I felt as great a delight as Billy, it being plain that we now had the first means of making fire, and if only we could discover anything to serve as tinder we might soon have a fire as large as we pleased. We went back to our hut by the wood very quickly, being eager to try before it was dark; but though we collected plenty of dry grass and struck spark after spark out of the flint, we could not kindle a flame, and, to our great disappointment, ate cold supper again. The next day also we were no more successful, though we neglected our work while we tried again and again, and should have been very sorry for the loss of time but that time mattered very little to us. However, in the afternoon, when we went into the wood to get cocoa-nuts, I sat myself down on the trunk of a great tree which had been thrown down by a storm, I suppose--not our storm, but earlier, for the leaves were all withered. I sat myself down, I say, but went lower than I intended, the trunk, that appeared solid, giving way under me, so that I toppled over backwards in a cloud of dust. When we looked at the tree, we saw that the inside of it was completely rotted away, with the dry rot, as we say, and we both cried out at the same moment that this might be our tinder. We immediately broke off a strip of the bark, and collected some of the dust upon it, and then striking a spark, we caught it on the tinder, which was, however, so dry that it flared up and burnt out in an instant, without kindling the bark. We remedied this very soon by mingling some dry grass, rubbed small, with the wood dust, and this burning more slowly, it caused the bark to smoulder, from which we blew up a flame, and in a few minutes had a very pretty fire of sticks. Billy leapt around it in an ecstasy, and I could not help but liken him to a fire-worshipper, whose religion I understood better now than before, after all the trouble we had had. "Now we can bake some bread," said I. "And roast some pork," says Billy. "We had better make bread first," said I. "My mouth is watering for the crackling," says Billy. "Bread will be the sooner done," I said. "But the taste of pork stays in the mouth longer," says Billy.