uldn't explode any more.

VII

The pines of the island were full of pitch and a branch would burn
torch-like for a long time. I kept a bundle of such handy, the short
ends sharpened so's you could stick 'em round wherever the ground was
soft enough and have an effect of altar candles in a draughty church. If
there was occasion to leave the cave at night I'd carry one of the
torches and feel as safe as if it had been an elephant rifle.

We made a kind of a dooryard in front of the cave's mouth, with a
stockade that we borrowed from Robinson Crusoe, driving pointed stakes
close-serried and hoping they'd take root and sprout; but they didn't.
Between times I made finger-drawings in the sand of plans for tiger
traps and pitfalls. I couldn't dig pits, but I knew of two that might
have been made to my order, a volcano having taken the contract. They
were deep as wells, sheer-sided; anything that fell in would stay in. I
made a wattle-work of branches and palm fibre to serve as lids for these
nature-made tiger jars. The idea was to toss dead fish out to the middle
of the lids for bait; then for one of the big cats to smell the fish,
step out to get it, and fall through. Once in, it would be child's work
to stone him to death.

Another trap I made was more complicated and was a scheme to drop trees
heavy enough to break a camel's back or whatever touched the trigger
that kept them from falling. It was the devil's own job to make that
trap. First place, I couldn't cut a tree big enough and lift it to a
strategic position; so I had to fell trees in such a way that they'd be
caught half-way to the ground by other trees. Then I'd have to clear
away branches and roots so that when the trees did fall the rest of the
way it would be clean, plumb, and sudden. It was a wonderful trap when
it was finished and it was the most dangerous work of art I ever saw. If
you touched any of a dozen triggers you stood to have a whole grove of
trees come banging down on top of you--same as if you went for a walk in
the woods and a tornado came along and blew the woods down. If the big
cats had known how frightfully dangerous that trap was they'd have
jumped overboard and left the island by swimming. I made two other traps
something like it--the best contractor in New York wouldn't have
undertaken to build one just like it at any price--and then it came
around to be the seventh day, so to speak; and, like the six-day bicycle
rider, I rested.