The novelty of our situation kept me long awake, and with my head pillowed on a bundle of dry seaweed, with the sail of the longboat spread over us as an impromptu tent and for protection from the dew, I lay in meditation and full of melancholy thoughts ere sleep came upon me, and with it confused dreams of the burning ship, of my secluded home, and of
"----the schoolboy spot, We long remember, though there long forgot."
Again I was at Eton! Again I saw the smooth green playing-fields alive with ardent schoolboys in the merry summer sunshine; and again I heard the clamor of their young voices and the balls rattling on bat and wicket; again I heard the pleasant green leaves rustle in the old woods of the Tudor times; or again I was in the shady quadrangles where the monotonous hum of many classes poring over their studies stole through the mullioned windows on the ambient air; and in my dreaming ear that "drowsy hum" seemed strangely to mingle with the chafing of the surge upon "th' unnumbered pebbles" of the lonely shore close by.
At last overcome by weariness, by lassitude and toil, I slept soundly.
My old tutor at Eton used to say, quoting some "wise saw," that "a lazy boy made a lazy man, just as a crooked sapling makes a crooked tree."
It was fortunate for me, however, while on the island of Alphonso, that my habits were those of activity, and that I was never lymphatic by nature.
After dawn next morning we set about the erection of a hut, though we had no other tools than a small hatchet and our clasp-knives. With these we cut or tore down a great number of large branches, and stuck them in the earth, selecting a place where two angles of impending rock conveniently enough formed two solid walls for our edifice, leaving us but two others to erect.
As Tom Lambourne said, "the fellow who cannot use a hammer or axe, is only _half a man_," so we all worked hard with such implements as we had, until our hut was complete.
We left an entrance next the rocks by which to creep in and out, and then thatched or built over the intertwisted branches with turf, torn up by our hands, and with broad plantain leaves, creepers, and all kinds of tendrils that had toughness and consistency woven to form a roof.