All this was bad enough, as Little Jacket thought. But he was very
thankful that he was alive and on shore, and able to use his limbs,
and that he found some companions still left. He was not long either
in using his wits, and in making the best use of the chances still
left him. He found himself upon a rocky promontory. But on climbing a
little higher up, he could see that there was beyond it, and joining
on to it, a beautiful smooth beach. The rocks were enormous, and he
and his comrades had hard work to clamber over them. It took them a
good while to do so, exhausted as they were by fatigue, and dripping
with wet. At length they reached the beach, the sands of which were of
very large grain, and so loose that they had to wade nearly knee deep
through them. The country back of the shore seemed very rocky and
rough, and here and there were trees of an enormous magnitude. Every
thing seemed on a gigantic scale, even to the weeds and grasses that
grew on the edge of the beach, where it sloped up to join the main
land. And they could see, by mounting on a stone, the same great
gloomy cliffs which they saw before the ship struck, but some miles
inland. But what most attracted their attention, was the enormous and
beautiful great sea-shells, which lay far up on the shore. They were
not only of the most lovely colors, but quite various in form, and so
large that a man might creep into them. Little Jacket was not long in
discovering the advantage of this fact, for they might be obliged,
when night came on, to retire into these shells, as they saw no house
anywhere within sight. Now, Little Jacket had read Robinson Crusoe,
and Gulliver's Travels, and had half believed the wonderful stories of
Brobdignag; but he never thought that he should ever be actually
wrecked on a giant's island. There now seemed to be a probability that
it might be so, after all. What meant these enormous weeds, and trees,