The evening of the third day after this conversation found us ready to embark the next morning. All our supplies were aboard. What was perishable we had put in the deck house which was a little aft of the center.
It was made as near water tight as possible. The cracks between the boards we had filled in with pitch taken from the pine trees. In this house we stored our provisions, which we had put into boxes that we had made from boards that had come down in the drift.
Our axes and other carpenter tools were fixed securely by strips of leather into which the blades and handles fitted. Nothing was left to roll around at hazard.
We knew to a certainty that we would have fierce rapids to run and sometimes we would be awash from stern to stern. Our rifles had places fixed for them on the outside of the deck house, which was covered with tarpaulin to make it as completely water-tight as possible.
Now everything was finished and we stood surveying our boat with pardonable pride. It had taken nearly two weeks of unremitting toil, some of the working days being twelve and fourteen hours even. But it was worth it all. It gave us a sense of fitness and security for the perilous trip that we were to start on in the morning.
"'The Captain' looks like a man of war with all those glittering axes and other weapons. We ought to go out on the Spanish main."
"If she lines up to her name she will be a man of war," said Jim. "I wish it were morning so we could start. Let's have supper aboard anyway."
This was agreed on, and we soon had a fire built on the beach, and the blue smoke rising in a slender column through the absolutely still air.
Jim slept aboard, but Tom and I decided that it was softer on the sand, so we rolled into our blankets and with the sound of the river in our ears, as it rolled its volume into a narrow ravine below, we were soon asleep.
A shrill whistle woke us up.