📸 Photo

returned to camp and set about measuring the branches.

‘I’d like to know how he thinks he’s going to cut them right down the middle,’ Kevin whispered to me sceptically, but Karl proved his skills. He fashioned a wedge from the branch of a hardwood tree, made a small slit in the middle of the balsa log, fit the wedge into it, and pounded on it with a heavy rock. The log fell into two pieces like a charm.

Karl was a genius with the machete. He rapidly cut the split logs into the shape of oars and then carved them to the desired width and length. He formed concavities in the lower section of each one and whittled out comfortable grips for our hands. Kevin and I worked on the other pieces, cutting them down to the basic shape, and Karl finished them. Now we had to let them get thoroughly dry so that they would be light and resilient.

I proposed spreading them around the fire. ‘Otherwise we’ll be stuck here for eight days waiting like we did with the raft.’

‘It’s not good to dry them by the fire,’ Karl said, ‘but we don’t really have any other choice, short of time as we are. We’ll sleep here today and go on tomorrow.’

Since it was still early, Karl decided to go hunting.

‘What do you think, Karl?’ Kevin asked before he could go. ‘Maybe we should move the raft down