We looked about us eagerly, both for water and for fruits wherewith to stay our hunger: but as for the former we saw none, and for the latter, though we saw many plants bearing berries, and some trees with fruits hanging upon them, we did not recognize at first any that we had seen on the island where we recruited, and durst not, hungry as we were, attempt anything strange lest they should be poisonous, and our first meal prove our last. At one point we were startled by a small animal leaping across our path, and Billy, crying it was a rabbit, without thinking dashed after it, a very useless thing to do; but it had this good result, that, tumbling headlong over something, he picked himself up ruefully, and then shouted with delight, the obstacle being a large cocoa-nut which had fallen from a tree. We were in a quandary at first how to break it open, having no knife or other tool to pierce the husk; but Billy bethought him of the buckles on our belts, and taking these off, we cut and scraped at the husk until we came to the inner nut, and then broke this open by hammering it very hard against the tree-trunk, finding it the more easily breakable because it was over ripe; and though we lost some of the liquid thereby, there remained enough to furnish us with a very refreshing draught.
While I was digging my teeth ravenously into the kernel, Billy shinned up the stem, which was straight like the mast of a ship, to obtain some more of this precious fruit. Having cast down two or three at my feet, he cried out that he was going to the masthead to take a look round. He went almost to the very top, and when he came down, told me that the hill we were on was not the highest in the island, the highest being the mountain, whose peak was still covered by the cloud of steam; but except what might be hidden by this mountain, he could see all the rest of the island, which by his reckoning could not be above two miles long. He told me of the high red rock which we had seen through the archway as we approached the land, and which lay now on our right hand. On the left he discovered a little bay, with a strip of yellow sand, though he could not tell how wide this was because of the cliffs. Beyond the bay the land went to a point, and beyond this again, some distance out in the sea, were two red rocks, not very large, standing up like the posts of a gate, or, as I thought when I myself saw them, like sentinels. All the country to the left of the burning mountain--that is, to the west--was covered with vegetation, either woods or grasses, which I was very glad to hear, since there was promise of food, at least of the vegetable kind. I concluded that the streams of lava cast forth by the mountain had flowed only towards the beach at which we had landed, or at any rate had flowed no other way for a long time, since otherwise the land could not have been so fruitful. I asked Billy anxiously whether he had seen any wild beasts, or any sign of the habitation of men; but he said that he had seen neither the one nor the other, but only some birds, at which I was vastly relieved.