stir till they had provision for their journey, as, in a country like that, there was nothing to depend on by the way. Many were eager to be employed in a work of such pressing importance: but not so Mr. Arnall.
“Do you actually mean, captain,” said he, “that I am to work in a ditch with ploughmen and hedgers? I am as willing as any body to do my part; but I assure you I have not been used to such companionship.”
“Nor have I,” said Mr. Stone, “yet I am going about my work without delay.”
“But it is contrary to all my habits,” persisted Arnall.
“Not more so than to your partner, Mr. Dunn’s,” said the captain; “and there he is at work already. He and Jack made a very pretty spade between them this morning, of a piece of hard wood, which they sawed and burnt into shape with the fragments of the saw left in the pit, and with heated stones. They will give you that spade and make another, if you will go and ask them. Then you can work by yourself, which will suit your dignity better than helping those men who are turning out the clods so cleverly by crossing the stakes they have taken from the fence.”
“You must excuse me, indeed,” replied Arnall. “I must beg some other employment. Could not I be your messenger to Cape Town, and send out tools and all that you want? I shall have pleasure in undertaking the journey, and will represent your case forcibly to the Governor.”
“I am afraid, Sir, you are scarcely the man to be the representative of a hard-working agricultural community as ours must be now. There is a rival candidate in the person of Richard the labourer. We can ill spare him; but he is a hardy traveller on foot, and is, besides, a good judge of implements, which, by your own statement, you cannot be for want of experience. Stand aside, Sir, if you please, for my time is precious this morning. Choose your own occupation; but remember that you must find your own food unless you do our work.”
“The tables are turned, you see,” said one of the labourers to Arnall as he was retiring. “You held your head very high a week ago, because you had a genteeler employment than ours, as you thought. And now that we are all put to the test, see what a poor figure you make! I always said a farmer ought to rank above a shopkeeper.”
“Hey-day! what is that I hear?” said the captain. “Let me tell you, you are quite in the wrong, my friend. What our society is now, is no test of the value of its members a week ago. Because we cannot have a shop to-day, it does not follow that a shop was not a good thing when we had goods to buy and sell. If Mr. Arnall transacted his business properly, he deserved as well of society as the farmer who did his part honestly.
As far as their labour is concerned, they rank equally.”
“But farmers do not give themselves airs like some shopkeepers I have known,” persisted the labourer; “and I see no gentility in such airs.”
“Nor I,” said the captain; “but I have seen farmers as haughty with their men as any shopkeeper. All this has nothing to do with the question. A man may make himself liked or disliked by his manners; but they do not affect his rank as a labourer in the community.”
Arnall did not much relish being called a labourer in any sense, having a very narrow notion of the meaning of the word. Some others who were present fell into the same mistake, as we shall see by-and-by. Business was so pressing just now, however, that there was no time for conversation: but many minds were active that day in thinking over what was happening, while the hands were busily employed in various tasks.
It was soon settled that no removal should be thought of till after the rains, at any rate, as the settlers could not hope to establish themselves elsewhere in the interval, and were unwilling to desert their fields after all the labour which had been spent upon them. With heart and good-will, therefore, men, women, and children set about improving their condition, determined to try what industry could do to make up for a scarcity of hands, and an almost total deficiency of tools.
Betsy’s father, the smith, was in high spirits at having found the fragments of the large saw. Of one part he believed a serviceable hand-saw might be made, and of another a hatchet, if he could but fix handles to them. This he thought he could do by burning grooves in two pieces of wood which he fixed at each end of the fragment, and tying them on with thongs of the leather cordage we have mentioned, the thongs being passed from one end to the other through holes also burned in the wood. Fulton, the tanner, was, meanwhile, twisting and tanning his thongs as expeditiously as possible, for as many were wanted as he could prepare. They could not even make houses without his help, for cordage must now supply the place of nails.
There was some deliberation about what these houses were to be made of.
