Hearing the voices of his companions, he shouted joyfully, without looking up, and hardly pausing in his bellowslike blowing, “I’ve got it.”
“What?” asked Phil, holding his nose. “The cholera? If so, keep right on with your fumigating. If not, do take pity on a suffering community, and feed your flame with leather, or rubber, or bones, or something else that is sweeter and pleasanter to the smell than the frightful stuff you are burning.”
Just then the smouldering mass burst into a bright blaze, and Serge sprang to his feet, jubilant over his success.
“Isn’t it glorious!” he shouted, as he added a few wood shavings to his blaze. Then lighting a sliver, he thrust it into a previously prepared pile of small sticks that he had placed directly before the open end of the tent. These were kindled in a moment. Larger sticks and billets of wood were carefully added, until in a few minutes more a fine, leaping, crackling, sparkling, and altogether lovely fire was banishing the last trace of gloom from the interior of the old barrabkie, and extending a cheery welcome of glowing warmth to the three castaways, from whose soaked garments little clouds of steamy fog began to ascend as they gathered admiringly about it.
At length Serge stood up, and stepped back a pace or two with an expression of triumphant satisfaction that said as plainly as words, “Now I am ready for congratulations.” And the others did congratulate him most heartily. Jalap Coombs said, “I wouldn’t have believed it could be did ef I hadn’t seen it.”
“It didn’t take seeing to make me believe it,” said Phil. “Smelling was sufficient. What was the magic compound from which you produced such a frightful smell, and such satisfactory results?”
“Eider-down and sulphur,” answered Serge, smiling.
“Brimstone and feathers!” shouted Jalap Coombs. “I knowed it. That’s what old Mis’ Roberson—she that was Kite’s wife, you understand—allus kep’ on hand for fainting fits. I’ve smelled ’em many a time, and to this day their parfume carries me back to my happy childhood.”
“It was certainly strong enough to carry one most anywhere,” interrupted Phil. “But where did you get ’em, old man, and how did you set ’em afire?”
“I had a long tramp after the sulphur,” replied Serge, “and only found it in a cañon about three miles back of here, near the foot of the mountain. As I couldn’t find any dry moss to go with it, I hunted for feathers as the next-best thing, and was lucky enough to discover an eider-duck’s nest on the cliffs. Then I came back here and found my ‘fire-stick,’ that flat bit of flint-rock, in one of the old huts, also my ‘striker,’ that bit of quartz. After that the getting of fire was simple enough. I spread a layer of eider-down on the flat rock, sprinkled a little sulphur over it, and pounded the mixture with my quartz rock until it was set on fire by a spark struck from the flint.”