Next day they took an iron bar with them, and pitched the stakes for the fence or stockade. Between the stakes they wove in willow rods and brushwood, so that thus bound together, it was much stronger than it looked, and no one could have got in without at least making a great noise. The two boards, nailed together for the gate, were fastened on one side to a stouter stake with small chains like rude hinges. On the other there was a staple and small padlock.
“It’s finished,” said Mark, as he turned the key and locked them in.
“No,” said Bevis, “there’s the bedstead. The ground’s dry,” (it was sand), “but it’s not proper to sleep on the ground.”
They put off preparing the bedstead till next day, when they approached on a spanking south east wind—half a breeze—against which they had to tack indeed, but spun along at a good speed. The waves were not large enough to make the Pinta roll, but some spray came over now and then.
“It’s almost shipwreck weather,” said Mark. “Just see—” He pointed at the cliff where there was a little splashing, as the waves swept sideways along the base of the cliff. “If you run her against the cliff the bowsprit will be knocked in. Would the mast go by the board?”
“Not enough wind,” said Bevis, as he steered past, and they landed at the usual place. The bedstead was made by placing five or six thick poles sawn off at four feet on the floor on the left side of the hut, like the sleepers of a railway. Across these lengthways they laid lesser rods, then still more slender rods crossways, and on these again boughs of spruce fir, one on the other to a foot or more in depth. The framework of logs and rods beneath kept the bed above the ground, and the boughs of the spruce fir, being full of resinous sap, gave out a slight fragrance. On this mattress a rug and some old great-coats were to be thrown, and they meant to cover themselves with more rugs and coats. The bedstead took up much of the room, but then it would answer in the daytime instead of chairs to sit on.
“It’s finished now, then,” said Mark.
“Quite finished,” said Bevis. “All we have now to do is to bring our things.”
“And get wrecked,” said Mark. “These chips and boughs,” pointing to the heap they had cut from the poles and stakes, “will do for our fire. Come on. Let’s go up and look at the cliff where we are to be dashed to pieces.”
They climbed up the cliff to the young oak on the summit, and went to the edge. The firm sand bore them safely at the verge.
“It looks very deep,” said Bevis. “The sand goes down straight.”
“Fathomless,” said Mark. “Just think how awful. It ought to happen at night—pitch black! I know! Some savages ought to light a fire up here and guide us to destruction.”
“We could not scramble up this cliff out of the water—I mean if we have to swim.”
“Of course we shall have to swim, clinging to oars.”
“Then we must get round that corner, somehow.”
“The other side is all weeds; that wouldn’t do.”
“Very likely the waves would bang us against the cliff. Don’t you remember how Ulysses clung to the rock?”
“His hands were torn.”
“Nearly drowned.”
“Tired out.”
“Thumped and breathless.”
“Jolly!”
“But I say! There’s one thing we’ve forgotten,” said Bevis. “If we smash our ship against a cliff like this she’ll go to the bottom—”
“Well, that’s just what we want.”
“Ah, but it’s not like rocks or shoals; she’ll go straight down, right under where we can’t get at her—”
“All the better.”
“But then our things will go down too—gun, and powder, and provisions, and everything.”
“Put them on the island first and wreck ourselves afterwards.”
“So we could. Yes, we could do that, but then,” said Bevis, imagining what would happen, “when the Pinta was missed from the harbour and did not come back, there would be a search, and they would think something had happened to us.”
“I see,” said Mark, “that’s very awkward. What a trouble it is to get wrecked! Why can’t people let us be jolly?”
“They must not come looking after us,” said Bevis, “else it will spoil everything.”
“Perhaps we had better put the wreck off,” said Mark, in a dejected tone. “Do the island first, and have the wreck afterwards.”
“It seems as if we must,” said Bevis, “and then it’s almost as awkward—”
“Why?”
“We shall have to come here in the Pinta, and yet we must not keep her here, else she will be missed.”
“The ship must be here and at home too.”
“Yes,” said Bevis; “she must be at New Formosa on the equator and at home in the harbour. It’s a very difficult thing.”
“Awfully difficult,” said Mark. “But you can do it. Try! Think! Shall I tickle you?”
“It wants magic,” said Bevis. “I ought to have studied magic more; only there are no magic books now.”
“But you can think, I know. Now, think hard—hard.”
“First,” said Bevis slowly, tracing out the proceedings in his imagination; “first we must bring all our things—the gun and powder, and provisions, and great-coats, and the astrolabe, and spears, and leave them all here.”
“Pan ought to come,” said Mark, “to watch the hut.”
