seven o’clock
During this time I made my rounds in the woods for game every day when the rain permitted me , and made frequent discoveries in these walks of something or other to my advantage ; particularly , I found a kind of wild pigeons , which build , not as wood-pigeons in a tree , but rather as house-pigeons , in the holes of the rocks ; and taking some young ones , I endeavoured to breed them up tame , and did so ; but when they grew older they flew away , which perhaps was at first for want of feeding them , for I had nothing to give them ; however , I frequently found their nests , and got their young ones , which were very good meat . And now , in the managing my household affairs , I found myself wanting in many things , which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make ; as , indeed , with some of them it was : for instance , I could never make a cask to be hooped . I had a small runlet or two , as I observed before ; but I could never arrive at the capacity of making one by them , though I spent many weeks about it ; I could neither put in the heads , or join the staves so true to one another as to make them hold water ; so I gave that also over . In the next place , I was at a great loss for candles ; so that as soon as ever it was dark , which was generally by seven o'clock , I was obliged to go to bed . I remembered the lump of beeswax with which I made candles in my African adventure ; but I had none of that now ; the only remedy I had was , that when I had killed a goat I saved the tallow , and with a little dish made of clay , which I baked in the sun , to which I added a wick of some oakum , I made me a lamp ; and this gave me light , though not a clear , steady light , like a candle . In the middle of all my labours it happened that , rummaging my things , I found a little bag which , as I hinted before , had been filled with corn for the feeding of poultry -- not for this voyage , but before , as I suppose , when the ship came from Lisbon . The little remainder of corn that had been in the bag was all devoured by the rats , and I saw nothing in the bag but husks and dust ; and being willing to have the bag for some other use -LRB- I think it was to put powder in , when I divided it for fear of the lightning , or some such use -RRB- , I shook the husks of corn out of it on one side of my fortification , under the rock .