He had taken the bowsprit of the barque and three large stems from the bamboo growth as a basis for this craft. The bamboo stems were firmly lashed together, to act as a mate for the bowsprit. They were held away from the latter at a distance of about three feet by some of the few unrotted bits of board he had torn from the old vessel's cabin, plus more bamboo, split and employed for his platform. Two half-cylindrical sections of this useful plant he had lashed to eight-foot poles of considerable stiffness to complete a pair of oars. His rowlocks, saved from the smelting processes, he finally tested in their sockets, where a rigid bridge had been stoutly secured across his raftlike contrivance, and found them all he could desire. The seat he had planned to occupy in rowing he abandoned now as quite superfluous. He felt he must lose no time in draining the cave, for possible use in a siege. There was no other task that had been altogether neglected. The flagpole was once more standing on the terrace; abundant fuse was made, dried, coiled, and safely stored from damp or accident, and a mold was hardening in the fire for running lead slugs that would make the cannon effective. For this latter need he meant to sacrifice his hammer. It, with the lead he had saved before, would supply some six or seven pounds of this needful ammunition. Now, as he swiftly braided three slender creepers in a "painter" for his crudely fashioned catamaran, he glanced at the tide inquiringly, and likewise up at the sun. There was over an hour in which to get to the cave, lodge a bomb in the ledge, and blow out the dam that held back the water, but the tide was still running against him. With ten feet only of his mooring-line completed, he abandoned the braiding impatiently, secured one end to his raft at the estuary's entrance, and, wading in behind the clumsy structure, launched it with one impetuous heave across the sandbar to the sea. Boarding immediately with his oars, he rowed it far enough only to prove he could drive it against the tide, and then brought it back to the shore. "One bomb and a torch," he meditated, aloud. "I can hang the bomb across my shoulder to keep it out of the wet." The catamaran having been made thoroughly secure, he hastened away to the terrace. He missed Elaine. She was down at the "smelter," attending the fire that was roasting the new clay vessels. With a bomb and his lighted torch in hand--held well apart and not for a moment handled carelessly--he hailed Elaine from the edge of the thicket by the wall. "Just thought I'd drop around and drain out that water from the cave," he announced. "Everything's ready--and I've nothing else to do. When you hear the salute, you'll know it's a commonplace affair." "Oh!" said Elaine, who had her doubts concerning his various explosions. "I'll watch to see you from the cliff." "Well--er--I wouldn't stand just at the edge, you know--not till you know it's all over."