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The Crater by James Fenimore Cooper

J >> James Fenimore Cooper >> The Crater




One of the annoyances to which our solitary man found himself most
subject, was the glare produced by a burning sun on rocks and ashes of
the drab colour of the crater. The spots of verdure that he had
succeeded in producing on the Summit, not only relieved and refreshed
his eyes, but they were truly delightful as aids to the view, as well as
grateful to Kitty, which poor creature had, by this time, cropped them
down to a pretty short herbage. This Mark knew, however, was an
advantage to the grass, making it finer, and causing it to thicken at
the roots. The success of this experiment, the annoyance to his eyes,
and a feverish desire to be doing, which succeeded the disappearance of
Botts, set Mark upon the project of sowing grass-seed over as much of
the plain of the crater as he thought he should not have occasion to use
for the purposes of tillage. To work he went then, scattering the seed
in as much profusion as the quantity to be found in the ship would
justify. Friend Abraham White had provided two barrels of the seed, and
this went a good way. While thus employed a heavy shower fell, and
thinking the rain a most favourable time to commit his grass-seeds to
the earth, Mark worked through the whole of it, or for several hours,
perspiring with the warmth and exercise.

This done, a look at the garden, with a free use of the hoe, was the
next thing undertaken. That night Mark slept in his hammock, under the
crater-awning, and when he awoke in the morning it was to experience a
weight, like that of lead in his forehead, a raging thirst, and a
burning fever. Now it was that our poor solitary hermit felt the
magnitude of his imprudence and the weight of the evils of his peculiar
situation. That he was about to be seriously ill he knew, and it behoved
him to improve the time that remained to him, to the utmost. Everything
useful to him was in the ship, and thither it became indispensable for
him to repair, if he wished to retain even a chance for life. Opening an
umbrella, then, and supporting his tottering legs by a cane, Mark
commenced a walk of very near a mile, under an almost perpendicular sun,
at the hottest season of the year. Twenty times did the young man think
he should be compelled to sink on the bare rock, where there is little
question he would soon have expired, under the united influence of the
fever within and the burning heat without. Despair urged him on, and,
after pausing often to rest, he succeeded in entering the cabin, at the
end of the most perilous hour he had ever yet passed.

No words of ours can describe the grateful sense of coolness, in spite
of the boiling blood in his veins, that Mark Woolston experienced when
he stepped beneath the shade of the poop-deck of the Rancocus. The young
man knew that he was about to be seriously ill and his life might depend
on the use he made of the next hour, or half-hour, even. He threw
himself on a settee, to get a little rest, and while there he
endeavoured to reflect on his situation, and to remember what he ought
to do. The medicine-chest always stood in the cabin, and he had used its
contents too often among the crew, not to have some knowledge of their
general nature and uses. Potions were kept prepared in that depository,
and he staggered to the table, opened the chest, took a ready-mixed dose
of the sort he believed best for him, poured water on it from the
filterer, and swallowed it. Our mate ever afterwards believed that
draught saved his life. It soon made him deadly sick, and produced an
action in his whole system. For an hour he was under its influence, when
he was enabled to get into his berth, exhausted and literally unable any
longer to stand. How long he remained in that berth, or near it
rather--for he was conscious of having crawled from it in quest of
water, and for other purposes, on several occasions--but, how long he
was confined to his cabin, Mark Woolston never knew. The period was
certainly to be measured by days, and he sometimes fancied by weeks. The
first probably was the truth, though it might have been a fortnight.
Most of that time his head was light with fever, though there were
intervals when reason was, at least partially, restored to him, and he
became painfully conscious of the horrors of his situation. Of food and
water he had a sufficiency, the filterer and a bread-bag being quite
near him, and he helped himself often from the first, in particular; a
single mouthful of the ship's biscuit commonly proving more than he
could swallow, even after it was softened in the water. At length he
found himself indisposed to rise at all, and he certainly remained
eight-and-forty hours in his berth, without quitting it, and almost
without sleeping, though most of the time in a sort of doze.

