The Coral Island

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  THE BOAT LAUNCHED--WE VISIT THE CORAL REEF--THE GREAT BREAKER THAT NEVERGOES DOWN--CORAL INSECTS--THE WAY IN WHICH CORAL ISLANDS ARE MADE--THEBOATS SAIL--WE TAX OUR INGENUITY TO FORM FISH-HOOKS--SOME OF THE FISH WESAW--AND A MONSTROUS WHALE--WONDERFUL SHOWER OF LITTLE FISH--WATERSPOUTS.

  It was a bright, clear, beautiful morning when we first launched ourlittle boat and rowed out upon the placid waters of the lagoon. Not abreath of wind ruffled the surface of the deep. Not a cloud spotted thedeep-blue sky. Not a sound that was discordant broke the stillness ofthe morning, although there were many sounds--sweet, tiny, andmelodious--that mingled in the universal harmony of nature. The sun wasjust rising from the Pacific's ample bosom, and tipping themountain-tops with a red glow. The sea was shining like a sheet ofglass, yet heaving with the long, deep swell that, all the world round,indicates the life of Ocean; and the bright seaweeds and the brilliantcorals shone in the depths of that pellucid water, as we rowed over it,like rare and precious gems. Oh, it was a sight fitted to stir the soulof man to its profoundest depths! and if he owned a heart at all, tolift that heart in adoration and gratitude to the great Creator of thismagnificent and glorious universe!

  At first, in the strength of our delight, we rowed hither and thitherwithout aim or object. But after the effervescence of our spirits wasabated, we began to look about us and to consider what we should do.

  "I vote that we row to the reef," cried Peterkin.

  "And I vote that we visit the islands within the lagoon," said I.

  "And I vote we do both," cried Jack; "so pull away, boys!"

  As I have already said, we had made four oars; but our boat was so smallthat only two were necessary. The extra pair were reserved in case anyaccident should happen to the others. It was therefore only needfulthat two of us should row, while the third steered by means of an oar--and relieved the rowers occasionally.

  First we landed on one of the small islands and ran all over it, but sawnothing worthy of particular notice. Then we landed on a larger island,on which were growing a few cocoa-nut trees. Not having eaten anythingthat morning, we gathered a few of the nuts and breakfasted. After thiswe pulled straight out to sea, and landed on the coral reef.

  This was indeed a novel and interesting sight to us. We had now been solong on shore that we had almost forgotten the appearance of breakers,for there were none within the lagoon. But now, as we stood beside thefoam-crested billow of the open sea, all the enthusiasm of the sailorwas awakened in our breasts; and as we gazed on the widespread ruin ofthat single magnificent breaker that burst in thunder at our feet, weforgot the Coral Island behind us, we forgot our bower and the calmrepose of the scented woods, we forgot all that had passed during thelast few months, and remembered nothing but the storms, the calms, thefresh breezes, and the surging billows of the open sea.

  This huge, ceaseless breaker, to which I have so often alluded, was amuch larger and more sublime object than we had at all imagined it tobe. It rose many yards above the level of the sea, and could be seenapproaching at some distance from the reef. Slowly and majestically itcame on, acquiring greater volume and velocity as it advanced, until itassumed the form of a clear watery arch, which sparkled in the brightsun. On it came with resistless and solemn majesty, the upper edgelipped gently over, and it fell with a roar that seemed as though theheart of Ocean were broken in the crash of tumultuous water, while thefoam-clad coral reef appeared to tremble beneath the mighty shock!

