I sat down again by Woodley, and passing my hand over my clothes to find if they were drying at all, I felt something hard in my inside coat pocket. Wondering vaguely what it could be, I unbuttoned my jacket, and while doing so remembered suddenly the metal tinder-box I had found in the empty desk the day before I left school. I took it out, fumbled with my fingers till I found the flint and steel, and—I suppose for the sake of seeing a ray of light, however tiny and momentary—I struck a spark. I hardly think if I had fired a gun it could have produced a more unexpected effect on Woodley. He sprang to his feet with something like a shout of surprise.
"What's that?" he cried. "A tinder-box! Where did you find it? I made sure Rodwood had taken it with him in his pocket."
"This is another," I answered; "it's one I found at school. The lid fits well, and has kept out the damp, I fancy."
"Bless the boy!" cried George, "why didn't you tell me you had it before? I've been wishing and wishing for one this last hour or more."
"It's precious little good now that you have got it," I replied, handing him the box in the darkness. "We've got nothing to light except the tinder and matches, and that's no practical use."
"Wait a bit," interrupted the guard. "We'll make a lamp. This bottle of oil I've got in my pocket will provide stuff to burn, and a strand of worsted out of one of my socks will make a wick. Hurrah, Master Eden! we'll get a light burning presently, and find out what sort of a place we're in."
"I don't see how you're going to make a lamp," I answered, "unless you hold the oil in the palm of your hand. We've got nothing left—not even that metal cup the men took from poor Tom's flask."
The question was a difficult one to answer. Reduced to the possession of practically nothing but the clothes we wore, it seemed at first impossible to manufacture any implement or vessel, however simple. But necessity is the mother of invention, and certainly the necessity in our case was sufficiently pressing to quicken any inventive faculties we might possess.
After some minutes' thought, and the making of one or two suggestions which had to be abandoned as impracticable, my companion slapped his thigh, exclaiming,—
"I've got it—my old watch!"