"How will anyone know we are here?" asked Jill. "We shall have to put up some sort of a sign, shan"t we, to show any pa.s.sing ship dr steamer that we are here?"
"Yes," said Andy. "I"ve been thinking about that. I"ll take down the ship"s sail, and we"ll tie it to a tree on the top of the cliff. That will be a fine signal."
"Good idea!" said Tom. "It will flap in the wind and be seen for miles."
"We"ll find a sleeping-place for the night before we do that," said Andy. "It looks like rain again now-see that low cloud over there? We don"t want to be soaked in our sleep. Come on."
They left the sandy cove and climbed up the steep cliff. It was hard going, but they got to the top at last, and once more looked across the island. They could not see right across it because the hill in the middle stopped their view-so they did not know how big or small it was. All they knew was that, at present, they could not see any sign of anyone else there, or of any house or other building.
"How I"d love to see a cow or two!" said Jill.
"Whatever for?" said Mary in surprise. "I didn"t know you liked cows so much, Jill."
"I don"t," said Jill. "But cows would mean a farmer, silly-and a farmer means a farmhouse-and a farmhouse means lots of people, and help, of course!"
The others laughed. "Well, let"s hope we see one or two cows for you, Jill," said Tom. "Which way shall we go, Andy?"
"We"ll make our way to the huV said Andy. "There"s bracken there, and heather, and maybe we can find a hill-cave to snuggle in. Bracken and heather make a fine bed, and we"ve got the rugs for covers."
They ran to the hill. It had a little wood of windblown pines and birches, but there was no cave in the hillside they could shelter in. It was covered with thick-growing bracken and heather, with a few stunted gorse-bushes-but there was no place that would really give them a safe shelter to sleep.
"Well, we"llhave to rig up a tent of some sort," said Andy at last. "I"m not going to be soaked through tonight. I"ve had enough of that to last me for quite a while."
"A tent, Andy!" said Tom. "Wherever would we get a tent from? Buy it from a shop, I suppose?"
"I"m going to get the old sail off the! boat," said Andy. "We can use it for a signal by day and a tent by night. It"s big enough to cover us all quite well."
"Andy, you have got good ideas!" said Jill. "I should never have thought of that. Well, shall we go back then and help you?"
"No," said Andy. "You stay here with Tom and help him to build a kind of tent-house that we can just drape the sail over. You"ll want some stout brunches, stuck well into the ground. I"ll go and get the sail."
Andy went off down to the sh.o.r.e again, and clambered and waded out to the boat. He was soon taking down the old sail.
The others hunted for good branches. The ones lying on the ground were too brittle and old, they found.
"They"ll make good firewood," said Tom. "we"llhave to break a few growing branches off the trees."
It was difficult to do this, but they managed it at last. Then they drove the stout sticks into the heathery ground and made a kind of circle with them, big enough to hold them all.
They had just finished when Andy came back, bent double over the heavy sail. He threw it dewn and panted.
"I thought I"d never get it up the cliff," he said. "I say, you"ve made a fine set of walls. The sail will go over them nicely."
Eight willing hands helped to"arrange the big brown sail over the circle of sticks stuck firmly into the ground. The weight of the sail kept it down, and when the children bad finished, they had made a kind of round, brown tent, with no doorway. But as the children could get in anywhere under the tent simply by lifting up the sail, it didn"t matter having no doorway.
"We"ll gather a nice pile of heather and put it inside the tent to lie on," said Tom. "And with our rugs, too, we shall be as cosy and wafm as toast! In fact, we may be much too hot!"
"Well, if we are, we"ll just Lift up one side of the tent,and let the breeze blow in," said Jill. "Oh, I do feel excited! I really feel as if we"ve got a sort of little home, now we"ve made this tent!"
"There isn"t time to explore the island now," said Andy, looking in surprise at the sinking sun. "We"ve taken ages over the tent. We"ll go all over the island to-morrow."
"That will be fun," said Mary. "I do wonder what we"ll find!"
CHAPTER 5.
Making the Best of Things
THE children were all hungry again. Andy thought it would be better to bring everything up from the sh.o.r.e, and put it near their tent.
"We may have to make our tent a sort of home," he said. "We don"t want to have to keep climbing up and down that rocky cliff every time we want a cup or a kettle! Besides, we are quite near the spring here, and we can easily get water whenever we want to."
So for the next hour or so the children fetched all their belongings. Some of them were very difficult to get up the cliff. The gramophone was almost impossible till Andy thought of the idea of tying a rope round it and hauling it gently up by that.
"Golly! All the records are broken!" said Tom in dismay, as he picked up the cracked records.
"Yes-they fell and broke when that dreadful storm was on," said Jill. "Leave them behind. They"re no use. There"s just one that"s not broken-now, where is it?"
They found it at last and looked at it.
