'it is God's will that we shall live, he will
furnish us the means; if not, we can but die. I wouldn't mind it half so
much, if my poor mother only knew what was become of me.' This
reflection seemed to sadden him for a moment, and I thought I saw a tear
in his eye; but he brightened up instantly as a great flock of ducks
went whizzing overhead. 'Well,' exclaimed he, 'there seems to be no lack
of something to eat here anyway, and we ought to manage to catch it
somehow, and live until a ship comes along and takes us off.'

"The Dean took such a hopeful view of the future that we were soon
chatting in a very lively way about everything that concerned our
escape, and here I must have dwelt largely upon the satisfaction which I
took in rescuing the Dean, for the little fellow said: 'Well, I suppose
I ought to thank you very much for saving me; but the truth is, all the
agony of death being over with me when you pulled me out, the chief
benefit falls on you, as you seem so much rejoiced about it; but I'll be
grateful as I can, and show it by not troubling you any more. See, I'm
almost well. I feel better and better every minute,--only I'm sore here
on the head where I got the crack.'

"To tell the truth, in thinking of other things, I had neglected, or
rather quite forgotten, the Dean's wounded head; so now, my attention
being called to it, I examined it very carefully, and found that it was
nothing more than a bad bruise, with a cut near the centre of it about
half an inch long. Having washed it carefully, I bound my bandanna
handkerchief about it, and we once more came back to consider what we
should do.

"Of course, the first thing we thought of and talked about was how we
should go about starting a fire; next in importance to this was that we
should have a place to shelter us. So far as concerned our food and
drink, our immediate necessities were provided for, as we had the little
rivulet close at hand, and any quantity of eggs to be had for the
gathering, and we set about collecting a great number of them at once;
for in a few days we thought it very likely that most of them would have
little ducks in them, as, indeed, many of them had already. Another
thing we settled upon was, that we would never both go to sleep at the
same time, nor quit our present side of the island together; but one of
us would be always on the lookout for a ship, as we both thought that,
since our ship had come that way, others would be very l