“Hurrah!” shouted Phil. “No starvation this time! Luck is still with us, after all. That is, Nel-te is still with us, and he seems to carry good luck; for we certainly should not have seen that fellow but for the little chap. So, hurrah, old man!”
But Serge needed no urging this time to shout as loudly as Phil, though while he shouted he got the sledge ready for bringing in their game.
“Seeing as how we hain’t got no fire nor no matches, I reckon we’ll eat our meat raw, like the Huskies,” said Jalap Coombs, dryly, a little later, as they began to skin and cut up the goat.
“Whew!” ejaculated Phil. “I never thought of that. But I know how to make a fire with the powder from a cartridge, if one of you can furnish a bit of cotton cloth.”
“It seems a pity to waste a cartridge,” said Serge, “when we haven’t but three or four left, and a single one has just done so much for us. I think I can get fire in a much more economical way.”
“How?” queried Phil.
“Ye won’t find no brimstone nor yet feathers here,” suggested Jalap Coombs, with a shake of his head.
“Never mind,” laughed Serge; “you two keep on cutting up the goat, and by the time your job is completed I think I can promise that mine will be.” So saying, Serge entered the cabin and closed the door.
In a pile of rubbish he had noticed several small pieces of wood and a quantity of very dry botanical specimens, some of which bore fluffy seed-vessels that could be used as tinder. He selected a bit of soft pine, and worked a small hole in it with the point of his knife. Next he whittled out a thick pencil of the hardest wood he could find, sharpened one end and rounded the other. In a block of hard wood he dug a cavity, into which the rounded top of the pencil would fit. He found a section of barrel hoop, and strung it very loosely with a length of rawhide from a dog harness, so as to make a small bow. Finally he took a turn of the bow-string about the pencil, fitted the point into the soft pine that rested on the floor, and the other end into the hard-wood block, on which he leaned his breast.