As you go along give an occasional whack at a tree with your hatchet to mark the bark or bend over the twigs and underbrush in the 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 camp.  Always have a signal code arranged and understood by your party before you attempt to go it alone.  You may never need it but if you do you will need it badly.

Sometimes we can get our bearings by climbing a tree.  Another aid to determine our direction is this:  Usually all the brooks and water courses near a large lake or river flow into it.  If you are sure that you haven’t crossed a ridge or divide, the surest way back home if camp is on a lake is to follow down the first brook or spring you come across.  It will probably bring you up at the lake, sooner or later.

On a clear night you can tell the points of compass from the stars.  Whether a boy or girl is a camper or not, they surely ought to know how to do this.  Have some one point out to you the constellation called the “dipper.”  It is very conspicuous and when you have once learned to know it you will always recognize it as an old friend.  The value of the dipper is this:  The two stars that form the lower corners of its imaginary bowl are sometimes called the “north star pointers.”