Page:Dick Hamilton's Steam Yacht.djvu/255

Rh Frank Bender, "but we'll have to eat them raw."

"Raw? Not a bit of it!" cried Dick. "I've just thought of something. We can make a stone fireplace aboard the raft, and take along some wood. Then, when it doesn't rain—and it's not likely to for a while—we can cook. I never thought of that before, but I've often seen fires built on big lumber rafts, and ours is large enough. We won't have to eat our fish raw, if we're luckyenough to catch any. And another thing, I'm going to rig up some sort of a sail. We can do it with pieces of the bagging. Then we can get some motion beside that of drifting. Oh, before we get through with this we'll have a regular ocean steamer," and he laughed gaily.

He was soon constructing the fireplace on the raft, with a bed of dirt beneath the stones to avoid danger from fire. Henry Darby helped, and Frank Bender gathered a supply of dry wood, which was stored in one of the wooden boxes under the platform. Then a mast, with a boom at top and bottom, to hold distended a square sail of bagging, was made, and erected.

"Now, we begin to look like something," declared Dick, as he surveyed the raft. "We'll float her at high tide to-morrow, and then we'll see how she rides. She may not be as swift as my steam yacht, but she'll answer, I hope."

"What are you going to christen her?" asked Henry.