With a stick he raked from the fire some hot coals. With the coals directly behind the pan, and with the bread in the pan facing the fire, and exposed to the direct heat, he placed it at an angle of forty-five degrees, supporting it in that position with a sharpened stick, one end forced into the earth and the tip of the handle resting upon the other end. The bread thus derived heat at the bottom from the coals and at the top from the main fire.
"She's risin' fine!" Jamie presently announced.
"She'll rise fast enough," David declared confidently. "There's no fear of that."
There was no fear indeed. In ten minutes the loaf had increased to three times its original thickness and the side nearer the ground took on a delicate brown, for the greater heat of a fire is always reflected toward the ground. David removed the pan from its support, and without lifting the loaf from the pan, moved it round until the brown side was opposite the handle. Then he returned the pan to its former position. Now the browned half was on the upper or handle side, while the unbrowned half was on the side near the ground, and in a few minutes the whole loaf was deliciously browned.
While the bread was baking David drove a stick into the ground at one side and a little farther from the fire than the pan. When the loaf had browned on top to his satisfaction he removed it from the pan and leaned it against the stick with the bottom exposed to the fire, and proceeded to bake a second loaf.
"Let me have the dough that's left," Jamie begged.
"Aye, take un if you likes," David consented. "There'll be too little for another loaf, whatever."
Jamie secured a dry stick three or four feet long and about two inches in diameter. This he scraped clean of bark, and pulling the dough into a rope as thick as his finger wound it in a spiral upon the centre of the stick. Then he flattened the dough until it was not above a quarter of an inch in thickness.
On the opposite side of the fire from David, that he might not interfere with David's cooking, he arranged two stones near enough together for an end of the stick to rest on each. Here he placed it with the dough in the centre exposed to the heat. As the dough on the side of the stick near the fire browned he turned the stick a little to expose a new surface, until his twist was brown on all sides.
"Have some of un," Jamie invited. "We'll eat un to stave off the hunger before dinner. I'm fair starved."