The few pieces of wood that we had were laid across from keel to keel, and over this the material of one of the torn tents was spread and secured with guys to the rocks.

The walls were ingeniously contrived and fixed up by Marston.

First he cut the now useless tents into suitable lengths; then he cut the legs of a pair of seaboots into narrow strips, and using these in much the same way that the leather binding is put round the edge of upholstered chairs, he nailed the tent-cloth all round the insides of the outer gunwales of the two boats in such a way that it hung down like a valance to the ground, where it was secured with spars and oars.

A couple of overlapping blankets made the door, superseded later by a sack-mouth door cut from one of the tents.

This consisted of a sort of tube of canvas sewn on to the tent-cloth, through which the men crawled in or out, tying it up as one would the mouth of a sack as soon as the man had passed through.