The cajack was indeed a curious looking craft, yet so light that she might be lifted easily with one hand, and when at length we launched her she bounded upon the water like an india rubber ball. Fritz was unanimously voted her rightful owner, but before his mother would hear of his entering the frail-looking skiff she declared that she must contrive a swimming dress, that "should his boat receive a puncture from a sharp rock or the dorsal fin of a fish and collapse, he might yet have a chance of saving his life." Though I did not consider the cajack quite the soap bubble the mother imagined it, I yet willingly agreed to assist her in the construction of the dress. The garment we produced was most curious in appearance, and I must own that I doubted its efficiency. It was like a double waistcoat, made of linen prepared with a solution of india rubber, the seams being likewise coated with caoutchouc, and the whole rendered perfectly air-tight. We so arranged it that one little hole was left, by means of which air could be forced into the space between the outer covering and the lining, and the dress inflated. Meanwhile I perceived with pleasure the rapid vegetation the climate was producing. The seeds we had scattered had germinated, and were now promising magnificent crops. The veranda, too, was looking pleasant with its gay and sweet-scented creepers, which were already aspiring to the summit of the pillars. The air was full of birds, the earth seemed teeming with life. The dress was at length completed, and Fritz one fine afternoon offered publicly to prove it. We all assembled on the beach, the boy gravely donned and inflated the garment, and, amid roars of laughter from his brothers, entered the water. Quickly and easily he paddled himself across the bay toward Shark Island, whither we followed in one of our boats. The experiment was most successful, and Ernest, Jack, and Franz, in spite of their laughter at their brother's garment, begged their mother to make for each of them a similar dress.