The Plant Hunters Part 32

"Oh! jolly lights,--lights enough to show us out. Hang me! if I think I dreamt it after all. By thunder! good brother, I believe I was half awake when the idea came into my mind. Capital idea, isn't it?"

"What idea?" inquired Karl in surprise, and rather apprehensive that Caspar's dream had deprived him of his senses. "What idea, Caspar?"

"Why, the idea of the _candles_, to be sure."

"The candles! What candles?--Surely," thought Karl, as he asked the question,--"surely my poor brother's intellect is getting deranged,-- this horrid darkness is turning his brain."

"Oh! I have not told you my dream,--if it was a dream. I am confused.

I am so delighted with the idea. We shall group no more in this hideous darkness,--we shall have light,--plenty of light, I promise you. Odd we did not think of the thing before!"

"But what is it, brother? What was your dream about?--Tell us that."

"Well, now that I am awake, I don't think it was a dream,--at least, not a regular one. I was thinking of the thing before I fell asleep, and I kept on thinking about it when I got to be half asleep; and then I saw my way clearer. You know, brother, I have before told you that when I have any thing upon my mind that puzzles me, I often hit upon the solution of it when I am about half dreaming; and so it has been in this case, I am sure I have got the right way at last."

"Well, Caspar,--the right way to do what? The right way to get out of the cave?"

"I hope so, brother."

"But what do you propose?"

"I propose that we turn tallow-chandlers."

"Tallow-chandlers! Poor boy!" soliloquised Karl; "I thought as much. O merciful Heaven, my dear brother! his reason is gone!"

Such were Karl's painful surmises, though he kept them to himself.

"Yes, tallow-chandlers," continued Caspar, in the same half-earnest, half-jocular way, "and make us a full set of candles."

"And of what would you make your candles, dear Caspar?" inquired Karl, in a sympathising tone, and with the design of humouring his brother, rather than excite him by contradiction.

"Of what," echoed Caspar, "what but the fat of this great bear?"

"Ha!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Karl, suddenly changing his tone, as he perceived that Caspar's madness had something of method in it, "the fat of the bear, you say?"

"Certainly, Karl. Isn't his stomach as full of tallow as it can stick?

and what's to hinder us to make candles out of it that will carry us all over the cave,--and out of it, I fancy, unless it be the greatest maze that Nature has ever made out of rock-work?"

Karl was no longer under the belief that his brother had gone mad. On the contrary, he saw that the latter had conceived a very fine idea; and though it did not yet appear how the thing was to be carried out, Karl fancied that there was something in it. His sweet dream recurred to him, and this he now regarded as ominous of the success of some plan of escape,--perhaps by the very means which Caspar had suggested,--by making candles out of "bear's grease!"

These were pleasant thoughts, but to Karl the pleasantest thought of all was the returning conviction that Caspar _was still in his senses_!

CHAPTER SIXTY TWO.

HOPES.

Ossaroo now joined in the general joy; and the three placed their heads together, to deliberate upon Caspar's suggestion, and to discuss its feasibility in detail.

But neither Karl nor Ossaroo had much need to spend their opinion on the details; for the original "promoter" of the plan had already conceived nearly the whole of them. It was, in fact, these that he had got hold of while half asleep; and which, on first awaking, he believed to have occurred to him in a dream. But there was no dream in the matter. The idea of making candles from the bear's fat had been in his mind before he lay down--he had even thought of it while they were at work in curing the meat.

"Yes," said he, commencing to tell them in detail all that had pa.s.sed through his mind upon the subject; "I had thought of the candles, while a.s.sisting Ossaroo to cut up the bear. I could tell, by the touch, that many pieces of the meat were almost pure fat; and I wondered to myself whether it would not burn and make a light. I knew, of course, that there was plenty more in the great stomach of the animal, and that of the real sort of which candles could be made. Would it burn? that was the question that puzzled me. I feared that it would not burn without first being rendered to grease or lard, and a wick put into it,--in fact, I knew it could not; and there arose the difficulty, since we had no fire wherewith to render the fat, and no vessel to render it in, even if we had been provided with fire in plenty."

