"It's got to be tried, though," he said, resolutely, "for it would never do to spend the night here, and I hate the thought of that lonely hut; so here goes."
With this the boy began to climb slowly and unsteadily. If he had had two sound hands and his normal strength, it would have been easy enough; but weak, giddy, and wounded as he was, it seemed very doubtful if he could gain the top. Now, too, he began to fear concerning the reception that he might meet even if he succeeded. Suppose the natives should take him for an enemy, how easy it would be for them to push him from his precarious footing?
Filled with such thoughts, he had only ascended a few feet when suddenly there came a loud shout from close behind him. So startling was it that he made a misstep, clutched vainly at the smooth rock to save himself, and with a despairing cry, fell heavily to the steep pathway, where he lay stunned and motionless.
[to be continued.]
"Times bein' so hard, I can't see my way clear to keep that little Portergee through the winter," said Cap'n 'Siah Doane, with a solemn shake of his gray head.
And three hearts seemed to stand still; they were sixteen-year-old Caddy's, who was the Hausmutter, and had knit the little "Portergee's" winter supply of stockings and mittens as carefully as she had knit her own boys', and young Josiah's and little Israel's, who had only truly enjoyed life since they had had a companion who knew as much of the great world as the geography and a fairy-book put together. For the little "Portergee," Manuel Silva, had been tossed upon the Cape Cod sands by a wreck, after cruising about in all the seas, and picking up sixteen years' worth of knowledge in many lands.