After a time Elizabeth, always quickest to recover her self-possession, began to reproach herself for giving way so easily to panic.
"What an idiot I was!" she said in a whisper. "The idea of running from a solitary creature!"
"How do we know that? Was he the owner of your little brown face, Tommy?"
"Yes--no--I don't know," murmured Tommy. "I don't think so."
"I ought to have waited," continued Elizabeth. "We might at least have seen whether he was young or old. Why, for all we know he is a white man, cast away like ourselves."
"He had no coat on, I saw that," said Mary.
"He may be a native hermit, then. There are such people among the savages, I suppose."
"There may be other huts, we can't tell," said Mary. "The savage may have been coming from one of the others."
"That's true! It is more likely that the man has companions, I admit. Well, if I can't pluck up courage to go among them, we must simply take care to keep on our side of the island, and that means starvation in time. But where are we? The sun is getting low: it will be dark soon. Let us run again."
They found themselves soon entering another patch of forest, and began to be seriously alarmed at the prospect of being overtaken by night before they reached home.
Elizabeth thought it best to keep straight on, for by so doing they must come in time to the shore. But it is difficult to judge direction in the forest, and when darkness descended upon them while they were still among the trees, Elizabeth was forced to the conclusion that they had been wandering round and round all the time.
"It's of no use, girls," she said; "we can never find our way in the dark. We shall have to stay here for the night."
They had been without food all day. Utterly worn out by hunger, exertion and alarm, they huddled together at the foot of a tree and fell into an uneasy sleep. Several times during the night they were disturbed by slight noises in the brushwood around them, or in the trees overhead. But nothing happened to alarm them, and when dawn glimmered through the trees they rose, a haggard and sorry trio, and set off once more to find a way home.
Only a few minutes' walk uphill brought them to the ridge, from which they could see the orange grove. They were so desperately hungry and thirsty that they were ready to face all hazards for the sake of some fruit. They hurried to the grove, snatched up a few oranges and bananas, and devoured them as they continued on their homeward way.