In the Under-water World
MEANWHILE, in the dark chamber and the long, dim corridors of the
House in the Water there was great perturbation. The battle with the
otter had been a tremendous episode in their industrious, well-ordered
lives, and they were wildly excited over it. But much more important
to them--to all but the big beaver who was now nursing his triumphant
wounds--was the presence of Man in their solitude. Man had hitherto
been but a tradition among them, a vague but alarming tradition. And
now his appearance, yesterday and to-day, filled them with terror.
That vision of the Boy, standing tall and ominous on the dam, and
afterwards going forward and backward over it, pulling at it,
apparently seeking to destroy it, seemed to portend mysterious
disasters. After he was gone, and well gone, almost every beaver in
the pond, not only from the main house but also from the lodge over
on the bank, swam down and made a flurried inspection of the dam,
without showing his head above water, to see if the structure on which
they all depended had been tampered with. One by one, each on his own
responsibility, they swam down and inspected the water-face; and one
by one they swam back, more or less relieved in their minds.
All, of course, except the big beaver who had been in the fight. If it
had not been for that vision of the Boy, he would have crept out upon
the dry grass of the little island and there licked and comforted his
wounds in the comforting sunlight. Now, however, he dared not allow
himself that luxury. His strong love of cleanliness made him reluctant
to take his bleeding gashes into the house; but there was nothing else
to be done. He was the head of the household, however, so there was
none to gainsay him. He dived into the mouth of the shorter of the two
entrances, mounted the crooked and somewhat steep passage, and curled
himself upon the dry grass in one corner of the dark, secluded
chamber. His hurts were painful, and ugly, but none of them deadly,
and he knew he would soon be all right again. There was none of that
foreknowledge of death upon him which sometimes drives a sick animal
to abdicate his rights and crawl away by himself for the last great
contest.
The room wherein the big beaver lay down to recover himself was not
spacious nor particularly well ventilated, but in every other respect
it was very admirably adapted to the needs of its occupants. Through
the somewhat porous ceiling, a three-foot thickness of turf and
sticks, came a little air, but no light. This, however, did not matter
to the beavers, whose ears and noses were of more significance to them
than their eyes. In floor area the chamber was something like five
feet by six and a half, but in height not much more than eighteen
inches. The floor of this snug retreat was not five inches above the
level of the water in the passages leading in to it; but so
excellently was it constructed as to be altogether free from damp. It
was daintily clean, moreover; and the beds of dry grass around the
edges of the chamber were clean and fresh.
From this room the living, sleeping, and dining room of the beaver
family, ran two passageways communicating with the outside world. Both
of these were roofed over to a point well outside the walls of the
house, and had their opening in the bottom of the pond, where the
water was considerably more than three feet in depth. One of these
passages was perfectly straight, about two feet in width, and built on
a long, gradual slope. It was by this entrance that the house-dwellers
were wont to bring in their food supplies, in the shape of sticks of
green willow, birch and poplar. When these sticks were stripped clean
of their bark, which was the beavers' chief nourishment, they were
then dragged out again, and floated down to be used in the repair of
the dam. The other passage, especially adapted to quick exit in case
of danger from the way of the roof, was about as spacious as the
first, but much shorter and steeper. It was crooked, moreover,--for a
reason doubtless adequate to the architects, but obscure to mere human
observers. The exits of both passages were always in open water, no
matter how fierce the frosts of the winter, how thick the armour of
ice over the surface of the pond. In the neighbourhood of the house
were springs bubbling up through the bottom, and keeping the
temperature of the pond fairly uniform throughout the coldest weather,
so that the ice, at worst, never attained a thickness of more than a
foot and a half, even though in the bigger lakes of that region it
might make to a depth of three feet and over.
[Illustration: "POKED HIS HEAD ABOVE WATER."]
While the wounded beaver lay in the chamber licking his honourable
gashes, two other members of the family entered and approached him. In
some simple but adequate speech it was conveyed to them that their
presence was not required, and they retreated precipitately, taking
different exits. One swam to the grassy edge of the islet, poked his
head above water under the covert of some drooping weeds, listened
motionless for some minutes, then wormed himself out among the long
grasses and lay basking, hidden from all the world but the whirling
hawk overhead. The other, of a more industrious mould, swam off toward
the upper end of the pond where, as he knew, there was work to be
done.
Still as was the surface of the pond, below the surface there was life
and movement. Every little while the surface would be softly broken,
and a tiny ripple would set out in widening circles toward the shore,
starting from a small dark nose thrust up for a second. The casual
observer would have said that these were fish rising for flies; but
in fact it was the apprehensive beavers coming up to breathe, afraid
to show themselves on account of the Boy. They were all sure that he
had not really gone, but was in hiding somewhere, waiting to pounce
upon them.
