Abel's Island Read online

  He fitted the bark into the grooves and then went to work lashing everything together, going round and round with the rope, and over and under, until his boat could hardly be seen for what it really was under all the lashings. Now he gathered a heap of soft grass and, with stone and stick for hammer and chisel, tamped it into all the crevices to prevent leakage.

  He was pleased with his ingenuity. He had never built a boat before; in fact, though he was a married mouse, he had never built anything, or done a day’s work. However, he had watched others working, so ideas came to him readily. When he finished his caulking, he made a mast with a crosspiece, or boom, out of branches.

  The mast was inserted among the numerous lashings and fastened with more. He made a rudder like the first, put it through a hole in the stern as he had planned, and surveyed the completed boat. Considering the crude materials and the lack of tools, he had to admit it was a fine piece of work. Too bad the bright day was his only witness.

  Before dressing the mast with his jacket, where it hung like a scarecrow’s slack raiment, he removed from the inner pocket Amanda’s scarf, the bit of beloved gauze that accounted for his being where he was. He kissed the piece of fluff and tucked it inside his shirt.

  A favorable breeze was drifting across the island toward the shore opposite. It seemed a good omen. He looked back in a farewell glance at this remote part of the world’s geography that had given him shelter for two nights. Then he shoved his ship into the water and leaped aboard, grabbing the tail of his coat with one paw, the rudder with the other.

  Boat number two fared worse than the first. The stream was too swift and the breeze too light for the sail to be effective. The boat swung around despite the rudder, hit a rock, and shattered. Luckily, Abel was pitched into a pebbled shallow and managed to scramble ashore, where he stood and watched his jacket and the wreck of his ship go the way of the river.

  Wringing his clothes, he made his way back to the birch, which had become his center of operations. He resented the stream and meant to best it.

  Abel grimly decided that in his next effort he would not count on a rudder; rudders were too dependent on the behavior of wayward water. Nor would he count on a sail, because wind was fickle. He would rely only on the strength of his own two arms. He had seen water striders, those insects that support themselves in swift streams on long legs kept wide apart. He would build a sort of water strider, a catamaran, and row it.

  Excited by this new idea, he quickly put together a catamaran of crisscross sticks in the form of a pyramid, tying the sticks together wherever they crossed. Next, using that remarkable, newly discovered tool, his rodent teeth, he made two long oars, or sweeps, which he placed in notches he had gnawed out for oarlocks. In a sporting spirit, he tied his handkerchief to the top of a pole as a pennant.

  Convinced he had finally solved the problem of conquering the stream, he launched his craft and climbed into the captain’s seat with his oars. The moment they touched the water, they were wrenched from his grasp, and the river took over once more. Once more he foundered on a rock, and once more barely managed to scramble back up on the island.

  He was beginning to feel he owed his wife, and the whole world, an explanation. He wished he could let them all know what was delaying him.

  5

  He sat on a stone, staining it with his wetness. He pulled at his snout and chewed his lips. He was beginning to comprehend the awkwardness of his position. He was marooned on an island, nowhere near civilization, as far as he could tell; and if he was going to get off, it must be by his own devices. But he was obviously not going to cross that river in any boat he could put together out of the available materials.

  He had worked so quickly that it was still only midafternoon. He returned to the birch, thoughtfully munching on mushrooms along the way. He knew which ones were safe. He had studied mushrooms in Souris’s Botany at home, and he and Amanda had picked them in the forest. He was hungrier than he had realized.

  Abel posed this question to himself: Other than by swimming or on boats, how do rivers get crossed? By tunnels and bridges, of course. Could he tunnel under that river with his paws, his penknife, and a homemade wooden shovel perhaps; no pickax, no crowbar, no wheelbarrow or wagon, not even a pail to carry out the earth and rocks?

