Jarwin and Cuffy

Thus did those castaways spend the first night on their island.

It must not be supposed, however, that we are going to trace thus minutely every step and sensation in the career of our unfortunate friends. We have too much to tell that is important to devote our “valuable space” to everyday incidents. Nevertheless, as it is important that our readers should understand our hero thoroughly, and the circumstances in which we find him, it is necessary that we should draw attention to some incidents—trifling in themselves, but important in their effects—which occurred to John Jarwin soon after his landing on the island.

The first of these incidents was, that John one day slipped his foot on a tangle-covered rock, and fell into the sea. A small matter this, you will say, to a man who could swim, and in a climate so warm that a dip, with or without clothes, was a positive luxury. Most true; and had the wetting been all, Jarwin would have had nothing to annoy him; for at the time the accident occurred he had been a week on the island, had managed to pull and crack many cocoa-nuts, and had found various excellent wild-fruits, so that his strength, as well as Cuffy’s, had been much restored. In fact, when Jarwin’s head emerged from the brine, after his tumble, he gave vent to a shout of laughter, and continued to indulge in hilarious demonstrations all the time he was wringing the water out of his garments, while the terrier barked wildly round him.

But suddenly, in the very midst of a laugh, he became grave and pale,—so pale, that a more obtuse creature than Cuffy might have deemed him ill. While his mouth and eyes slowly opened wider and wider, his hands slapped his pockets, first his trousers, then his vest, then his coat, after which they fell like pistol-shots on his thighs, and he exclaimed, in a voice of horror—“Gone!”

Ay, there could be no doubt about it; every particle of his tobacco was gone! It had never been much, only three or four plugs; but it was strong, and he had calculated that, what with careful husbanding, and mixing it with other herbs, it would last him for a considerable length of time.

In a state bordering on frenzy, the sailor rushed back to the rock from which he had fallen. The “baccy” was not there. He glanced right and left—no sign of it floating on the sea. In he went, head foremost, like a determined suicide; down, down to the bottom, for he was an expert diver, and rioted among the coral groves, and horrified the fish, until he well-nigh burst, and rose to the surface with a groan and splutter that might have roused envy in a porpoise. Then down he went again, while Cuffy stood on the shore regarding him with mute amazement.

Never did pearl-diver grope for the treasures of the deep with more eager intensity than did John Jarwin search for that lost tobacco. He remained under water until he became purple in the face, and, coming to the surface after each dive, stayed only long enough to recharge his lungs with air. How deeply he regretted at that time the fact that man’s life depended on so frequent and regular a supply of atmospheric air! How enviously he glanced at the fish which, with open eyes and mouths, appeared to regard him with inexpressible astonishment—as well they might! At last Jarwin’s powers of endurance began to give way, and he was compelled to return to the shore, to the great relief of Cuffy, which miserable dog, if it had possessed the smallest amount of reasoning power, must have deemed its master hopelessly insane.

“But why so much ado about a piece of tobacco?” we hear some lady-reader or non-smoker exclaim.

Just because our hero was, and had been since his childhood, an inveterate smoker. Of course we cannot prove our opinion to be correct, but we are inclined to believe that if all the smoke that had issued from Jarwin’s lips, from the period of his commencing down to that terrible day when he lost his last plug, could have been collected in one vast cloud, it would have been sufficient to have kept a factory chimney going for a month or six weeks. The poor man knew his weakness. He had several times tried to get rid of the habit which had enslaved him, and, by failing, had come to know the tyrannical power of his master. He had once been compelled by circumstances to forego his favourite indulgence for three entire days, and retained so vivid a recollection of his sufferings that he made up his mind never more to strive for freedom, but to enjoy his pipe as long as he lived—to swim with the current, in fact, and take it easy. It was of no use that several men, who objected to smoking from principle, and had themselves gone through the struggle and come off victorious, pointed out that if he went on at his present rate, it would cut short his life. Jarwin didn’t believe that. He felt well and hearty, and said that he “was too tough, by a long way, to be floored by baccy; besides, if his life was to be short, he saw no reason why it should not be a pleasant one.” It was vain for these disagreeable men of principle to urge that when his health began to give way he would not find life very pleasant, and then “baccy” would fail to relieve him. Stuff and nonsense? Did not Jarwin know that hundreds of thousands of old men enjoyed their pipes to the very last. He also knew that a great many men had filled early graves owing to the use of tobacco, but he chose to shut his eyes to this fact—moreover, although a great truth, it was a difficult truth to prove.

