But they had no tools, no
workmen and no sailors, and nothing to eat while the ships were
a-building, even if they knew how to build them. They gave it up for
that night and prayed for direction.
Next day one of the men proved to have been a carpenter, and another
came to Cabeca de Vaca with a plan for making bellows of deerskin with a
wooden frame and nozzle, so that a forge could be worked and whatever
spare iron they had could be pounded into rude tools. The officers took
heart. Cross-bows, stirrups, spurs, horse-furniture, reduced to
scrap-iron, furnished axes, hammers, saws and nails. There was plenty of
timber in the forests. Those not able to do hard work stripped palmetto
leaves to use in the place of tow for calking and rigging. Every third
day one of the horses was killed, the meat served out to the sick and
the working party, the manes and tails saved to twist into rope with
palmetto fiber, and the skin of the legs taken off whole and tanned for
water bottles. At four different times a selected body of soldiers went
out to get corn from the Indians, peaceably if possible, by force if
necessary, and on this, with the horse-meat and sometimes fish or
sea-food caught in the bay, the camp lived and toiled for sixteen
desperate days. A Greek named Don Theodoro knew how to make pitch for
the calking, from pine resin.
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