e Sea on a Tr

ff, while my body seemed to be bruised in places. I was, of course, wet to the skin, and I cr

each. The vegetation, very thick and luxuriant, grew close to the line of sand, and all around me

me, but I saw nothing save lo

I could be nowhere else, and I judged that it mus

expanse of deep blue water stretching away to

nced by the heavy surf which broke upon the narrow beach. There was no wr

alone, and, so far as I knew, upon an uninhabited island. My future was a sealed book. After a while I began to take a more hopeful view of the

ery tall and with a heavy long narrow leaf seemed to be the most abundant; and from the descriptions which I h

d," I thought, "at least I shall not starve so

e loftiest headland to see if I could obtain any trace of the bark, although I felt sure that she had gone down, and that all but myself had p

ly along, keeping on the sand except when I was obliged to turn aside to a

climbing to the top of a high mound I looked around. Before me, and to my right and left, there was nothing but the blue, heaving ocean; and behind me, I saw nothing but a den

not, the future alone would reveal. For the present it did n

had on only my trousers, and shirt, shoes and stockings; and these were all I possessed in the world, but I was overjoyed to find that my knife was still in one of the

hink of finding a good place to build a temporary shelter. This seemed to be as good a location as any

ition to watch closely in the hope that some vestige of the bark would yet be washed ashore; for I thought that, if the vessel had foundered, something belonging to her

ng from a small palm tree what looked like coarse canvas. On examining it more closely, I found that it was really a sort of natural cloth, about the color of hemp, and composed of fibres

orm a conical cap. The edges I fastened together with long, sharp thorns that I cut

to look about for some means of satisfying the hunger which I now felt keenly, f

ich it was enveloped; so I opened my knife and set to work. It was no easy task, for the husk was thick and tough; but after much labor I succeeded in removing it until I bared the round, hard shell of the nut, when, with a large stone I was not long in cracking it, and laying bare the white meat. With the nut in my hands I walked about among the trees as I ate. So interested was I in the beautiful, brilliant-colored flowers, some of which were of enormous size, and in numbers of little green lizards that hopped about over the leaves of the smaller shrubs, t

to a beautiful little stream of clear water. Having still one of the halves of the cocoanut shell in my hand, I u

quite swiftly. Along the banks I noticed that a certain tall, reed-like plant grew in great profusion, and, on

e shore, and then returned to my landin

in no need of protection from cold in this tropical climate, I remembered having read that it was not advisa

found some straight trees about three inches in diameter, having smooth bark and with but few limbs, each tree forked about seven feet from the ground. After an hour's hard work, I succeeded in cutting down four of them with my knife; and after trimming off the branches and cutting off the tops, lea

a short distance when I came to a place where the stream widened into a broad pool. The water here was dark and apparently deep, and all around it, gracefully bending over the still depths, I found growing tall plants having small, narrow green leaves. The plants grew in clusters, and some of them were very tall, I judged from twenty-five to forty feet. I hurried forward with a view to ascert

my building site. Laying them along one side of the area to be occupied by the house, I found that they were nearly twenty feet long. Four of them I cut off to the required length. I then raised one on either side, one end of each pole

cs, I must make haste and provide a temporary shelter for the night before suspending work. I therefore cut the rest of the poles in halves and laid them across the two longer poles resting in the forks, thus forming a gridiron-like structure. With my k

not where, perhaps on an island, with the boundless ocean on one side, and a deep, unknown forest on the other which might conceal fierce wil

again I took my knife and cut a quantity of bushes which I piled in the form of a bed beneath the scaffold. I next cut several armfuls of the tall grass which grew all aro

esitating what to do next, and instinctively listening for some new sound. There was no breeze stirring, and the sea lightly washed the sand with a

e noise was made by a ripened cocoanut falling from the tree. The indistinct notes of many insects, new and strange, filled the air, and one particularly noisy insect gave forth a sharp clipping sound like that made by shears in the hands of a barber. Sometimes a note like that of a bird va