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 nothing. It
came on to rain; he raised a huge umbrella and crouched under it
till the storm was over. But the third day he began to show signs
of new life, and before they reached the Schroon's mouth, on the