he led
his parent into all sorts of discussions.

On the present occasion, while he was engaged in preparing the pig for
the spit, and his father was mending the handle of a fish-spear of his
own fabrication, the discussion, or rather the conversation, turned upon
the possibility of two people living happily all their days on a desert
island.

Billy thought it was quite possible if the grub did not fail, but Gaff
shook his head, and said it would be a blue look-out if one of them
should get ill, or break his leg. Billy did not agree with this at all;
he held that if one should get ill it would be great fun for the other
to act the part of nurse and doctor, while the sick one would learn to
value his health more when he got it back. As to breaking a leg, why,
it was no use speculating how things would feel if that should occur; as
well speak of the condition of things if both of them should break their
necks.

The discussion diverged, as such discussions usually did, to home and
its inmates, long before any satisfactory conclusion was come to, and it
was brought to a close in consequence of Billy having to go out of the
cave for firewood to roast the pig.

The cavern home had assumed a very different aspect from that which it
presented when Gaff and his son took possession of it five years before.
It now bore, externally and internally, the appearance of an old
much-used dwelling. The entrance, which was an irregular archway of
about ten feet in diameter, had been neatly closed up with small trees,
over which strong banana leaves were fastened, so as to make it
weather-tight. In this screen two holes were left--a small one for a
door, and a still smaller one for a window. Both were fastened with a
goat-skin curtain, which could be let down and fastened at night. In
the daytime both door and window were always left wide-open, for the
island on which our friends had been cast was one of a group of
uninhabited islets, the climate around which is warm and delightful
during the greater part of the year.

The ground outside of the cave was trodden by long use to the hardness
of stone. The small vegetable garden, close to the right of the door,
was enclosed by a fence, which bore evidence of having been more than
once renewed, and frequently repaired. Some of the trees that had been
cut down--with stone hatchets made by themselves--when they first
arrived, had several tall and sturdy shoots rising from the roots.