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Small bays with sandy beaches white with broken clam shells mark the shore, and if across the beach a stream of crystal water rippled to the sea, one Indian lodge or more was sure to be erected on the rising land behind; for Indians always choose to build their homes on sheltered sandy bays where pure fresh water runs, and so in years which are among those past and gone one could not fail to see the blue wood smoke of Indian fires hanging like gauze above the little bays; but most are now deserted and corner posts of old time houses alone are seen, and beds of stinging nettle cover ancient kitchen middens, and spirea and elderberry strive for space where once red strips of salmon hung in the smoke of punk-wood fires, and stillness reigns where once the Indians' mournful song was heard.
"Keep up your courage," cried the trapper; "we must have a light. I have a flint, knife, and punk-wood; so far all is well, but what are we to burn?" "There is wood in here I know," said Sidney, "for I have stumbled over it a number of times?" "Have a care how you hunt round for it, or you will go down after Jane and the chief," said Edward.
They pondered how they should get the fire to Kalevala, and at last Ilmarinen seized it in his hands to carry it off. But it singed Wainamoinen's beard and burned Ilmarinen's hands dreadfully, and then it jumped out of their reach and rolled off over field and forest, burning everything in its course. Wainamoinen hastened after it, and at length caught it hidden in a mass of punk-wood.
When the boy who had stunned Jerry with his paddle-blade and who claimed him as his own stole into the canoe house, the ancient did not hear him. Being blind, he did not see him. He continued gibbering and chuckling dementedly, to twist the bushman's head back and forth and to feed the smudge with punk-wood.
Fierce Indians they were, but all Indians had been good to Nanking; so he advanced right merrily, and at the crossing of the second river snaked a fish out of the water with his line and made a fire with his flint and punk-wood to cook it. When he had finished his meal he looked up and was surrounded by Indians. They were fierce, grave Indians, armed with spears and bows.
But in this they were doomed to sad disappointment. Their punk-wood tinder had been so dampened by the snow sifting into their coat-pockets, where they had deposited it, that it could not be made to catch the sparks of the smitten steel.
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