direction of your course. The thicker the undergrowth the more blaze
marks you must make. Haste is not so important as caution. You may go
a number of miles and at the end be deeper in the woods than ever, but
your friends who are looking for you, if they can run across one of
your blazes, will soon find you.

When you are certain that you will not be able to find your way out
before dark, there is not much use of going any farther. The thing to
do then is to stop and prepare for passing the night in the woods
while it is still daylight. Go up on the highest point of ground,
build a leanto and make your camp-fire. If you have no matches, you
can sometimes start a fire by striking your knife blade with a piece
of flint or quartz, a hard white stone that is common nearly
everywhere. The sparks should fall in some dry tinder or punk and the
little fire coaxed along until you get a blaze. There are many kinds
of tinder used in the woods, dried puff balls, "dotey" or rotten wood
that is not damp, charred cotton cloth, dry moss, and so on. In the
pitch pine country, the best kindlings after we have caught a tiny
blaze are splinters taken from the heart of a decayed pine log. They
are full of resin and will burn like fireworks. The Southerners call
it "light-wood."

Dry birch bark also makes excellent kindlings. A universal signal of
distress in the woods that is almost like the flag upside down on
shipboard is to build two smoky fires a hundred yards or more apart.
One fire means a camp, two fires means trouble.

Another signal is two gunshots fired quickly, a pause to count ten and
then a third. Always listen after you have given this signal to see if
it is answered. Give your friends time enough to get the gun loaded at