"How can we hide it, though?" asked Tom, looking at the heavy raft. "We really can't toss it lightly into the heather as we could do with planks!"
Andy grinned. "Well hide it in a very easy place," he said. "We'll simply rig up the tent above it, and pile heather on the raft, which will then make the floor I don't think anyone is likely to think that our tent hides a raft!"
In three days the raft was quite complete, and was very sound and solid. Andy had decided to take all the food in the big wooden box in which the man had brought the tins and jars on his last visit.
"We can nail the box to the floor of the raft," said Andy, "and our food will stay there quite safely I If we put it loose on the deck of the raft, everything would get thrown off in a rough sea, even though we've put a kind of rail to the edge of the raft."
There came a warning cry from Jill not long after that. She had seen a boat coming round the cliff on the far side of the cave-beach. Hastily the boys put up the tent over the raft, and Mary strewed the heather and bracken over the deck. She could not hide the box of. food in the middle of the raft, however.
"Never mind about that," said Andy. "Put a rug over it, and it will look like a seat or something."
There were two men this time, and one of them was the one who spoke English.
The boat drew up in the cove where the raft was, and one man got out. It was not the man who had seen the fallen-down shack, but the one who spoke English.
Andy went down to meet him. "Please, sir, won't you give us a boat to go home in?" asked Andy, knowing perfectly well that the man would say no.
"No," said the man at once. "You will stay here for as long as we wish. But soon the winter will come, and a tent will be no good to you. Is mere any building here that can be mended?"