CHAPTER XIV.
WORK AND SONG—SUNDAY SERVICE—BUILD A LARGER BOAT, THE "ANGLO-FRANC"—COLLECTING WRECKAGE—COMMENCE A JETTY—OUR COOKERY—BLASTING OPERATIONS—THE OPENING BANQUET.
During the remainder of March we worked away merrily in the garden and in the fields on the top of the island. I was really astonished at the work we could get through in a day, Alec, myself, and the donkey. Alec laughed at my plough and the cart, and together we made some improvements in them. We also improved the lower path right round the island, by cutting away the furze and undergrowth; with spade and pick we made it broader in the narrowest parts, and by filling the inequalities, made it comfortable to walk upon.
Alec was a wonder for singing; in fact he was warbling all day long over his work, and I must say he had rather a nice tenor voice, just such as an Englishman would expect a Frenchman to possess. His répertoire of songs was large, and embraced both ancient and modern, sacred and secular, French and English; so there was plenty of variety.
Somehow or other, although he was of a most lively disposition, most of his "best songs," as he called those he could sing with the greatest ease and effect, were of the somewhat dismal or semi-lachrymose type, as "Tom Bowling," "Half Mast High," "The Skipper and his Boy," etc. These are all beautiful in their way, but with repetition pall upon one somewhat, while your jovial song seems ever fresh, and will stand singing many times before it becomes threadbare.
Sometimes of an evening, after supper and a pipe, we would indulge in duet singing, and when we came to the end of the song we would praise each other and encore ourselves.
"Let's have that one again. That's capital! Bravo!"
Then at it we would go again, sometimes till near midnight.