Work was resumed then, and by dark they all had the satisfaction of feeling that fully five hundred yards of the long portage had been got over, and, as Oliver said, there was no reason whatever why they should not get on quite as far day by day.
There were plenty of rejoicings there that night—“high jinks,” Smith called them—but by daylight next morning every man was in his place, and the lugger began to move again.
And so matters went on day after day, in a regular, uneventful way. There were tremblings of the earth beneath them, and now and then a sharp cracking, tearing sound, as if some portion of the rocky bed below was splitting suddenly open.
At times, too, a heavy report was heard from the direction of the mountain, generally followed by the flight of birds, making in alarm for the south, or the appearance of some little herd of deer, but these matters, like the lurid glow which shone nightly in the clouds above the volcano, had grown so familiar that they ceased to command much attention, and the work went steadily on.
It had to be checked, though, from time to time, for there were occasions when difficulties arose as to the proper fixing of the capstan from the want of hold in the rock, or the failing of blocks to which ropes could be secured, necessitating the driving down of crowbars into some crack in the stone.
At these times, when Mr Rimmer knew almost at a glance that some hours must elapse before the half-dozen for whom there was room to work would complete their task, advantage was taken of the opportunity for a hunting expedition in the nearest patch of forest, or for a party to go down to the lagoon, cross it to the reef, and spend the time with better or worse luck fishing with lines, or collecting the abundant molluscs which formed a dainty addition to their food.
And at last, a month of exactly four weeks from the day they began, the lugger stood up near to the end of the two-mile land voyage, close to the sands, with the cocoa-nut grove beginning on either side, just at the edge of the land which had not been swept by the earthquake wave.
That afternoon there was a desperate fight with the soft, yielding sand, into which the well-worn bearers and blocks used under the lugger’s keel kept on sinking so deeply that it seemed as if fresh means must be contrived for getting the boat quite to the water’s edge.
“I’m about done,” said Mr Rimmer, as he stood with a huge mallet in his hand; “this sand gives way directly. We shall have to get her back and make for the cocoa-nut trees, but I doubt whether they will bear the strain if we get a cable and blocks at work.”
“But look here,” said Oliver, “I’m not a sailor, but it seems to me—”