He could eat nothing; however I made shift to stew a fowl in the shell of a gourd, and when the broth was cold I got him to drink it, for he had a perpetual thirst; and that his drink might be cool and refreshing, I went a score of times during the day almost to the source of the stream, where the water was of the best. Of such fruits as were good also I gave him, particularly the apples from a low, square-boughed tree with egg-shaped leaves, which is called, I believe, guava.
And now I prayed to God that this man's life might be spared, and that I might not be left alone, which more than all proves the great and good change which had been wrought in my heart since the time when I sought but to escape from the society of mankind, and wished harm to all men, and this one above all.
At the end of seven days' very painful watching, Sir Harry's disorder took a turn, and soon after he began to mend (thanks be to God!) so that he could take meat instead of slops to his diet. Yet was he greatly changed, his skin having lost its freshness and healthful color, and his face much wasted. Also he was very weak, and for days lay exhausted and unable to move, yet with his eyes wide open and very bright. After a while I persuaded him to rise in the cool of the morning and evening, and then would he take a turn, leaning on my arm. And though he said nothing, I perceived he recognized the love I bore for him, and was grateful for my care. What pleased me vastly was to perceive that a change had been wrought in his spirit; it seemed as though his sluggish indifference had been purged away. When the fever had quite left him, his eyes continued bright and eager, and there was in his face an eager expression, telling of an anxiety which only exists where there is hope. But what his hope was he told me not. This encouraged me to believe that he designed leaving the island (where there was, as I could see, naught to hope for), and not dying there, as he had at first resigned himself to. I again began to meditate on the means of reaching Trinidado, but I refrained from opening the subject yet awhile, because he was still too feeble to undertake the fatigue of it.
One day, when I had returned to the hut by the shore from the inner parts, where I had been planting a snare to catch a pig, I found Sir Harry absent; but soon after I heard him shouting, and, turning my eyes, I spied him running towards me along the sand with something in his hand, which, as he came nearer, I perceived was the stave of a barrel.
"Look at that," says he, with much emotion; "there have been men on this island before us. Up in the wood there is a broken barrel; this is a stave of it. Men brought it here."
"Why, for a certainty," says I, "this wood never sprang out of the earth fashioned thus?"
"No," says he, "nor did the pigs on this island spring out of the earth."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, perplexed by this observation.
"I mean," says he, "that the men who came here to fetch water in that barrel left the swine and the fowls to multiply against the time they should come here to revictual. I thought as much as I lay there in my sickness hearing the cock crow, and now I have the proof. Do you doubt it, man—do you doubt it?"
"Not a whit," says I; "and I wonder I have not drawn the conclusion before, for I remember now how Rodrigues told me it was the habit of pirates, who fight shy of towns, to provide for themselves in this wise."