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. We sat for some while appeasing our appetites, scarcely speaking, for Billy was not a talkative boy, and I was still too much under the oppression of our lonely situation. All at once I set up a laugh, at which Billy stopped munching at his cocoa-nut and looked at me in astonishment. "Oh, Billy," I said, "if you had catched that rabbit, what could we have done with it?" "Why, eat it, to be sure," says Billy. "I like rabbit meat." (We knew afterwards that there were no rabbits on the island, and thought the animal we had seen must be a rat, though it did not run like one.) "But how could we cook it?" I said.