The two girls worked at the trunk from opposite sides. The air was growing hotter and hotter, the insects became very troublesome, and as time went on and the incisions they had made in the sappy wood were still very shallow, both felt very much discouraged.
"We shall never get through the wretched thing," said Tommy in disgust.
"Can"t we snap it off, Bess?"
"I"m afraid that would only splinter it," said Elizabeth. "It is a bother. What troubles me most is that our knives will be hopelessly blunted if it takes so long to cut one tree. Still, we must peg away.
You rest now, Tommy, and let Mary try again."
Tommy got up with relief, and strolled a few yards away while her sisters continued the work. In a few minutes she came running back.
"What idiots we are!" she cried. "Stop work, you two. We needn"t break our backs or our wrists at all. Come and look."
She led them to the edge of the gra.s.sy knoll, and pointed to three small trees standing within a few feet of each other about the same distance apart, and forming the corners of a sort of triangle.
"There!" she said. "Don"t you see? There"s half our work done for us.
Those three trees can be the corner posts of our hut, and we can use the branches to make a roof."
Quite excited at her discovery, she pointed out that two of the trees had each thrown out a branch about seven feet from the ground, and the third had a branch a little higher. These overhanging branches protected one side of the triangle, and Tommy suggested that they could be employed as a framework upon which they might spread mats woven from the gra.s.ses on the bank of the stream.
"It would take a terrible time to weave the mats," said Mary dubiously.
"Not so long as to cut down the trees," replied Tommy, "and not nearly so hard work. What do you say, Bess?"
"It"s a capital idea, but I can"t weave."
"Oh, we"ll soon teach you that," said Tommy. "You didn"t go to a kindergarten like Mary and me; but it"s not very different from the string work you did on board. Come along; let"s make a start."
They went hopefully to the bank of the stream, but when they tried to cut down the rushes, they found that their knives were already blunt.
As the day was now very hot, and they were hungry and tired, they resolved to have an early dinner, then rest for a while, and later on sharpen their knives on stones at the beach and try again.
By the evening they had cut a large quant.i.ty of gra.s.ses, which they placed in a heap to be weaved next day. They decided again to sleep in the boat, and returned to it just before sunset by way of the clump of banana-trees, carrying their supper with them.
"We have made a good start," said Elizabeth cheerfully, as they sat munching bananas in the boat.
"Yes, but I tell you what," said Tommy, "I"m getting tired of bananas."
"Already!" said Mary, smiling. "Don"t you remember how you said once at home you"d love to live in a banana plantation, where you could pick as many as you liked?"
"And you told me the story of a greedy boy who loved cake, and dreamt that he was in the middle of a big one, and had to eat his way out. I was a silly kid then. Anyway, I"m sick of bananas now, and people say it"s bad to have no change of diet."
"But what can we do?" said Elizabeth. "We haven"t seen anything else."
"Except birds," said Mary. "Pigeon-pie is rather nice."
"We might snare some," said Tommy, "or fish--what about fish? They"d be easiest to catch, I expect. I"ve got some string, and we can easily find something that"ll do for a rod."
"And a bent pin for a hook," said Mary.
"Now just listen to that!" said Tommy. "Anybody would think we were going fishing for sticklebacks. No fish worth cooking would ever let himself be hooked by a bent pin. We"ll find something better than that."
"We"ll see what we can do to-morrow," said Elizabeth. "We"ve never done any sea-fishing, and fishing in the river at home won"t help us much, I fancy. Still, we can try, and I"d like a little fish for a change. You both look awfully tired, so let"s go to sleep now; we shall have plenty to do in the morning."
And Elizabeth, as she laid herself down that night, felt happy in the success of her plan. "If we can only keep busy," she said to herself, "all will be well. But I do hope it won"t be for long."
CHAPTER VIII
THE FISHERS
Up with the sun next morning, the girls began the day by bathing in a little secluded pool, where there was no danger of being interrupted by a shark. Immediately after breakfast they set off to the site of their hut, looked cautiously around to make sure that no one had been there, and began to weave the gra.s.ses they had prepared the day before.
Elizabeth was at first rather slow, but the others worked quickly, and by dinner-time they had each finished a mat several feet square.
"You two have quite outstripped me," said Elizabeth as they returned to the boat. "I"ll go on with my mat after dinner, while you see what you can do to make some fishing-tackle."
"Right!" cried Tommy; "you shall have fish for supper, if you"re good."
They dined on bananas and coffee, ruefully noticing that the tin of condensed milk was nearly empty. Then Mary and Tommy went up the stream to a place where they had seen a clump of canes, which would furnish any number of fishing-rods. They selected one about six feet long, and after a good deal of trouble, the wood being tough, cut it down. Tommy brought out of her pocket two or three pieces of string of unequal length and thickness, and knotted them together.
"There"s our line," she said, "and it"s lucky there"s no one here to laugh at it."
"How can we fasten it on to the rod?" asked Mary.
"Tie it, of course."
Tommy proceeded to tie the string to the thinner end of the rod.
"Oh, bother!" she said, "the cane"s so smooth the string slips down every time. This won"t do."
"Let"s make a hole in the rod, and put the string through it,"
suggested Mary.
"The cane is sure to split if we try to bore a hole with a knife," said Tommy. "I know! There"s a sort of spike in my knife. We"ll make it red-hot, and then I dare say we can bore a clean hole."
They ran back to their little camp on the beach, where Elizabeth was still at work on her mat.
"How are you getting on?" asked Mary.
"Faster now," replied Elizabeth. "I shall beat you both soon."
They told her what they had done, and Tommy thrust the spike into the fire, which they never allowed to go out. Meanwhile, Mary hunted for something that would serve as a hook. She gave a cry of delight when she discovered a strong safety-pin; and Tommy having by this time bored a hole neatly through the cane, they very soon had their rough-and-ready fishing-tackle complete. It only remained to bait the hook. They found plenty of small sh.e.l.lfish clinging fast to the rocks on the sh.o.r.e, and they prised these up with their knives, and provided themselves with a number of the little molluscs. Thus equipped, they went along the sh.o.r.e in search of a spot that promised success. They were both excited--and Elizabeth was so much interested in the experiment that she laid down her mat and followed her sisters. After a little time they came to an irregular line of rocks running from the base of the cliffs towards the reef on which they had nearly struck on approaching the island. They had already observed that some of the rocks always stood above water, while others were sometimes submerged.
These latter were easily distinguishable by the seaweed and the limpets with which they were covered. At the present moment the tide was going down, and the girls thought that they would have a good chance of catching some of the fish that had probably come up with the tide.
Accordingly, they made their way for some distance along the rocky barrier. The sea was pretty calm, owing to the protection of the reef; but every now and then there was a dash of spray over the rocks at the farthest end. Choosing a rock that was lashed by broken water on the seaward side, and had a deep calm pool on the landward side, they determined to try their luck.
"I can see hundreds of fish darting about," said Mary, peering into the pool as Tommy baited the hook.
"The more the merrier," said Tommy. "Look out, Bess, I don"t want to hook you, dear."