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20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Part 1 Chapter 21 Summary

A Few Days on Land

  • Ned gets down to business immediately; he starts knocking coconuts off trees, breaking them open, and drinking their milk.
  • Soon, the three are out scavenging for veggies. They're a bit wary of cannibals, but, at this point, their stomachs are doing most of the thinking.
  • Soon Ned starts cooking up some breadfruit—a big starchy tropical fruit that tastes sort of like bread when it's cooked—and everybody's chowing down.
  • By noon, they've got tons of bananas and other goodies. Now Ned really wants the real deal: land-animal meat. Evening comes too soon, though, and they all head back to the boat and load it up.
  • When the make it back to the sub, they find dinner already prepared.
  • The next day, at dawn, the trio returns to the island.
  • Ned immediately goes out hunting. First, he gets to work hunting parrots, but after bagging a few, he decides he still wants some four-legged animals.
  • He gets what he's after: a wild boar and some kangaroos. But then the group finds something they don't want. While they're supping, a stone falls at their feet. A bunch of two-legged mammals—a.k.a. cannibals—have come, and they're hungry for meat too.