On our sledge we put such of the
casks which held food, and took them back to The Nest. Fritz and I went
once more to the wreck, and this time we brought off chests of clothes,
pigs of lead, cart wheels, sacks of maize, oats, peas, and wheat. With
a strong bar we broke down some of the doors, and took such parts of
the ship as we thought would aid us to build our house, which as yet
was far less safe than I could wish. These we bound with cords, and
made them float back at the stern of the raft.
When we got to the shore my wife and the three boys were there to greet
us. My first care was to send for the sledge, and with this we took
most of our new wealth up to The Nest.
The next day I told my sons that they must now learn to run, to leap,
to climb, and to throw stones straight at a mark, as all these things
would be of great use to them in their new mode of life.
I next taught them to use the LAS-SO, by means of which men catch the
wild horse on the vast plains of the New World. I tied two stones to
the ends of a cord some yards in length, and flung off one of them at
the trunk of a young tree; the cord went round and round it in a coil
and bound it so tight that I could have drawn it to me had it not been
fast in the ground. This trick the boys were not slow to learn; and
Fritz, in a short time, could take an aim as well with a stone as he
could with his gun.
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