During all that time the poor women were kept pretty busy cooking, looking after domestic matters, and mending the garments of the men. This last they accomplished by means of needles made from albatross bones and the finely divided sinews of various animals, instead of thread. When the European garments were worn out--which they were, long before deliverance was sent to them--Nell Massey proved her fitness for a Robinson Crusoe life, by actually splitting the sealskins--which were as thick as sole leather--so as to obtain material thin enough for clothing. Of course, a flagstaff had been among the first things erected. It stood on a prominent hill, and a seal-skin flag was hoisted thereon, to attract any vessel that might chance to pass that way, but the flag fluttered in vain, for, as we have said, the island lay far out of the usual track of commerce. Although poor Mrs Mitford appeared to become resigned to her great loss as time passed by, it was evident to her kind-hearted female companions that she was not recovering from the shock she had received. In spite of their care of her she grew thinner and older-looking every day, and although she quietly took her share of the work, she had become sad and silent--caring little apparently for what was going on around her, and never indulging in those prolonged observations of an irrelevant nature, to which she had been addicted before her husband's disappearance. Things were in this state when, about two months after their landing, a boat-voyage to the western cliffs of the island was arranged for purposes of further exploration. STORY ONE, CHAPTER 11. Within the dark recesses of a great cavern in the western cliffs, in the midst of a mass of wreckage, there sat one morning a man whose general appearance might have suggested to a beholder "the wild man of the cave"--or, at the least, an unhappy maniac--for his grey locks were long and unkempt, his eyes bloodshot and wild, his garments torn, so that his wasted limbs were exposed in numerous places, and his beard and moustache dishevelled and bristling. No one looking at that gaunt creature--not even the mother who bore him--would have easily recognised John Mitford; yet it was he.