face when we opened our eyes to the new day. [Illustration: "I DEALT HIM SUCH A BLOW THAT HE FELL DOUBLED UP AT THE DOORWAY."] CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH OF OUR RETREAT TO THE RED ROCK, AND OF OUR VARIOUS RAIDS UPON OUR PROPERTY We had one great advantage over the seamen in that we knew every yard of the island, and so could find our food without searching. Billy laughed when he thought of them having to get their own breakfast, and wishing they had not driven us away; but I said that they had not intended to drive us away, but that Hoggett expected to daunt and cow us, and so make us his bond servants. "Well, he _must_ be a fool," says Billy, and chuckled again to think that his old enemy had over-reached himself. Presently we saw that I was right in my surmise, for we heard men shouting in different parts of the island, and guessed they were seeking us; but we kept close all that day, feeling pretty sure that the men would not come up the mountain until they had searched other parts. We were not idle this day, for we at once set about making a raft to carry us round to the cave, using saplings and creepers for this purpose, fashioning them into a kind of hurdle which we hoped would support us well enough, or at least one of us, for the short voyage. We laughed again to think that when we should have got our canoe again, we might if we pleased sail clean away from the island and seek another home without let or hindrance from the seamen; but we never had any serious thought of this, Palm Tree Island being now our very home. As for what our course of action was to be, we very earnestly considered that while our fingers were busy with the raft. It was plain we could not fight the men, for they had muskets and powder and shot enough to kill us, being only two; and we were without any weapons save our axes, which we always carried in our belts, all the others being either in the hut or in the cellar below it. If we did not fight them, we must nevertheless be either friends or enemies; friends we could not be while Hoggett maintained his present insolency, and as enemies we could but keep out of their way. But I saw we should lead a terrible life if we remained on the island and were harried from place to place, and hunted down, and maybe captured and made slaves of in the end. We might, to be sure, go and live in the cave, where it was little likely that we should be discovered, and if we were we could no doubt make a very good defence; but we did not relish the prospect of skulking, so to speak, in the dim purlieus of the cave and tunnel while our enemies were ranging the island free, and enjoying the full use of what we had laboured so hard for. "I can't a-bear to think of Hoggett drinking out of _my_ mug," says Billy, with a rueful countenance, "and blunting _my_ spears, and wasting _my_ arrows, and eating our pigs, too, master. What if they eat 'em all, as they did in their own island, and don't