!"

Sylvia suddenly gave a little scream. The remembrance of the evening
when she read about the Ancient Britons to poor Bates came vividly into
her mind, and though she had since re-read the passage that had then
attracted her attention a hundred times, it had never before presented
itself to her in its full significance. Hurriedly turning the
well-thumbed leaves, she read aloud the passage which had provoked
remark:--

"'The Ancient Britons were little better than Barbarians. They
painted their bodies with Woad, and, seated in their light coracles of
skin stretched upon slender wooden frames, must have presented a wild
and savage appearance.'"

"A coracle! That's a boat! Can't we make a coracle, Mr. Dawes?"

CHAPTER XIII. WHAT THE SEAWEED SUGGESTED.

The question gave the marooned party new hopes. Maurice Frere, with his
usual impetuosity, declared that the project was a most feasible one,
and wondered--as such men will wonder--that it had never occurred to him
before. "It's the simplest thing in the world!" he cried. "Sylvia,
you have saved us!" But upon taking the matter into more earnest
consideration, it became apparent that they were as yet a long way
from the realization of their hopes. To make a coracle of skins seemed
sufficiently easy, but how to obtain the skins! The one miserable
hide of the unlucky she-goat was utterly inadequate for the purpose.
Sylvia--her face beaming with the hope of escape, and with delight at
having been the means of suggesting it--watched narrowly the countenance
of Rufus Dawes, but she marked no answering gleam of joy in those eyes.
"Can't it be done, Mr. Dawes?" she asked, trembling for the reply.

The convict knitted his brows gloomily.

"Come, Dawes!" cried Frere, forgetting his enmity for an instant in the
flash of new hope, "can't you suggest something?"

Rufus Dawes, thus appealed to as the acknowledged Head of the little
society, felt a pleasant thrill of self-satisfaction. "I don't know,"
he said. "I must think of it. It looks easy, and yet--" He paused as
something in the water caught his eye. It was a mass of bladdery seaweed
that the returning tide was wafting slowly to the shore. This object,
which would have passed unnoticed at any other time, suggested to Rufus
Dawes a new idea. "Yes," he added slowly, with a change of tone, "it may
be done. I think I can see my way."

The others preserved a respectful silence until he should speak again.
"How far