Part 52 (1/2)
Stern had none of these things, neither could he fas.h.i.+on them without tools. He had, therefore, to resort to the still more primitive method of ”fire-sawing,” such as long, long ago the Australian bushmen had been wont to practice.
He was a strong man, determined and persistent; but two days more had pa.s.sed, and many blisters covered his palms ere--after innumerable experiments with different kinds of woods and varying strokes--the first tiny glow fell into the carefully sc.r.a.ped sawdust. And it was with a fast-beating heart and tremulous breath that he blew his spark to a larger one, then laid on his shredded strips of bark and blew again, and so at last, with a great up-welling triumph in his soul, beheld the flicker of a flame once more.
Exhausted, he carefully fed that precious fire, while the girl clapped her hands with joy. In a few moments more the evening air in the dim forest aisles was gladdened by the ruddy blaze of a camp-fire at the door of the lean-to, and for the first time smoke went wafting up among the branches of that primeval wood.
”Now for some real meat!” cried Stern with exultation. ”To-morrow I go hunting!”
That evening they sat for hours feeding their fire with deadfalls, listening to the trickle of the little spring and to the night sounds of the forest, watching the bats flicker among the dusky s.p.a.ces, and gazing at the slow and solemn march of the stars beyond the leafy fretwork overhead. Stern slept but little that night, in his anxiety to keep the fire fed; and morning found him eager to be at his work with throwing-sticks among the vistas of the wilderness.
Together they hunted that day. She carried what his skilful aim brought down from the tangled greenery above. Birds, squirrels, chipmunks, all were welcome. Noon found them in possession of more than thirty pieces of small game, including two hedgehogs. And for the first time in almost a week they tasted flesh again, roasted on a sharp stick over the glowing coals.
Stern hunted all that day and the next. He dressed the game with an extraordinarily large and sharp clamsh.e.l.l, which he whetted from time to time on a rock beside the spring. And soon the fire was overhung with much meat, being smoked with a pine-cone smudge in preparation for the journey into the unknown.
”Inside of a week, at this rate,” he judged, ”we'll be able to start again. You must set to work platting a couple of sacks. The gra.s.s along the brook is tough and long. We can carry fifty or seventy-five pounds of meat, for emergencies. Fruits we can gather on the way.”
”And fire? Can we carry that?”
”We can take a supply of properly dried-out woods with punk. I've already had practice enough, so I ought to be able to get fire at any time inside of half an hour.”
”Weapons?”
”I'll make you a battle-ax like my own, only lighter. That's the best we can do for the present, till we strike some ruin or other where a city used to be.”
”And you're still bent on reaching Boston?”
”Yes. I reckon we're more than half-way there by now. It's the nearest big ruin, the nearest place where we can refit and recoup the damage done, get supplies and arms and tools, build another boat, and in general take a fresh start. If we can make ten miles a day, we can reach it in; ten days or less. I think, all things considered, the Boston plan's the wisest possible one.”
She gazed into the fire a moment before replying. Then, stirring the coals with a stick, said she:
”All right, boy; but I've got a suggestion to make.”
”What is it?”
”We'll do better to follow the sh.o.r.e all the way round.”
”And double the distance?”
”Yes, even so. You know, this sh.o.r.e is--or used to be--flat and sandy most of the way. We can make better progress along beaches and levels than we can through the forest. And there's the matter of sh.e.l.l-fish to consider; and most important of all--”
”Well, what?”
”The sea will guide us. We can't get lost, you understand. With the exception of cutting across the shank of Cape Cod, if the cape still exists, we needn't ever get out of sight of salt water. And it will bring us surely to the Hub.”
”By Jove, you're right!” he cried enthusiastically. ”The sh.o.r.e-line has it! And to-morrow morning at sunup we begin preparations in earnest. You'll weave the knapsacks while I go after still more meat.
Gad! Now that everything's decided, the quicker we're on our way the better. I'm keen to see old Tremont Hill again, and get my hands on a good stock of arms and ammunition once more!”
That night, long after Beatrice was sleeping soundly on her bed of odorous gra.s.ses, Allan lay musing by the lean-to door, in the red glow of the fire. He was thinking of the long and painful history of man, of the great catastrophe and of the terrible responsibility that now lay on his own shoulders.
As in a panorama, he saw the emergence of humanity from the animal stage, the primitive savagery of his kind; then the beginnings of the family, the nomadic epoch, the stone age, and the bronze age, and the age of iron; the struggle up to agriculturalism, and communism, and the beginnings of the village groups, with all their petty tribal wars.