h was looking up in his face.
"You see, history is easy. What I knows I knows an' can teach, an' what
I don't know I let alone, an there's an end on't. There's no makin' a
better o' _that_. Then, as to writin', though my hand is crabbed
enough, and my pot-hooks are shaky and sprawly, still I know the shapes
o' things, an' the youngsters are so quick that they can most of 'em
write better than myself; but in regard to that 'rithmetic, it's a
heartbreak altogether, for I've only just got enough of it to puzzle me.
Wi' the use o' my fingers I can do simple addition pretty well, an' I
can screw round subtraction, but multiplication's a terrible business.
Unfort'nitely my edication has carried me only the length o' the fourth
line, an' that ain't enough."

He paused, and the lively lizard, ready to fly at a moment's notice, put
its head on one side as if interested in the man's difficulty.

"Seven times eight, now," continued Adams. "I've no more notion what
that is than the man in the moon. An' I've no table to tell me, an' no
way o' findin' it out--eh? Why, yes I have. I'll mark 'em down one at
a time an' count 'em up."

He gave his thigh a slap, which sent the lively lizard into his hole,
horrified.

"Poor thing, I didn't mean that," he said to the absent animal.
"Hows'ever, I'll try it. Why, I'll make a multiplication-table for
myself. Strange that that way never struck me before."

As he went on muttering he busied himself in rubbing clean a flat
surface of rock, on which, with a piece of reddish stone, he made a row
of eight marks, one below another. Alongside of that he made another
row of eight marks, and so on till he had put down seven rows, when he
counted them up, and found the result to be fifty-six. This piece of
acquired knowledge he jotted down in a little notebook, which, with a
quantity of other stationery, had originally belonged to that great
fountain of wealth, the _Bounty_.

"Why, I'll make out the whole table in this way," he said, quite
heartily, as he sat down again on the flat rock and went to work.

Of course he found the process laborious, especially when he got among
the higher numbers; but Adams was not a man to be turned from his
purpose by trifles. He persevered until his efforts were crowned with
success.

While he was engaged with the multiplication problem on that day, he was
interrupted by the sound of merry voices, and soon Otaheitan Sally,
Bessy Mills, May Christian