Morning brought bitter disappointment to Johnny. He had hoped that the palm tree he had seen down the creek was a cocoanut tree. The milk even of a green cocoanut is sweet and refreshing. Since ripe nuts fall the year round, there was reason to hope too that some of these might be found on the ground. But early morning light revealed a cohune nut tree. True, there were great clusters of nuts hanging from this tree, but these Johnny had been told were composed mostly of a hard shell. The meat, such as there was of it, was dry and indigestible.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “got to eat.”
At that he worked his way downstream to the tree. After spending a half hour cracking three nuts, and finding their meat meager and tough, he turned to other quarters for food.
A tropical wilderness abounds in fruit. The strangest, most unheard of trees in the world were at Johnny’s very elbow. The fruit of many of these was good to eat. Some might be eaten raw; others were delicious when cooked. But some, too, were deadly poison. Which might be eaten? Which not? This he could not tell. To his right was a tree laden with a green cucumber-like fruit, and over to his left one that hung heavy with long yellow muskmellons, or so they seemed to be.
“If I only knew!” he groaned. “If I only did!”
He recalled hours wasted that might have been put to good use roaming the jungle with one of his Caribs, learning the use and value of these plants.
“If I get back in safety I’ll never waste another hour!” he resolved.— “I’ll learn, and learn and learn until there is not an important thing in this wilderness that I do not have some accurate knowledge of.”
In the meantime, however, his stomach was crying loudly for food. Food? Without doubt there was plenty at hand, but he dared not eat it.
There were fishes in the stream. He could see them calmly fanning the water in a pool beside the rocks. Fish were always good. His mouth watered at thought of the fry he would have on the hot rocks. But he had no hooks. He tried a snare of tie-tie vine, but the fish were too quick for him.
At last, despairing of his undertaking, he dropped on hands and knees to creep away into the bush. He had not gone far before his heart was gladdened by what he saw just before him. It was a hot, humid morning. A peccary, a little wild pig, with her half grown brood, having without doubt spent the cooler hours of night hunting grubs and roots, lay stretched out on a bed of dead ferns, fast asleep. One of the young porkers, lying with his two hind feet close together, was not twelve feet from where Johnny lay.