“And now,” said the Captain, “what was the young man doing, when we knocked off the other day, after the storm?”
William, whose memory was always as good as his words were ready, said he was “just going to sleep.”
“True, that’s the thing; and I went to sleep and slept soundly, I can tell you. And this you may well enough believe when you bear in mind how much I had passed through since the last sleep I had on board the ship,—for since then had come the shipwreck, the saving of the Dean and carrying him ashore, the walk around the island, besides all the anxiety and worriment of mind in consequence of my own unhappy situation and the Dean’s uncertain fate.
“More than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the shipwreck, and if I tell you that I slept full twelve hours, without once waking up, you must not be at all surprised.
“When I opened my eyes again, we were in the shadow of the cliffs once more; that is, the sun had gone around to the north again. The Dean was already wide awake. When I asked him how he was, he said he felt much better, only his head still pained him greatly, and he was very thirsty and hungry.
“I got up immediately, and assisted the Dean to rise. He was a little dizzy at first, but after sitting down for a few minutes on a rock he recovered himself. Then I brought him some water in an egg-shell to drink. And then I gave him a raw egg, which he swallowed as if it had been the daintiest morsel in the world. ‘It’s lucky, isn’t it,’ said he, ‘that there are so many eggs about?’ After a moment I observed that he was laughing, which very much surprised me, as that would have been about the last thing that ever would have entered into my head to do. ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘what a very ridiculous figure we are cutting? Look, we are all covered over with feathers. I have heard of people being tarred and feathered, but never heard of anything like this. Let’s pick each other.’
“Sure enough we were literally covered over with the down in which we had been sleeping, and when I saw what a jest the poor Dean, with his sore head, made of the plight we were in, I forgot all my own troubles and joined in the laugh with him.
“We now fell to work picking each other, as the Dean had suggested, and were soon as clean of feathers as any other well-plucked geese.
“By this time the Dean’s clothes had become entirely dry; so each dressed himself in the clothes that belonged to him, and then we started over to the nearest brook, where we bathed our hands and faces, drying them on an old bandanna handkerchief which I was lucky enough to have in my pocket. I had to support the Dean a little as we went along, for he was very weak; but in spite of this his spirits were excellent, and when he saw, for the first time, the ducks fly up, he said, ‘What a great pair of silly dunces they must take us for,—coming into such a place as this.’
“After we had refreshed ourselves at the brook, and eaten some more eggs, we very naturally began to talk. I related to the Dean, more particularly than I had done before, the events of the shipwreck and our escape, and what I had discovered on the island, and then made some allusion to the prospect ahead of us. To my great surprise, the Dean was not apparently in the least cast down about it. In truth, he took it much more resignedly, and had a more hopeful eye to the future, than I had. ‘If,’ said he, ‘it is God’s will that we shall live, he will furnish us the means; if not, we can but die. I wouldn’t mind it half so much, if my poor mother only knew what was become of me.’ This reflection seemed to sadden him for a moment, and I thought I saw a tear in his eye; but he brightened up instantly as a great flock of ducks went whizzing overhead. ‘Well,’ exclaimed he, ‘there seems to be no lack of something to eat here anyway, and we ought to manage to catch it somehow, and live until a ship comes along and takes us off.’