“What we can’t cut, we can burn. And after dinner, we’ll have Sam’s help and his knife.”
“Gosh—it looks to me as if it will take a year!”
“Two days at the most,” countered the Indian. “The wood, though very strong, is not heavy, except when it’s green; and a dead branch like this is easy to work on. Break off some of the smaller branches and get a fire going in that hole I’ve just finished digging under the limb—see it?—halfway down its length, there.”
Bill went to work, collecting dry wood and twigs for the fire.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll burn up the whole thing?” he asked, after a moment or two.
“Oh, no, that’s easily prevented,” Osceola replied. He had whittled a flat spade wherewith to dig the fire hole and now he began to pack moist earth round the trunk on the side of the hold nearest to the butt of the log. “Of course she’ll burn a bit inside,” he went on, “but I’ve plugged the butt with moss and dirt. Mighty little air can get in through that end.”
For the next hour or so the lads were kept busy; the one adding to the pile of burning brush heaped completely around the limb, the other preventing the spread of the fire toward the butt of the log. By the time Sam’s shrill whistle announced dinner, the hollow shell had been burned clear of its upper end and they were able to roll the twenty-foot log clear of the fire.
It was delicious fare Sam had waiting for the lads by the camp fire. True, it consisted of but one dish, roast heron, washed down with spring water. But all three diners voted it a success, for a keen hunger is the best of all appetizers, and anyone who has eaten “the Major” when roasted, knows that this great bird is worthy of any feast.
The meal over, the three adventurers repaired to the hollow cypress log. Bill and Osceola got to work cutting horizontal grooves along the trunk on lines that marked the top of the gunwales. Their progress was slow, but the dying wood was not over-hard and they made fair headway, despite the inadequacy of their tools.
Stones of any kind were a rarity on the island, and it took Sam all of two hours to find one that would be suitable for an ax-head. This he bound to a wooden shaft with strips of cloth cut from Bill’s jumper. When he finished the job to his liking, the ax or hammer resembled those Indian curios one sees in the museums of our large cities.