Page:Kapalkundala (1919).djvu/11



The first impulses of elation being over, the crew proposed that as there was still time for the tide to come, the passengers in the meantime might cook and dine on the sands before them and with the rising tide might start on the way home. The men fell in with the suggestion. Then the boatmen having secured the boat along the bank, the men landed. They had had their dips in the water before they attended to their morning ceremonies.

After bath before starting kitchen-work another difficulty presented itself in the shape of the absence of any fuel on board. Every one was loth to fetch firewood from the high bank on account of tigerscare. At last the dread of sheer starvation staring them in the face, the old man proposed to the previously mentioned youth "Nabokumar, my boy, we so many people would die, if you can not cast about for any means.

Nabokumar reflected a few seconds and replied "All right, I shall go. Let a man bear me company with a wood-cutting knife and an axe."

No body, however, responded to the call.

With the words "The affair would be squared up at the meal-time", Nabokumar girded up his loins and axe in hand, set out in search of fuel.