leaving it all one night.

Shaddy watched him with a grim smile, and kept on giving him words of
encouragement, as he worked, tending Mr Brazier the while, brushing the
flies away and arranging green boughs over him to keep him in the shade,
declaring that he would be better out there in the open than in the
forest.

"Well done, my lad!" said the old sailor as Rob held up the finished pot
before placing it in the fire; "'tis a rough 'un, but I daresay there
has been worse ones made. What I'm scared about is the firing. Strikes
me it will crack all to shivers."

To Rob's great delight, the pot came out of the wood ashes perfectly
sound, and their next experiment was the careful stewing down of an
iguana and the production of a quantity of broth, which Shaddy
pronounced to be finer than any chicken soup ever made; Rob, after
trying hard to conquer his repugnance to food prepared from such a
hideous-looking creature, said it was not bad; and their patient drank
with avidity.

"There," said Shaddy, "we shall go on swimmingly in the kitchen now; and
as we can have hot water I don't see why we shouldn't have some tea."

"You'd better go to the grocer's, then, for a pound," said Rob, with a
laugh.

"Oh no, I shan't," said Shaddy; "here's plenty of leaves to dry in the
sun such as people out here use, and you'll say it ain't such bad tea,
neither; but strikes me, Mr Rob, that the sooner you make another pot
the better."

Rob set to at once, and failed in the baking, but succeeded admirably
with his next attempt, the new pot being better baked than the old, and
that night he partook of some of Shad's infusion of leaves, which was
confessed to be only wanting in sugar and cream to be very palatable.

That day they found a deer lying among the bushes, with the neck and
breast eaten, evidently the puma's work, and, after what Shaddy called a
fair division, the legs and loins were carried off to roast and stew,
giving the party, with the fruit and fish, a delightful change.

The next day was one to be marked with a red letter, for towards evening
Mr Brazier's eyes had in them the look of returned consciousness.

Rob saw it first as he knelt down beside his friend, who smiled at him
faintly, and spoke in quite a whisper.

From that hour he began to amend fast, and a week after he related how,
in his ardour to secure new plants, he had lost his bearings, and gone
on wandering here and there in the most helpless way, su