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XX
ROBINSON GETS READY FOR WINTER
There was one thing that troubled Robinson greatly. "What will become
of me when the winter comes? I will have no fire to warm me. I have
no clothing to protect me from the cold, and where shall I find food
when snow and ice cover all the ground and when the trees are bare
and the spring is frozen? It will be cold then in my cave; what shall
I do? It is cold and rainy already. I believe this is harvest time
and winter will soon be here. Winter and no stove, no winter clothing,
no winter store of food and no winter dwelling. What shall I do?"
He considered again the project of making fire. He again sought out
two pieces of wood and sat down and rubbed them together. The sweat
rolled down his face. When the wood began to get warm, his hand would
become tired, and he would have to stop. When he began again the wood
was cold. He worked for an hour or two, then he laid the wood aside
and said, "I don't believe I can do it I must do the next best thing.
I can at least get warm clothing to protect me from the rain and
snow." He looked down at his worn, thin clothing, his trousers, his
shirt, his jacket; they had become so thin and worn that they were
threadbare.
"I will take the skins of the hares which I have shot and will make
me something," he thought. He washed and cleaned them, but he needed
a knife and he set about making one. He split one end of a tough piece
of wood, thrust his stone blade in it and wound it with cocoa fibre.
His stone knife now had a handle. He could now cut the skins quite
well. But what should he do for needle and thread? Maybe the vines
would do. "But they are hardly strong enough," he thought. He pulled
the sinews from the bones of the rabbit and found them hard. Maybe
he could use them. He found fish skeletons on the seashore and bored
a hole in the end of the small, sharp rib bones. Then he threaded his
bone needle with the rabbit sinews and attempted to sew, but it would
not go. His needle broke. The skin was too hard. He bored holes in
the edge of the pieces of skin and sewed through the holes. This went
very well.
He sewed the skins together with the hair side inward, made himself
a jacket, a pair of trousers, a hat, and finally covered his parasol
with rabbit skin, for the rain had already dripped through the leaves
of it. All went well, only the trousers did not fit. He loosened them
and puckered them to no purpose. "Anyway," he thought, "I am now well
protected from the cold, when it does come."
[Illustration: ROBINSON IN HIS NEW SUIT]
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Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
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