Chapter 8 Chapter 8 The Cave

In this way, the boys' most important safety issue remains unresolved.Needless to say, the so-called sea here is actually a very large lake.But another string of questions came to their minds.Is this lake on an island?If they continue to explore, will they find a sea in the distance, which they cannot cross. The lake in front of them is quite large, and the other three sides are connected by water and sky.As Donagan points out, their island is more like a continent. "Then our ship must have been wrecked in America," Bryant added. "I've always thought that," Donagan said, "and now it looks like I was right."

"Anyway," Bryant pointed out, "to the east of us, all I see is an ocean." "Yes, but it's not the sea." Donagan's self-satisfaction is evident in his tone of voice, revealing his vain nature.Bryant said nothing more.For the sake of everyone's safety, he would rather be wrong.As long as this is the mainland, they will not be banned from smoking on this small island.But they must wait for the best time to head east.The difficult journey of the four of them to reach this lake was nothing compared to the long trek they had made as a whole party.It is already early April, and winter in the south of the earth comes earlier than winter in the north of the earth.Before the weather improves, don't have any extravagant hopes of setting off.

But that part of the bay would soon cease to be their safe haven, for it was exposed to the sea wind.They will have to abandon the sailboat before the end of this month.If no cave can be found in the cliff, can the children live safely by the lake?Should they have explored the surrounding terrain more carefully?Although their continued quest would delay their return by a day or two, it made Gordon anxious.But Bryant and Donagan didn't hesitate at all on this point.Their dry food can last two days, and there is no sign of the weather here, so they decided to head south along the lake. Thus they set out again on their expedition for another purpose.

There is no doubt that this is a place that has been inhabited or frequented by humans.The dikes and small huts in the creek clearly indicate when people have been here recently or in the past.In the light of the facts at hand, it would indeed be advisable to find out all this first if they were to move to a new place for the winter.Maybe they could find something else, too, if there were no wildlings here, it must have been the sailors of other wrecks who had been here for a while before they moved inland.The area next to the lake is well worth exploring. There is only one problem that needs to be solved urgently.Should Bryant and Donagan head south or north.But if you go south, you are approaching their wrecked ship.After consideration, finally decided to go south.As for whether we should go to the end of the lake, I'm afraid we will know later.

It was around 8:30 when the four boys continued their journey.They walked along the grassy dunes that divided the plain.To the west of the dunes is a lush forest. Mimi flitted about in front, startling many birds that roosted in the bushes and ferns.Clusters of red and white huckleberry trees and wild celery grew here and there.But they didn't dare to shoot, because there were probably savages living around the lake. The children walked along the shore of the lake, sometimes on the edge of the dunes, sometimes in the middle of the sand.Because it was daytime, they walked for more than ten miles at once, but they found no trace of savages, no smoke rising from the forest, and no footprints on the beach.The wet sand gradually extended to the surface of the lake, and there was not a single steamer, not even a small boat, to be seen on the lake.The whole lake area is deserted.If the place was ever inhabited, it is not what it is now.

There are no beasts in this place at all.Several times that afternoon they saw a few birds flying over the edge of the woods, but it was difficult to catch them. Sovis yelled loudly, "That's an ostrich." "That's the very small ostrich," replied Donagan, "because they're not very big." "If that's an ostrich," Bryant said, "we must be on the mainland." "Do you still think we're on an island?" Donagan said sarcastically. "That must be the American continent, where there are a lot of animals like this." Bryant continued. "That's what I'm trying to say."

At 7 o'clock in the evening, they stopped advancing.If there is no accident the next day, they can return to the wrecked ship.It was impossible to travel at night like this.Where they rested there was a river flowing from the lake.This river requires swimming to cross.Night fell slowly, and the surroundings of this place gradually became blurred.But a cliff could be seen vaguely on the right bank of the river. After Bryant, Donagan, Wilcox, and Sauvis finished their dinner quickly, they thought about the night's rest.Although there was no cabin, the sky was full of stars at this time, and the crescent moon was slowly sinking into the Pacific Ocean.The lake and its shores were all very still, and the four little ones slept so sweetly against each other under a great beech tree that even a sudden thunderclap could not wake them up.

Like the dog, they paid no attention to nearby sounds.The sound might be the howling of a jackal, or the strange cry of some distant beast.In a place where ostriches are everywhere, they should have expected pumas, leopards, and tigers and lions that roam everywhere in South America, but they came here without incident that night. Around 4 a.m., just as the sun was about to rise above the horizon, the dog looked restless.It barked for a while.Its sensitive nose kept sniffing the ground, as if it wanted its master to let it look for something. Just before 7 o'clock, Bryant woke up his companions.Soon they all woke up.While Sovis was nibbling on the biscuits, the rest of the people looked around the riverbed.

"Well!" exclaimed Wilcox, "it's a good thing we didn't wade through this water last night, otherwise we might have fallen into the swamp." "Yeah," Bryant went on, "it's a swamp, and it goes right south, and we can't see the end of it at all." "Look at the ducks," Donagan said, "and the teals and sand chicks. If we can move our roost here, we can relax a lot." "Why not?" Bryant said, walking toward the right bank of the river. Behind the river is a high cliff with a sharp top.The two sides form an angle, with one facing the river bank and the other sitting in the lake.Is this the precipice we see when our sailboats are wrecked in the bay?I am afraid that further exploration will be required to clarify this issue.

