As the shades of night began to close in upon him, Sandy found himself
still in the same position. From time to time one or another of the pack
would hurl itself against the rocky islet in the snow waste, only to be
remorselessly thrown back by the impact.
But for the most part the creatures sat silent and motionless, content
to watch and wait for the harvest that they seemed sure would come to
them in time.
After his fit of despair Sandy had once more rallied his energies and
devoted his really active and brave mind to devising some means of
passing the night, that it now appeared certain he must spend on the
great rock pile.
Above him, growing in a rift, were the remains of some stunted balsams,
the seeds of which had probably blown thither from the woods whence the
wolves had issued. He stared at the melancholy, twisted, dried-up stumps
of vegetation for some time before any idea concerning them came into
his head. Then all at once he realized that here at least was the means
for fire and warmth.
But hardly had this idea occurred to him, when he recollected something
that made his heart sink to a lower level than before. He had no
matches. The little nickeled box that held them lay at the foot of the
rocks too well guarded by the wolves for him to make an effort to reach
it. And yet he knew that he must have fire in the night or perish.
It was quite a while before a retentive memory helped him out. Then he
recalled having heard some time before from an old trapper a method of
fire-making without matches. The operation was simplicity itself and yet
Sandy doubted if he could make it succeed.
The plan was simply this: to remove from a cartridge the bullet and part
of the powder; then to place the cartridge in the gun as usual and fire
into a pile of dry kindling. The sparks and flame from the powder were
supposed to furnish the necessary start to the blaze, which could then
be enlarged by blowing.
“At any rate, I might try it,” thought Sandy. “If I don’t make it go I
stand a good chance of freezing. But if I do——”
He stopped short. While he had been turning these matters over in his
mind he had climbed up to the ridge on which grew the withered, dead
balsams.
Now that he had gained it, he saw that beyond the gnarled, wind-twisted
stumps was a considerable rift in the rocks. How far in it went he did
not, of course, know. But it appeared that it ought to make a snug
refuge from the rigors of the almost arctic cold.
Further exploration showed that the rift was quite a cave. It was not
very high, but appeared to run back a considerable distance. Sandy
hailed its discovery with joy. If he could light a fire back within the
rift it would be practicable to keep it warm.
The thought of warmth, light and a good fire was comforting, even though
for the present it existed only in the imagination. Sandy set to work on
the withered balsams with his hunting knife. The wood was dry and dead
and cut easily. Soon he had quite a pile of it dragged back into the
rift.
As he worked he almost forgot the perils of his situation. For the
present the biting cold which, as the sun grew lower, was more and more
penetrating, turned his thoughts from his present miseries to the
delights to come of warmth and comfort.
Having collected his pile and stacked it till it almost reached the roof
of the rift, Sandy thought it was time to see if there was any merit in
the old trapper’s recipe for starting a fire in the wilderness without
matches. With his blade he stripped off patches of dry bark from the
dead timber and shredded it until it was an easily inflammable mass,
like excelsior.
Having done this, he collected his kindling and then piled the sticks
crosswise in the form of a tower, so that when his fire was started he
would be sure of a good draft. Then, with his knife, he extracted a
bullet from a cartridge, poured a little of the powder upon the kindling
and then slipped the half emptied shell into his rifle.
When this much of his preparations had been completed he was ready for
the final test. He aimed the rifle carefully at his kindling pile,
selecting a place where he had previously sprinkled the grains of
powder. Then he pulled the trigger.
A muffled report and a shower of sparks from the muzzle followed, but to
the boy’s disappointment, the kindling did not catch fire. The only
result of his experiment, so far, was a suffocating smell of gunpowder.
But Sandy did not come of a stock that gives in easily.
“I must try it again,” he said to himself, thinking of his great
countryman, Robert Bruce, and perhaps likening himself in the cave
besieged by his enemies to that national hero.
Only in Sandy’s case there was no spider, as in the legend, to give him
an example of perseverance. It was far too cold for spiders, as the boy
reflected, with a rueful grin; and then he doubted if even Bruce’s foes
were more remorseless or deadly than the ones awaiting him outside the
rock masses, piled in the snow desert like an island in a vast ocean of
white.
He prepared another cartridge, sprinkling more powder on his kindling.
This time there arose a puff of flame and smoke from the pile as soon as
he fired the rifle. Casting his weapon aside, Sandy threw himself down
on his knees by the fire.
He began puffing vigorously at the smoldering place where the burning
powder had landed.
A tiny flame crept up, licked at the kindling, grew brighter and seized
upon some of the larger sticks piled above.
Five minutes later Sandy was warming himself at a satisfying blaze. As
the smoke rolled out of the rift and upward in the darkening gloom the
patient watchers outside set up a savage howl.
“Ah, howl away, you gloomeroons,” muttered Sandy, in the cheerful glow
inside the rift. “I’ve got you beaten for a time, anyhow. And noo let’s
hae a bite o’ supper.”
With a plucky grimace, as though to defy fate, Sandy spread out on the
rock floor his stock of food. It looked scanty, pitifully so, when
considered as the sole provision against starvation that the boy had
with him in his rock prison—for such it might be fitly called.
“'Tis nae banquet,” and the Scotch lad wagged his head solemnly. “It
would make a grand feed for a canary bird.”
He paused a minute, and then:
“But be glad you hae it, Sandy McTavish, you ungrateful carlin. You’re
lucky not to have to make a supper off scenery; and, after all, you are
nae sae hungry as yon wolves, judging by their voices.”