They were to be only temporary sheds to sleep in, to save the extra labour of walking two miles up the pass every night to their cave. It was evident that they could not be built like their former habitations with timbers. Till tools should arrive, this was impossible.—Harrison, the brickmaker and potter of the settlement, (for in several instances two somewhat similar employments were undertaken by one man,) was urgent to be allowed to begin brick-making, as the clay-pits were open, and stones and wood were all the implements he should require. But a quicker method was devised, and Harrison was to build in a new fashion. The huts of the natives were composed of reeds, bound together and plastered over with clay, inside and out. The roofs were covered in with branches of trees and dry grass. Such were to be the sheds of the settlers.
Thus there was work for everybody. The men were some digging, some tanning, some smoothing a space among the trees for the sheds, for, as no foundations could be dug, it was necessary to make the trees themselves the corner-posts. The boys were busy scooping out and working the clay, or making bows and arrows, or cutting reeds. The women were preparing flax or cooking the dinner, or, with their little girls, collecting brushwood and dry grass for the fires, and to thatch the sheds with. The captain meanwhile went about from one party to another, ready to advise, and encourage, and assist, wherever he could.
One little party, however, escaped his notice, and that of everybody else. Little Betsy had taken her cue from what the captain had said the night before about her spoon-brushes and her basket. She could teach her little companions to make spoon-brushes, while she fancied that, with help from her brothers, she could make what was wanted much more, a strong substantial basket. There was a difficulty about carrying away the earth from the trench; and it occurred to her that, in the absence of barrows and all means of making them, it would be a good thing to have baskets which would take it all away in time, though it would certainly be slow work. Her brothers and she collected twigs in the wood, and she went for rushes to the water-side, and then they sat down to their work.
Having found, the day before, that she had no means of fastening the bottom in firm, she did not attempt to make a basket that would stand.
She bent the twigs into the same shape she had been accustomed to make, only on a much larger scale, so that the basket, when finished, would look very like a sieve. She was particularly careful to fasten the ends of the twigs firmly to the stronger ones that made the rim, and to twist in the handles so that they would not easily give way. She tied the twigs wherever they crossed with bands of rushes, and then wove in the whole as closely as possible. This was not done in an hour’s time. She and her companions made many attempts before they could get the twigs into any shape at all, and their fingers were scarcely strong enough to twist the rim firmly. Once, just when she thought she should succeed, the little boys left hold, saying they were tired and hungry. She was very near crying; but she thought the wiser way would be to let them rest, and find them something to eat, when they would, perhaps, help her again; for she little expected that any better assistance would come.
She desired one of the boys to watch her basket lest the monkeys, which abounded in the wood, should destroy it; while, with the other brother, she looked about for wild strawberries and chesnuts. There were a few strawberries still left, and a great many chesnuts lying in the grass, and more to be had by throwing stones at the monkeys in the trees, which provoked the animals to pelt them with chesnuts in return. After a hearty laugh at these mimics, Betsy returned with her treasure of fruit; but the young gentleman who, the day before, was mourning for gravy, could not, hungry as he was, eat his chesnuts unless they were roasted.
Betsy cared much less about eating than about her basket; but she was a good-natured little girl, and ready to remember that her brother was younger than herself. So she advised him to run home and roast his chesnuts at the oven-fire; and told him not to come back again unless he liked. She sent a message to her mother to say that she was quite safe, and would be back before dark; but she charged Ned not to tell any body what she was busy about. Then she sent her other little companion with some chesnuts to the children who were making spoon-brushes some way off; and as soon as he was gone, she looked at her basket and sighed; for she feared she should not be able to finish it. Just then she heard some one coming through the bushes, and looking up, she saw it was Mr.
Arnall. He had his hands in his pockets, and anybody would have thought by his appearance that it was a holiday in the colony.
“So you are eating chesnuts; my little girl,” said he. “Can you spare me some?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Betsy, pointing to the little heap beside her.
“Will you help yourself?”
Arnall went on eating for some time in silence. “Where did you get these chesnuts?” he asked at length, when he had nearly made an end of them.
“Yonder, under the trees there.”
