twigs, and
small articles in his mouth until he found what was pleasant to his
taste and eatable--nuts and berries; and it was instinct, the most
ancient and deeply implanted,--the lingering index of an arboreal
ancestry,--that now taught him the safety and comfort of these woody
shades, and, as night came on, prompted him--as it prompts a drowning
man to reach high, and leads a creeping babe to a chair--to attempt
climbing a tree. Failing in this from lack of strength, he mounted the
rocky wall a few feet, and here, on a narrow ledge, after indulging in
a final fit of crying, he slept through the night, not comfortably on
so hard a bed, but soundly.

During the day, while he had crawled about at the foot of the rocks,
wild hogs, marsupial animals, and wood-rats had examined him
suspiciously through the undergrowth and decamped. As he slept, howling
night-dogs came up, sniffed at him from a safe distance, and scattered
from his vicinity. He would have yielded in a battle with a pugnacious
kitten, but these creatures recognized a prehistoric foe, and would not
abide with him.

A week passed before he had ceased to cry and call for his mother; but
from this on her image grew fainter, and in a month the infant
intelligence had discarded it. He ate nuts and berries as he found
them, drank from the pool, climbed the rocks and strolled in the wood,
played on the beach with shells and fragments of splintered wreckage,
wore out his clothes, and in another month was naked; for when buttons
and vital parts gave way and a garment fell, he let it lie. But he
needed no clothes, even at night; for it was southern summer, and the
northeast monsoon, adding its humid warmth to the radiating heat from
the sun-baked rocks, kept the temperature nearly constant.

He learned to avoid the sun at midday, and, free from contagion and
motherly coddling, escaped many of the complaints which torture and
kill children; yet he suffered frightfully from colic until his stomach
was accustomed to the change of diet, by which time he was emaciated to
skin and bone. Then a reaction set in, and as time passed he gained
healthy flesh and muscle on the nitrogenous food.

Six months from the time of his arrival, another storm swept the beach.
Pelted by the warm rain, terror-stricken, he cowered under the rocks
through the night, and at daylight peered out on the surf-washed sands,
heaving lagoon, and white line of breakers on the barrier reef. The
short