or the rest of our lives, far away from our friends and our native
land. To set energetically about preparations for a permanent residence
seemed so like making up our minds to saying adieu to home and friends
for ever that we tacitly shrank from it, and put off our preparations,
for one reason and another, as long as we could. Then there was a
little uncertainty still as to there being natives on the island, and we
entertained a kind of faint hope that a ship might come and take us off.
But as day after day passed, and neither savages nor ships appeared, we
gave up all hope of an early deliverance, and set diligently to work at
our homestead.

During this time, however, we had not been altogether idle. We made
several experiments in cooking the cocoa-nut, most of which did not
improve it. Then we removed our goods and took up our abode in the
cave, but found the change so bad that we returned gladly to the bower.
Besides this, we bathed very frequently, and talked a great deal--at
least Jack and Peterkin did; I listened. Among other useful things,
Jack, who was ever the most active and diligent, converted about three
inches of the hoop-iron into an excellent knife. First, he beat it
quite flat with the axe; then he made a rude handle, and tied the
hoop-iron to it with our piece of whip-cord, and ground it to an edge on
a piece of sandstone. When it was finished he used it to shape a better
handle, to which he fixed it with a strip of his cotton handkerchief--in
which operation he had, as Peterkin pointed out, torn off one of Lord
Nelson's noses. However, the whip-cord, thus set free, was used by
Peterkin as a fishing-line. He merely tied a piece of oyster to the end
of it. This the fish were allowed to swallow, and then they were pulled
quickly ashore. But as the line was very short and we had no boat, the
fish we caught were exceedingly small.

One day Peterkin came up from the beach, where he had been angling, and
said in a very cross tone, "I'll tell you what, Jack, I'm not going to
be humbugged with catching such contemptible things any longer. I want
you to swim out with me on your back, and let me fish in deep water!"

"Dear me, Peterkin!" replied Jack; "I had no idea you were taking the
thing so much to heart, else I would have got you out of that difficulty
long ago. Let me see;" and Jack looked down at a piece of timber, on
which he had been labouring, with a peculiar gaze of abstraction which
h