gain, till presently away
he came tumbling down the breech in the cliffs, to my great delight.
After a bit I despatched him to fetch "Eddy," and while that worthy was
on his way to my help, managed, with great exertion and risk, to scale
the cliff. "Eddy" bore me up the zig-zag, and home by the lower path,
and thankful indeed was I to get there.

I bathed my knee, and did all I could for it, but it was many days
before I fully recovered the use of the limb; in fact, for three days I
used a crutch, which helped me along famously. Fancy a Crusoe on
crutches! After this adventure I made up my mind that I was not born to
be drowned.

Now, a week after my Creux adventure another incident occurred which
greatly influenced my career both as regards my stay on the island and
my after life. This was a curious discovery I made quite by accident.

It happened to be a very wet morning when I rose, and looked as if it
would continue all day, so I thought I would stay indoors and tidy up my
dwelling. I soon prepared my breakfast, and sat down to enjoy it, and as
I and my dog were discussing it, I could not help noticing the
dilapidated state of the stained and ragged wall-paper. It had probably
been on many years, and I recollected that somewhere among my stores I
had about a dozen rolls of new paper, so I said to myself, "Why not
strip the walls and re-paper the room?"

Good! I soon cleared the room, and with a pail of water and a brush
began to soak the old paper and strip it off, when I found, to my
surprise, that it was several layers thick--five at least--while
underneath all was a kind of netting of some sort of linen-looking
fabric. I surmised that this was to give a better adhesive power to the
paste, as probably the walls might be damp, although they did not appear
to be so. So I tore the various papers off the wall, till I clumsily
dragged off a piece of the netting also. The netting came quite off in
my hand; a circular piece, about eighteen inches across. I examined it
to see what it really was, and to my amazement discovered it was a
beautiful lace collar. What a curious way of putting a collar on I
thought, and returned to the wall to see if it wore any other finery,
and quickly discovered that the four walls were covered all over with
lace of beautiful design. There were pieces of all shapes and sizes, and
most of it of exquisite workmanship; so, packing it into a trunk with
plenty of tobacco among it to keep away