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Crusoes of Sunday Island

CHAPTER SIX — The Watch for the "Norval"

CHAPTER SIX
The Watch for the "Norval"

every day, at some hour of morning or afternoon, Frederica Bell put aside whatever she was doing and climbed the hillside to a lookout from which she could see the huge spread of ocean lying flat as a blue plate against the bluer sky. Some day, she said to herself, there would be a faint blur of grey against the everlasting blue, or perhaps the tip of a white sail moving slowly closer towards the island.

She knew it was too early to expect the return of the Norval, but whalers and island schooners still passed the Kermadecs occasionally. She often feared that a ship might pass in the night, or slip down over the horizon while she was busy with her pots and pans.

The family had no calendar by which to keep count of the days and weeks until the Norval was due to return, nor had they any clock or watch to mark the passing of the hours. Mrs. Bell kept a diary, however, in which each evening she faithfully recorded the day's happenings.

As for a timepiece, the family would have considered such a thing entirely unnecessary. For the Bells time had in a sense ceased to exist. There were no boats or trains to catch, no appointments to keep. Days and nights were marked by sunrise and sunset, by light and dark when the skies were heavy with cloud and mists pressed down hard on Moumoukai's peak.

The three traditional meals, breakfast, dinner and tea were little more than a constant repetition of the same fare. The Bells could never have died of actual starvation,page 52but they could, and did, grow heartily tired of having to eat the same things day by day and week by week.

The capture of the nanny, followed not long after by that of another she-goat and her kid, had been nothing less than providential. There was now good rich milk for the children to drink, even though there might be little to eat.

Another urgent need that presently made itself felt was for salt and sweetening in the preparation of food.

"Can't you find us something sweet?" Mrs. Bell asked her husband one day in a tone of near-desperation. "Everything tastes so flat and uninteresting that it's hard to get the children to eat at all. Johnston said we'd find pretty well everything we wanted growing here. Well, what we want now is a good clump of sugar cane. Can't you find us some?"

Bell shook his head. "It's all gone. There.was a bit somewhere in his old garden, but it has died out." Suddenly his face cleared of its almost habitual expression of gloom. "Talking of Johnston reminds me-the Ti-tree -the sugar-tree! I had forgotten it completely. He said there was one growing somewhere down by young Denham's grave near the lagoon. Let's go and have a look."

The family trailed after him to the lagoon. Not far in from the beach was a rough mound, outlined with stones but with no memorial to tell whose dust it was that now mingled there with the sands of Denham Bay. Bell shook his head as they walked silently past it.

"I don't think it can be young Denham's. Johnston said there was some kind of memorial tablet with an inscription. But the sugar-tree ought to be somewhere about here."

Almost immediately his keen eyes discovered it, a handsome Cordyline, about eight feet high, with thin stems branching from the base, which bore graceful heads of sword-like leaves two feet in length.

"That's it! Johnston's description exactly."page 53"Where's the sugar? I don't see any nuts or fruit. What do you do-chew the leaves?" Mrs. Bell sounded disappointed, if not downright sceptical. She had expected something more obvious than this.

"Don't be in a hurry, mother. It's in the roots. I'll have to chop them out. Good thing I brought a spade, but I'll need an axe too. Hettie, run back to the hut and bring me the big axe."

Bell had set himself an unexpectedly tough job. The Ti-tree roots were tough and fibrous, enormously thick and heavy. He had to dig deep and then hack away great lumps with his axe. Some of the roots were nearly eight inches in diameter and fully three feet long. One of the pieces he at last managed to drag out weighed almost seventy pounds!

"That'll be enough for today," he said, laying down his axe and straightening his back. "I'll split it up and then we'll cook it. You youngsters run home and gather a pile of good big stones. We'll cook it the Maori way, in an earth-oven. They call it a hangi."

"Cook that great lump of root? Turn it into sugar?" Poor Mrs. Bell's bewilderment increased. She had seen plenty of piglets, chickens, kumaras and potatoes cooked in a Maori oven, but never a lump of wood!

"It won't be just a lump of wood by the time it's put in the oven. I've got to split it first. Come on! You'll soon see." Her husband swung off with his load, the others following.

The preparation of oven and root took some time. First of all Bell dug a wide, fairly shallow pit, into which the children piled masses of dry sticks and leaves with heavier, quick-burning wood on top. A fire was lighted and when the blaze had died down, stones were laid round the sides of the pit and on the bed of glowing embers. The sugar-tree root was split and the pieces pounded with a mallet until thin and soft. The red-hot stones, throwing off a haze of quivering heat, were covered with page 54 a layer of dampened nikau fronds, on which were placed the pieces of root wrapped in leaves. More palm fronds were laid over the bundles of sugar-strips, and covered with earth and wet sacks until the pit was filled.

"Now we'll leave them to cook for a couple of days," said Bell, "and don't any of you youngsters go peeking into that pit, or you'll get your noses burned off! Keep right away from it."

