bubbling up in the
middle of it. Stooping down, he quickly washed out his shell, and then
took a long, delicious draught. He felt as if he could never take
enough. He did not forget his companions; and while he was considering
how little the shell could carry, his eye fell on an iron pot by the
side of the tank. He stooped down and filled it, and was carrying it
off, when the door of the hut opened, and a woolly head with a hideous
black face popped out, and a voice which sounded like a peal of thunder,
the roll of a muffled drum, and the squeak of a bagpipe, mingled in one,
shouted out to him in a language he could not understand. Instead of
running away, Paul turned round and asked the negro what he wanted. The
latter only continued growling as before, and making hideous faces,
while his eye glanced at the can. Paul made signs that he was only
borrowing it, and would bring it back. He, however, did not venture
within grasp of the unattractive-looking negro, who showed no
inclination to follow him. The reason was soon apparent, for, as the
black came rather more out of the doorway, Paul perceived that he had
lost both his legs, and stood upon two wooden stumps. No one else
appeared to be moving inside the hut, and Paul concluded, therefore,
that the black was its only inmate. To avoid that unprepossessing
individual, he had made a circuit, and as he looked about to ascertain
the direction he was to take, he discovered that he was near the head of
a long narrow lagoon, or gulf, which ran up from the sea. He had no
time to examine it, as he was anxious to get back to Devereux. He ran
on as fast as he could without spilling the water. He thought that he
knew the way. He stopped. He feared that he had mistaken it. He
looked back at the tall cocoa-nut trees, and wished that he had brought
some of the fruit with him; but then he remembered that alone he could
not have got it, and that the black, might possibly not have chosen to
give him any. Again and again he stopped, fearing that he must be going
in a wrong direction. The flagstaff could nowhere be seen. "Poor Mr
Devereux! what will become of him should I miss him?" he said frequently
to himself, as he worked his way on through the heavy sand. At last the
looked-for signal appeared above the top of a bank. Devereux was lying
where he had left him, but seemed unconscious of his approach. "Was he
asleep--or, dreadful thought! could he be dead?" He ran