I agreed with her, and for the next few days we conformed to strict rules. We slept out the darkest hours of the night and worked from dawn until nine o’clock. Thereafter I provided firewood for the day and dug the driest turf I could find while Terry cooked a meal. She tidied the cave and washed the dishes with religious care. From ten o’clock we dozed amongst the rocks if the weather was warm. We had dinner at six, and set to work again in the evening. We ate our last meal before daylight left us.

We were forced to change this routine after a couple of nights in which we scarcely slept a wink, so cold and draughty was our cave and so hard our couch.

‘We can’t carry on like this,’ I told Terry. ‘We scarcely sleep a wink at night. Once the cave is tight and warm we can sleep in it, but until then we must snatch sleep through the day, or while we can. We daren’t risk our health and waste our time lying awake in misery for the sake of a time-table.’

‘What can we do at night if we can’t sleep?’ she asked. ‘We can’t work, it’s too dark—’

We found an occupation for the night-time by going down to the car and stripping it. We brought away its hood and its upholstery, its tools, and its wind-screen; the side-curtains, even the petrol-tank and the sump, and everything that would come loose, brake-rods and controls, torque tubes and stays and number-plates, were all carried to our cave. On our last journey I erased the engine number and every other distinguishing mark with a chisel.

Terry looked at me when I finished the work of destruction.

‘That burns our boats,’ she murmured.

We had underestimated the labour necessary to build our west wall. Since this gable would hold our fireplace it was necessary to plan it out carefully and build it with extreme care. I had a vague idea in my head for a wall, sloping on the outside from a broad base to a peak at the roof of the cave, in which we would leave a square space for our fireplace and a vertical hole for our chimney. The simplest hearth sufficed to burn peats. To build the wall itself, without a fireplace, would have cost us little difficulty. We had unlimited material to our hands in the heaps of broad flat slabs of stone all around. I am sure we had a sort of fireplace and chimney constructed ten times, only to discover that it was unsteady, or the chimney would not draw when we lit a fire, or the whole top half of the gable collapsed at a touch. We were in despair.