“Never mind him, Jim,” Dave said. “You come to Christmas Island with us, and after that I’ll take you to Hoboken, where you can ride about in trolley-cars in a tall silk hat with feathers in it if you like. Will you come?” Jim shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands――a gesture with which he always expressed agreement. As the days drifted on, and Dave and Tempest grew to know their island home better, they came to the conclusion that there were worse things than being shipwrecked under such conditions. As a rule the cooking was done by Dave, he being the accepted expert, but in the hunting and fishing they all three joined, and they obtained much excellent sport. Jim, with a native’s cunning in the chase, devised various methods of catching birds as a change for their food, but their best sport was the hunting of pigs. The little wild animals were by no means easy to catch, and this was only done occasionally, neither Dave nor Tempest liking the idea of killing them. Excepting the creatures with gorgeous plumage which still made strident noises when any one approached them, the birds were remarkably tame, no doubt because the hand of man had never been raised against them. There were boatswain birds, wideawake tern, puffins by the thousand, and white-cap noddys, besides others which Tempest could not name, though the Kanaka had an unpronounceable name for every kind. Some of the birds were so unused to fear that they merely strutted out of the way when any one passed. On one occasion Jim, with great pride, prepared a special dish which was evidently a sort of islanders’ omelette. It consisted largely of sea-birds’ eggs and tasted rather like cod-liver oil. Rather than hurt Jim’s feelings, Tempest and the boy gulped down their share and congratulated him on his skill, but after that they were careful not to encourage him in a repetition of the experiment. Dave’s greatest joy was a pig-hunt. The little wild animals were by no means easy to catch, but they formed a delicious dish which rewarded the hunters for their trouble. The chief difficulty in capturing them was the natural shelter they sought in the thick, tangled undergrowth. Fully half the island’s surface was covered with impenetrable bush, intertwined with a fearsome form of cactus whose leaves were like saws. It was utterly impossible to force an entry into this natural fortress, through which the small hogs had beaten innumerable run-ways but little wider than their own bodies. Once a pig got into the maze of run-ways it was as safe as though in the heart of a jungle, but occasionally the hunters were able to surprise their quarry in some of the isolated clumps of bushes. In this the Kanaka’s assistance proved of the utmost value. Like most other men who have lived in a semi-wild state, his hearing was extraordinarily acute. “I’ll get um li’le pig,” he said once when they had tried several times to make a capture and failed utterly.