“I’ll get it when I need it,” Phil replied. “There’s still some of this wet stuff left. Say, who gets the flashlight?”
“I’ll need it to get down below,” Ronnie said.
“So I’ll light your way for you from here. Look, Ronnie, if I don’t get the light, I don’t tend the fire. Then when you take over, you’ll get the light.”
“O.K.,” Ronnie agreed. “See you later.”
The long hours dragged by. With each one that passed, Ronnie’s faith in the smoke signals he had devised grew less and less. Twice he relieved Phil. More wood had to be taken from the shelf, and now there was barely room enough for Bill to sit upright. The water pouring in from the St. Lawrence had risen another three feet. Soon the top of the shelf would be awash. And still worse, their supply of rubber was getting low. “Soon we’ll have to cut up the soles of our shoes,” Ronnie said. “Why doesn’t someone come?”
“I think it’s probably still dark out,” Phil said, “and no one can see the smoke unless they’re close by.”
Ronnie had lost all sense of time, and no one among them had a watch. He’d slept a few times when he wasn’t tending the fire, short naps during which he was more awake than asleep.
Sometime later they used the small blade of Bill’s knife to cut the heels and rubber soles from their shoes. Phil went up with Ronnie to feed some of it into the fire. They lay on their sides before the ash box. Phil picked up some of the soft, powdery earth and watched it sift through his fingers. “I wish I could eat this stuff,” he said. “I wish I could eat something.”
Ronnie nodded. “I’m hungry too,” he admitted. “It seems like days and days that we’ve been down here.”
Ronnie dropped off to sleep for a while, waking only long enough to place another piece or two of the rubber into the fire. Soon the last piece was gone. “That’s it,” he said to Phil. “That’s all there is.”