Cast Away in the Cold Part 9

"'With matches, to be sure,' answered the Dean. 'I thought I had a great load of them in my pocket.'

"'Then,' said I, 'I'm sure I pity you, to wake up out of such a pleasant dream; for you'll find no matches here, nor any fire either, nor do I think we shall ever have any.'

"'O, don't say that, Hardy,' replied the Dean, sadly, 'I don't think we are so bad off as to say we never will have any fire. Do you really think we are?'

"'I can't say,' I replied; 'but what can we do?'

"'Try again,' answered the Dean;--and we were soon once more upon our feet, both very determined to do something, but neither of us knowing exactly what it should be.

"So we set off to inspect the cave which I told you of yesterday. The Dean was much pleased with it, and, seeing nothing better to do, we both went to work at once to build up a wall in front of it, feeling very sad and sorrowful as we worked in silence. But in spite of our gloomy thoughts we made good progress, and had soon a solid foundation laid; but as we went on, it was plain enough to see that our wall was likely to be of very little account, since we had no way of filling up the cracks between the stones.

"This set us once more to thinking. Down below us in the valley there was plenty of moss, or rather turf; but when we tried to pull it up with our hands, we discovered that we could do nothing with it, and we wished for something to dig with. Then I remembered the bones I had found on the beach; so I told the Dean about them, and we both agreed that they might be of use to us. The thing which I first thought of was the dead narwhal with the great long horn; and I imagined that, if we could only get that out of his head, we should have all we wanted.

"When the Dean and I went down to the narwhal, we foresaw that our task would be even greater than we had supposed; for the horn which we were after was so firmly embedded in the skull and flesh that it promised to be a very serious work to get it out.

"First, we had to cut away the flesh and fat from the thick nose, until we exposed the skull, and then we had to break the horn loose by dropping heavy stones upon the socket. At length we were successful. But we had consumed almost the whole day about it, and we found ourselves very much fatigued; so we sat down upon the green gra.s.s, and rested and talked for a while, before going back to work upon the wall again. The horn was very heavy, but it answered our purpose; and we were soon digging up the moss with it, and then we carried the moss up to help make out the wall. This moss was very soft, being full of water; and it fitted with the stones as nicely as any mason's mortar, so that we had no more trouble in making the wall perfectly tight and solid. Nor did we have any trouble in building up a little fireplace and chimney along with it.

"We had some discussion as to what use there was in taking all this pains, since we had no fire to put in our fireplace. But then, if we should in the end find that we could make a fire, we saw that we would have to tear the wall down again if we did not build the fireplace and chimney up at once; therefore it was clearly better to take a little extra trouble now, and save it possibly in the end,--an observation that might apply to people who were never cast away in the cold, and did not have to build chimneys without knowing what use to put them to.

"We labored very hard, and were well satisfied with the progress we had made, when we found it necessary to knock off, and eat some more raw eggs, and sleep away our fatigue again.

"By this time we had grown tired enough of these raw eggs, and, in truth, were very sick of them. But we had nothing else to eat unless we should devour the duck which the Dean had caught; and this we could never, as we thought, bring ourselves to do, uncooked as it was.

"The Dean had by this time grown pretty strong again, but still he was so weak that I should not have allowed him to work had he not insisted upon it; so, when his turn came to go to sleep, I was glad to be at work by myself, and I much surprised the Dean, when he got up again, with what I had done.

"'Do you know what I was thinking of?' said the Dean, as we paused to rest, after we had again worked awhile together.

"'What's that?' said I; 'for I dare say it's something clever, as you have a wise head on your young shoulders, Dean.'

"'Thank you,' said the Dean; 'being cast away in the cold don't stop us from paying compliments, anyway; but I was thinking that we ought to save all the blubber of that old narwhal down there; we'll want the oil by and by.'

"'What for?' said I.

"'To burn,' said he.

"'Nonsense!' said I; 'how are you going to burn it?'

"'That's just what we're going to find out,' said the Dean; 'we'll get a fire somehow, of that I'm sure.'

"'I should like to know how,' said I. 'Perhaps you have another bright idea.'

"'To be sure I have,' answered the Dean.

"'What is it this time?' said I.

"'Well, I don't know,' said he, 'as there's much in it, but I'm going to try the lens again.'

"'That's of no use,' said I.

"'I'm not so sure,' said he; 'you know we made a great deal of heat with our lens the other time,--so much that it almost burned my hand. I think the trouble was in my old pocket, which, having once been in salt water, wouldn't burn; now I think I've found out something that is better.'

"'What's that?' said I.

"'Why, some cotton stuff,' said he, 'that I found blowing about among the stones.'

"'Cotton!' I exclaimed, in great surprise; 'there's no cotton growing here.'

"'Well, it looks like cotton for all that,' answered the Dean, 'and I'm sure it will burn. Let me get some of it, and I'll try it.'

"So the Dean ran off, and soon came back again with a little wad of white stuff, that looked very much like cotton, only much finer in its texture. I remembered it perfectly, for I had seen it, everywhere I went, about the little willow-bushes; and I had even plucked a willow-blossom to find it covered all over with this tender cotton-like substance, which I blew from it with my breath. But the idea had never once come into my head that it would be of any use.

"'What are you going to do with this?' said I to the Dean, when he had showed it to me.

"'Why,' said he, with much confidence, 'I'm going to make another lens of ice, and set fire to it.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Striking fire under difficulties."]

