Soon Billy returned with an armful of dry wood.
“Have ye got a light yet, daddy?”
Gaff, who had been endeavouring to produce a light by using his knife on a bit of flint for five or ten minutes, said he had “just got it,” and proved the truth of his assertion by handing his son a mass of smoking material. Billy blew this into a flame, and applied it to the wood, which soon kindled into a roaring fire.
“Now, then,” cried the Bu’ster, “where’s the spit? Ah! that’s it; here you go; oh dear, how you would yell just now, Mister Grumpy, if you were alive! It’s a cruel thought, but I can’t help it. There, now, frizzle away, and I’ll go clean up my dishes while you are roasting.”
No sooner had the pig been put on the spit, and the first fumes arisen, than there was a loud yell in the forest, followed immediately by the pattering of small feet, as if in tremendous haste.
“Aha! Squeaky, I knew you would smell out the supper double quick,” cried Billy with a laugh, as he looked towards the door.
“He never misses it,” said Gaff with a quiet smile. Next moment a small pig came scampering into the cave and rushed up to the fire, where it sat down promptly as if the sole object it had in view were to warm itself!
And this was indeed its only object, for that pig was passionately, ludicrously fond of the fire! It was a pet pig.
One day when Billy was out hunting, he had caught it in a somewhat singular fashion. He usually went out hunting with a bow and arrow of his own making, and was very successful in bringing down white doves, parroquets, and such creatures, but could make nothing of the pigs, whose skins were too tough for his wooden and unshod arrows. He let fly at them, nevertheless, when he got a chance.
Well, on the day referred to, Billy had shot nothing, and was returning home in a somewhat pensive mood when he heard a squeak, and at once fitted an arrow to his bow. A rush followed the squeak, and dreadful yells accompanied the rush—yells which were intensified, if possible, when Billy’s arrow went into an old sow’s ear after glancing off the back of one of her little ones.