Now this device stood him in good stead—as doubtless it was intended to do by the practical mind of the giver—for it served to light the fire wherewith man roasteth roast, and is satisfied. And a fire once lit in the hollow heart of that vast mowana–tree (where twenty men might sit and smoke, when the rainy season came), if you only supplied some fuel daily, and cleared away the ashes weekly, there need be no fear of philanthropy making a trespasser of Prometheus. Cradock soon resolved to keep his head–quarters there, for the tree stood upon a little hill, overlooking land and sea, for many a league of solitude. And it was not long before he found that the soft bark of the baobab might easily be cut so as to make a winding staircase up it; and the work would be an amusement to him, as well as a great advantage. Master and dog having made a most admirable breakfast upon turtles’ eggs, “roasted very knowingly”—as Homer well expresses it—with a large pineapple to follow, started, before the heat of the day, in search of water, the indispensable. Shaddocks, and limes, and mangosteens, bananas—with their long leaves quilling—pineapples, mawas, and mamoshoes, cocoa–nuts, plantains, mangoes, palms, and palmyras, custard–apples, and gourds without end—besides fifty other ground–fruits, ay, and tree–fruits for that matter, quite unknown to Cradock, there was no fear of dying from drought; and yet the first thing to seek was pure water. If Cradock had thought much about the thing, very likely it would have struck him that some of the fruits which he saw are proof not so much of human cultivation, as of human presence, at some time. But he never thought about that; and indeed his mind was too full for thinking. So he cut himself a most tremendous bludgeon of camelthorn, as heavy and almost as hard as iron, and off he went whistling, with Wena wondering whether the stick would beat her. He certainly took things easily; more so than is quite in accord with human nature and reason. But the state of his mind was to blame for it; and the freshness of the island air, after the storm of the night. Even a rejected lover, or a disconsolate husband, gives a jerk to his knee–joints, and carries his elbows more briskly, when the bright spring morning shortens his shadow at every step. Cradock, moreover, felt quite sure that he would not be left too long there; that his friends on board the _Taprobane_ would come aside from their track to find him, on their return–voyage from Ceylon; and so no doubt they would have done, if it had been in their power. But the _Taprobane_, as we shall see, never made her escape, in spite of weatherly helm and good seamanship, from the power of that typhoon. She was lost on the shoals of Benguela Bay, thirty miles south of Quicombo; and not a man ever reached the shore to tell the name of the ship. But a Portuguese half–caste, trading there, found the name on a piece of the taffrail, and a boat which was driven ashore.