"While we're looking for food tomorrow morning, we'd better keep our eyes open for a place to build a house."
She closed her eyes.
Cochrane kept watch through the dark hours. He heard night-cries in the forest, and once toward dawn the distant volcano seemed to undergo a fresh paroxysm of activity. Boomings and explosions rumbled in the night. There were flickerings in the sky. But there were fewer temblors after it, and no shocks at all.
More than once, Cochrane found himself dozing. It was difficult to stay in a state of alarm. There was but one single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. That was not nearby. He tried to make plans. He felt bitterly self-reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway. But he had been a city man all his life. Woodcraft was not only out of his experience—on overcrowded Earth it would have been completely useless.
From time to time he found himself thinking, instead of practical matters, of the astonishing sturdiness of spirit Babs displayed.
When she waked, well after daybreak, and sat up blinking, he said:
"Er—Babs. We're in this together. From now on, if you want to tell me something for my own good, go ahead! Right?"
She rubbed her eyes on her knuckles and said,
"I'd have done that anyhow. For both our good. Don't you think we'd better try to find a place where we can get a drink of water? Water has to be right to drink!"
They set off, Cochrane carrying the weapon he'd brought from the ship. It was Babs who pointed out that a stream should almost certainly be found where rain would descend, downhill. Babs, too, spotted one of the small, foot-high furry bipeds feasting gluttonously on small round objects that grew from the base of a small tree instead of on its branches. The tree, evidently, depended on four-footed rather than on flying creatures to scatter its seeds. They gathered samples of the fruit. Cochrane peeled a sliver of the meat from one of the round objects and put it under his watchstrap.