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 un