"What's the good?" says Billy. "They won't live. I had some rabbits once, and they died; and some guinea-pigs, and my mother drownded them--she wasn't my real mother; and they may be pretty now, though I can't see it, but when they grow up, bless you, they'll be as fierce as those other villains, and we may as well kill 'em first as last." "Billy," I said, "my aunt Susan used to say, 'Never climb up to the chimney-pots to meet the rain'----" "No one would but a fool," says Billy, interrupting, and when I tried to explain what my aunt meant he said that was all very well, but where did the chimney-pots come in? However, to shorten the story, he gave in to my wish, and we carried the puppies to our hut, and made them up a bed of grass and leaves in one of our large pans. We were hard put to it to know how to feed them, and indeed, the food we gave them--bread-fruit made into pap, and scraps of chicken, and the like, as well as broth sometimes--did not agree with them very well, because they were so young, so that I doubted whether we should succeed in rearing them. One died in three days, but the others survived, and I ought to say that Billy was fully as diligent as myself in tending them, and showed a marvellous ingenuity in the preparation of their meals. As they grew up, we used to watch them anxiously, expecting that one fine day they would leave us and join themselves to their own kindred in the wilds, and Billy said he hoped his dog would not leave us the first, for he would never forgive it. But we saw with great satisfaction that they showed no inclination towards the society of their kind; indeed, it was the contrary; they shunned them, and showed every mark of enmity if they approached, so that we saw they would prove to be very good watchdogs when fully grown. Billy called his dog Robin, which he said was a good name for a dog but not for a man, and I called mine Little John to match; and they soon learnt to answer to their names. [1] Probably the fissure had at one time extended to the surface, but had been gradually filled up with soil brought to the spot by drainage from the high ground.--H.S. CHAPTER THE TWELFTH OF A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION BETWEEN BILLY AND THE NARRATOR--OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH A SHARK, AND THE BUILDING OF A CANOE