“Of course I did not know, and told him so.
“‘Then I’ll give it one right off,’ said he; ‘I’ll call it from this minute the Rock of Good Hope, and here we’ll make our start in life. It’s as good a place, perhaps, to make a start in life as any other; for nobody is likely to dispute our title to our lands, or molest us in our fortune-making, which is more than could be said if our lot were cast in any other place.’
“This vein of conversation brightened me up a little. Indeed, it was hard to be very long despondent in the presence of the Dean’s hopeful disposition. There was much more said of the same nature, which it is not necessary to repeat. It is enough for me to tell you that the upshot of the whole matter was that we came in the end to regard ourselves as settled on the island, if not for the remainder of our lives, at least for an indefinite time, and we made up our minds that there was no use in being gloomy and cast down about it. So from that time forward we were mostly cheerful, and, though you may think it very strange, were generally contented.
“This was a great step gained, and when we now came to make an inventory of our possessions, we did it just as a farmer or merchant would do. Being the undisputed owners of this Rock of Good Hope, we considered ourselves none the less owners of all the foxes, ducks, eggs, eider-down, dead beasts, dry bones, and whatsoever else there might be upon it; and, besides this, we had a lien upon all the seals and walruses and whales of every kind that lived in the sea,—that is, if we could catch them.
“We now worked with even a better spirit than we had done before, for the idea of being settled on the island for life seemed to imply that we had need to look ahead farther than when our hopes of rescue had been strong.
“And first we finished the hut in which we were to live,—doing it not as if we were putting up a tent for temporary use, but as a man who has just come into possession of a large property puts up a fine house on it, that he may be comfortable for the remainder of his days.
“I have told you our hut was about twelve feet square, and that we had, after much hard labor, succeeded in closing it up perfectly, and in making it tight. Along the peak of it, where the two rocks came together, there was a crack which gave us much trouble; but at length we succeeded in pounding down into it, with the but-end of our narwhal horn, a great quantity of moss or turf, and thus closed it tight.
“I must tell you here, while we are on the subject of moss, and since I have spoken about it so often, that the moss grew on our island, as it does in all Arctic countries, with a richness that you never see here,—moss being, in truth, the characteristic vegetation of the Arctic regions. In the valley fronting us there was a bed of it several feet thick. Its fibres were very long,—as much, in some places, as four inches,—all of a single year’s growth; and as it had gone on growing year after year, you will understand that there was layer after layer of it. In one place, at the side of the valley to the right as we went down towards the beach, it seemed to have died out after growing for many years; and when we discovered this, we were more rejoiced than we had been at any time since starting the fire; for the moss, being dead, had become dry and hard, and burned almost like peat, as we found when we came to try it in our fireplace; and when we added to it a little of our blubber, it made such a heat that we could not have desired anything better. Indeed, it made our hut so warm that we could leave the door and window both open until the weather became colder.
“One thing which gave us great satisfaction was the immense quantity of the dead moss which was in this bed,—so much, indeed, that, no matter how long we should live there, we could never burn up the hundredth part of it. At first there had not appeared to be much of it, but it developed more and more, like a coal mine, as we dug farther and farther into it.
“Our fireplace was therefore, as you see, a great success; but we were, after a few days, most unexpectedly troubled with it. Thus far the wind had been blowing only in one direction; but afterwards it shifted to the opposite quarter, driving the smoke all down into the hut, and smothering us out. Neither of us being a skilful mason, we could not imagine what was the matter; but finally it occurred to us, after much useless labor had been spent in tearing part of it down and building it up again, that it was too low, being just on a level with the top of the hut; so we ran it up as much higher as we could lift the stones, which was about four feet, and after that we had no more trouble with it.