SUSAN WAS ASHORE NEXT. Then Titty with her basket of crockery. John stayed in the Swallow to hand out the stores. First went the loose cooking things that had been tucked in anywhere. Then went the two tents, each rolled in its ground-sheet, then the biscuit tins, and then the heavy tin box with the books and barometer and the things that had to be kept dry. That lightened the ship, and Mate Susan and the able-seaman pulled her a little further up, which made it easier to bring ashore the big sacks full of rugs and blankets. Everything was piled together on the dry pebbly beach.
“Now, Mister Mate,” said Captain John, “let’s go and explore.”
“The first thing to do,” said Susan, “is to find the best place for our camp.”
“Not too easily seen from anywhere,” said Titty.
“We want a flat bit of ground with trees to hold the tents up,” said John.
“And a good place for a fire,” said Susan.
“Is it safe to leave the things here?” said Titty. “There might be a tidal wave, forty feet high, washing over everything.”
“Not as big as that,” said John. “That would cover the island.”
“Hullo, where’s that boy?” said the mate. The Boy Roger was exploring already. Just then he shouted from close to them, behind some bushes.
“Someone’s had a fire here before.”
The others ran up from the little beach. Between the landing-place and the high part of the island where the big pine tree was, there was a round, open space of mossy ground. There were trees round the edge of it, and in the middle of it there was a round place where the turf had been scraped away. Roger was there, looking at a neat ring of stones, making a fireplace with the ashes of an old fire in it. At opposite sides of the ring two stout forked sticks had been driven into the ground and built round with heavy stones and another long stick was lying across the fireplace in the forks of the two upright sticks, so that a kettle could be hung on it over the fire. Close by the fireplace there was a neat pile of dry sticks all broken to about the same length. Someone had had a fire here, and someone was meaning to have a fire again.
“Natives,” said Titty.
“Perhaps they are still here,” said Roger.
“Come on,” said Captain John. “We’ll go all over it.”
There was really not very much of the island to explore. It did not take the crew of the Swallow very long to make sure that, though someone had been on the island sometime, there was nobody but themselves on the island to-day. They went up to the northern end of the island, and looked out over the lake from the high part of the island by the big tree. Then they went to the southern part of the island, but found it rocky and covered with heather and small stunted bushes, growing so thickly that it was not easy to push one’s way through them. There were trees, too, but not so tall as those at the northern end. But there were no signs of human beings, and no place where it would be safe to have a fire. They came back to the fireplace.
“The natives knew how to choose the right place,” said Susan, “and it’s a fine fireplace.”
“There are no natives on the island now,” said Roger.
“They may have been killed and eaten by other natives,” said Titty.
“Anyhow, this is the best place for a camp,” said John. “Let’s put the tents up at once.”
So they set about making their camp. They brought the tent bundles up from the landing-place and unrolled them. They chose four trees on the side of the fireplace nearest to the big pine. “The high ground will shelter them from the north,” said John. Then he climbed about seven feet up the trunk of a tree, and fastened one end of one of the tent ropes. Susan held the other end until he had climbed up another tree, when he fastened it at about the same height. The rope, of course, sagged in the middle, so that the tent was only about five feet high. The rope was not made too taut, because the dew at night would make it shrink. The tent now hung down on both sides of the rope like a sheet put to dry. The next thing to do was to fill its pockets with stones. As soon as there were a few stones in the pockets that were at the bottom of each side of the tent, it was easy to keep the walls apart. But to make sure that the tent was firmly set up they carried a great many stones from the beach, besides the stones they picked up under the trees, so that all round the two sides and back of the tent there was a row of stones in the pockets keeping the tent walls properly stretched.
“It’s a good thing mother made this sort of tent,” said Susan. “The rock is close under the ground everywhere, and we could never have driven any pegs in.”
The next thing was to drag the ground-sheet into the tent and spread it. As soon as that was done, they all crowded in.
“Good,” said Susan. “You can just see the fireplace from inside.”
The second tent was set up in the same way, and then all the rest of the stores were brought up from the beach. Mate Susan began to think about dinner. Able-seaman Titty and the Boy Roger were sent to gather firewood. There were a lot of dry branches scattered about under the trees. Somehow, no one wanted to use the neat little pile of wood that had been left by the last users of the fireplace. And really there was no need. Presently a fire was burning in the blackened ring of stones. Susan found a place by the landing beach where it was easy to stand on two rocks and dip a kettle full of clean water. She came back with the kettle, and slung it on the cross stick over the fire.
“Everything is all right,” said Captain John, “except the landing-place. Everybody can see it from the mainland, and if it comes on to blow from the east it’s a very bad place for the Swallow. I’m going to look for a better place.”
“There isn’t one,” said Susan. “We’ve sailed all round.”
“I’m going to have another look, anyway,” said Captain John.
“But we’ve just been all over the island,” said Susan.
“We didn’t go to the very end of it,” said John.
“But it’s all rocks there,” said Susan.
“Well, I’m going to look,” said Captain John, and leaving the mate and the crew to their cooking, he went off to the southern end of the island.
He knew there was nothing that would do for a harbour on the north end of the island, or on the west, because there the rock dropped down like a wall of stone into the water. On the eastern side, except for the landing-place, it was much the same. But there was just a chance that he might find what he wanted at the south end where the island broke up into smaller islands, bare rocks sticking up out of the water, some of them lying so far out that he had not thought it was safe to come very near when they had been sailing round in Swallow.
He took the easiest way through the undergrowth and the small trees. Almost it seemed to him that someone had been that way before. He walked straight into the thing he was looking for. He had been within a yard or two of seeing it when they had first explored the island. Yet it was so well hidden that he had turned back without seeing it. This time he almost fell into it. It was a little strip of beach curving round a tiny bay at the end of the island. A thick growth of hazels overhung it, and hid it from anyone who had not actually pushed his way through them. Beyond it the south-west corner of the island ran out nearly twenty yards into the water, a narrow rock seven or eight feet high, rising higher and then dropping gradually. Rocks sheltered it also from the south-east. There was a big rock that was part of the island, and then a chain of smaller ones beyond it. It was no wonder that they had thought that there was nothing but rocks there when they had sailed past outside.
“It may be only a puddle with no way into it,” said John to himself.
He climbed out on the top of the big rock. There was heather on the top of this rock, and John crawled out on it, looking down into the little pool below him. Further out on the far side of the pool he could see