Page:Ballantyne--The Coral Island.djvu/41

 stem of the tree like a squirrel, and, in a few minutes, returned with three nuts, each as large as a man's fist.

"You had better keep them till we return," said Jack. "Let us finish our work before eating."

"So be it, captain, go ahead," cried Peterkin, thrusting the nuts into his trousers pocket. "In fact I don't want to eat just now, but I would give a good deal for a drink. Oh that I could find a spring! but I don't see the smallest sign of one hereabouts. I say, Jack, how does it happen that you seem to be up to everything? You have told us the names of half a dozen trees already, and yet you say that you were never in the South Seas before."

"I'm not up to everything, Peterkin, as you'll find out ere long," replied Jack, with a smile; "but I have been a great reader of books of travel and adventure all my life, and that has put me up to a good many things that you are, perhaps, not acquainted with."

"Oh, Jack, that's all humbug. If you begin to lay everything to the credit of books, I'll quite lose my opinion of you," cried Peterkin, with a look of contempt. "I've seen a lot o' fellows that were always poring over books, and when they came to try to do anything, they were no better than baboons!"

"You are quite right," retorted Jack; "and I have seen a lot of fellows who never looked into books at all, who knew nothing about anything except the things they had actually seen, and very little they knew even about these. Indeed, some were so ignorant that they did not know that cocoa-nuts grew on cocoa-nut trees! "

I could not refrain from laughing at this rebuke, for there was much truth in it, as to Peterkin's ignorance.

"Humph! may be youre right," answered Peterkin; "but I would not give tuppence for a man of books, if he had nothing else in him." 3