So this island had to be deserted.
The next place they came to swarmed with natives, and very fine-looking fellows they were, armed to the teeth, however. They obstinately refused to hold any palaver with the officers or crew of the Gloaming Star. Even the display of beads did not tempt them, and although here were streams of fresh water, it was ultimately decided to sail away and seek for it on other and probably more hospitable shores.
It is impossible to chronicle all the wanderings of our heroes in those lovely islands, and their cruises round their coasts, but all summer long off and on they voyaged in their midst. Then came the autumn—which is contemporaneous with our spring—and higher winds began to blow, and the weather got sensibly cooler and more pleasant.
There was no dearth of fresh provisions anywhere, there was fish in the sea and game on shore, and although the dangers they had to incur in search of water were sometimes great, they succeeded in getting it nevertheless.
One day about the middle of February they found themselves approaching a beautiful though small island, which, as it was well-wooded and hilly, gave promise not only of water, but of a supply of good things for the larder as well. The weather was not quite so clear, however, as usual. As the wind seemed freshening and blowing towards the land, the Gloaming Star altered her course, and towards evening found herself at the lee side of this terra incognita, when she dropped anchors, being sheltered on one side by the rocks, and on another by a long spit of land, covered with shingle, that jutted out into the sea.
There was no smoke to be seen among the trees, no huts near the shore, never a sign of human life anywhere. The island was as much their own as Robinson Crusoe’s was.
Leonard and Douglas with a boat’s crew of five men landed in the afternoon, and after making their boat fast to the trunks of some mangrove trees, that grew near the spit of land, they went away into the interior on a prospecting expedition.
They found the island far more lovely than they could have imagined in their wildest dreams. It was indeed a garden of nature—hills and glens, woods and waters, and even inland lakes, foaming cataracts, wondrous trees, and climbing flowers of every shape and colour. Birds and strange beasts, but nothing apparently hurtful or venomous. And yet all was in the smallest compass.
No wonder that the sun was almost setting before—laden with delicious fruit—they began to make their way back to the beach.