"To set fire to it was something easier said than done, yet the idea seemed to take root in my mind; and how or why it ever came about I can no more tell than I can fly, but somehow or other, it matters not what was my impulse or idea or expectation, the truth is, without saying a single word, I pulled out my knife and the bit of flint which I had found and carefully preserved the day before, and then struck one upon the other (as if it were quite mechanical) above the Dean's little bit of cotton stuff, which lay upon the gra.s.s. A great shower of sparks was thrown off with each fresh stroke, and these told of the fineness of the steel and the hardness of the flint. I went on pounding and pounding away, as if resolved on something. And if I was resolved, my resolution was rewarded; for at length the Dean threw up his hands as suddenly as if a shot had struck him in the heart, and he shouted out, 'A spark, a spark!'

"The Dean's little bit of cotton stuff had taken fire, and the daintiest little streak of smoke was curling upward from it.

"Without pausing an instant, quick as the hawk to swoop down upon its prey, quick as the lightning-flash, quick as thought itself, I threw away my knife and flint, and caught up the spark. The Dean drew instantly from his pocket the bit of cotton cloth which we had tried to light with the lens the day before, and thrust it in my hand. I put the spark upon it, and then blew.

"The first breath drove all the Dean's light cotton stuff away, and the spark was gone.

"But we were now no longer where we were before. The Spark had been made once, and it could be made again; and our hearts were bounding with delight. 'Hurrah! hurrah!' shouted the Dean, 'we're all right now!'

"But our troubles about the fire were very far from ended. We had no difficulty in getting another spark to catch in another piece of this strange sort of tinder, of which we found great plenty near at hand. But it would not blaze. With the slightest breath it vanished almost as a flash of powder; and it was long before we hit upon anything that would do us any further good. We tried all the pieces of cotton cloth that we had about our clothes, picking it into shreds, and, putting the lighted tinder among these shreds, tried to make them blaze. But no blaze could we get. Once only did we raise a little flash, but it was gone in a single instant. We tried the dry leaves of the fire-plant (Andromeda), the dry gra.s.s,--everything, indeed, we could think of that was within our reach,--but still no blaze, no blaze.

"With sore fingers and wearied patience, and with wits as well as bodies quite exhausted, we fell once more asleep, with mingling thoughts of triumph and disappointment, and with prayerful hopes for what the morrow might bring forth running through our minds.

"When the morrow came, a chance seemed to open for us; and we resolved to go about our work with caution, determined, since we had gone thus far, that we would in the end succeed. I don't know whether it was the Dean or I that first suggested it, but we made up our minds that the moss which we had turned up with the narwhal horn, when we were building at the hut, some of which had dried, would burn. We picked to pieces some of the long fibres of this moss, and laid upon them, loosely, some fragments of the tinder. A spark was struck as before, and upon blowing this a bright blaze flashed up, and then died out again as quickly as it had come.

"'I have it now!' shouted the Dean, 'we're sure of it next time!' and without saying another word he darted off towards the beach. When he came back again, he held in one hand a chunk of blubber from the narwhal, out of which we squeezed some drops of oil, and soaked in them some fibres of the moss.

"Another piece of tinder and another piece of moss were placed as they had been before; another spark was struck, another blaze was blown, and when this came, the Dean was holding in it his fibres of oil-soaked moss, and we soon had a lighted torch. 'Hurrah, hurrah!' we might well shout now, for the thing was done. 'Praised be Heaven! we have got a fire at last!'

"Then we added fresh moss to the flaming torch, which was scarcely larger than a match, and then a few more drops of oil were added, and so on, oil and moss, and moss and oil, little by little, gently, gently all the time, until we had secured at length a good and solid flame.

"Then we laid the burning moss upon a flat stone, and then, as before, moss and oil, and oil and moss, were added, each time in larger and larger quant.i.ties,--no longer gently, gently, but with a careless hand, and in less, perhaps, than half an hour we had a great, smoking, fluttering blaze; and then we threw on some of the driest leaves and twigs of the Andromeda, and some dead willow-stems and dry gra.s.s, and then we had a roaring, sputtering, red-hot fire.

"And how we danced, and skipped, and shouted round the fire, like happy children round some new-found toy!

"The next thing was, of course, to turn the fire to some account. On two sides of the blaze we placed large square stones, and over these we put another that was thin and flat; and then we skinned the duck which the Dean had caught, and cut the rich flesh into little pieces and placed them on the flat stone above the blaze; and then, to keep the smoke and ashes from the cooking food, we put another light, thin stone upon the flesh, and then we watched and waited for the coming meal. To help the fire along, and make it burn more quickly, we threw into it some little chunks of blubber, and then, in a little while, the duck was cooked.

"O what a royal meal we had!--we half-famished, s.h.i.+pwrecked boys,--the first hot food we had tasted during all these long, weary, dreary days; and, not satisfied with the duck, we next broiled some eggs upon the heated stone, and ate and ate away until we were as full as we could hold.

"All this had consumed many hours, and all the time we had been so much excited that we found ourselves quite exhausted when the meal was over, and we could do no more work that day; so we lay down again upon the gra.s.s, to talk and rest and sleep. When we came to sleep, however, we had now another motive, besides watching for a s.h.i.+p, to make us sleep one only at a time; for we must keep this fire going, which we had got with so much trouble. This was easily done, since we only had to add, from time to time, some branches of the Andromeda, and these kept up a smouldering fire.