Judith and Britomarte picked the cotton, separating the seed from the wool with their fingers.
Justin, who possessed great mechanical ingenuity, constructed a wheel for Judith. A pair of cards had been found among the stores of the wreck.
Judith carded and spun the cotton wool into fine yarn, and Britomarte knit it into hose for her two friends and herself.
Justin also began to try to construct a loom for weaving, but as the task was a difficult one to a man not brought up to the trade, he had many failures before he had any prospect of success.
Thus had passed the second winter of their sojourn upon the island. It was near the end of the second summer that the pirate ship had anchored near their island, and the captain, by a strange turn of fate, had become their prisoner.
And now Justin was very busy getting in his second summer’s crops and building up his long delayed dwelling houses.
CHAPTER XXIX.
BRITOMARTE’S NEW HOME.
Before the end of the autumn Britomarte’s house was completed. A rough house it was, indeed; not at all like those of the north temperate zone, yet possessed of some advantages peculiar to itself.
Its architect was limited in the matter of hand tools and of building materials; for the first he had to depend upon the carpenter’s box rescued from the wreck, and for the second upon the cocoa-palm trees and the mountain rocks.
Its site was selected in front of the cocoa-palm grove, facing the sea, and looking westward toward their native hemisphere.