Presently, however, another long point projected out into the Bay to force him into the open.

He turned about in his boat and for several minutes studied the white-capped seas beyond the point.
"I'll try un," he muttered, and settled again to his oars.
But try as he would Eli could not force his light craft against the wind, and at length he reluctantly dropped back again under the lee of the land and went ashore.
"There'll be no goin' on to-day," he admitted.

"I'll have to make camp whatever." Under the shelter of the thick spruce forest where he was fended from the gale and drive of the rain, he cut a score of poles.

One of them, thicker and stiffer than the others, he lashed between two trees at a height of perhaps four feet.

At intervals of three or four inches he rested the remaining poles against the one lashed to the trees, arranging them at an angle of fifty-five degrees and aligning the butts of the poles evenly upon the ground.