ess have burned it if
we had not disturbed them. The gun for which we had come was in the
rear chamber, limbered up and ready for use. The recluse of the island
had brought it as a weapon of defence. It could be discharged from any
door or window; and, loaded with canister and fired into an invading
horde of savages, it would produce fearful havoc among them.

I attached a rope to the carriage, and we rolled it out of the house.
When I realized how heavy it was, my confidence in my ability to convey
it to the main shore was a little shaken. However, it was down hill all
the way to the point where we had landed, and we had no difficulty in
moving it so far; but we had to return a second time for the
ammunition.

"Here we are," said Plunkett, "and here we are likely to be, unless we
go over without the gun. It won't swim over there."

"Of course it won't," I replied, impatiently; "but we are going to take
it over there. Now we must make a raft."

"A raft!" exclaimed the croaker. "The lieutenant ought to have sent a
whole section over here."

"That's the idea! We can make a raft in less than an hour. There is no
end of logs here," added Morgan, glancing along the shore, where there
were plenty of sticks of timber, of all sorts and sizes.

Plunkett growled; but he assisted Morgan, who went to work in earnest.
While they were rolling the logs to a convenient position in the water,
I went back to the house. Mr. Gracewood had a wheelbarrow. I broke up
some large boxes, and wheeled the boards, with a supply of nails, down
to the river. By this time the soldiers had placed half a dozen logs,
from fifteen to twenty feet long, in the water, side by side. They had
been obliged to use the axes a little, but generally the sticks had
been deprived of their branches by being tossed about on the shore. The
boards I had brought were nailed across them, so as to hold them
together.

Above this foundation shorter and dryer sticks, from the woods, were
placed crosswise, and while my companions were laying them down I
returned to the house with the wheelbarrow. I could take only a small
portion of the ammunition at a load, and I repeated the journey several
times before the raft was finished. I did not bring the whole of it,
but I thought I had enough to kill all the Indians within twenty miles
of the Castle.

The raft was built up a foot above the water, so as to furnish the
necessary floating power, and the parts were securely bo