With a sigh he resumed work on the raft which he had hoped he could afford to dispense with and finally got it so far completed that he thought he might trust himself on it.
Robert was a little solicitous about the strength of his raft. It must be admitted that, though he had done the best he could, it was rather a rickety concern. If the nails had been all whole and new and he had had a good hammer and strong boards he could easily have made a satisfactory raft.
But the materials at his command were by no means of the best. The nails were nearly all rusty, some were snapped off in the middle and his stone did not work with the precision of a regular hammer.
“If it will only hold together till I can get to shore,” he thought, “I won’t care if it goes to pieces the next minute. It seems a little shaky, though. I must try to find a few more nails. It may increase the strength of it.”
There was an end of a beam projecting from the sand, just at his feet.
Robert expected that probably he might by unearthing it find somewhere about it a few nails, and he accordingly commenced operations.
If he had had a shovel or a spade, he could have worked to better advantage, but as it was he was forced to content himself with a large shell which he picked up near the shore.
Soon he had excavated a considerable amount of sand and brought to the surface a considerable part of the buried beam. It was at this point that he felt the shell strike something hard.
“I suppose it is a stone,” thought Robert.
And he continued his work with the object of getting it out of the way. It was not long before the object was exposed to view.