paused and looked back. His hand fumbled where the left-pocket of
his coat would have been, and as he listened to the crackling of
the flames and stared into the heart of the red glow there smote
him with sudden and sickening force a realization of their
deadliest peril. In that twisting inferno of burning pitch was his
coat, and in the left-hand pocket of that coat WERE HIS MATCHES!

Fire! Out there in the open a seething, twisting mass of it,
taunting him with its power, mocking him as pitiless as the mirage
mocks a thirst-crazed creature of the desert. In an hour or two it
would be gone. He might keep up its embers for a time--until the
Eskimos, or starvation, or still greater storm put an end to it.
The effort, in any event, would be futile in the end. Their one
chance lay in finding the other cabin, and reaching it quickly.
When it came to the point of absolute necessity he could at least
try to make fire as he had seen an Indian make it once, though at
the time he had regarded the achievement as a miracle born of
unnumbered generations of practice.

He heard the glad note of welcome in Celie's throat when he
returned to her. She spoke his name. It seemed to him that there
was no note of fear in her voice, but just gladness that he had
come back to her in that pit of darkness. He bent down and tucked
her snugly in the big bear-skin before he took her up in his arms
again. He held her so that her face was snuggled close against his
neck, and he kissed her soft mouth again, and whispered to her as
he began picking his way through the forest. His voice,
whispering, made her understand that they must make no sound. She
was tightly imprisoned in the skin, but all at once he felt one of
her hands work its way out of the warmth of it and lay against his