ed that of course there is no such thing as
pitch-dark, so long as you have a door open or a sky above you.

Calling for the loan of a bow, the Doctor loosened the string, put the
hard stick into a loop and began grinding this stick into the soft wood
of the log. Soon I smelt that the log was smoking. Then he kept feeding
the part that was smoking with the inside lining of the squirrel's nest,
and he asked me to blow upon it with my breath. He made the stick drill
faster and faster. More smoke filled the room. And at last the darkness
about us was suddenly lit up. The squirrel's nest had burst into flame.

The Indians murmured and grunted with astonishment. At first they were
all for falling on their knees and worshiping the fire. Then they wanted
to pick it up with their bare hands and play with it. We had to teach
them how it was to be used; and they were quite fascinated when we laid
our fish across it on sticks and cooked it. They sniffed the air with
relish as, for the first time in history, the smell of fried fish passed
through the village of Popsipetel.

Then we got them to bring us piles and stacks of dry wood; and we made
an enormous bonfire in the middle of the main street. Round this, when
they felt its warmth, the whole tribe gathered and smiled and wondered.
It was a striking sight, one of the pictures from our voyages that I
most frequently remember: that roaring jolly blaze beneath the black
night sky, and all about it a vast ring of Indians, the firelight
gleaming on bronze cheeks, white teeth and flashing eyes--a whole town
trying to get warm, giggling and pushing like school-children.

In a little, when we had got them more used to the handling of fire,
the Doctor showed them how it could be taken into their houses if a hole
were only made in the roof to let the smoke out. And before we turned
in after that long, long, tiring day, we had fires going in every hut in
the village.

The poor people were so glad to get really warm again that we thought
they'd never go to bed. Well on into the early hours of the morning
the little town fairly buzzed with a great low murmur: the Popsipetels
sitting up talking of their wonderful pale-faced visitor and this
strange good thing he had brought with him--FIRE!

THE FOURTH CHAPTER. WHAT MAKES AN ISLAND FLOAT

VERY early in our experience of Popsipetel kindness we saw that if we
were to get anything done at all, we would almost always have to do it
se