CHAPTER XXII
_All Night Work_
The bear was dragged into the cabin. Jack picked out a bent stick ofround wood, and with an axe quickly sharpened its ends into points,making of it a "gambrel" stick, about two and a half feet long.Inserting its sharpened ends under the big tendons of the animal's hindlegs, he had him ready to hang up for dressing. Meantime, another of theboys had driven another stick in between two of the upper logs of thecabin, letting its end protrude a foot or two into the cabin. Four ofthe boys seized the bear, which weighed not much less than two hundredpounds, and after some exertion succeeded in hanging it, head downwards,upon this stick. Then, with sharp knives, they set to work to skin it.
"Oh stop!" cried Ed. "I know a better plan than that. If you wait toskin the bear, we sha'n't get any meat to eat before morning. Treat himas a butcher treats a deer or calf. Cut him open, and give me theheart, liver and kidneys to cook, and you can skin him afterwards justas well as before. In the meantime I'll be getting supper."
The boys were much too nearly famished to dispute over any suggestionthat promised to hurry meal time, so they did at once what Ed had biddenthem do. They ripped the animal open, removed the viscera, detached theheart, liver and kidneys, and delivered them into Ed's hands.
Ed washed them and cut them into small bits, discarding the gristle-likelinings of the heart. Then he put the whole mass into the kettle inwhich the beans were cooking, adding a goodly piece of the bear's fatand a pint or two of water.
"It'll be a new dish," he muttered to himself--"'bear giblets andbeans'. But if I'm not mistaken nobody in this company will hesitate toeat of it."
"I say, fellows," he called out presently, "save every ounce of thatfat! We'll need it for cooking purposes if ever we get anything besidesbear beef to cook."
"By the way, Tom," said Jack, as he worked at the task of skinning thebear, "how did this fellow come to be prowling around our cabin?"
"He was hungry, like the rest of us," answered Tom. "The snow has cutoff his customary sources of supply, so he set out, precisely as Iintended to do in the morning, to find something to eat. Bears always dothat when the snow is heavy. They have often gone down, in hard winters,to the Piedmont region--sometimes as far as Amelia or Powhatan county.They are searching for something to eat--corn in a crib if they can getat it, or pork in a barrel, or a robust boy if they can't get anythingbetter. This fellow was hunting for anything he could find, and,unluckily for him, he found me, with my rifle. What a splendid gun thatis, by the way, Doctor! Every shot I fired at the big beast went rightthrough him and hurtled off into the air beyond."
"That's the nitro powder," said the Doctor.
"By which you mean--what?" asked Tom.
"Why, nitro powder is smokeless powder. It is mainly composed ofnitro-glycerine, and it has an explosive force many times greater thanthat of ordinary gunpowder. That is what gives to the guns that areloaded with it so much greater a range than ordinary guns have. You see,it starts the bullet with a vastly greater velocity than that of abullet propelled by the explosion of ordinary gunpowder, and so themissile goes very much faster, with very much more force, and in a muchstraighter line, and the gun is more accurate and greatly deadlier inits aim."
"Well, now I want to say," interrupted Ed, "that I've got a supper readywhich will go to the spot with a much surer aim than any bullet ever didin the world."
The boys responded instantly, as a matter of course. They were literallystarving, or so nearly so, that they afterwards confessed that they hadhad great difficulty in resisting the temptation, while skinning thebear, to cut off mouthfuls of the meat and consume it raw.
There was, of course, no criticism, therefore, upon Ed's new dish of"bear giblets and beans," and not until the last morsel of it wasconsumed, did any boy in the party relinquish his assiduous attention toit.
"Now," said Jack, "we can go to work again. To-morrow, we'll dig thehouse out of the snowdrift any how."
"Yes," said Tom, "and as I needn't go hunting now, I'll help in that.The snow has settled a good deal by its own weight now and it willsettle a good deal more before morning."
"Why?" asked Ed.
"Because it is raining," said Tom, "and nothing settles snow like adrizzling rain."
"It is now two o'clock," said Jack, "and I for one am going to bed."
"Better sit up for half an hour longer," said the Doctor.
"Why?" asked Jack.
"Because our stomachs are full. They have been seriously weakened byseveral days of starvation, and are apt to do their work rather badlyfor a time. Let's give them a chance."
