After opening one of the largest, (using his cutlass as an oyster-knife), and making the experiment with due deliberation, he announced himself perfectly satisfied.
By the time we had all sufficiently tasted the quality of the oysters, (which were really very good, and well-flavoured, notwithstanding the unusual position in which they were discovered), it had become quite dark. Though the evening was fine, there was not much light, the moon and stars glimmering faintly through a soft purple haze, which, as I had observed since we had been on the island, generally seemed to fill the atmosphere for a short time after sunset, and at a little later hour entirely disappeared. As we strolled back towards the foot of “Castle-Hill,” Johnny suddenly looked up, and inquired, as if the thought had just occurred to him, where we were going to sleep.
“That’s a pretty question to ask,” said Browne, laughing, “it implies that we are common vagrants.”
“So we are, strictly speaking,” answered Max, “we have no regular means of living, and no fixed place of abode, and that I believe, makes us common vagrants, according to Webster.”
“I should think our means of living were ‘regular’ enough to rescue us from the definition,” replied Morton, “having been thus far, cocoa-nuts and mussels every day, and all day long, and nothing but cocoa-nuts and mussels. I am glad that there is now some prospect of a little more irregularity in future.”
“As to our having no fixed habitation or place of abode,” said Browne, “that does not arise from poverty, or lack of land—‘the isle is all before us where to choose’—and we are now on a tour of observation through our extensive domains, in order to decide upon the finest spot for our head-quarters. Meantime, for a night or two, we shall have to be satisfied with ‘a tent in the green wood, a home in the grove,’ in other words, we shall have to ‘camp out,’ as the most renowned hunters and soldiers have frequently done before us. I’m sure there’s no vagrancy in that.”
“Why,” cried Johnny, forgetting for the moment his anxiety on the score of our quarters for the night, “we are no more vagrants than Robinson Crusoe was:—
“‘We are monarchs of all we survey,
And our realm there is none to dispute,’
“As he says of himself so that we are much more like kings than vagrants.”
“And the sea-birds and fishes,” said Max, “are to be considered as our subjects, I presume, since we have no man Friday, and no goats or poll-parrots to reign over.”