Part 19 (1/2)
”Better sit up for half an hour longer,” said the Doctor.
”Why?” asked Jack.
”Because our stomachs are full. They have been seriously weakened by several days of starvation, and are apt to do their work rather badly for a time. Let's give them a chance.”
”But, Doctor,” said Jack, ”I have noticed that all the animals lie down and sleep as soon as they have fed heartily. Why isn't it a good thing for men to do the same thing? Men are after all, animals on one side of their nature.”
”Yes, I know,” said the Doctor, ”and I have known physicians to argue in that way in favor of late suppers. But experience hardly bears out the argument. A man may sleep well on a heavy meal, but often he gets up with a bad taste in his mouth and with a morbid craving for food, which means that he hasn't properly a.s.similated the food that he has already eaten.”
”What do you mean by 'a.s.similating' food?” asked Tom, adding: ”I'm afraid 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 to account in building up our bodies, making strength and heat, and generally carrying on the processes of life. One of those processes is digestion, and the other a.s.similation. Digestion simply reduces the food which we have eaten to a condition in which it can be a.s.similated. By a.s.similation certain organs of the body take up the food thus prepared for them, convert it into blood and send it through the system to nourish it. In the pa.s.sage of the blood through the arteries and veins, it leaves deposits of muscle here, fat there, bone in another place, and so on. This is a very rude statement of the matter, but it is sufficient to show you what I mean, at least in a general way. Very well. It does a man no good whatever to digest his food if he doesn't a.s.similate it. No matter how perfectly the stomach does its work, the body is not nourished unless the organs charged with the function of a.s.similating the digested food do theirs also. Once, in a hospital, I saw a little baby die of actual starvation, although it had an abundance of food, and digested it perfectly. It simply could not a.s.similate.”
”But what has that to do with our going to bed at two o'clock in the morning?” asked Jack, who was disposed to be a trifle cross as the result of the long starvation and strain.
”Only this,” answered the Doctor, ”that unless we give our weakened stomachs a little chance to digest our food properly before we go to sleep, the process of a.s.similation will be very imperfectly performed and we shall not be as perfectly nourished as we need to be. Still, I think we might safely go to bed now,” added the Doctor, ”as the half hour is gone, and it is now two thirty”--looking at his watch.
With that the exhausted company prepared for bed. Jim Chenowith was the first to approach the bunks, under which the earthen floor was a little lower than in the rest of the cabin. As he did so, having slipped off his boots, Jim called out:
”h.e.l.lo! What's this? I say, fellows, we have a creek here under our beds!”
A hasty examination confirmed his statement. There was a vigorous stream of water running directly under the bunks, and worse still, as an exploration with torches soon revealed, the water was not only running in under the lower logs of the hut, but was also pouring through every opening it could find in the c.h.i.n.king of the walls above, and streaming into 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 rain and 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 work at once and dig the house out of the snowdrift. Get some fatwood torches ready and let's go to work.”
The boys responded quickly, and presently all of them except Ed, whom the Doctor forbade to do any further work that involved strenuous physical exertion, were engaged in shoveling the snow away from the house and opening a pa.s.sageway around it fully eight feet wide.
By daylight this was accomplished. It put an end to the inflow of water through the c.h.i.n.king of the upper logs; but, as Tom expressed it, there was still ”a young river” flowing into the house, from the bottom of the snow bank, underneath the lower logs of the hut. Not only was all the warm rain flowing through the snow bank, but in its pa.s.sage it was dissolving a great deal of the snow, and so the volume of water flowing out at the bottom and running into the house was quite double that which the rain itself would have supplied.
”We ought to have made a bank of earth around the lower part of the cabin,” said the Doctor, after studying the situation for a time.
”True,” said Jack, ”but we had no tools with which to do it. Neither have 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 the house, hammering it into solid ice, with our mauls, and in that way making a ditch that will carry off the water around the end of the house and down over the cliff.”