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CHAPTER FOUR

Back to the Ship

When I woke up, I said to my wife, ‘I don’t know what to do first. There are so many things that we need to do.’

‘First,’ she said, ‘you must bring those animals from the ship. Go with Fritz. The rest of us will look for a place where we can build a home.’

I said to her, ‘We’ll have to stay on the ship all night. Tell Ernest to climb up that high tree. He should tie a piece of cloth to the top. If there’s any danger, pull the cloth down.’

‘And you must put up a light in the ship,’ said my wife. ‘Then I’ll know that you’ve got there safely.’

We reached the ship quite easily. The animals were in good health and had enough food. I remembered my wife’s words and put up a light. Then we had some food and went to sleep.

We woke up very early the next morning. We found useful things for our life on the island.

‘We must have plenty of gunpowder,’ said Fritz. ‘Then we’ll be safe if we meet wild animals or enemies. Later, we’ll need.’

‘We must think of the present,’ I said. ‘What do we need now, for these next few days or weeks? We must take more sailcloth because we need to make a home. And we must think of food. What food is there on the ship?’

‘I’ve seen a barrel of butter,’ said Fritz, ‘and there’s the ship’s bread, and some meat in salt. But what will we do when the bread’s finished? And the butter will soon go bad.’

‘Let’s think of the present,’ I said. ‘We have enough problems to worry about now. We can think about the future later. Perhaps a ship will come and take us away.’

But I was wrong. It’s always a good idea to prepare for the future. We didn’t know that at the time. So we made some silly mistakes. We didn’t take back things that we needed later.

It was a slow job, getting all these things together. So we had to spend a second night on the ship.

We woke up late the next morning.

‘Now, Fritz,’ I said, as we sat at breakfast, ‘how can we take these animals to the land?’

‘We can’t put them in the boat,’ he said. ‘They’re too heavy. Can we make another boat? No, the animals are too big. What can we do? The pig can swim, but the goats and the donkey can’t swim so far.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we can’t make a boat that’s big enough. There are a lot of barrels on the ship - enough for a bigger boat. But we haven’t got time to make one.’

‘Barrels!’ cried Fritz. ‘Let’s make a boat for each animal. Let’s tie barrels to the animals. The barrels will hold them up above the water when we pull them behind the boat!’

‘That’s possible,’ I said. ‘Let’s try first with one animal and see.’

We tied a barrel to each side of a sheep and put it into the sea. It went down and down.! Then finally I saw its head above the water, and it began to swim. When it was tired, it stopped swimming. It stayed there, held up by the barrels.

Fritz jumped into the sea and tied a rope to the sheep, and we pulled it back into the ship. We worked very hard and for a time the job seemed impossible. The pig and the donkey were the most difficult.

‘Perhaps we should leave them,’ said Fritz. ‘We need the goats more than the other animals.’

We tied barrels to the goats, and then we tried again with the pig and the donkey. The donkey seemed to understand, but the pig gave us a lot of trouble.

‘The pig’s very fat,’ said Fritz, ‘and pigs are good swimmers. Perhaps its fat will keep it up in the water.’ So we didn’t tie barrels to the pig.

At last, we got all the animals into the water. Then we climbed into the boat and put up the sail.

There was a strong wind, and we soon reached the land. I cut the barrels from the animals, and they came up on to the beach. They were glad to be on land again.

My wife and the boys came running. My wife was surprised to see all the animals, even the pig, safe on the land.

‘How did you think of using the barrels?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t think of it,’ I answered. ‘This was Fritz’s plan, not mine.’