He swung his foot that was not lame from side to side, clearing a place on the ground at one side of the log, and there he laid his paper and the wood to start his fire.
You may be sure Bert was very anxious as he struck one of his few matches and held it to the paper. He hardly breathed as he watched the tiny flame. And then, all at once, the blaze flickered out after it had caught one edge of the paper!
“This is bad luck!” murmured Bert. “I’ve got a few more chances, though.”
He crumpled up the paper in a different shape, arranged it carefully under the pile of splinters and rotten wood, and struck another match. This time he made sure to hold in his breath completely, for it was his breath before, he feared, that had blown out the match.
This time the paper caught and blazed up merrily. Bert wanted to shout and cry “hurrah!” but he did not. The fire was not really going yet, and he was getting more and more thirsty all the while. It was all he could do not to scoop up some of the dry snow and cram it into his mouth. But he held back.
“I’ll have some water melted in a little while,” he told himself. “My fire is going now.”
And, indeed, the tiny flame had caught the soft wood and was beginning to ignite the twigs. From them the larger and heavier pieces of wood would catch, and then he could set the can of snow on to melt into water.
Still hardly daring to breathe, Bert fed his fire in the shelter of the half snow-covered log. It was beginning to melt the snow all around it now, but of course this melted snow ran away and was lost. Bert could not drink that.
When the fire was going well, Bert kicked around on the ground under the log until he found some stones. With these he made a little fireplace, enclosing the blaze, and when he had some embers there, with more wood at hand to pile on, he brought the can to the fire and scooped the tin full of snow.
“This is going to be my teakettle,” said Bert, with a little smile. “Mother and Nan would laugh if they could see me now.”