I now had a great store of pork, and the next thing was to cure it. Salt was now the important thing, and I went to my salt pan to see what the prospect was. To my great satisfaction, I found the water all dried up, leaving a fine layer of glistening salt, thickest in the lower part of the basin and gradually thinning away to a mere frosting at the edges. It was quite dry and caked, so that there was no trouble to get it up from the bottom, and when I had heaped it together in the centre, there were, I should judge, over fifty pounds. This precious commodity I carried at once to the house so that it might be under shelter from the dew and rain.
I turned to at once to “dry-salt” the pork, rubbing each piece thoroughly on all sides, and piling the whole up in the now empty turtle shell with the breast plate weighed down on it with heavy stones. The only place where I could store this meat was in the single room of my house. But I determined to remedy this by building as soon as possible a lean-to at the back of the house, which I could use first as a smoke-house, and then as a storeroom for my provisions. The turtle meat, now perfectly cured, I stored temporarily in the chest.
That night I lay in my hammock in position to see the starlit ocean through one of the ventilators, and thought over my situation. I could not now complain of lack of food, for there was a supply sufficient to last me two months at least, and there was reason to suppose that it would not be at all difficult to replenish the store. In my porous earthen jar, slung at the head of my hammock in the cool air-current, and by its slow evaporation cooling the liquid contents, was pure, cool, sweet water to drink, and outside was a running brook from which to fill it as often as required. I could safely hope to support myself here as long as might be necessary. But as I had no desire to remain indefinitely a prisoner on this island, I began to turn my thoughts persistently upon the problem of building a boat to get away in. If in the mean time a vessel of some sort should heave in sight I was prepared to take advantage of the chance; and if none came I would still have my work started and no time unnecessarily lost.