice person,” said he, laughing. “But what I want to do now is to get strong. I suppose you haven’t any milk here?”

“There are the goats. If you like goat’s milk, you can have all you want of it.”

So I fed him on goat’s milk for a week, and by the end of that time he was stronger than Mr. Crusoe ever was.

He was a great deal nicer than Mr. Crusoe, and whenever I told him what Mr. Crusoe used to do he would laugh himself nearly sick. The goat-skin clothes amused him more than anything else, though he hated them as much as I did.

He didn’t remember the least thing about his having been at sea. He said that the last thing he could remember was being in his house in New York, and having two doctors come to see him. When I described the man that was with him on board the ship he could not tell who he was, but rather thought he must have been a hired nurse. It was Mr. Monroe’s opinion that his doctors must have told him to take a sea-voyage, and that he must have become crazy soon after the ship sailed.

I can’t to this day understand how it was that I could have lived nearly a year with Mr. Monroe without seeing that he was a lunatic. Sometimes I used to say to myself that I believed he wasn’t quite right in his mind, but I never really thought so; and when towards the last he was raving crazy, I thought it was only because he had caught a fever by taking cold after he had shot himself in the leg.

As soon as Mr. Monroe was well enough we made ready to leave the island in the canoe. We victualled her with canned provisions, and put water aboard her enough to last us a month. Of course we took blankets and such things with us, but nearly everything else that we had we put into the house, and before we started we nailed a card on the door with our names written on it, and a promise that we would come back for our property in a short time.

I was in favor of sailing across to what we had always supposed was the main-land. Mr. Monroe said that if a picnic-party had landed on the island it proved that there was a town within at least a day’s sail, and that we should be very sure to find it by crossing to the main-land. I thought so too; so we set sail one morning with a fair wind, and by night were within four or five miles of the land. As we were afraid to try to land at night, we lay off the land till morning, and then, the wind having died out, we paddled to the shore.

We went ashore, but as there was no sign of any town, we coasted along expecting every time we doubled a headland to find a town behind it. We kept on all day, and never saw anything but sand or trees, and about sunset found ourselves just opposite the place where we had landed.

Instead of being the main-land the land was only another uninhabited island, much smaller than ours. There was no other land in sight except one island, and we went ashore and camped on the beach, feeling a good deal discouraged—that is, I was discouraged.

Mr. Monroe couldn’t be made discouraged by anything. He was the jolliest man I ever knew. I told him how he insisted that there were a lot of Spaniards kept as prisoners on the main-land by the cannibals, and how he was always expecting them to come over to our island, and he fairly rolled over and over on the ground, laughing at himself. Perhaps I ought to say that he was laughing at Mr. Crusoe, for he was such a different man from Mr. Crusoe that I could never feel as if they were the same.

Since we had found out that the main-land was nothing but another island, and that there was no more land in sight, we could not tell which way to steer in order to find land. As our ship had been driven out of her course a long way south before she was wrecked, we both agreed that the best thing we could do would be to steer north. So the next morning we set sail and steered northward all day; but that night Mr. Monroe stumbled and fell over the compass and smashed it, so after that we could only steer by the stars.

We had beautiful weather, with fair, fresh breezes that sent us along at about the rate of five knots an hour. Mr. Monroe learned how to handle the boat very quickly, and we used to take watch and watch; that is, he would steer for about four hours, and then he would take a rest for four hours. I never had a better time than I had in that canoe. We had plenty to eat, just work enough to keep us busy, and a good seaworthy boat under us. If I could have got rid of my goat-skin clothes I should have been perfectly happy; but when those clothes got wet, as they did almost every day, they were as stiff as planks, and felt as if they were full of sharp nails.

We cruised for eight days in the canoe. Twice we saw a sail, but she was always way up to windward, and we had no chance of catching her, and were too far away for her to see us. But the eighth day we saw a ship a good ways astern of us and a good ways to leeward, for we had a beam wind. We had no trouble in laying our course so as to meet her, and by noon we were safe aboard her, with our canoe lying on the deck alongside the long-boat.

She was an English ship, the _Aberdeen_, bound to San Francisco, and the captain treated us very well. He took Mr. Monroe into the cabin, but I turned to with the crew, for I had been ashore so long that I was very glad to see the inside of a forecastle again. We had a good run to San Francisco, and when we had landed, Mr. Monroe telegraphed home and got some money, and took me to New York with him on the train.

What I want to know now is where to find that island. I believe that it is somewheres, inside of a thousand miles north of Australia, but that isn’t enough to help anybody to find it. You might as well try to find a Mr. Smith by just knowing that he lived within a thousand miles more or less north of Mexico. If Mr. Monroe and I could find that island, we could sell it for a lot of money, and be rich all the rest of our days. But nobody will ever find it till somebody is shipwrecked on it again, and most likely when anybody is shipwrecked on it he will have to stay there.

Mr. Monroe and I often talked about the picnickers, and we finally agreed that they couldn’t have been a Sunday-school, but that they must have been on a yachting cruise, and accidentally discovered the island. But they certainly acted as if they had been there before; and then how can you account for the footprint and the hair-pin unless they had been there before? And if women and men came twice to the same island just to cook dinner there and then sail away again, they must have come from some place within a day’s sail. Then there were the goats. They would hardly have been as tame as they were unless they had been used to seeing people.

But it doesn’t do any good to cry over lost islands. The island is lost, and I never expect to find it. After all, I don’t care very much about having lost it, for Mr. Monroe has got me a first-rate place on a farm, and I needn’t ever go to sea any more. He is the best man that ever lived, and I would stick by him even if he were to turn into Mr. Crusoe again.

THE END.

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