Only a meal of little hot roasted potatoes, without butter, pepper, or salt, but no banquet of the choicest luxuries could have tasted half so good. They were done to a turn, and though very small, of the most desirable flavour, and satisfying to a degree. "Try another, sir, try another," Ned kept on saying; but Jack needed no urging, and as he sat there eating one after another, the sun seemed to be less hot, the place around more beautiful, the shore less distant, and the possibility of their reaching the yacht that night more and more of a certainty. But that certainty began to grow into doubt when, well satisfied by their meal, the pair lay back to rest a little before making a fresh start. "Must give the second batch time to get well done, sir, and to cool a bit, before we toddle, and then we ought to be on the look-out for water. A good drink wouldn't come amiss." "No," replied Jack slowly; "but hadn't we better get some more wood to put on? The fire's getting very low." "No, sir, it's just right. There's a good heap of embers now, and by the time the wood's all burned the potatoes will be about done. Think any one planted them here first?" "I should say they were planted by the captain who left the pigs." "Then I say he ought to have a monument, sir, for it was the finest thing he ever did in his life--much finer than anything I shall ever do. My, how different everything looks after you've had a good feed!" Jack made no reply to that, but said, a minute or so later-- "Think the savages have seen our fire, Ned?" There was no reply. "'Sleep, Ned?" said Jack, looking toward him. There was still no reply. "Poor fellow! Let him rest a bit," thought the boy; and then he began to think of what news it would be when he got back to the yacht, to announce that the arm was restored. The yacht brought up the thought of sailing right away over the blue waters, gliding easily on, with the warm sun upon his cheek and the soft breeze fanning his brows, and Jack Meadows went on sailing away, but it was only in fancy, for he too, utterly worn out by the morning's exertions, was fast asleep, without a thought that danger might be near. CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. COOKERY UNDER QUEER CIRCUMSTANCES. "Ah-e! Ah-e! Ah-e!" A loud peculiar call, followed by a repetition from a distance, too long after to be a reverberation, though strange echoes had been heard from far up the mountain when a shot was fired well down in one or other of the ravines which scored the slopes of the volcano. There was a pause of a few minutes, another cry came again, and was answered or echoed. The first time it had no effect whatever upon Jack, who lay upon his back fast asleep, in the deep slumber which comes to the hungry after that hunger has been appeased.