“Well, well, Ben, we must be prepared for a good many trials and disappointments; but I hope that we shall all meet them like men,” said Boxall.
“Yes, sir, that we will; and I am ready for anything that turns up,” said Ben, giving himself a shake. “We want water and we want food, in the first place, I suspect.”
“The water, I have a notion, we can get by digging, as we did on the sand-bank the other day; and as for food, it’s hard if the sea does not give us something to eat, besides the pork,” observed Boxall.
The hot sun having quickly dried our wet clothes, we felt, as we began to move, in somewhat better spirits. We soon reached the spot where we had left the cask,—being guided to it by the remains of the raft on the beach. Halliday was the most hungry, and ran on first.
“Hallo, the cask has been overturned; and what has become of the pork?” he exclaimed, as he began hunting about in the sand. “That monster of a hyena must have been here; and I am afraid the brute has not even left us enough for breakfast.”
We hurried on, and speedily joined in the search.
“Here is a piece, fortunately, jammed between the staves,” said Halliday, dragging forth the remnant of a joint of pork.
“We may be thankful to get even that,” said Boxall.
We hunted round in every direction, but a couple of gnawed bones, with scarcely any flesh on them, were the miserable remains of the provision on which we had depended.
“There can be no doubt about the hyena being the thief,” I observed.