thing I ought to have before night," he said,--for he had got into the
way of talking aloud,--"that is, shelter. I must build myself a hut;"
and so he set to work. There were canes, and bushes, and broad leaves
of the pandanus and other trees in abundance. He did not require a very
spacious mansion; still he wanted one high enough to sit in. He worked
on till he was tired and hungry. He had left his cocoa-nuts some way
off, and had to go for them. He brought as many as he could carry back
to his hut. Knocking a hole in the end of one of them, and carefully
scraping out the fruit after he had drunk the milk, he waded into the
water, and cut some mussels off the rocks. His cocoa-nut he filled with
salt-water. Coming back, he lighted a fire in a hole a little way from
his hut. Would he put his cocoa-nut on it? No; he was too wise for
that; but he made some stones red-hot, and kept tumbling them into the
water till the mussels were sufficiently cooked. Others he toasted
before the fire, but he liked the boiled ones best. He thus made a
tolerably substantial meal. To keep in his fire, he built up a wall of
stones round it, and put on a quantity of green sticks, which would burn
slowly, hoping in that way to save the expenditure of another match.

"I will finish my hut, and then I will go and have another hunt for
water," he said to himself, as he began working again. He had placed
his hut against a tree, with the opening turned away from the wind.
There were plenty of dry leaves about, which he collected for his bed.
He did not require furniture; that he would make by and by. While
hunting in his pockets for the matches, he found a number of thin flat
seeds. He recollected having saved them from a fruit of the gourd
species, which had been used on board the schooner. He carefully dried
them and put them by, remembering that such things grow very rapidly.
"There will be no harm sowing them; if I do not use them, others will.
I am thankful I found them," he thought. Once more he set out to look
for water. The exertion he had gone through, and the heat, made the
milk of the cocoa-nut insufficient for quenching his thirst. The ground
was rough; but he eagerly clambered over it, backwards and forwards,
hoping thus to find a spring if one existed. The sun was sinking low,
when he thought that the trees and shrubs, in a hollow he saw some way
before him, looked greener and more luxuriant than those in other
p