“Certainly, Karl. Isn’t his stomach as full of tallow as it can stick? and what’s to hinder us to make candles out of it that will carry us all over the cave,—and out of it, I fancy, unless it be the greatest maze that Nature has ever made out of rock-work?”
Karl was no longer under the belief that his brother had gone mad. On the contrary, he saw that the latter had conceived a very fine idea; and though it did not yet appear how the thing was to be carried out, Karl fancied that there was something in it. His sweet dream recurred to him, and this he now regarded as ominous of the success of some plan of escape,—perhaps by the very means which Caspar had suggested,—by making candles out of “bear’s grease!”
These were pleasant thoughts, but to Karl the pleasantest thought of all was the returning conviction that Caspar was still in his senses!
Chapter Sixty Two.
Hopes.
Ossaroo now joined in the general joy; and the three placed their heads together, to deliberate upon Caspar’s suggestion, and to discuss its feasibility in detail.
But neither Karl nor Ossaroo had much need to spend their opinion on the details; for the original “promoter” of the plan had already conceived nearly the whole of them. It was, in fact, these that he had got hold of while half asleep; and which, on first awaking, he believed to have occurred to him in a dream. But there was no dream in the matter. The idea of making candles from the bear’s fat had been in his mind before he lay down—he had even thought of it while they were at work in curing the meat.
“Yes,” said he, commencing to tell them in detail all that had passed through his mind upon the subject; “I had thought of the candles, while assisting Ossaroo to cut up the bear. I could tell, by the touch, that many pieces of the meat were almost pure fat; and I wondered to myself whether it would not burn and make a light. I knew, of course, that there was plenty more in the great stomach of the animal, and that of the real sort of which candles could be made. Would it burn? that was the question that puzzled me. I feared that it would not burn without first being rendered to grease or lard, and a wick put into it,—in fact, I knew it could not; and there arose the difficulty, since we had no fire wherewith to render the fat, and no vessel to render it in, even if we had been provided with fire in plenty.”