"We'd better do the thing thoroughly. Suppose we start from this big rock and walk right round the island," suggested Isobel. "I have a piece of paper and a pencil in my pocket, and I'll draw a map of it as we go along, and we'll give names to all the capes and bays and headlands."
"Stunning!" agreed Charlie. "This rock can be 'Point Set-Off,' and we can take it in turns to christen the other places. I don't believe the island itself has a name; we shall each have to suggest something, and then put it to the vote. I'm for 'Craggy Holme' myself, but we won't decide anything yet until we have been completely over it."
Thrilled with the excitement of the occasion, the pioneers started on their tour of inspection, noting with approval that the pools at the foot of the cliff were full of sea anemones, star-fishes, hermit crabs, periwinkles, whelks, pink sea-weed, and a wealth of desirable treasures; that the brambles which grew on the slopes above were already covered with fast ripening blackberries; that there were flukes quite seven inches long in the narrow channel on the north shore; and that the sands beyond showed a perfect harvest of cockles and other shells. They had gone perhaps halfway round the coast, and were on the south side, facing the open sea, when suddenly, turning a corner, they found themselves in a spot which made them stand still and look at one another with little gasps of delight. Surely it was the ideal place for a camp. They were in a small creek between two great overhanging crags, where brambles and wood vetch hung down in delightful tangled masses, the fine white sand under their feet alternated with soft green turf, spangled with tiny sea-flowers, and there was quite a bank of small delicate shells left by the high spring tides. Close under the rocks lay the wreck of a schooner, driven ashore by winter storms, and stranded upon the shingle, the broken spars and a fragment of the hull lying half buried in the silvery sand, surrounded by a forest of sea-weed and drift-wood.
"Why, it just beats 'The Swiss Family Robinson' or 'The Boy Explorers' hollow!" said Charlie, turning to his companions with something of the look that Christopher Columbus may have worn when he stepped with his followers on to the shores of the New World. "Here's the very place we were hoping for! We'd soon get that old trail tilted out of the sand; she only needs propping against the cliff, and she'd make a regular Uncle Tom's cabin. With the Wrights and the Rokebys to help, we'd haul her up in a jiffy. Some of these spars and planks would do for seats and tables, and we could light fires with the drift-wood. It's a camp almost ready made for us, I declare."