“Shall we, Tom?” I asked. “I want to think about our ship before we go on with her.”
“Perhaps one day won’t matter. What is it you’ve found, Bill?”
“Never you mind until I show it you.”
It was accordingly agreed that we should the next morning go and see what Bill had to show, and not to ask him to say what it was beforehand.
Early in the morning Bill woke us, and gave us a good breakfast of eggs, roast maize, and a grilled fowl; and when we had finished he said, “Come along, and see what I have to show you.”
First he took us to the spring, and showed us how he had patched up the troughs, cleared out a basin, and lined it with turtle shells, into which the water fell, and which was large enough to take a bath in. Here we all enjoyed a thorough good wash, and sat in turn under the end of the trough from which the water fell into the basin.
Bill soon got tired of being here, and said, “If I’d thought that you would have been so long here, I’d have brought you here last night; now bear a hand, and come on.”
Getting out of the water, we dried ourselves with cocoanut fibre, and putting on our clothes we went on with Bill a short way, until he brought us to a shed he had made for the fowls, which he had enclosed with leaf mats; and here he said he had all the fowls on the island except two or three, and that some hens were laying regularly, while others were sitting on their eggs.
“Certain you’re a regular farmer,” said Tom.
“Wait a bit; I’ll show you if I’m a farmer. Come along here a bit farther.” And following him along, he brought us to a clearing about twice as large as that where our hut stood, and which, like it, had been at one time planted with maize; but here the maize had been stronger than the weeds, and Bill having torn up all the latter, there was to be seen enough Indian corn, nearly ripe, to have loaded the Escape twice over.