Chapter 4.
A Home Up High Over dinner, my wife told us what had happened while Fritz and I had been gone.
We decided to work as hard as you if we were going to live here.
We agreed to all go on a trip.
Jack, Franz, Ernest, and I went out with water, an axe, and some guns.
We followed Dirk, who led us the way you had taken.
She smiled as she told us more of her adventures with the other boys while we were at sea.
We were startled by amazing birds everywhere and found some giant trees.
As we looked at them, I had an idea.
What if we could build a house in these giants?
It seemed to be perfect and with that we went to the beach and looked for anything else left from the wreck.
As we looked, we saw the dogs eating something in the rocks.
Crabs, said Jack.
Yes, said my wife, and the dogs also led us to the turtle eggs that we're now eating.
Well, I said, you'll have to show me your tree palace and we can decide if we can live there like birds.
It might just work, she answered, and it would save us from the jackals.
If we could build a staircase and a nice floor, we would be safe at night.
All right, I answered.
Let's look tomorrow and see if it will work.
And with that, we all went to bed and slept deeply.
The next morning, my wife and I woke and discussed our plans.
We agreed that if I could build a bridge across our river and could find a safe place far up in the rocks to stow dangerous things such as gunpowder away from our house, we might just make it all work.
We woke the children and set about to making our bridge.
Ernest, Fritz, and I set sail again for our wrecked ship to take boards from it.
Soon we saw some birds feeding on a giant fish on an island and drew close to watch.
"'Fritz,' yelled Ernest, once we had gotten close, "'it's the shark you shot.
You must have hit him in the head.'
It was true.
As we drew close, we saw what a monster the shark had been, with rows of shining, terrible teeth.
We jumped onto the island and cut off the shark's fin as a prize and found the island there full of boards and beams from the wreck perfect for our bridge back near our beach.
We put these on our boat and headed back.
When we reached our beach, we were met by the boys and my wife, who showed us bundles of crawfish that Jack and Franz had found.
As we cooked these, we began to plan our bridge.
My wife had created a bag for the donkey to carry gear over the river and I built a pulley from a tree to lower wooden beams from one shore to the other.
Soon we had set down all the beams needed to make a flat bridge, and the children danced across the river with joy.
By the time this work was done, we were exhausted and made our way to bed, happy with our progress.
The next morning I told everyone, even though we are moving to the trees, we are not safe and we still need to be careful.
Who knows what danger lies ahead?
With this warning, we began to move all we had in the world to the site of our new home.
The children ran to gather the chickens, ducks and geese, and Franz rode the donkey across the bridge.
The other boys helped lead the animals across the river, and soon we were all on the other side.
As we came upon our future home, we knew it would make a wonderful place to live.
Soon enough, the boys were all helping.
Ernest found stones to build a fireplace, while Franz discovered that the trees where we were going to build our home were filled with wild figs.
He fed these to the baby monkey named Nips by the boys.
We also hunted some birds and managed to capture a live flamingo, which we decided to keep and add to our other birds.
We then searched the trees to pick one we thought was best.
We set out to find bamboo to build platforms because it would be strong and would hold up well in the rain.
Searching in a nearby marsh, we were lucky enough to find plenty for our use.
We decided that we would live thirty feet off the tree, so I built a ladder to take us to our first platform.
Once the ladder was done, we hauled up all that we could and set about making makeshift hammocks around the tree branches for sleeping in the next night.
We were very tired by all of our work, so we ate dinner and slept by the fire at the foot of our new home.
The next morning we began to get our home ready by cutting branches out of the way, building platforms and making walls from planks and sails.
Soon enough, we had a place of our own and had our first meal among the trees, laughing and happy, with Nips the monkey.
When we pulled up our ladder that night, we felt safe and secure.
We were together in our new home, high among the branches.