  We gazed long and wonderingly at this great sight, and it was withdifficulty we could tear ourselves away from it. As I have once beforementioned, this wave broke in many places over the reef and scatteredsome of its spray into the lagoon; but in most places the reef wassufficiently broad and elevated to receive and check its entire force.In many places the coral rocks were covered with vegetation--thebeginning, as it appeared to us, of future islands. Thus, on this reef,we came to perceive how most of the small islands of those seas areformed. On one part we saw the spray of the breaker washing over therocks, and millions of little, active, busy creatures continuing thework of building up this living rampart. At another place, which wasjust a little too high for the waves to wash over it, the coral insectswere all dead; for we found that they never did their work above water.They had faithfully completed the mighty work which their Creator hadgiven them to do, and they were now all dead. Again, in other spots theceaseless lashing of the sea had broken the dead coral in pieces, andcast it up in the form of sand. Here sea-birds had alighted, littlepieces of seaweed and stray bits of wood had been washed up, seeds ofplants had been carried by the wind, and a few lovely blades of brightgreen had already sprung up, which, when they died, would increase thesize and fertility of these emeralds of Ocean. At other places theseislets had grown apace, and were shaded by one or two cocoa-nut trees,which grew literally in the sand, and were constantly washed by theocean spray--yet, as I have before remarked, their fruit was mostrefreshing and sweet to our taste.

  Again, at this time Jack and I pondered the formation of the large coralislands. We could now understand how the low ones were formed; but thelarger islands cost us much consideration, yet we could arrive at nocertain conclusion on the subject.

  Having satisfied our curiosity, and enjoyed ourselves during the wholeday in our little boat, we returned, somewhat wearied, and withal ratherhungry, to our bower.

  "Now," said Jack, "as our boat answers so well we will get a mast andsail made immediately."

  "So we will!" cried Peterkin as we all assisted to drag the boat abovehigh-water mark. "We'll light our candle and set about it this verynight. Hurrah, my boys, pull away!"

  As we dragged our boat, we observed that she grated heavily on her keel;and as the sands were in this place mingled with broken coral rocks, wesaw portions of the wood being scraped off.

  "Hallo!" cried Jack on seeing this, "that won't do. Our keel will beworn off in no time at this rate."

  "So it will," said I, pondering deeply as to how this might beprevented. But I am not of a mechanical turn naturally, so I couldconceive no remedy save that of putting a plate of iron on the keel; butas we had no iron, I knew not what was to be done. "It seems to me,Jack," I added, "that it is impossible to prevent the keel being wornoff thus."

  "Impossible?" cried Peterkin. "My dear Ralph, you are mistaken; thereis nothing so easy."

  "How?" I inquired in some surprise.

  "Why, by not using the boat at all!" replied Peterkin.

  "Hold your impudent tongue, Peterkin!" said Jack as he shouldered theoars. "Come along with me, and I'll give you work to do. In the firstplace, you will go and collect coca-nut fibre, and set to work to makesewing-twine with it--"

  "Please, captain," interrupted Peterkin, "I've got lots of it madealready--more than enough, as a little friend of mine used to be in thehabit of saying every day after dinner."

  "Very well," continued Jack; "then you'll help Ralph to collectcocoa-nut cloth and cut it into shape, after which we'll make a sail ofit. I'll see to getting the mast and the gearing; so let's to work."

  And to work we went right busily, so that in three days from that timewe had set up a mast and sail, with the necessary rigging, in our littleboat. The sail was not, indeed, very handsome to look at, as it wasformed of a number of oblong patches of cloth; but we had sewed it wellby means of our sail-needle, so that it was strong, which was the chiefpoint.--Jack had also overcome the difficulty about the keel by pinningto it a _false_ keel. This was a piece of tough wood, of the samelength and width as the real keel, and about five inches deep. He madeit of this depth because the boat would be thereby rendered not onlymuch more safe, but more able to beat against the wind--which, in a seawhere the trade-winds blow so long and so steadily in one direction, wasa matter of great importance. This piece of wood was pegged very firmlyto the keel; and we now launched our boat with the satisfaction ofknowing that when the false keel should be scraped off we could e
asilyput on another,--whereas, should the real keel have been scraped away,we could not have renewed it without taking our boat to pieces, whichPeterkin said made his "marrow quake to think upon."

  The mast and sail answered excellently; and we now sailed about in thelagoon with great delight, and examined with much interest theappearance of our island from a distance. Also, we gazed into thedepths of the water, and watched for hours the gambols of the curiousand bright-coloured fish among the corals and seaweed. Peterkin alsomade a fishing-line; and Jack constructed a number of hooks, some ofwhich were very good, others remarkably bad. Some of these hooks weremade of iron-wood--which did pretty well, the wood being extremelyhard--and Jack made them very thick and large. Fish there are notparticular. Some of the crooked bones in fish-heads also answered forthis purpose pretty well. But that which formed our best and mostserviceable hook was the brass finger-ring belonging to Jack. It gavehim not a little trouble to manufacture it. First he cut it with theaxe, then twisted it into the form of a hook. The barb took him severalhours to cut. He did it by means of constant sawing with the brokenpenknife. As for the point, an hour's rubbing on a piece of sandstonemade an excellent one.

