This piece of wood was
pegged very 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 seaweed. 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
penknife.
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