At length the fever abated in its violence, though it began to assume,
what for a man in Mark Woolston's situation was perhaps more dangerous,
a character of a low type, lingering in his system and killing him by
inches. Mark was aware of his condition, and though: of the means of
relief. The ship had some good Philadelphia porter in her, and a bottle
of it stood on a shelf over his berth. This object caught his eye, and
he actually longed for a draught of that porter. He had sufficient
strength to raise himself high enough to reach it, but it far exceeded
his powers to draw the cork, even had the ordinary means been at hand,
which they were not. There was a hammer on the shelf, however, and with
that instrument he did succeed in making a hole in the side of the
bottle, and in filling a tumbler. This liquor he swallowed at a single
draught. It tasted deliciously to him, and he took a second tumbler
full, when he lay down, uncertain as to the consequences. That his head
was affected by these two glasses of porter, Mark himself was soon
aware, and shortly after drowsiness followed. After lying in an uneasy
slumber for half an hour, his whole person was covered with a gentle
perspiration, in which condition, after drawing the sheet around him,
the sick man fell asleep.

Our patient never knew how long he slept, on this all-important
occasion. The period certainly included part of two days and one entire
night; but, afterwards, when Mark endeavoured to correct his calendar,
and to regain something, like a record of the time, he was inclined to
think he must have lain there two nights with the intervening day. When
he awoke, Mark was immediately sensible that he was free from disease.
He was not immediately sensible, nevertheless, how extremely feeble
disease had left him. At first, he fancied he had only to rise, take
nourishment, and go about his ordinary pursuits. But the sight of his
emaciated limbs, and the first effort he made to get up, convinced him
that he had a long state of probation to go through, before he became
the man he had been a week or two before. It was well, perhaps, that his
head was so clear, and his judgment so unobscured at this, his first
return to consciousness.

Mark deemed it a good symptom that he felt disposed to eat. How many
days he had been altogether without nourishment he could not say, but
they must have been several; nor had he received more than could be
obtained from a single ship's biscuit since his attack. All this came to
his mind, with a distinct recollection that he must be his own physician
and nurse. For a few minutes he lay still, during which he addressed
himself to God, with thanks for having spared his life until reason was
restored. Then he bethought him, well as his feeble state would allow,
of the course he ought to pursue. On a table in the cabin, and in sight
of his berth, through the state-room door, was a liquor-case, containing
wines, brandy, and gin. Our sick man thought all might yet go well,
could he get a few spoonsfull of an excellent port wine which that case,
contained, and which had been provided expressly for cases of sickness.
To do this, however, it was necessary to obtain the key, to open the
case, and to pour out the liquor; three things, of which he distrusted
his powers to perform that which was the least difficult.

The key of the liquor-case was in the draw of an open secretary, which,
fortunately, stood between him and the table. Another effort was made to
rise, which so far succeeded as to enable the invalid to sit up in his
bed. The cool breeze which aired the cabin revived him a little, and he
was able to stretch out a hand and turn the cock of the filterer, which
he had himself drawn near his berth, while under the excitement of
fever, in order to obtain easy access to water. Accidentally this
filterer stood in a draught, and the quart or two of water that had not
yet evaporated was cool and palatable; that is, cool for a ship and such
a climate. One swallow of the water was all Mark ventured on, but it
revived him more than he could believe possible. Near the glass into
which he had drawn the water, lay a small piece of pilot bread, and this
he dropped into the tumbler. Then he ventured to try his feet, when he
found a dizziness come over him, that compelled him to fall back on his
berth. Recovering from this in a minute or two, a second attempt
succeeded better, and the poor fellow, by supporting himself against the
bulkheads, and by leaning on chairs, was enabled to reach the desk. The
key was easily obtained, and the table was next reached. Here Mark sunk
into a chair, as much exhausted as he would have been, previously to his
illness, by a desperate effort to defend life.

The invalid was in his shirt, and the cool sea-breeze had the effect of
an air-bath on him. It revived him in a little while, when he applied
the key, opened the case, got out the bottle by using both hands, though
it was nearly empty, and poured out a wine-glass of the liquor. With
these little exertions he was so much exhausted as almost to faint.
Nothing saved him, probably, but a sip of the wine which he took from
the glass as it stood on the table. It has been much the fashion, of
late years, to decry wine, and this because it is a gift of Providence
that has been greatly abused. In Mark Woolston's instance it proved,
what it was designed to be, a blessing instead of a curse. That single
sip of wine produced an effect on him like that of magic. It enabled him
soon to obtain his tumbler of water, into which he poured the remainder
of the liquor. With the tumbler in his hand, the invalid next essayed to
cross the cabin, and to reach the berth in the other state-room. He was
two or three minutes in making this passage, sustained by a chair, into
which he sunk not less than three times, and revived by a few more sips
of the wine and water. In this state-room was a bed with clean cool
linen, that had been prepared for Bob, but which that worthy fellow had
pertinaciously refused to use, out of respect to his officer. On these
sheets Mark now sank, almost exhausted. He had made a happy exchange,
however, the freshness and sweetness of the new bed, of itself, acting
as delicious restoratives.

