"That means," said Tom, "that we've got to dig our way out of here in a hurry, and we haven't a shovel in the camp."

"No," said Jack, "but we've got a pile of leftover clapboards over there in the corner, and we can soon make some snow shovels. Let's get to work at that."

After a breakfast on corn pones--for the pork must be saved for use with the beans--the boys set to work to manufacture rude shovels that would do as implements with which to handle snow. For handles they used such round sticks as they found in their meagre supply of fire wood.

In half an hour the whole company of boys were armed for an attack upon the snowdrift. In the meantime Tom had thought out methods.

"First of all," he explained, "we must attack the snow directly in front of the door, and work our way to the top of the drift. We must shovel that snow into the house, because we haven't any where else to put it.

We'll put on all the kettles we have and reduce as much as we can of the housed snow to water for use in drinking, cooking, washing and so forth.

When we break through to the top, we can shovel the snow to the right and left till we open a pa.s.sageway to the wood pile."

"It's going to be mighty hard work," said Ed, "for the snow is so soft that we'll sink up to our waists in it."

"Yes," answered Harry, "but light snow like that will be easier to handle than if it had settled and frozen."

With that the boys set to work to break a pa.s.sage from the door to the top of the snowdrift. When they had accomplished that they found, to their sorrow, that it was still snowing heavily, a fact which threatened to undo much of their work after it was done. Still the snow was dry and light, and standing up to their waists in it, they shovelled it to right and left, making a pa.s.sageway through it that led towards their nearest wood supply. They did not pause for a midday meal, and yet when night came they had not reached the wood pile, while the snow continued to fall as heavily as ever. Fortunately the high wind had gone down, so that no more great drifts were blown into their trench.

They had not tried to dig to the ground in making their pa.s.sageway. They had simply created an upward incline from the door of their house to the top of the drift, and then dug a sort of inclined trench towards the wood pile.

"Now I say, fellows," said Jack, as they left off work to get such supper as they could, "we've got to keep this thing up all night. We have barely wood enough left to get supper and breakfast with, and we simply _must_ get to that wood pile by morning. Of course we can't all work all night; we must have some sleep; so I propose that we divide the company into three shifts of two boys each, one shift to keep up the work of shovelling while the others sleep. We'll let each shift work for an hour and then wake up the next shift to take its place. That will let every fellow have two hours' sleep between his one hour spells of work."

The plan seemed in all respects the best that could be devised. Three sticks of wood were all that now remained in the cabin and it was decided not to burn any of these during the night, but to save them for use in cooking breakfast in the morning. Breakfast, it was agreed, should consist of a kettle of corn meal mush, with two slices of salt pork and a pint of coffee to each member of the party. The boys would have foregone the pork, saving it for a worse emergency, but the Doctor advised against that course.

"With so much work to do," he said, "we shall need the strength that comes from meat."

"And besides," said Tom, "this snow will pack down pretty soon and freeze over with a crust hard enough to bear a man. As soon as that happens I am going out to get some game."

The night's work was awkwardly pursued, owing to the darkness, which was rendered intense by the continued and very heavy snow fall. But while they had not reached the wood pile by daylight, they were nearing it and in fact believed themselves to be almost over it--for they had made their trench a shallow one, in order to hasten their advance. So, when the working shift was called to breakfast, Harry reported:

"We're almost over the wood pile. After breakfast, when we all get to work, we'll soon make a sloping path down to it. As it is still snowing, without a sign of quitting, I move that when we reach the wood, we all set to work to bring a houseful of it in here, against emergencies."

"That's our best plan," said the Doctor. "If we are destined to live on starvation rations and it should turn very cold, as is likely, we must have artificial heat to replace that which a full supply of food would make. A starving man practically freezes to death. So the first thing is to bring into our cabin as large a supply of wood as it will hold.

Luckily we have plenty of it. There are twenty cords at least in that first pile."

With that the boys set to work on their scant breakfast of coffee, mush and salt pork.

CHAPTER XX

_In Perilous Plight_

After breakfast the boys began again the snow digging for their wood pile. They had somewhat miscalculated its locality, and so when they reached the ground with their descending path, the wood pile was not there. Nor could they easily correct their reckoning until little Tom came to the rescue with his keen eyes and his alert intelligence.

Climbing to the top of the snowdrift and standing, hips deep in the soft snow, he studied the trees round about, or so much of them as protruded above the snow. It was Tom's excellent habit to observe things closely, even when there was no apparent occasion to observe them at all, and he had observed that one of the trees between which the wood had been ranked up had a peculiar knot on it about thirty feet from the ground, caused by some injury received while yet it was young. So he looked for that tree. The snow had so changed the aspect of the landscape that all its recognizable features had disappeared, but Tom remembered that peculiar knot and eagerly looked out for it. Presently he discovered it, in spite of the fact that a ma.s.s of snow that had collected on top of it seriously impaired its proportions. Instantly he called out directions to the boys to carry their pathway south toward the tree in question.

"But we're already south of the wood pile," said Harry. "Your plan will take us directly away from it. It is north of here, I tell you."

"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 shifted 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_