t. Long
straight branches were cut, the leaves stripped off; it was shaped,
stronger in the middle, more slender at the extremities, and nothing
remained to be done but to find a plant fit to make the bow-string.
This was the "hibiscus heterophyllus," which furnishes fibers of such
remarkable tenacity that they have been compared to the tendons of
animals. Pencroft thus obtained bows of tolerable strength, for which he
only wanted arrows. These were easily made with straight stiff branches,
without knots, but the points with which they must be armed, that is
to say, a substance to serve in lieu of iron, could not be met with so
easily. But Pencroft said, that having done his part of the work, chance
would do the rest.

The settlers arrived on the ground which had been discovered the day
before. Being composed of the sort of clay which is used for making
bricks and tiles, it was very useful for the work in question. There was
no great difficulty in it. It was enough to scour the clay with sand,
then to mold the bricks and bake them by the heat of a wood fire.

Generally bricks are formed in molds, but the engineer contented himself
with making them by hand. All that day and the day following were
employed in this work. The clay, soaked in water, was mixed by the feet
and hands of the manipulators, and then divided into pieces of equal
size. A practiced workman can make, without a machine, about ten
thousand bricks in twelve hours; but in their two days work the five
brickmakers on Lincoln Island had not made more than three thousand,
which were ranged near each other, until the time when their complete
desiccation would permit them to be used in building the oven, that is
to say, in three or four days.

It was on the 2nd of April that Harding had employed himself in fixing
the orientation of the island, or, in other words, the precise spot
where the sun rose. The day before he had noted exactly the hour when
the sun disappeared beneath the horizon, making allowance for the
refraction. This morning he noted, no less exactly, the hour at which
it reappeared. Between this setting and rising twelve hours, twenty-four
minutes passed. Then, six hours, twelve minutes after its rising, the
sun on this day would exactly pass the meridian and the point of the sky
which it occupied at this moment would be the north. At the said hour,
Cyrus marked this point, and putting in a line with the sun two trees
which would serve him for