"But, Doctor," said Jack, "I have noticed that all the animals lie downand sleep as soon as they have fed heartily. Why isn't it a good thingfor men to do the same thing? Men are after all, animals on one side oftheir nature."
"Yes, I know," said the Doctor, "and I have known physicians to argue inthat way in favor of late suppers. But experience hardly bears out theargument. A man may sleep well on a heavy meal, but often he gets upwith a bad taste in his mouth and with a morbid craving for food, whichmeans that he hasn't properly assimilated the food that he has alreadyeaten."
"What do you mean by 'assimilating' food?" asked Tom, adding: "I'mafraid you'll think me very ignorant."
"Not at all," replied the Doctor. "Most people don't understand that.You see, there are two distinct processes by which we turn food toaccount in building up our bodies, making strength and heat, andgenerally carrying on the processes of life. One of those processes isdigestion, and the other assimilation. Digestion simply reduces the foodwhich we have eaten to a condition in which it can be assimilated. Byassimilation certain organs of the body take up the food thus preparedfor them, convert it into blood and send it through the system tonourish it. In the passage of the blood through the arteries and veins,it leaves deposits of muscle here, fat there, bone in another place, andso on. This is a very rude statement of the matter, but it is sufficientto show you what I mean, at least in a general way. Very well. It does aman no good whatever to digest his food if he doesn't assimilate it. Nomatter how perfectly the stomach does its work, the body is notnourished unless the organs charged with the function of assimilatingthe digested food do theirs also. Once, in a hospital, I saw a littlebaby die of actual starvation, although it had an abundance of food, anddigested it perfectly. It simply could not assimilate."
"But what has that to do with our going to bed at two o'clock in themorning?" asked Jack, who was disposed to be a trifle cross as theresult of the long starvation and strain.
"Only this," answered the Doctor, "that unless we give our weakenedstomachs a little chance to digest our food properly before we go tosleep, the process of assimilation will be very imperfectly performedand we shall not be as perfectly nourished as we need to be. Still, Ithink we might safely go to bed now," added the Doctor, "as the halfhour is gone, and it is now two thirty"--looking at his watch.
With that the exhausted company prepared for bed. Jim Chenowith was thefirst to approach the bunks, under which the earthen floor was a littlelower than in the rest of the cabin. As he did so, having slipped offhis boots, Jim called out:
"Hello! What's this? I say, fellows, we have a creek here under ourbeds!"
A hasty examination confirmed his statement. There was a vigorous streamof water running directly under the bunks, and worse still, as anexploration with torches soon revealed, the water was not only runningin under the lower logs of the hut, but was also pouring through everyopening it could find in the chinking of the walls above, and streaminginto the bunks.
The Doctor hastily went outside to study conditions and, returning,said:
"There's a terrific rain on, boys, and the thermometer stands at fifty.So the snow is melting rapidly, and the two things together--the rainand the melting snowdrift--are flooding us."
Tired and sleepy as Jack was, he rose instantly to the occasion.
"There's no sleep for us to-night, boys!" he said. "We must
go to workat once and dig the house out of the snowdrift. Get some fatwood torchesready and let's go to work."
The boys responded quickly, and presently all of them except Ed, whomthe Doctor forbade to do any further work that involved strenuousphysical exertion, were engaged in shoveling the snow away from thehouse and opening a passageway around it fully eight feet wide.
By daylight this was accomplished. It put an end to the inflow of waterthrough the chinking of the upper logs; but, as Tom expressed it, therewas still "a young river" flowing into the house, from the bottom of thesnow bank, underneath the lower logs of the hut. Not only was all thewarm rain flowing through the snow bank, but in its passage it wasdissolving a great deal of the snow, and so the volume of water flowingout at the bottom and running into the house was quite double that whichthe rain itself would have supplied.
"We ought to have made a bank of earth around the lower part of thecabin," said the Doctor, after studying the situation for a time.
"True," said Jack, "but we had no tools with which to do it. Neitherhave we any now. So I don't see what is to be done."
"I do!" said Tom, the alert of mind. "I do, and it is perfectly simple."
"What's your idea, Tom?" asked Jack.
"Why, to make the snow protect us against itself."
"But how?"
"Why, by building a little snow bank between the big snow bank and thehouse, hammering it into solid ice, with our mauls, and in that waymaking a ditch that will carry off the water around the end of the houseand down over the cliff."