  He would have to start far back from the shore, so as not to have to carry the diggings out of too vertical a shaft; and he would have to burrow way down deep where it was almost as hard as rock, if indeed it wasn’t rock itself. And how could he be sure he was tunneling well under the riverbed? What if the river flooded his tunnel, or if the tunnel simply collapsed on him? What a way that would be for the descendant of an ancient and noble family to die! Pressed out of existence in mundane mud, and no one even knowing what had happened to him, or where. Only he himself would know, and just for a second at that. The tunnel idea was out.

  He would have to construct a bridge of some sort. He was intelligent and had imagination. Something would surely occur to him. The situation was by no means hopeless. However, he was clearly not leaving the island that day. He decided to explore it.

  His birch was situated near the upper end, which he had already hastily crossed. He now carefully walked its length. It was a typical piece of the temperate zone, with familiar kinds of rocks, trees, bushes, brambles, grass, and other plants. It was gravelly near the water, rockiest at the lower end, and, from a mouse’s point of view, hilly. Abel estimated the island to be about 12,000 tails long, 5,000 wide.

  What most felt like home in this strange place full of familiar objects was the birch. He had already slept in it twice. Returning there, he heard birdsong and saw birds, but they showed no interest in him, and he felt no hope of communicating with them. They were wild, and he civilized. He knew that certain pigeons could be taught to carry messages. He had heard the woeful sounds of a mourning dove, but that was the wrong kind of pigeon.

  Though he was having a most extraordinary experience, Abel was bored. It was not an adventure of his choosing. It was being foisted on him, and that he resented. He even began to dislike his friends back home for lacking the powers of logic to puzzle out where he was so they could come to his rescue. He wished to be in his own home, with his loving wife, surrounded by the books he liked to browse in, by his paintings and his elegant possessions, dressed in neat modish clothes, comfortable in a stuffed chair. He wouldn’t even mind being bored there, staring at the patterns in the wallpaper. He was fed up with the stupid, pointless island.

  But the stupid island was where he was going to spend this night, at least, in soiled clothes that were beginning to smell fusty. What if he had to stay longer than this night? Food would be no problem. The island abounded with edible plants, many of which he recognized from illustrations in his encyclopedia. And there were insects he could eat if it came to a choice of that or starving. He could continue to sleep in the birch, where, if not completely protected, he had the advantage of a high redoubt, the upper hand in case of a conflict.

  For dinner he ate wild carrots, carefully scraped with his knife. Then, with his paws folded across his belly, where the nourishment was being extracted from the carrots, he sat under his birch in the opal glow of the waning day and took stock of his resources. He had a shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, underwear, a necktie, and suspenders. His jacket had gone with the smashed sailboat, his handkerchief with the catamaran. In his pockets he had the stub of a pencil, a small scratch pad, quite damp, a few coins, the keys to his house, and his penknife.

  And of course there was Amanda’s scarf. He pressed it to his face. In spite of all the washings it had been through, its threads still held Amanda’s dear scent. Abel fought off a wave of self-pity. Only when he considered the unhappiness he was causing Amanda, his family, his friends, did he finally allow himself some hot tears. Despair was darkening his spirit. Deep down, where truth dwells, he wasn’t at all sure he’d be getting off the island soon.

  He rested against his tree and gaz
ed at the river just being itself, burbling along. The river was where it ought to be; Abel wasn’t. He felt out of place. When it grew dark, he climbed to the top of his tree and lay down in the crook of a branch, hugging Amanda’s scarf.

  He was suddenly thrilled to see his private, personal star arise in the east. This was a particular star his nanny had chosen for him when he was a child. As a child, he would sometimes talk to this star, but only when he was his most serious, real self, and not being any sort of a show-off or clown. As he grew up, the practice had somehow worn off.

  He looked up at his old friend as if to say, “You see my predicament.”

  The star seemed to respond, “I see.”

  Abel next put the question: “What shall I do?”

  The star seemed to answer, “You will do what you will do.” For some reason this reply strengthened Abel’s belief in himself. Sleep gently enfolded him. The constellations proceeded across the hushed heavens as if tiptoeing past the dreaming mouse on his high branch.

