“But if you grew uneasy, it ought to have been your business to call us in?” continued Thad, as the leader of the patrol.
“Just so, boss,” Davy went on to say, “but you see, it happened that I let Bob White take my gun; and when Bumpus, he let that silly notion to wander get a strangle hold on him, why, he carried off the only other shooting iron we had in camp.”
“Oh!” said Thad, “of course. You did all right, Davy. And besides, there’s a little chance right now, that Bumpus, in wandering around, may glimpse our fire here, and come in.”
“And on that account you mean we ought to keep a bumper blaze going all evenin’,” remarked Giraffe, eagerly.
Giraffe’s weakness lay in his adoration of fire. It was forever on his mind, and whenever he sat down to rest, his always keen-edged jack-knife was busy whittling shavings.
“Oh! we might want to make a fire later on, who knows; and then these shavings will come in real handy,” he would say.
He knew about every means possible for producing a blaze without the use of matches. The patrol leader, afraid lest Giraffe set the woods afire up in Maine, where the law is very particular about such things, had given Giraffe the job of official fire-maker for the camp on condition that he agreed never to carry matches on his person, but to ask for them as needed.
This put Giraffe on his mettle.
He began experimenting, first with a burning sun-glass, and a pinch of powder to start a blaze in the dry tinder. Then he had used flint and steel successfully. And from this old-time method he advanced along the line, making fires in half a dozen primitive ways, until he came up against one that “stumped” him for a long time.
This was the South Sea Island method of producing heat by friction. The scout had studied it well, made him a little bow, and spent many hours twirling the stick that was rolled back and forward by the cord.