It took them an hour or more to sober down. For once, Maseden’s orders were tacitly ignored, even by himself. Instead of helping in the construction of another hut the girls were busy with the lashings of the canvas cover. Every true woman has the instinct of the good housewife, and these two could not rest content until they had examined and classified the stores.
None of them could resist the temptation of a bottle of coffee extract, some condensed milk and a tin of biscuits. The spirit-stove was lighted, some water boiled and they drank hot coffee and ate wheat for the first time in seventeen days.
Their greatest surprise was the quantity and variety of stores on board. There were knives and forks, enameled plates and cups, even such minor requisites as salt, pepper and mustard.
Of course, the chief steward of the Southern Cross had been given many hours in which to make preparations. Being a resourceful man, when the lockers were packed with their regulation supplies he stuffed “extras” into odd corners.
Poor fellow! The pity was that an adverse fate had denied him any benefit from his own foresight.
Although the castaways entered with good heart upon their second campaign against the forces of nature, the immense advantages now enjoyed as compared with their condition on Hanover Island did not blind them to the difficulties yet to be faced and conquered ere the haunts of civilized man might be reached. There was no gainsaying the cogency of Maseden’s logic; the absence of aborigines from a spot so favored as Rotunda Bay (the name allotted to their new location), supplied positive proof of the impracticable nature of all approaches by sea.
How far the barriers might extend they had no means of knowing. They could guess how forbidding they were from the character of the northerly channel, and it was easy to believe that one such dangerous passage alone would not have deterred tribesmen accustomed to navigate these perilous waters.
So, in the intervals of labor, they gave close heed to the tides and their action. For instance, Maseden would knock together a small raft, launch it at high water and watch its subsequent course. He found, at first, that it stranded invariably. Then he took it to the tiny estuary of the second river, waited until the ebb was well established, and let it swing out with the current.