"Exactly," Ernest answered.
"Let us sit down then," Jack claimed, "for I am hungry enough to eat my plate—and I could digest it!"
They settled themselves at the top of the beach, near the gap in the cliff, where there was shelter from the rays of the sun. Provisions were fetched from the pinnace, potted meat, smoked ham, cold chicken, cassava cakes, and bread baked the day before. To drink they had mead, of which there were several casks in the pinnace's store room, and a few bottles of Falconhurst wine to be uncorked later.
After the provisions and utensils had been brought ashore, Mrs. Wolston with Mme. Zermatt and Hannah laid the cloth on a smooth stretch of fine sand spread over thick bunches of very dry seaweed. Then all enjoyed a good luncheon, which would satisfy them until the six o'clock dinner.
But it would not have been worth while to undertake the toil of a voyage like this merely in order to land on this beach, go aboard again, and anchor at some other point along the shore only to leave it, too, in the same conditions. The Promised Land could only be a very small portion of New Switzerland.
So directly the meal was finished Mr. Wolston said:
"I suggest that we spend this afternoon pushing into the interior of the island."
"And at once," exclaimed Jack. "We ought to be a good two miles away already."
"You would not have talked like that before lunch," Hannah remarked with a smile; "you ate enough for four people."
"And now I am ready to walk four times as far as anyone else," Jack answered; "ready to go to the end of the world—our small world, I mean."