He then proceeded to explain and illustrate how the silk was to be unwound--a task which kept them both busy for several hours--and when this was at length done he showed Dick how to spin the fine, tough filament into a thin but immensely strong cord. But the most remarkable part of the whole affair was the perfectly intimate knowledge which he displayed of the various operations, none of which, be it remembered, he had ever performed before. The unwinding of the cocoons and the spinning of the cords--two for each bow--occupied the young men during the remainder of that first day and the whole of the second, for the process was a rather tedious and delicate one, in which Dick at least exhibited all the inaptitude of the novice. The third and fourth days were fully occupied in the cutting of reeds and the conversion of them into arrows; and here again Stukely showed the same weird, incomprehensible knowledge and skill that he had so conspicuously displayed in his choice of the wood for the bows, his working of it to the proper shape, and his manufacture of the bowstrings; for the arrows, when finished, were as nearly perfect as such missiles could possibly be, the shafts being of uniform length, perfectly straight, and each tipped with a strong, hard thorn, sharp as a needle, and growing naturally in the form of a barb. Two dozen arrows for each constituted their initial equipment, but they cut a considerable quantity of spare reeds and thorns, and wound quite a large skein of silk to bind the barbed heads with, as they were quite prepared to lose several of their arrows at the outset, and accordingly made ample provision for their replacement, which could be done at odd moments, while working their way up the river. Their next business was to plait two quivers of palm-leaf fibre, with shoulder straps to support the same; and it was Stukely who had to make these, for when Dick endeavoured to follow his friend's instructions he proved to be so absolutely lacking in the necessary skill that, to save time, Phil undertook to do all the work himself. These several occupations kept them busy for an entire week, during which they saw no sign of human presence on the river; and by the time that all was finished the bows had dried into prime condition, and Dick found, to his amazement, that the wood which, when first cut, had been soft and workable as cheese, had become as hard as iron, tough, elastic, and extraordinarily strong; that it had, in short, become perfect for use as a bow.