There indeed was the tree, and at the top of it were the cocoanuts—three ripe ones and many green ones. The problem of securing the food was still before him. At close sight of the tree his heart sank. It was taller and larger than he thought—fifteen feet high and a foot through at the base. What was worse, the circle of great fern-like leaves that grew between him and the nuts appeared to present a solid barrier through which it was going to be difficult to pass.
“I’m weak from hunger,” he told himself. “From hunger and something else. I’d rather lie down and sleep than climb that tree, but I must try.”
He did try. Three times he climbed to that green barrier; three times tried to break his way through the ring of branches to the fruit; fought there until cold perspiration stood out upon his brow and his knees shook so he could scarcely support himself; then each time slid slowly down.
The last time, with something very much like a sob, he threw himself upon the bare rocks and cried passionately:
“Oh, I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”
That night, on the surface of the highest rock he could find, with no fire, with only the glittering stars above him, he slept the deep sleep of utter exhaustion. From time to time as he slept there came sounds of scratches on the rock above him, of grunts and other sounds in the darkness; but no wild thing dared approach too close to this strange smelling creature from another world.
The three days that followed that night on the rocks beside the falls were like a long drawn out evil dream. True, Fate dropped him a comforting morsel. One of the cocoanuts, a small one, had fallen during the night. With fingers that shook, Johnny bored a hole through one eye of it and drank the milk eagerly; drank to the last drop. Then he broke the nut on a rock and gnawed at the rich, white meat until not a shred was left.
Lacking strength and courage to build a second raft, he began making his way as best he could, now on hands and knees and now flat on his stomach, over the low, narrow game trail that followed the bank of the stream.
As the heat of the day beat its way through the tangled forest he began to feel faint. Now and again, as he paused to rest, he felt that he must be losing consciousness.
A great desire to sleep came over him. Nothing much mattered. A strange peace, the drowsy, drug-like peace of the tropics, lulled him to rest. Now he slept, defenseless in the open trail. And now he woke to journey on. When night came he could not rightly tell. In that gloom there was no day. In time he woke to find all dark about him. Still he struggled on.