felt that he was
not entirely alone. He had now a living being near him.

XX

ROBINSON GETS READY FOR WINTER

There was one thing that troubled Robinson greatly. "What will become of
me when the winter comes? I will have no fire to warm me. I have no
clothing to protect me from the cold, and where shall I find food when
snow and ice cover all the ground and when the trees are bare and the
spring is frozen? It will be cold then in my cave; what shall I do? It
is cold and rainy already. I believe this is harvest time and winter
will soon be here. Winter and no stove, no winter clothing, no winter
store of food and no winter dwelling. What shall I do?"

He considered again the project of making fire. He again sought out two
pieces of wood and sat down and rubbed them together. The sweat rolled
down his face. When the wood began to get warm, his hand would become
tired, and he would have to stop. When he began again the wood was cold.
He worked for an hour or two, then he laid the wood aside and said, "I
don't believe I can do it. I must do the next best thing. I can at least
get warm clothing to protect me from the rain and snow." He looked down
at his worn, thin clothing, his trousers, his shirt, his jacket; they
had become so thin and worn that they were threadbare.

"I will take the skins of the hares which I have shot and will make me
something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed a
knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece of
wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre. His
stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite well. But
what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines would do. "But
they are hardly strong enough," he thought. He pulled the sinews from
the bones of the rabbit and found them hard. Maybe he could use them. He
found fish skeletons on the seashore and bored a hole in the end of the
small, sharp rib bones. Then he threaded his bone needle with the rabbit
sinews and attempted to sew, but it would not go. His needle broke. The
skin was too hard. He bored holes in the edge of the pieces of skin and
sewed through the holes. This went very well.

He sewed the skins together with the hair side inward, made himself a
jacket, a pair of trousers, a hat, and finally covered his parasol with
rabbit skin, for the rain had already dripped through the leaves of it.
All went well, only the trousers did not fi