“See here, boys,” Ralph Addington said one morning.  “I say we get together and build some cabins.  There’s no calculating how long this grand weather’ll keep up.  The first thing we know we’ll be up against a rainy season.  Isn’t that right, Professor?”

On most practical matters Ralph treated Frank Merrill’s opinion with a contempt that was offensively obvious to the others.  In questions of theory or of abstruse information, he was foolishly deferential.  At those times, he always gave Frank his title of Professor.

“I hardly think so,” Frank Merrill answered.  “I think we’ll have an equable, semi-tropical climate all the year round — about like Honolulu.”

“Well, anyway,” Ralph Addington went on, “it’s barbarous living like this.  And we want to be prepared for anything.”  His gaze left Frank Merrill’s face and traveled with a growing significance to each of the other three.  “Anything,” he repeated with emphasis.  “We’ve got enough truck here to make a young Buckingham Palace.  And we’ll go mad sitting round waiting for those air-queens to pay us a visit.  How about it?”

“It’s an excellent idea,” Frank Merrill said heartily.  “I have been on the point of proposing it many times myself.”

However, they seemed unable to pull themselves together; they did nothing that day.  But the next morning, urged back to work by the harrying monotony of waiting, they began to clear a space among the trees close to the beach.  Two of them had a little practical building knowledge:  Ralph Addington who had roughed it in many strange countries; Billy Fairfax who, in the San Francisco earthquake, had on a wager built himself a house.  They worked with all their initial energy.  They worked with the impetus that comes from capable supervision.  And they worked as if under the impulse of some unformulated motive.  As usual, Honey Smith bubbled with spirits.  Billy Fairfax and Pete Murphy hardly spoke, so close was their concentration.  Ralph Addington worked longer and harder than anybody, and even Honey was not more gay; he whistled and sang constantly.  Frank Merrill showed no real interest in these proceedings.  He did his fair share of the work, but obviously without a driving motive.  He had reverted utterly to type.  He spent his leisure writing a monograph.  When inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring books.  Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed their swollen bulks back to shape.  Eternally he puttered about, mending and patching them.  He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had rescued from the ship’s furniture.  The others never became accustomed to the comic incongruity of this picture — especially when, later, he virtually boxed himself in with a trio of book-cases.

“Wouldn’t you think he was sitting in an office?” Ralph Addington said.