Tom and Jack were the only ones of all the crew of the cutter that were cast alive on the island. The first day or two of their life thereon was as bitter and miserable as could be. All this would be both painful and unpleasant to tell, as well as needless, and, therefore, I will pass it by. By the time that a month had gone, they were settled as comfortably as could be, considering what they had at hand to make themselves comfortable. The body of the island was about five miles in length, and about two miles or two miles and a half in breadth at the widest part. From the lower and easterly end a long, sandy hook ran out into the ocean. It was the continuation of the eastern beach, and, with the south shore of the island, it enclosed a smooth, deep bay or harbor, in which even the largest ships could have ridden at anchor easily and comfortably. On the Atlantic side of this sand-spit, and close to where it joined the body of the island, was the sunken wreck that afterward had so much to do with Tom’s fortunes, and of which I shall soon have more to tell you. The eastern side of this hook or beach was of sloping sand, washed up by the continual beating of the surf. The western, or bay side, was an abrupt coral reef. This coral reef was covered with barnacles, so that there were always plenty of fish to be caught along that shore during the slack water or the young flood. Up and down the length of the eastern shore, and following in a line with the beach, was a ridge of white sand hills. A number of scrub trees grew along the crest of this ridge, and it was these trees or bushes that the lookout in the cutter had first sighted. In the south-western end of these sand hills Jack and Tom built their hut. The lower end of the chain of white hills made a sudden turn to the westward, and not far from where they fell away to the level of the beach was a thicket of underbrush, with half a dozen palmetto trees growing in the midst of it. Near to the edge of this thicket a spring of clear, cool water bubbled up out of the white sand, and slid away through thick grasses and sedge until it found its way through a marshy little flat into the bay. It was close to this spot that they chose to live, and thither they dragged the cutter from the place where she had been flung on the sand, two or three miles further up the beach. The boat had been stove in beyond all hopes of repairing, especially as they had no tools to mend it with, excepting their jack-knives and two rude chisels that Tom afterward made from rusty bolts which they picked out of the ribs of the wreck on the sand-spit. But, even if they had had a whole boat-builder’s outfit, and planks to spare, I doubt if the cutter could have been mended, for not only had the bottom been stove in, but the bow had been smashed into splinters.