“Salt junk,” Wilcox said, as they looked at the cask they first came to, “and no bad thing either; cocoa-nuts are good for drink, but that soft, pulpy stuff inside don’t go very far; and after a chap has been eating it for a week he wants to get his teeth into something more substantial. This ain’t no good,” he went on, giving a kick at the next cask, “unless the natives come up and we open trade with them. These are goods they shipped at Calcutta. This is better,” he went on, as he looked at the next; “this ’ere is biscuits; and with biscuits and salt junk, and a banana now and then, no man need grumble.”
The next two were, like the second, filled with trade articles; the last was a cask of flour.
“Well, we can stop here a couple of months if we like, gentlemen, if we can but hit upon water; for that, of course, we must look beyond the line of sand; a river can cut through it, but a little stream would find its way underneath the sand to the sea.”
As they approached the rocky ground, which rose like a ridge, and could be traced far inland, the sailor said: “This is the most likely spot. Any water that came down from the hills would run along at the foot of these rocks to the sea.”
“I think that you are right, Wilcox; the foliage looks [pg 105]brighter along by the rocks than it does anywhere else, and I should not be surprised if we found a stream there.”
As they approached the rocks within a hundred yards, the hope became a certainty, for there was some growth of verdure. They quickened their steps and ran forward, but, to their disappointment, there was no stream, however small.
“We have got to dig for it,” Wilcox said; “there is water not far down, I will swear.”
The soil was chiefly composed of sand, and they set to work with their hands to scrape a hole in it. They had got but a foot down when the soil became moist, and a foot lower water began to ooze out of the sides into the hole.
“Thank God for that!” the sailor said reverently, “that makes it safe. This evening, when it gets cool, we will bring the paddles here, and will soon dig a hole for our well. We can’t do better than roll a tub here and sink it in the hole, and bring the canoe to the edge of that rock down by the sea, then we have only got to chop some boughs and make a sort of hut, and we shall be as comfortable as if we were back home.”
“It is curious finding a rock here,” Joyce said presently, as they made their way over to it. “For all the distance that we have gone along by the sea, it has been nothing but sand: it is rum black-looking stuff, too.”