We had forgotten to bring boot polish with us. We had been using the offal which remained when Terry melted out the deer fat to smear our shoes. It kept them soft and waterproof for a time, but it quickly wore off. My boots had begun to bleach and show signs of wear at the toes. The rank heather and stones through which I had to go on my way to the forest were hard on boots. Terry collected soot from the chimney and mixed it to a stiff paste with some pike oil. The mixture proved very successful. It seemed to feed the leather and give it a gloss as well as waterproof it.

When I saw Terry busy making her dubbin I thought I had better do something to protect the toes of my boots. We had a few knots of limestone remaining from what we brought home to make the pickle for our eggs and I burnt them and made a stiff paste of the quicklime with water. This paste I spread over the outside of a square of deer skin. In a few days I washed away the lime and all the hair came with it. I laid the bare skin on a rock with stones at the corners to keep it taut and treated it liberally with the dubbin. Then I cut two strips an inch wide and three inches long and nailed them with brass rivets, of which we had a half-pound, round the toes of my boots. Terry meanwhile cut two other pieces from our deer-leather to make anklets for me. They were long enough to encircle my legs over the tops of my boots, and three inches broad. She sewed a long thin strip of leather to one end of each anklet which would go twice round my legs and hold the anklets in place like the tapes of puttees. These fastenings were only temporary. As soon as we could spare more time she intended to steal the back-straps from two pairs of my breeches and use their buckles for my anklets.

For the moment, after I had admired my boots and anklets, we determined to abjure the hundreds of tempting refinements which were constantly suggesting themselves, and to devote all our attention to making the cave comfortable. Fortunately the ground of the floor was slightly deeper under the cliff than on the outer side of the cave, and we rectified the floor’s list by digging a few inches from the top side and spreading out the earth lower down. We finally produced a fairly flat smooth surface, though it was still soft. We pounded the floor with flat heavy stones until it was so hard that my tackety boots made no impression in it though I jumped and danced.