is
two seamen made their welcome appearance on the sand-bank. It occurred
to Roger that it would be a very good thing to have a flag and
flag-staff, because their fuel would not last for ever, and with it
would go their only means of signalling to passing ships; so several
narrow pieces of wood were nailed together, and the two seamen, both of
whom were wearing red shirts, sacrificed those garments in the interests
of the community. The lad then split them both down one side, to
increase the area of his improvised ensign, and tied the arms together
to increase the length. This "flag" was then nailed to the makeshift
flag-staff, and Roger and Jake Irwin swarmed up a palm-tree--one of the
three composing the posts for the support of the walls of their hut,
while Walter Bevan passed up the flag and staff to them from below.
Then Roger, with his sword, which he had carried up naked between his
teeth, cut away part of the foliage, and the staff was pushed up through
the hole thus made, the lower portion being secured to the top of the
trunk of the palm-tree. Both men then scrambled down to the ground
again and looked up at their handiwork. There it fluttered, far above
the tufted crowns of the palm-grove, a large red flag at the top of its
lengthy staff, some eighty feet above the ground, and visible, as they
judged, at a distance of at least ten miles out at sea on a clear day.
This, as Roger remarked, gave them an extra chance of being recovered by
the fleet, as the flag would be seen at almost as great a distance as
the smoke from the fire, while the two together ensured their being
sighted by any vessel that approached the island within ten miles.

Satisfied at last with their work, and seeing that there was nothing
further for them to do at the moment, Roger determined to make a tour of
their little domain; so, leaving Jake Irwin to attend to the sick man
Evans, Roger and Walter Bevan set off. Starting from a point on the
beach opposite the hut, they began their walk, going towards the eastern
end of the sand-bank. They found that the shore was everywhere sand
until they had gone some half a mile and nearly reached the end of the
island, when they came upon a ledge of rocks over which they had to
clamber, and which stretched out for quite a long distance into the sea.
The two ventured out some few hundred yards along the ridge to seaward,
and found that it had deep water on each side of it, the rock seeming to
ru