"What a pity! This is a silly record-it would be the only one that"s left unbroken!" said Mary. "On one side it"s a girl singing a iind of lullaby, without even any music-and on the other it"s nursery rhymes. The silliest one we"ve got!"
"Oh well-bring it along," said Tom. "And where"s my camera? It doesn"t look as if I"ll find any good pictures to take-but I may as well have it."
By the time they had got everything to the tent they were really very tired. They cooked the rest of the fish and opened a tin of peaches. They ate an apple each, broke a bar of chocolate into four pieces, and then drank some hot cocoa. It was a good meal and they enjoyed it. The sun was now almost gone and the first star was shining brightly.
"Well, we"ve had an adventurous day," said Jill, yawning. "I slept all the morning-but I feel awfully sleepy again already."
"We"ll turn in early," said Andy. "I"m tired too."
"We can"t clean our teeth," said Jill, who was always very particular about nails and teeth and things like that. "I wish I had a tooth-brush."
"Well, here"s a brush for you," said Tom, with a grin, handing Jill the brush that was used to sweep bits of fish off the deck. "Brush your teeth with this."
Jill took it and at once brushed Tom"s hair with it. Tom was disgusted.
"Don"t, you cuckoo!" he said. "I shall smell of fish all night long."
"Come on," said Andy. "We want more heather for our beds. Tom, stamp out the fire. We don"t want to set the hill alight, and the heather is very dry."
Tom stamped out the fire. The girls filled the tent with more, heather. Andy took the largest rug and spread it all over the springy pile.
"You girls can sleep on this side of the tent, and Tom and I will take the other," he said. "There are plenty of rugs, luckily."
n.o.body undressed. For one thing they had no night-clothes, and for another they didn"t even think of it Life seemed quite different on an unknown island. n.o.body even thought of going to wash-though Tom"s hair smelt so much of old fish that Andy threatened to pour a kettle of water over it.
"I"ll wash my head under the spring to-morrow morning," said Tom sleepily. "I really can"t go now. I"m simply dropping asleep whilst I talk!"
They rolled themselves up in their rugs and lay flat on the heathery bed. It was beautifully soft and springy, and very comfortable once they had pressed down several sharp bits that stuck into them.
Tom was asleep at once. The girls lay awake for a minute or two. Jill felt very hot, for the tent was airless, and the four of them made quite a crowd in it. The -roof was not more than arm"s length above their heads.
"Andy," said Jill, in a low voice. "I"m so hot. Could we get some air in, do you think?"
"Yes," said Andy. He raised one side of the sail and let the breeze in. It was lovely, for now the girls could see out. The moonlight lay on the hillside and everything was clear till the clouds sailed across the moon. Mary fell asleep as she watched bracken outside waving, in the wind. Then Jill fell asleep. Only Andy lay awake, leaning on his elbow, looking out down the hillside, and listening to the sound of the waves in the distance, under the cliff.
He was old enough to feel that this adventure might not turn out at all well. He wondered what would be the best thing to do for them all.
"We must certainly hang out a signal every day," he thought. "It might be seen by some pa.s.sing ship. We must find a better place to live iirtoo, for if the weather should break up, this tent won"t be any use. And I wonder if it"s possible to get the ship off the rocks and patch her up. If we could do that, maybe we might have a shot at sailing home."
As he lay worrying about all these things his eyes closed. He was soon dreaming that he had got the boat off the rocks, but it changed into a large steamer that seemed to have hands and was fishing busily in a pool. There was such a strong smell of fish that Andy opened his sleepy eyes again-only to find that Tom"s fishy-smelling head was just under his nose. Andy turned over, grinning. "What a silly sort of dream!" he thought-and then, in half a second, he was dreaming again.
All the children slept soundly that night, and even when the clouds piled up over the moon and a sharp downpour of rain came they didn"t wake. The raindrops pattered over the tent, but did not soak through to the sleeping children. Some came through the side where Andy had raised the sail to let in the air, but the children felt nothing.
They awoke when the sun was fairly high-about eight o"clock in the morning. Andy as usual awoke first and rolled out of the tent quietly. But he had waked Tom, and when the boy yawned loudly the girls awoke too.
It was a fine sunny morning with clouds scudding across the sky like big pieces of cotton-wool. The first thing, of course, was breakfast-but it had to be caught!
So Andy and Tom went fishing on the rocks and the" girls managed to catch about twenty large prawns in a pool on the sandy sh.o.r.e. They cooked their catch and ate hungrily.
"I do feel dirty," said Jill. "I shall go and wash at the spring. Coming, Mary?"
"Yes," said Mary. "And I vote we all have a bathe to-day. That will clean us up a bit too."
They all felt cleaner after a rinse and splash in the spring. Tom and Andy made the fixing of the signal their next job. They found a good tree-at least, it was a good one for their purpose, for it had been struck by lightning at one time and now stood straight and bare OB the top of the cliff.