“They are very good. I dare say you will be my little maid, and get me some more: and here comes your brother; I will send him to roast them by the fire.”
“You must do it yourself, if you please, sir. We are very busy.”
“Indeed! What can children like you be busy about? Basket-making! Why, that basket will never stand.”
“It is not meant to stand,” said Betsy, who began to wish her visitor would go away and leave her to her business.
Arnall sat idly watching the little work-people, till seeing that greater strength of finger was what they wanted, he offered his services, which Betsy was very willing to accept. He became more interested as the affair went on, and continued his assistance till the framework was complete and the rim secure.
“And now,” said Betsy, jumping up joyfully, “now I will get you some chesnuts and welcome. I can easily finish the rest, for the weaving part will soon be done; and I should never have got so far without you.”
As soon as she was gone, Arnall took up the remainder of the twigs, and began another basket. He was really ashamed of doing nothing, and was glad to have found an employment which did not reduce him to toil with labourers or to provide his own dinner. He flattered himself that Betsy was saving his dignity by procuring his food; while she, in the innocence of her heart, thought he was working as much for her as she for him, and was grateful to him accordingly.
When it began to grow dusk, the little party in the wood made haste to gather up their materials and be gone. Arnall was no coward, as some very haughty people are. He had been long accustomed to the dangers of the woods, and if he had had his gun, would have been as ready as any man to make a defence against wild men or beasts: but it was only prudent, as he was unarmed, to leave the shade before night-fall. He did not choose to return to the settlement in company with the children; neither would he carry any of their goods. He lingered a while, till they were some way before him, and then appeared with his usual lounging gait, and his hands in his pockets. Of those who had time to observe him, some smiled at the unsuitability of his appearance to his circumstances, and others were indignant at his seating himself to eat that which they supposed he had done nothing to earn.
“Pardon me, sir,” said the captain; “but I hope you have your dinner in your pockets, or I am afraid you will have none. Our provisions are the right of those who work for them.”
“Mr. Arnall helped me to make my basket,” said little Betsy, “and he has got a great way with another; so I hope he may have the dinner I should have wanted if I had not found the chesnuts, and some for his own share besides.”
“Hold your tongue, child,” cried the gentleman, who was quite above owing his meal to the request of a little girl. “Who has any business with what I have been doing? Things have come to a pretty pass when one must account to anybody that asks for the use of one’s time and hands.”
“By sitting down to table, sir”—— “To grass, you mean,” said Arnall. “We are in a fair way to eat in Nebuchadnezzar fashion, I think. Was ever a meal so served before?”
“If you will make us a table, we shall very thankfully accept it,” said the captain. “Meanwhile, as I was saying, by asking food, you demand the wages of labour, as we have agreed to live by the natural law, that food cannot be obtained without labour. You are accountable to us in no other way than all labourers are accountable to those who pay them wages.
Little Betsy has settled your account with us: allow me, therefore, to help you to a lump (I wish I could say a slice) of lamb; or would you prefer hare?”
While the gentleman was picking his bone in silence, wondering when he should again be blessed with a knife and fork, Betsy placed beside him a pretty dessert of wild strawberries on a leaf.
He seemed barely to thank her, but began to resolve that he would either find some mode of being more useful, and thus feeling himself on equal terms with other people, or take himself off, where he need be accountable to nobody.
CHAPTER IV.
HAND-WORK AND HEAD WORK.
The heat of the weather was, we have said, very oppressive during the middle of the day. It was hard work to dig in the trench, for the badness of the tools more than compensated for the lightness of the soil. The labourers, fully aware of the importance of conveying water to the crops, toiled most diligently through all hours of the day, till it became evident that such exertion was injurious to their strength. A new regulation was made, according to which they began work two hours earlier in the morning, and rested in the shade for two hours at noon.
