Marooned in the Forest: The Story of a Primitive Fight for Life

by A. Hyatt Verrill

I CALLED OUT JOE’S NAME

My sole hope of reaching civilization would be in following the banks of the river, and this I realized would mean many weary days of tramping alone and unguided through the great forest.

Vainly I regretted having trusted so completely to Joe that I had paid no attention to the surroundings as we swept down the stream, and for that matter had not even asked for information which would have proved so valuable to me now. But it was wasting valuable time to spend the few remaining hours of daylight in regrets, and I was thankful for the few odds and ends of woodcraft and forest lore I had picked up during my life in the woods.

My clothing had partly dried, but with the passing of the bit of sunlight from the opening between the trees the air had become chilly and I was shivering with cold, the strain of my recent experience and my forebodings for the future. Rising from my seat, I strode back and forth, swinging my arms and striving by exercise to regain in some measure the circulation of my blood and a feeling of warmth. Activity, even of this forced sort, did me a world of good, and I began to plan for my immediate wants. Shelter I must have, and warmth, before night fell, and while I was not at the moment hungry, I realized that food of some sort would become a most pressing need by the following morning. Shelter without warmth would be of little value, and I thought with longing of the roaring fires which Joe had built before our camps each night and about which we had lounged while telling tales of past adventures.

Fire I must obtain, and in a mad hope that at least one good match might still remain in my pockets, I sought feverishly and emptied every one of my pockets upon a smooth rock. My total possessions thus displayed consisted of a small bunch of keys, a few small coins, a cambric handkerchief, a heavy jackknife, and the headless sticks of some matches from which the phosphorus had been completely soaked off. I gazed at these few articles with the bitterest disappointment, for of them all the knife was, as far as I could see, the only thing of any value to me in my present plight. With it I thought I might be able to fashion a bow-drill and spindle and thus obtain fire, for in my youth I had accomplished this feat when “playing Indian,” but I well knew the difficulty in obtaining just the proper kinds of wood and I realized that a search for them would consume much valuable time, whereas but an hour or two of daylight now remained. Then flint and steel occurred to me. I had the steel in my knife, but I did not know whether flint was to be obtained in the vicinity. However, I rose, made my way to the stony edge of the river, and sought diligently for some bit of rock which resembled flint. Each piece that struck my fancy I tried with my knife, and several gave off faint, bright sparks. All these I pocketed and, having obtained quite an assortment, I retraced my way to the rock whereon I had left my other possessions and prepared to try my hand at obtaining fire by means of my knife and the pebbles.

I realized that the tiny sparks which I could obtain in this way would never ignite a twig, or even a bit of bark, and that some inflammable tinder, which would catch the spark and which could then be fanned to a flame, must be secured before I could hope to succeed. As I was thinking of this my gaze fell upon a black-edged hole in my handkerchief. It had been burned, a couple of days before, by a spark from Joe’s pipe blown back by the wind. The incident was too trivial to have filled my thoughts for an instant at another time, but now all its details came back to me with a rush and I gave a shout of joy as I suddenly realized that this burnt hole and the events which had caused it had actually solved my puzzle. Seizing the square of cotton cloth, which was now quite dry, I weighted it down with bits of stone—for the apparently useless handkerchief had now become of the utmost value to me—and hurried into the woods in search of dry twigs and other inflammable material. I had not long to hunt, for dead and dried trees were all about; several white birches furnished sheets of paper-like bark, and with a great armful of fire-wood I returned to my rock. Gathering the handkerchief into a loosely crumpled mass, I placed it on the rock, held the most promising of my pebbles close to it, and struck the stone sharply with the back of my knife-blade. A little shower of sparks flew forth at the blow, but none fell upon the handkerchief. Again and again I tried, each time holding the stone in a different position and trying my best to cause the sparks to fall upon the handkerchief. Finally I gathered the cloth in my hand, held the pebble in the midst of its folds, and struck it.

Sparks gleamed against the handkerchief, but no sign of charring cloth or wisp of smoke rewarded me. Surely, I thought, these sparks must be as hot as the tiny, glowing ember from Joe’s pipe, and I unfolded and examined the handkerchief about the burned spot. Perhaps, I thought, this particular part of the cloth was more inflammable than the rest, and again gathering up the handkerchief, with the old burn close to the pebble, I again struck it with my knife.

Carefully I examined the cloth and the next instant dropped knife and pebble and cried aloud in triumph, for at one edge of the charred hole a tiny speck of red glowed in the dusk of coming evening, and spread rapidly in size. Carefully I blew upon it, folded another corner of the cloth against it, and waved it back and forth. Brighter and brighter it gleamed; a tiny thread of pungent smoke arose from it and an instant later a little tongue of flame sprang from the cambric, and I knew that fire, warmth, and comfort were mine. It was but an instant’s work to ignite a piece of birch bark and push it among the pile of wood and twigs, and then, carefully extinguishing the handkerchief—for it had now grown very precious in my eyes—I squatted before the blazing fire and reveled in the comforting warmth from its glow. Although it was too late to consider ways and means of shelter that night, I knew that I could keep warm, and as soon as the chill and stiffness had been driven from my bones and muscles I set diligently at work gathering great piles of fuel to feed the flames during the night. Several large logs were close by, and these, with much labor, I dragged to the fire and placed near at hand to use later on when I went to sleep. By the time I had accumulated a supply which I judged would last through the night, I discovered that I was very hungry. I had not eaten since the forenoon, and I had worked strenuously, to say nothing of the utter exhaustion occasioned by my semi-drowning. My efforts to obtain fire and the extent to which I had concentrated my mind on this problem had kept me up and doing until now, but, once the fire was blazing merrily and an ample supply of fuel was at hand, I felt weary beyond words, famished, and absolutely worn out.