The plan had been to set to work next morning to dig the house out of the snow; that is to say, to dig away a s.p.a.ce around the cabin. But the Doctor forbade it.

"The more force we expend in work," he said, "the more food we must have, and as we have pretty nearly no food now, we absolutely mustn't expend any force unnecessarily. We must simply rest to-day, doing no more shoveling than is necessary to open a little larger area around the door, and to keep our path to the wood pile open."

That day, the next and the next were pa.s.sed in idleness and with growing hunger. The snow ceased for a time on the second day, but the severe cold weather which alone could release the boys from their terrible plight, did not come. On the third day, the snow began to fall again in a pitiless and discouraging way, and by that time the food supply had run so low that the Doctor's dole of it was too small even to ward off the severe pangs of hunger.

Tom said that night: "Boys, I don't care what the consequences are, I'm going to break out of this to-morrow morning or perish in the attempt.

I'd rather die in a snow bank, fighting for a chance, than sit here and slowly starve to death. My strength is already waning, and before it goes altogether I'm going to make an effort to get some food. If I wait longer I sha'n't have either the strength or the courage to go at all."

This time n.o.body interposed an objection, but foreseeing Tom's need, and knowing that he would accept nothing not shared equally by the others, the Doctor deliberately dealt out a larger supply of beans than usual that night. The meal was all gone. The pork had been eaten up, and after the Doctor gave out this supper, which it would take till eleven or twelve o'clock at night to cook, there was left only about two quarts of beans in the camp, and absolutely not an ounce of food of any other kind.

In ordinary circ.u.mstances, if the boys had been thus shut up in their cabin and deprived of physical activity, they would have held long talks and learned much. Especially they would have beset the Doctor with questions, the answers to which would have interested them. But now they were too hungry for material food, too starved of body and far too depressed in mind to care for conversation of any kind. They simply sat still and starved, in gloomy silence, and under the terrible oppression of hopelessness and helplessness. All but Little Tom. His courage survived, and as he sat before the fire waiting for the beans to cook, he was resolutely planning ways and means by which, if possible, to make the morrow's expedition successful. The chances, he knew, were a hundred to one against him, and he was trying, by the exercise of a careful foresight, to bring that one chance in a hundred within his grasp.

Presently he took off his boots and drove the heaviest nails there were in the camp into their heels, letting the heads protrude more than a quarter of an inch below the surface.

"What's that for, Tom?" asked Jack, in listless fashion.

"To keep me from slipping," Tom answered, "in climbing over rocks with snow or ice on them."

"But you're not really going to try this thing to-morrow, are you? It will be madness to attempt it."

"Probably," answered Tom. "But madness or sanity I'm going to make the attempt. I don't see anything particularly sane in staying here in camp and trusting to a quart or two of beans to keep life in six already starved boys. I'd rather die trying than sitting still. So I'm going to start at daylight."

There was no use in arguing, particularly as the argument was manifestly all on Tom's side. So all the boys remained silent.

"I'm going to take two guns," said Tom, presently, "the rifle and a shot gun, so as to lose no chance of any game, big or little. I'll pretty certainly lose one of the guns before I get back if I ever get back at all."

n.o.body said anything in reply. Tom's remark had been addressed to n.o.body in particular. Indeed it was rather a reflection out loud than a remark.

Then Tom proceeded to get his ammunition belt ready. The rifle was already loaded in its magazine, with fourteen cartridges. For the shot gun, Tom put into his belt, twenty cartridges loaded with nine buckshot each, and twenty that carried turkey shot--these last for game smaller than deer.

"I'll kill anything I see," he said, presently, "from a skunk to a big buck deer. We are hungry enough now to eat any sort of meat that may come to our hand."

Just then a noise was heard on the snow-covered roof--a noise as of scratching and slipping. n.o.body heard it but Tom, but his senses were already in that condition of alertness which the morrow's work would require for its success. So, without saying anything to his comrades, Tom took the rifle, opened the door, and went out to see what the matter might be. He reflected as he did so, that it was probably only some slipping of the snow and ice upon the clapboards, but at any rate he wanted to see for himself the cause of it.

A few minutes later the boys inside the hut were startled by two cracks of a rifle and a heavy fall, just in front of the door. They seized their guns and rushed out, stumbling over something at the door as they did so.

"Look out there!" called Tom, eagerly; "don't risk a blow from his claws yet. He may have life in him still. Let me give him one more bullet to make sure."

With that Tom advanced and fired once more into the carca.s.s of the large black bear that he had already killed.

"It's pretty hard, isn't it?" said Tom.

"What is?" asked the Doctor.

"Why, to shoot a friend that had come to our rescue as that fellow did."

"I don't understand."

