“Then, depend upon it, here we shall find her. Don’t you see the sand has blown over her, and she is safe enough within it. To save ourselves trouble, we will dig a line parallel with the beach, and another at right angles, and the chances are we shall strike some part of her gunwale before long.”
“Shall I go and call the other men?” asked Billy.
“They are cooking the breakfast, sir,” observed Bird.
“Let them go on by all means,” said Tom; “if we find the boat we will come back afterwards and dig her up.”
They immediately set to work, under Tom’s directions, but the sand had risen even higher than they had supposed, and as they had only the boat’s stretchers and their hands to work with, it was a slow business.
“I’ve thought, sir, of a quicker way of finding her than this,” observed Jerry; and taking his axe, he cut a short pole with a sharp point, and ran it down though the sand, along the line which Tom had marked out. “There’s something here, sir,” he cried out at length, and forthwith a hole was dug at the spot. Jerry then plunged down his hand. “No doubt about it, sir; there’s the boat’s side, and if the weight of the sand has not bulged her out, she will be all to rights.”
“I have no fear on that score,” observed Tom. “The sand has probably driven up around her, and afforded her sides support. I am very thankful that we took the precaution of banking her up as we did, or I am pretty sure that she would have been rolled over and over, and knocked to pieces.”
The party having satisfied themselves as to the safety of the boat, returned to their camp, where they found Tim and Pat busily engaged over a huge fire in cooking pork chops.
“Why, where did these come from?” asked Tom.
“Shure, sir, they are from a porker which we found in the bush. It’s my belief it’s the very baste Mr Desmond shot last night. He was not quite dead, and showed some fight, but we finished him, and cut him up in a jiffy.”