CHAPTER XXVII—FACING DEATH.
As the shades of night began to close in upon him, Sandy found himself still in the same position. From time to time one or another of the pack would hurl itself against the rocky islet in the snow waste, only to be remorselessly thrown back by the impact.
But for the most part the creatures sat silent and motionless, content to watch and wait for the harvest that they seemed sure would come to them in time.
After his fit of despair Sandy had once more rallied his energies and devoted his really active and brave mind to devising some means of passing the night, that it now appeared certain he must spend on the great rock pile.
Above him, growing in a rift, were the remains of some stunted balsams, the seeds of which had probably blown thither from the woods whence the wolves had issued. He stared at the melancholy, twisted, dried-up stumps of vegetation for some time before any idea concerning them came into his head. Then all at once he realized that here at least was the means for fire and warmth.
But hardly had this idea occurred to him, when he recollected something that made his heart sink to a lower level than before. He had no matches. The little nickeled box that held them lay at the foot of the rocks too well guarded by the wolves for him to make an effort to reach it. And yet he knew that he must have fire in the night or perish.
It was quite a while before a retentive memory helped him out. Then he recalled having heard some time before from an old trapper a method of fire-making without matches. The operation was simplicity itself and yet Sandy doubted if he could make it succeed.
The plan was simply this: to remove from a cartridge the bullet and part of the powder; then to place the cartridge in the gun as usual and fire into a pile of dry kindling. The sparks and flame from the powder were supposed to furnish the necessary start to the blaze, which could then be enlarged by blowing.
“At any rate, I might try it,” thought Sandy. “If I don’t make it go I stand a good chance of freezing. But if I do——”
He stopped short. While he had been turning these matters over in his mind he had climbed up to the ridge on which grew the withered, dead balsams.
Now that he had gained it, he saw that beyond the gnarled, wind-twisted stumps was a considerable rift in the rocks. How far in it went he did not, of course, know. But it appeared that it ought to make a snug refuge from the rigors of the almost arctic cold.
Further exploration showed that the rift was quite a cave. It was not very high, but appeared to run back a considerable distance. Sandy hailed its discovery with joy. If he could light a fire back within the rift it would be practicable to keep it warm.
The thought of warmth, light and a good fire was comforting, even though for the present it existed only in the imagination. Sandy set to work on the withered balsams with his hunting knife. The wood was dry and dead and cut easily. Soon he had quite a pile of it dragged back into the rift.
As he worked he almost forgot the perils of his situation. For the present the biting cold which, as the sun grew lower, was more and more penetrating, turned his thoughts from his present miseries to the delights to come of warmth and comfort.
Having collected his pile and stacked it till it almost reached the roof of the rift, Sandy thought it was time to see if there was any merit in the old trapper’s recipe for starting a fire in the wilderness without matches. With his blade he stripped off patches of dry bark from the dead timber and shredded it until it was an easily inflammable mass, like excelsior.
Having done this, he collected his kindling and then piled the sticks crosswise in the form of a tower, so that when his fire was started he would be sure of a good draft. Then, with his knife, he extracted a bullet from a cartridge, poured a little of the powder upon the kindling and then slipped the half emptied shell into his rifle.
When this much of his preparations had been completed he was ready for the final test. He aimed the rifle carefully at his kindling pile, selecting a place where he had previously sprinkled the grains of powder. Then he pulled the trigger.
A muffled report and a shower of sparks from the muzzle followed, but to the boy’s disappointment, the kindling did not catch fire. The only result of his experiment, so far, was a suffocating smell of gunpowder.
But Sandy did not come of a stock that gives in easily.
“I must try it again,” he said to himself, thinking of his great countryman, Robert Bruce, and perhaps likening himself in the cave besieged by his enemies to that national hero.
Only in Sandy’s case there was no spider, as in the legend, to give him an example of perseverance. It was far too cold for spiders, as the boy reflected, with a rueful grin; and then he doubted if even Bruce’s foes were more remorseless or deadly than the ones awaiting him outside the rock masses, piled in the snow desert like an island in a vast ocean of white.
He prepared another cartridge, sprinkling more powder on his kindling. This time there arose a puff of flame and smoke from the pile as soon as he fired the rifle. Casting his weapon aside, Sandy threw himself down on his knees by the fire.
He began puffing vigorously at the smoldering place where the burning powder had landed.
A tiny flame crept up, licked at the kindling, grew brighter and seized upon some of the larger sticks piled above.
Five minutes later Sandy was warming himself at a satisfying blaze. As the smoke rolled out of the rift and upward in the darkening gloom the patient watchers outside set up a savage howl.
“Ah, howl away, you gloomeroons,” muttered Sandy, in the cheerful glow inside the rift. “I’ve got you beaten for a time, anyhow. And noo let’s hae a bite o’ supper.”
With a plucky grimace, as though to defy fate, Sandy spread out on the rock floor his stock of food. It looked scanty, pitifully so, when considered as the sole provision against starvation that the boy had with him in his rock prison—for such it might be fitly called.
“'Tis nae banquet,” and the Scotch lad wagged his head solemnly. “It would make a grand feed for a canary bird.”
He paused a minute, and then:
“But be glad you hae it, Sandy McTavish, you ungrateful carlin. You’re lucky not to have to make a supper off scenery; and, after all, you are nae sae hungry as yon wolves, judging by their voices.”