Explore "God and the Man" by Robert W. Buchanan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
By this time it was afternoon, and very windy and dark.
To distract my thoughts, I entered my house and lit my fire; then I brought out the train oil I had saved from the ship, and devised how I should make myself a lamp, both for light in the darkness of the cave and for warmth also if snow and frost should come. So I took the twine that I had carried in my pouch, and pouring some of the oil into my tobacco pouch, soaked the twine therein; and afterwards, plaiting two pieces of twine together for stiffness, and mixing with the oil a portion of the soft oily fat of the seal, I made a kind of coarse taper, like the rude rush-lights our fishermen fashion in the fens out of dry reeds and tallow. This I carried within, and striking a flame with flint and tinder, tried to make the taper burn; which it did not readily, for I had soaked the twine too thick in oil; but essaying again, I made another of the like which gave a feeble light and burned even too rapidly.