My Tropic Isle | Page 3

their exclusion. Wooden buildings
rest on piles sunk in the ground, on the top of which is an excluder of
galvanised iron in shape resembling a milk dish inverted. It is also wise
to take the additional precaution of saturating each pile with an
arsenical solution. Being quite unfamiliar with the art of hut-building,
and in a frail physical state, I found the work perplexing and most
laborious, simple and light as it all was. Trees had to be felled and sawn
into proper lengths for piles, and holes sunk, and the piles adjusted to a
uniform level. With blistered and bleeding hands, aching muscles, and
stiff joints I persevered.
While we toiled our fare, simplicity itself, was eaten with becoming
lack of style in the shade of a bloodwood-tree, the tents being reserved
for sleeping. When the blacks could be spared, fish was easily
obtainable, and we also drew upon the scrub fowl and pigeon
occasionally, for the vaunting proclamation for the preservation of all
birds had not been made. Tinned meat and bread and jam formed the
most frequent meals, for there were hosts of simple, predestined things
which had to be painfully learned. But there was no repining. Two
months' provisions had been brought; the steamer called weekly, so that
we did not contemplate famine, though thriftiness was imperative. Nor
did we anticipate making any remarkable addition to our income, for
the labour of my own hands, however eager and elated my spirits, was,
I am forced to deplore, of little advantage. I could be very busy about
nothing, and there were blacks to feed, therefore did we hasten to
prepare a small area of forest land, and a still smaller patch of jungle
for the cultivation of maize, sweet potatoes, and vegetables. Fruit,
being a passion and a hobby, was given special encouragement and has
been in the ascendant ever since, to the detriment of other branches of
cultural enterprise.
I have said that our Island career began with an explosion. To that
starting-point must I return if the narration of the tribulations our
youthful inexperience suffered is to be orderly and exact.
While we camped, holiday-making, the year prior to formal and
rightful occupancy, in a spasm of enthusiasm, which still endures, I

selected the actual site for a modest castle then and there built in the
accommodating air. It was something to have so palpable and rare a
base for the fanciful fabric. All in a moment, disdaining formality, and
to the, accompaniment of the polite jeers of two long-suffering friends,
I proclaimed "Here shall I live! On this spot shall stand the
probationary palace!" and so saying fired my rifle at a tree a few yard's
off. But the stolid tree--a bloodwood, all bone, toughened by death, a
few ruby crystals in sparse antra all that remained significant of past
life--afforded but meagre hospitality to the, soft lead.
"Ah!" exclaimed one of my chums, "the old tree foreswears him! The
Island refuses him!"
But the homely back gate swings over the charred stump of the boorish
tree burnt flush with the ground. Twelve months and a fortnight after
the firing of the shot which did not echo round the world, but was
merely a local defiant and emphatic promulgation of authority, a fire
was set to the base of the tree, for our tents had been pitched perilously
close. Space was wanted, and moreover its bony, imprecating arms,
long since bereft of beckoning fingers, menaced our safety. I said it
must fall to the north-east, for the ponderous inclination is in that
direction, and therein forestalled my experience and delivered the
whole camp as hostages into the hands of fortune.
In apparent defiance of the laws of gravity the tree fell in the middle of
the night with an earth-shaking crash to the south-east. There was no
apparent reason why it did not fall on our sleeping-tent and in one act
put an inglorious end to long-cogitated plans. Because some gracious
impulse gave the listless old tree a certain benign tilt, and because
sundry other happenings consequent upon a misunderstanding of the
laws of nature took exceptional though quite wayward turnings, I am
still able to hold a pen in the attempt to accomplish the task imposed by
imperious strangers.
And while on the subject of the clemency of trees, I am fain to dispose
of another adventure, since it, too, illustrates the brief interval between
the sunny this and the gloomy that. Fencing was in progress--a fence
designed to keep goats within bounds. Of course, the idea was

preposterous. One cannot by mere fencing exclude goats. The proof is
here. To provide posts for the vain project trees were felled, the butts of
which were reduced to due dimensions by splitting. A dead tree