es to wash over us, and taking care not to go far enough in to
give the sharks a chance to get at us. Then, when we felt sufficiently
relieved, we staggered along for a few yards, repeating the process
about thirty or forty times a day.

"At length, however, we found a stream of fresh water and camped beside
it. But so terrible had been our suffering from thirst that, having at
length found fresh water, we could not summon the courage to leave it
again.

"One day, however, as we were seeking shell-fish on the beach near the
mouth of the stream, Dirk suddenly remarked:--

"`Olaf, my son, just run your eye along the ridge of that hill yonder,
and tell me what you see.'

"I did so; and presently saw what had attracted his attention. There
was a little patch of green that looked as though it might be trees,
while all below it was black, where the fire had been.

"`It certainly looks very like a clump of trees,' said I; `and where
there are trees there will also probably be fruit. Let us take a walk
up there and investigate.'

"`And what about leaving this fresh water?' asked Dirk.

"`No need to do that,' said I. `The stream comes down from that
direction, and we can probably follow it for a good part of the way.
Surely it is worth while to risk it.'

"So we started, following the course of the stream until we had arrived
very near to our destination. And when that was reached we found it to
be a nice little patch of forest, rising to the top of the hill and
dipping down on the other side of it for a distance of about two miles.
And the reason why it had not been burnt with the rest was because it
stood on the lee side of a lake big enough to cut off the flames from
that little patch.

"There were plenty of birds there; and when we proceeded to investigate
we soon found that there were animals also--small monkeys, creatures
very like hares but with short ears, a few deer; but nothing dangerous
so far as we could discover. And there was an abundance of fruit of
several kinds also; we therefore quickly determined to settle down there
and rest a bit before going any farther. There was a great patch of
reeds along the western end of the lake, and here thousands of wild duck
used to settle every night; and we soon found that it was an easy matter
to get a few by simply waiting for them among the reeds and catching
them as they swam past.

"We built ourselves a hut of wattles, thatched with palm leaves, that
k