Murray’s despair was a thing of the past, and his spirits rose to a pitch of excitement now, for at the end of the clearing was the roughly-made hut of some negro, which appeared to have been only quite lately forsaken.
He entered the hut cautiously, expecting to find traces of inhabitants, and these were simple and plain in the shape of several cocoanut shells that had been used for food vessels, and close at hand a large dry calabash.
Trembling with excitement, the discoverer seized the latter vessel and one of the nut-shells, to bear them to the side of the grip, where he dipped with the shell and drank with avidity of the perfectly clear-looking water, which proved to be of a deep amber colour, but tasted sweet and refreshing.
He refilled the nut-shell and drank again with a feeling of excited hope running through him. Then filling the calabash, he drew the cutlass he bore, hacked through the fruit-stalk of the ripest banana plant he could find, shouldered it, and with the calabash in his right hand paused for a few moments to look excitedly round, fully expecting to find that he was watched.
But the place was quite forsaken, and, trembling with eager desire now to get back to the two sufferers he had left behind, he muttered to himself, “Saved!” and stepped out, but only for his heart to sink again, for in his excitement he felt that he had not taken sufficient precaution as to his way back.
It was after some minutes and only through forcing himself to step back and stand in the very position where he had first felt, that he was gazing upon the
clearing, that he caught his idea of location of the place again, when he started back with the treasures he had found, and further encouraged himself with one of the sweet succulent fruit which with the water gave him invigoration and enabled him to recover his traces and blazings of the trees on his way back.
And now it was that he found how much further he had strayed away than he had thought, and twice over he seemed to have missed his marks entirely, and turned hot and faint.
A fresh draught of the water he bore, however, restored the failing clearness of his intellect, and he found that which he had missed, started afresh, and at last to his intense delight he staggered with his load to where he found Roberts lying asleep, but quite alone.