"But there may be hundreds," said Tommy.
"Living in one little hut? Nonsense!"
"There may be other huts, we can't tell," said Mary. "The savage may have been coming from one of the others."
"That's true! It is more likely that the man has companions, I admit. Well, if I can't pluck up courage to go among them, we must simply take care to keep on our side of the island, and that means starvation in time. But where are we? The sun is getting low: it will be dark soon. Let us run again."
They found themselves soon entering another patch of forest, and began to be seriously alarmed at the prospect of being overtaken by night before they reached home.
Elizabeth thought it best to keep straight on, for by so doing they must come in time to the shore. But it is difficult to judge direction in the forest, and when darkness descended upon them while they were still among the trees, Elizabeth was forced to the conclusion that they had been wandering round and round all the time.
"It's of no use, girls," she said; "we can never find our way in the dark. We shall have to stay here for the night."
They had been without food all day. Utterly worn out by hunger, exertion and alarm, they huddled together at the foot of a tree and fell into an uneasy sleep. Several times during the night they were disturbed by slight noises in the brushwood around them, or in the trees overhead. But nothing happened to alarm them, and when dawn glimmered through the trees they rose, a haggard and sorry trio, and set off once more to find a way home.
Only a few minutes' walk uphill brought them to the ridge, from which they could see the orange grove. They were so desperately hungry and thirsty that they were ready to face all hazards for the sake of some fruit. They hurried to the grove, snatched up a few oranges and bananas, and devoured them as they continued on their homeward way.
When they reached their hut, their feeling of security was alloyed by the distressing thought that they had lost their boat. The savages, whose settlement was near the cove at which they had landed, and who probably appropriated the fruits of the cocoa-nut palms there, would certainly discover the boat drawn up on the beach. The girls had always regarded it as a last refuge; they could always use it to row out to any ship that came reasonably near, if they failed to attract the attention of those on board in any other way. They felt that its disappearance very likely doomed them to a lifelong imprisonment on the island, and their hearts were heavy as lead. Not being without imagination, they had often in their secret thoughts looked into the future, and seen themselves growing older, falling ill, one or the other of them dying; and the possibility of being the last survivor, shut up in this ocean prison-house without human companionship, filled each of them with terror.