Some slept, while others, who were stronger or more industrious, employed themselves in some light occupation, either preparing flax with the women, or looking for honey or fruit, or cutting the reeds of proper lengths, and binding them in bundles ready for the builder, or helping to make bows and arrows. This was the most pleasant and refreshing time of the day. It was the only time for conversation; for in working hours they were too busy, and at night too weary to enjoy it. Mr. Stone was always ready for cheerful talk at these intervals, both because he was sociable, and because he knew it to be a very important thing to keep up the spirits of the people by all such natural and proper means. A few days after the labours of the settlement were got into train, he was sitting with a party of companions on the trunk of a tree which served as a work-bench, and which was drawn within the shadow of a noble chesnut. He was making sandals for some of the people whose shoes were worn out, by fastening leather thongs to slips of wood made as nearly the size of the foot as the saw could bring them. Some of the men had been for walking barefoot; thinking shoes too great a luxury for the present state of their affairs: but Mr. Stone would not hear of this, on account of the venomous reptiles in the grass, from whose bite there could be no security to the barefooted. He engaged to furnish each man with sandals as his shoes wore out, till there should be leather enough to make a sort of socks with wooden soles, which would serve the purpose better still. While he was thus busied, his wife was beside him mending his coat, which had received a terrible rent. It was amusing enough at first to see her set about this new sort of tailoring; for she had neither needle, thimble, nor scissors. George had furnished her with a porcupine’s quill from the stock which had been placed in his hands for his arrows. With this she pricked holes in the cloth, through which a string of flax was passed; and thus, by slow degrees, the edges of the rent were brought together. To be sure, it did not look much like a gentleman’s coat after this; but, as all clothes were now worn for a covering and not for ornament, it did not much signify. Next Mrs. Stone sat Hill, sorting and picking the herbs and roots he had gathered, that he might not be without medicines in case of sickness or accidental bruises. He had also furnished a poison in which the points of the arrows were dipped, as it was found that though the bristles wounded the game, they were not strong enough to bring it down. Hill had discovered how the natives procured, from a venomous snake, poison so powerful as to destroy all animals which it could be made to reach; and having provided himself with it, he suffered no one else to touch it, for fear of accidents. George, who formed one of the party, was therefore obliged to give up his arrows as they were made, and did not receive them again till the venom was dried on their tips. All the game, as it was brought in, was given into the charge of the butcher, who carefully took out the parts round the wound the arrow had made. His wife was now plucking partridges, which had become abundant since the best way of bringing down game had been discovered. The feathers were carefully dried and preserved to answer various purposes of clothing and bedding hereafter.
While the little party were thus busily employed and sociably conversing, they saw Arnall at a distance, practising shooting with bow and arrow at a mark.
“I wonder at the captain,” said Hill, “for calling that gentleman yonder a labourer, as he did the other day.”
“Arnall himself was surprised,” said Mr. Stone; “and I do not wonder at it: but I should have expected you would allow him the title. Remember the captain spoke of him as he had been,—a shopkeeper.”
“He led a pretty genteel life as a shopkeeper,” replied Hill. “Look at his delicate hands and his slight make, and it seems ridiculous to call him a labourer.”
“Did he not buy his goods at Cape Town, and have them brought in his waggon; and did he not purchase various productions of his neighbours in large quantities and sell them by retail?” asked Mr. Stone.
“Certainly,” replied Hill; “but there was no hard work in all this. It would have done him good to have driven his own team over the mountains, and to have stuck fast among the rocks, as many a waggoner does, unless he can put his own shoulder to the wheel.”
“I should have liked to see him kill his own meat,” added the butcher’s wife, “or thresh the corn he used to sell. A heavy flail would be a fine thing to put into hands like his.”
“We are not inquiring,” replied Mr. Stone, “what sort of discipline would be good for such a man; but whether he can properly be called a labourer. You seem to think, Hill, that there is no labour but that of the hands, and that even that does not deserve the name unless it be rough and require bodily strength to a great degree.”
“I don’t mean to say so,” replied Hill. “I consider that I work pretty hard, and yet my hands shew it more by being dyed with these plants than roughened by toil. And there are the straw-platters of my native town in dear old England;—the Dunstable folks labour hard enough, delicate as their work is.”
