They were willing to try, however, the attempt would
help us to kill time; and the commandant proving perfectly
agreeable to humor us, we gut the planks, borrowed some tools from
the soldiers, and set to work.
The next following days saw half a dozen of us busily employed in
the courtyard in knocking together a long shallow box, in the upper
side of which we pierced S-shaped holes like those of the fiddle,
with a notched bridge at about one-third of its length for holding
four strings, and wooden screws at the other end for stretching
them taut. Joe Punchard, good fellow, was the most ardent of the
artificers, plying the tools with a dexterity born of his work for
master cooper Matthew Mark years before. We got from the soldiers,
who showed a great interest in our task, cords of different
thickness, and several lengths of iron wire which we twisted
together somewhat after the manner of the thickest string of the
fiddle. We then stretched this and three cords over the bridge on
the top of the box, screwed them to a high tension, and plucked
them to see if they emitted notes that could be called musical.
The result surpassed my expectations. Tolliday, our fiddler,
declared that the notes were true music, though to be sure not very
resonant, and he undertook to tune the strings in fifths, so that
it might be able to take a proper part in our next symphony. Having
no bow with which to scrape the strings, he said that they could
only be strummed with the finger and thumb, and when he offered to
teach one of us thus to handle it, there were many candidates for
the place, which in the end fell to a man named Winslow.
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