Chapter Ten.
The Voyage.
After Limberleg had had a ride, the Twins took a turn, while their mother watched them from the shore.
“It’s almost more fun than our logs,” said Firetop, when he took his first ride.
They played with the boat and tried all sorts of experiments with it, and were so happy and excited that it grew dark and the moon came out before one of them so much as thought of anything to eat.
For days and days after that, Hawk-Eye worked on his boat. He found out all its tricks. He even found out that he could go in deep water if he paddled. He found it out first by using his hands for oars. Then he chopped out a clumsy flat paddle.
All this took him some time, but by midsummer he had become quite expert with his clumsy craft. He could keep it right side up and make it go where he wanted it to at any rate.
Sometimes he ventured out into the deep water around the gulls’ rocks. One day he even rowed all round them. He could look down into the water and see shoals of fish swimming about, but he could not catch them.
When he went back to the cave that day, he said to Limberleg: “I have an idea. Why can’t you weave a kind of net out of leather thongs? I can fasten it in the water out by the rocks and catch fish in it. The water gods may like us very much, as you say, but they haven’t been throwing any fish up on land for us since the earthquake, so I’m going to try to catch some.”