"We have nothing but our shirts," said I, "and those we cannot spare."
"But we don't need to raise our flag until we see a ship over yonder," says Billy, "and if we do see one I can strip off my shirt in no time."
"But we can't fit the staff in no time," I replied, "and we must practise ourselves in that until we are very speedy in it."
We did this accordingly, several evenings in succession, always at dusk, so that our proceedings should not be seen by sharp-eyed savages; and we found in a few days that we could fit the joints of the staff together, and set it up in its socket, in the space of five minutes, as near as I could guess. We kept the several joints in the tree, so that we should not have the labour of hauling them from the ground every time, fastening them to the boughs with strands of creepers.
While on this matter of the flagstaff, I must say that it came into my mind one day that I had seen the native women making a kind of cloth out of the bark of a tree, though I had not observed what tree it was. I thought we might contrive to make a pendant in the same way, and after some trials of the bark of different trees we discovered that the bread-fruit tree was best fitted for our purpose, and by diligently beating with stones upon a broad strip of the bark, moistened with water, we flattened and stretched it until it became a sort of thin fabric, which would serve for a flag, though a makeshift one. But having made it, we could not at first devise a means of attaching it to the staff, having no nails, or anything that could be used in their stead. There did, indeed, come out of the bark as we bruised it, a sticky substance which we hoped might serve as glue, but we found that it was not sufficiently tenacious. However, after some thought I hit upon the device of stringing the flag on a strand of creeper, and then knotting the ends of this about the pole.
Our success in this particular gave us much contentment, and Billy declared that now that we knew how to make cloth we must discover a means of making needles and thread, so that we could patch our shirts and breeches, which were already miserably rent and tattered. But this was too great a puzzle for us at the moment, though we solved it afterwards, as I shall tell in its place.
Pottery
Having started to tell some of the matters that occupied us while we were pondering the means of setting up the posts of our house, I may mention here another notion that came into my head. We had used some of the clayey earth of the hill-side to fill the interstices of our small house, and being often at a loss for vessels in which to cook our food, and also to carry water—as yet we did not drink it much, for very good reasons—I thought of trying to make some pots and pans. I had, to be sure, no turning wheel, nor could I make one, nor had I the prepared flints or the lead for glaze, such as were employed in my uncle's factory. But I had seen the native people making pottery on the island at which we touched, and that being, so to speak, my own line of business, I had taken more particular note of it than of any other of their devices.
Their manner was to put a piece of calabash, or some such thing, under a lump of clay, to make it turn freely, and then to turn it slowly, but very deftly, by hand, fashioning thereby a vessel of such regular shape that I am sure my uncle, could he have seen it, would scarce have believed it had not been thrown, as we say, on the wheel. Such vessels they first dried in the sun, then, when a group of them had been moulded, a fire was kindled round and over them, and so they were baked. I had no calabash, but I tried my prentice hand with the half of a cocoa-nut shell, and found it very serviceable. But what gave me a deal of trouble was the clay. When I had mixed a great lump of it, moistening it with water and pounding it with stones, and had moulded a sort of porringer upon the shell at first, the vessel would not keep its shape, even so long as it took me to set it upon the ground to dry. After making several trials of it, and being always disappointed, I saw that I must mix some other substance with the earth to give it consistency. This was a thing that baffled me for days, since all our scouring of the island did not bring to light any substance that would be of use, and we had no means of grinding into powder the flints which lay around in plenty. How strange is it that we may look afar for what we have at our very doors! All of a sudden it came into my head that the sand of the seashore, at the edge of the lava tract, which we trod every day in going to bathe, might be the very substance I needed, and I found, when I came to try it, that it not only gave the clay the consistency I desired, but added a glaze to it when I baked the first vessel I made with it. I soon had a row of basins finished, not very comely in shape, but serviceable, and all of a size; and Billy, having heard me deplore that I had nothing larger than a cocoa-nut to mould them on, went a-prowling on the shore one day, and came staggering back with a great dome-shaped stone, and when he set it down in front of me, "Oh, ain't I a fool!" says he.