and me, Peter, I've less pain, but much more weakness, which is a bad
sign."

"Oh, you'll be well in a few days," said Robert cheerfully. "One wound
won't carry off a man as strong as you are."

"One wound always suffices, provided it goes in deep enough, but I thank
you for your rosy predictions, Peter. I think your good wishes are
genuinely sincere."

Robert realized that they were so, in truth. In addition to the call of
humanity, he had an intense horror of being left alone on the island,
and he would fight hard to save the slaver's life. He compounded the
poultice with no mean skill, and, after bathing the wound carefully with
fresh water from a little spring behind the hut, he applied it.

"It's cooling, Peter, and I know it's healing, too," said the man, "but
I think I'll try to go to sleep again. As long as I'm fastened to a
couch that's about the only way I can pass the time. Little did I think
when I built this house that I'd come here without a ship and without a
crew to pass some helpless days."

He shut his eyes. After a while, Robert, not knowing whether he was
asleep or not, took down the rifle, loaded it, and went out feeling that
it was high time he should explore his new domain.

In the sunlight the island did not look forbidding. On the contrary, it
was beautiful. From the crest of the hill near the house he saw a
considerable expanse, but the western half of the island was cut off
from view by a higher range of hills. It was all in dark green foliage,
although he caught the sheen of a little lake about two miles away. As
far as he could see a line of reefs stretched around the coast, and the
white surf was breaking on them freely.

From the hill he went back to the point at which he and the captain had
been swept ashore, and, as he searched along the beach he found the
bodies of all those who had been in the boat with them. He had been
quite sure that none of them could possibly have escaped, but it gave
him a shock nevertheless to secure the absolute proof that they were
dead. He resolved if he could find a way to bury them in the sand beyond
the reach of the waves, but, for the present, he could do nothing, and
he continued along the shore several miles, finding its character
everywhere the same, a gentle slope, a stretch of water, and beyond that
the line of reefs on which the white surf was continually breaking,
reefs with terrible teeth as he well knew.

But it was all very peaceful no