and they had been
delayed by the difficulties of navigation.

But when another hour passed and they did not appear or answer to our
calls, the reason for their delay did not matter. We were wet, cold and
hungry. Food and fire were the necessary articles. We had not a scrap of
food except our uncooked fish, and it would be no easy matter, without
ax or hatchet, to get a fire started in those rain-soaked woods. Also,
we had no salt, but that was secondary.

Eddie said he would try to build a fire if I would clean some fish, but
this proved pretty lonesome work for both of us. We decided to both
build and then both clean the fish. We dug down under the leaves for dry
twigs, but they were not plentiful. Then we split open some dead spruce
branches and got a few resinous slivers from the heart of them, a good
many in fact, and we patiently gathered bits of reasonably dry bark and
branches from under the sheltered side of logs and rocks and leaning
trees.

We meant to construct our fire very carefully and we did. We scooped a
little hollow in the ground for draught, and laid in some of the drier
pieces of bark, upon which to pile our spruce slivers. Upon these in
turn we laid very carefully what seemed to be our driest selections of
twigs, increasing the size with each layer, until we laid on limbs of
goodly bulk and had a very respectable looking heap of fuel, ready for
lighting on the windward side.

Our mistake was that we did not light it sooner. The weight of our
larger fuel had pressed hard upon our little heap of spruce slivers and
flattened it, when it should have remained loose and quickly
inflammable, with the larger fuel lying handy, to be added at the
proper moment. As it was, the tiny blaze had a habit of going out just
about the time when it ought to have been starting some bigger material.
When we did get a sickly flame going up through the little damp mess of
stuff, there was a good deal more smoke than fire and we were able to
keep the blaze alive only by energetic encouragement in the form of
blowing.

First Eddie would get down on his hands, with his chin against the
ground and blow until he was apoplectic and blind with smoke, and then I
would take my turn. I never saw two full-grown men so anxious over a
little measly fire in my life. We almost forgot that we were perishing
with cold and hunger ourselves in our anxiety to keep the spark of life
in that fire.

We saved the puny thing, finally, and