“That’s a great idea!” Bill exclaimed. “I sure wish I could help you with it.”
“We’ll need kindling,” Ronnie went on. “There’s more of that where Phil got your splints. But the real problem is finding something that’ll give a lot of thick smoke and won’t burn up too quickly.”
“Like rubber,” Phil said.
“Say, Phil, you’re really using your brains at last!” Ronnie exclaimed. “And rubber’s something we’ve got plenty of! Three raincoats, three pairs of boots, and the soles off our shoes, too, if we need them.”
“I’ve got a penknife,” Bill said, his enthusiasm mounting as the pain in his leg subsided. “You can cut the rubber into chunks and then feed them into the fire. Why, with the supply we’ve got we can keep a signal fire going for hours and hours!”
They set to work immediately. Bill found he could help, too, after he had pulled himself up to a sitting position. He used the knife to cut up the heavier pieces of boots. Phil and Ronnie worked at the raincoats, ripping the fabric, first into strips and then into smaller pieces. Soon they had a large pile between them in the middle of the shelf.
Phil waded down the culvert to gather kindling. In the meantime Ronnie took off his torn shirt and, tying a knot about the neck end, used the piece of clothing as a sack to carry the chunks of rubber while he climbed to the crawl-space above.
Phil joined him in front of the ash box a few minutes later. “All I could find was wet wood,” he told Ronnie. “The floodwater has picked it all up. We’ll need something dry to get the fire started.”
Ronnie inspected the wood Phil had brought. “Yes, I guess you’re right. We’ll have to take part of the shelf. Suppose you go down and rip off a few boards. You take the flashlight. I think I can manage in the dark.”
It wasn’t easy breaking up the wood in the darkness. He was continually hitting his head on the low floor beams. But by the time Phil returned with the flashlight and several pieces of dry wood, Ronnie had most of the work done.