"It seems a pity to waste a cartridge," said Serge, "when we haven't but three or four left, and a single one has just done so much for us. I think I can get fire in a much more economical way."
"How?" queried Phil.
"Ye won't find no brimstone nor yet feathers here," suggested Jalap Coombs, with a shake of his head.
"Never mind," laughed Serge; "you two keep on cutting up the goat, and by the time your job is completed I think I can promise that mine will be." So saying, Serge entered the cabin and closed the door.
In a pile of rubbish he had noticed several small pieces of wood, and a quantity of very dry botanical specimens, some of which bore fluffy seed-vessels that could be used as tinder. He selected a bit of soft pine, and worked a hole in it with the point of his knife. Next he whittled out a thick pencil of the hardest wood he could find, sharpened one end and rounded the other. In a block of hard wood he dug a cavity, into which the rounded top of the pencil would fit. He found a section of barrel hoop, and strung it very loosely with a length of rawhide from a dog harness, so as to make a small bow. Finally he took a turn of the bow-string about the pencil, fitted the point into the soft pine that rested on the floor, and the other end into the hard wood block on which he leaned his breast.
SERGE'S METHOD OF LIGHTING A FIRE.
With one hand he now drew the bow swiftly to and fro, causing the pencil to revolve with great rapidity, and with the other he held a small quantity of tinder close to its point of contact with the soft pine. The rapid movement of the pencil produced a few grains of fine sawdust, and this shortly began to smoke with the heat of the friction. In less than one minute the sawdust and tinder were in a glow that a breath fanned into a flame, and there was no longer any doubt about a fire.[2]
That evening, as our friends sat contentedly in front of a cheerful blaze, after a more satisfactory meal than they had enjoyed for many a day, Jalap Coombs remarked that he only wanted one more thing to make him perfectly happy.
"Same here," said Phil. "What's your want?"