“Dig,” said Dick, pointing to the sand.
Crusoe looked at him in surprise, as well he might, for he had never heard the word “dig” in all his life before.
Dick pondered a minute; then a thought struck him. He turned up a little of the sand with his fingers, and pointing to the hole cried, “Seek him out, pup!”
Ha! Crusoe understood that. Many and many a time had he unhoused rabbits, and squirrels, and other creatures at that word of command; so, without a moment’s delay, he commenced to dig down into the sand, every now and then stopping for a moment and shoving in his nose, and snuffing interrogatively, as if he fully expected to find a buffalo at the bottom of it. Then he would resume again, one paw after another, so fast that you could scarce see them going—“hand over hand,” as sailors would have called it—while the sand flew out between his hind legs in a continuous shower. When the sand accumulated so much behind him as to impede his motions he scraped it out of his way, and set to work again with tenfold earnestness. After a good while he paused and looked up at Dick with an “it-won’t-do;-I-fear-there’s-nothing-here” expression on his face. “Seek him out, pup!” repeated Dick.
“Oh! very good,” mutely answered the dog, and went at it again, tooth and nail, harder than ever.
In the course of a quarter of an hour there was a deep yawning hole in the sand, into which Dick peered with intense anxiety. The bottom appeared slightly damp, Hope now reanimated Dick Varley, and by various devices he succeeded in getting the dog to scrape away a sort of tunnel from the hole, into which he might roll himself and put down his lips to drink when the water should rise high enough. Impatiently and anxiously he lay watching the moisture slowly accumulate in the bottom of the hole, drop by drop; and while he gazed he fell into a troubled, slumber, and dreamed that Crusoe’s return was a dream, and that he was alone, perishing for want of water.
When he awakened the hole was half full of clear water, and Crusoe was lapping it greedily.
“Back, pup!” he shouted, as he crept down to the hole and put his trembling lips to the water. It was brackish, but drinkable, and as Dick drank deeply of it he esteemed it at that moment better than nectar. Here he lay for half an hour, alternately drinking and gazing in surprise at his own emaciated visage as reflected in the pool.
7
