We were right! It did work. It needed an extreme effort, but  eventually it did perform the  function as we had hoped.

For weeks, we had talked this  idea over and over in the evenings before we decided to try the  likelihood through practical  experiment. It all seemed possible.
And then, the concern became  not the idea, but a matter of how we would set up the forge, and  together we offered as many ideas  as we could about our observations and experience on  such matters. Now we had built it, and here it  was, primitive and simple in its structure, but with all the  elements we needed to make it work. With a new sense of  optimism we stood around in an excited crammed group as we lit the fire and watched the flames flow through the dry bracken we  had found for the base. And as  the flame grew, we added small  pieces of dry twigs and finally  worked up to the full sized logs.  The intensity of flame finally  waxed into a full raging fire.

Enthraled, we gathered around  the heat of the blazing flames in expectation. It drew us into its  warmth, it held us as a tight  fist might, with our gaze on the  gathering race of fire, the licking flames. There was something magical happening here amid  the intense heat of the blaze, the sparks whizzing up with the great flying balls of smoke,  the logs crackling at us, and the rocks ever growing hotter and hotter. With one and sometimes two men pumping full tilt on the handles of the seal skins bellows the fire became a roar and we knew  we could generate enough  heat to melt the metal.

To assemble these makeshift  bellows had been a task in its self,  but they did work and as so the  work was warranted. The right skins had to be selected and then the  arduous task of the fine stitching took hours. The fixing of the  branches to the skins, the hinge mechanism, it all had to be  deliberated and then only through experimentation with each  part could we succeed.  In the bright, red glow, the thin  strip of iron poked anxiously in to the flickering flaming heart slowly warmed, became hot and then turned into the pliant red and yellow material we had yearned for. And quickly, at this necromancy of  colour, a good strike between two specially selected rocks, one as a flat anvil the other as an improvised hammer, left the desired indent in the metal and it had grown into another more desirable shape.

Time after time we heated the strip until it glowed redder and redder and then we would briskly hammer  hard until it spread again closer to  the shape we were after. It was as  though we had discovered this for the first time, and we yelled with mirth. The finished article was rough no  denying that, rough as I've ever seen in fact, and few of us would have accepted it if we were to purchase such a nail, but still one we could drive the spike into a pair of planks, and that's all we had care of. Although it was a success it also betokened the hard venture ahead if we were to shape any sort of a boat that could carry
us off here north to New Zealand.

We would need lengths of planks and piles of these hand forged nails to  hold them together. We even debated the making of bolts for certain key  areas. We were so lucky we had been able to salvage much of the "Grafton" when she broke up . There would  have been no chance of that on the rugged shores of other parts of these islands. For a ship there could be  dashed to bits and gone forever. We did have the iron to forge the spikes, we did have the planks  washed up upon the shore that  had been gathered months before,  we did have some tools and now  with the  forge,  we were able to make some further utensils to help us with  our work. We now had the forge and the wood to power it, we did have the bellows to enrich the flame  and boost the heat. And most of all, we did have all the time in the world  to dare this venture.  We just might succeed.

Despite the tired arms, the aching limbs, Musgrave and Raynal still  found more energy, and both kept writing feverishly in their  diaries as if trying to out do  each other. We would all lie tired watching them, and while we could hardly move a finger, their  hands were moving line after line  across the pages, flowing  out their thoughts and the accounts of the day.

Long ago they had run dry of ink  from their small bottle and now the fluent words flowed across their blank pages not in black, but in  fresh, red, thick seal blood . It took longer to dry than the typical black ink used in the earlier pages that recorded our life here, but the red blood had a richness of colour that desegregated the inexplicable circumstances of our ordeal. It  was a total expression of our life  here and the struggles  we had endured.

The enkindling satisfaction of the work and our success subterfuged the hardness of the work we had indulged upon. But it didn't take long before the reality of our 
ambitions manifested itself as a daunting task. Day after day we  would cut the wood, stack the fire, pump the bellows and heat the metal. With blow after blow we hit and shaped the molten metal. We became better with the shaping and faster with each spike that  dropped into the finished pile and  slowly the pile grew, and every  day we exhausted ourselves with the smell of smoke and the black  of soot on our wrinkled brows. 

Keeping up the wood up to the hungry fire was never ending. We  needed so much heat and the flames ate fiercely at the fuel.  The more wood we burnt, the further we would have to trudge to gather the next load,  and this grew further each day. Wet though much of it was,  we had no choice but to burn it,  for we had no time to form a drying stack it.

That we still had to survive while all this exhausting work continued only caused to slow our progress. We still had to search for widgeon and seals about the rocky shores to shoot and then as usual cook up for dinner. The routine tasks about the hut  still had to be preformed daily also,  and this took some time. But then,  there had been times at the beginning when we could do little more than  these key tasks. And then the  weather would sweep in with icy blasts and lashes of rain and hail 
that could stop the work for up to a week at a time, and who felt like  work in that. It all added to  thwart our fervour, but on we kept with our work.

Cheerful as we were at the work, we continued for weeks, and even while the pile of spikes grew, it became  obvious the gap between our finished efforts and our needs still appeared as a great empty chasm. Although Raynal and Musgrave , kept our  heartsup with their cheerfulness with which they drove at the work, after
some time, even they could see the  enormity of our task and they began  to discuss other ideas. That of  lengthening the existing dinghy  by using the existing materials  we had made over these past  weeks to add to it.

After some further time, this was our plan, and we set about the lengthening of the boat with great gusto. We sorted through the  planking to find the most suitable 
pieces and with some slight modification and shaping were able to begin the work. After all our efforts,  it felt good to begin driving these  spikes through the timbers and begin forming the extended shape of the vessel we were seeking in our minds. Each one of those nails had taken so long to make and we had to make them all count. Although it was larger, it appeared so scanty for  such a voyage, but on we pushed.

There were few, but occasionally the odd nail would spin off onto the  ground as we stuck it for the first  time, and among these most were  found and redriven through the timbers.  But the ones we never found,  they irked me . All that work, just to fly off and be lost.