emarkable substance is white and transparent, quite flexible, and
altogether a delicate and beautiful fabric, but not sufficiently strong
to be put to any useful purpose: as it becomes older and tougher, it
assumes a yellow colour, and loses much of its flexibility and beauty.
A quantity of hibiscus bark was also collected, to be used in the
manufacture of cord for fishing-lines, nets, etcetera.

While the rest of us were actively engaged, under Arthur's direction, in
accumulating a stock of these materials, Max devoted all his energies to
the task of capturing an enormous eel which frequented the upper end of
the lake. But he exhausted all his ingenuity in this endeavour without
success. The monster had a secure retreat among the submerged roots of
an old buttress tree, beneath an overhanging bank, from which Max daily
lured him forth by throwing crumbs into the water; but, after devouring
the food that was thrown to him, he would immediately return to his
stronghold under the bank. Max was at great pains to manufacture a
fish-hook out of a part of a cork-screw found in the till of the blue
chest, by means of which he confidently expected to bring matters to a
speedy and satisfactory issue between himself and his wary antagonist.
But the latter would not touch the bait that concealed the hook. Driven
to desperation by this unexpected discomfiture, Max next made sundry
attempts to spear and "harpoon" him, all of which signally failed, so
that at the end of the brief interval of fine weather, this patriarch of
the lake, whose wisdom seemed to be proportioned to his venerable age
and gigantic size, remained proof against all the arts and machinations
of his chagrined and exasperated enemy.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

WINTER EVENINGS AT HOME.

AMUSEMENTS AND OCCUPATIONS--STORY-TELLING--THE SOUTH-SEA LYCEUM.

"When the winter nights grow long,
And the winds without blow cold,
We sit in a ring round the warm wood fire,
And listen to stories old."

Having now brought my story down to the period of our getting into
winter-quarters at Lake Laicomo, (where, during the last few weeks, the
foregoing portion of this narrative has been written), I shall change my
tenses, for the present chapter at least, while I sketch the occupations
and amusements by which we endeavour to fill up the time of our
imprisonment.

The rainy season is now nearly over, and we have got through it much
more comfortably and pleasantly