were attached. The sight of these suggested the idea to him that on the
opposite side there might be clams in the sand. He walked over there in
search of them. Here the slope was so gradual that extensive flats were
left uncovered by the receding tide.

When a boy he had been sometimes accustomed to wander on sand flats near
his home, and dig up these clams in sport. Now his boyish experience
became useful. Myriads of little holes dotted the sand, which he knew to
be the indications of these molluscs, and he at once began to scoop in
the sand with his hands. In a short time he had found enough to satisfy
his hunger, and what was better, he saw all around an unlimited supply
of such food.

Yet food was not enough. Drink was equally necessary. The salt of these
shell-fish aggravated the thirst that he had already begun to feel, and
now a fear came over him that there might be no water. The search seemed
a hopeless one; but he determined to seek for it nevertheless, and the
only place that seemed to promise success was the rock at the eastern
end. Toward this he now once more directed his steps.

The island was all of sand except the rocks on the south beach and the
cliff at the eastern end. Coarse grass grew very extensively over the
surface, but the sand was fine and loose, and in many places thrown up
into heaps of many different shapes. The grass grew in tufts or in
spires and blades, thinly scattered, and nowhere forming a sod. The soil
was difficult to walk over, and Brandon sought the beach, where the damp
sand afforded a firmer foothold. In about an hour and a half he reached
the rock.

It was between five hundred and six hundred feet in length, and about