We set to work getting material for our big house, as we called it, immediately after our little house, or hut, was finished. At first we were greatly disheartened, for though we chose small trees of which to make our logs, both for easiness of felling and of moving when they were felled, we found that our clumsy axes were very poor tools. Not only did the flints need sharpening every few minutes, like a mower's scythe, but being attached to the handles only with creepers, and not very skilfully, they continually worked loose, and we had to desist in order to bind them again, which mightily exasperated us. At the end of the first day, seeing what little progress we had made, we were ready to despair. "It will take us a hundred years, master," says Billy, "and the corner posts will be rotted before we get the roof on. I don't believe in none of your Robinson Crusoes; and we'd better have been drownded; and I warrant you Hoggett and Chick and great fat Wabberley are just enjoying themselves somewhere, and I'm sick of my life." [Sidenote: Billy Scoffs at Romance] I have forgot to say that when we were eating our meals, or resting, I had told Billy the surprising story of Robinson Crusoe, of whom he had never heard, encouraging both him and myself with the tale of how that good mariner, after tribulations like to our own, came at length happily to his own land again. But I own I thought our case was much worse than Crusoe's, for he had clothes, and corn food, and good liquors, and firearms, and good tools, though few; and, indeed, everything he needed save company, and that came to him at last; whereas we had absolutely nothing except the fruits of the island and what things we could make for ourselves. Yet in reckoning up our situation and his, I felt very thankful that I had a companion, for the worst of evils are tolerable if we have some one to share them, and I wonder that Crusoe did not go stark mad, being alone for so many years till his man Friday came. Billy often scoffed when I told him what I remembered of Crusoe's story, and said he wasn't near so badly off as we were, and if he--that is, Billy--only had what Crusoe had, he would do as much as he, or more, especially if he had a forge and blacksmith's tools. And in particular, when I told him of Crusoe's horror when he saw a footprint in the sand, he burst into a laugh, and asked why there was only one footprint, and made me go down to our little bit of sandy beach there and then, and showed me the prints he made with his own feet, and asked me triumphantly whether the man whose mark Crusoe saw was a one-legged man, or what.