This event was nothing less than a violent storm of wind and rain which sprang up suddenly in the middle of the night. We had returned to our first shelter, the make-shift hut, or rather lean-to, which we had constructed of boughs and leaves around a great tree. The wind broke this down utterly, scattering the materials of it far and wide, and the rain drenched us to the skin, or I should say, soaked us to the bone, we having no garments but our shirts and breeches. That night was the most miserable of all my life, I assure you. We huddled together for shelter under the thickest trees, listening to the howling of the wind, and sometimes hearing great crashing noises that made us fear almost to remain under shelter at all, lest the trees should fall upon our heads and kill us. Never a wink of sleep had we that night, and when daylight came, we staggered forth from the wood, two shivering miserable mortals, who would have given the world for a roaring fire and a hot posset to comfort us. We needed not to climb trees for our breakfast, for the wind had strewed the ground with cocoanuts, and had indeed uprooted many trees, one of which had narrowly missed the very spot where we had lain. As we ate our food, very wretched, we considered how we were to construct some sort of hut, in case another storm should visit us. There was timber in plenty, but neither Billy nor I had any knowledge of sawyers' or carpenters' work; nor if we had should we have been much better off, having no tool save the rough axe of Billy's fashioning. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and so it proved in our case, as will be seen more fully hereafter. After breakfast the first thing that Billy did was to try his axe on one of the big fallen trees. He was able after very great labour--I taking my turns when he was tired--to lop some of the branches off, but the flint was so much blunted by it that we saw it would serve us little longer. Accordingly we set off up the mountain-side to find other flints of which to make axe-heads, and on this little expedition we were followed by the pack of dogs, which watched our proceedings as if they took a great interest in them, but always remained at a reasonable distance. By midday we had collected a fair number of sharp-edged flints, small and big, and Billy having made me an axe like his own--he would not let me do it, saying that he was sure he could make a better one than me--we felt a deal more comfortable both in body and mind, being satisfied that we should not lack tools, though rough, and our clothes being dried with the sun. Indeed, we found the sun rather oppressive, especially upon our bare heads, and we wished very heartily that our hats had been spared to us; coats we could do without in the daytime, though they would have been a great solace o' nights. [Sidenote: Plans]