“Having succeeded so well with our arrangements towards keeping up a fire, we next fitted up a bed, as the storms now began to trouble us, and we found, when we were driven away from the grass, and were obliged to sleep inside of the hut, that it was a very hard place to sleep, being nothing but rough stones, which made us very sore, and made our bones ache.
“The first thing we did now was to build a wall about as high as our knees right across the middle of the hut, from side to side; then, across the space thus enclosed in the back part of the hut, we built up another wall about three feet high,—thus, you see, making two divisions of it.
“One of these divisions we used as a sort of store-room or closet, levelling the bottom of it with flat stone, of which we had no difficulty in getting all we wanted. We also covered the front part of the hut with stones of the same description, thus making quite a smooth floor. It was not large enough, as you will see, to give us much trouble in keeping it clean. Of the second division, in the back part, we made our bed, by first filling it up with moss, then covering the moss over with dry grass.
“Having given up all hope of a ship coming after us, we now gave up watching for one; and we went to sleep together on our new bed, lying on the dry grass, and, as before, covering ourselves over with my large overcoat. We found it to be more comfortable than you would think, and altogether better than anything we had yet had to sleep on. But we came near losing our fire by it, as the last embers were just dying out when we awoke from this our first sleep in the hut.
“But this bed did not exactly suit our fancy, and, seeing the necessity for some better kind of bedclothes, our wits were once more set to working, in order to discover something with which to fasten together the duck-skins that we had been saving and drying, and of which we had now almost a hundred. We had spread them out upon the rocks, and dried them in the sun; for we had seen that, if we could only find something with which to sew them together, we might make all the clothing that we wanted.
“The eider-duck skin is very warm, having, besides its thick coat of feathers, a heavy underlayer of soft warm down, which, as I told you before, the ducks pick off to line their nests with. The skins are also very strong, as well as warm.
“Now, however, as at other times since we had been cast away, good fortune came to us; and we had scarcely begun seriously to feel the need of sewing materials before they were thrown in our way, as if providentially. It happened thus:—
“In cutting the blubber from the dead narwhal, we had quite exposed the strong sinews of the tail, without, however, for a moment imagining that we were preparing the way to a most important and useful discovery. After a while this sinew had become partially dried in the sun, and one day, while busy with some one of our now quite numerous occupations, I was much surprised to see the Dean running towards me from the beach, and was still more surprised when I heard him crying out, ‘I have it, I have it!’
“It seemed to me that the Dean was always having something, and I was more than ever curious to know what it was this time.
“He had been down to the beach, and, observing some of the dried sinew, had begun to tear it to pieces; and in this way he found out that he could make threads of it, and he immediately set off to tell me about it. We at once went together down to the beach, and, cutting off all that we could get of this strong sinew, we spread it upon the rocks, that it might dry more thoroughly.