To obviate this, my wife, who feared these continual wettings might injure our health, contrived waterproofs: she brushed on several layers of caoutchouc over stout shirts, to which she attached hoods; she then fixed to these duck trousers, and thus prepared for each of us a complete waterproof suit, clad in which we might brave the severest rain.
In spite of our endeavours to keep ourselves busy, the time dragged heavily. Our mornings were occupied in tending the animals; the boys amused themselves with their pets, and assisted me in the manufacture of carding-combs and a spindle for their mother. The combs I made with nails, which I placed head downwards on a sheet of tin about an inch wide; holding the nails in their proper positions I poured solder round their heads to fix them to the tin, which I then folded down on either side of them to keep them perfectly firm.
In the evening, when our room was illuminated with wax candles, I wrote a journal of all the events which had occurred since our arrival in this foreign land; and, while my wife was busy with her needle and Ernest making sketches of birds, beasts and flowers with which he had met during the past months, Fritz and Jack taught little Franz to read.
Week after week rolled by. Week after week saw us still close prisoners. Incessant rain battered down above us, constant gloom hung over the desolate scene.
Chapter 9
The winds at length were lulled, the sun shot his brilliant rays through the riven clouds, the rain ceased to fall—spring had come. No prisoners set at liberty could have felt more joy than we did as we stepped forth from our winter abode, refreshed our eyes with the pleasant verdure around us, and our ears with the merry songs of a thousand happy birds, and drank in the pure balmy air of spring.
Our plantations were thriving vigorously. The seed we had sown was shooting through the moist earth. All nature was refreshed.
Our nest was our first care: filled with leaves and broken and torn by the wind, it looked indeed dilapidated. We worked hard, and in a few days it was again habitable. My wife begged that I would now start her with the flax, and as early as possible I built a drying-oven, and then prepared it for her use; I also, after some trouble, manufactured a beetle-reel and spinning-wheel, and she and Franz were soon hard at work, the little boy reeling off the thread his mother spun.
I was anxious to visit Tentholm, for I feared that much of our precious stores might have suffered. Fritz and I made an excursion thither. The damage done to Falconhurst was as nothing compared to the scene that awaited us. The tent was blown to the ground, the canvas torn to rags, the provisions soaked, and two casks of powder utterly destroyed. We immediately spread such things as we hoped yet to preserve in the sun to dry.
The pinnace was safe, but our faithful tub-boat was dashed in pieces, and the irreparable damage we had sustained made me resolve to contrive some safer and more stable winter-quarters before the arrival of the next rainy season. Fritz proposed that we should hollow out a cave in the rock, and though the difficulties such an undertaking would present appeared almost insurmountable, I yet determined to make the attempt; we might not, I thought, hew out a cavern of sufficient size to serve as a room, but we might at least make a cellar for the more valuable and perishable of our stores.