MAKING THE BEST OF IT After his return in the dinghy Robert decided that he would have some fresh beef and also a little sport.

Although the island contained no indigenous wild animals of any size, there were the wild cattle, and he had seen they were both long of horn and fierce.

If he courted peril he might find it in hunting them, and in truth he rather wanted a little risk.

There was such an absence of variety in his life, owing to the lack of human companionship, that an attack by a maddened bull, for instance, would add spice to it.

The rifle would protect him from any extreme danger.
He knew he was likely to find cattle near the larger lake, and, as he had expected, he saw a herd of almost fifty grazing there on a flat at the eastern edge.