The following morning our mariners resumed their more worldly duties with renewed powers.  While the kettle was boiling for their tea, they rolled ashore a couple of empty water-casks, and filled them with fresh water, at one of the largest natural reservoirs on the reef; it having rained hard in the night.  After breakfast, Mark walked round to examine his piles of loam, in the crater, while Bob pulled away in the dingui, to catch a few fish, and to get a new cargo of the earth; it being the intention of Mark to join him at the next trip, with the raft, which required some little arranging, however, previously to its being used for such a purpose.  The rain of the past night had thoroughly, washed the pile of earth, and, on tasting it.  Mark was convinced that much of the salt it contained had been carried off.  This encouraged him to persevere in his gardening projects.  As yet, the spring had only just commenced, and he was in hopes of being able to prepare one bed, at least, in time to obtain useful vegetables from it.

The Rancocus had a great many planks and boards in her hold, a part of the ample provision made by her owners for the peculiar voyage on which she had been sent.  Of real cargo, indeed, she had very little, the commerce between the civilized man and the savage being ordinarily on those great principles of Free Trade, of which so much is said of late years, while so little is understood, and which usually give the lion’s share of the profit to them who need it least.  With some of these planks, Mark made a staging for his raft.  By the time he was ready, Bob returned with a load of loam, and, on the next outward voyage, the raft was taken as well as the dingui.  Mark had fitted pins and grummets, by which the raft was rowed, he and Bob impelling it, when light, very easily at the rate of two miles in the hour.

Mark found Betts’s deposit of decayed vegetable matter even larger and more accessible than he had hoped for.  A hundred loads might be got without even using a wheelbarrow; and to all appearances there was enough of it to give a heavy dressing to many acres, possibly to the whole area of the crater.  The first thing the young man did was to choose a suitable place, dig it well up, mixing a sufficiency of guano with it, agreeably to Betts’s directions, and then to put in some of his asparagus roots.  After this he scattered a quantity of the seed, raking the ground well after sowing.  By the time this was done, Bob had both dingui and raft loaded, when they pulled the last back to the reef, towing the boat.  In this manner our two mariners continued to work most of the time, for the next fortnight, making, daily, more or less trips to the ‘loam-rock,’ as they called the place where this precious deposit had been made; though they neglected none of their other necessary duties.  As the distance was short, they could come and go many times in a day, transporting at each trip about as much of the loam as would make