viding himself with a strip of the bark,
fastened the ends about his ankles, and then firmly clasping the trunk
of one of the trees with his hands and feet alternately, the latter
being as wide apart as the ligature would permit, he vaulted rapidly and
easily upward, and soon gained the dizzy height where the nuts grew.
Once fairly perched in the tuft of the tree among the stems of the
enormous leaves, where he looked scarcely larger than a monkey, he
quickly supplied us with as many cocoa-nuts as we could put to present
use. Loading ourselves with the fruit, we returned to our first
resting-place, and after piling the nuts in a heap, reclined around it,
after the manner of the ancients at their banquets, while we enjoyed our
repast. Though all these nuts were gathered from the same tree, and, in
fact, from the same cluster, some of them contained nothing but liquid,
the kernel not having yet begun to form, and in these the milk was most
abundant and delicious: in others, a soft, jelly-like, transparent pulp,
delicate and well-flavoured, had commenced forming on the inner shell:
in others, again, this pulp had become thicker and firmer, and more like
the kernel of the imported nut, the milk having diminished in quantity,
and lost in a great measure its agreeable taste.

Johnny, after having tried all the different varieties with the zeal of
an epicure, declared that he was beginning to get sick of cocoa-nuts: he
wondered whether we should have to live entirely on cocoa-nuts and
shell-fish, and whether there was not some bread-fruit on the island.

"If there is," said Browne, "it will be of no use to us, unless we can
find means to make a fire, and cook it."

"Make a fire!" cried Johnny, "that's easy enough--all we've got to do,
is just to get two dry sticks and rub them together briskly for a few
minutes. None of the shipwrecked people I ever read of, had any trouble
about that."

"How lucky we are," cried Max, gravely, "in having some one with us, who
has read all about all the desert islanders that have ever lived, and
can tell us just what to do in an emergency! Please get a couple of
those dry sticks which you speak of, Johnny, and show us how unfortunate
castaways in our condition, are accustomed to kindle a fire."

Without seeming, in the simplicity of his heart, to suspect for a moment
the perfect good faith and sincerity of Max's compliment, Johnny
commenced casting about for some sticks or pieces of woo