mid
and vacillating as a little girl; and I honour him for it!

As this boat was a curiosity in its way, a few words here relative to
the manner of its construction may not be amiss.

I have already mentioned the chestnut-tree with its wonderful buttresses
or planks. This tree, then, furnished us with the chief part of our
material. First of all, Jack sought out a limb of a tree of such a form
and size as, while it should form the keel, a bend at either end should
form the stem and stern-posts. Such a piece, however, was not easy to
obtain; but at last he procured it by rooting up a small tree which had
a branch growing at the proper angle about ten feet up its stem, with
two strong roots growing in such a form as enabled him to make a
flat-sterned boat. This placed, he procured three branching roots of
suitable size, which he fitted to the keel at equal distances, thus
forming three strong ribs. Now the squaring and shaping of these, and
the cutting of the grooves in the keel, was an easy enough matter, as it
was all work for the axe, in the use of which Jack was become
wonderfully expert; but it was quite a different affair when he came to
nailing the ribs to the keel, for we had no instrument capable of boring
a large hole, and no nails to fasten them with. We were, indeed, much
perplexed here; but Jack at length devised an instrument that served
very well. He took the remainder of our hoop-iron and beat it into the
form of a pipe or cylinder, about as thick as a man's finger. This he
did by means of our axe and the old rusty axe we had found at the house
of the poor man at the other side of the island. This, when made red
hot, bored slowly through the timbers; and the better to retain the
heat, Jack shut up one end of it and filled it with sand. True, the
work was very slowly done; but it mattered not--we had little else to
do. Two holes were bored in each timber, about an inch and a half
apart, and also down into the keel, but not quite through. Into these
were placed stout pegs made of a tree called iron-wood, and when they
were hammered well home, the timbers were as firmly fixed as if they had
been nailed with iron. The gunwales, which were very stout, were fixed
in a similar manner. But besides the wooden nails, they were firmly
lashed to the stem and stern-posts and ribs by means of a species of
cordage which we had contrived to make out of the fibrous husk of the
cocoa-nut. This husk was very