After resting a few minutes, the solitary invalid formed a new plan of
proceeding. He knew the importance of not over-exerting himself, but he
also knew the importance of cleanliness and of a renovation of his
strength. By this time the biscuit had got to be softened in the wine
and water, and he took a piece, and after masticating it well, swallowed
it. This was positively the first food the sick and desolate young man
had received in a week. Fully aware of this, he abstained from taking a
second mouthful, though sorely pressed to it by hunger. So strong was
the temptation, and so sweet did that morse taste, that Mark felt he
might not refrain unless he had something to occupy his mind for a few
minutes. Taking a small swallow of the wine and water, he again got on
his feet, and staggered to the drawer in which poor Captain Crutchely
had kept his linen. Here he got a shirt, and tottered on as far as the
quarter-deck. Beneath the awning Mark had kept the section of a
hogshead, as a bathing-tub, and for the purpose of catching the
rain-water that ran from the awning, Kitty often visiting the ship and
drinking from this reservoir.

The invalid found the tub full of fresh and sweet water, and throwing
aside the shirt in which he had lain so long, he rather fell than seated
himself in the water. After remaining a sufficient, time to recover his
breath, Mark washed his head, and long matted beard, and all parts of
his frame, as well as his strength would allow. He must have remained in
the water several minutes, when he managed to tear himself from it, as
fearful of excess from this indulgence as from eating. The invalid now
felt like a new man! It is scarcely possible to express the change that
came over his feelings, when he found himself purified from the effects
of so long a confinement in a feverish bed, without change, or nursing
of any sort. After drying himself as well as he could with a towel,
though the breeze and the climate did that office for him pretty
effectually, Mark put on the clean, fresh shirt, and tottered back to
his own berth, where he fell on the mattress, nearly exhausted. It was
half-an-hour before he moved again, though all that time experiencing
the benefits of the nourishment taken, and the purification undergone.
The bath, moreover, had acted as a tonic, giving a stimulus to the whole
system. At the end^of the half hour, the young man took another mouthful
of the biscuit, half emptied the tumbler, fell back on his pillow, and
was soon in a sweet sleep.

It was near sunset when Mark lost his consciousness on this occasion,
nor did he recover it until the light of day was once more cheering the
cabin. He had slept profoundly twelve hours, and this so much the more
readily from the circumstance that he had previously refreshed himself
with a bath and clean linen. The first consciousness of his situation
was accompanied with the bleat of poor Kitty. That gentle animal,
intended by nature to mix with herds, had visited the cabin daily, and
had been at the sick man's side, when his fever was at its height; and
had now come again, as if to inquire after his night's rest. Mark held
out his hand, and spoke to his companion, for such she was, and thought
she was rejoiced to hear his voice again, and to be allowed to lick his
hand. There was great consolation in this mute intercourse, poor Mark
feeling the want of sympathy so much as to find a deep pleasure in this
proof of affection even in a brute.

Mark now arose, and found himself sensibly improved by his night's rest,
the washing, and the nourishment received, little as the last had been.
His first step was to empty the tumbler, bread and all. Then he took
another bath, the last doing quite as much good, he fancied, as his
breakfast. All that day, the young man managed his case with the same
self-denial and prudence, consuming a ship's biscuit in the course of
the next twenty-four hours, and taking two or three glasses of the wine,
mixed with water and sweetened with sugar. In the afternoon he
endeavoured to shave, but the first effort convinced him he was getting
well too fast.

It was thrice twenty-four hours after his first bath, before Mark
Woolston had sufficient strength to reach the galley and light a fire.
In this he then succeeded, and he treated himself to a cup of good warm
tea. He concocted some dishes of arrow-root and cocoa, too, in the
course of that and the next day, continuing his baths, and changing his
linen repeatedly. On the fifth day, he got off his beard, which was a
vast relief to him, and by the end of the week he actually crawled up on
the poop, where he could get a sight of his domains.

