Island of the Lost by Joan Druett Page B

bird—demanded his share.”
    The story had a sad ending, alas. Harry, in a hurry to put down a heavy pot of water, unwittingly set it on top of Boss, crushing him to death, and “his poor little mate died of grief.”
    A CCORDING TO HIS OWN ACCOUNT , Raynal was the person who established the strict household routine. During that first week of duty as cook, he had risen at six in the morning, and had made sure that his companions did too, a healthy custom he insisted they continue. If his cabinmates complained, he simply pointed out that they needed enough firewood to get them through the next twenty-four hours, and sent them out to chop down trees. “And soon they fell into the good habit of early rising,” he complacently wrote.
    The fire was kept blazing day and night, and so a lot of wood was needed, the best being “ironwood,” which came from the twisted branches and contorted trunks of the forest rata. While it had the distinct virtue of burning well, producing a lot of heat and very little smoke, it was very hard to cut—so hard that their one hatchet was notched and blunted, providing Raynal with yet another challenge. After vainly hunting the beaches for a stone to serve as a whetstone, he remembered the blocks of sandstone that had been loaded in the
Grafton
as extra ballast. At the next low tide he clambered on board the wreck, lowered himself into the hold on a rope, and felt around with his feet until he managed to lift a block, tie it to the rope, and haul it up to the deck.
    He also found an iron pin that had rusted free from a spar. After heating this until it was cherry red, he hammered one end flat to make a cold chisel—“then, with this new tool and my hammer, I fashioned my block of sandstone into a knife grinder’s grindstone.” The hardest part was drilling a hole through the center, but once he had done it, he was able to fit it with a wooden axle, to which he attached a handle. Fixed between a couple of trees growing close together near the house, the grindstone became a very useful and much-appreciated gadget for sharpening not just the hatchet but other tools as well.
    Meanwhile, yet another instance of Raynal’s resourcefulness had made their lives more civilized. Within weeks of being stranded, they had all become uncomfortably aware of their smelly and unkempt condition. It was bad enough that they were wildly bearded and longhaired, but every time they pushed through the forest their clothes caught and ripped, and so they were all wearing a collection of rags. Still worse, those rags stankof rancid oil and decomposed blood, an unpleasant reminder of the many long marches their wearers had made with dripping quarters of sea lion carried on their shoulders.
    Making trousers and blouses out of sailcloth to wear as protective clothing during hunting forays was one solution to the problem, but it didn’t fix the clothes that had been fouled already. Soaking them in the brook didn’t have much effect, so, while the men sat around slapping at insects and frowning over their sailmaker’s needles and the sewing thread they had made from unraveled sailcloth, Raynal put his mind to the manufacture of soap. When he described his ambition, it was received with some hilarity, his shipmates asking if he knew the right magic words to conjure soap out of thin air. However, that only added to the challenge.
    Not long after, he had the opportunity to experiment in semiprivacy. On a day that dawned fine and clear, Musgrave, George Harris, and Henry Forgès decided to climb to the top of the mountain so that they could take a look at the hinterland and the sea, just on the off chance that they might spy a sail. Alick Maclaren wasn’t well—being the strongest of the party, he had done more than his fair share of the heavy work. As Raynal meditated, “Our brave Norwegian, who is full of zeal and activity, has undoubtedly abused his