It took the two boys about an hour to climb the tree and fix the sail-signal. It flapped out well in the breeze and. Andy was sure it could be seen from a great distance. They climbed down again and went back to the girls.
"What about exploring the island now?" asked Tom. "I feel just like a good walk!"
"Well, the island may be too small for a good walk!" said Andy. ""We"ll just see. Ready, you girls?"
They were all ready for their walk. First they climbed the bill and stood on the top, looking to see what they could spy.
From the top of the hill they could see all around their island-and certainly it was not very big-only about a mile and a half long and about a mile wide. They could see the blue water all around it.
But not far off were other islands! They lay in the sea, blue and misty in the distance. But as far, as the children could see, there were no houses or buildings of any kind on them. They seemed as desolate and lonely as their own island. The cries of sea-birds came as they stood on the hill, and big white gulls swooped around them-but except for that sound, and the far-off splash of waves, there was no other sound to be heard. No shout-no hoot of a horn-no drone of an aeroplane. They might be lost in the very middle of the ocean for all they could see or hear!
"I don"t believe a single soul lives here on these islands," said Andy, his face rather grave. "Come on-let"s go down to this side of the hill. We may as well find out all there is to know."
As they went down the hill and came to the level ground again, Tom stopped in astonishment "Look!" he said. "Potato plants!"
The children looked-and sure enough, growing completely wild around them were plants that looked exactly like potatoes! Andy pulled one up-and there, clinging to the roots, were a dozen or more small white potatoes!
"That"s queer!" said Andy, staring round. "At some time or other there must have been people living here-and they grew potatoes. Some have seeded themselves and grown wild. But the thing is-if people lived here-where did they live? They must have lived somewhere!"
"How queer," said Tom, looking all round as if he expected houses to spring from the ground.
And then Jill gave a shout. "I believe I can see the chimney of a house! Look! Where the ground dips down suddenly over there."
The others looked. They saw that the ground did suddenly dip down into a kind of hollow, well protected from the wind-just the place where people might build a house. They tore over the rocky ground to the dip, expecting they hardly knew what.
And what a surprise they got when at last they reached the hollow and looked down into it!
CHAPTER 6.
A Queer Little Home
THE four children stood at the top of the steep dip. The hollow ran right down to the sea-and in it was a cl.u.s.ter of small buildings!
But what strange buildings! The roofs were off, the chimneys were gone, all but the one they had seen, the walls were fallen in. and everything looked forlorn and deserted.
"Nothing but ruins!" said Tom, in astonishment. "Whatever happened to make the houses and shed fall to pieces like that?"
"I think I know," said Andy. "A year or two ago there came a great storm to these parts-so great that the people of our village fled insh.o.r.e for miles, because the sea battered our houses and flooded our street. The storm must have been even worse on these unprotected islands here-and I should think the sea came into this hollow and battered the farm "to bits! Look at that chimney-stack there-all black and broken-that was struck by lightning, I should think."
The four children gazed down at the poor, hollow house and out-buildings. A little farm had once been there-a poor farm maybe, trying to grow a few potatoes in the rocky ground, to keep a few goats or cows, and to take from the sea enough fish to live on.
Now the folk had all gone, unable to battle with the great sea-storms that swept over their farm and destroyed their living.
"This explains the potatoes," said Jill. "That stretch of struggling potato plants must once have been a field."
"Let"s jo down into the hollow and have a look round," said Andy. So down into the dip they scrambled and wandered round the ruined buildings. Nothing had been left-all the furniture had been taken away, and even the gates and doors removed. Seash.o.r.e weeds grew up from the floors of the farmhouse.
"A boy must have lived here," said Andy, picking up a broken wooden train from a patch of weeds.
"And here"s a broken cup," said Jill, bending over what had once been a rubbish-heap.
They wandered about and at last came to a lirfle wooden shack where perhaps a cow or two had been kept in the winter. For some reason it had escaped being beaten in by the waves, and still stood upright, its one window broken, and its floor covered with a creeping weed.
Andy looked at it carefully. "This wouldn"t be a bad place to make into a little house for ourselves," he said. "I was thinking we"d have to try and build one somehow-but this will do if we patch it up a bit. The tent won"t be any use at all if the weather breaks up-and also it"s going to be a great nuisance to keep taking it down from the signal tree each night for our tent and putting it back again in the mornings."
"Oh yes!" said Tom in delight. "Let"s make this our house! That would be fun. Then we could leave the sail flapping for our signal all the time."
They all went into the shack. It was not very large-more like a big bicycle shed, though the roof was higher. A wooden part.i.tion divided it into two.
"We"ll take that down," said Andy. "It would be better to have one fairly big room than two tiny ones."