till the charm of
novelty, and to fry the flukes which they had themselves speared or to
concoct blackberry jam or toffee in an enamelled saucepan over the camp
fire was at present their keenest delight. The only regret was that they
did not possess a boat in which they could row over to their territory
whenever they wished, and the boys had tried to provide a substitute by
constructing a raft from some of the old planks left lying about from
the schooner, lashing them together with pieces of rope in the orthodox
"shipwrecked sailor" fashion, and making paddles out of broken spars. It
looked quite a respectable craft--as Charlie Chester said, "most
suitable for a desert island"--and they had anticipated having a good
deal of fun with it, and being able to take little sea excursions if
they could only manage to steer it properly; and Charlie even had ideas
of rigging up a sail, and perhaps getting across the bay as far as
Ferndale with a favourable wind. Its career, however, was short and
brilliant. It was launched with much noise and nautical language by
Charlie and the other boys, and started gaily off, greatly to the
admiration of the feminine portion of the Sea Urchins, who ran along the
shore shouting encouragement. But it had hardly gone more than a hundred
yards, and was still in shallow water, when the too enthusiastic efforts
of its amateur oarsmen caused it suddenly to turn a somersault, and
upset the crew into the briny deep; then floating swiftly away bottom
side up, it was caught by the current, much to the regret of its
disconsolate builders, who, wet through with their unexpected swim,
watched it drift in the direction of Ferndale, where the tide probably
carried it over the bar, to wash about as a derelict in the open sea
till the water had rotted the ropes that bound the planks.

After the raft proved a failure, the boys took to carving miniature
yachts out of pieces of drift-wood, and sailing them in a wide pool
which was generally left at the mouth of the creek. The girls hemmed the
sails, and provided the vessels with flags in the shape of tiny coloured
pieces of ribbon stitched on to the masts, and would stand by to cheer
the particular bark in which they were interested, as the ladies in
olden days encouraged their knights in the tourney. There was great
competition between the various boats, and it seemed a matter of the
utmost importance whether Charlie Chester's _Water Sprite_, Bertie
Rokeby's _E