There was a little controversy about the use of the skins, Daggett continuing to regard them as cargo.  Necessity and numbers prevailed in the end, and the whole building was lined with them, four or five deep, by placing them inside of beckets made of the smaller rigging.  By stuffing these skins compactly, within ropes so placed as to keep all snug, a very material defence against the entrance of cold was interposed.  But this was not all.  Inside of the skins Stimson got up hangings of canvass, using the sails of the wreck for that purpose.  It was not necessary to cut these sails—­Daggett would not have suffered it—­but they were suspended, and crammed into openings, and otherwise so arranged as completely to conceal and shelter every side, as well as the ceilings of both rooms.  Portions were fitted with such address as to fall before the windows, to which they formed very warm if not very ornamental curtains.  Stephen, however, induced Roswell to order outside shutters to be made and hung; maintaining that one such shutter would soon count as a dozen cords of wood.

Much of the wood, too, was brought over from the wreck; and that which had been carelessly abandoned on the rocks was all collected and piled carefully and conveniently near the outer door of the hut; which door, by the way, looked inward, or towards the rocks in the rear of the building, where it opened on a sort of yard, that Roswell hoped to be able to keep clear of ice and snow throughout the winter.  He might as well have expected to melt the glaciers of Grindewald by lighting a fire on the meadows at their base!

Stephen had another project to protect the house, and to give facilities for moving outside, when the winter should be at the hardest.  In his experience at Orange Harbour, he had found that great inconvenience was sustained in consequence of the snow’s melting around the building he inhabited, which came from the warmth of the fire within.  To avoid this, a very serious evil, he had spare sails of heavy canvass laid across the roof of the warehouse, a building of no great height, and secured them to the rocks below by means of anchors, kedges, and various other devices; in some instances, by lashings to projections in the cliffs.  Spare spars, leaning from the roof, supported this tent-like covering, and props beneath sustained the spars.  This arrangement was made on only two sides of the building, one end, and the side which looked to the north; materials failing before the whole place was surrounded.  The necessity for admitting light, too, admonished the sealers of the inexpediency of thus shrouding all their windows.  The bottom of this tent was only ten feet from the side of the house, which gave it greater security than if it had been more horizontal, while it made a species of verandah in which exercise could be taken with greater freedom than in the rooms.  Everything was done to strengthen the building in all its parts that the ingenuity of seamen could suggest; and particularly to prevent the tent-verandah from caving in.