"Oh, yes you do, or at least you ought to," answered Tom, in whom the long continued, but now released, nervous strain, had wrought an irritable mood. "Don't you see that fellow came here just in time to rescue us from starvation--for I had hardly a hope of getting back with any game from to-morrow's expedition--and he brought a huge supply of bear's meat with him, under his skin. By the way, boys, skin him carefully, as his hide will be a valuable addition to my collection of pelts. I have the painter's coat, a deer's hide, the skins of several racc.o.o.ns and opossums, thirty or forty squirrel and hare skins, and now this bear's thick overcoat will greatly increase the value of my collection. Skin him carefully, but quickly, for we're going to have a dinner of bear beef before we go to bed, and we'll eat bear beef to our hearts' content till the weather releases us from our prison. I'm not going out for game to-morrow."

CHAPTER XXII

_All Night Work_

The bear was dragged into the cabin. Jack picked out a bent stick of round wood, and with an axe quickly sharpened its ends into points, making of it a "gambrel" stick, about two and a half feet long.

Inserting its sharpened ends under the big tendons of the animal's hind legs, he had him ready to hang up for dressing. Meantime, another of the boys had driven another stick in between two of the upper logs of the cabin, letting its end protrude a foot or two into the cabin. Four of the boys seized the bear, which weighed not much less than two hundred pounds, and after some exertion succeeded in hanging it, head downwards, upon this stick. Then, with sharp knives, they set to work to skin it.

"Oh stop!" cried Ed. "I know a better plan than that. If you wait to skin the bear, we sha'n't get any meat to eat before morning. Treat him as a butcher treats a deer or calf. Cut him open, and give me the heart, liver and kidneys to cook, and you can skin him afterwards just as well as before. In the meantime I'll be getting supper."

The boys were much too nearly famished to dispute over any suggestion that promised to hurry meal time, so they did at once what Ed had bidden them do. They ripped the animal open, removed the viscera, detached the heart, liver and kidneys, and delivered them into Ed's hands.

Ed washed them and cut them into small bits, discarding the gristle-like linings of the heart. Then he put the whole ma.s.s into the kettle in which the beans were cooking, adding a goodly piece of the bear's fat and a pint or two of water.

"It'll be a new dish," he muttered to himself--"'bear giblets and beans'. But if I'm not mistaken n.o.body in this company will hesitate to eat of it."

"I say, fellows," he called out presently, "save every ounce of that fat! We'll need it for cooking purposes if ever we get anything besides bear beef to cook."

"By the way, Tom," said Jack, as he worked at the task of skinning the bear, "how did this fellow come to be prowling around our cabin?"

"He was hungry, like the rest of us," answered Tom. "The snow has cut off his customary sources of supply, so he set out, precisely as I intended to do in the morning, to find something to eat. Bears always do that when the snow is heavy. They have often gone down, in hard winters, to the Piedmont region--sometimes as far as Amelia or Powhatan county.

They are searching for something to eat--corn in a crib if they can get at it, or pork in a barrel, or a robust boy if they can't get anything better. This fellow was hunting for anything he could find, and, unluckily for him, he found me, with my rifle. What a splendid gun that is, by the way, Doctor! Every shot I fired at the big beast went right through him and hurtled off into the air beyond."

"That's the nitro powder," said the Doctor.

"By which you mean--what?" asked Tom.

"Why, nitro powder is smokeless powder. It is mainly composed of nitro-glycerine, and it has an explosive force many times greater than that of ordinary gunpowder. That is what gives to the guns that are loaded with it so much greater a range than ordinary guns have. You see, it starts the bullet with a vastly greater velocity than that of a bullet propelled by the explosion of ordinary gunpowder, and so the missile goes very much faster, with very much more force, and in a much straighter line, and the gun is more accurate and greatly deadlier in its aim."

"Well, now I want to say," interrupted Ed, "that I've got a supper ready which will go to the spot with a much surer aim than any bullet ever did in the world."

The boys responded instantly, as a matter of course. They were literally starving, or so nearly so, that they afterwards confessed that they had had great difficulty in resisting the temptation, while skinning the bear, to cut off mouthfuls of the meat and consume it raw.

There was, of course, no criticism, therefore, upon Ed's new dish of "bear giblets and beans," and not until the last morsel of it was consumed, did any boy in the party relinquish his a.s.siduous attention to it.

"Now," said Jack, "we can go to work again. To-morrow, we'll dig the house out of the snowdrift any how."

"Yes," said Tom, "and as I needn't go hunting now, I'll help in that.

The snow has settled a good deal by its own weight now and it will settle a good deal more before morning."

"Why?" asked Ed.

"Because it is raining," said Tom, "and nothing settles snow like a drizzling rain."

"It is now two o'clock," said Jack, "and I for one am going to bed."