  Abel dreamed of Amanda—odd, unfinished dreams. As the new day dawned, he dreamed he was falling. There was nothing to get hold of in the awesome void, and he plummeted toward unthinkable pain on the hard ground. Was he really dreaming? Yes. But he was also really falling. Dream and reality were the same. He hit a leafy branch which broke his fall and he landed in deep grass and was awake. It sickened him to see the river in the pale, early light.

  6

  Was it just an accident that he was here on this uninhabited island? Abel began to wonder. Was he being singled out for some reason; was he being tested? If so, why? Didn’t it prove his worth that such a one as Amanda loved him?

  Did it? Why did Amanda love him? He wasn’t all that handsome, was he? And he had no particular accomplishments. What sort of mouse was he? Wasn’t he really a snob, and a fop, and frivolous on serious occasions, as she had once told him during a quarrel? He had acted silly even at his own wedding, grinning during the solemnities, clowning when cutting the cake. What made him act that way when he did?

  Full of such questions, he went to wash his face in the river that kept him captive, and drank some of its water. It was foolish, he realized, to harbor a grudge toward this river. It had no grudge against him. It happened to be where it was; it had probably been there for eons.

  He found a bush of ripe raspberries and ate his fill for breakfast. This was his third morning on the island. Carefully cracking the few seeds that remained in his mouth, he thought again about a bridge. He decided he could make one of rope, a single floating strand on which he could pull himself across. It would have to be strong enough so the current wouldn’t tear it, and light enough so he could sling it across to the other side. He would tie a stone on one end and try to make it catch in some bushes he’d picked out on the far shore.

  This time he proceeded methodically, not in nervous haste. He went first to defecate, behind a rock, though no one was watching. Then he cut long blades of tough crab grass, and sat cross-legged on the ground tearing the grass lengthwise so that each blade became many strands. He worked this way for hours and he enjoyed the absorbing task.

  When he felt he had enough, he proceeded to braid and weave the long fibers to form a continuous rope. Occasionally he would encircle the rope with a few strands of grass and tie a firm knot to prevent unraveling. He was doing the kind of thing he had often, leaning on his cane, watched others do.

  Noon passed. His thoughts concerned only rope—its making and how he would use it. But as the rope grew, Amanda, who was always somewhere in his mind, came forward. What was she thinking, he wondered.

  No doubt they had searched for him in a large area around the cave, dreading to find him injured, or dead. But what did they make of not finding him at all? Had they gone after him right away? The hurricane would have prevented them from getting very far. He was certain Amanda had to be restrained from risking her life to aid him. They must have spent a sleepless night inside the cave and started looking early in the morning when the storm was over. By now the whole town was certainly looking; his powerful father would have seen to that. They might look pretty far. But this far? Never!

  How frantic Amanda must be! But so much greater her joy when she had him back again.

  It was evening when he’d woven enough rope to span the river. He had it neatly coiled on the ground in a large ring. It would be wise to wait for morning, though, before crossing over. If he crossed now, he’d have to sleep on the other side, where he’d be less at home than he was here. And he was tired.

  He ate the seed from the grass he’d worked with; it was scattered all around him. He drank at the river and then, for diversion, wandered toward the interior of the island, chewing on fragrant raspberries as he wandered. In a pleasant place, open yet sheltered by overhanging boughs, the hollow bole of a dead tree lay on the ground. He entered.

  Recalling his fall from the birch, he felt this log would afford a safer night’s lodging. He went to work carting out some of the rot. The log had limbs which were also hollowed by decay. It amounted to a house with several wings. No beast of prey could fit into that log, or reach beak, talon, fang, or claw deep enough to get at Abel where he planned to sleep. As for snakes, there were stones with which to close the entrance when he went in.

