"Good idea, Tyke," agreed the captain. "But pass guns around first, boys. All of you can handle a rifle, I suppose?" "Aye aye, sir," said Barker, "you'd better believe we kin." "If it comes to bullets," said Captain Hamilton, "those swabs will be so near to us we can scarcely miss 'em. That is, if they come out of the jungle. "Suppose they circle around and come at us from above?" Drew suggested. "We'll build a circular fort, by gosh!" cried Tyke. "An' build the back higher'n the front. How about it, Cap'n Rufe? Then if them swabs climb the hill to git the better of us, they can't shoot over." "You're right, Tyke," agreed the master of the _Bertha Hamilton_. "I don't believe," said Drew, "that Ditty and the men have many firearms. Nothing like these high-powered rifles, that's sure." "That's so, Drew, I'm sure," said the captain promptly. "Now, boys, get to work," he added. "Roll 'em down! Here, Barker, you're chantey-man. Set 'em the pace." Weirdly, echoing back from the wall of the jungle and hollowly from the hillside, the improvised chantey was raised by Barker, and the chorus line taken up by the other seamen as though they were jerking aloft the schooner's topsails. "Oh, Bug-eye's dead an' gone below, Oh, we says so, an' we hopes so; Oh, Bug-eye's dead an' he'll go below Oh, poor--ol'--man! "He's deader'n the bolt on the fo'c'sle door, Oh, we says so, an' we hopes so; Oh, he'll never knock us flat no more, Oh, poor--ol'--man!" Under the impetus of this dirge with its innumerable verses the men rolled the boulders down. The fortification began to take form and give promise of shelter in time of need. And there was no telling how soon that time might come! CHAPTER XXX THE FLAG OF TRUCE The seamen rolled the larger boulders to the line Tyke indicated. Captain Hamilton himself and Drew chocked the interstices between the larger blocks with broken lava. A chance bullet might slip through into the fort, but under a rain of lead those within the fortification would be fairly well protected. In two hours, and not long before sunset, the work was finished. Facing the jungle, from which the expected attack would come, if at all, the wall was breast high; in the rear, it rose higher so that no man unless he stood fairly in the lip of the crater above, could shoot over the barrier. "And take it from me," said Tyke Grimshaw, "those bums ain't going to run their legs off to reach the top of this volcano. They're scared to death of it." "And our own boys aren't much better," muttered Captain Hamilton. "See 'em looking over their shoulders now and again? They're expecting a shoot-off any minute." "Well," the older man agreed, "that may be so. But it strikes me that the volcano and the earthquakes have been mighty helpful to us. Now, if I was superstitious----"