This took me until noon, working hard every minute, with the perspiration streaming from every pore. Then I discovered that my fire was out. But I had no trouble to start another with the burning-glass, as the sun was shining fiercely and so directly overhead that I had to search for my shadow. Presently the great flames were roaring and leaping high in the air and casting out such a heat that I was glad to retire to the brook for a drink and a cocoanut lunch while waiting for the fuel to burn out.
As I rested in the shade, I employed myself in twisting or rudely spinning some cord out of the fibre of the cocoanut husks. I first pounded the husk between two stones until the fibre was reduced to a mass resembling coarse hemp, and then began to draw it out and twist it as one twists a hay band, only into a slenderer thread. As fast as it became twisted, I wound the thread on a short stick about six inches long and a quarter of an inch in diameter. With the cord wound smoothly on this stick, and a half-hitch taken around one end, I could roll the cord and stick between my hand and leg to give the twist necessary for the spinning operation, and at the same time use the other hand to manipulate the entangling fibres. By this simple process it was possible to produce the thread, or cöir, quite rapidly.
In about an hour and a half my great fire was burned to the ground, and as a result there lay in the shallow excavation a mingled mass of embers, ashes, lime, fragments of partly burned shells, wood, and charcoal. Of course the ground beneath was very hot, and I could not work among the embers and hot fragments. The tide was now beginning to come in, and I dug a trench from the pit to the sea, through which the water flowed till it quenched the fire and slaked the lime, and partly sinking in the porous sand, left: a muddy compound of lime, ashes, and sand, all over the bottom of the pit. I filled and plastered up the trench except a narrow gateway, cleaned out the sticks and fragments, and sprinkled dry sand over the mud, raking it well in and smoothing the surface as much as possible with the aid of sticks and a great clam-shell. It now remained for me only to let the cement or mortar set and dry, and then, I hoped, it would prove impervious to water.