Fire in the Woods / Illustrated

by James De Mille

As he walked along it grew larger and larger; other brooks joined it; and at length it ran into a stream which was quite as large as that one from which he had originally wandered. On reaching this he sat down on the bank and rested. The stream was about a dozen yards wide here, and the waters were shallow, running on among gravel and cobble stones. The banks were bordered with trees, which rose to the height of about forty feet, and threw their branches across the stream till they nearly met.

Sitting here and resting, Phil began to feel more hungry than ever. His walk had only served to sharpen his appetite, and the alleviation of his thirst had brought out his hunger more prominently. And now what could he do? To struggle forward all day without anything to eat would be almost impossible. Already he felt exhausted from his walk thus far without food; and to commence again seemed out of the question. In his hunger he now tried to find something in the woods. He tore up some grass, and chewed the roots; he peeled off some maple bark, and tried to chew this; but the grass roots and the maple bark had no perceptible effect in diminishing his hunger. At last he thought of his fishing line, which he had carried with him after throwing away the rod. Wondering why he had been so stupid as not to think of this before, he proceeded to search for a suitable rod. This he found after a short time, and attaching the line to the end of it, he proceeded to try his skill at fishing. He walked down the stream for some distance, but for some time he met with no success. He began to feel a little alarm, and to think that the heat and the smoke prevented the fish from rising, when suddenly, in the midst of his discouragement, he felt a nibble at the hook. He jerked it up, but missed his prey that time; still the circumstance encouraged him greatly, for it showed him that there was hope, and he continued his task with fresh spirit. At length, to his intense delight, he jerked out a fish. It was quite small, but still it was indescribably welcome; and without waiting any longer, Phil at once proceeded to kindle a fire. He did this with little difficulty, and placing the fish on the blazing sticks, he watched it until it seemed sufficiently cooked to be eaten. Although his hunger had made him too impatient to wait till the fish was thoroughly cooked, yet that same hunger made him indifferent to little deficiencies of this sort, and the half-raw trout seemed to him, without exception, the most delicious morsel that he had ever eaten. He now resumed his rod, and before long hauled out another, which was soon followed by another, and yet another. By this time the fire had died down to the coals, and on these Phil laid his fish. This time he waited until they were so thoroughly cooked that they would have satisfied the most fastidious appetite. On these Phil made a right royal repast; and this supply of food seemed to him to be sufficient for any effort that he might have to make that day. Before starting, however, he was provident enough to wait until he had caught three more trout, so as to secure himself from again coming so close to absolute starvation as he had been that morning; and then, putting these in his pocket, he rolled up very carefully his precious hook and line, and once more resumed his journey.

He had thus been able to satisfy both that thirst and that hunger which had each assailed him so fiercely on his first awaking; and this fact gave to him a glow of satisfaction, and a confidence in his own resources, which dispelled the last vestige of his gloom, and filled him with energy, and hope, and cheerfulness. In this frame of mind he set out on the renewal of his journey, not knowing any better than before where he was going, yet hoping for the best.

The brook ran on for some miles, receiving other brooks, and growing gradually larger. As a general thing, its bed afforded a sufficiently easy pathway for Phil to traverse, without any unusual exertion, and was preferable, on the whole, to the forest with its underbrush. Occasionally, however, he was able to take advantage of favorable openings among the trees, and on several occasions gained very much by taking short cuts, and avoiding certain bends in the river. On such short cuts it is needless to say that he never ventured, unless he was able to see plainly where he was going. In this way he went on for some hours, and in that time he certainly succeeded in getting-over a large extent of ground.

But such exertions as these were not made easily; and soon the energy with which he had started began to relax. He became more sensitive to the heat, and it seemed to him that the smoke was growing more dense and more distressing. He began to think that he must be drawing nearer to the fires from which all this smoke and this oppressive heat arose. The thought was a most disheartening one; for if it were true, it would transform what seemed to be his pathway to safety into a blind rush to danger, and make of no avail all his long struggles that he had put forth so perseveringly. It was a thought, indeed, which was too depressing for him to entertain, and so he strove to drive it from his mind; but it was one of those unpleasant ideas which cling to the mind in spite of itself, and so, notwithstanding Phil's efforts to hope for the best, there lowered over him a very dark and dismal foreboding that his present course would at length bring him face to face with the fire.

And what then?

All, that he could not tell.

Should he turn back now? No; that was a thing which he could not bear to think of. Wherever he was going, he could not turn back yet—not till he was convinced that it was all wrong—not till the very presence of the fire itself should force him to give up all hope of farther progress in this direction.

In spite of his surroundings of oppressive heat and distressing smoke, of rough pathways and alternating wood and water,—in spite of his fatigue of body, and despondency of mind,—Phil still kept on his course, and struggled most heroically to maintain his onward march, wherever it might lead. At length he reached a place where the stream ran in almost a straight line for a considerable distance; and looking down this, he could see at the farthest extremity the smoky haze; but at the same time he felt confident that it was not a whit denser than it had been in the morning. This discovery encouraged him; and now, if he felt the smoke and the heat more keenly, he was able, with great apparent reason, to attribute it solely to his own weariness of body.

“I will rest soon,” he thought. “I will take a long rest, and get something to eat, and that will be sure to restore me.”