Philip woke and sat up. Then the girls stirred. Soon they were all wide awake, looking round the curious cavity, and remembering the events of the night before.
“What a night!” said Dinah, shuddering. “Oh — when our tents blew away — I really did feel awful!”
“And when Philip disappeared, I felt worse,” said Lucy-Ann. “What time is it, Jack?”
Jack looked at his watch and whistled. “My word — it’s almost ten o’clock. How we’ve slept. Come on, let’s see if the storm is still going strong.”
He stood up and pulled away the overhanging heather that blocked up the narrow entrance to the hole. At once a shaft of blinding sunlight entered, and the children blinked. Jack put his head out of the hole in delight.
“Golly! It’s a perfect day! The sky is blue again, and there’s sunshine everywhere. Not a sign of the storm left. Come on, let’s go up into the sunlight and have a look round.”
Up they went, giving each other a hand. Once they wore out of the hole, and the heather fell back into place again, there was no sign of where they had spent the night.
“Wouldn’t it make an absolutely marvellous hiding-place?” said Jack. The others looked at him, the same thought occurring to everyone at once.
“Yes. And if the enemy comes — that’s where we’ll go,” said Dinah. “Unless they actually walk over the place they can’t possibly find it. Why — I don’t know myself where it is now — though I’ve just come out of it!”
“Gosh, don’t say we’ve lost it as soon as we’ve found it,” said Jack, and they looked about for the entrance. Jack found it in almost the same way as Philip had the night before — by falling down it. He set an upright stick beside it, so that they would know the entrance easily next time. “We might have to sleep down there each night now, as our tents have gone,” said Jack. “It’s a pity we’ve brought our rugs up. Still, they can do with a sunning. We’ll spread them out on the heather.”
“Thank goodness that awful wind’s gone,” said Dinah. “There’s hardly even a breeze today. It’s going to be frightfully hot. We’ll bathe.”
They had a dip in the quiet sea, which looked quite different from the boiling raging sea of the day before. Now it was calm and blue, and ran up the sand in frilly little waves edged with white. After their bathe the children had an enormous breakfast in the spot where their tents had been.
Huffin and Puffin appeared as soon as the children arrived and greeted them joyfully.
“Arrrrrr! Arrrrrrr!”
“They’re saying that they hope we’ve got a good breakfast for them,” said Dinah. “Huffin and Puffin, I wish you’d eat rats. You’d be very useful then.”
Philip’s rats had appeared again, now that the storm was over, much to Dinah’s disgust. They seemed very lively, and one went into Jack’s pockets to find a sunflower seed. It brought one out, sat on Jack’s knee and began to nibble it. But Kiki pounced at once, and snatched the seed away, whilst Squeaker scurried back to Philip in a hurry.
“You’re a dog in the manger, Kiki,” said Jack. “You don’t really want that sunflower seed yourself, and you won’t let Squeaker have it either. Fie!”
“Fie fo fum,” said Kiki promptly, and went off into a screech of laughter, right in Jack’s ear. He pushed her off his shoulder.
“I shall be deaf for the rest of the day! Lucy-Ann, look out for that potted meat. Huffin is much too interested in it.”
“Really — what with Kiki pinching fruit out of the tin, and Huffin and Puffin wanting the potted meat, and Philip’s rats sniffing round, it’s a wonder we’ve got anything ourselves!” said Lucy-Ann. But all the same, it was fun to have the creatures joining in and being one with them. Huffin and Puffin were especially comical that morning, for now that they were really friendly, they wanted to look into everything. Huffin suddenly took an interest in Dinah’s fork and picked it up with his beak.
“Oh, don’t swallow that, silly!” cried Dinah, and tried to get her fork away. But Huffin had a very strong beak, and he won the tug of war. He waddled away to examine the fork in peace.
“He won’t swallow it, don’t worry,” said Philip, tossing Dinah his own fork. “It’ll keep him quiet a bit if he plays with it for a while.”
The children’s fire was, of course, completely out. It had to be pulled to pieces and lighted all over again. This was not so easy as before, because everything had been soaked during the night. Still, the sun was so very hot that it wouldn’t be long before the wood and the sea-weed were bone-dry again.
The children missed out dinner completely that day, because it had been twelve o’clock before they had cleared up their breakfast things. “We’ll have a kind of high tea about five,” said Jack. “We’ve plenty to do — look for our tents — light the fire — find some more wood — and go and see if the motor boat is all right.”
Their tents were nowhere to be seen. One or two pegs were found but that was all. “The tents are probably lying on some island miles and miles away,” said Jack. “Scaring the sea-birds there. Well — shall we sleep in that hole tonight?”
“Oh no, please don’t let’s,” begged Lucy-Ann. “It’s smelly. And it’s so very hot again now that surely we could put our rugs on cushions of heather and sleep out in the open. I should like that.”
Philip looked up at the clear blue sky. Not a cloud was to be seen. “Well,” he said, “if it’s like this tonight, it would be quite comfortable to sleep in the open. We’ll plan to do that unless the weather changes. Let’s find a nice cushiony place, and put our rugs there, and our other clothes, with the ground-sheets over them. Good thing the ground-sheets only blew up against those birch-trees and got stuck there!”
They found a nice heathery place, not too far from where Lucy-Ann kept the stores, beneath the big ledge of stone, and piled their extra jerseys, their mackintoshes, their rugs and their ground-sheets there. Lucy-Ann had stored their spare clothes with the food under the ledge, but the rain had driven in, and had made them damp. So it was decided that it would be better to use them as extra bedclothes at night, and keep them under the ground-sheets during the daytime.
After they had done all this they went to see their fire, which was burning well now. They sat on the top of the cliff, with the birds crying all round them, and looked out on the calm, brilliantly-blue sea.
“What’s that?” said Lucy-Ann suddenly, pointing to something floating not far off.
“Looks like a heap of wood, or something,” said Philip. “Wreckage of some sort. Hope it comes inshore. We can use it for our fire.”
It came slowly in with the tide. Philip put his glasses to his eyes. Then he lowered them again, looking so taken-aback that the others were scared.
“Do you know,” he said, “that wreckage looks awfully like bits of the Lucky Star. And there’s more bits over there, look — and I daresay we should find some down on the rocks.”
There was a shocked silence. Nobody had even thought that the motor-boat might have been taken by the storm and battered. Jack swallowed hard. That would be a blow! He got up.
“Come on. We’d better go and see. Of course it was bound to be smashed up, but we couldn’t have moved it. Gosh — what bad luck if the boat’s gone! Even if the engine was smashed, it was still a boat. We might have rigged up a sail — or something. . . .”
In silence the children left the fire on the cliff and made their way through the cleft, and down the rocky ledges to the little harbour.
There was no boat there. Only a bit of the mooring rope was left, still round the rock nearby, its ragged ends fluttering in the tiny breeze.
“Look!” said Jack, pointing. “She must have been battered up and down by great waves rushing in and out of the channel — see the paint on the rocks — and look at the bits of wood about. When the rope broke she must have been taken right out of the channel, and then beaten to bits against the cliffs. What a frightful shame!”
The girls had tears in their eyes, and Philip had to turn away too. Such a lovely boat! Now she was nothing but masses of wreckage which they could burn on their fire. Poor Lucky Star. Unlucky Star should have been her name.