He followed the line of vegetation; there the ground was firm and level. There was no suggestion of the mariner's roll in his steady gait. Alter his clothing, change the heavy boots into spurred Wellingtons, and he would be the beau idéal of a cavalry soldier, the order of Melchisedec in the profession of arms.
He was not surprised to find that the hill terminated in a sheer wall of rock, which stood out, ominous and massive, from the wealth of verdure clothing the remainder of the ridge. Facing the precipice, and separated from it by a strip of ground not twenty feet above the sea-level in the highest part, was another rock-built eminence, quite bare of trees, blackened by the weather and scarred in a manner that attested the attacks of lightning.
He whistled softly. "By Jove!" he said. "Volcanic, and highly mineralized."
The intervening belt was sparsely dotted with trees, casuarinas, poon, and other woods he did not know, resembling ebony and cedar. A number of stumps showed that the axe had been at work, but not recently. He passed into the cleft and climbed a tree that offered easy access. As he expected, after rising a few feet from the ground, his eyes encountered the solemn blue line of the sea, not half a mile distant.
He descended and commenced a systematic search. Men had been here. Was there a house? Would he suddenly encounter some hermit Malay or Chinaman?
At the foot of the main cliff was a cluster of fruit-bearing trees, plantains, areca-nuts, and cocoa-palms. A couple of cinchonas caught his eye. In one spot the undergrowth was rank and vividly green. The cassava, or tapioca plant, reared its high, passion-flower leaves above the grass, and some sago-palms thrust aloft their thick-stemmed trunks.
"Here is a change of menu, at any rate," he communed.
Breaking a thick branch off a poon tree he whittled away the minor stems. A strong stick was needful to explore that leafy fastness thoroughly.
A few cautious strides and vigorous whacks with the stick laid bare the cause of such prodigality in a soil covered with drifted sand and lumps of black and white speckled coral. The trees and bushes enclosed a well—safe-guarded it, in fact, from being choked with sand during the first gale that blew.
Delighted with this discovery, more precious than diamonds at the moment, for he doubted the advisability of existing on the water supply of the pitcher-plant, he knelt to peer into the excavation. The well had been properly made. Ten feet down he could see the reflection of his face. Expert hands had tapped the secret reservoir of the island. By stretching to the full extent of his arm, he managed to plunge the stick into the water. Tasting the drops, he found that they were quite sweet. The sand and porous rock provided the best of filter-beds.