tting ready for a fire with a
great, solid pile of small logs, most of them wet and green. He knew how
to use flint and steel, because that was the established household way
of the times. Since childhood had he lighted the candle at home by this
primitive means. When his pile of soggy logs was ready, he struck his
flint, caught a spark on the tinder that is always kept on hand, blew
it to a flame, thrust in between two of the wet logs, waited for all to
blaze up, and wondered why the tiny blaze went out at once, no matter
how often he tried.

When the others came back, Van Cortlandt remarked: "It doesn't seem to
burn." The Indian turned away in silent contempt. Rolf had hard work to
keep the forms of respect, until the thought came: "I suppose I looked
just as big a fool in his world at Albany."

"See," said he, "green wood and wet wood won't do, but yonder is some
birch bark and there's a pine root." He took his axe and cut a few
sticks from the root, then used his knife to make a sliver-fuzz of each;
one piece, so resinous that it would not whittle, he smashed with
the back of the axe into a lot of matchwood. With a handful of finely
shredded birch bark he was now quite ready. A crack of the flint a
blowing of the spark caught on the tinder from the box, a little flame
that at once was magnified by the birch bark, and in a minute the pine
splinters made a sputtering fire. Quonab did not even pay Van Cortlandt
the compliment of using one of his logs. He cut a growing poplar, built
a fireplace of the green logs around the blaze that Rolf had made, and
the meal was ready in a few minutes.

Van Cortlandt was not a fool; merely it was all new to him. But his
attention was directed to fire-making now, and long before they reached
their cabin he had learned this, the first of the woodman's arts--he
could lay and light a fire. And when, weeks later, he not only made the
flint fire, but learned in emergency to make the rubbing stick spark,
his cup of joy was full. He felt he was learning.

Determined to be in everything, now he paddled all day; at first with
vigour, then mechanically, at last feebly and painfully. Late in the
afternoon they made the first long portage; it was a quarter mile. Rolf
took a hundred pounds, Quonab half as much more, Van Cortlandt tottered
slowly behind with his pill-kit and his paddle. That night, on his ample
mattress, he slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. Next day he did little
and said not