Chapter VII

It was not very long after we had moved into our goat-skin clothes that Mr. Crusoe got up early one morning, and came and stood over me with an axe in his hand as I was lying asleep on my bed. I woke up suddenly, and saw him looking very solemn, and I thought at first that he must have been taken sick, so I asked him what was the matter, and if I could do anything for him.

“Nothing is the matter with me,” he replied; “but I am sorry you woke up, for I was just going to kill you.”

“That’s very kind in you, I’m sure,” said I; “but don’t you think, Mr. Crusoe, that you could manage to get along without killing me till after breakfast? I ought to get up and start the fire, you know.”

Now Mr. Crusoe couldn’t bear to start a fire, and whenever he tried it he always got his throat and eyes full of smoke, and couldn’t get anything to burn except kindlings. So he was glad to get rid of making a fire and getting breakfast that morning, and he told me that on second thoughts I might live till the coffee was ready.

It took me a good while to make a fire that morning, and I pretended that I couldn’t split kindlings without the axe, and when I once got the axe into my hands I took very good care not to let Mr. Crusoe get hold of it again. I made up my mind, however, that Mr. Crusoe must give up his notion about killing me, for it was really getting pretty dangerous, now that he had got the idea of knocking me on the head with the axe whenever he could catch me asleep. So, while the coffee was boiling, I said to him, “Mr. Crusoe, the reason why you are going to kill me is that your grandfather wasn’t cast ashore with an intelligent sailor-man, isn’t it?”

“That’s just it, my dear boy,” said he.

“But,” said I, “there was his man Friday, that I’ve heard you talk about. Now why shouldn’t I be your man Friday? It won’t do for you to try to get on without one, you know very well; and I don’t see where your Friday is to come from unless I help you out.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Mike,” exclaimed Mr. Crusoe. “And what’s more, if you are Friday I needn’t kill you; and I do assure you I don’t want to kill you if it can be avoided.”

“All right,” said I, “I’m your man Friday, and I hope you won’t give yourself the least trouble after this about killing me.”

Mr. Crusoe was as pleased with the notion of turning me into Friday as if he had been made a captain in the navy, but he said I couldn’t be made into Friday by just saying so, and that he would have to think how to do it in the correct way.

After breakfast Mr. Crusoe told me that I must burn a piece of cork and black myself all over, and that I might move out of my goat-skin clothes, and wear nothing but a towel tied round my waist. This suited me perfectly, and in a few minutes I was as black as a native African king. Then Mr. Crusoe told me I must walk about a mile down the beach, and then turn and run back to the house, and he would meet me, and consider that I was Friday.

I can’t tell you how nice it was to get rid of my goat-skin clothes. I felt as light as a feather; and after I had walked a mile away, and turned to run back, I felt as if I could run for a week without stopping.

I was running my best when Mr. Crusoe stepped out from the woods and aimed his gun almost at me. I thought first that he was going to shoot me, so the instant he fired I dropped flat on the beach, and then jumped up again and ran towards him, so as to get hold of his gun before he could load.

But he hadn’t fired at me after all. As I came towards him he put his gun down on the ground and smiled from ear to ear, and beckoned me to come to him in the most friendly sort of way. Then I remembered what he had told me about the way in which his grandfather had introduced himself to Friday by shooting a cannibal who was hungry, and was chasing Friday so as to catch him and put him on the coals.

When I came where Mr. Crusoe was he patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good fellow! poor fellow! your enemies are killed and you are safe now.” He couldn’t have been kinder if I had been a dog; and when he took me by the hand and led me back to the house, and made me lie down and drink another cup of coffee, I was pretty well satisfied to be Friday.

MIKE TAKES THE PART OF “MAN FRIDAY.”
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He began calling me Friday at once, and never called me anything else except once or twice when he got very angry at something and called me “You Mike!” When I began to talk back to him he stopped me, and said, “Friday, you talk too plain. You mustn’t say, ‘That coffee’s awful good!’ but you must say, ‘Him coffee berry muchee good!’ Remember that you’re a poor, ignorant savage, just beginning to learn English, and don’t let me have to correct you again.”

I was disappointed to find that I had to climb into my goat-skin clothes again; and when I had finished the coffee, and Mr. Crusoe showed me the clothes, and said, “Now, Friday, you must put on these clothes,” I said, “I do wish, Mr. Crusoe, you’d let me go as I am now.” He looked very angry, and said, “What did you say, Friday? Your broken English isn’t very easy to understand.” I knew what he meant then, and said, “Me no likee clothes. Me no wearee clothes in my country.” This pleased him better, but all the same I had to put the clothes on.

I found it pretty easy to talk as Mr. Crusoe wanted me to, and after a while it seemed perfectly natural to be a man Friday. It was a nuisance to have to black myself all over every time after I had been in swimming, and once I tried to get Mr. Crusoe to let me black nothing but my face and hands, but he wouldn’t agree to it. I really began to feel as if I was a real black savage; and as Mr. Crusoe never said anything more about killing me, I could go to sleep without fear of having my brains knocked out with the axe.