The children knew better than to disobey an order like that, and turned their attention to the hole from which the ft'-roots had been taken. This provided a new and exciting digging ground. Even Bess and Hettie stopped work next morning when their father went fishing, and ran off to the hole with the others.

"You never know what you might find!" exclaimed Hettie, digging energetically with a flat piece of wood. "Mr. Johnston said lots of old ships had been wrecked here, and that a Spanish treasure ship loaded with gold and silver and precious stones was supposed to have gone ashore right here in Denham Bay. Oh Bess,"—her voice rose excitedly-"wouldn't it be wonderful if we were to dig up some of the treasure?"

"More likely to dig up a lot of mouldy old skulls and bones! Oh … oh!" Her sceptical voice changed suddenly to a yelp of excitement as her wooden spade struck something hard and resistant.

"What is it? What have you found? Oh Bess, let me see!" The children crowded round and scrabbled eagerly in the sand. They clutched something hard buried deep in the bottom of the hole.

"The treasure! Pull hard!" cried Hettie.

Panting with excitement, they dragged it out. Not buried treasure after all! A large copper plaque streaked with verdigris after years of burial in the damp sand.

"Let's have a look! There's writing on it." There was; beautiful engraved writing adorned with scrolls and flourishes such as they had never seen before.

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"And we can't read what it says!" Hettie's voice was tragic. "Bess, we'll just have to learn! Come on, we'll take it home to mother."

And mother read aloud:

SACRED

To the Memory of

Fleetwood James Denham

The dearly beloved son of Henry Mangles

Denham, Captain of Her Britannic Majesty's

ship HERALD, and Isabella Denham.

He died aboard the Herald at this Island on the 8th day of July, 1854, aged 16 years, leaving an afflicted parent to mourn his loss here, and many at home who dearly loved him.

This tablet is erected by his bereaved father

and shipmates, as a last testimony of their

esteem.

SUNDAY ISLAND

South Pacific

July 9, 1854

"The poor lad! And his poor father, having to go away and leave his boy buried here on this lonely, lonely island." The note of sadness in their mother's voice impressed the children even more than the reading of the inscription.

When her husband returned from fishing, they all walked down to the grave again.

"So it was the poor lad's grave after all," he said. "It must have been a terrific storm that swept the plaque down to the ti-tree. It's all of a hundred feet away! Well, I'm glad we found it. I'll make a new cross, and as soon as we can grow some flowers, we'll plant something on the grave."page 56The cross was made, the plaque affixed. There it stood until Sunday Island was once again deserted. A requiem of wind and wave sounded over the grave for many years. Cross and plaque finally disappeared. The Denham grave is now marked only by a row of stones.

After a couple of days, the coverings were removed from the hangi and the ti'-roots unwrapped. To the delight of all, the tough slabs had been transformed into sugary strips. These were dried in the sun and then boiled down to a thick golden syrup. But the sweet-starved children could not wait for the boiling down. They seized the sugar strips, and but for their mother's ever-watchful eye, would have soon gorged themselves sick.

After that there was always sweetening for Mrs. Bell's cooking and no lack of a wholesome sweetmeat for the children.

The boiling down of the ti'-root was attended by an accident that came near to tragedy. While the mother's back was turned for a moment, young Harry knocked over a pot full of the scalding syrup, some of which splashed over his bare legs. He screamed with pain as great blisters formed. Mrs. Bell rushed to her first-aid box, and smeared the burns thickly with a homemade ointment she had brought from New Zealand made from broad-leafed plantain, marshmallow and lard. She had used nothing else for the healing of the cuts, scratches and blisters suffered by her bare-footed brood since they had come to Sunday Island. Harry's sobs ceased as the pain was allayed. The blisters did not break, and in a miraculously short time the burns were healed, leaving no trace of a scar.

Towards the end of January 1879, when the family had been on the island nearly two months, Tom Bell went one morning to look at his garden. To his amazement and utter dismay, he found it a wreck. Every vestige of his young plants had disappeared. The rows of freshly-dug page 57 earth, in which he had planted maize, pumpkin seed and beans the day before, were pitted from end to end with small holes from which every seed had been taken. A couple of maize cobs he had left lying at the end of a row had been picked clean of every grain.

He took one into the hut and showed it to his wife. "Rats! The garden's a complete wreck" he said grimly.

The Bells had been hoping against hope that the all-too-well-known Sunday Island scourge might have lifted after the last party of settlers had left. It had not. The rats came in their hundreds and their thousands, a small, peculiarly voracious, cereal-eating type of animal, impudent and ugly.

Every scrap of food prepared by Mrs. Bell in her outside camp oven and pots now had to be carried into the hut immediately and stored away. Fortunately the rats did not come inside. But the damage they did outside almost broke Tom Bell's heart. It was as if the curse of another Bishop Hatto lay over the Bay, which even a Pied Piper would have found hard to lift.

