Bill spread out the parachute on the ground and proceeded to cut off a large circular piece of the fabric. Next he cut a piece from the shroud, and painstakingly unravelled strands from the rope. That completed, he cut off three green branches from a nearby sapling—trimmed them, and cut two to a length of approximately eighteen inches and the third somewhat shorter. After notching their ends, he laid the two longer ones side by side and bound the ends together with strands from the parachute rope. The next operation was to bend them outward and apart at the center and to slip the shorter notched stick crosswise between them. When its ends were bound to the other poles to keep it firm and in place, he found himself possessed of an oval wooden frame.