r would soon jump over that."

"Ay, but not over this and sixty more; a wall of stilettos. Don't touch
it, please."

He worked very hard all day, and brought twelve of these prickly trees to
the bower by sunset. He was very dissatisfied with his day's work; seemed
quite mortified.

"This comes of beginning at the wrong end," he said; "I went to work like
a fool. I should have begun by making a cart."

"But you can't do that," said Helen, soothingly; "no gentleman can make a
cart."

"Oh, surely anybody can make a cart, by a little thinking," said he.

"I wish," said Helen, listlessly, "you would think of something for me to
do; I begin to be ashamed of not helping."

"Hum! you can plait?"

"Yes, as far as seven strands."

"Then you need never be unemployed. We want ropes, and shall want large
mats for the rainy weather."

He went to the place where he had warned her of the snakes, and cut a
great bundle of long silky grass, surprisingly tough, yet neither harsh
nor juicy; he brought it her and said he should be very glad of a hundred
yards of light cord, three ply and five ply.

She was charmed with the grass, and the very next morning she came to
breakfast with it nicely prepared, and a good deal of cord made and
hanging round her neck. She found some preparations for carpenter's work
lying about.

"Is that great log for the cart?" said she.

"Yes! it is a section of a sago-tree."

"What, our sago?"

"The basis. See, in the center it is all soft pith." He got from the boat
one of the augers that had scuttled the _Proserpine,_ and soon turned the
pith out. "They pound that pith in water, and run it through linen; then
set the water in the sun to evaporate. The sediment is the sago of
commerce, and sad insipid stuff it is."

"Oh, please don't call anything names one has eaten in England," said
Helen, sorrowfully.

After a hasty meal, she and Mr. Hazel worked for a wager. Her taper
fingers went like the wind, and though she watched him, and asked
questions, she never stopped plaiting. Mr. Hazel was no carpenter, he was
merely Brains spurred by Necessity. He went to work and sawed off four
short disks of the sago-log.

"Now what are those, pray?" asked Helen.

"The wheels--primeval wheels. And here are the linchpins, made of hard
wood; I wattled them at odd times."

He then produced two young lime-trees he had rooted up that morning and
sawed them into poles in a minute. Then he bored two holes in