The brig was a novelty to him here, and as day succeeded to day he found occupation in searching her. During the hotter part of the day he busied himself in shoveling out the sand from the cavern with a board. In the cool of the morning or evening he worked at the hatchway. Here he soon reached the cargo.
This cargo consisted of staves and short boards. All were blackened, and showed traces of fire. The fire seemed to have burned down to a depth of four feet, and two or three feet under the sides; then the water coming in had quenched it.
He drew out hundreds of these staves and boards, which were packed in bundles, six boards being nailed together as box-shooks, and thirty or forty staves. These he threw out upon the deck and on the sand. What remained he drew about and scattered loosely in the hold of the vessel. He did this with a purpose, for he looked forward to the time when some ship might pass, and it would then be necessary to attract her attention. There was no way of doing so. He had no pole, and if he had it might not be noticed. A fire would be the surest way of drawing attention, and all this wood gave him the means of building one. He scattered it about on the sand, so that it might dry in the hot sun.
Yet it was also necessary to have some sort of a signal to elevate in case of need. He had nothing but a knife to work with; yet patient effort will do much, and after about a week he had cut away the rail that ran along the quarter-deck, which gave him a pole some twenty feet in length. The nails that fastened the boards were all rusted so that they could not be used in attaching any thing to this. He decided when the time came to tie his coat to it, and use that as a flag. It certainly ought to be able to attract attention.
Occupied with such plans and labors and purposes as these, the days passed quickly for two weeks. By that time the fierce rays of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. The interior of the hold and the cabin became free from damp, and hot and dry.
