“No; we won’t take all that trouble; but what we do we must do quickly. Come along.”
I followed him up a slope to where the ground seemed to be a trifle more open and the trees larger, and as we forced our way on my uncle drew his great hunting-knife and chopped down a straight young sapling, which, upon being topped and trimmed, made a ten-feet pole about as thick as my arm was then.
This he fixed by resting one end in the fork of a tree and tying the other to a branch about five feet from the ground.
“Now then, Nat,” he cried, “get your big sheath-knife to work and clear the ground here. Does it seem dry?”
“Yes, uncle, quite,” I said.
“Well, then, you chop off plenty of soft twigs and leaves and lay them thickly for a bed, while I make a roof over it.”
We worked with a will, I for my part finding plenty of tree-ferns, whose fronds did capitally, and Uncle Dick soon had laid sloping against the pole a sufficiency of leafy branches to form an ample shelter against the wind and rain should either come.
“So far, so good, Nat,” he said; “now are you very hungry?”
“I’m more tired than hungry, uncle,” I said.
“Then I think we will light a fire and then have as good a night’s rest as we can.”