It was of still less use that those tiresome men of principle demonstrated that the money spent in tobacco would, if accumulated, form a snug little fortune to retire upon in his old age. John only laughed at this. “Wot did he want with a fortin in his old age,” he would say; “he would rather work to the last for his three B’s—his bread and beer and baccy—an’ die in harness. A man couldn’t get on like a man without them three B’s, and he wosn’t goin’ for to deprive hisself of none of ’em, not he; besides, his opponents were bad argifiers,” he was wont to say, with a chuckle, “for if, as they said, baccy would be the means of cuttin’ his life short, why then, he wouldn’t never come to old age to use his fortin, even if he should manage to save it off his baccy.”

This last argument always brought Jarwin off with flying colours—no wonder, for it was unanswerable; and thus he came to love his beer and baccy so much that he became thoroughly enslaved to both.

His brief residence on the south-sea island had taught him, by painful experience, that he was capable of existing without at least two of his three B’s—bread and beer. He had suffered somewhat from the change of diet; and now that his third B was thus suddenly, unexpectedly, and hopelessly wrenched from him, he sat himself down on the beach beside Cuffy, and gazed out to sea in absolute despair.

We must guard the reader at this point from supposing that John Jarwin had ever been what is called an intemperate man. He was one of those honest, straightforward tars who do their duty like men, and who, although extremely fond of their pipe and their glass of grog, never lower themselves below the level of the brutes by getting drunk. At the same time, we feel constrained to add that Jarwin acted entirely from impulse and kindly feeling. He had little to do with principle, and did not draw towards those who professed to be thus guided. He was wont to say that they “was troublesome fellers, always shovin’ in their oars when they weren’t wanted to, an’ settin’ themselves up for better than everybody else.” Had one of those troublesome fellows presented John Jarwin with a pound of tobacco in his forlorn circumstances, at that time he would probably have slapped him on the shoulder, and called him one of the best fellows under the sun!

“Cuffy, my friend,” exclaimed Jarwin at last, with an explosive sigh, “all the baccy’s gone, so we’ll have to smoke sea-weed for the futur’.” The terrier said “Bow-wow” to this, cocked its ears, and looked earnest, as if waiting for more.

“Come along,” exclaimed the man, overturning his dog as he leaped up, “we’ll go home and have summat to eat.”

Jarwin had erected a rude hut, composed of boughs and turf, near the fountain where he had first landed. It was the home to which he referred. At first he had devoted himself entirely to the erection of this shelter, and to collecting various roots and fruits and shell-fish for food, intending to delay the examination of the island until his strength should be sufficiently restored to enable him to scale the heights without more than ordinary fatigue. He had been so far recruited as to have fixed for his expedition the day following that on which he sustained his irreparable loss.

Entering his hut he proceeded to kindle a fire by means of a small burning-glass, with which, in happier times, he had been wont to light his pipe. Very soon he had several roots, resembling small potatoes, baking in the hot ashes. With these, a handful of plums, a dozen of oyster-like fish, of which there were plenty on the shore, and a draught of clear cold water, he made a hearty repast, Cuffy coming in for a large share of it, as a matter of course. Then he turned all his pockets inside out, and examined them as carefully as if diamonds lurked in the seams. No, not a speck of tobacco was to be found! He smelt them. The odour was undoubtedly strong—very strong. On the strength of it he shut his eyes, and endeavoured to think that he was smoking; but it was a weak substitute for the pipe, and not at all satisfying. Thereafter he sallied forth and wandered about the sea-shore in a miserable condition, and went to bed that night—as he remarked to his dog—in the blues.

