|
|
XII
ROBINSON MAKES A HUNTING BAG
Several days passed with Robinson's hat-making and his calendar-making
and his watching the sea. Every day his corn and bananas became more
distasteful to him. And he planned a longer journey about the island
to see if something new to eat could be found.
But he considered that if he went a distance from his cave and found
something it would really be of little use to him. "I could eat my
fill," he said, "but that is all. And by the time I get back to my
cave I will again be hungry. I must find something in which I can
gather and carry food." He found nothing.
"The people in New York," he said, "have baskets, or pockets, or bags
made of coarse cloth. Of them all, I could most easily make the net,
perhaps, of vines. But the little things would fall out of the net.
I will see whether I can make a net of small meshes."
But he soon saw that the vines did not give a smooth surface. He
thought for a long while. In his garden at home his father had
sometimes bound up the young trees with the soft inner bark of others.
He wondered if he could use this. He stripped away the outer bark from
the tree, which before had yielded him a fibre for his hat, and pulled
off the long, smooth pieces of the inner bark. He twisted them
together. Then he thought how he could weave the strands together.
He looked at his shirt. A piece was torn off and unravelled. He could
see the threads go up and down. He saw that some threads go from left
to right (woof), others lengthwise (the warp).
From his study of the woven cloth, Robinson saw he must have a firmer
thread than the strips of bark gave alone. He separated his bark into
long, thin strips. These he twisted into strands or yarn by rolling
between his hands, or on a smooth surface. As he twisted it he wound
it on a stick. It was slow, hard work. Of all his work, the making
of yarn or thread gave him the most trouble. He learned to twist it
by knotting the thread around the spindle or bobbin on which he wound
it and twirling this in the air. He remembered sadly the old spinning
wheel we had seen at his grandmother's house.
His next care was something to hold the threads while he wove them
in and out. He had never seen a loom.
After long study Robinson set two posts in the ground and these he
bound with seventy-two strands horizontally under each other. Then
he tied in the top at the left another thread and wove it in and out
through the seventy-two threads. So he tied seventy-two vertical
strands and wove them in and out. Thus he had a net three times as
long as his foot and as wide as long. He tied the four corners
together. He made a woven handle for it and put it on his shoulder
like a sack, saying gleefully, "This shall be my hunting bag."
[Illustration: ROBINSON'S LOOM]
|
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
|