Man, woman, children, and terrier, they fought the scourge by every means in their power. Bell set arsenic-poisoned maize. The rats died by the score, but for every one that died there came a horde of avenging relatives, and they died also. But still they came.

The children found a ship's rusty old mooring-buoy and turned it into a giant trap by the ingenious method of placing half a dozen smelling-to-heaven fish heads and scraps of goat offal in the bottom of the buoy, which was rolled into position beneath a shrub. Two or three young branches were stripped of their leaves and bent half-way down inside.

As soon as the rats got a whiff of the nauseating bait, they came swarming and scampering up the shrub, down the bent branch, and then dropped off into the bottom of the trap to enjoy the best-and the last-feast of their lives.

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Sliding off the branch was easy, but no rat on Sunday Island ever learned the trick of springing high enough to regain its footing. They came in hordes all through the night—the Bells counted two hundred in one night's catch—finished every trace of the bait except the vile smell, milled round and fought and squealed all night.

Each morning Patsy the terrier and her pup were dropped into the buoy, where they carried out the most intensive and rewarding "rattings" ever recorded. Another trick greatly favoured by Bess and Hettie-Mary was far too nervous to take part in any of their more robust diversions—was to bait a large tin with a lump of decayed offal, and tip it on its side near a clump of bushes behind which they crouched with finger-tips gripping the open mouth of the tin.

"Hold tight, Bess!" breathed Hettie tensely. "Here they come!"

Any ordinary girl-child would have fainted dead away as the rats came racing and swarming into the tin, j'umping over one another, jostling, squealing, leaping sometimes to within a few inches of the girls' fingers. But neither ever missed her cue.

"Now!"

In a split second the tin was jerked sharply upright, tipping the vermin headlong into the bottom in a madly struggling mass of legs and tails. Again the terrier finished the job expertly and thoroughly. But it made no appreciable difference. The position became so desperate that the unfortunate Bell was at last driven to lighting fires and sitting up all night to protect his newly planted seeds and the few struggling plants that now and then managed to survive.

The climax came sharply and unexpectedly one day when he and the two older girls went off to the beach for a few hours' fishing. It was a perfect summer morning. "Just the morning for a walk," decided Mrs. Bell. "I'll take you little ones up to the lookout. Mary, you can go page 59 on very slowly with the boys, and I'll bake some taro cakes. We'll have a little picnic."

The camp oven was still hot, and the embers red after the morning meal. The cakes were quickly baked, split open while hot, and spread with ti-root syrup. Mrs. Bell had a bright idea as she wrapped them up.

"I'll get rid of a few more of those brutes!" she said to herself.

Pulling three or four of the cakes apart, she spread a layer of poison over the syrup, closed the two halves and laid the cakes on a bench outside the hut.

They spent a happy, peaceful hour up at the lookout, the children sitting at their mother's feet while she told them stories and mended a terrific rip in Harry's pants.

"Mother, could we have the cakes now, please?" asked Mary presently.

"Yes, dear-here's one for each of you and try not to get the syrup all over your ears."

Mary giggled. "Won't Bess and Hettie be mad they didn't get any. Is this all you made, mother?"

"Yes, all but a few I left for old Mister Rats. I expect a lot of them will have a bad tummy-ache by now."

Harry, who had wandered off a little, called shrilly, "Look, mummy-there they all are coming home, down there by the lagoon."

Mrs. Bell got up and looked. And screamed!

"The rat cakes! If the rats haven't eaten them yet, the girls won't know—they'll eat them before we can get down. Here Mary, you take Jackie and don't one of you dare move an inch till I come back."

Sliding, stumbling, she fell almost bodily down the mountain and rushed to the hut. The girls and their father were just coming up the path to the door.

"Cakes!" cried Bess, making a dive for the bench.

"Stop Bess, stop! Don't touch them. They're poisoned!"

"Poisoned? What d'ye mean? What have you been up to?" Tom Bell was greatly alarmed by his wife's distress.

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"I put poison in them and left them out for the rats. I never thought you'd be back so soon ... I ... I forgot all about them! If the girls had eaten them. ..."

"There, there, mother! Pull yourself together. There's no harm done. Even if the girls had taken a bite, they'd have spit it out quick and lively! Where are the children ?"

"Up at the lookout."

"Go up and get them, Bess. Hettie, you stay here and cook these fish for dinner. Look, Fred—aren't they beauties?"

With pride he showed his catch, three of the beautiful electric blue fish with gold spots running down their sides that made the best eating of all Sunday Island's fish. Leaving them with Hettie, he strode off to look at his garden. Another row of neatly scooped-out holes showed that the rats too, had had a busy morning. Staring moodily at the dismal sight Bell felt a sense of utter failure and depression.

"It's no use," he muttered as he turned away. "We'll have to get out! We should never have come!"

It was the first time he had definitely acknowledged the possibility of defeat.

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