Reader, it is not possible to give you an adequate conception of the sensations and sufferings of John Jarwin on that first night of his bereaved condition. He dreamed continuously of tobacco. Now he was pacing the deck of his old ship with a splendid pipe of cut Cavendish between his lips. Anon he was smoking a meerschaum the size of a hogshead, with a stem equal to the length and thickness of the main-topmast of a seventy-four; but somehow the meerschaum wouldn’t draw, whereupon John, in a passion, pronounced it worthy of its name, and hove it overboard, when it was instantly transformed into a shark with a cutty pipe in its mouth. To console himself our hero endeavoured to thrust into his mouth a quid of negro-head, which, however, suddenly grew as big as the cabin-skylight, and became as tough as gutta-percha, so that it was utterly impossible to bite off a piece; and, stranger still, when the poor sailor had by struggling got it in, it dwindled down into a point so small that he could not feel it in his mouth at all. On reaching this, the vanishing-point, Jarwin awoke to a consciousness of the dread reality of his destitute condition. Turning on his other side with a deep groan, he fell asleep again, to dream of tobacco in some new and tantalising form until sunrise, when he awoke unrefreshed. Leaping up, he cast off his clothes, rushed down the beach, and plunged into sea, by way of relieving his feelings.

During the day John Jarwin brooded much over his dreams, for his mind was of a reflective turn, and Cuffy looked often inquiringly into his face. That sympathetic doggie would evidently have besought him to pour his sorrows into his cocked ears if he could have spoken; but—alas! for people who are cast away on desert islands—the gift of speech has been denied to dogs.

Besides being moody, Jarwin was uncommonly taciturn that day. He did not tell Cuffy the result of his cogitations, so that we cannot say anything further about them. All that we are certainly sure of is, that he was profoundly miserable that day—that he postponed his intended expedition to the top of the neighbouring hill—that he walked about the beach slowly, with his chin on his breast and his hands in his pockets—that he made various unsuccessful attempts to smoke dried leaves, and bark, and wild-flowers, mixing with those substances shreds of his trousers’ pockets, in order that they might have at least the flavour of tobacco—that he became more and more restive as the day wore on, became more submissive in the evening, paid a few apologetic attentions to Cuffy at supper-time, and, finally, went to bed in a better frame of mind, though still craving painfully for the weed which had enslaved him. That night his dreams were still of tobacco! No lover was ever assailed more violently with dreams of his absent mistress than was John Jarwin with longings for his adorable pipe. But there was no hope for him—the beloved one was effectually and permanently gone; so, like a sensible man, he awoke next morning with a stern resolve to submit to his fate with a good grace.

In pursuance of this resolution he began the day with a cold bath, in which Cuffy joined him. Then he breakfasted on chestnuts, plums, citrons, oysters, and shrimps, the former of which abounded in the woods, the latter on the shore. Jarwin caught the shrimps in a net, extemporised out of his pocket-handkerchief. While engaged with his morning meal, he was earnestly watched by several green paroquets with blue heads and crimson breasts; and during pauses in the meal he observed flocks of brightly-coloured doves and wood-pigeons, besides many other kinds of birds, the names of which he did not know, as well as water-hens, plover, and wild ducks.

“Lost your appetite this morning, Cuff?” said Jarwin, offering his companion a citron, which he decidedly refused. “Ah!” he continued, patting the dog’s sides, “I see how it is; you’ve had breakfast already this morning; bin at it when I was a-sleepin’. For shame, Cuffy!—you should have waited for me; an’ you’ve bin an’ over-ate yourself again, you greedy dog!”

This was evidently the case. The guilty creature, forgetful of its past experiences, had again gorged itself with dead fish, which it had found on the beach, and looked miserable.

“Well, never mind, doggie,” said Jarwin, finishing his meal, and rising. “I’ll give you a little exercise to-day for the good of your health. We shan’t go sulking as we did yesterday; so, come along.”

