firmly to the keel; and we now launched our boat with the
satisfaction of knowing that when the false keel should be scraped
off we could easily put on another; whereas, should the real keel
have been scraped away, we could not have renewed it without taking
our boat to pieces, which Peterkin said made his "marrow quake to
think upon."

The mast and sail answered excellently; and we now sailed about in
the lagoon with great delight, and examined with much interest the
appearance of our island from a distance. Also, we gazed into the
depths of the water, and watched for hours the gambols of the
curious and bright-coloured fish among the corals and sea-weed.
Peterkin also made a fishing line, and Jack constructed a number of
hooks, some of which were very good, others remarkably bad. Some
of these hooks were made of iron-wood, which did pretty well, the
wood being extremely hard, and Jack made them very thick and large.
Fish there are not particular. Some of the crooked bones in fish-
heads also answered for this purpose pretty well. But that which
formed our best and most serviceable hook was the brass finger-ring
belonging to Jack. It gave him not a little trouble to manufacture
it. First he cut it with the axe; then twisted it into the form of
a hook. The barb took him several hours to cut. He did it by
means of constant sawing with the broken pen-knife. As for the
point, an hour's rubbing on a piece of sandstone made an excellent
one.

It would be a matter of much time and labour to describe the
appearance of the multitudes of fish that were day after day drawn
into our boat by means of the brass hook. Peterkin always caught
them, - for we observed that he derived much pleasure from fishing,