The depressing opposite of the fire that is the warm heart of the camp
is the pile of green or rain-soaked fuel that in spite of all coaxing
and nursing refuses to yield a cheerful flame. Shavings from the
resin-embalmed heart of a dead pine and scrolls of birch bark fail to
enkindle it to more than flicker and smoke, while the wet and hungry
campers brood forlornly over the cheerless centre of their temporary
home, with watery eyes and souls growing sick of camp life.
Night is falling, and the shadows of the woods thicken into solid gloom
that teems with mysterious horrors, which stretch their intangible claws
through the darkness to chill the backs of the timid with an icy touch,
and the silence is terrible with unuttered howlings of imaginary beasts.
Each one is ready to blame the other for the common discomfort, and all,
the high priest, who so far fails to kindle the altar fire. He is an
impostor, who should be smothered in the reek of his own failure. Yet,
as the group regard him with unkind glances and mutterings of
disapproval, he perseveres, feeding the faint flame with choice morsels
of fat wood and nursing it with his breath, his bent face and puffed
cheeks now a little lightened, now fading into gloom, till suddenly the
sullenness of the reluctant fuel is overcome, wings of flame flutter up
the column of smoke, and the black pile leaps into a lurid tower of
light, from whose peak a white banner of smoke flaunts upward, saluted
by the waving boughs that it streams among.
Tent and shanty, familiar trees, and moving figures with their circle of
grotesque, dancing shadows, spring into sudden existence out of the
blank darkness. The magic touch of the firelight dispels every sullen
look, warms every heart to genial comradeship; jokes flash back and
forth merrily, and the camp pulses again with reawakened cheerful life.
Verily, fire worketh wonders in divers ways.