How fast the pointed stick did go! Flame showed them how to hold it in the hollowed block, then she rose and once more faced the sun, her arms held toward it and her lips mumbling a prayer to the Fire-god.
Faster and faster whirled the stick, and louder and louder prayed Flame. Pretty soon she began stamping her feet and waving her hands. She moved around the boys in a circle, her face always toward the sun.
[For a long time nothing happened]. Then at last Bolo saw a tiny thread of smoke rising from the hollow.
“The fire is coming,” he shouted. “Pray! pray!”
In another moment a very, very small spark glowed through the smoke. The eager boys sprinkled crumbs of dry tinder upon it and soon they had a small blaze. A few dry sticks made it leap up brightly, and then how Flame shouted and sang and flung her arms up toward the sun.
“I have heard the will of the Fire-god,” she said after a time. “I am old, and he has taken this way to show me that I must teach someone else to call him. I might have died in the water, and then who could have helped the cave people? They must all have died, too. And it is better that two should know than one, for then the secret of the Great Fire will not be so easily lost. You are faithful; you will be faithful. I will teach you. But first you must carry fire to the people.”
Bolo and Fisher each took a lighted torch and started back to where the discouraged cave people were huddled together. How everyone shouted for joy when they saw the fire coming. They knew that again they were safe in their homes in the Valley of Caves.
It was not many days until most of the people who were left were back at home again. Some had been swept away by the water, some had wandered away when they found there was no fire, and some had died from cold and hunger. All felt very sad when they saw how the water had laid waste their pretty valley.
They had lost all their weapons, too, and old Quickfinger, who had made most of the spears and harpoons for the Clan, was nowhere to be found. They thought he must have died, for they knew he would never have left them.
Then One Eye showed them what he had carried away in the great skin bag. He had gathered up all the arrows he could find, many spear and harpoon heads, and the flint flakers that Quickfinger and himself had used in making them.