He had a lively remembrance of the red ants, soldier-snails, gnats, lizards, mosquitoes and sand-flies of Ruatan; but none of these winged and creeping pests disturbed his slumber, and he slept on until the sun was fully an hour high and the palm trees vocal with the chattering of the paroquets.
He awoke refreshed, sprang from his hammock and ran to see if the schooner was all right.
Yes, there she was! Her tapering masts shining like polished marble in the brilliant sunshine, and the tide fretting and frothing against her sides.
After an exhilarating plunge in the surf, Frank set about getting his breakfast. The day previous he had carried on shore all the galley furniture, completely dismantling poor Nat’s late quarters of stove, cooking utensils, cups and plates, and everything portable, even to the zinc covering of the floor.
He had not ventured so far as the hold, but had taken everything of value from the captain’s cabin—his books and charts, the ship’s instruments, a fine eight-day chronometer clock, still going, and which he wound up with no little pleasure.
He carefully housed on shore the contents of the lockers, which included a case of port wine, a little bag of Spanish reals, another of doubloons, a case of canned meats, two of preserved fruits and jellies and a small medicine chest.
All the cargo, save the cocoanuts, was a rotten mass in the hold, the larger part of which he eventually pitched overboard.
There were coffee, chocolate, sugar, rice, beans, dried beef, barley, vermicelli, a small quantity of tea, salt pork, hard biscuit, flour, salt beef, lemons, honey, a cask of vinegar, a dozen sacks of salt and a few other supplies, such as a sailing craft of the kind usually carries.
In four days’ time Frank had every movable article out of her, yet the dreaded squall had not come nor a drop of rain fallen.
There lay the Sea Eagle, blistering under the sun by day and gauntly outlined under the stars by night, changed in no way since she stranded, except that she had settled quite two feet in the sand and was aground