een
washed up from the wreck. Some tins of biscuits were likely to be very
useful, and a box of carpenter's tools, most of them sadly rusted, was
welcomed eagerly; but nothing else was found, and the day might have
begun with murmurs of discontent but for a discovery made by Mackay,
which restored satisfaction to the men's faces.

Close by his head in the log hut where he had spent the night, he found
a sort of cupboard--something like a rabbit-hutch. And this cupboard
contained--oh, joyful discovery!--not gold or gems, nor any such useless
glittering lumber, but something far more precious to these weary
mariners--two bottles of brandy and a chest of tea. Perhaps a former
sojourner on the island had placed them in that hiding-place, thinking
compassionately of the voyagers who might in some future day find
themselves in bitter need upon the Rocas Reef. "Whoever it was as left
'em here," said Pollard, "got off safe again, you may depend on it; and
so shall we." Percival said nothing: he had been thinking that perhaps
the former owner of this buried treasure had died upon the island. He
hoped that they would not find his grave.

He measured out some tea for the morning's meal, but decided that
neither tea nor spirits should be used, except on special occasions or
in cases of illness. The men accepted his decision as a reasonable one;
they were all well-disposed and tractable on the whole. Percival was
amazed to find them so easy to manage. But they were more depressed that
morning at the thought of their lost comrades, their wrecked ship, and
the prospect of passing an indefinite time upon the coral-reef, than
they had been on the previous day. It was a relief when they were busy
at their respective tasks; and Percival found an odd kind of pleasure in
all sorts of hard and unusual work; in breaking up rotten planks, for
instance; in extracting old nails painfully and laboriously from them
for future use; and in tramping to and fro between the sea-shore and the
log hut, carrying the driftwood deposited on the sand to a more
convenient resting-place. They had planned to build another hut, as the
existing structure was both small and frail; and Percival laboured at
his work like a giant. In the hot time of the day, however, he was glad
to do as the others did; to throw down his tools, such as they were, and
creep into the shadow of the log hut. The heat was very great; and the
men were beginning to suffer from the bites of