Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood several inches in length.

By rubbing this against the fragment of the wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a rough point.
He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt upon it to hold it firm.

On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrapped in several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragment of wood.

When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolved at a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging into the wood on which it rested.

It is a method of starting a fire which was once familiarly used by Indians.
For half an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor.
Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone.