When it was made, he again crossed the island, selected a blazing stick from the camp-fire, and started to retrace his steps. By the time he reached the log-hut he found it necessary to stop and renew his blaze by building a fire in the rude chimney. By thus establishing a relay station he finally succeeded in getting a blaze to the desired spot on the channel side of the island, and in starting a brisk fire at that point. Here the boy would have stayed and watched for the craft that he fondly hoped would come to his deliverance; but it was now a long time since breakfast, and his hard work had made him very hungry. He might find something to eat at that abandoned camp, which he had not yet examined. At any rate he would go and look. So he piled logs on his fire until satisfied that it would last for some hours. Then picking up a bit of shingle from the beach, he wrote on it with the stump of a lead-pencil: "I am on the island. Follow the trail and you will find me.----WINN CASPAR." This note he stuck in a cleft sapling, from which he first cut the top, and which stood so near the fire that it was certain to attract attention. Then feeling that he could do nothing more in that place, he set forth in search of something with which to satisfy his hunger. On his way back he stopped at the hut, and made a thorough but vain search for food. There was not so much as would have fed a mouse, and the only thing of value that the boy discovered was a rusty fish-hook stuck into one of the wall logs. Before leaving the hut he replenished the fire in the chimney-place, thinking that perhaps he might return there to sleep. Then he went on to the camp. Here Winn's search for food was as unsuccessful as it had been at the hut. He found a number of cooking utensils, battered and smoked, and discovered an old axe still sticking in the log on which it had been last used. He also found some bits of rope and cord. He knotted together enough of the latter to make a rude line, attached his fish-hook to it, cut a pole, dug some bait, and began to fish just above the "river-traders'" boom. For some time he sat there, patiently, but got no bites. The poor boy began to grow desperate with hunger. "I declare! I've a great mind to swim for the main-land," he said, aloud. "No I won't, though. I can do better than that. Besides, the water is cold enough to give me a cramp. I can make a raft of these logs. Why didn't I think of it before?" Thrusting the butt end of his pole into the soft earth of the bank, and weighting it with a good, sized stone, the boy went to the boom to examine its contents. There were plenty of logs suitable for the foundation of a raft, and more than enough lumber to deck it handsomely. But what was that brown stuff filling so many of the crevices between the logs and timbers?