“That is a good thought, Betts, and we will turn it over in our minds.  If such a thing is to be done at all, the sooner it is done the better, that the melons maybe getting ahead while we are busy with the other matters.  This is just the season to put seed into the ground, and I think we might make soil enough to sustain a few hills of melons.  If I remember right, too, there are some of the sweet potatoes left.”

Bob assented, and during the rest of the meal they did nothing but pursue this plan of endeavouring to obtain half-a-dozen or a dozen hills of melons.  As Mark felt all the importance of doing everything that lay in his power to ward off the scurvy, and knew that time was not to be lost, he determined that the very first thing he would now attend to, would be to get all the seed into as much ground as he could contrive to make.  Accordingly, as soon as the breakfast was ended, Mark went to collect his seeds Bob set the breakfast things aside, after properly cleaning them.

There were four shoats on board, which had been kept in the launch, until that boat was put into the water, the night the Rancocus ran upon the rocks.  Since that time they had been left to run about the decks, producing a good deal of dirt, and some confusion.  These shoats Bob now caught, and dropped into the bay, knowing that their instinct would induce them to swim for the nearest land.  All this turned out as was expected, and the pigs were soon seen on the island, snuffing around on the rocks, and trying to root.  A small quantity of the excrement of these animals still lay on the deck, where it had been placed when the launch was cleaned for service, no one thinking at such a moment of cleaning the decks.  It had been washed by the sea that came aboard quite across the deck, but still formed a pile, and most of it was preserved.  This manure Mark was about to put in a half-barrel, in order to carry it ashore, for the purpose of converting it into soil, when Bob suddenly put an end to what he was about, by telling him that he knew where a manure worth two of that was to be found.  An explanation was asked and given.  Bob, who had been several voyages on the western coast of America, told Mark that the Peruvians and Chilians made great use of the dung of aquatic birds, as a manure, and which they found on the rocks that lined their coast.  Now two or three rocks lay near the reef, that were covered with this deposit, the birds still hovering about them, and he proposed to take the dingui, and go in quest of a little of that fertilizing manure.  A very little, he said, would suffice, the Spaniards using it in small quantities, but applying it at different stages in the growth of the plant.  It is scarcely necessary to say that Bob had fallen on a knowledge of the use of the article which is now so extensively known under the name of guano, in the course of his wanderings, and was enabled to communicate the fact to his companion.  Mark knew that Betts was a man of severe truth, and