“And you, sir,” said Mrs. Prest, the butcher’s wife, “have done so much, setting aside your farm, that it would be a sin to say you have not toiled night and day for us. If there was a person sick or unhappy, or if your advice was wanted any hour in the twenty-four, you were always ready to help us. But you would not call yourself a labourer, would you?”
“Certainly,” replied Mr. Stone. “There is labour of the head as well as of the hands, you know. Any man who does anything is a labourer, as far as his exertion goes.”
“The king of England is a labourer,” said Mrs. Stone. “If he does nothing more than sign the acts of parliament which are brought to him, he does a very great thing for society. Those acts cannot become law till they are so signed; and the man, whoever he be, who performs a necessary part in making laws, is a labourer of a very high order, however little trouble the act of signing may cost him.”
“Arnall did take more trouble than that, to do him justice,” said Hill.
“He kept his books very well, besides purchasing and looking after and selling goods: but still I cannot think he was so useful a man as the ploughman who helps us to food; for food is the most necessary of all things.”
“A great deal of harm has been done,” said Mr. Stone, “by that notion of yours, when it has been held by people who have more power to act upon it than you. In many states, it has been a received maxim that commercial labour is inferior in value to agricultural; and agriculture has therefore been favoured with many privileges, and manufactures and commerce burdened with many difficulties. This seems to me to be a very unjust and foolish policy; for the greatest good of society cannot be attained without the union of both kinds of labour. The thresher, and the miller, and the baker, do not help to produce food like the ploughman; but they are quite as useful as he, because we could not have bread without their help. They are manufacturers, and the retail baker is engaged in commerce; but it would be absurd to say that they are on that account to be thought less valuable than the sower.”
“But is not the case different, sir,” said Hill, “when things of less importance than food are in question? Is not a weaver worth less than a ploughman in society?”
“Suppose,” said Mr. Stone, “that in our society, consisting of fifty-four persons, fifty-three were engaged in tilling the ground every day and all day long, and that the other was able to prepare flax and weave it into cloth and make it into clothes. Suppose you were that one; do not you think you would always have your hands full of business, and be looked to as a very important person; and that, if you died, you would be more missed than any one of the fifty-three ploughmen?”
“Certainly,” said Hill, laughing. “But what a folly it would be to raise ten or twenty times as much corn as we could eat, and to be in want of everything else!”
“It would,” replied Mr. Stone: “and in such a case, we should be ready to pass a vote of thanks to any man who would leave the plough and turn tanner or weaver; and then we would spare another to be a tailor; and, at last, when we had gathered a good many comforts about us, we would thank another to set up a shop where we might exchange our goods. Now, would it not be ungrateful and foolish, when we had reached this point, to say that the farmers were, after all, the most valuable to us; and that they must have particular honour and particular privileges?”
“To be sure,” said Hill. “The natural consequence of such partiality would be to tempt the shopkeeper to give up his shop, and the weaver his loom, and the tailor his sheers, to go back to the plough, and then we should be as badly off as before.”
“This would be the consequence in larger states, as well,” said Mr.
Stone, “if the practice of the people were not wiser than the principles of the policy by which they have hitherto been governed. People buy clothes and furniture and other comforts as they have need of them, without stopping to pronounce how much less valuable they are than food.”
“All the world seems to have agreed,” said Mrs. Stone, “that the right leg is worth more than the left; and if a man had the choice which he would lose, he would probably rather part with the left: but it would be a sad waste of time to argue about which is the more useful in walking.”
“All labour, then, should be equally respected,” said Hill, “and no one kind should be set above another.”
“Nay; I was far from saying that,” replied Mr. Stone. “Our friend George, there, makes beautiful little boats out of walnut-shells, and he must have spent a good deal of trouble on his art before he could carve the prow and stern and put in the deck as he does. If he were now to set to work and make us each one within a week, he would no more have earned his dinner every day than if he should lie down and sleep for seven days. We do not want walnut-shell boats, and his ill-directed labour would be worth no more than no labour at all.”
