Chapter Seven.
The Island.
One.
If I were to tell you all the things that the Twins and their father and mother did on that island, it would make a book as big as the dictionary; so I can only tell you a very little about the wonderful days that followed. In the first place, they soon found out that it was a wonderful island. Small as it was, it had the most astonishing things in it.
There were great cliffs and jagged rocks along its coast in some places, and there were beautiful broad sandy beaches right next to them. The waves had washed holes clear through some of these great rocks and left them standing there like huge ruins.
The beaches were covered with star-fish and beautiful shells and seaweed and crabs and jelly-fish and stones of all colours. The Twins found something new every time they played there.
Inland there were hills and valleys with sparkling streams of clear water running through them. There were sunny open meadows where bison grazed. In the woods there were deer and small game of all kinds, but though Hawk-Eye went everywhere in the days that followed the earthquake, he never saw a sign of a cave bear or of tigers or lions, or any of the more savage beasts which made life in their old home so full of terror.
Neither did he find a trace of any other human beings.