"Ain't there plenty of trees on the island, donkey?" said Clums. "You may take your davy there's bread-fruit and bananas and cocoa-nuts and such like, and they pick 'em when they want 'em."

"But where are the young devils?" said Hoggett. "Ain't that there pig done yet, Clums? The smell makes me want to get my teeth into him."

"One more turn," says Clums, "and then we'll have a better supper than we've had many a day."

"I say, where are the young devils?" says Hoggett again. "D'ye think they see us a-coming and sheered off?"

"Like as not," said Wabberley, "but we'll find 'em to-morrow, and they shall get our dinner for us, d'ye see. I believe in taking it easy and letting the youngsters do the work, I do. Did you get all the yams out of that pig's trough, Clums?"

"I did," says he, "and there must be some more growing somewhere, and 'tis to be hoped things ain't so short as they are in our island, mates. Did you ever know food go so fast? There seemed enough for thousands when we landed there, and you wouldn't ha' thought a score of men would ha' made such a hole in it."

And then they fell a-talking of the eight or nine men they had left on what they called their island, and I judged from their discourse that provisions being short with them, these twelve had come away to discover a more plentiful land, having promised, if they found one, to return and fetch their shipmates. Pumfrey reminded them of their promise, adding that the men would certainly starve if they were not brought off, whereupon Hoggett declared with an oath that he for one was not going to tug an oar for twenty miles in a leaky boat, to bring off a lot of useless blockheads who would soon eat them out of house and home. We pricked up our ears at this, Billy and me, hearing for the first time that our visitors had made up their minds to abide with us, and Billy ground his teeth, and whispered that we should have to fight 'em. One of the men—I think it was Wabberley—asked what about the mountain? and said he didn't like the notion of living where he might be boiled or roasted any day. At this Hoggett made a mock of him. "Ain't it years since we left they boys here?" he said. "Does it look like boiling or roasting, 'cept for pigs? These here burning mountains ain't always a-working, that's plain, and this one here may be asleep for fifty years to come."

And then they ended their discourse for a time, devoting themselves to the roast pork and the yams of which they had deprived our pigs, sighing also very heavily for beer; and finding no cocoa-nuts handy for quenching their thirst, and being too lazy to fetch any (besides, it was dark), two of them went with pots in their hands to the lake, on which there was a very pretty reflection of their fire, and brought them back full of water. Billy chuckled so much at this that I was afraid he would be heard; but I was amused too, for there having been no rains lately, we knew what the effect of drinking the water would be; and, indeed, the next night we heard the men condoling with one another, and it was plain that when they were seized in the middle of the night with griping pains, they believed one and all that they were poisoned.

They had eat such a monstrous supper that they were fit afterward for nought but swinish slumber, and the most of them lay where they were, never intending to stir until the morning. Two or three, however, took up their quarters in the hut. We did not observe that they set any kind of watch, which was certainly a point of carelessness, and Billy said it would be easy enough to steal upon them in the night and kill them all, but this of course was not to be thought of. When we saw that all was quiet we stole away back to the canoe, both to get our own supper from the surplus of our provisions, and also to have a sleeping-place. Since we did not know how long this rascally crew would remain on the island, we thought we ought to convey what smoked fish and salted pork we had in the canoe to the thicket on the side of the mountain; as for the bread-fruit and cocoa-nuts, there was no need for us to trouble about these, the trees being exceeding well laden with them. And considering that it would be foolish to let the men see our canoe, when we had taken the food up the mountain, very toilsomely, we being so tired, we worked the canoe round the island with extreme care, until we came to the little cove in the cliff which we had seen near the archway in our voyage of circumnavigation. There we slept by turns till break of day, finding it a matter of the greatest difficulty to keep awake when our turns came for watching; and when it began to be light we unshipped the mast, and clambering along the base of the cliffs we made our way gradually upward until we reached the thicket, where we deemed it best to remain in hiding. We heard nothing of the men all the morning, and guessed that they were not in very active trim after their medicinal draught of the night before; but in the afternoon we heard them talking to one another from various parts of the island, from which it was plain that they were searching for us. Once, indeed, they came so near us that we were fearful of being discovered, and kept very close in the depth of the thicket; but they passed us by, and I wondered that they had been brave enough to come so far up the mountain, remembering their panic on the day they landed.

Dispossessed