“So he did; he shall come, and besides, if we shoot a wild duck he can swim out and fetch it.”
“Now go on,” said Mark. “First, we bring everything and Pan.”
“Tie him up,” said Bevis, “and row home in the boat. Then the thing is, how are we to get to the island?”
“Swim,” said Mark.
“Too far.”
“But we needn’t swim all up the New Sea. Couldn’t we swim from where we landed that night after the battle?”
“Ever so much better. Let’s go and look,” said Bevis.
Away they went to the shore on that side of the island, but they saw in a moment that it was too far. It was two hundred yards to the sedges on the bank where they had landed that night. They could not trust themselves to swim more than fifty or sixty yards; there was, too, the risk of weeds, in which they might get entangled.
“I know!” said Bevis, “I know! You stop on the island with Pan. I’ll sail the Pinta into harbour, then I’ll paddle back on the catamaran.”
“There!” said Mark, “I knew you could do it if you thought hard. We could bring the catamaran up in the boat, and leave it in the sedges there ready.”
“I can leave half my clothes on the island,” said Bevis, “and tie the rest on my back, and paddle here from the sedges in ten minutes. That will be just like the savages do.”
“I shall come too,” said Mark. “I shan’t stop here. Let Pan be tied up, and I’ll paddle as well.”
“The catamaran won’t bear two.”
“Get another. There’s lots of planks. I will come—it’s much jollier paddling than sitting here and doing nothing.”
“Capital,” said Bevis. “We’ll have two catamarans, and paddle here together.”
“First-rate. Let’s be quick and get the things on the island.”
“There will be such a lot,” said Bevis. “The matchlock, and the powder, and the flour, and—”
“Salt,” said Mark. “Don’t you remember the moorhen. Things are not nice without salt.”
“Yes, salt and matches, and pots for cooking, and a lantern, and—”
“Ever so many cargoes,” said Mark. “As there’s such a lot, and as we can’t go home and fetch anything if it’s forgotten, hadn’t you better write a list?”
“So I will,” said Bevis. “The pots and kettles will be a bother, they will want to know what we are going to do.”
“Buy some new ones.”
“Right; and leave them at Macaroni’s.”
“Come on. Sail home and begin.”
They launched the Pinta, and the spanking south-easterly breeze carried them swiftly into harbour. At home there was a small parcel, very neatly done up, addressed to “Captain Bevis.”
“That’s Frances’s handwriting,” said Mark. Bevis cut the string and found a flag inside made from a broad red ribbon cut to a point.
“It’s a pennant,” said Bevis. “It will do capitally. How was it we never thought of a flag before?”
“We were so busy,” said Mark. “Girls have nothing to do, and so they can remember these sort of stitched things.”
“She shall have a bird of paradise for her hat,” said Bevis. “We shall be sure to shoot one on the island.”
“I shouldn’t give it to her,” said Mark. “I should sell it. Look at the money.”
In the evening they took a large box (which locked) up to the boat, carrying it through the courtyard with the lid open—ostentatiously open—and left it on board. Next morning they filled it with their tools. Bevis kept his list and pencil by him, and as they put in one thing it suggested another, which he immediately wrote down. There were files, gimlets, hammers, screw-drivers, planes, chisels, the portable vice, six or seven different sorts of nails, every tool indeed they had. The hatchet and saw were already on the island. Besides these there were coils of wire and cord, balls of string, and several boxes of safety and lucifer matches. This was enough for one cargo, they shut the lid, and began to loosen the sails ready for hoisting.
“You might take us once.”
“You never asked us.”
Tall Val and little Charlie had come along the bank unnoticed while they were so busy.
“I wish you would go away,” said Mark, beginning to push the Pinta afloat. The ballast and cargo made her drag on the sand.
“Bevis,” said Val, “let us have one sail.”
“All the times you’ve been sailing,” said Charlie, “and all by yourselves, and never asked anybody.”
“And after we banged you in the battle,” said Val. “If you did beat us, we hit you as hard as we could.”
“It was a capital battle,” said Bevis hesitatingly. He had the halyard in his hand, and paused with the mainsail half hoisted.
“Whopping and snopping,” said Charlie.
“Charging and whooping and holloaing,” said Val.
“Rare,” said Bevis. “Yes; you fought very well.”
“But you never asked us to have a sail.”
“Not once—you didn’t.”
“Well, it’s not your ship. It’s our ship,” said Mark, giving another push, till the Pinta was nearly afloat.