The worst thing about it was that Mr. Crusoe would insist on instructing me, as he called it. He would make me sit down by him and listen while he told me that there was more of the world than the island where we were, and there were great nations of white people who built ships and railroads and all sorts of things; just as if I didn’t know all about it a great deal better than he did, who had never been on board a ship but once. However, I had to listen respectfully, and I used to remember that, after all, it was easier to sit still and let a man talk than it was to work hard either afloat or ashore. But one day he tried to tell me what a ship was like. He called it a “big canoe,” and I never heard any man talk such nonsense as he did when he described how a ship is rigged. I really couldn’t stand it, so I said, “You no talkee sense. Gimme rest; you makee me tired,” and I got up and left him. After that he didn’t talk to me any more about ships.

Another thing that bothered me was that Mr. Crusoe would make me tell him all sorts of yarns about my country. He didn’t mean America, nor yet Ireland, but some heathen country not far from our island, where he maintained that I used to live. Of course my stories didn’t suit him until I found out just what he wanted me to tell. I had to tell him that the tribe of savages that I belonged to used to fight with another tribe. That was partly true of the Flanagans in old Ireland, for I have often heard my father say how they used to fight with the Maguires; but I thought things had come to a pretty pass when I had to call a respectable, decent family like the Flanagans a tribe of savages.

Then, too, Mr. Crusoe was bound to make me tell him that there were a whole ship’s company of Spaniards in my country. I had to make believe that they had been shipwrecked there, and whenever we talked about them Mr. Crusoe would sigh, and say that if we only had a boat we would set sail and find the Spaniards, and bring them to the island. Once he said, “We had better make a canoe, Friday, and have it all ready, so that when your father comes we can send him in it to bring the Spaniards here.”

I was so astonished to hear him say that my father was coming that I almost spoke English to him; but I recollected in time that I was Friday, so I only said, “What you meanee?”

“Your father, my poor Friday,” he answered, “is a very old savage, and he has been captured by the enemy. They will bring him here to eat him before very long, and then we’ll rescue him.”

“My father was a respectable Irishman, Mr. Crusoe,” said I, “and I won’t allow any man—I don’t care who he is—to call him an old savage.” I was so angry that I got up and left Mr. Crusoe after saying this, and I didn’t see him again till supper-time. However, he never said anything to me about it, and perhaps he didn’t notice that I had answered him in English.

By this time you must have found out that Mr. Crusoe was a very curious man. What was perhaps the strangest thing of all about him was that he wouldn’t make the least attempt to get away from the island. Not only did he forbid me to hoist a signal where any ship could see it, or to make a bonfire at night, but he would never listen when I proposed building a boat or making a raft, and so trying to get over to the main-land; that is, if it was the main-land that we could see from the top of the hill. He would always say, whenever I spoke about getting away, that an English ship would come for us after a while, and that we hadn’t been on the island half long enough yet. According to the almanac, as he called his post with notches cut on it, we had been on the island about two years when he turned me into a man Friday, though, according to my reckoning, we had been there less than a year. But Mr. Crusoe seemed to enjoy himself better the longer we stayed, and I made up my mind that he never meant to get away, and that unless I wanted to live and die a corked-up savage, I must contrive some plan for getting away alone.

I took the saw one afternoon when Mr. Crusoe was asleep, and went up to the top of the hill, and climbed the big tree that stood at the very top, and had only a few limbs. I began at the very top of the tree, and sawed all the limbs off except two that were opposite to each other, and stood out straight from the tree. Then I trimmed these two limbs until the whole tree looked exactly like an enormous cross. It stood to reason that no ship could see this cross without understanding that some one was on the island, and meant the cross to be a signal of distress; and no Christian ship would think of passing by the island without sending a boat to find out what was the matter.

I was afraid that Mr. Crusoe would be in a rage when he should find out what I had done, and I didn’t suppose it would be possible to keep him from finding it out. Still, I took the trouble to drag all the sawed-off branches into the woods, where Mr. Crusoe would not be likely to find them, and brushed up the leaves and the sawdust.

That night we had a very heavy thunder-storm, and the lightning struck three or four times very near us. Mr. Crusoe was a good deal frightened, and told me while the shower was going on that his grandfather didn’t like thunder, and that he was like his grandfather in most things. It appears that old Mr. Crusoe was in a terrible state of mind when it thundered and lightened, for fear that his gunpowder would take fire and blow him up; and it’s a great pity that it didn’t. My Mr. Crusoe thought that he ought to worry about the powder because his grandfather did; but I finally convinced him that when the lightning had the choice of twenty thousand big trees to strike, it would not demean itself to strike a little low but just for the sake of looking for some powder to blow up.

The next morning we happened to walk out where we could see my big tree, and I saw that the top of it was splintered, and that it was burned black. You see, the lightning had struck it, and it would have been burnt up if the rain had not put the fire out.

Mr. Crusoe was perfectly delighted when he saw the big cross. He never dreamed that I had anything to do with it, and he said that it was a sign to tell him that he was doing right, and that the English ship would come and take him off, and that everything would turn out well, only that we must hurry up and find my father and the Spaniards on the main-land, and be ready to kill the cannibals and to capture Will Atkins. I really began to think that perhaps Mr. Crusoe was a little crazy, and resolved that I would keep a close watch on him, and stand by to lash him to a tree, in case it should become necessary.