"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."
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.
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."