"You didn't look far enough, my festive," said Burgoyne. "How did you get ashore?"
"Just hung on to the boat," replied Peter. "Or rather, what was left of her. Had quite a soft passage. Nothing much to complain about. The wreckage drove into this cove, and I waded ashore with hardly any trouble. Then I walked up and down the beach for nearly half the night, I should imagine, trying to find you. Never saw a sign, so I came to the conclusion—well, I was wrong."
"You're in luck," remarked the Third Officer, nodding in the direction of the fire and the savoury contents of the bucket.
"Yes, rather," admitted the Wireless Officer. "I knocked over a fowl with a chunk of coral. There are hundreds of them up there—fowls, I mean. Wasn't certain altogether how to clean the brute, but I've done it after a fashion. Fire? Easy, when you know how. One of the things we used to practise when I was a Scout."
"It was beyond me," declared Alwyn.
"I'll show you later on," promised Mostyn, struggling into his ragged coat. "Now I'm ready. Where are the others? 'Spose the jolly old pot won't boil over?"
Ten minutes later a light-hearted, reunited party gathered round the steaming pot. Water, copious and wholesome, was to be found near at hand. There were hundreds of fowls in the woods, and, Mostyn had good reason for believing, pigs. Yams, taro roots, and coco-nuts grew in profusion, so for the present all fears of a lingering death by thirst and starvation vanished.
"I boiled the brute because it was less trouble," explained Mostyn apologetically as he severed a portion of the steaming fowl by means of a strip of dried coconut shell. "You may find a few feathers, but I singed most of 'em off. Next time I'll try roasting a bird in clay."
It was a most appetizing meal, in spite of the fact that Peter's companions had only recently eaten bully beef and drunk coco-nut milk.
"One of the buckets came ashore with the boat," continued the Wireless Officer. "It'll have to serve for both cooking and fetching water, I'm afraid——"