"I will take the skins of the hares which I have shot and will make
me something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed
a knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece
of wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre.
His stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite
well. But what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines
would do. "But they are hardly strong enough," he thought. He pulled
the sinews from the bones of the rabbit and found them hard. Maybe
he could use them. He found fish skeletons on the seashore and bored
a hole in the end of the small, sharp rib bones. Then he threaded his
bone needle with the rabbit sinews and attempted to sew, but it would
not go. His needle broke. The skin was too hard. He bored holes in
the edge of the pieces of skin and sewed through the holes. This went
very well.
He sewed the skins together with the hair side inward, made himself
a jacket, a pair of trousers, a hat, and finally covered his parasol
with rabbit skin, for the rain had already dripped through the leaves
of it. All went well, only the trousers did not fit. He loosened them
and puckered them to no purpose. "Anyway," he thought, "I am now well
protected from the cold, when it does come."
[Illustration: ROBINSON IN HIS NEW SUIT]
XXI
HOW ROBINSON LAYS UP A STORE OF FOOD
Now for the food.
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