y; and I must acknowledge that I felt a secret
pride in belonging to so great a country.

I considered that I belonged to it, for my father and mother were
English, and though I might be called The Little Savage, and be fixed to
an obscure island in the great ocean, I felt that my real home was in
this great country my mother talked about so glowingly, and that my
chief object ought to be to return into the hands of my grandfather, the
belt that had in so singular a manner come into my possession.

I often thought of this great England whose glory had been so widely
spread and so durably established, and longed for some means of leaving
our present abode, and going in search of its time-honoured shores. But
I asked myself how was this desirable object to be effected? We had no
means of transporting ourselves from the prison into which we had been
accidentally cast. We had nothing resembling a boat on the island, and
we had no tools for making one; and even had we been put in possession
of such a treasure, we had no means of launching it. The rocky
character of the coast made the placing of a boat on the water almost
impossible.

The expectation of a vessel appearing off the island appeared quite as
unreasonable. We had seen no ships for a long time, and those we had
observed, were a great deal too far off to heed our signals.

We had no help for it, but to trust to Providence and bear our present
evil patiently. Nevertheless, I took my glass and swept the sea far and
wide in search of a ship, but failed to discover anything but a
spermaceti whale blowing in the distance, or a shoal of porpoises
tumbling over each other nearer the shore, or a colony of seals basking
in the sun on the rocks nearest the sea. My disappointment was shared
by Nero, who seemed to regard my vexation with a sympathising glance,
and even the gannets turned their dull stupid gaze upon me, with an
expression as if they deeply commiserated my distress.

I had for a long time employed myself in making a shelving descent to
the sea, on the most secure part of the rock, intending that it should
be a landing-place for a boat, in case any ship should come near enough
to send one to our rescue. It was a work of great labour, and hatchet
and spade equally suffered in my endeavours to effect my object; but at
last I contrived to take advantage of a natural fracture in the rock,
and a subsequent fall of the cliff, to make a rude kind of inclined