He made no answer, but flung himself on the ground, groaning, and I stood over him, condoling with him, and very much concerned lest he was poisoned. I had stood thus for the space of a minute or two, when all at once I felt a terrible pain myself, and soon was beside him, groaning full as loud as he. Since I had eaten none of the shell-fish, and cocoa-nuts had never done us any harm before, I concluded, when I was able to think, that our sufferings were caused by the sulphurous water of the lake, which indeed turned out to be the true explanation; for after we had drunk of it next day we were both afflicted with the same violent colic, so that we resolved never to taste it again. Billy was worse than me, having drunk the greater quantity, and it was a good while before we were able to stand, and then we trembled so much and felt so weak that we wished for nothing but to lie down and sleep. And that put us on thinking of what we should do in the night. We had come so slowly across the island that the sun was already sinking, and we must needs find some secure place for repose before darkness fell upon us. We were both used to discomforts aboard the _Lovey Susan_, but there we had at least a bunk or a hammock and security from all but the storm, whereas here there was no shelter save the woods, and we did not know what strange perils might beset us there. And I know not whether 'twas the oncoming of the dark that made me more fearful, but certain it is that I found myself looking about me timorously, and at one point I was so sure that I saw a man that I clutched Billy hard by the arm and whispered him to look too. Which doing, he cried out in a perfectly loud voice, "Why, master, 'tis but an old stump of a tree. 'Tain't nothing to be scared on." Billy, I will say now, was never affrighted at imaginary perils so much as at real ones. [Sidenote: Night] We had to consider, I say, of how we should pass the night. I was not the least disposed to trudge back over the island, and indeed there was no need, for no part, so far as I knew, was better than any other; in short, we were both pretty tired, so that we determined to take shelter in a small wood on the edge of the cliff on the opposite side of the burning mountain from that where the lava had flowed. Our entrance caused a great disturbance among the birds, which flew out in great flocks and making shrill cries. We saw some brown rats, too, scuttering among the undergrowth, and these put Billy in mind of the rats in the _Lovey Susan_, which sometimes ran across the face of the seamen in the forecastle when they slept. "I don't like them things, master," he said, "and we'd best climb up into a tree and sleep on a bough."