"This is better," said he, with satisfaction, as after some stumbling steps, with the aid of a dead tree branch, he was able to limp upright though slowly.
Dave reached the water, a mere rill gushing down the shore bluff over some rocks. It was clear and sparkling, and he took a deep draught of the life-giving element that invigorated him greatly.
"Hungry," thought Dave next. "Thanks to Stoodles--good!"
Right at his side Dave discovered a bush full of pods. When on the Windjammers' Island with Stoodles, the latter had shown him this very bush. Upon it grew pods full of kernels that tasted like cocoa. Dave ate plentifully, though it was not a very satisfying meal.
"Now then," he spoke. "Oh, how could I have forgotten them!" he cried with sudden self-reproachfulness.
It was quite natural in his forlorn, confused condition that Dave should first of all have thought only of himself. Still, his deep anxiety, poignantly aroused now as he thought of Daley and the others who had been in the yawl with him, showed his heart to be in the right place.
He hurried down to the beach again, in his solicitude for his late companions forgetting how crippled he was, and had several falls.
"It's no use," said Dave sadly, after over an hour's search along the lonely shore. "They must have perished, Daley and the others."
The conviction saddened the youth for a long time. He sat down thinking over things for nearly an hour.
"I don't know where I am," he said, rising to his feet, "and I must trust to luck as to what is best next to do. This must be the Windjammers' Island. I think I could tell if I could get to some high point overlooking it or a part of it."