ng
man will clutch at a straw. Perhaps it may have been some such feeling
in me, for I did not know that it was in my hand at the time we were
wrecked. However, we felt some pleasure in having it with us now--
although we did not see that it could be of much use to us, as the glass
at the small end was broken to pieces. Our sixth article was a brass
ring which Jack always wore on his little finger. I never understood
why he wore it; for Jack was not vain of his appearance, and did not
seem to care for ornaments of any kind. Peterkin said, "it was in
memory of the girl he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this
girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either
jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles, we had a little bit
of tinder and the clothes on our backs. These last were as follows:

Each of us had on a pair of stout canvas trousers and a pair of sailors'
thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and a red
Kilmarnock bonnet or nightcap, besides a pair of worsted socks, and a
cotton pocket-handkerchief with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson printed
on it and a union-jack in the middle. Peterkin had on a striped flannel
shirt--which he wore outside his trousers and belted round his waist,
after the manner of a tunic--and a round black straw hat. He had no
jacket, having thrown it off just before we were cast into the sea; but
this was not of much consequence, as the climate of the island proved to
be extremely mild--so much so, indeed, that Jack and I often preferred
to go about without our jackets. Peterkin had also a pair of white
cotton socks and a blue handkerchief with white spots all over it. My
own costume consisted of a blue flannel shirt, a blue jacket, a black
cap, and a pair of worsted socks, besides the shoes and canvas trousers
already mentioned. This was all we had, and besides these things we had
nothing else; but when we thought of the danger from which we had
escaped, and how much worse off we might have been had the ship struck
on the reef during the night, we felt very thankful that we were
possessed of so much, although, I must confess, we sometimes wished that
we had had a little more.

While we were examining these things and talking about them, Jack
suddenly started and exclaimed:

"The oar! We have forgotten the oar!"

"What good will that do us?" said Peterkin. "There's wood enough on the
island to make a thousand oars."