“Starving! Mr. Long, we’re in that condition that we could eat horseshoes.”
With a good-natured laugh, Mr. Long turned away, and jumping into the boat, handed up the eatables that he had brought for them..
XVIII.
Wanderings about the Beach.—Science and Sport.—Back Home.—Frightful Tale of Poison.—A Visit to the Afflicted.
THE eatables which Mr. Long had brought with him were not such as would have been welcome to a fastidious taste or a dainty appetite; but to these long-fasting, hard-working, and half-starving, and altogether ravenous boys, anything that was eatable was precious. The brown ship-bread and salt pork, which Mr. Long handed up to them, were seized as eagerly as if they had been roast beef and plum pudding, and soon disposed of. A knife drawn from Phil’s belt served very quickly to cut the pork into slices, after which the pork and the brown biscuit vanished.
“What a pity,” said Mr. Long, as he looked around, “that we didn’t get here an hour earlier! The water’s going out fast; the schooner is aground, and we’ll have to wait till the next tide before we can start for the cove.”
“It’s a pity that we can’t do something while waiting, so as not to throw our time away,” said Mr. Simmons.
“There don’t seem to be much prospect of doing anything just here, but we can try.”
“Nor do I see that there are any people living about here.”