The right bank of the river is more than twenty feet high, and wraps around the foot of this escarpment; the left bank is so low that it is almost indistinguishable from the swamps and puddles of the plain stretching southward.To tell which way the river flows, one has to climb that cliff.So Bryant decided to get this done before returning to the wreck. The first thing that can be done now is to take a closer look at the mouth of the lake.The channel outlet is about 40 feet wide, and the water gets deeper as the mouth gets wider. "Look here," said Wilcox.He climbed up to the end of the cliff.

A pile of stones caught his attention, forming a dam like the one they had seen in the woods. "There's no doubt about it now," Bryant said. "No, not at all," said Donagan, pointing to some chips in the gutter. These things are obviously the wreckage left by the boat.One of the boards was half rotting, covered with moss, and bent into a treefork, from which hung a rusty iron ring. "An iron ring, an iron ring." Sovis shouted loudly. The four boys stood there not daring to move.They looked around, as if the man who had built that ditch with that boat was about to appear. But no one showed up!Apparently the boat had been left in that river to rust for many years.The owner may have found a companion later, or he never left the island, and ended the rest of his miserable life on the island.It is conceivable what the children felt when they saw these footprints where humans lived. At this moment, Little Mi started running around again, as if it smelled some strange smell again.The ears are erect, the tail is wagging, and the nose is sticking to the grass, as if to find something in these bushes. "See what the little fan wants to do!" Sovis yelled. "It might smell something." Donagan said as he walked towards Little Mi. Xiao Mi stopped suddenly, stretched out one front paw, stretched out her neck, and rushed towards a pile of bushes at the foot of the cliff by the lake. Bryant and his partners followed closely.A few minutes later they came to a small beech tree and found two letters and a date engraved on the bark: F． B． 1807 If Little Mi hadn't run back around the cliff, they would still have stood quietly in front of the tree engraved with letters and dates. "Come here, little fan. Come here," Bryant yelled. Little Mi just didn't come back, but its cry was heard from afar. "Be careful," Bryant warned the others, "don't separate, be vigilant!" In fact, they are already very vigilant.I'm afraid there is a large group of wildlings nearby.If these savages had been the Indians who so often roam the southern prairies in great numbers, they would have been terrified and overwhelmed. As the boys came round the corner of the cliff and onto the narrow bank, they raised their muskets and drew their revolvers.They hadn't walked more than a dozen steps when Donagan bent down and picked up something from the ground.It was an iron pick with a handle half rotten.This kind of iron pick is used by Americans, and it is definitely not like that kind of heavy and ancient tool.Like the iron ring picked up on the ship, the iron pick is also rusty and looks like it was made by the Polynesians, and it may have been left here many years ago. There are some traces of farming at the foot of the cliff.There were a few patchy patches of grass and a small field of yams, but the yams had gone wild long ago because no one looked after them. Suddenly there was a low barking sound.Xiao Mi reappeared in front of her eyes, showing a restless look.It turned around in front of the owner from time to time, and sometimes ran in front of the owner, and then looked back at them, as if asking them to follow it. "There must be something wrong here." Bryant tried to calm the dog, but to no avail. "See where it takes us," Donagan motioned to Wilcox and Sauvis. After walking about 10 yards or so, Mimi stopped in front of a tangled bush that extended to the foot of the cliff. Bryant went up to see if there was some animal carcass hidden in the bushes or someone the fan had been stalking.He pushed aside the bushes and found a very narrow opening. "There's a hole here?" He screamed, and took a few steps back in a panic. "Possibly," Donagan said, "but what's in the hole?" He began to shovel away the tangled bushes around the cave, listening as he shoveled, but there were no suspicious sounds at all. As Sauvis was about to dive into the hole, Bryant grabbed him. "Let's see what the little fan is doing first." Little Mi kept barking angrily, as if the owner of the hole was about to appear. How is this going?These kids have to figure it out.Bryant fetched a handful of dried pine branches and lit the entrance to see if the air inside could be breathed.The pine branches burst into flames.Apparently the air inside is breathable. "Can we go in?" Wilcox asked. "Of course," Donagan replied. "Wait a minute, let's see the route first," Bryant interjected.He cut a few pine branches nearby, and after lighting them, he led his companions into the cave. The cave entrance is only about 4 feet high and 2 feet wide.But as they went deeper, the cave grew wider, 12 feet high and 4 feet wide, and the floor was dry, hard sand. In their haste, Wilcox tripped over a wooden bench.Next to the wooden bench was a table with some crude cooking utensils, a stone pot, some shells used as plates, a rusty knife, two or three fishhooks, and a small tinning cup.Directly opposite the wall is a box, presumably nailed together from some slabs from a rotten ship.Inside the box were a few miscellaneous rotten clothes. There is no doubt that the hole has long been occupied, but when?who is it?What happened to the man who came here? At one end of the hole, there was a straw mattress covered with linen rags; at the other end, on a bench, a cup and a wooden candle, and a bowl containing a struck matchstick. . The children retreated from the straw mattress, thinking that there must be a dead body wrapped in it. Regardless of the stench in the cave, Bryant tremblingly opened the covering on the straw mat. There is nothing on the straw mat. A few minutes later, the frightened children returned to Xiaomi's side.I could only hear it barking sadly again. They had gone about 20 yards down the bank when they came to a sudden stop, as if held in place by something frightened as if nailed there. Under a beech tree they found a pile of bones. It turned out that the person who had lived on the island died pitifully here.He did not use the cave where he lived as his burial place.