I told him, and as he could not appreciate the comicality of Morgan’s remark, he looked sulky and full of doubt for a few moments, but showed his white teeth directly after.
It did not seem long after that the four largest boats of the settlement were loaded deep down with timbers and planks, to supplement those which lay just under the trees by the rattlesnake clearing, and now well seasoned and dry. Many of them had been carried here and there during the flood, but being ready cut down when the clearing was made, they were hunted up at the first thought of the return to build up our house, and dragged out of spots where they had been overgrown with the rapidly-sprung-up verdure.
Expeditions had been sent out several times toward the Indians’ country, but as no signs of the savages were seen, our confidence rapidly increased, and some of my happiest hours were passed with Pomp, hunting out these logs and planks, and marking the spots with a blaze from an axe on the nearest tree.
Then a strong party came over from the settlement on the day the boats were despatched, travelled across rapidly, knocked up a shed of the planks and newly-sawn-up boards unloaded at our landing-place from the boats, and I honestly believe the two happiest people there that day among the strange party of blacks, who carried the wood along the forest path, were Pomp and Hannibal, who, though far from strong, insisted upon his being well enough to help.
So many willing bands were there who came over in a couple of boats morning by morning, that with the help of the blacks camped in the rough shed, a fortnight had not passed before the nucleus of our home was up, sufficient for shelter, the finishing and improvements being left to come by degrees.
I believe that the sight of our home slowly rising from the ruins did more to give my father back his strength than anything done by the doctor, but perhaps that is ungrateful. But be that as it may, it was a pleasure to see him.
“Only look at the captain,” Morgan said to me one morning, two days after our friends had gone back. “Don’t he look lovely again, sir?”
“Well, I don’t know about lovely. I thought that about Sarah.”
“Now, don’t you make fun,” said Morgan, giving a heap of wood ashes a tap with his spade, to make it lie close in his rough barrow, whose wheel was a section sawn off the end of a very round-trunked pine, and tired by nailing on the iron hooping from a cask.