without the aid of a tail. And so the bo'sun bade him set-to without
delay, for that we should do well to deliver the people in the hulk, and
afterwards make all haste from the island, which was no better than a
nesting place of ghouls.

Now hearing the man say that his kite would fly without a tail, I was
mightily curious to see what manner of thing he would make; for I had
never seen the like, nor heard that such was possible. Yet he spoke of no
more than he could accomplish; for he took two of the reeds and cut them
to a length of about six feet; then he bound them together in the middle
so that they formed a Saint Andrew's cross, and after that he made two
more such crosses, and when these were completed, he took four reeds
maybe a dozen feet long, and bade us stand them upright in the shape of a
square, so that they formed the four corners, and after that he took one
of the crosses, and laid it in the square so that its four ends touched
the four uprights, and in this position he lashed it. Then he took the
second cross and lashed it midway between the top and bottom of the
uprights, and after that he lashed the third at the top, so that the
three of them acted as spreaders to keep the four longer reeds in their
places as though they were for the uprights of a little square tower.
Now, when he had gotten so far as that, the bo'sun called out to us to
make our dinners, and this we did, and afterwards had a short time in
which to smoke, and whilst we were thus at our ease the sun came out,
the which it had not done all the day, and at that we felt vastly
brighter; for the day had been very gloomy with clouds until that time,
and what with the loss of Tompkins, and our own fears and hurts, we had
been exceeding doleful, but now, as I have said, we became more cheerful,
and went very alertly to the finishing of the kite.

At this point it came suddenly to the bo'sun that we had made no
provision of cord for the flying of the kite, and he called out to the
man to know what strength the kite would require, at which Jessop
answered him that maybe ten-yarn sennit would do, and this being so,
the bo'sun led three of us down to the wrecked mast upon the further
beach, and from this we stripped all that was left of the shrouds, and
carried them to the top of the hill, and so, presently, having unlaid
them, we set-to upon the sennit, using ten yarns; but plaiting two as
one, by which means we progressed with more speed than