er barrico from Cocoa-nut Bay
with us, for now we could have filled it and carried a supply with us in
the event of our being unable to come across another spring; but none of
the other men would carry it, and he and I after taking it along for a
time had thrown it away before the end of our first day's pilgrimage, it
being as much as we could do to drag ourselves along without being
hampered with an empty cask that might after all be a useless
incumbrance.

"So, once more depending on the chance of what we might meet with on the
way, we set out; our way was, as at first starting, lying again uphill
and the steepest bit of climbing we had yet had. In spite of our good
intentions of the previous night, what with prospecting our journey and
one thing and another, it was past mid-day before we got well off from
the valley, and it was nightfall when we reached the top of the third
mountain; but the men were not near so tired as they had been on the
last two days of our wandering before getting water, and even now did
not complain again of thirst as they had done at their former halts for
the night--moaning through their sleep and bursting out sometimes in
incoherent ravings as if they were going mad. From the top of this
eminence, too, we had more of an outlook than we had yet been able to
gain, seeing a distant peep of the sea through the trees, and below us
far away, wandering in and out between the masses of thick foliage, the
silvery gleam of a river coursing its way to the coast. We went to
sleep, therefore, with the comfortable assurance that everything would
turn out well for us on the morrow, when we should be in clover if
appearances were to be trusted.

"Alas, it was a day of calamity and greater peril than we had yet
undergone!

"Our downward progress this morning was as rapid as that into the oasis
we had discovered in the wilderness on the day before, and indeed seemed
much easier, the vegetation not being so thick and the ground shelving
less abruptly; but then, in compensation for this, we did not receive a
similar thankful reward for our toil on reaching the bottom, for,
although we came to a river, its water was utterly unlike that of the
spring in the glade, being muddy and brackish. However, to men thirsty
like ourselves it was drinkable, and we had to content ourselves with
it, taking as little of it as we could help and that only sufficient to
quench our cravings.

"What upset us more than this