“Say, Alec, d’you know that every boat was stocked with provisions and water for twenty people for fourteen days? I heard the captain give the order.”
Sturgess was so excited that he almost yelped the words.
“I saw the stewards putting the stuff on board,” said Maseden.
“There’s tea, and coffee, and condensed milk, and butter, and tins of meat and jam,” cried Nina.
“And ship’s biscuits, and a spirit stove, and matches, and barrels of water,” chimed in Madge.
Maseden was tapping the planks and peering at so much of the keel as was visible, but he could find no sign of injury. The smart white paint had been badly scraped amidships and in the bows, but the wood was not splintered. To the best of his belief the craft was thoroughly seaworthy. She carried her full complement of oars, a mast, and lugsail. In fact, she was almost in the exact condition in which she had left the ship.
Two pulleys and a part of a broken davit showed how she had been wrenched bodily from her berth and flung into the sea by the first great wave that crashed over the Southern Cross when the steamship swung broadside on to the reef under the pull of the aft anchor.
“Come along, everybody!” shouted Maseden, and the ring of triumph in his voice revealed the depth of his feelings. “We start building a new camp at once. Within less than a fortnight the spring tides which brought her here will be with us again, and we must be ready for them.”
“Can’t we launch her on rollers?” demanded Sturgess.
“I doubt it. She was docked here by a backwash which does not occur very often, judging by the herbage growing among the sand. She is a heavy craft, too. I don’t think the four of us could move her. We’ll have rollers in readiness, of course, but we must cut a channel for the tide, and so make sure of floating her.... By Jove! What a piece of luck!”