Inside, the walls were twenty feet high all round, all bare rock; but the floor was covered with grass, and moss, and wild flowers.

Aralia and Pansy were wild with delight, and Pansy said she would now be able to sleep without ugly dreams.

Veevee would be her bed-fellow, and Floss would curl up with Sissie, and big Briton could sleep at the entrance.

So it was all arranged.

But as there could be no telling how long they might have to remain here, and as rain would be sure to fall, even if snow did not, Tom and Frank began to build a hut inside Fort Fairyland, as they called their strange abode.

[Illustration]

Now each boy had—­like all Greenland sailors—­not only a large, many-bladed knife, with a saw in it, but a huge broad dagger in a leathern belt round his waist.  So they did not want for tools.

They found the best wood for what they wanted growing close by the lake, in the shape of straight and strong willows.  There were plenty of leaves, and grasses, and heath also.

It would be rather a long job, but they set to work with a will, and in three days’ time they had dragged everything they wanted up to Fort Fairyland.  The building of the hut was fine fun.  At first it was only meant to be a kind of shelter on poles, but, as they had so much time upon their hands, they agreed to build real walls, and leave space for a door and a window.  In little more than a week they had the framework all up, and the roof all made.  It was thatched first with broad leaves, and then with grass.  And, mind you a short ladder had to be made first to permit them to do the thatching.  When this was finished, all the sides were filled in with willow branches, except door and window.  Never a hole was left in it, for Aralia and Pansy collected heaps and heaps of dried moss, and the boys worked this in to fill up the gaps.

And when all was finished, and wicker seats made, it did look a cosy little hut indeed.

But all the cooking was done out-of-doors.  There were no sauce-pans to clean, nor knives nor forks.  The plates were broad leaves, and for knives and forks the castaways used pointed sticks.

It really wasn’t bad fun at all being Crusoes in such a place as this.

But—­dear me! there is always a “but” about everything—­how was it all to end?

And where was the Valhalla?

Except for these two questions, which would keep on running through Tom’s and Frank’s minds, they could have been quite contented—­well, for a time at all events.

CHAPTER VI

In their rambles through this little Arctic fairy land, Tom noticed that the squirrels were now busy every day running away to their holes with nuts and leaves.  Of course they might have young ones to feed, he thought; but surely it was something more than this which made them act thus.