We began by loading our boat with as much as she would carry of the building materials and the requisites for a few days’ stay upon the islet; and then we left the wreck, arriving at our destination rather late the same evening, taking the short cut through those parts of the intersecting channels that we had already traversed upon the occasion of our discovery of the islet. The choice of a site for the house, and the unloading and conveyance of the tools and building materials to that site occupied the whole of another day, for the site chosen was on the eastern slope of the hill, about a mile distant from the cove where the boat lay, involving the carrying of several heavy loads of timber all that distance up-hill; but it was well worth the labour, for the situation afforded a magnificent and uninterrupted view of the open sea to the eastward, while toward the west and south-west we had a view of a considerable portion of the island with the remarkable precipitous cliffs, and a broad stretch of lagoon to the south of it.
Spending the night of that very fatiguing day on Eden, we returned to the wreck on the day following, a fair wind the whole way enabling us to accomplish the trip in time to load up the boat that same evening in readiness for an early start next day. This mode of procedure was followed for nearly a month; by the end of which period we had transported from the wreck to our islet the whole of the material for our house, the chests of treasure, the ship’s medicine-chest, all the tools of every description that were to be found in the ship, all the arms and ammunition, the chronometer and other navigating instruments, the charts, and a considerable quantity of the most valuable contents of the lazarette; after which we were practically independent of the wreck; for as soon as we had built our house we should be in possession of everything absolutely necessary to the maintenance of life and health.
The house, however, still remained to be built, and this task kept Billy and me busy for another six weeks; but when it was finished we found ourselves, relatively speaking, in clover, for our house consisted of a strongly-built, weather-proof bungalow containing living-room, store-room, two bedrooms, kitchen, scullery, fuel house, and other outbuildings, with a stoep and veranda extending all round it; and it was roofed with deck planking, caulked, thoroughly well tarred, and then coated with sand. The furniture was of course a bit rough, but it served its purpose, and it was eked out by the addition of a couple of comfortable arm-chairs and six deck-chairs from the wreck, with, of course, beds and bedding, table linen, crockery, cutlery, and all the cooking gear.
This great task accomplished, my next business was to run the boat, single-handed, to and fro between the islet and the wreck, removing from the latter everything that might by any chance be of the slightest value to us, while Billy, having developed an ambition to lay out a considerable expanse of the slope in front of the house as a garden, put in his time in the realisation of that ambition. After a time I was able to lend a hand at this job; and I finished up by setting on end, in front of the house, the brigantine’s spare main topmast, which made a fine flagstaff, upon which I proposed to hoist the ship’s ensign, union-down, if ever a ship should heave in sight.
Chapter Ten.
A Spider’s Web!
My next task was one which I felt I had already neglected too long, namely, the provision of weapons to supplement our firearms, and so save our ammunition for cases of extreme emergency. This I proposed to do by the manufacture of bows and arrows, if I could find materials suitable for the purpose. So far as the arrows were concerned, I had already found perfect material for the shafts in the bundle of rushes I had cut in the Shark Bay swamp, and which had by this time dried and hardened in the air until they had become all that I could wish for. But I still required wood from which to make bows, and I spent a whole day unsuccessfully searching the woods of Eden for suitable trees. But it did not follow that because there were no suitable trees on our own islet, there were none on any of the other islands of the group; therefore on a certain evening I announced my intention of starting next morning upon a further voyage of exploration and discovery.
In pursuance of this intention, immediately after breakfast on the following morning, I put two rifles in the boat, with an ample supply of cartridges, while we each carried a brace of revolvers in a belt strapped round our waists; in addition to which I took along with me a ship’s cutlass to serve instead of an axe with which to cut any suitable boughs we might chance to find.