Part 16 (2/2)
The hours pa.s.sed on. The wind howled more and more fiercely, and but for the solidity of its thick log walls the house would have shaken in a way to wake the heaviest sleeper. As it was the boys slept on undisturbed.
Finally the fire burned low, so that it gave very little light in the cabin. Little Tom waked and feeling no need for further sleep he got up and piled on some additional logs. Then he went back to bed, but somehow his eyes would not close again. The other boys also waked up, and, turn over as they might, could not go to sleep again. Finally Harry, seeing that all were awake, called out:
”I say, fellows, let's get up and have some breakfast. I for one am hungry.”
”So am I,” answered Jack, springing out of bed.
”So say we all of us,” responded Tom. ”By the way, what time is it?”
Harry fumbled among the Doctor's belongings and looked at that gentleman's watch.
”Doctor, you forgot to wind your watch last night. It has run down at a quarter past nine.”
”No, I didn't,” answered the Doctor, leaping out of bed, where he had lazily lingered for a time. ”I certainly wound it before I went to bed.”
With that he went across the cabin, took the watch, looked at it, and then put it to his ear.
”It's running all right,” he presently said, whereupon the other two members of the company who had watches brought them out.
All pointed to a quarter past nine.
Just then Jack opened the door and something like half a ton of snow fell into the house, but no light came with it.
”Boys!” he cried, ”we're utterly snowed in. It is a quarter past nine in the morning, but the house is completely buried in snow! You see there is no light coming in even through the loosely laid roof, while the Doctor's windows are as black as midnight. Yet by looking up the chimney you can see daylight plainly. The fire has kept that open.”
”Can there have been twenty odd feet of snowfall in a single night?”
asked Harry in astonishment.
”No, certainly not,” answered the Doctor. ”We're caught in a snowdrift, that's all. You see with the fearful gale that has been blowing all night the snow has drifted greatly and now that I think of it, our house is peculiarly well situated to be caught in a drift.”
”How so, Doctor?”
”Why, the wind has been from the north, northwest, or very nearly north.
Our house stands on a plateau on the northerly side of the mountain.
Less than a hundred feet south of it, rises a high cliff. That, of course, catches all the snow that comes on a north, northwest wind. Then again the house itself is an obstruction, catching and holding all the snow that strikes it. The snow storm has been a tremendous one, probably a three-foot fall, and we are caught under all of it that ought to have been scattered over several miles of mountainside.”
”Let's postpone the explanations, fellows,” broke in Tom, who always devoted himself to the practical, ”and give our attention for the present to the problem of What to Do Now. That is after all the thing to think about in every case of emergency, and this is a case of emergency if ever there was one.”
”How do you mean, Tom?” asked Jim Chenowith.
”Why, in the first place, we have less than a quarter of a cord of wood in the cabin, and, after such a storm, it is likely to turn very cold.
So we must first of all dig a pa.s.sageway to one of our wood piles, or else we must freeze to death. We can't get to the spring, of course, and if we did, it would be frozen up. But we can get all the water we need by melting snow. The worst of our problems is that of a food supply.”
”That's so,” said Jack, in something like consternation. ”We haven't a pound of fresh meat on hand and I remember that you, Tom, intended to go out with your gun to-day to get some. We have eaten up all our hams and bacon, and we haven't anything left except the coffee, two small pieces of salt pork, some corn meal and the beans.”
<script>