From Sand to Nand

Chapter Seven

Together, Pei and some members of the captain's crew walked along the shoreline collecting a variety of seashells and rocks. It didn't take long before most people managed to fill their bags and ascend the slopes back toward the plateau. They then dumped their gatherings into the growing stockpile and headed straight back down for more.

On the plateau, the rest of the encampment had been hard at work for days. An additional team of workers continued building multiple, large kilns and filling them with more, necessary pottery. Most important were the storage bins. Pei insisted that vacuous containers with lids were necessary to protect the powdered materials from wetness. They were generously sizeable and consumed little resources to make.

While some were stoking fires with wood, others were dumping seashells into the pots above the fire pits. At Pei's direction, the process consisted of removing the shells from heat and crushing them into a fine, white powder. The workers then scooped the piles of lime and stored it in larger clay bins for later use.

"So, what is this stuff?" asked one girl.

"It's lime," Pei began. "It's very abundant in seashells. We heat the shells to soften them and then we crush them into a finer, purer form. See how the water sizzles away when I add it? There's a chemical reaction taking place."

"But, like...why are we doing it though?"

Pei pointed. "Lime is the main hardening ingredient in concrete. You mix it with the crushed rocks and dry soil over there to make a special type of it. We could even take some of the dry, termite clay from down by the river to make it stronger, but this seems to work just fine. I'll play around with the recipe later."

"And that's what roads and stuff are made out of?"

Pei wanted to laugh, but he didn't want to seem condescending. "No, actually roads are usually paved with asphalt. That's a little different, but driveways are usually concrete. This recipe here was used by the Romans, I believe."

"Oh okay. But, wait," the girl hesitated as she struggled with a shell that wouldn't break easily, prompting Pei to toss it aside for her. "Why are we making concrete?"

"You see what those guys are doing?" Pei shot a finger toward two men who were taking mixed concrete and filling a square, clay mold that had been fired the previous day. The men worked thoroughly to ensure they left no bubbles of air and tried to perfectly fill the edges of the mold before lifting it, creating a square brick with all flat surfaces.

"Yeah?" the girl answered.

"They're making bricks." Pei responded.

"What do we need bricks for?"

"Well, the captain wants us to build a jail for someone—that guy who went crazy on those kids the other day."

"Oh, yeah," the girl scooped the pile of lime that she had crushed and dumped it into the container beside her. "Seems like a lot of work, though."

Pei continued, "I also convinced the captain to let us build a few small stone and clay houses so that the huts don't blow away anymore. As long as everyone keeps working, we should all have a permanent shelter in a few days."

"Do you really think we'll be here that long? My mom and some other people said that we should be found pretty fast."

Pei recalled the captain's words and remembered that no one had yet to successfully contact rescue. "Yeah," Pei lied. "That's probably true. But for now, I think we could use some roofs that don't blow away—just in case."

"How are you going to make a roof out of bricks?" the girl interrogated. "Won't they fall?"

Pei didn't think about that detail. "I meant that we'll build the house walls out of bricks. The roofs will actually be made from bamboo."