"Why, how stupid of me!" he said. "I can give you something to eat. It was what I couldn't finish of my own."
Out of his pockets he pulled the unappetizing lumps of food he had secreted, and kneeling again, he began feeding the helpless man as if he had been a baby.
"Upon my word, you are a magician," said Bob, keeping up a cheery tone, although he could little more than whisper. "But eat some yourself; turn and turn about."
"I don't want any," said the boy.
"Obey," said Bob briskly, with his kind smile.
So they made their strange meal together. It was a small one, but quite enough for Bob after his long starvation.
"I ate every leaf and berry within my reach," he told Eustace, "or I don't think I should be alive to tell the tale. Lucky for me, they were none of them poisonous. When they were done I started on chewing twigs, but they didn't go far."
At last Eustace had no excuse to linger. Very unwillingly he rose to do Bob's behest. He had never heard of anything so awful as leaving him like this to his fate. It seemed the worst kind of desertion—something that he would be ashamed of all the days of his life.
Bob made him take his watch and chain with the compass on it.
"Keep the compass afterwards if you like," Bob said, "and give my love to every one."