“Time’s up,” called Frank Merrill.  “Sorry to drive you, but we’ve got to keep at it as long as the light lasts.  After to-day, though, we need work only at high water.  Between times, we can explore the island — " He spoke as if he were wheedling a group of boys with the promise of play.

“Select a site for our capital city” — Honey Smith helped him out facetiously — “lay out streets — begin to excavate for the church, town-hall, schoolhouse, and library.”

“The first thing to do now,” Frank Merrill went on, as usual, ignoring all facetiousness, “is to put up a signal.”

Under his direction, they nailed a pair of sheets, one at the southern, the other at the northern reef, to saplings which they stripped of branches.  Then they went back to the struggle for salvage.

The fascination of work — and of such novel work — still held them.  They labored the rest of the morning, lay off for a brief lunch, went at it again in the afternoon, paused for dinner, and worked far into the evening.  Once they stopped long enough to build a huge signal fire on the each.  When they turned in, not one of them but nursed torn and blistered hands.  Not one of them but fell asleep the instant he lay down.

They slept until long after sunrise.

It was Pete Murphy who waked them.  “Say, who was it, yesterday, talked about seeing black spots?  I’m hanged if I’m not hipped, too.  When I woke just before sunrise, there were black things off there in the west.  Of course I was almost dead to the world but — "

“Like great birds?” Billy Fairfax asked with interest.

“Exactly.”

“Bats from your belfry,” commented Ralph Addington.  Because of his constant globe-trotting, Addington’s slang was often a half-decade behind the times.

“Too much sunlight,” Frank Merrill explained.  “Lucky thing, we don’t any of us have to wear glasses.  We’d certainly be up against it in this double glare.  Sand and sun both, you see!  And you can thank whatever instinct that’s kept you all in training.  This shipwreck is the most perfect case I’ve ever seen of the survival of the fittest.”

And in fact, they were all, except for Pete Murphy, big men, and all, even he, active, strong-muscled, and in the pink of condition.

The huge tide had not entirely subsided, but there was a perceptible diminution in the height of the waves.  Up beyond the water-line lay a fresh installment of jetsam.  But, as before, they labored only to save the flotsam.  They worked all the morning.

In the afternoon, they dug a huge trench.  Frank Merrill presiding, they buried the dead with appropriate ceremony.

“Thank God, that’s done,” Ralph Addington said with a shudder.  “I hate death and everything to do with it.”

“Yes, we’ll all be more normal now they’re gone,” Frank Merrill added.  “And the sooner everything that reminds us of them is gone the better.”