Harrigan listened only while his astonishment kept him helpless; then
he took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his sapling
top. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leaving
the string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had
brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood
several inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of the
wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a rough
point.

He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt upon
it to hold it firm. On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrapped
in several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragment
of wood. When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolved
at a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging into
the wood on which it rested. It is a method of starting a fire which
was once familiarly used by Indians.

For half an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor.
Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg
slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a
short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed
of its rotation--a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing of
the storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again and
this time the peg kept firm. The smoke grew pungent; there was a spark,
then a glow, and it spread and widened among the powdery, rotten wood
which Harrigan had heaped around his rotating peg.

He tossed the peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on the
glowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flame