“What a place for a botanist!” cried the major. “We could fill our bags with wonders; but a good patch of Indian corn would be the greatest discovery we could find now, for, Mark, my lad, we shall find that we want flour in some form.”
“Is Indian corn likely to grow here?”
“If some kind friend who has visited this shore has been good enough to plant some—not without.”
They stood gazing for a few minutes at the wondrously fertile growth of the plants whose roots found their way to the warm stream, and whose leaves received the steamy moisture, and then climbed slowly back.
“We must explore inland some day, Mark, and see if we can find a hot spring of good water fit to cook in. I must say I should not like my cabbage boiled in that.”
“That’s better,” said Mark as they reached the sand once more, and stood panting.
“Yes; the other’s ‘pad for the poots,’ as a Welsh friend of mine used to say. Now, then, forward to find fresh water and birds. We’ll go another mile, and if we don’t find a stream we must try for some fruit.”
The dog trotted on a little ahead, and, to their great delight, they came to the end of the monotonous fringe of cocoa-nuts and found that quite a different class of vegetation came down close to the shore, which now grew more rocky, and it was not long before they were able to slake their thirst on the pleasant sub-acid fruit of a kind of passion-flower.
A few hundred yards further and Bruff began to trot, breaking into a canter of two legs after one, and suddenly turned into the jungle, to come back barking.
They soon reached the spot, to find that quite a fount of pure-looking water was welling up out of a rock basin, trickling over and losing itself in the sand, while upon a tree close at hand were at least a hundred tiny parrots not larger than sparrows, fluttering, piping, and whistling as they rifled the tree of its fruit.