“Stop,” cried Charlie, running down to the water’s edge. “Bevis, do take us—”
“It’s very selfish of you,” said Val, following.
“So it is,” said Bevis. “I say, Mark—”
“Pooh!” said Mark, and with a violent shove he launched the boat, and leaped on board. He took a scull, and began to row her head round. The wind was north and light.
“I bate you,” said Charlie. “I believe you’re doing something. What’s in that box.”
“Ballast, you donk,” said Mark.
“That it isn’t, I saw it just before you shut the lid. It’s not ballast.”
“Let’s let them come,” said Bevis irresolutely.
“You awful stupe,” said Mark, under his breath. “They’ll spoil everything.”
“And why do you always sail one way?” said Val. “We’ve seen you ever so many times.”
“I won’t be watched,” said Bevis angrily: he, unconsciously, endeavoured to excuse his selfishness under rage.
“You can’t help it.”
“I tell you, I won’t.”
“You’re not General Caesar now.”
“I hate you,” pulling up the mainsail. Mark took the rope and fastened it; Bevis sat down to the tiller.
“You’re a beast,” screamed little Charlie, as the sails drew and the boat began to move: the north wind was just aft.
“I never thought you were so selfish,” shouted Val. “Go on—I won’t ask you again.”
“Take that,” said Charlie, “and that—and that.”
He threw three stones, one after the other, with all his might: the third, rising from the surface of the water, struck the Pinta’s side sharply.
“Aren’t they just horrid?” he said to Val.
“I never saw anything like it,” said Val. “But we’ll pay them out, somehow.”
On the boat, Bevis looked back presently, and saw them still standing at the water’s edge.
“It’s a pity,” he said; “Mark, I don’t like it: shall we have them?”
“How can we? Of course they would spoil everything; they would tell everybody, and we could never do it; and, besides, the new island would not be a new island, if everybody was there.”
“No more it would.”
“We can take them afterwards—after we’ve done the island. That will be just as well.”
“So it will. They will watch us, though.”
“It’s very nasty of them to watch us,” said Mark. “Why should we take them for sails when they watch us?”
“I hate being watched,” said Bevis.
“They will just make everything as nasty for us as they can,” said Mark; “and we shall have to be as cunning as ever we can be.”
“We will do it, though, somehow.”
“That we will.”
The light north wind wafted the Pinta gently up the New Sea: the red pennant, fluttering at the mast, pointed out the course before them. They disposed of their first cargo in the store-room, or cave, placing the tools in a sack, though the cave was as dry as the box, that there might not be the least chance of their rusting. The return voyage was slow, for they had to work against the wind, and it was too light for speed. They looked for Charlie and Val, but both were gone.
Another cargo was ready late in the afternoon. They carried the things up in the flag-basket, and, before filling the box, took care to look round and behind the shed where the sculls were kept, lest any one should be spying. Hitherto they had worked freely, and without any doubt or suspicion: now they were constantly on the watch, and suspected every tree of concealing some one. Bevis chafed under this, and grew angry about it. In filling the box, too, they kept the lid towards the shore, and hoisted the mainsail to form a screen.
Mark took care that there should be some salt, and several bags of flour, and two of biscuits, which they got from a whole tinful in the house. He remembered some pepper too, but overlooked the mustard. They took several tins of condensed milk. From a side of bacon, up in the attic, they cut three streaky pieces, and bought some sherry at the inn; for they thought if they took one of the bottles in the house, it would be missed, and that the servants would be blamed. Some wine would be good to mix with the water; for though they meant to take a wooden bottle of ale, they knew it would not keep.
Then there was a pound of tea, perhaps more; for they took it from the chest, and shovelled it up like sand, both hands full at once. A bundle of old newspapers was tied up, to light the fire; for they had found, by experience, that it was not easy to do so with only dry grass. Bevis hunted about till he discovered the tin mug he had when he was a little boy, and two tin plates. Mark brought another mug. A few knives and forks would never be missed from the basketful in the kitchen; and, in choosing some spoons, they were careful not to take silver, because the silver was counted every evening.
They asked if they could have a small zinc bucket for the boat; and when they got it, put three pounds or more of knob sugar in it, loose; and covered it over with their Turkish bathing-towels, in which they had wrapped up a brush and comb. Just as they were about to start, they remembered soap and candles. To get these things together, and up to the Pinta, took them some hours, for they often had to wait awhile till people were out of the way before they could get at the cupboards. In the afternoon, as they knew, some of the people went upstairs to dress, and that was their opportunity. By the time they had landed, and stowed away this cargo, the sun was declining.