about it, making a solid wall on one side of
it; then he put a thin narrow stone on the other side, and on this he
supported still another stone that was very heavy. Then he took from his
pocket a piece of twine which he was fortunate enough to have, and tied
one end of it to the thin narrow stone, and, holding on to the other
end, hid himself behind some rocks near by. When the duck came back to
her nest, he jerked the thin narrow stone away by a strong pull on the
twine string, and down came the heavy stone upon the duck's back. 'You
should have heard the old thing quacking,' said he, evidently forgetting
everything else but the sport of catching the bird: 'but I soon gave her
neck a twist, and here we are ready for a dinner, when we only find a
way to cook it. Have you discovered any way to make a fire yet?'

"I had to confess that on the subject of fire I was yet as ignorant as
ever.

"'Do you know,' continued he, 'that I have got an idea?'

"'What is it?' said I.

"'Why,' replied he, 'you told me something about people making fire with
a lens made of glass. Now, as I was down on the beach and looked at the
ice there, I thought, why not make a lens out of ice,--it is as clear as
glass?'

"'How ridiculous!' said I; 'but suppose you could, what will you set on
fire with it?'

"'In the first place,' he answered, 'the pockets of my coat are made of
some sort of cotton stuff, and if we could only set fire to that,
couldn't we blow a blaze into the fire plant, as you call it? See, I've
gathered a great heap of it.' And sure enough he had, for there was a
pile of it nearly as high as his head, looking like a great heap of dry
and green leaves.

"The idea did not seem to me to be worth much, but still, as it was the
only one that had been suggested by either of us, it was at least worthy
of trial; so we went down to the beach, and, finding a lump of ice about
twice as big as my two fists, we began chipping it with my knife into
the shape we wanted it, and then we ground it off with a stone, and then
rubbed it over with our warm hands until we had worn it down perfectly
smooth, and into the shape of a lens. This done, we held it up to the
sun, relieving each other as our hands grew cold; but without any
success whatever. We tried for a long time, and with much patience,
until the ice became so much melted, that we could do nothing more with
it, when we threw it away, and the experiment was abandoned as hopeless.