ood. With great difficulty he rolled these logs one by one into
the sea, and, getting astride of each, pushed them by means of a pole
towards a point of rocks, or natural jetty, alongside of which the water
was deep. Here he fastened them together by means of a piece of rope--
one of the old fastenings which remained to him, the others having been
used in the construction of the hut. The raft thus formed was, however,
much too small to weather a gale or float in a rough sea. In whatever
way he placed the spars the structure was too narrow for safety.
Seeing, therefore, that it was absolutely necessary to obtain more logs,
he set brain and hands to work without delay.

Many years before, he had seen an ancient stone hatchet in a museum, the
head of which was fastened to the haft by means of a powerful thong of
untanned hide. He resolved to make a hatchet of this sort. Long did he
search the beach for a suitable stone, but in vain. At last he found
one pretty nearly the proper shape, which he chipped and ground into the
rude form of an axe. It had no eye for the handle. To have made a hole
in it would have weakened the stone too much. He therefore cut a groove
in the side of the handle, placed the head of the stone into it, and
completed the fastening by tying it firmly with the tough fibrous roots
of a tree. It was strongly and neatly made, though clumsy in
appearance, but, do what he would, he could not put a sufficiently fine
edge on it, and although it chipped pretty well when applied to the
outside of a tree, it made very slow progress indeed as the cut
deepened, and the work became so toilsome at last that he almost gave it
up in despair. Suddenly it occurred to him that fire might be made use
of to facilitate the work. Selecting a tall cocoanut-tree, he piled dry
wood all round the foot of it. Before setting it on fire he dipped a
quantity of cocoanut fibre in the sea and tied a thick belt of this
round the tree just above the pile, so as to protect the upper parts of
the spar from the flames as much and as long as possible. This done, he
kindled the pile. A steady breeze fanned the flame into an intense
fire, which ere long dried up the belt of fibre and finally consumed it.
The fire was pretty well burnt out by that time, however, so that the
upper part of the stem had been effectually preserved. Removing the
ashes, he was rejoiced to find that the foot of the tree had been so
deeply burned that s