  It would be a matter of much time and labour to describe the appearanceof the multitudes of fish that were day after day drawn into our boat bymeans of the brass hook. Peterkin always caught them--for we observedthat he derived much pleasure from fishing--while Jack and I found ampleamusement in looking on, also in gazing down at the coral groves, and inbaiting the hook. Among the fish that we saw, but did not catch, wereporpoises and swordfish, whales and sharks. The porpoises camefrequently into our lagoon in shoals, and amused us not a little bytheir bold leaps into the air and their playful gambols in the sea. Theswordfish were wonderful creatures--some of them apparently ten feet inlength, with an ivory spear six or eight feet long projecting from theirnoses. We often saw them darting after other fish, and no doubt theysometimes killed them with their ivory swords. Jack remembered havingheard once of a swordfish attacking a ship, which seemed strange indeed;but as they are often in the habit of attacking whales, perhaps itmistook the ship for one. This swordfish ran against the vessel withsuch force that it drove its sword quite through the thick planks; andwhen the ship arrived in harbour, long afterwards, the sword was foundstill sticking in it!

  Sharks did not often appear; but we took care never again to bathe indeep water without leaving one of our number in the boat, to give uswarning if he should see a shark approaching. As for the whales, theynever came into our lagoon; but we frequently saw them spouting in thedeep water beyond the reef. I shall never forget my surprise the firstday I saw one of these huge monsters close to me. We had been ramblingabout on the reef during the morning, and were about to re-embark in ourlittle boat to return home, when a loud blowing sound caused us to wheelrapidly round. We were just in time to see a shower of spray falling,and the flukes or tail of some monstrous fish disappear in the sea a fewhundred yards off. We waited some time to see if he would rise again.As we stood, the sea seemed to open up at our very feet; an immensespout of water was sent with a snort high into the air, and the huge,blunt head of a sperm-whale rose before us. It was so large that itcould easily have taken our little boat, along with ourselves, into itsmouth! It plunged slowly back into the sea, like a large shipfoundering, and struck the water with its tail so forcibly as to cause asound like a cannon-shot.

  We also saw a great number of flying-fish, although we caught none; andwe noticed that they never flew out of the water except when followed bytheir bitter foe the dolphin, from whom they thus endeavoured to escape.But of all the fish that we saw, none surprised us so much as thosethat we used to find in shallow pools after a shower of rain; and thisnot on account of their appearance, for they were ordinary-looking andvery small, but on account of their having descended in a shower ofrain! We could account for them in no other way, because the pools inwhich we found these fish were quite dry before the shower, and at somedistance above high-water mark. Jack, however, suggested a cause whichseemed to me very probable. We used often to see waterspouts in thesea. A waterspout is a whirling body of water, which rises from the sealike a sharp-pointed pillar. After rising a good way, it is met by along tongue, which comes down from the clouds; and when the two havejoined, they look something like an hour-glass. The waterspout is thencarried by the wind--sometimes gently, sometimes with violence--over thesea, sometimes up into the clouds; and then, bursting asunder, itdescends in a deluge. This often happens over the land as well as overthe sea; and it sometimes does much damage, but frequently it passesgently away. Now, Jack thought that the little fish might perhaps havebeen carried up in a waterspout, and so sent down again in a shower ofrain. But we could not be certain as to this point, yet we thought itlikely.

  During these delightful fishing and boating excursions we caught a goodmany eels, which we found to be very good to eat. We also found turtlesamong the coral rocks, and made excellent soup in our iron kettle.Moreover, we discovered many shrimps and prawns, so that we had no lackof variety in our food; and, indeed, we never passed a week withoutmaking some new and interesting discovery of some sort or other, eitheron the land or in the sea.