"That's a superb idea, Tom," said Jack, "and we'll get to work at it atonce. I'd give the proceeds of all my winter's work for a head half asgood as yours, Tom."
"Oh, pshaw!" said Tom. "My head isn't of much account. It is only that Ilook straight at things and try to use common sense."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "and that is what we call 'genius' in science.It is the men who 'look straight at things and try to use common sense'who do the great things in science. Darwin did that, and so did AsaGray, and Edison, and Agassiz, and all the rest of them. Scientificgenius is nothing in the world but common sense, reinforced by a habitof observation."
But there was no further time for talk. The boys quickly built a lowsnow embankment between their house and the great snowdrift, and beat itdown with their mauls, into a condition of solid ice. With this barrierto aid them they succeeded in compelling the water from the rain and themelting snow to flow in a sort of ditch around their house, and to ceaseflowing through it.
Inside, however, the condition of things was deplorable. The earthenfloor under the bunks was a mud hole. The broom straw that constitutedthe beds was soaking wet, and the task of drying it promised to be noeasy one.
"We've simply got to sleep on hard clapboards for two or three nights,"said Ed.
"Well, what of that?" asked Tom, "I've often slept on much harder bedsthan clapboards make."
"For example?" asked Jim.
"Well, I've slept on big rocks for one thing."
"Why did you do that? Why didn't you sleep on the softer ground?"
"Because the softer ground was much too soft, being mud. I've slept ontwo rails placed about eight inches apart, with one end stuck into afence so as to keep me out of the mud, and a pretty good bed rails make.Finally, I have slept on the worst bed there is in the world."
"What is that?"
"Why, a pile of pebbles. That's the very worst there is, but you cansleep on it, if you've got to. Now, let's have some breakfast, Ed, andafter devouring a proper quantity of bear steak, I'll show you fellowshow a healthy fellow who has worked all night can sleep on clapboards inspite of the daylight that the Doctor's rag windows are letting in, nowthat we've shoveled the snow away from them."
Ed had breakfast already well under way. It was to consist solely ofbear steak and coffee, for coffee was their one supply which was notexhausted, and during the starving time they would hardly have enduredtheir hunger but for that resource.
"But," said Jack, as they ate their breakfast, "what are we going to dowith that bear meat? It won't keep long in this soft weather. By theway, Jim, throw another stick on the fire. It's cold."
"So it is," said the Doctor, who had just come in after a consultationwith his scientific instruments. "The thermometer has sunk twentydegrees within the last hour, and stands now at two degrees belowfreezing. It will go much lower, for the barometer is rising and thewind has shifted to the northwest. We're in for a trip to the Arcticregions without doing any traveling to get there."
"Let's hang the bear out of doors, then," said Jack. "It will freezethere."
"Yes, and every carnivorous animal in these woods will come and eat forus," said Tom, whose authority on the habits of wild creatures wasaccepted by all the boys as final.
"Besides," said the Doctor, "it isn't necessary. Our bear will freezehanging just where he is, by the door there."
With that he arose, went outside, and brought in a thermometer, which hepinned to the bear's carcass.
"We're down to twenty-six degrees outside now," he said, "and it isgrowing steadily colder." Then, after waiting for five minutes, heconsulted the thermometer that he had hung upon the bear, and announced:
"It stands at thirty-three degrees--fruit-house temperature."
"What do you mean by 'fruit-house temperature?'" asked Tom.
"Why, don't you know? The houses in which fresh fruits of the summer arepreserved for winter use are kept always at a temperature ofthirty-three degrees. If the temperature were higher than that, thefruits would ferment and decay. If it were a single degree lower theywould freeze--for thirty-two degrees is the freezing point. But at atemperature of thirty-three degrees nothing decays and nothing freezes.So they keep the fruit houses always at that temperature, and they keepfresh strawberries and peaches and all the rest of the fruits all winterin nearly as good condition as when they were picked."
"Well, what do they do with a boy," asked Tom, "who has worked all nightand is mightily sleepy, except let him go to bed, even if it is theusual time for going to work, instead? Good morning, and pleasant dreamsto all of you."
With that Tom rolled himself up in his blanket and lay down upon theclapboard flooring of his bed, taking a stick of wood with him for apillow. The rest immediately followed his example and in spite ofadverse conditions, they were all presently sound asleep.