My ape-like companion trotted along by my side, with his hands
hanging down and his jaw thrust forward. I wondered what memory
he might have in him. "How long have you been on this island?"
said I.

"How long?" he asked; and after having the question repeated,
he held up three fingers.

The creature was little better than an idiot. I tried
to make out what he meant by that, and it seems I bored him.
After another question or two he suddenly left my side and went
leaping at some fruit that hung from a tree. He pulled down
a handful of prickly husks and went on eating the contents.
I noted this with satisfaction, for here at least was a hint for feeding.
I tried him with some other questions, but his chattering, prompt responses
were as often as not quite at cross purposes with my question.
Some few were appropriate, others quite parrot-like.

I was so intent upon these peculiarities that I scarcely noticed the path
we followed. Presently we came to trees, all charred and brown,
and so to a bare place covered with a yellow-white incrustation,
across which a drifting smoke, pungent in whiffs to nose and eyes,
went drifting. On our right, over a shoulder of bare rock, I saw
the level blue of the sea. The path coiled down abruptly into a narrow
ravine between two tumbled and knotty masses of blackish scoriae.
Into this we plunged.

It was extremely dark, this passage, after the blinding sunlight reflected
from the sulphurous ground. Its walls grew steep, and approached