"Ah! that is too true," a.s.sented Karl, rather despairingly.

"Well, so thought I, Karl, and I had well-nigh given up thinking about the matter--of course, I said nothing about it to either of you--as I knew you could not create fuel out of stones any more than I, and there was an end of it."

"Yes--an end of it," unconsciously echoed Karl, in a desponding tone.

"Not yet, brother! not yet!" rejoined Caspar, as he proceeded in his relation. "You see the thing had got into my thoughts, and, after a while, I found myself once more speculating upon it. How were we to make a fire that would melt that fat? That we could strike a light, I knew--we could do that with our tinder or gunpowder; but where were we to get sufficient fuel to make a fire with, and where was the vessel to be obtained, in which to render the lard? At first, I thought only of the fire. If we could once raise fuel for that, the vessel would not be of so much importance--we might contrive to heat a flat, thin stone, and melt some of the fat in that way. If we could not make fine candles, we might dip some wick in the grease, and thus have a kind of taper that would serve almost as well. I knew we had wick--I remembered the long hempen string which Ossaroo has got, and I knew that that would serve admirably for the purpose. All that would be easy enough--at least it appeared so--all except the stuff for the fire."

"Very ingenious of you, Caspar; these things had never entered my mind.

Go on, brother!"

"Well--to make a long story short, I have got the fuel."

"Bravo! good! good!" exclaimed Karl and Ossaroo in a breath, and in accents of joy. "You have got the fuel?"

"Yes--I found it, at length; just as I was bobbing over asleep, the idea crossed my mind; though I fancied I was only dreaming, and must have afterwards fallen asleep. But I partially awoke shortly after, and took to thinking again; and then I found the vessel in which we can render our tallow--I think we can."

"Hurrah! better than all!"

"And now, listen to my plan; for I have been thinking while I have been talking, and I have it _more_ complete than ever. Maybe you can both add something, but here is what I propose."

"Tell us, Caspar--all right, go on."

"We have with us two guns--Ossaroo has his spear, his hatchet, his bow, and a good quiver of arrows--fortunately his quiver, too, is of thick bamboo, and dry as a chip. First, then, I propose that, with Ossaroo's axe, we break up the stocks of our guns, ramrods, and all--we can soon make others, once we get out--also the shaft of Ossaroo's spear, his bow, arrows, and quiver--never mind, Ossaroo, you can replace them from the forest. This being done, we can make a fire large enough to melt as much fat as will make us no end of dips."

"You are right, brother," interposed Karl; "but how about the vessel to melt it in?"

"That puzzled me for a while," replied the ingenious Caspar; "but I got over the difficulty, at length, by thinking of my powder-flask; you know it is a patent one, and the top screws off. Well--we can take off the top, empty the powder into one of our pockets, and make use of the bottom part for the lard. I am sure it will stand the fire, for it is stout copper without a flaw. The only difficulty is, that it is small; but we can fill it over and over again."

"And you propose to make the string which Ossaroo has got into wicks, and dip them in the hot grease?"

"Nothing of the sort," replied Caspar, in a triumphant tone; "we shall have no dips. I was contented with them at first, but not any longer.

We shall have candles--real mould-candles!"

"How? Mould-candles? How?"

"Oh! that you shall see by-and-by. Ossaroo would only disclose part of his plans when he went to trap the tiger, and I mean to keep a little of mine to myself, in order to have a _revanche_ upon him. Ha! ha! ha!"

Caspar finished his speech with a laugh. It was the first time any of them had laughed since they entered that cave--no doubt, the first laugh that ever echoed through its gloomy aisles.

CHAPTER SIXTY THREE.

LIGHT IN DARKNESS.