and go. 
    With a “Hathi! hathi! hathi!” ele-phant and buffa_lo_,
    “Chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow, chow-chow,”
      “Teri ma!” “Chel-lo!”
    Oh, that’s the way they shout all day, and drive the buffalo.

Iris would not be satisfied until she understood the meaning of the Hindustani phrases, mastered the nasal pronunciation of “hainya,” and placed the artificial accent on phant and lo in the second line of the chorus.

Jenks was concluding the last verse when there came, hurtling through the air, the weird cries of the singing beetle, returning, perchance, from successful foray on Palm-tree Rock.  This second advent of the insect put an end to the concert.  Within a quarter of an hour they were asleep.

Thenceforth, for ten days, they labored unceasingly, starting work at daybreak and stopping only when the light failed, finding the long hours of sunshine all too short for the manifold tasks demanded of them, yet thankful that the night brought rest.  The sailor made out a programme to which he rigidly adhered.  In the first place, he completed the house, which had two compartments, an inner room in which Iris slept, and an outer, which served as a shelter for their meals and provided a bedroom for the man.

Then he constructed a gigantic sky-sign on Summit Rock, the small cluster of boulders on top of the cliff.  His chief difficulty was to hoist into place the tall poles he needed, and for this purpose he had to again visit Palm-tree Rock in order to secure the pulley.  By exercising much ingenuity in devising shear-legs, he at last succeeded in lifting the masts into their allotted receptacles, where they were firmly secured.  Finally he was able to swing into air, high above the tops of the neighboring trees, the loftiest of which he felled in order to clear the view on all sides, the name of the ship Sirdar, fashioned in six-foot letters nailed and spliced together in sections and made from the timbers of that ill-fated vessel.

Meanwhile he taught Iris how to weave a net out of the strands of unraveled cordage.  With this, weighted by bullets, he contrived a casting-net and caught a lot of small fish in the lagoon.  At first they were unable to decide which varieties were edible, until a happy expedient occurred to the girl.

“The seabirds can tell us,” she said.  “Let us spread out our haul on the sands and leave them.  By observing those specimens seized by the birds and those they reject we should not go far wrong.”

Though her reasoning was not infallible it certainly proved to be a reliable guide in this instance.  Among the fish selected by the feathered connoisseurs they hit upon two species which most resembled whiting and haddock, and these turned out to be very palatable and wholesome.