However, the standard was not heavy enough of itself to stand as firmly as would be required, so one end of the driftwood base was slipped under a rock projection, and then Delbert tugged in as big a rock as he could lift and set it down on the other end.
Now all that was lacking was a band to connect the two wheels. Marian crocheted this out of fiber, just wide enough to fit the spool.
Any of the children could turn the big wheel. Even Davie would be able to when he got up. This left Marian’s hands free to manipulate her cotton at the spindle.
Probably no spinning-wheel that was ever built was just like that one, but that did not disturb Marian’s equanimity so long as her wheel would spin, and that it certainly did. True, her yarn was always lumpy; she never did get so she could make it nice and smooth, but she was convinced that that was the fault of the manipulation of the cotton, for the wheel itself went quite swiftly and smoothly.
After she had spun up all their cotton, which included that from the wild cotton-tree, which she mixed in with that of the now flourishing bushes in the garden, she got out the little bundle of the combings of their hair, which she had saved ever since about the first of their being on the island, and she finally got that all spun into yarn too. It took as much time to prepare her material for spinning as it did to spin it, but the children helped with the cotton. They all, Davie included, got to be quite expert at picking out cotton seeds.
The next problem was weaving. Delbert was unexpectedly helpful at that. He knew nothing of his grandmother’s loom, but once upon a time he had seen a woman weaving a rag carpet, and on that never-to-be-forgotten trip with Clarence and his father he had seen an old Indian weaving on a loom.
As, however, the son of the old Indian had been blest with a number of fighting cocks which he was very desirous of showing off to the Americans, the small boy had bestowed most of his attention on the pugnacious birds instead of on the sober and less interesting loom; with the result that of the two processes that of rag-carpet weaving was really the clearer in his mind, though it had been witnessed earlier.
“There were two rollers,” he told Marian. “One had the threads and one had the carpet, and there were two little frame things something like in a beehive, only with strings across, and when one jerked up it lifted up every other thread, and she’d throw the thing through and then the other would jerk up and that lifted the other every other thread, and she’d throw it back again and pound it down with a stick.”
Marian drew a long breath. “Delbert,” she said, “it sounds just like a nightmare.”
Delbert stared. “Why,” he said, “I can see it just as plain as can be, only I can’t remember how it was made.”