"'But do you really think,' said the Dean, when he got his voice again,--'do you really think that, if a ship don't come along and take us off, we can live here on this wretched little island,--that is, when the summer goes, and all the birds have flown away, and the darkness and the cold are on us all the time?'"
"'To be sure we can,' I answered; but, to tell the truth, I had very great doubts about it, only I thought that this would strengthen up the Dean; and as I had, by this time, made for myself a better definition to Job's comforter than a something to go around the neck, I had no idea of being called by that name any more.
"'I'm glad to hear you say that!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Indeed I am!'
"There was no need to give me such very strong assurance that he was 'glad to hear it,' for his face showed as plain as could be that he was glad to hear me say anything that had the least hope in it.
"After this the Dean grew quite cheerful. Suddenly he asked, 'Do you know, Hardy, if this island has a name?'
"Of course I did not know, and told him so.
"'Then I'll give it one right off,' said he; 'I'll call it from this minute the Rock of Good Hope, and here we'll make our start in life. It's as good a place, perhaps, to make a start in life as any other; for nobody is likely to dispute our title to our lands, or molest us in our fortune-making, which is more than could be said if our lot were cast in any other place.'
"This vein of conversation brightened me up a little. Indeed, it was hard to be very long despondent in the presence of the Dean's hopeful disposition. There was much more said of the same nature, which it is not necessary to repeat. It is enough for me to tell you that the upshot of the whole matter was that we came in the end to regard ourselves as settled on the island, if not for the remainder of our lives, at least for an indefinite time, and we made up our minds that there was no use in being gloomy and cast down about it. So from that time forward we were mostly cheerful, and, though you may think it very strange, were generally contented.
"This was a great step gained, and when we now came to make an inventory of our possessions, we did it just as a farmer or merchant would do. Being the undisputed owners of this Rock of Good Hope, we considered ourselves none the less owners of all the foxes, ducks, eggs, eider-down, dead beasts, dry bones, and whatsoever else there might be upon it; and, besides this, we had a lien upon all the seals and walruses and whales of every kind that lived in the sea,--that is, if we could catch them.