CHAPTER XLII
ALL OVER BUT——
Then we brought the round thick logs which had formed the trunk, and which had been sawn into lengths of about four feet, and piled them one on top of another in their own order, which was obvious and unmistakable on account of the lessening girth of the trunk as it went higher. We piled three of these, fitting them one upon the other as they had stood in life, and the nail was in the fourth, with which we crowned the edifice, Jack standing upon a step-ladder and I handing up the logs.
"There!" he said, when he had built up the edifice to the height of some fifteen feet; "there's our tree as it stood in life, wobbly, no doubt, and insecure; but it will bear the picture though it wouldn't stand much of north-easter. Hand up the work of art."
We hung up the portrait, and again I lay on the ground here and there and ogled the hideous thing until I had wooed its eyes to meet my own.
Then we dug together. Jack had thrown all ridiculous fastidiousness to the winds of heaven, and helped me like a man and a sensible being.
Together we dug, and the hole rapidly grew, and with it grew also our own excitement and Ginger's, who looked on whining, as before, for the game that we were to start from our burrow for him to run away from. We had had no lunch, and the afternoon was fleeting fast; but we dug on.
Now the grave was two feet deep, and now four, now five. I had never felt so excited as this, even at that supreme moment when my fingers touched the tin box in the African veldt.
Now the hole was six feet in depth, and Jack's head, when he stood up, was just below the earth-level. Ginger, in his excitement, pulled Jack's cap off and laid it on the ground beside him, probably determined that if we were to disappear altogether, he would preserve at least a memento of us to swear by.
Six feet and a half, and now my spade (it was mine; I am glad it was mine), my spade struck against something hard and metallic.