Keketaw then withdrew the smoking stick, and gathered the moss together.  Lying down by it, and putting his arm about it, the Indian lad began to blow it gently.  The smoldering fire increased until a little blue flame, which he could barely see, appeared.  Keketaw now added some very thin paper-like bits of dry bark and some small twigs to the pile of smoking moss.  These caught fire, and sent up a straw-colored flame.  Henry put on larger twigs until there was at last a crackling blaze.

Taking lighted sticks from this fire, the boys made a fire all round the base of a large tree from which they meant to get the canoe.  This fire they kept going constantly for two days.  They even got up at night to put dead boughs on, it.

[Illustration:  Burning down a Tree.]

On the third night of their stay in camp, they didn’t lie down at the usual time, for the tree was burned nearly through.  About two o’clock in the morning a little breeze rustled in the leaves of the great tree.  Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, the tree fell with a tremendous crashing sound, until with a final thundering roar it lay flat upon the ground.

Sleepy as the boys were, they did not lie down for the night until they had built a new fire near the trunk of the tree.  Having no ax to chop with, they had to burn the log in two.  They put the fire at a place that would cut off enough of the tree trunk to make a canoe.

The next day they built up this new fire, and then went fishing in the neighboring stream with their bone fishhooks, and lines made of the Spanish bayonet leaf.  In two days after the fall of the tree they had burned off the log that was to make their canoe, and had scraped off all the bark with shells.

They then lighted little fires on top of the log, and, when these had charred the wood for an inch or more in depth in any place, they removed the fire and scraped away the charcoal.  Then they built another little fire in the same place.  These little fires were made with gum taken from the pine trees.

By burning and scraping they gradually dug out the inside of their boat, scraping out one end of it while they were burning out the other, and working at it day after day.

The only tools they had for scraping were shells from the river, and sharp stones.  Keketaw sometimes used his deer-horn tomahawk for the same purpose.  It was fourteen days from the time they first lighted the fire at the foot of the tree until their canoe was finished.  Two more days were spent in making paddles.  This work was also done by burning and scraping.

When all was done, the canoe was slid down the soft bank into the water.  It floated right side up to the delight of its makers.  The boys now thought it would be a fine stroke to take a deer home with them.  So they pulled one end of their canoe up on the shore, and started out to look for one.

But the first tracks they found were not deer tracks.  They were the footprints of men.  Keketaw made a sign to Henry by turning the palm of his hand toward the earth, and then moving the hand downward.  This meant to keep low, and make no noise.  Then Keketaw climbed a high pine tree.  From the top of the tree he could see a number of Indians at a spring of water.