We did try, and I was not very much surprised when we failed, for though we could point a stick with our flints, we had nothing with which we could pierce the eye, and we found that tying the thread to the end was by no means satisfactory. However, we did contrive to put a few patches into our breeches by sticking on some of the bread-fruit cloth, which was soft and brown, with the sticky stuff that came out of the bark when we beat it. I should mention that we were not able to use this stuff immediately, for it did not make the cloth adhere; but we found that if we left it for a day, it became hard, and being then heated in one of our pots over a fire, it turned into a very fair glue. Besides patching our breeches thus, we made ourselves long coats, or rather cloaks, for they had no sleeves, being simply a long piece of cloth with a hole in the middle, and though we laughed at each other a good deal when we put them on, they covered us from neck to heel, and were very useful in keeping off the rain. And while we were about this, we thought we might as well make hats too, if we could; and after many failures we managed to fashion some bonnets out of cocoa-nut leaves, which kept our heads dry, and when the summer came defended them from the sun's heat, and our necks too, for we stuck on flaps at the back. [Illustration: Billy's Palm-leaf Hat] We had started a piggery, as I have mentioned. At first it was a great deal of trouble to us, for the dogs came yelping round the sty at night, and the wild pigs also tried to reach the two piglets we had captured, and we had to be constantly on the watch lest the walls of the sty should be broken through. However, these wild inhabitants of our island in course of time seemed to accept the piggery as part of the order of things, and left us in peace. But our troubles were started again when Billy all of a sudden conceived the notion of a poultry run. In the course of our second holiday, after our new hut was finished, we chanced to discover several nests of hens, which we had formerly sought for in vain, they being cunningly concealed or else very inaccessible. Domestic fowls do not seem in general to be very plentifully endowed with wits, but the fowls on our island, having to provide against the rapacity of rats and dogs and pigs, certainly had more intelligence than ordinary; and the hens were not particular about the comfort of their nests, so long as they could find a shelter--some secluded nook among the rocks where they could lay their eggs. Billy had said more than once that he would like to have a poultry run, but though we now and then found eggs, and once or twice managed to bring down a fowl with our arrows, which we roasted or boiled, we had never yet been able to catch one alive. They frequented mostly the little patch of woodland in the extreme west of the island, and there we sometimes saw them roosting in the upper branches of tall trees. It