“No, that’s true,” said Jack. “No caves, no trees, except for those few little birches — and the cliffs too steep to explore. We really are in a fix!”
“Can’t we do anything to help Bill?” asked Lucy-Ann dolefully. “I keep on and on thinking of him.”
“So do I,” said Jack. “But I don’t see that we can do much to help ourselves, let alone Bill. Now — if we could escape from here — or wireless for help and get some of Bill’s friends along — it would be something. But there doesn’t seem anything at all to do except stay here and wait.”
“There’s plenty of food, anyway,” said Dinah. “Stacks of tinned stuff, and biscuits and potted meat, and Nestle’s milk and sardines. . . .”
“I think we’d better strip the boat of them,” said Jack. “I’m surprised the enemy didn’t take what they could with them. Maybe they’ll come back for them — so we’ll take them first. We can hide them down some of the puffin burrows.”
“Let’s have a bit of breakfast now,” said Philip, feeling better now that they had all talked the matter over and made a few plans. “Open some tins and get some ginger-beer. Come on.”
They all felt better still when they had had something to eat and drink. They had put a cover over the poor smashed wireless. They couldn’t bear to look at it.
Jack went up on deck when they had finished their meal. It was very close again, and even the wind seemed warm. The sun shone through a thin veiling of cloud, and had a reddish hue. “That storm is still about,” said Jack. “Come on, everyone. Let’s get to work before it comes.”
It was decided that Philip and Dinah should hunt for driftwood to make a fire up on the cliff. “We don’t know that those aeroplanes we sometimes see belong to the enemy,” said Philip. “If they don’t, they may see our signal and come to circle round. Then they will send help. One might come today, even. So we’ll get a fire alight. We’ll bank it with dry seaweed. That will smoulder well and send up plenty of smoke.”
Jack and Lucy were to carry things from the boat to the tents in Sleepy Hollow. “Take all the tins and food you can,” said Philip. “If the enemy happened to come back at night and take it, we’d be done. We should starve! As it is, we’ve got heaps to last us for weeks.”
The four children worked very hard indeed. Jack and Lucy carried sacks of tins from the boat to Sleepy Hollow. For the time being they bundled them in a heap by the tents. Kiki examined them with interest, and pecked at one or two.
“It’s a good thing your beak isn’t a tin-opener, Kiki,” said Jack, making the first little joke that day, to try and make Lucy-Ann smile. “We shouldn’t have much food left if it was.”
Philip and Dinah were also very busy. They took a sack each from the boat and wandered along the shore to pick up bits of wood. They found plenty at the tide-line and filled their sacks. Then they dragged them to the top of the cliff. Huffin and Puffin went with them, solemn as ever, sometimes walking, sometimes flying.
Philip emptied his sack of wood on a good spot. He began to build a fire. Dinah went off to fill her sack with dry seaweed. There was plenty.
Soon Jack and Lucy-Ann, emptying their own sacks in Sleepy Hollow, saw a spire of smoke rising up from the cliff-top. “Look!” said Jack. “They’ve got it going already! Good work!”
The wind bent the smoke over towards the east. It was good thick smoke, and the children felt sure that it could be seen from quite a distance.
“One of us had always better be up here, feeding the fire, and keeping watch for enemies or friends,” said Philip.
“How shall we know which they are?” asked Dinah, throwing a stick on the fire.
“Well — I suppose we shan’t know,” said Philip. “What we’d better do if we see any boat coming is to hide — that is, if we can find anywhere to hide — and then try and discover if the searchers are enemies or friends. We are sure to hear them talking. We’d better get lots more wood, Di — this fire will simply eat it up!”
Lucy-Ann and Jack helped them when they had finished their own job. “We’ve taken every single tin and every scrap of food out of the boat,” said Lucy-Ann. “We really have got plenty to eat — and that rock-pool to drink from when we’ve finished the ginger-beer. There aren’t an awful lot of bottles left now. Wouldn’t you like to have dinner soon?”
“Yes. I’m jolly hungry,” said Philip. “Let’s have it up here, shall we? Or is it too much bother to fetch a meal here, Lucy-Ann? You see, one of us must keep the fire going all the time.”
“Well, it won’t go out for a while, anyhow,” said Lucy-Ann. “Bank it up with some more seaweed. Honestly, we feel fagged out, carrying all that stuff. Let’s go to Sleepy Hollow and have a good rest and a jolly good meal.”
So they all returned to Sleepy Hollow, where the two tents flapped in the little breeze. They sat down and Lucy-Ann opened tins, and ladled the contents on to plates.
“You’ve got tinned salmon, biscuits and butter, tinned tomatoes and tinned pears,” she said.
Even Huffin and Puffin came closer than usual, to share such a nice meal. They would have eaten every scrap of the salmon if they could. Kiki preferred the tinned pears, but the children would only allow her one.
“Well, things would be a lot worse if we hadn’t got all this nice food,” said Jack, leaning back in the warm sun, after a big meal. “An adventure without good food would be awful! Kiki, take your head out of that tin! You’ve had more than any of us, you greedy glutton of a parrot!”
Chapter 15
A REALLY TERRIBLE STORM
THE wind got up about five o’clock. It whipped the waves round the island until they towered into big white horses that raced up the beaches and broke with a sound of thunder. The sea-birds deserted the coves, and flew into the air, crying loudly. The wind took them and they soared for miles without beating a wing, enjoying themselves thoroughly.
Kiki didn’t like so much wind. She could not glide or soar like the gulls and guillemots. It offended her dignity to be blown about too much. So she stayed close to the tents, which flapped like live things in the wind, and strained at the tent-pegs violently.
“Look here, we can’t possibly watch the fire all night!” said Philip. “We’ll have to bank it up and hope for the best. Maybe it will send out a glow, anyway. Doesn’t that seaweed keep it in nicely? My goodness, the wind tears the smoke to rags now!”
The sun went down in a bank of angry purple clouds that gathered themselves together in the west. Jack and Philip stared at them.
“That’s the storm coming up all right,” said Jack. “Well, we’ve felt one coming for days — this hot weather was bound to end up like that. I hope the wind won’t blow our tents away in the night.”
“So do I,” said Philip anxiously. “Honestly, there’s a perfect gale blowing up now! Look at those awful clouds! They look really wicked!”
The boys watched the clouds covering the sky, making the evening dark much sooner than usual. Philip put his hand into one of his pockets. “My rats know there is a storm coming,” he said. “They’re all huddled up in a heap together right at the very bottom of my pocket. Funny how animals know things like that.”
“Jack!” called Lucy-Ann anxiously. “Do you think the tents are safe? The wind is blowing them like anything!”
The boys went to examine them. They were as well pegged as they could be, but in this gale who knew what might happen?
“We just can’t do anything about it but hope for the best,” said Jack rather gloomily. “Philip, have you got your torch? We’d better be prepared to be disturbed in the night, if this gale goes on — we might have to re-peg one of the tents.”
Both boys had torches with new batteries, so that was all right. They put them down beside their beds when they cuddled up into their rugs that night. They all went early because for one thing it was getting very dark, for another thing it had begun to rain heavily, and for a third thing they were all very tired with the day’s work. Kiki retired with the boys as usual, and Huffin and Puffin scuttled into their burrows nearby.