“This is like being marooned, isn’t it, gentlemen?” one of the sailors remarked.
“Well, it is being marooned by fortune, but we must make the best of it.”
In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as “fail.” There should not be, at all events; and so these deserted sailors at once set about making the best of a bad job.
They had hope in their hearts—which were stout ones all of them—and after a bit they quite enjoyed their Crusoe life.
They had axes, and spades, and knives, and guns, and plenty of ammunition; but even had they possessed none of these tools, they could have lived on the fruit that grew so abundantly everywhere, on bushes on the hills, and on trees in every glade and glen.
As gales of wind or hurricanes might come again and level the strongest hut they could build, they determined to become for a time cave-dwellers. They searched for, and found farther inland, and up on a terrace in the side of a woody hill, just the place that would suit—a large, dry, lofty cave in sight of the sea. They at once set about fitting it up for a dwelling. The floor was covered deep in silvery sand. Nothing could be better, whether to squat in by day, or sleep on by night. The entrance to the cave was built up with felled trees, leaving only a small entrance for light, and a doorway. Thus the dwelling-house was speedily completed.
“Why not,” said Leonard, “fortify this terrace?”
“Good,” replied Douglas; “we have nothing else to do, and I can’t forget that footstep in the sand of Crusoe’s Isle.”
“And as we never know what may happen,” continued Douglas, “I propose that we store our guns and ammunition, and trap game for our food.”
This proposal was carried unanimously.