A raft forthwith he set about to make. Some stout portions of his boat
were still left. Tough shrubs of the sand-hills furnished trennels and
suppler parts. Of ropes there was no lack. The mast was easily dragged
down again to the beach to be once more a mast, and in nervous haste, yet
with skill and thoroughness, the tent was ripped up and remade into a
sail, and even a rude centreboard was rigged in order that one might tack
against unfavorable winds.

Winds, at nightfall, when the thing began to be near completion, there
were none. The day's sky had steadily withdrawn its favor. The sun shone
as it sank into the waves, but in the northwest and southeast dazzling
thunderheads swelled from the sea's line high into the heavens, and in the
early dusk began with silent kindlings to challenge each other to battle.
As night swiftly closed down the air grew unnaturally still. From the
toiler's brow, worse than at noon, the sweat rolled off, as at last he
brought his work to a close by the glare of his leaping camp-fire. Now,
unless he meant only to perish, he must once more eat and sleep while he
might. Then let the storm fall; the moment it was safely over and the wind
in the right quarter he would sail. As for the thirst which had been such
a torture while thwarted, now that it ruled unchallenged, it was purely a
wild, glad zeal as full of method as of diligence. But first he must make
his diminished provisions and his powder safe against the elements; and
this he did, covering them with a waterproof stuff and burying them in a
northern slope of sand.

He awoke in the small hours of the night. The stars of the zenith were
quenched. Blackness walled and roofed him in close about his crumbled
fire, save when at shorter and shorter intervals and with more and more
deafening thunders the huge clouds lit up their own forms, writhing one
upon another, and revealed the awe-struck sea and ghostly sands waiting