"Now, there's a fix! What shall we do?" said Peterkin, while we both
turned our eyes to Jack, to whom we always looked in our difficulties.
Jack seemed not a little perplexed.
"There are flints enough, no doubt, on the beach," said he, "but they
are of no use at all without a steel. However, we must try." So saying,
he went to the beach, and soon returned with two flints. On one of
these he placed the tinder, and endeavoured to ignite it; but it was
with great difficulty that a very small spark was struck out of the
flints, and the tinder, being a bad, hard piece, would not catch. He
then tried the bit of hoop-iron, which would not strike fire at all;
and after that the back of the axe, with no better success. During all
these trials Peterkin sat with his hands in his pockets, gazing with a
most melancholy visage at our comrade, his face growing longer and more
miserable at each successive failure.
"Oh dear!" he sighed; "I would not care a button for the cooking of our
victuals--perhaps they don't need it--but it's so dismal to eat one's
supper in the dark; and we have had such a capital day that it's a pity
to finish off in this glum style. Oh, I have it!" he cried, starting
up; "the spy-glass--the big glass at the end is a burning-glass!"
"You forget that we have no sun," said I.
Peterkin was silent. In his sudden recollection of the telescope he had
quite overlooked the absence of the sun.
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