“The captain was telling me, though,” said George, “that if I were at some place he mentioned in England, I might get a very pretty living by those same boats. He said the quality would give me five shillings a-piece for them.”
“Very likely,” said Mr. Stone; “and in that case your labour would not be ill-directed. The rich, in any country, who have as much as they want of food and clothes and shelter, have a right to pay money for baubles, if they choose; and in such a state of things there are always labourers who, not being wanted for necessary occupations, are ready to employ their labour in making luxuries.”
“The lace-makers and jewellers and glass-cutters, and even those who spin glass for the amusement of the wealthy, are respectably employed in England, where there is a demand for their services,” observed Mrs.
Stone; “but they would be sadly out of place here, and very ridiculous.
All labour must be directed by the circumstances of the state of society in which it is employed; and all labour, so regulated, is equally respectable.”
“I am afraid, madam,” said Hill, “that your doctrine would go far towards doing away the difference between labour that is productive and that which is unproductive.”
“It is impossible,” replied Mr. Stone, “to do away that difference, because it is a difference of fact which no opinions can alter. It must always be as clear as observation can make it whether a man’s labour _produces_ any of the things which constitute wealth. But the respectability of labour does not depend on this circumstance. I hope you do not think it does?”
“I have been accustomed, certainly, to think productive labourers more valuable than unproductive.”
“It depends upon what you mean by the word _valuable_,” replied Mr.
Stone. “If you mean that productive labourers add more to the wealth of the society, the very way of putting the question shews that you are right: but we may see, in the case of every civilized state, that a mixture of productive and unproductive labourers is the best for the comfort and prosperity of society.”
“What would the English nation do,” said Mrs. Stone, “without household servants, without physicians and soldiers, and clergy and lawyers, without a parliament, without a government? If they were a nation of farmers and graziers and builders, without any unproductive labourers, they would have abundance of corn and cattle and houses; but no towns, no commerce, no law, and no king. They would be a savage nation.”
“Ours was not a savage settlement,” said George, “and we had no unproductive labourers. Everybody worked very hard.”
“However hard our people worked,” said Mr. Stone, “they were divided into productive and unproductive labourers, as the people of every civilized society are. If you will just run over a few names, we will try to divide the two classes.”
“Let us begin with the lowest,” said George. “The labourers on Robertson’s farm and on yours, sir, are productive labourers, because they produce corn for ourselves, and hay for the horses, and flax for our clothes. Then there are the other servants, who have wages paid them,—the captain’s errand-boy, and your maid, ma’am, who nurses the child, and kept the house clean when you had one, and Goody Fulton, who attended to Arnall’s shop when he was out shooting——” “Well: go on,” said Mr. Stone; “tell us what they produced.”
George laid down his bow to consider; but he could not think of anything industrious and useful they might be, domestic servants were unproductive labourers. Then he went on with his list.
“Fulton, I suppose, sir, produces leather out of what was only the hide of a beast; and Harrison makes bricks out of what was only clay; and Links——let me see, what does the farrier do? He puts on horse-shoes: that is not making anything. He is unproductive, I suppose.”
“As a farrier;—but he is also a smith, and makes horse shoes and nails, and implements of many sorts, out of what was only a lump or a bar of iron.”
“Then he is a labourer of both kinds. That is curious. And so are you, Mr. Hill. You make medicines; but when you give your advice, or bleed your patients, or shave my father on Saturday night, you are an unproductive labourer.”
“And at the same time, one of the last men we could spare,” said Mr.
Stone. At which, Hill rose and bowed low.
“I am afraid my father is an unproductive labourer,” said George. “I cannot think of anything that a butcher makes.”
“Why should you say ‘afraid’?” inquired Mr. Stone. “Your father is of the same class with the captain.”
“Why, that’s true,” cried George; “and there’s an end of all objections to unproductive labour; for who works harder than the captain, and how should we get on without him?”
“And how do you class yourself, my dear?” said Mrs. Stone.
