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This was a vital question, for useful as their raft was for coming and going between the wreck and the shore, it was far too heavy and clumsy for transporting their valuables any distance; and without hatchets or carpenters’ tools they could not construct a raft by breaking up the deck, and the cutting down of trees with their pocket-knives was not to be thought of.
The memorial-hunters have completely cut away the original wood-work around the spot, with their pocket-knives; and the staircase, balustrade, and floor, as well as the adjacent doors and door-frames, have recently been renewed; the walls, moreover, are covered with new paper-hangings, the former having been torn off in tatters; and thus it becomes something like a metaphysical question whether the place of the murder actually exists.
'Come along, said Allan authoritatively; 'don't let's stand dawdling about. 'I can't understand Allan at all, declared Marjorie. She and Reggie, armed with large pocket-knives, were engaged in cutting heather on the moor, which stretched, a mass of purple, to the verge of the cliffs. A pile of heather lay beside them, the result of an hour's hard sawing of the wiry stems.
The trees had low branches and it would be an easy matter to stand other branches up against them, one end on the ground, and so make a fairly good shelter. With their pocket-knives Bert and Harry began cutting branches from the evergreen trees that grew all about. As fast as they were cut the girls took them, and piled them up as best they could.
Blithely and merrily, like all coach passengers after feeding, our party rolled steadily along, with occasional gibes at those they met or passed, such as telling waggoners their linch-pins were out; carters' mates, there were nice pocket-knives lying on the road; making urchins follow the coach for miles by holding up shillings and mock parcels; or simple equestrians dismount in a jiffy on telling them their horses' shoes were not all on "before."
After they had left the store, the oldest boy gave Oscar and Alfred, each, one of the pocket-knives, to pay them for their trouble, as he expressed it. They were much pleased with their present, and felt very well satisfied with their afternoon's adventure.
And then the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip-beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, painkillers, pocket handkerchiefs, pills, sardines, saddles, shears and sauces: in fact everything which every kind of man might want, and which apparently every man did want, for large and various were the purchases, and great the flow of conversation.
"Oh!" replied the engineer, "we might, no doubt, find all these substances on the island, but a gun is a delicate instrument, and needs very particular tools. However, we shall see later!" "Why," cried Pencroft, "were we obliged to throw overboard all the weapons we had with us in the car, all our implements, even our pocket-knives?"
The beef was immediately shot and butchered, and before the animal heat had left the meat, it was impaled in little strips on sticks, bayonets, swords, and pocket-knives, and roasting over the fires. Though numbers of the enemy visited the camps and plied the men with all sorts of questions, seeming very curious and inquisitive, not an unkind word was said on either side that day.
On the beds there were hard mattresses, but no pillows, sheets, or in fact any bed-furniture. Our guests being travellers and full of resources, slept on their pith hats for pillows, and used their pocket-knives. A good deal of fun was made of our privations, and indeed, as no beloved friend was missing, we could afford to laugh.
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