That was the beginning of their effort to make fire without matches. It was fascinating. With some sticks the smoke would curl up thick and white till Marian’s eyes fairly smarted with it, but no fire appeared. Delbert tried it, the little girls tried it, and Davie, with great gravity and earnestness, tried it too.
They whittled sticks constantly in the endeavor to get one just right. Then the craze died out for a few days; but it was taken up again. Marian was sure that she was doing it just as the Walton’s boys’ uncle had done it, and he had produced fire in a very short time,—not more than a minute, she was sure. She studied over the problem. It seemed as if with so much smoke and charring it simply must ignite, but it did not. She would rub and rub, till there would be a teaspoonful of brown powdered wood at the foot of her downward notch, but never a spark. She would drop the implements in disgust and go at something else, but always next day, or the next, she returned to them and tried again.
She had seen it done and she herself could produce a little wreath of smoke, while her implements grew hot and actually charred. She tried with every kind of driftwood that seemed different from what she had used before, and while up in the pasture she would cut sticks from the different growing shrubs and dry them in the hot sun to experiment with. Then, one day, as she watched the little pile of black powder fall from her twirling stick, she saw a bit of it turn to a red glow and knew that she had succeeded.
How they scurried for kindlings and coaxed that tiny bit of brightness! It glowed and glowed till all the black powder was burned, and then it went out. Well, having once done it, of course she could do it again, and next time she would be prepared and have fine stuff ready to kindle with.
So she tried again and again and again, till her arm ached and her breath came in gasps. And the children would squat in a circle, their bright eyes glued to the tiny pile of powdered charred wood, and Esther, with unvarying monotony, would ask, “Why doesn’t it light, Marian? Did before”; and presently, “Why doesn’t it light, Marian? Did before.”
It was fully a week after the first success before she achieved the second one, and then also, in spite of her best and most earnest endeavor, she could not kindle it any farther, and when the charred powder was exhausted it went out.
Of course, she could not spend all her time upon it, but every day there would be a trial of it sandwiched in between other labors.
She took particular notice of the wood she was using when success crowned her efforts. The little round stick was from a piece of driftwood. She did not know what it was, but it was a soft wood that whittled easily, and the base piece was from a kind of tree cactus called echo.[4]
[4] Pronounced ayʹ tcho.
After a while she became so accomplished that she could produce fire about every tenth time she tried, and in course of time she became much more expert than that. She always used echo for her base piece, and for the other she found that a certain bush up in the pasture was best. She could cut sticks from it and dry them, and they were straight and round and smooth without any whittling.