The very day after this Mr. Millward and I began to cut the osiers. We tied them in bundles of a hundred or more, and put them into the water to keep from drying out until used. When we had quite a large stock on hand we began each evening after supper to make the cages, enclosing four of the gourds, now quite dry and hard, in each cage.
In the mean time, as regular work for each day, we began the construction of the framework. For this we needed seven great spars, which had to be cut on the upland from a species of pine which grew there, trimmed to the required shape on the ground, and from thence got down to the sea.
We selected the trees as near the creek as possible, and by means of levers rolled them into the water, which was barely deep enough to float such great sticks. The labor was a great deal for two men to accomplish, one being old and feeble. It took us every working day for three weeks to get these timbers down to the mouth of the creek. But it was finally done, and then commenced the framing together of the two triangles and their attachment to the beam. This we did with ties of strong inch and a half rope in several turns. At last, the complete structure lay floating in the creek ready to be towed out to the galleon.
While we were at work getting out the timbers on the upland it happened nearly every day that Alice Millward would either go with us in the morning or come out at noon bringing a lunch to us of hot baked yams and bacon, and so go home with us at night; or when I had wet work in the creek, following down a launched timber, she would return with her father in advance. We always went to this work quite early in the morning and returned home at least four hours before sunset, as the cage-making work demanded some of our time. On rainy days we did not go out at all, but kept busy with the basket-work.
One day it happened that at noon when we expected Alice with the lunch, she did not come promptly as usual, and after waiting nearly an hour over time, we both became quite anxious to know why she did not arrive. I told Mr. Millward to wait where he was, to receive her if she came, while I went back to the house with Duke to see if she was there. Hurrying along, the dog and I arrived in a little over half an hour at the house, going by the shortest cut and as rapidly as possible, running indeed part of the way where the nature of the ground permitted. As I had greatly feared, she was not there. Nothing indicated any disturbance; everything was as we had left it in the morning, and I concluded at once that she had started to come to us with the lunch, and had either lost her way in the dense growth, or had received some hurt on the road. The obvious thing to do under such circumstances was to follow up the regular path which we customarily took, and which in my haste to reach the house I had not pursued on my return, and to look for traces of her on the way.