I think I lay for a time in a kind of lethargy, for I was perfectly unconscious of anything that might be happening about me, and it seemed to me that my mind was a total blank. Whether it was the heat of the sun, which had mounted well-nigh to the zenith, or the pangs of hunger that roused me, I know not; but when I did arise I was aware of a prodigious aching in my inwards, which was very natural, seeing that I had not eaten for sixteen or twenty hours. And then I discovered that Billy had risen first; indeed he told me that he had not lain long, being not near so much overcome as I was, his harder life having indurated as well his feelings as his skin. When I beheld him he was a hundred yards or more away, sitting on a low flat rock, and eating with a great appearance of relish. Seeing me get to my feet, he called to me to come and eat likewise, and when I reached his rock I found a great array of shells beside him, some broke apart and empty, others still closed up.
Clams and Cocoa-nuts
"They ain't bad, master," he said, for so he commonly called me, "but they do make a body uncommon dry."
I was amazed, and indeed almost angry, because he seemed so comfortable, not reflecting that after the dog's life he had led aboard the Lovey Susan his present posture was, at least, one of ease and security, the mountain having done no harm as yet. My gorge rose when I saw him take out the slimy inhabitants of the shells and eat them raw; I had never eaten shell-fish at all, much less uncooked, and for all my famishment my stomach refused this sort of food. The horror of our situation smote upon my mind: here were we, little more than boys, left on a strange shore with no food but what we could pick up, no clothes but what we stood in—and they were but shirt and breeches, for the coats we had used as a sail had been washed from the raft when the great wave struck us—and no implements or tools of any kind, not so much as a jack-knife. As yet we knew nothing of the land whereupon we had been cast, though I guessed it must be an island, but whether large or small, peopled or desolate, fertile or barren, all remained to be discovered. The sum of our knowledge was that we were at the foot of a burning mountain, and that was a very terrible thing to contemplate. The thought of it drew me to look aloft at the summit, where there still hung a cloud of steam, though not so large as before, and the fire and smoke had ceased, but a stream of hot water was still flowing down the side, yet not in a great volume.
The sky was now very clear, and my head being uncovered, I found the heat of the sun very discommoding, and withal my throat was parched, and I had a great thirst, though Billy's must have been greater after the salt things he had been eating. When he saw me turn from them with loathing, he got up and said that we had better find a spring of fresh water, so we walked along the hard beach, going to the right hand with the design to ascend to the woods above, where I thought we might find a spring, and certainly shelter from the sun. Billy groaned as the sharp edges cut his bare feet; nevertheless he would not suffer me to go alone, for which I was sorry, for when we had gone a little way we came to some cliffs, which rose up so straight and forbidding that we did not think fit to scale them, at least until we had sought an easier way. Accordingly we went back again, crossing the stream of hot water, which was now only trickling, and so continued until the lava ended at the strip of sandy beach. I was now minded to strike up from the shore, but was a little timid of approaching so near the course of the hot flood, not knowing but that we might meet another torrent and suffer a scalding. But, having come to the end of the sand, we arrived at more cliffs, which, though not so high as the first, were no less steep, so that we had to make a choice between scaling them and ascending by the lava slope. Taking counsel with Billy, I determined to venture on this latter, hoping that before we had gone far, we might find a means of reaching the woods either on the right hand or the left.
When we had gone a good way up, very toilsomely, I saw with great thankfulness a slope to our left hand, which seemed to lead away from the barren lava to living soil. We struck up this and found ourselves by and by on a mossy plateau, on which Billy danced, so joyful was he at feeling so soft a carpet beneath his feet. The wood was just beyond us, not above a hundred yards away. When we came to it we were pretty well blown, and exceeding hot, having never rested nor even looked back since we left the beach. But now we bethought us to turn and gaze over the sea, having some hope—at least I had—that the seamen might even at the last have repented and put back to take us off. We saw the boat indeed, but it was a mere speck, and the raft we could not see at all, being in doubt whether it had sunk, or whether it was only the distance that made it invisible. But far beyond the boat, we saw a dark line which a landsman might have supposed to be a cloud, but which we, our eyes being accustomed to ranging over wide spaces, knew at once to be land. It did not seem likely that the seamen could yet have discovered it, since it had escaped us when we were at the sea level; I considered it to be a happy chance for them that they had directed their course so truly, though when I said so to Billy, he said he hoped they would find the land full of cannibals, who would cook and eat them all, and Hoggett first. This mention of cannibals set up an apprehensiveness in my mind, and I was chary of entering the wood, lest we came upon savages, but Billy said very sturdily, that savages or no savages, he must drink, and so went on among the trees, with me close at his heels.
We looked about us eagerly, both for water and for fruits wherewith to stay our hunger: but as for the former we saw none, and for the latter, though we saw many plants bearing berries, and some trees with fruits hanging upon them, we did not recognize at first any that we had seen on the island where we recruited, and durst not, hungry as we were, attempt anything strange lest they should be poisonous, and our first meal prove our last. At one point we were startled by a small animal leaping across our path, and Billy, crying it was a rabbit, without thinking dashed after it, a very useless thing to do; but it had this good result, that, tumbling headlong over something, he picked himself up ruefully, and then shouted with delight, the obstacle being a large cocoa-nut which had fallen from a tree. We were in a quandary at first how to break it open, having no knife or other tool to pierce the husk; but Billy bethought him of the buckles on our belts, and taking these off, we cut and scraped at the husk until we came to the inner nut, and then broke this open by hammering it very hard against the tree-trunk, finding it the more easily breakable because it was over ripe; and though we lost some of the liquid thereby, there remained enough to furnish us with a very refreshing draught.
While I was digging my teeth ravenously into the kernel, Billy shinned up the stem, which was straight like the mast of a ship, to obtain some more of this precious fruit. Having cast down two or three at my feet, he cried out that he was going to the masthead to take a look round. He went almost to the very top, and when he came down, told me that the hill we were on was not the highest in the island, the highest being the mountain, whose peak was still covered by the cloud of steam; but except what might be hidden by this mountain, he could see all the rest of the island, which by his reckoning could not be above two miles long. He told me of the high red rock which we had seen through the archway as we approached the land, and which lay now on our right hand. On the left he discovered a little bay, with a strip of yellow sand, though he could not tell how wide this was because of the cliffs. Beyond the bay the land went to a point, and beyond this again, some distance out in the sea, were two red rocks, not very large, standing up like the posts of a gate, or, as I thought when I myself saw them, like sentinels. All the country to the left of the burning mountain—that is, to the west—was covered with vegetation, either woods or grasses, which I was very glad to hear, since there was promise of food, at least of the vegetable kind. I concluded that the streams of lava cast forth by the mountain had flowed only towards the beach at which we had landed, or at any rate had flowed no other way for a long time, since otherwise the land could not have been so fruitful. I asked Billy anxiously whether he had seen any wild beasts, or any sign of the habitation of men; but he said that he had seen neither the one nor the other, but only some birds, at which I was vastly relieved.
We sat for some while appeasing our appetites, scarcely speaking, for Billy was not a talkative boy, and I was still too much under the oppression of our lonely situation. All at once I set up a laugh, at which Billy stopped munching at his cocoa-nut and looked at me in astonishment.
"Oh, Billy," I said, "if you had catched that rabbit, what could we have done with it?"