Titty Alone
After mother had gone, Able-seaman Titty thought it well to go all over her island. Everything was as it should be. The dipper had come back to a stone outside the harbour and bobbed to her again and again, and Able-seaman Titty bobbed to him in return, but this time was so far away that he did not fly off but stood on his stone, bobbing two or three times a minute. She watched him flop into the water and fly out again, and then she went on with her patrol. At last she came back to the camp and put some more wood on the fire.
Then she remembered that Robinson Crusoe kept a log, and that she had brought an exercise book in which to do the same. She sat down in the sunlight at the mouth of her tent and wrote “LOG” in capital letters at the top of a page. It was a pity that she had not been keeping count of the days by making notches on a stick, but as there was only one day to put in the log that did not really matter. So she wrote:—
“Twenty-five years ago this day I was wrecked on this desolate place. Wind southwest. Sea slight. Fog at dawn. Met a polite bird. I saw him flying underwater. I found a native canoe on the shore. The native was friendly. Her name was Man Friday. In her country there are kangaroos. Also bears. It was a joy to me in my lonely state to hear a human voice, though savage. Man Friday cooked our dinner. Pemmican cakes with tea. She went away in her canoe to the mainland where the natives are. She …”
Able-seaman Titty could think of no more to say. She had caught up with herself. There was nothing else to say until something more