This day's work was far from agreeable, and the dreadful smell
oppressed us all, more especially my poor wife, who, nevertheless,
endured it with her accustomed good temper. However, she very urgently
recommended that the new island should be the headquarters for another
colony, where, said she, `any animals we leave would be safe from apes
and other plunderers, and where you would find it so very convenient to
boil whale-blubber, strain train oil, and the like'.
This proposal met with hearty approval, especially from the boys, who
were always charmed with any new plan; and they were eager to act upon
it at once. But when I reminded them of the putrefying carcase which
lay there, they confessed it would be better to allow wind and storms,
birds and insects to do their work in purging the atmosphere, and
reducing the whale to a skeleton before we revisited the island.
The idea of a rowing-machine kept recurring to my brain, and I
determined to attempt to make one. I took an iron bar, which when laid
across the middle of the boat projected about a foot each way. I
provided this bar in the middle with ribbed machinery, and at each end
with a sort of nave, in which, as in a cart wheel, four flat spokes, or
paddles, were fixed obliquely. These were intended to do the rowers'
part.
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