Then came, as we have seen, the wreck of the sloop, the drowning of my negro assistants, and my long struggle in the sea.
The sun was well up the eastern sky when I awoke in the morning, so numb and stiff that I could with difficulty unbury myself from the sand, the weight of which had almost stopped the circulation in some parts of the body. My clothing, which I had spread on the sand, had completely dried. After some chafing and rubbing I dressed myself and felt more comfortable than at any time since the loss of the sloop. The first thing to do was to get something to eat. I walked to the brook, bathed my face, and took a long drink of water, and began to be more and more impressed with the fact that the diet was thin. There were a number of cocoanut palms near by, growing within a few rods of the sea, and plenty of nuts on them, as could be plainly seen. But though I searched the ground with hungry glance I could find only one nut that had not been operated on by the land crabs, which are able in an ingenious manner to extract the contents through the three little eyes or holes in the shell. This one nut, the exterior husk of which had not been disturbed, I broke open by pounding it upon a rock, and found it to my bitter disappointment blackened, rancid, and quite unfit for food.
I had noticed a flock of gulls, or some species of shore birds, wheeling about and lighting and running on the beach near by. With a shotgun it would have been an easy matter to creep near and bag half a dozen at a shot. I watched them a little while and concluded that though it might prove a tough and unpalatable dish I must have one, or starve. It would be a good plan, I thought, to gather a dozen pebbles weighing three or four ounces apiece and try the effect of a shot into the thick of the flock from as near a point as I could reach. But as there would be no chance for more than one trial, I determined to fire the stones in a volley. To do this effectively I gathered some tough reeds and tied one to each stone until I had half a dozen stones so provided. By swinging these missiles at the end of the reeds they could be thrown a considerable distance with great velocity.
Trembling with expectation and excitement, I crept down toward the flock, keeping out of sight behind some rocks until I was as near as it was possible to go, when I let fly my volley of improvised slung-shots as well as I could direct them into the thickest of the birds. Running forward immediately, I found two lying on the sand struggling. One was hit squarely on the wing with a stone, and the other had a reed wound once around its neck. I secured both and wrung their necks. The idea at once occurred to me that the next time I had occasion to hunt gulls, I would contrive a bolas by tying a stone to each end of a cord; it seemed to me that this would prove even a more effectual instrument of destruction than the sling volley, as it would be almost certain to entangle one or more of the flock.