It nearly came to a quarrel between us, as to which should be cooked first, meat or bread; but when we were in the heat of the argument we perceived that our fire was going out, and that brought us to our senses. We piled more sticks on it, and broken cocoa-nut shells, and Billy, yielding to my desire for bread, went out into the wood and soon returned with two or three fine large fruits, weighing, I should think, about three pounds apiece. We had seen the native way of cooking this fruit, paring off the rough rind and baking the inner part, between the rind and the core, in an oven; but having no oven, though we promised ourselves to build one soon, we laid the fruits as they were on a red part of the fire, turning them about as you do chestnuts, and after a while we took them up and, having broken away the rind, ate the bread hot, and I do think I had never in my life before made such a hearty meal as I now did, though, to be sure, the bread had a slight flavour of burnt wood. However, we ate a good supper, and went to bed much happier than at any time since we first came to the island. [Sidenote: Bread] We made our breakfast in the same way when we awoke, but finding that it took some time to get a fire, we considered whether we could not keep it constantly alive, yet without needing to replenish it too frequently with fuel, which would have been a trouble, as well as a hindrance to our work. After some thought, we devised a kind of covered-in grate, which we built four-square of stones and pieces of rock, filling up the spaces between them, where they did not fit, with the clayey earth I have before mentioned, which we moistened with water, fetched from the lake in half a cocoa-nut shell, and then worked with our hands into a kind of mortar. We made a cover to this grate with small boughs plaited with grass and smeared all over with earth, and at the bottom of the grate we left two small holes by which air might enter, not a great current, but enough to keep the fire smouldering without burning much fuel. This device answered our expectations very well. We found that by casting into the embers a quantity of dry brushwood, and blowing upon them, we could obtain a brisk fire in a very little time, and when we had no more need of it for the present, we laid on a heap of grass and twigs, not too dry, and shut down the lid, and so found that we could keep our fire alive for a whole day with no more tending. We discovered, moreover, that by making a second enclosure about our grate, and covering this in also, we had a very convenient oven, in which we could lay in the morning the bread-fruit we needed for our dinner, and at midday find it very well cooked, neither too much nor too little. I must not forget to say that our neighbours the dogs watched these proceedings very curiously, and the first time we left the grate they went to it, to investigate with their noses; but the stones being very hot, their noses were burnt, and