That was an easy task. There was much driftwood along the beach, besides the sticks that could be gathered from the hillside; and the children enjoyed gathering it up, and Marian would have also if she had not been inwardly so perplexed and worried.
To add to her worries, the sky turned cloudy and the wind rose. Suppose it were to storm, and she with not even a tent to shelter these little ones!
“Delbert,” she asked, finally, “isn’t there a cave on this Island?”
“Sure,” he answered; “right down here a way. Let’s go see.”
Marian’s hopes rose, only to fall again when she viewed the cave. It stood barely above high tide, a dark hole, foul and ill-smelling from the myriads of bats that lived in it.
“Dear me!” she said, “we can’t sleep in this, Delbert. Besides, if a storm should come up, the water would wash right in.”
“It goes back a long way,” said Delbert. “Clarence and I went in with a torch, but the farther you go the smellier it gets. Phew! No, I should say we couldn’t sleep in it. If it’s a cave to sleep in that you want, I guess we shall have to hunt one up.”
So they climbed back up the hill and began an investigation of the big masses of rock which at that end of the Island looked as if some giant hand had tossed them up and they had since lain in the same wild confusion in which they fell.
It would be very strange, thought Marian, if some sort of shelter could not be found among these. But she had no luck. Several places she discovered that would have been ideal in pleasant weather, an overhanging rock to keep off the dew, or a thick, dry, mossy bed, but when wind and rain were to be considered—
Finally Delbert called to her from a point farther up than she had yet gone.