Hope now reanimated Dick Varley, and by various devices he succeeded in getting the dog to scrape away a sort of tunnel from the hole, into which he might roll himself and put down his lips to drink when the water should rise high enough.

Impatiently and anxiously he lay watching the moisture slowly accumulate in the bottom of the hole, drop by drop, and while he gazed he fell into a troubled, restless slumber, and dreamed that Crusoe's return was a dream, and that he was alone again, perishing for want of water.
When he awakened the hole was half full of clear water, and Crusoe was lapping it greedily.
"Back, pup!" he shouted, as he crept down to the hole and put his trembling lips to the water.

It was brackish, but drinkable, and as Dick drank deeply of it he esteemed it at that moment better than nectar.

Here he lay for half-an-hour, alternately drinking and gazing in surprise at his own emaciated visage as reflected in the pool.
The same afternoon Crusoe, in a private hunting excursion of his own, discovered and caught a prairie-hen, which he quietly proceeded to devour on the spot, when Dick, who saw what had occurred, whistled to him.
Obedience was engrained in every fibre of Crusoe's mental and corporeal being.

He did not merely answer at once to the call--he _sprang_ to it, leaving the prairie-hen untasted.
"Fetch it, pup," cried Dick eagerly as the dog came up.
In a few moments the hen was at his feet.