I had a lot of food now. I cooked it over a fire or dried it in the sun. So I always had meat during the rainy months when I could not go out with a gun. I learnt to make pots to keep my food in, but I wanted to make a harder, stronger pot – a pot that would not break in a fire. I tried many times, but I could not do it. Then one day I was lucky. I made some new pots and put them in a very
hot fire. They changed colour but did not break. I left them there for many hours and, when they were cold again, I found that they were hard and strong. That night I was very happy. I had hot water for the first time on the sland.
By then, I also had my own bread. That was luck, too. One day I found a little bag. We used it on the ship to keep the chickens’ food in. There was still some of the food in the bag and I dropped some of it onto the ground. A month later I saw something bright green there, and after six months I had a very small field of corn. I was very excited. Perhaps now I could make my own
bread! It was easy to say, but not so easy to do. It is a lot of work to make bread from corn. Many people eat bread, but how many people can take corn from a field and make bread out of it without help? I had to learn and to make many new things, and it was a year before I cooked and ate my first bread. During all this time I never stopped thinking about escape.
