Page:The Swiss Family Robinson (Kingston).djvu/428

382 Jack up into the tree with axes to cut off the larger of the high branches that, when the tree fell, it might not injure its neighbours. They then descended, and Fritz and I attacked the stem. As the easiest and most speedy method we used a saw, such an one as is employed by sawyers in a saw-pit, and Fritz taking one end and I the other the tree was soon cut half through. We then adjusted ropes that we might guide its fall, and again began to cut. It was laborious work, but when I considered that the cut was sufficiently deep we took the ropes and pulled with our united strength. The trunk cracked, swayed, tottered, and fell with a crash.

The boughs were speedily lopped off, and the trunk sawed into blocks four feet long.

To cut down and divide this tree had taken us a couple of days, and on the third we carted home four large and two small blocks, and with the vertebrae joints of the whale I, in a very short time, completed my machine.

While engaged on this undertaking I had paid little attention to our fields of grain, and, accordingly, great was my surprise when one evening the fowls returned, showing most evident indifference to their evening meal, and with their crops perfectly full. It suddenly struck me that these birds had come from the direction of our cornfield. I hurried off to see what damage they had done, and then found to my great joy that the grain was perfectly ripe.

The amount of work before us startled my wife. This unexpected harvest, which added reaping and threshing to the fishing, salting, and pickling already on hand, quite troubled her.

“Only think,” said she, “of my beloved potatoes and manioc roots! What is to become of them, I should like to know? It is time to take them up, and how to manage it with all this press of work, I can't see.”

“Don't be down-hearted, wife,” said I ; “there is no immediate