After this she took them to where she had a fire burning out-of-doors upon the ground. She raked away the fire to one side, and set the pots where the fire had been, standing them all upside down, and ranging them together in as small a space as possible. Then she piled up sticks and pieces of dried fir tree wood about the pots, and laid little faggots all round, and raked up the hot ashes and set fire to the pile. And she and Tig carried fresh fuel as the fire burned, and kept it going until they could see the pots all red hot. And then they let it sink gradually and die down of itself; and there were the pots baked hard and sound, and fit for use as soon as they were cold. Once Gofa had set to work making pottery, she used to make a good batch at a time; she did not stop making and baking as soon as she had finished just what she wanted at the time. For she liked to have a store of pottery at hand; and if she did not want to use them all herself, she could always exchange one or two for something useful that she might happen to want. When Gofa or any of the other women wanted to make a large pankin for holding water or milk or meal, she used to make a tall basket, like a bucket, of osiers and reeds, and daub it inside with clay. The clay was laid on thickly and then smoothed and trimmed with the stone and the wooden blade; and the wide neck and the rim were moulded by hand. She did not attempt to lift the pankin out of the basket mould, but set the whole thing in the fire as it was; and the fire burned off the basket work, and left the marks of the reeds showing all round on the outside like a pattern. And very likely it was the look of this pattern on the pottery which first gave the women the notion of graving a design upon the smaller vessels which they made entirely by hand. The women generally took pains to make neat patterns by using different simple tools of wood and bone, and sometimes they tied a piece of twisted cord round a vessel, and impressed its mark upon the clay. Sometimes they did not use a tool at all, nor even a twisted cord, but made little dents round the neck of a jar with the thumb nail, and made the pattern in that way. _Chapter the Twentieth_ _How Tig went Hunting the Deer_