The Summit was fast getting to be really green in considerable patches,
for the whole rock was now covered with grass. Kitty was feeding quietly
enough on the hillside, the gentle creature having learned to pass the
curtain at the gate, and go up and down the ascents at pleasure. Mark
scarce dared to look for his hogs, but there they were rooting and
grunting about the Reef, actually fat and contented. He knew that this
foreboded evil to his garden, for the creatures must have died for want
of food during his illness, had not some such relief been found. As yet,
his strength would not allow him to go ashore, and he was obliged to
content himself with this distant view of his estate. The poultry
appeared to be well, and the invalid fancied he saw chickens running at
the side of one of the hens.

It was a week later before Mark ventured to go as far as the crater. On
entering it, he found that his conjectures concerning the garden were
true. Two-thirds of it had been dug over by the snouts of his pigs,
quite as effectually as he could have done it, in his vigour, with the
spade. Tops and roots had been demolished alike, and about as much
wasted as had been consumed, Kitty was found, _flagrante delictu_,
nibbling at the beans, which, by this time, were dead ripe. The peas,
and beans, and Indian corn had made good picking for the poultry; and
everything possessing life had actually been living in abundance, while
the sick man had lain unconscious of even his own, existence, in a state
as near death as life.

Mark found his awning standing, and was glad to rest an hour or two in
his hammock, after looking at the garden. While there the hogs entered
the crater, and made a meal before his eyes. To his surprise, the sow
was followed by ten little creatures, that were already getting to be of
the proper size for eating. A ravenous appetite was now Mark's greatest
torment, and the coarse food of the ship was rather too heavy for him.
He had exhausted his wit in contriving dishes of flour, and pined for
something more grateful than salted beef, or pork. Although he somewhat
distrusted his strength, yet longing induced him to make an experiment.
A fowling-piece, loaded with ball, was under the awning; and freshening
the priming, the young man watched his opportunity when one of the
grunters was in a good position, and shot it in the head. Then cutting
its throat with a knife, he allowed it to bleed, when he cleaned, and
_skinned it_. This last operation was not very artistical, but it was
necessary in the situation of our invalid. With the carcase of this pig,
which was quite as much as he could even then carry back to the ship,
though the animal was not yet six weeks old, Mark made certain savoury
and nourishing dishes, that contributed essentially to the restoration
of his strength. In the course of the ensuing month three more of the
pigs shared the same fate, as did half-a-dozen of the brood of chickens
already mentioned, though the last were not yet half-grown. But Mark
felt, now, as if he could eat the crater, though as yet he had not been
able to clamber to the Summit.




Chapter X.



"Yea! long as nature's humblest child
Hath kept her temple undefiled
By sinful sacrifice,
Earth's fairest scenes are all his own,
He is a monarch, and his throne
Is built amid the skies."

Wilson.


Our youthful hermit was quite two months in regaining his strength,
though, by the end of one he was able to look about him, and turn his
hand to many little necessary jobs. The first thing he undertook was to
set up a gate that would keep the animals on the outside of the crater.
The pigs had not only consumed much the largest portion of his garden
truck, but they had taken a fancy to break up the crust of that part of
the crater where the grass was showing itself, and to this inroad upon
his meadows, Mark had no disposition to submit. He had now ascertained
that the surface of the plain, though of a rocky appearance, was so far
shelly and porous that the seeds had taken very generally; and as soon
as their roots worked their way into the minute crevices, he felt
certain they would of themselves convert the whole surface into a soil
sufficiently rich to nourish the plants he wished to produce there.
Under such circumstances he did not desire the assistance of the hogs.
As yet, however, the animals had done good, rather than harm to the
garden, by stirring the soil up, and mixing the sea-weed and decayed
fish with it; but among the grass they threatened to be more
destructive; than useful. In most places the crust of the plain was just
thick enough to bear the weight of a man, and Mark, no geologist, by the
way, came to the conclusion that it existed at all more through the
agency of the salt deposited in ancient floods, than from any other
cause. According to the great general law of the earth, soil should have
been formed from rock, and not rock from soil: though there certainly
are cases in which the earths indurate, as well as become disintegrated.
As we are not professing to give a scientific account of these matters,
we shall simply state the facts, leaving better scholars than ourselves
to account for their existence.

