To their great delight they found that the boat had been cast ashore on a sandy place, and that it was uninjured. A short way beyond it, too, the oars were found stranded between two rocks.
This was a piece of great good fortune, because it placed within their reach the means of an immediate circumnavigation of their island. But before entering on this voyage of discovery they resolved to explore the woods near the place where they had landed, in search of a cavern, or some suitable place in which to fix their home.
Acting on this resolve they pulled the boat up the beach, placed the oars within it, and returned to the woods. As they went they picked up a few shell-fish, and ate them raw. Thus they breakfasted; but although the meal was a poor one it was unusually pleasant, because of the hunger which had previously oppressed them, and which Billy, in a fit of confidential talk with his father, compared to having his “interior gnawed out by rats!”
Passing through the woods they found a quantity of ripe berries, of various kinds, of which they ate heartily, and then came to a spring of clear cold water. Gaff also climbed a cocoa-nut tree and brought down two nuts, which were clothed in such thick hard shells that they well-nigh broke their hearts before they succeeded in getting at the kernels. However, they got at them in course of time, and feasted sumptuously on them.
It was half an hour, or perhaps three-quarters of an hour, after the gathering of the cocoa-nuts, that they came suddenly on a spring of water above which there was a cloud of vapour resembling steam.
“It’s bilin’,” exclaimed Billy, as he ran forward and eagerly thrust his hand into the water.
Billy had said this in joke, for he had never conceived of such a thing as a spring of hot water, but he found that his jest might have been said in earnest, for the spring was almost “bilin’,” and caused the Bu’ster to pull his hand out again with a roar of surprise and pain.
Just beyond the hot spring they found a small cavern in the face of a cliff, which appeared to them to be quite dry.
“Here’s the very thing we want, daddy,” cried Billy in gleeful surprise.
“Don’t be too sure, lad; p’raps it’s damp.”