  He lay on his back for a while, Amanda’s scarf held with both paws to his breast. Having worked all day, seriously and well, he was warmed with a proper self-regard. He had provided food and shelter for himself, and woven a rope which would be his bridge to freedom, home, and love.

  He spent that night in the log, eager for the morning. He believed he could shoot his rope across the river by using his suspenders as a slingshot.

  7

  At sunrise Abel was at the river, where he washed, had breakfast, and got to work on his bridge. He set up his suspenders as a slingshot, fastening one end to a stout bush. Then he arranged his rope in a few long, loose loops that would straighten out easily as it arched over the gap. He tied one end to a stone and the other to the bush, made a pocket in the suspenders to hold the stone, and was ready for his shot.

  Grasping the stone in its pocket and leaning backward, he pulled mightily, stretching the suspenders as far as the elastic would allow, and aimed his bridge, or life line, in the direction of the bushes on the opposite shore. Fervently hoping for success, he released his hold.

  The stone, with the rope trailing it, made a small parabola in the air, and the line, as if with a sigh, fell limply into the river only ninety tails away. He quickly hauled it in. A bit of faith still remaining, he set up his machinery and tried again, using a lighter stone. The result was even more disappointing. The rope was wet now, and heavy.

  Abel tried swinging the stone around and around above his head with a gradually lengthening line and then releasing it like a bola. This simpler method worked better than the suspenders, but not enough better to matter. He pulled in the rope and sat beside it, clutching his head in his paws.

  The stubbornness of his character stood him now in good stead. He refused to consider himself defeated. A few minutes of gloomy pondering produced a new idea: a bridge of steppingstones. Why hadn’t he thought of this simple scheme before? He would make piles of stones, using each pile as a step to build the next one, until he’d made enough to walk, or hop, his way across the river.

  He spent the rest of the day amassing a huge heap of pebbles and rocks, going farther and farther afield to find them. By sundown he was so exhausted he lay down in his log without having eaten, and fell asleep before the birds had finished making their final evening statements.

  The next morning, after wolfing a big breakfast, he stood in water up to his neck, building the first step. He viewed it with satisfaction. He realized that the steps would have to be close together, because he could make only a short leap carrying a heavy weight. He managed a second and a third step, and that was all.

  The would-be fourth step, which was started in swifter water, never formed, because
the current carried away the largest rocks Abel could handle. It was a hopeless project. The middle of the river, if ever he could reach it, was surely very deep, and even if the rocks held, the amount required to make a single step would be more than he could find on the island or carry in what remained of his life.

  He would keep thinking. It was his family tradition never to give up but to keep gnawing away until problems were solved. For the time being, however, he had run out of ideas. He began to develop an obstinate patience.

  In the next few days he discovered additional sources of nourishment: groundnuts, mulberries, wild mustard, wild onions, new kinds of mushrooms, spearmint, peppermint, and milkweed. His former days of reading helped him identify these plants. He made a hammock of grass fibers and swung himself in it by pulling on a rope, swaying from side to side like seaweed on the rolling sea, full of vacant wonder. He was stunned with his own solitude, his own silence.

  Every night he slept in the log. It had become half hotel, half home. But he still regarded the birch as the focal point of his comings and goings. He would often climb it to scan the surroundings and sit there chewing on a twig.

  By the end of the month of August he knew he was an inhabitant of the island, whether he liked it or not. It was where he lived, just as a prison is where a prisoner lives. He thought constantly of Amanda. He thought of his parents, his brothers, sisters, friends. He knew they were grieving and he was moved by their grief. He, at least, knew he was alive. They didn’t. What was Amanda doing? How did her days drag out? Did she still write poetry? Was she able to eat, to sleep, to enjoy her existence in any way?

  Her image was in his mind, as clear as life sometimes, and he smiled with wistful tenderness, remembering her ways. Amanda was dreamy. It often seemed she was dreaming the real world around her, the things that were actually happening. She could dream Abel when he was right there by her side. Abel loved this dreaminess in her. He loved her dreamy eyes.