Away , near the mouth of the river , a great fire was glowing among the trees , and between that point and the ship one of the gigs kept coming and going , the men , whom I had seen so gloomy , shouting at the oars like children . But there was a sound in their voices which suggested rum . At length I thought I might return towards the stockade . I was pretty far down on the low , sandy spit that encloses the anchorage to the east , and is joined at half-water to Skeleton Island ; and now , as I rose to my feet , I saw , some distance further down the spit and rising from among low bushes , an isolated rock , pretty high , and peculiarly white in colour . It occurred to me that this might be the white rock of which Ben Gunn had spoken and that some day or other a boat might be wanted and I should know where to look for one . Then I skirted among the woods until I had regained the rear , or shoreward side , of the stockade , and was soon warmly welcomed by the faithful party . I had soon told my story and began to look about me . The log-house was made of unsquared trunks of pine -- roof , walls , and floor . The latter stood in several places as much as a foot or a foot and a half above the surface of the sand . There was a porch at the door , and under this porch the little spring welled up into an artificial basin of a rather odd kind -- no other than a great ship 's kettle of iron , with the bottom knocked out , and sunk `` to her bearings , '' as the captain said , among the sand . Little had been left besides the framework of the house , but in one corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth and an old rusty iron basket to contain the fire . The slopes of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house , and we could see by the stumps what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed . Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees ; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand . Very close around the stockade -- too close for defence , they said -- the wood still flourished high and dense , all of fir on the land side , but towards the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks . The cold evening breeze , of which I have spoken , whistled through every chink of the rude building and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine sand . There was sand in our eyes , sand in our teeth , sand in our suppers , sand dancing in the spring at the bottom of the kettle , for all the world like porridge beginning to boil . Our chimney was a square hole in the roof ; it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out , and the rest eddied about the house and kept us coughing and piping the eye . Add to this that Gray , the new man , had his face tied up in a bandage for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers and that poor old Tom Redruth , still unburied , lay along the wall , stiff and stark , under the Union Jack . If we had been allowed to sit idle , we should all have fallen in the blues , but Captain Smollett was never the man for that . All hands were called up before him , and he divided us into watches .
The doctor and XXXXX and I for one ; the squire , Hunter , and Joyce upon the other .
Gray Redruth Smollett chink day evening gigs left live-oaks mutineers