Next, Mark with one of the old axes they had used to excavate the store-room, cut a notch in the edge of the cave, where it opened on the hut, large enough to stand the lantern in, as the chest would be required for the raft. They raked the potatoes out of the ashes, and had them for supper, with a damper, the last fragment of a duck, and cold tea, like gold-diggers.
Bevis now recollected the journal he had proposed to keep, and got out the book, in which there was as yet only one entry, and that a single word, “Wednesday.” He set it on the table under the awning, with the lantern open before him. Outside the edge of the awning the moon filled the courtyard with her light.
“Why, it’s only Thursday now,” said Mark. “We’ve only been here one full day, and it seems weeks.”
“Months,” said Bevis. “Perhaps this means Wednesday last year.”
“Of course: this is next year to that. How we must have altered! Our friends would not know us.”
“Not even our mothers,” said Bevis.
“Nor our jolly old mokes and governors.”
“Shot a kangaroo,” said Bevis, writing; “shot a duck and a jack—No. Are they jacks? That’s such a common name?”
“No; not jacks: jack-sharks.”
“No; sun-fish: they’re always in the sun.”