Part 17 (2/2)
”All right,” answered Tom. ”I know where the wood pile is, and if I am wrong I'll do all the rest of the digging myself. Only if you'll dig in the direction I tell you, you'll come to it in about forty feet.”
So confused were the geographical perceptions of all the boys, and so confident were they that Tom was wrong, that they made earnest protest against digging in the direction indicated by him. But his insistence was so resolute, and their faith in his sagacity was so strong, that after making their protest they yielded and pushed the snow excavation in the direction he had indicated. An hour's digging brought as its reward the discovery of the wood pile, and instantly every fellow set to work to carry wood into the house over the very imperfect pathway, which was being every hour rendered less and less pa.s.sable by the continuing snow fall. By working hard, however, they managed to fill all the spare s.p.a.ce in the house with wood and to pile five or six cords more around the doorway.
As they used about half a cord a day in ordinary winter weather, and from a cord and a half to two cords a day when the thermometer sank low, this was not a large supply. But at least it would ward off the present danger of freezing, and now that the way was open to the wood pile, and could be kept open by a little shovelling now and then, they could get more from time to time, as they might need it.
It was past nightfall when this work was completed. The boys had not stopped for a midday dinner, but Ed, with the foresight of an accomplished cook, had put a kettle of beans on to boil about midday, with just enough pork in it to give the beans a relish, and when night came he dished up the meal.
”There's no bread, boys,” he said, ”because we can't afford two dishes at one meal now. But you remember the Doctor told us that beans are bread as well as meat, and so that's all I have provided.”
After supper the boys were very tired from their hard day's work, and yet they were disposed to talk, and at any rate it would not do to go to bed until their supper of boiled pork and beans should have had time to digest.
”If this snow continues,” said Ed, ”we fellows will pretty soon have to take our beans without the pork. I have a little of that bacon dripping left and I'll use that while it lasts. But unless we get some sort of supplies within three days we shall be out of meal.”
”Are we so near the end as that?” asked Jack.
”Yes. We have nothing left now except two small pieces of salt pork, about twenty pounds of corn meal, and the beans. The pork and the meal won't last us more than two or three days, and as for the beans, well, we have less than half a peck of them left.”
This announcement was received with something like consternation.
”We're nearing the starving point,” said Jack. ”We must recognize the fact and put ourselves at once upon starvation diet. I move that the Doctor take charge of such provisions as are left to us, with full power, to dole them out in the best way to keep life in us till the conditions change.”
”Good!” cried all the boys in chorus, and so the motion was carried.
”If worse comes to worst,” said Tom, ”I'll take my gun, break my way out of here, and kill something fit to eat, at whatever risk. The game of every sort is starving now as well as we are. The turkeys, deer, rabbits and all the rest of them will be out on the mountains hunting for something to eat on those spots that the wind has blown clear of snow.
It will be curious if I don't get some of them.”
”We'll permit nothing of the kind,” said Jack, ”till the snow stops and freezing weather makes a crust upon it. To go out now would simply mean suicide. You wouldn't live to get out of this snowdrift, and if you did, you'd perish in the next one, Tom.”
”Probably,” answered Tom, in a meditative voice. ”But I'd rather die that way, in an effort to save the whole company than stay here and starve like a rat in a hole.”
”But,” broke in the Doctor, ”we are not yet starving. We are hungry, of course, having had an insufficient supply of food to-day. And we'll be hungrier to-morrow, and still hungrier next day. But as I reckon it we have food enough, at least to keep life in our bodies for three or four days to come if we h.o.a.rd it carefully and eat only so much as is necessary to sustain life. By that time the weather will have changed in some way, and we shall have found some means of supplying ourselves.”
So it was decided that Tom should not court death by attempting to go out upon the mountain under existing conditions.
”By the way, Doctor,” asked Ed, ”what are your weather predictions?”
”I can't make any,” answered the Doctor. ”It is still snowing hard; the barometer is low; the wind, which amounts to nothing, has s.h.i.+fted to the south-west--a bad quarter, suggesting more snow--and so far as I can see there is no promise of severe cold weather, which is what we most want now.”
In this melancholy plight the boys went to bed, and, thanks to their high health and extreme weariness, they slept soundly.
CHAPTER XXI
_An Enemy to the Rescue_
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