We were very well pleased with this, but I own I was still better pleased two or three days after, for I then came upon a portion of the batter which we had left uncooked in the pot and forgotten, and found that it was perfectly sweet and good, being not in the least offensive either in taste or smell. It then came into my head all of a sudden that if the bread-fruit pulp would keep good for days even when exposed to the air, it might keep good for weeks and months if kept from the air, and thus all our anxiety about our winter food would be removed. When I suggested this to Billy he shook his head, saying, "We used to keep potatoes in a cellar, but then they had their jackets on, and I've never heard tell of fruits keeping. You can't keep an apple, 'cause I've tried, only I ate it afore it was quite rotten." But I was determined to make the experiment, though having no cellar or other confined space I was at first at a loss how to form a large enough receptacle for our store. After considering of it for some time I had a notion of digging a hole in the ground and lining it with pottery ware, but to this Billy said that we might use leaves and so save a lot of time. So we dug a hole, not very deep, and lined it well with large thick leaves, and into it we poured a great quantity of the bread-fruit pulp that we had mashed--not mixing it with eggs, of course--and then we covered it over with leaves, and put heavy stones on the top, and waited for a week to see what came of it. [Sidenote: Archery] While we were waiting the result of our experiment at storage we practised very diligently with our bows and arrows, and I observed that Billy was pitting himself against me, though he did not say so, at least not then, but he told me afterwards that he meant to try whether Little John could not beat Robin Hood. At first we chose broad trees for our targets, but we found after a time, when we began to be able to hit them, that our arrows were very much blunted against the bark, which made us think of devising a target, for the arrows took so long to shape that it was important to us they should not be injured. This making of a target gave us no trouble, for we had only to stretch leaves across a light framework made of twigs; and to mark the centre of it, for what I believe is called the bull's-eye, we smeared a circle with the sticky substance which, as I have said, came out of the bark of the bread-fruit tree when we beat it to make our flag, and then sprinkled the sticky circle with sand, which stood out, light in colour, against the dark green of the leaves.