I have not said anything about the plan of our big hut, but it must not be supposed that we began to work without any design. We often talked about it, and so made a general plan, though we forgot many things and did not foresee others. What this plan was will be made clear as I go on: if I set it down here all in one place it would be like writing the same thing twice over, which would be tedious. Having felled the four fairly large trees we designed for our corner-posts, the next thing was to bring them down from the wood to the level plateau where we intended to build. We lopped off some of the branches and burnt off the rest, but then found that the trunks were too heavy for us to drag, even though it was downhill. Thus we were put to it to make rollers, which was not such a tedious matter as felling the trees, for there were many young trees of a shape and size fit for this use when we had taken off their branches. But when we came to place the rollers under the first of our trunks we could not at first by any means do it, the tree being so heavy that the two of us together could not raise it an inch from the ground. How to get over this difficulty puzzled us for some time; indeed, we might never have thought of a way but for what I may call an accident. We had gone down to the shore for our morning swim, and as we walked over the beach we spied a crab scuttling away under a small rock. Billy had felt a grudge against crabs ever since one had robbed him of his club: so he cries out, "We'll have this old crab for dinner, master," and with that he takes his axe and prises up the rock, and then gives the crab a great knock, which did it not the least harm, it being large with a thick shell. However, he was not to be baffled, so, setting down the rock again, he bids me watch it, and runs off to the wood, returning presently with a long bit of creeper, in which he had made a loop or noose at one end. This noose he slips over one of the claws of the crab, and drew it tight, and then set off at a run, dragging the crab after him. [Sidenote: A Crab] We ate the crab for dinner, and liked it very well, but the more important matter was that seeing Billy prise up the rock gave me a notion of the right manner of moving our trees. "We must carry two rocks up to the wood," I said, "and cut two stout poles, and then I will show you how the trees can be moved." "'Tis desperate hard work, master," says Billy with a prodigious sigh. "We don't get on very fast. I wish we could find a cave where we could live like that old Robinson Crusoe, without any building at all." "But he built all the same," said I. "But not without tools," says Billy.