ff towards the spot where he hoped to find water.
Devereux wished him good speed.

"You will easily find me again," he said, as Paul left him. Paul
hurried on. The ground was composed of sand and rock, with scarcely any
vegetation. The spot where he had left Devereux was the summit of a
bank; the space he was traversing looked as if it had been recently
covered by the sea. The trees were much farther off than he had
fancied. The heat of the sun increased; he felt very weak and hungry,
and it was with difficulty that he could make his way through the deep
sand.

"If I do not go on, poor Mr Devereux will die of thirst, and water must
be found," he said to himself whenever he found his resolution flagging.
A famous word is that _must_. We _must_ do what has to be done. We
_must_ not do what ought not to be done. Paul struggled on in spite of
the heat, and thirst, and hunger, and weariness, and the strange
creatures which crawled out from the crevices in the rocks, and ran
along the hot sand. He had no time to examine them. At length he found
that he was rising on the side of another bank, and what had seemed mere
shrubs in the distance, now assumed the appearance of a group of tall
cocoa-nut trees. "Should there be no water below, I shall find what
will be almost as refreshing," thought Paul, as he hurried on, almost
forgetting his fatigue in his eagerness to reach the spot. The sand,
however, seemed deeper and hotter than any he had before traversed.
Below the cocoa-nut trees there were low shrubs and some herbage. These
indicated water without doubt. He ran on. He stopped and hesitated.
There was a long, low building, capable of holding a number of persons.
If it was at present occupied, what reception could he expect to meet
from its inmates? He had read about savage Caribs, and buccaneers, and
pirates, and he thought that, possibly, the people in the hut might be
one or the other. He advanced cautiously, expecting every moment to see
some one come out of the hut. "I am but a boy, and however bad they may
be, they will not hurt me; and I must have the water at all events--for
water there must be, or the hut would not have been built on that spot."
Saying this, he hurried on, treading lightly, "The people may be
asleep, and I may get the water and be away without any one seeing me,"
he thought. He passed the door of the hut. Before him appeared a tank
cut in the coral rock, with the pure clear water