Mark made his gate out of the fife-rail, at the foot of the mainmast,
sawing off the stanchions for that purpose. With a little alteration it
answered perfectly, being made to swing from a post that was wedged into
the arch, by cutting it to the proper length. As this was the first
attack upon the Rancocus that had yet been made, by axe or saw, it made
the young man melancholy; and it was only with great reluctance that he
could prevail on himself to begin what appeared like the commencement of
breaking up the good craft. It was done, however, and the gate was hung,
thereby saving the rest of the crop. It was high time; the hogs and
poultry, to say nothing of Kitty, having already got their full share.
The inroads of the first, however, were of use in more ways than one,
since they taught our young cultivator a process by which he could get
his garden turned up at a cheap rate. They also suggested to him an idea
that he subsequently turned to good account. Having dug his roots so
early, it occurred to Mark that, in so low a climate, and with such a
store of manure, he might raise two crops in a year, those which came in
the cooler months varying a little in their properties from those which
came in the warmer. On this hint he endeavoured to improve, commencing
anew beds that, without it, would probably have lain fallow some months
longer.

In this way did our young man employ-himself until he found his strength
perfectly restored. But the severe illness he had gone through, with the
sad views it had given him of some future day, when he might be
compelled to give up life itself, without a friendly hand to smooth his
pillow, or to close his eyes, led him to think far more seriously than
he had done before, on the subject of the true character of our
probationary condition here on earth, and on the unknown and awful
future to which it leads us. Mark had been carefully educated on the
subject of religion, and was well enough disposed to enter into the
inquiry in a suitable spirit of humility; but, the grave circumstances
in which he was now placed, contributed largely to the clearness of his
views of the necessity of preparing for the final change. Cut off, as he
was, from all communion with his kind; cast on what was, when he first
knew it, literally a barren rock in the midst of the vast Pacific Ocean,
Mark found himself, by a very natural operation of causes, in much
closer communion with his Creator, than he might have been in the haunts
of the world. On the Reef, there was little to divert his thoughts from
their true course; and the very ills that pressed upon him, became so
many guides to his gratitude by showing, through the contrasts, the many
blessings which had been left him by the mercy of the hand that had
struck him. The nights in that climate and season were much the
pleasantest portions of the four-and-twenty hours. There were no
exhalations from decayed vegetable substances or stagnant pools, to
create miasma, but the air was as pure and little to be feared under a
placid moon as under a noon-day sun. The first hours of night,
therefore, were those in which our solitary man chose to take most of
his exercise, previously to his complete restoration to strength; and
then it was that he naturally fell into an obvious and healthful
communion with the stars.

So far as the human mind has as yet been able to penetrate the mysteries
of our condition here on-earth, with the double connection between the
past and the future, all its just inferences tend to the belief in an
existence of a vast and beneficent design. We have somewhere heard, or
read, that the gipsies believe that men are the fallen angels, oiling
their way backward on the fatal path along which hey formerly rushed to
perdition. This may not be, probably is not true in its special detail;
but that men are placed here to prepare themselves for a future and
higher condition of existence, is not only agreeable to our
consciousness, but is in harmony with revelation. Among the many things
that have been revealed to us, where so many are hid, we are told that
our information is to increase, as we draw nearer to the millennium,
until "The whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea." We may be far from that blessed day;
probably are; but he has lived in vain, who has dwelt his half century
in the midst of the civilization of this our own age, and does not see
around him the thousand proofs of the tendency of things to the
fulfilment of the decrees, announced to us ages ago by the pens of holy
men. Rome, Greece, Egypt, and all that we know of the past, which comes
purely of man and his passions; empires, dynasties, heresies and
novelties, come and go like the changes of the seasons; while the only
thing that can be termed stable, is the slow but sure progress of
prophecy. The agencies that have been employed to bring about the great
ends foretold so many centuries since, are so very natural, that we
often lose sight of the mighty truth in its seeming simplicity. But, the
signs of the times are not to be mistaken. Let any man of fifty, for
instance, turn his eyes toward the East, the land of Judea, and compare
its condition, its promises of to-day, with those that existed in his
own youth, and ask himself how the change has been produced. That which
the Richards and Sts. Louis of the middle ages could not effect with
their armed hosts, is about to happen as a consequence of causes so
obvious and simple that they are actually overlooked by the multitude.
The Ottoman power and Ottoman prejudices are melting away, as it might
be under the heat of divine truth, which is clearing for itself a path
that will lead to the fulfilment of its own predictions.