And when, weeks
later, he not only made the flint fire, but learned in emergency
to make the rubbing stick spark, his cup of joy was full. He felt
he was learning.
Determined to be in everything, now he paddled all day; at first
with vigour, then mechanically, at last feebly and painfully.
Late in the afternoon they made the first long portage; it was a
quarter mile. Rolf took a hundred pounds, Quonab half as much
more, Van Cortlandt tottered slowly behind with his pill-kit and
his paddle. That night, on his ample mattress, he slept the sleep
of utter exhaustion. Next day he did little and said nothing. It
came on to rain; he raised a huge umbrella and crouched under it
till the storm was over. But the third day he began to show signs
of new life, and before they reached the Schroon's mouth, on the
fifth day, his young frame was already responding to the elixir
of the hills.
It was very clear that they could not take half of the stuff that
they had cached at the Schroon's mouth, so that a new adjustment
was needed and still a cache to await another trip.
That night as they sat by their sixth camp fire, Van Cortlandt
pondered over the recent days, and they seemed many since he had
left home.
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