Winter Under Water
FOR three days more the Boy and Jabe remained in the beaver country;
and every hour of the time, except when he had to sleep, the Boy found
full of interest. In the daytime he compared the ponds and the dams
minutely, making measurements and diagrams. At night he lay in hiding,
beside a different pond each night, and gained a rich store of
knowledge of the manners and customs of the little wilderness
engineers. On one pond--his own, be it said--he made a rude raft of
logs, and by its help visited and inspected the houses on the island.
The measurements he obtained here made his note-book pretty complete,
as far as beaver life in summer and fall was concerned.
Then Jabe finished his cruising, having covered his territory. The
packs were made up and slung; the two campers set out on their three
days' tramp back to the settlements; and the solemn autumn quiet
descended once more upon the placid beaver ponds, the shallow-running
brooks, and the low-domed Houses in the Water.
As the weather grew colder; and the earlier frosts began to sheathe
the surface of the pond with clear, black ice, not melting out till
noon; and the bitten leaves, turning from red and gold to brown, fell
with ghostly whisperings through the gray branches, the little beaver
colony in Boy's Pond grew feverishly active. Some subtle prescience
warned them that winter would close in early, and that they must make
haste to finish their storing of supplies. The lengthening of their
new canal completed, their foraging grew easier. Trees fell every
night, and the brush pile reached a size that guaranteed them immunity
from hunger till spring. By the time the dam had been strengthened to
withstand the late floods, there had been some sharp snow-flurries,
and the pond was half frozen over. Then, in haste, the beavers brought
up a quantity of mud and grass roots, and plastered the domes of their
houses thickly till they no longer looked like heaps of sticks, but
rather resembled huge ant-hills. No sooner was this task done than, as
if the beavers had been notified of its coming, the real cold came.
In one night the pond froze to a depth of several inches; and over the
roof of the House in the Water was a casing of armour hard as stone.
The frost continued for several days, till the stone-like roof was a
good foot in thickness, as was the ice over the surface of the pond.
Then a thick, feather-soft, windless snow-fall, lasting twenty-four
hours, served as a blanket against the further piercing of the frost;
and the beavers, warm-housed, well-provisioned, and barricaded against
all their enemies but man, settled themselves down to their long
seclusion from the white, glittering, bitter, outside world.
When the winter had tightened its grip, this outside world was full of
perils. Hungry lynxes, foxes, and fishers ("black cat," the woodsman
called them) hunted through the silent and pallid aisles of the
forest. They all would have loved a meal of warm, fat beaver-meat; and
they all knew what these low, snow-covered mounds meant. In the roof
of each house the cunning builders had left several tiny, crooked
openings for ventilation, and the warm air steaming up through these
made little chimney holes in the snow above. To these, now and then,
when stung by the hunger-pangs, a lynx or fox would come, and sniff
with greedy longing at the appetizing aroma. Growing desperate, the
prowler would dig down, through perhaps three feet of snow, till he
reached the stony roof of the house. On this he would tear and scratch
furiously, but in vain. Nothing less than a pick-axe would break
through that stony defence; and the beavers, perhaps dimly aware of
the futile assault upon their walls, would go on calmly nibbling
birch-sticks in their safe, warm dark.
[Illustration: "HUNTED THROUGH THE SILENT AND PALLID AISLES OF THE
FOREST."]
Inside the house everything was clean and dry. All refuse from the
clean repasts of the family was scrupulously removed, and even the
entrances, far out in the pond, were kept free from litter. When food
was needed, a beaver would slip down into the dark water of the
tunnel, out into the glimmering light of the pond, and straight to the
brush pile. Selecting a suitable stick, he would tow it back to the
house, up the main entrance, and into the dry, dark chamber. When all
the tender bark was eaten off, the bare stick would be carried away
and deposited on the dam. It was an easy life; and the beavers grew
fat while all the rest of the wild kindreds, save the porcupine and
the bear, were growing lean with famine. There was absolutely nothing
to do but eat, sleep and take such exercise as they would by swimming
hither and thither at terrific speed beneath the silver armour of the
ice.
One night, however, there came to the pond an enemy of whose powers
they had never had experience. Wandering down from northwestward,
under the impulse of one of those migratory whims which sometimes give
the lie to statistics and tradition, came a sinister, dark,
slow-moving beast whose savage and crafty eyes took on a sudden flame
when they detected the white mound which hid the shore beaver-house.
The wolverene did not need that faint, almost invisible wisp of vapour
from the air-holes to tell him there were beavers below. He knew
something about beavers. His powerful forearms and mighty claws got
him to the bottom of the snow in a few seconds. Other hungry marauders
had done the same thing before, to find themselves as far off as ever
from their aim. But the wolverene was not to be balked so easily. His
cunning nose found the minute openings of the air-holes; and by
digging his claws into these little apertures he was able to put forth
his great strength and tear up some tiny fragments of frozen mud.
[Illustration: "A SINISTER, DARK, SLOW-MOVING BEAST."]
If he had had the patience to keep on at his strenuous task
unremittingly for, perhaps, twenty-four hours or more, it is
conceivable that this fierce digger might have succeeded in making his
way into the chamber. There was no such implacable purpose, however,
in his attack. In a very little while he would have desisted from what
he knew to be a vain undertaking. Even had he succeeded, the beavers
would have fled before he could reach them, and taken refuge in their
burrows under the bank. But while he was still engrossed, perhaps only
amusing himself with the thought of giving the dwellers in the house a
bad quarter of an hour, it chanced that a huge lynx came stealing
along through the shadows of the trees, which lay blue and spectral in
the white moonlight. He saw the hind quarters of some unknown animal
which was busy working out a problem which he himself had striven in
vain to solve. The strange animal was plainly smaller than himself.
Moreover, he was in a position to be taken at a disadvantage. Both
these points weighed with the lynx; and he was enraged at this
attempted poaching upon what he chose to regard as his preserves.
Creeping stealthily, stealthily forward, eyes aflame and belly to the
snow, he sprang with a huge bound that landed him, claws open,
squarely on the wolverene's hind quarters.
Instantly there arose a hideous screeching, growling, spitting and
snarling, which pierced even to the ears of the beavers and sent them
scurrying wildly to their burrows in the bank. Under ordinary
circumstances the wolverene, with his dauntless courage and tremendous
strength, would have given a good account of himself with any lynx
alive. But this time, caught with head down and very busy, he stood
small chance with his powerful and lightning-swift assailant. In a
very few minutes the lynx's eviscerating claws had fairly torn him to
shreds; and thus came to a sudden close the invasion of the
wolverene.
But meanwhile, from far over the hills, moving up from the lowlands
by the sea, approached a peril which the beavers did not dream of
and could find no ingenuity to evade. Two half-breed trappers,
semi-outlaws from the Northern Peninsula, in search of fresh
hunting-grounds, had come upon this rich region of ponds and dams.
[Illustration: "HE SPRANG WITH A HUGE BOUND THAT LANDED HIM, CLAWS OPEN,
SQUARELY ON THE WOLVERENE'S HIND QUARTERS."]