The fleet was wind-bound all that day, for neither the wind nor the sea showed the slightest intention of going down. Harry and Tom returned after an hour’s absence, with bread, butter, eggs, milk, and strawberries, and with the cheerful information that, in the opinion of a gloomy farmer, the wind would continue to blow for at least two days more.
After resting and sleeping on the soft sand the boys began to find the time hang heavily on their hands. They overhauled their sails and rigging, putting them in complete order. Charley mended a pair of trousers belonging to Joe in a really artistic way; and Joe, with his left arm in a sling, played “mumble-te-peg” with Harry. Tom collected fire-wood, and, when he had got together more than enough to cook two or three meals, occupied himself by trying to roll a heavy log into a position near the canoes, where it could be used as a seat or a table.
The sand was strewn with logs, big and little, and Harry proposed that as many logs as possible should be got together, so that an enormous camp-fire could be started. It was a happy idea, for it gave the boys employment for the greater part of the day. It became a matter of pride with them to bring the biggest and heaviest of the logs up to the fireplace. Some of them could only be stirred with levers, and moved with the help of rollers cut from smaller logs. Whenever a particularly big log was successfully moved the boys were encouraged to attack a still bigger one. Thus they finally collected an amount of fire-wood sufficient to make a blaze bright enough to be seen a dozen miles at night.
When they were tired of rolling logs Tom went fishing, but caught nothing; while Charley cooked the dinner and watched the rising tide—half afraid that the water would reach the fire and put it out before he could get dinner ready. The tide rose so high that it came within two or three yards of the fire, and almost as near to the canoes, but it spared the dinner. When the tide was nearly full only a small part of the sand-spit was out of water, and the path along the foot of the precipice was completely covered, so that the waves broke directly against the rocks.
“It’s lucky for us that the tide doesn’t cover the whole of this place,” remarked Charley as he placed the dinner on a large log which served as a table, and beat a tattoo on the frying-pan as a signal to Tom to give up fishing and come to dinner. “I should hate to have to take to the canoes again in this wind.”
“It’s lucky that the tide will ebb again,” said Harry, “for we’re cut off from the shore as the tide is now, unless we could climb up the rocks, and I don’t believe we could.”
“It’s all right,” said Tom, putting his fishing-tackle in his canoe, “provided the tide doesn’t come up in the night and float the canoes off.”
“Oh, that can’t happen!” exclaimed Harry. “The tide’s turned already, and doesn’t reach the canoes.”
“I’m going to sleep on the sand,” remarked Joe. “It’s softer than the bottom of my canoe, and there isn’t any sign of rain.”