in the
cave and on your own beds in the morning."

"Yah, dot vas so," assented Van Ryn. "But vhen ve comes to overhaul
ourselfs ve found dot our hands and faces vas badly skinned by our fall
outside dot cave, und our hair and beards, as vell as our clothes, vas
singed vhere ve had shoomped through the fire."

"Indeed!" said I. "That was certainly remarkable--if you are both quite
sure you did not imagine those very peculiar happenings."

"If you mean about our skinned hands and faces, and our singed hair and
clothes, there was no imagination about _that_," asserted Svorenssen.
"But about the other--well, when we came to talk about it in broad
daylight we were unable to decide whether we had actually heard the
sounds, or whether we had dreamed them. You see, it was not as though
the thing happened once only; it happened several nights running, and at
length it got upon our nerves to such an extent that we could endure it
no longer; so we agreed to return to the beach and work our way along-
shore, on the look-out for a break in the reef, abreast of which we
proposed to camp in the hope that sooner or later a ship might come
along, enter the lagoon, and take us off."

"A most sensible plan," said I, "and the only thing I am surprised at is
that, to a couple of sailor-men like yourselves, the idea did not come
much earlier."

"Ay," agreed Svorenssen, "it is a pity that it did not. Had it done so
we should no doubt have discovered that you were still alive much
earlier than we did, and found means to signal to you."

"No doubt," said I. "Well, what happened to you after you left the cave
the second time?"

"The first thing," replied Svorenssen, "was that we had the misfortune
to lose Pete's burning-glass, which left us without the means to light a
fire. That was a terrible loss, for it left us defenceless against the
attacks of wild beasts at night, so that we dared not camp anywhere in
the open. Dirk remembered having heard that the natives of certain
countries made fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and we tried
the same plan over and over again. Indeed we spent the better part of
several days trying to get fire in that way, but without success; we
could not even raise a whiff of smoke. That was about the worst
misfortune that happened to us, for without fire to protect us at night,
or to cook food during the day, we were continually in difficulties.
But it was not long before we discovered a me