But Sandy did not come of a stock that gives in easily.
“I must try it again,” he said to himself, thinking of his great countryman, Robert Bruce, and perhaps likening himself in the cave besieged by his enemies to that national hero.
Only in Sandy’s case there was no spider, as in the legend, to give him an example of perseverance. It was far too cold for spiders, as the boy reflected, with a rueful grin; and then he doubted if even Bruce’s foes were more remorseless or deadly than the ones awaiting him outside the rock masses, piled in the snow desert like an island in a vast ocean of white.
He prepared another cartridge, sprinkling more powder on his kindling. This time there arose a puff of flame and smoke from the pile as soon as he fired the rifle. Casting his weapon aside, Sandy threw himself down on his knees by the fire.
He began puffing vigorously at the smoldering place where the burning powder had landed.
A tiny flame crept up, licked at the kindling, grew brighter and seized upon some of the larger sticks piled above.
Five minutes later Sandy was warming himself at a satisfying blaze. As the smoke rolled out of the rift and upward in the darkening gloom the patient watchers outside set up a savage howl.
“Ah, howl away, you gloomeroons,” muttered Sandy, in the cheerful glow inside the rift. “I’ve got you beaten for a time, anyhow. And noo let’s hae a bite o’ supper.”
With a plucky grimace, as though to defy fate, Sandy spread out on the rock floor his stock of food. It looked scanty, pitifully so, when considered as the sole provision against starvation that the boy had with him in his rock prison—for such it might be fitly called.
“'Tis nae banquet,” and the Scotch lad wagged his head solemnly. “It would make a grand feed for a canary bird.”