CHAPTER XXXIII.

A NEW PERPLEXITY.

The disappearance of the boom and of Tom's old striped shirt, which had waved from it like a banner, excited considerable speculation and something of alarm.

If simply overturned by the wind, it must have lain where it fell; at all events, it could not have rolled far from the cairn, or pile of stones, in the centre of which we had wedged it. By what agency had this disappearance come to pass?

That it was the work of wild animals could not for a moment be conceived; so the event filled us with vague but very alarming conjectures.

With his hatchet, Probart the carpenter cut down and prepared a long and slender tree to replace the lost boom on the top of the Devil's Mountain, as we now termed it; and while one portion of us assisted him in this, the other set about the capture of some of the wild goats with which the woods of the island abounded, as we were anxious to procure the milk of the females, and the flesh of their kids.

This was a most arduous task, as they were so fleet of foot; and when pursued, or when in search of those bitter and astringent plants of which they are so fond, they could gain the most dangerous pinnacles and ledges of rock that overhung the sea. In such places there grew a kind of wild laburnum, and Hislop did not fail to remind me that Theocritus described it as the favorite food of the goat.

We often saw these agile quadrupeds spring, without pause, fear, or hesitation, from pinnacle to pinnacle, or from ledge to ledge of rock, where, had they missed footing, they must have fallen a thousand feet or more, either into the ocean on one side, or some ravine on the other; and there, perched far aloft, they would remain, looking at us quietly, and reminding me of the couplet:

"High hung in air the hoary goat reclined, His streaming beard the sport of every wind."

By great industry, and the exertion of incredible labor and activity, we succeeded in capturing five, by isolating them from their flocks and chasing them into chasms and corners from which they had no means of escape, and then we secured them by the running rigging of the longboat.

Some of the females afforded milk, a rarity and nourishment to us who had been so long at sea. The flesh of a kid we thought delicious; and lest we should tire of roasted and broiled, Jack Burnet, the ship's cook, contrived to boil some pieces of a goat in its own skin, stretched upon sticks, with a fire underneath, salt for a spice, and sliced pumpkin for vegetables.

Of the horns, when carefully scraped and cleaned, we made very efficient drinking-cups, in which our rum, duly mixed with water, was doled out to us by Hislop, the keeper of our provision-store.

The eggs of the sea-birds were a constant object of search, and being an expert climber, I frequently collected great numbers of those laid in the crevices of the rocks by the sea-gull and storm-finch.

Our life was one of perpetual exposure and daily activity. Though overpoweringly hot at noon, the atmosphere of the morning and evening was delightful; and as these portions of the day were spent in hunting for food, the time passed rapidly; but Hislop's chief fear was, that if we were not taken off by some ship before the rainy season set in, our discomforts and danger from agues would become very great.

By the time we had been fourteen days on the island, he was recovered so far as to be able to join me in making an exploration of it, or rather in walking all round it.

The circumference of the largest isle is only four leagues; but its shores are so steep and rocky in some places, that traversing them proved a most arduous task.

On the eastern side we found a great cascade pouring from a brow of rock upon the beach. The latter was covered almost everywhere by a broad-leaved seaweed, the dark and slimy tendrils of which were several yards in length, and were termed by Hislop "the gigantic fucus."

So day after day passed, and amid our various means of procuring food, we never failed to keep a keen look-out to seaward for a passing sail; but none came near that lonely islet of the southern sea.

One morning I found there had drifted ashore near our hut a mass of that mysterious substance, the origin of which has puzzled so many naturalists--ambergris. It must have weighed more than a hundred pounds in weight; and and when we threw some of it into the fire, it melted and diffused around a most agreeable perfume. This marine production, which is only to be found in the seas or on the shores of Africa and Brazil, is alleged by some to be a concretion formed in the stomach of the spermaceti whale.

On the fifteenth morning after our landing, a seaman named Henry Warren, who went to milk our goats, which had been tethered to a large tree near the hut, returned in haste to announce that the ropes which had secured them were cut, apparently by a sharp instrument--cut clean through--and that the goats, the capture of which had cost us so much labor, were gone.

"Cut? By whom?" asked every one.

Before we had time to consider this, Hislop came out of the hut, and stated that one of our three bread bags had also been cut open, by a slash from a knife apparently, and that several pounds of biscuit had been abstracted.

The strange alarm, and what was worse, the doubt of each other, which these discoveries excited, were painful and bewildering.

We examined the place where the goats had been tethered, but could discover no traces of feet, and nothing remained but the ends of the ropes (the longboat sheets and halliards) tied to the stem of a tree.

Whoever among us had done this was guilty of wanton malice and treason to the rest of his friends--for friends we hoped we were, as well as brothers in misfortune.

We also examined the mutilated bread bag. In the side thereof was a clean slash a foot in length, made by some sharp instrument, and by this aperture the biscuits had been abstracted by some one who had inserted his hands through the fragile wall of our hut, which, as I have stated, was composed only of turf and branches.

This theft had been committed in the night; but by whom?

Was the thief one of ourselves? The eyes of each seemed to ask the hateful question of the others, and to repel their inquiring glances; but soon after three of our missing biscuits were discovered by Tom Lambourne, lying a few yards apart among the long grass, as if the abstractor had dropped them during a hasty flight toward the woods or the Devil's Mountain.

"In addition to ourselves there is some one else on this island," exclaimed Hislop, emphatically; "and this accounts for the loss of the studding-sail boom; and without delay, this some one else must be discovered."

We dreaded lest savages might be concealed in some of the caverns or woods, and that they might come upon us in the night and slay all, or that they might make off with or destroy the longboat, our most valuable possession.

It was at once resolved that one of our number (to be regularly relieved) should remain in it day and night, armed with the hatchet, our only weapon, and that he should be well flogged if he slept, or neglected the double duty of watching the hut and boat, which were close by each other.