"Certainly, Miss Vivian," was the reply. "That is, if you feel equal to it."
"I am quite all right, thank you, Mr. Burgoyne," declared Hilda. "Provided you don't want me to climb trees or swim off to the reef, I think you won't find me an encumbrance."
"Right-o," assented Alwyn cheerfully. "Let's make a move. I don't suppose this island is so very big. We may as well explore it and find out how we stand, before we decide upon the site for our camp. A lot depends upon where we find fresh water."
"Will there be any?" asked the girl.
"I should think so," replied Burgoyne, pointing to a hill about a hundred feet in height. "That rising ground points to it, and the fairly dense vegetation is another hopeful sign. I suggest we try to walk right round the island—it can't be so very far—before we start exploring the interior."
They gained the beach, and instead of turning northward—Burgoyne had already examined the beach for about two hundred yards that way—they walked in the opposite direction. Before they had gone more than fifty paces Minalto, whose eyes incessantly scanned the shore, stooped and dragged from the water's edge a canvas sack containing the life-boat's stock of biscuit, utterly spoilt by the salt water.
"Things be a-comin' ashore-like," he remarked. "When flood-tide makes then te's time to look."
"I wonder if we soaked the biscuits in fresh water and thoroughly got rid of the salt we could bake them again?" asked Hilda. "I'll try it. How do we make a fire?"
Burgoyne shook his head. He had already tried his hand at rubbing together two sticks on the chance of obtaining a flame, but without success.
"I'll have another shot at it," he continued, when he had related his failure. "Perhaps the wood wasn't perfectly dry. Savages obtain fire that way, but I've never watched them do it. Wish I had."