“Of course I am, Dick,” she replied; “I am glad of anything that will ease your work for you, for indeed you have been making a perfect slave of yourself ever since we landed here. The discovery of these things has, I suppose, relieved your mind of a great deal of anxiety; and I hope that now you will be able to take matters more easily.”
“I am afraid,” said Dick, “there still remains a great deal to be done before I can think of ‘taking matters easily.’ I must complete my examination of this cargo, for one thing; and when that is done I must begin to pull the poor old brig herself to pieces for the sake of her timber, that being the only material available out of which to build our boat.”
“But surely there is no such very urgent need for hurry over all this work, is there, Dick?” remonstrated Flora.
“Oh yes, there is,” insisted Dick; “for the reason that, if another gale were to spring up, the brig would most probably go to pieces, and then everything in her would be lost, excepting, of course, such matters as might be washed ashore. And the timber of which she is built would be more or less smashed up and generally made less fit for use than it will be if I am afforded time to break her up carefully.”
“I see,” assented Flora, thoughtfully. “In that case I suppose we had better go to work again, hadn’t we?”
So they resumed operations; Dick descending into the hold and slinging the cases, one by one, and then coming on deck and taking the tackle fall to the winch, and heaving the package on deck while Flora hung on to the tail-end of the rope to prevent it slipping round the winch barrel. It was easy work for the girl, and such as she could do without becoming greatly fatigued; but for the man it was hard labour indeed, and such as sent him back to the island at night almost too weary to eat.
But a day or two later he met with a find that more than rewarded him for all his toil, and rendered a further continuance of it unnecessary. Among the first cases that he came upon was a long and heavy one, marked like those containing the spars and sails, that, upon being opened, was found to contain copper sheathing, already cut to shape and carefully marked. There was also, in the same case, a small, light, flat box, containing two drawings to scale; one being a sheer, half-deck, and body plan of a very smart, handsome, and wholesome-looking cutter, thirty-five feet long on the water-line, and ten feet beam; while the other was a drawing similarly marked to the copper sheathing, showing exactly where and how every sheet ought to be applied. Near this case was another, similarly marked, a very large case as to length and breadth, but of no great depth. Wondering what this could possibly contain, Leslie eagerly opened it and found in it the complete set of steel frames for the cutter, packed one inside the other, and each marked and figured in accordance with the sheet of plans. And finally, not to dwell at undue length upon this discovery, important though it was, he also found the keel, stem and stern-posts, rudder and trunk, deck-beams, wales, stringers, skin and deck-planking—in short, every scrap and item of material and fittings required for the little vessel; so that nothing remained but to put the whole together. A more fortunate find could by no possibility be conceived for two people circumstanced as he and his companion were.
It goes without saying that the whole of this valuable material was most carefully and promptly transferred to the beach; and as the last item of it was unloaded from the catamaran Leslie flung himself down upon the sand and exclaimed, in accents of infinite relief—
“There, that is a good job well done; and I care not now though the old hooker should go to pieces to-morrow!”
“And now,” returned Flora, “you will be able to give yourself a little holiday, and take some much-needed rest, will you not? Promise me that you will, Dick, please. You have been looking very anxious and worried of late, and have been toiling the whole day through, day after day, in the hot sun. I am sure such arduous work is not good for you; and indeed I have more than once been tempted to refuse to help you, because I knew that, if I did, you would be compelled to desist. But when I saw how eager you were I thought it would be cruel; and I could not bring myself to be that, even though I felt that it would be for your good.”