"One wound always suffices, provided it goes in deep enough, but I thank you for your rosy predictions, Peter. I think your good wishes are genuinely sincere." Robert realized that they were so, in truth. In addition to the call of humanity, he had an intense horror of being left alone on the island, and he would fight hard to save the slaver's life. He compounded the poultice with no mean skill, and, after bathing the wound carefully with fresh water from a little spring behind the hut, he applied it. "It's cooling, Peter, and I know it's healing, too," said the man, "but I think I'll try to go to sleep again. As long as I'm fastened to a couch that's about the only way I can pass the time. Little did I think when I built this house that I'd come here without a ship and without a crew to pass some helpless days." He shut his eyes. After a while, Robert, not knowing whether he was asleep or not, took down the rifle, loaded it, and went out feeling that it was high time he should explore his new domain. In the sunlight the island did not look forbidding. On the contrary, it was beautiful. From the crest of the hill near the house he saw a considerable expanse, but the western half of the island was cut off from view by a higher range of hills. It was all in dark green foliage, although he caught the sheen of a little lake about two miles away. As far as he could see a line of reefs stretched around the coast, and the white surf was breaking on them freely. From the hill he went back to the point at which he and the captain had been swept ashore, and, as he searched along the beach he found the bodies of all those who had been in the boat with them. He had been quite sure that none of them could possibly have escaped, but it gave him a shock nevertheless to secure the absolute proof that they were dead. He resolved if he could find a way to bury them in the sand beyond the reach of the waves, but, for the present, he could do nothing, and he continued along the shore several miles, finding its character everywhere the same, a gentle slope, a stretch of water, and beyond that the line of reefs on which the white surf was continually breaking, reefs with terrible teeth as he well knew. But it was all very peaceful now. The sea stretched away into infinity the bluest of the blue, and a breeze both warm and stimulating came out of the west. Robert, however, looked mostly toward the north. Albany and his friends now seemed a world away. He had been wrenched out of his old life by a sudden and unimaginable catastrophe. What were Tayoga and Willet doing now? How was the war going? For him so far as real life was concerned the war simply did not exist. He was on a lost island with only a wounded man for company and the struggle to survive and escape would consume all his energies.