ls; which, after I had showed him how to use, he did very handily:
and in about a month's hard labour we finished it, and made it very
handsome; especially when, with our axes, which I showed him how to
handle, we cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a boat.
After this, however, it cost us near a fortnight's time to get her
along, as it were inch by inch, upon great rollers into the water; but
when she was in, she would have carried twenty men with great ease.

When she was in the water, and though she was so big, it amazed me to
see with what dexterity, and how swift my man Friday would manage her,
turn her, and paddle her along. So I asked him if he would, and if we
might venture over in her. "Yes," he said, "we venture over in her very
well, though great blow wind." However, I had a farther design that he
knew nothing of, and that was to make a mast and a sail, and to fit her
with an anchor and cable. As to a mast, that was easy enough to get; so
I pitched upon a straight young cedar tree, which I found near the
place, and which there were great plenty of in the island: and I set
Friday to work to cut it down, and gave him directions how to shape and
order it. But as to the sail, that was my particular care. I knew I had
old sails, or rather pieces of old sails enough; but as I had had them
now six and twenty years by me, and had not been very careful to
preserve them, not imagining that I should ever have this kind of use
for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten, and, indeed, most of
them were so. However, I found two pieces, which appeared pretty good,
and with these I went to work; and with a great deal of pains, and
awkward stitching, you may be sure, for want of needles, I, at length,
made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a
shoulder of mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short
sprit at the top, such as usually our ships' long-boats sail with, and
such as I best knew how to manage, as it was such a one I had to the
boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as related in the first
part of my story.

I was near two months performing this last work, viz. rigging and
fitting my mast and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a
small stay, and a sail, or fore-sail, to it, to assist, if we should
turn to windward; and, which was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the
stern of her to steer with. I was but a bungling shipwright, yet, as I
kne