第44章

"Now," said Jack, "as our boat answers so well, we will get a mast and sail made immediately.""So we will," cried Peterkin, as we all assisted to drag the boat above high-water mark; "we'll light our candle and set about it this very night.Hurrah, my boys, pull away!"As we dragged our boat, we observed that she grated heavily on her keel; and, as the sands were in this place mingled with broken coral rocks, we saw portions of the wood being scraped off.

"Hallo!" cried Jack, on seeing this."That won't do.Our keel will be worn off in no time at this rate.""So it will," said I, pondering deeply as to how this might be prevented.But I am not of a mechanical turn, naturally, so Icould conceive no remedy save that of putting a plate of iron on the keel, but as we had no iron I knew not what was to be done.

"It seems to me, Jack," I added, "that it is impossible to prevent the keel being worn off thus.""Impossible!" cried Peterkin, "my dear Ralph, you are mistaken, there is nothing so easy - ""How?" I inquired, in some surprise.

"Why, by not using the boat at all!" replied Peterkin.

"Hold your impudent tongue, Peterkin," said Jack, as he shouldered the oars, "come along with me and I'll give you work to do.In the first place, you will go and collect cocoa-nut fibre, and set to work to make sewing twine with it - ""Please, captain," interrupted Peterkin, "I've got lots of it made already, - more than enough, as a little friend of mine used to be in the habit of saying every day after dinner.""Very well," continued Jack; "then you'll help Ralph to collect cocoa-nut cloth, and cut it into shape, after which we'll make a sail of it.I'll see to getting the mast and the gearing; so let's to work."And to work we went right busily, so that in three days from that time we had set up a mast and sail, with the necessary rigging, in our little boat.The sail was not, indeed, very handsome to look at, as it was formed of a number of oblong patches of cloth; but we had sewed it well by means of our sail-needle, so that it was strong, which was the chief point.Jack had also overcome the difficulty about the keel, by pinning to it a FALSE keel.This was a piece of tough wood, of the same length and width as the real keel, and about five inches deep.He made it of this depth because the boat would be thereby rendered not only much more safe, but more able to beat against the wind; which, in a sea where the trade-winds blow so long and so steadily in one direction, was a matter of great importance.This piece of wood was pegged very firmly to the keel; and we now launched our boat with the satisfaction of knowing that when the false keel should be scraped off we could easily put on another; whereas, should the real keel have been scraped away, we could not have renewed it without taking our boat to pieces, which Peterkin said made his "marrow quake to think upon."The mast and sail answered excellently; and we now sailed about in the lagoon with great delight, and examined with much interest the appearance of our island from a distance.Also, we gazed into the depths of the water, and watched for hours the gambols of the curious and bright-coloured fish among the corals and sea-weed.

Peterkin also made a fishing line, and Jack constructed a number of hooks, some of which were very good, others remarkably bad.Some of these hooks were made of iron-wood, which did pretty well, the wood being extremely hard, and Jack made them very thick and large.

Fish there are not particular.Some of the crooked bones in fish-heads also answered for this purpose pretty well.But that which formed our best and most serviceable hook was the brass finger-ring belonging to Jack.It gave him not a little trouble to manufacture it.First he cut it with the axe; then twisted it into the form of a hook.The barb took him several hours to cut.He did it by means of constant sawing with the broken pen-knife.As for the point, an hour's rubbing on a piece of sandstone made an excellent one.