He had started building his new home three years ago. First he had hammered four tall, sharpened guide-posts into the corners of the site. Then he had felled tree trunks on the mainland to make a raft. Loosening large boulders on the coral reef, enduring the huge pounding waves that sometimes drove him into the sea, he had loaded them on to the raft, a few at a time, and poled them over to the site he had marked out, and dropped them into the water between the four posts. When the rocks had reached the level of the waterline he had started to mould his island into shape, staggering across the surface with more boulders in his hands. After the rocks had emerged from the lagoon to a height of six feet he had ferried huge quantities of sand from the beach and poured the sand between the gaps in the rocks as they shifted and settled into position. Now that the boulders and water had soaked up the sand he could start building a thatched house and plant alu trees for shade and palm trees for their fruit.