It was the inhabitants of the House in the Water who were moving
about the pond, this retreat being occupied by their wounded and
ill-humoured champion. The inhabitants of the other house, over on
the shore, who had been interested but remote spectators through
all the strange events of the morning, were now in comfortable
seclusion, resting till it should be counted a safe time to go
about their affairs. Some were sleeping, or gnawing on sappy
willow sticks, in the spacious chamber of their house, while others
were in the deeper and more secret retreats of their two burrows
high up in the bank, connecting with the main house by roomy
tunnels partly filled with water. The two families were quite
independent of each other, except for their common interest in
keeping the great dam in repair. In work upon the dam they acted not
exactly in harmony but in amicable rivalry, all being watchful and all
industrious.
In the under-water world of the beaver pond the light from the
cloudless autumn sun was tawny gold, now still as crystal, now
quivering over the bottom in sudden dancing meshes of fine shadow as
some faint puff of air wrinkled the surface. When the dam was first
built the pond had been of proper depth--from three to four feet--only
in the channel of the stream; while all the rest was shallow, the old,
marshy levels of the shore submerged to a depth of perhaps not more
than twelve or fifteen inches. Gradually, however, the industrious
dam-builders had dug away these shallows, using the material--grass,
roots, clay, and stones--for the broadening and solidifying of the
dam. The tough fibred masses of grass-roots, full of clay and almost
indestructible, were just such material as they loved to work with,
the ancient difficulty of making bricks without straw being well known
to them. Over a large portion of the pond the bottom was now clean
sand and mud, offering no obstacle to the transportation of cuttings
to the houses or the dam.
The beavers, moving hither and thither through this glimmering golden
underworld, swam with their powerful hind feet only, which drove them
through the water like wedges. Their little forefeet, with flexible,
almost handlike paws, were carried tucked up snugly under their chins,
while their huge, broad, flat, hairless tails stuck straight out
behind, ready to be used as a powerful screw in case of any sudden
need. Presently two of the swimmers, apparently by chance, came upon
the body of the beaver which the journeying otter had slain. They knew
that it was contrary to the laws of the clan that any dead thing
should be left in the pond to poison the waters in its decay. Without
ceremony or sentiment they proceeded to drag their late comrade toward
shore,--or rather to shove it ahead of them, only dragging when it got
stuck against some stone or root. At the very edge of the pond, where
the water was not more than eight or ten inches deep, they left it, to
be thrust out and far up the bank after nightfall. They knew that some
hungry night prowler would then take care of it for them.
Meanwhile an industriously inclined beaver had made his way to the
very head of the pond. Here he entered a little ditch or canal which
led off through a wild meadow in a perfectly straight line, toward a
wooded slope some fifty yards or so from the pond. This ditch, which
was perhaps two feet and a half deep and about the same in width,
looked as if it had been dug by the hand of man. The materials taken
from it had been thrown up along the brink, but not on one side only,
as the human ditch-digger does it. The beavers had thrown it out on
both sides. The ditch was of some age, however, so the wild grasses
and weeds had completely covered the two parallel ridges and now
leaned low over the water, partly hiding it. Under this screen the
beaver came to the surface, and swam noiselessly with his head well
up.
At the edge of the slope the canal turned sharply to the left, and ran
in a gradual curve, skirting the upland. Here it was a piece of new
work, raw and muddy, and the little ridges of fresh earth and roots
along its brink were conspicuous. The beaver now went very cautiously,
sniffing the air for any hint of peril. After winding along for some
twenty or thirty yards, the new canal shoaled out to nothingness
behind a screen of alder; and here, in a mess of mud and water, the
beaver found one of his comrades hard at work. There was much of the
new canal yet to do, and winter coming on.
The object of this new ditch was to tap a new food supply. The food
trees near enough to the pond to be felled into it or rolled down to
it had long ago been used. Then the straight canal across the meadow
to the foot of the upland had opened up a new area, an area rich in
birch and poplar. But trees can be rolled easily down-hill that cannot
be dragged along an uneven side-hill; so, at last, it had become
necessary to extend the canal parallel with the bottom of the slope.
Working in this direction, every foot of new ditch brought a lot of
new supplies within reach.
[Illustration: "STICKY LUMPS, WHICH THEY COULD HUG UNDER THEIR CHINS."]
The extremity of the canal was dug on a slant, for greater ease in
removing the material. Here the two beavers toiled side by side,
working independently. With their teeth they cut the tough sod as
cleanly as a digger's spade could do it. With their fore paws they
scraped up the soil--which was soft and easily worked--into sticky
lumps, which they could hug under their chins and carry up the slope
to be dumped upon the grass at the side. Every minute one or the other
would stop, lift his brown head over the edge, peer about, and sniff,
and listen, then fall to work again furiously, as if the whole future
and fortune of the pond were hanging upon his toil. After a
half-hour's labour the canal was lengthened very perceptibly--fully
six or eight inches--and as if by common consent the two brown
excavators stopped to refresh themselves by nibbling at some succulent
roots. While they were thus occupied, and apparently absorbed, from
somewhere up the slope among the birch-trees came the faint sound of a
snapping twig. In half a second the beavers had vanished noiselessly
under water, down the canal, leaving but a swirl of muddy foam to mark
their going.