Eight willing hands helped to arrange the big brown sail over the circle of sticks stuck firmly into the ground. The weight of the sail kept it down, and when the children bad finished, they had made a kind of round, brown tent, with no doorway. But as the children could get in anywhere under the tent simply by lifting up the sail, it didn't matter having no doorway.
"We'll gather a nice pile of heather and put it inside the tent to lie on," said Tom. "And with our rugs, too, we shall be as cosy and warm as toast! In fact, we may be much too hot!"
"Well, if we are, we'll just Lift up one side of the tent,and let the breeze blow in," said Jill. "Oh, I do feel excited! I really feel as if we've got a sort of little home, now we've made this tent!"
"There isn't time to explore the island now," said Andy, looking in surprise at the sinking sun. "We've taken ages over the tent. We'll go all over the island to-morrow."
"That will be fun," said Mary. "I do wonder what we'll find!"
Chapter 5
Making the Best of Things
The children were all hungry again. Andy thought it would be better to bring everything up from the shore, and put it near their tent.
"We may have to make our tent a sort of home," he said. "We don't want to have to keep climbing up and down that rocky cliff every time we want a cup or a kettle! Besides, we are quite near the spring here, and we can easily get water whenever we want to."
So for the next hour or so the children fetched all their belongings. Some of them were very difficult to get up the cliff. The gramophone was almost impossible till Andy thought of the idea of tying a rope round it and hauling it gently up by that.