In the evening I brought a good supply of clay into the house, and using the chest as a work-bench, busied myself until bedtime with moulding several vessels of different shapes and sizes for use in cooking and about the house. I fashioned a rude pot capable of holding about five gallons; a smaller one to hold a gallon or thereabouts; a water-jar with two handles by which it might be swung with a cord from the ridgepole, to contain drinking-water; and others of various shapes and sizes. All these I dusted over inside and out with dry sand and set aside where they might dry ready for burning.
That night I slept for the first time in my hammock, and the change was a comfortable one, though in the early morning hours I felt the need of some warm covering. For however hot the days might be, the nights on the island were always cool. However, when it got chilly I turned out and heaped the dry grass of my former bed into the hammock, and was soon warm enough.
In the morning, after setting my vessels out in the sun, I turned to the careful examination of all the samples of vegetation which I had collected, carefully looking them up in the Botany to find their names and properties, and also in the Dispensatory. The seed-bearing grass was undoubtedly canary grass. Besides this and the wax-bearing myrtle, the only other notable sample was a species of india-rubber-bearing artocarpus. As the canary grass was ripe, I thought I could not do better than to harvest a good supply of it at once. The whole of that day and the next were spent in gathering it and stacking it up near the house. The labor was very great, as my knife was a poor substitute for a sickle; but the necessity of some sort of farinaceous food spurred me on. I gathered in all a great stack ten feet in diameter and twelve feet high at the peak. This I thatched with grass, just as I had seen grain stacks thatched at home, that it might be protected from the wet. Great flocks of small birds were feeding upon this seed where it grew, and I trapped a dozen or more by unhinging the chest lid and using it propped up with a stick as a trap.
To try the character of the seed as food, I parched a pint of it over the fire and then crushed it in a great bivalve shell with a round stone into a coarse meal. This meal I mixed with water and salt, and it made a very good sort of cold gruel. This, with the birds broiled on the coals, made quite the best meal I had so far eaten on the island. The salt pan had already begun to yield salt, which was crystallizing along the edges as the water evaporated. The smoked turtle meat continued good, and I relished it very much. The weather remained fine from day to day, and I had strong hopes that a vessel might heave in sight at any moment. As a preparation for such a chance I laid a pile of wood ready to make a signal fire, and as a permanent signal selected an isolated palm-tree and denuding it of its leaves, tied a great stick across it near the top,--an arrangement which, I hoped, might attract the attention of a passing vessel should I fail to see it. Of material to make a flag I had nothing to spare except the square of black focussing-cloth belonging to the camera,--and this I needed every night as a covering, as it was all I had for that purpose.