The sailor left his bower as he spoke, and set off at a round pace with his hands in his pockets, and a thick stick under his arm, whistling as he went, while Cuffy followed lovingly at his heels.

Chapter Three.

Communings of Man and Beast

It would appear to be almost an essential element in life that man should indulge in speech. Of course we cannot prove this, seeing that we have never been cast alone on a desert island (although we have been next thing to it), and cannot positively conclude what would have been the consequences to our castaway if he had rigidly refrained from speech. All that we can ground an opinion on is the fact that John Jarwin talked as much and as earnestly to his dog as if he knew that that sagacious creature understood every word he uttered. Indeed, he got into such a habit of doing this, that it is very probable he might have come to believe that Cuffy really did understand, though he was not gifted with the power to reply. If it be true that Jarwin came to this state of credulity, certain it is that Cuffy was deeply to blame in the matter, because the way in which that ridiculous hypocrite sat before his master, and looked up in his face with his lustrous, intelligent eyes, and cocked his ears, and wagged his tail, and smiled, might have deceived a much less superstitious man than a British tar.

We have said that Cuffy smiled, advisedly. Some people might object to the word, and say that he only “snickered,” or made faces. That, we hold, is a controvertible question. Cuffy’s facial contortions looked like smiling. They came very often inappropriately, and during parts of Jarwin’s discourse when no smile should have been called forth; but if that be sufficient to prove that Cuffy was not smiling, then, on the same ground, we hold that a large proportion of those ebullitions which convulse the human countenance are not smiles but unmeaning grins. Be this as it may, Cuffy smiled, snickered, or grinned amazingly, during the long discourses that were delivered to him by his master, and indeed looked so wonderfully human in his knowingness, that it only required a speaking tongue and a shaved face to constitute him an unanswerable proof of the truth of the Darwinian theory of the origin of the human species.

“Cuffy,” said Jarwin, panting, as he reached the summit of his island, and sat down on its pinnacle rock, “that’s a splendid view, ain’t it?”

To any one save a cynic or a misanthrope, Cuffy replied with eye and tail, “It is magnificent.”

“But you’re not looking at it,” objected Jarwin, “you’re looking straight up in my face; so how can you tell what it’s like, doggie?”

“I see it all,” replied Cuffy with a grin; “all reflected in the depths of your two loving eyes.”

Of course Jarwin lost this pretty speech in consequence of its being a mute reply, but he appeared to have some intuitive perception of it, for he stooped down and patted the dog’s head affectionately.

After this there was a prolonged silence, during which the sailor gazed wistfully round the horizon. The scene was indeed one of surpassing beauty and grandeur. The island on which he had been cast was one of those small coral gems which deck the breast of the Pacific. It could not have been more than nine or ten miles in circumference, yet within this area there lay a miniature world. The mountain-top on which the seaman sat was probably eight or nine hundred feet above the level of the sea, and commanded a view of the whole island. On one side lay three lesser hills, covered to their summits with indescribably rich verdure, amongst which rose conspicuous the tall stems and graceful foliage of many cocoanut-palms. Fruit-trees of various kinds glistened in the sunshine, and flowering shrubs in abundance lent additional splendour to the scene. On the other side of the mountain a small lake glittered like a jewel among the trees; and there numerous flocks of wild-fowl disported themselves in peaceful security. From the farther extremity of the lake flowed a rivulet, which, from the mountain-top, resembled a silver thread winding its way through miniature valleys, until lost in the light yellow sand of the sea-shore. On this beach there was not even a ripple, because of the deep calm which prevailed but on the ring or coral-reef, which completely encircled the island, those great “rollers”—which appear never to go down even in calm—fell from time to time with a long, solemn roar, and left an outer ring of milk-white foam. The blue lagoon between the reef and the island varied from a few yards to a quarter of a mile in breadth, and its quiet waters were like a sheet of glass, save where they were ruffled now and then by the diving of a sea-gull or the fin of a shark. Birds of many kinds filled the grove with sweet sounds, and tended largely to dispel that feeling of intense loneliness which had been creeping that day over our seaman’s spirit.

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