After some experiments they decided to make it a three-tier one, and flexible in the center. Hence it was fully thirty feet in length, the average length of a thick log being fifteen feet after its roots and thin section had been burnt off. For the same reason the raft was fifteen feet wide. It had a step in the forepart for their old friend, the broken topmast. They dispensed with a rudder, believing they could guide their ark with poles.
Observation showed that the tide flowed swiftly in mid-stream, and their well-matured project was to push out to a prearranged point at high-water, anchor while the tide fell, and travel as far as practicable on the next tide. They tried to avoid all risks that could be foreseen.
The raft was built in the waterway which Madge had termed the “creek”—the gulley cleared for itself by the torrent whose dry bed had offered them a road through the otherwise impenetrable forest. Every test of stability their inventiveness could devise proved that an area of thirty feet by fifteen of logs arranged in three rows would support four or five times the weight they were likely to place on it. By manipulating the poles Maseden and Sturgess found that they could control the movements of even such an unwieldy bulk, while if the wind suited they might rig a sail of skins.
They were able to build quickly and well because of three essentials. The timber was at hand, they had a fire, and in the pieces of rope and strips of iron and wire they had invaluable means of making the structure secure.
At last, on the fifteenth day after the wreck, Maseden poled out the raft during the slack tide at high-water, and fastened it to ropes already fixed and buoyed nearly a quarter of a mile from the shore. He would allow none of the others to accompany him, nor did he carry any of the few stores they possessed. He could not be absolutely certain that the cables would withstand the strain, and if the raft were swept seaward by the falling tide only one life was in jeopardy, while Sturgess might be able to help him from the shore.
His vigil was watched by anxious eyes, especially when he thought fit to ease the stress on the ropes by planting a long pole against a big rock which he knew rested a few feet astern and below the surface. The two hours of half-tide were the worst, but the anchors held. Three hours later the raft was aground and he came ashore.
It was then nearly dark, as their first voyage would naturally be taken in broad daylight. Nothing was said at the time, but he was told afterwards, that for no conceivable guerdon would any of the three again go through the agony of suspense they endured while the raft swung and lurched in the fierce current.
Meat, fresh and dried, a quantity of oysters, the leather trunk, and a charcoal fire cunningly packed in oyster shells kept in position by wire—this cooking brazier being the invention of Nina Forbes—formed the cargo. Most fortunately Maseden carried the poncho and the rifle slung across his back with rope, and the cartridges were in his pockets.
They slept on board. Soon after daybreak the raft was afloat, but was not allowed to move until there was a fair depth of water, owing to the very great probability of the whole structure being dashed to pieces against some awkwardly placed boulder. At last, however, Maseden thought the channel was practicable, and the ropes were cast loose, being sacrificed, of course, but that could not be helped.
They were off! The first of the sixty miles was already slipping away. They were so excited, so bent on the adventure ahead, that none of them thought of looking back until Providence Beach, which was the name they gave their refuge, was nearly out of sight.