Page 16 - An American Robinson Crusoe

When the table was done, Robinson began on a chair. He made it also of stone. It had no back. It looked like a
bench. It was uncomfortable to sit on. Robinson covered it with moss. Then it was an easy seat.

Table and chair were now ready. Robinson could not move them from one corner to another, nor when he sat
on the chair could he put his feet under the table, and yet he thought them excellent pieces of furniture.

Every day Robinson went hunting and shot a rabbit, but the meat would not keep. At home they would have
put it in the cellar. If only he had a cellar! He saw near his cave a hole in the rock. He dug it out a little with
his mussel shell and found that it led back under a rock.

From much bending over in digging, Robinson's back, unused to severe toil, ached wretchedly. He decided to
make a spade. With his flint he bored four holes in a great, round mussel shell. They formed a rectangle as
long as a little finger and as wide. Through these holes he drew cocoanut fibre and bound the shell to a handle
fast and strong.

With his spade he dug a hole so deep that he could stand in it upright. Then he put in a couple of shelves made
of flat stones. In this cellar he put his rabbit meat and his eggs. Then he laid branches over it and finally
covered the whole with leaves.

X VIII

ROBINSON BECOMES A SHEPHERD

With his bow and arrow, Robinson went hunting every day. The rabbits soon learned to know him and let
themselves be seldom seen. As soon as they saw him, they took alarm. They became timid and shy. One day
Robinson went out as usual to shoot rabbits. He found none. But as he came to a great rock he heard from
behind a new sound, one he had not heard before in the island. Ba-a-a, it sounded.

"A kid," thought Robinson, "like that with which I have so often played at home."

He slipped noiselessly around the rock and behold, really there stood a kid. He tried to call it, but the kid
sought safety in flight. He hastened after it. Then he noticed that it was lame in one fore foot. It ran into some
brush, where Robinson seized it by the horns and held it fast.

How Robinson rejoiced! He stroked it and fondled it. Then he thought, how could it come into this wilderness
on this lonesome island? "Has your ship been cast upon the rocks too, and been broken to pieces? You dear
thing, you shall be my comrade." He seized the goat by the legs, and no matter how it kicked, carried it to his
cave.

Then he fetched quickly a cocoanut shell full of water and washed and bathed the goat's wounded leg. A stone
had rolled down from the hill and had inflicted a severe wound on its left fore leg, or perhaps it had stepped
into a crack in the rocks. Robinson tore off a piece of linen from his shirt, dipped it in water and bound it with
shreds of the cocoanut upon the wound. Then he pulled some grass and moss and made a soft bed near the
door of the cave. After he had given it water, it looked at him with thankful eyes and licked his hand.

Robinson could not sleep that night. He thought continually of his goat and got up time and again to see if it
was safe. The moon shone clear in the heavens. As Robinson sat before the goat's bed he looked down on his
new possession as lovingly as a mother on her child.

The next morning Robinson's first thought was, "I am no longer alone. I have a companion, my goat." He
sprang up and looked for it. There she lay on her side, still sleeping.