“In that case we will go and see right after breakfast.”
Which they did, and he led them to the highest, rockiest point of that end of the Island, facing the long, sandy point where the watermelons were and where one could see both the bay and the harbor.
“Now,” said he, seating himself on a big boulder, “you observe the lovely view we have. Nowhere on the whole Island can you get a better one. With a little clearing there is a fair chance of a path down to the pier. We are not so very far from the Cave either. And then, too, you see, this nice high cliff would save our making more than three sides to the house, and those big rocks there would be handy to brace against.”
“Where would be our floor?” asked Jennie. “It’s all rocks here.”
But Marian was looking. The cliff, as Delbert called it, would save making one side of the house, and several of the big rocks Jennie was so scornful of were in a direct line for working into the walls, while the others could be moved by means of crude levers that they could work. The floor could then be leveled by building up with rocks from the lower side. It would be impossible to dig holes to set posts in, but, if one were not too particular about having the house symmetrical, there were several fissures in the rocks where posts could be put, and braced solid with other stones packed in about them. The face of the big rock, or cliff, back of them was very irregular, and there were several good places to set roof-timbers in.
The ground sloped rather steeply down to the sandy point and was covered with brush, but a path, as Delbert said, could be cleared down to the pier, and it would be a better one really than the one they were using, too. Also a little tossing of the rocks to one side would clear the way back to the Cave, where they could use the old path to the beach. The heavy task would be bringing all the material up the hill, but that would have to be done in any case; only, of course, if they built at the Cave, for instance, they would not have to carry things so far.
“Delbert,” she said, “what we are going to need, and need badly, is lime.”
“Lime? What for?”
“To mix with sand and fresh water to make mortar to pack around the roof-timbers, where we set them into the cliff there, and around the posts, where we put them into this crevice below. Good mortar would set and keep them solid.”
“They dig lime out of the ground, don’t they?”