“Unproductive in my pulpit and in the school-room,” replied her husband, “and productive when I am working in my field. I leave it to my friends to say in which capacity I am most useful.”
“You have cleared up the matter completely, sir,” said Hill. “We see now that the words relate to wealth and not to usefulness. I am only sorry I ever understood any reproach by the word _unproductive_; but I shall never fall into the mistake again.”
“It is as well to observe, however,” said Mr. Stone, “that the prosperity of a nation depends much on the proportion between these two classes of labourers. If it would be a bad thing to have a population that could do nothing but produce food, and clothes, and habitations, with as many other comforts and luxuries as the industry of man can supply, it would be worse by far to have more unproductive labourers among us than the labour of the productive could maintain.”
“Our settlement would soon be ruined,” observed his wife, “if we had a great many soldiers, and two or three clergymen, and four or five surgeons, and several household servants in every family. However skilful all these might be in their several ways, they would soon eat us out of house and home. In the same way the welfare of an empire depends on its productive resources being abundant enough to supply the wants and reasonable wishes of the whole people. But, my dear, what noise is that?”
The little party started to their feet as they heard the sound of a horn. For a moment they were alarmed by the fear that an enemy was upon them; but some labourers passing by informed them that the captain had ordered the horns of the bullock which had been slain to be taken care of; and had turned one to the best account by using it as a summons to call the people together. It was, from this time forward, to be blown at the hours of work, of eating, and of rising and going to rest. The two hours of repose being now over, Mr. Stone went to his work in the trench, and the little party broke up.
CHAPTER V.
HEART-WORK.
In a few days from this time, some of the most thoughtful of the settlers began to ponder the necessity of increasing their supplies of food. Prest, the butcher, sighed every day as he passed the ruined paddocks and saw no cattle in them for him to exercise his skill upon.
“Heaven knows,” said he to his wife, “when I may have the pleasure of slaying a beast again. And as for our ever having a drove or a herd, there is no possibility of it unless we can get hides enough to make thongs for snares. Fulton says he has used up every scrap of leather, and unless we can get more, Campbell and I may both lay aside our craft, for we shall never more have droves in our fields, or smoking joints on the table.”
“We must live like savages, on roots and fruit and fish,” said his wife.
“Now, fish is very good in its way; but we have had so much lately, that one might fancy it was to be Lent all the year round.”
While they were thus talking, a plan was being settled between Arnall and the captain which promised fair to supply the butcher with employment, and the paddocks with stock which might increase in time so as to employ a herdsman on the hills. This magnificent plan entered Arnall’s head one day when he was thinking how he might distinguish himself in a genteel way, and shew himself a benefactor to the settlement without sacrificing his dignity.
He had once passed a pit, dug in the middle of a plain and quite empty and apparently useless. He could not make out at the time what it was for; but now he remembered having read that the natives of some countries dig pits for snaring wild animals, covering them over lightly so as to look even with the rest of the ground, that the beast may fall in unawares. He thought that he might secure antelopes in this way, or even the buffalo—fierce and strong as it is, and more difficult to deal with than the wildest bull of his own country. He could not prepare the pit with his own delicate hands, of course; and was therefore obliged to apply to the captain for leave to employ some labourers. Their help was promised as soon as the trench should be completed, which was to be in two days. Nothing must interrupt that important work, the captain said; and in the mean while they must live as well as they could on what might come in.
“Now is my time then,” thought the sportsman, “to try my new arrows, and my skill in using them; and if I fail, nobody will know but George Prest, and I can trust him for not telling. He will hold his tongue in return for my shewing him how to get the eggs.”
Here were three different schemes,—the pits for buffaloes, a new sort of arrows for smaller game, and a way of getting the enormous eggs of the ostrich,—a rich and nourishing food. Truly Arnall had exerted his wits to some purpose.
“If I succeed,” thought he, “I will give each man his due. I will own that Harrison gave me these reeds, so much stronger and more fit for arrows than the common sort. And I will thank Prest for pointing out how sharp the thigh bone of the antelope is, though he did not think of