t as one does an
entangled whipcord. When I had thus disengaged a sufficient length, I
cut that off, and repeating the like operation, in about three hours'
time, but with no little toil, I made up my load of different lengths
just to my liking. Having finished this task, I filled the gourd,
brought for that purpose, with water; and having first viewed the whole
remaining part of the rock, I returned over the stone bridge home again.

This journey, though it took me up several days, and was attended
with some fatigue, had yet given me great satisfaction; for now I
was persuaded I could not have one rival or enemy to fear in my whole
dominions. And from the impossibility, as I supposed, of there being
any, or of the ingress of any, unless by the same passage I entered
at, and by which I was well assured they could never return, I grew
contented, and blamed myself for the folly of my imaginary voices, as I
called them then, and took it for a distemper of the fancy only.

The next day I looked over my load of matweed, having given it that
name, and separated the different lengths from each other. I then found
I had several pieces between forty and fifty feet long, of which I
resolved to get a good number more, to make me a drag-net that I might
try for some fish in the lake. A day or two after, therefore, I brought
home another load of it Then I picked out a smooth level spot upon the
green-sward, and having prepared a great number of short wooden pegs, I
strained a line of the matweed about ten feet long, tying it at each end
to a peg, and stuck a row of pegs along by that line, about two inches
asunder; I next strained another line of the same length, parallel to
that, at the distance of forty feet from it, and stuck pegs thereby,
corresponding to the former row; and from each peg on one side, to the
opposite peg on the other, I tied a like length of my mat-line, quite
through the whole number of pegs; when the work looked like the inside
of a harpsichord. I afterwards drove pegs in like manner along the whole
length of the two outermost longer lines, and tied shorter lines to
them, so that the whole affair then represented the squares of a racket;
the corners of each of which squares I tied very tight with smaller
pieces of the line, till I had formed a complete net of forty feet long
and ten wide.

When I had finished my net, as I thought, I wrapped several stones
in rags, and fastened them to the bottom to sink it,