And now the storm was at its climax, and the hail and rain came down in a whitening flood upon that ocean of forest leaves; the old grey branches were lifted up and down, and the stout trunks rent, for they would not bow down before the fury of the whirlwind, and were scattered all abroad like chaff before the wind.
The children thought not of danger for themselves, but they feared for the safety of their fathers, whom they believed to be not far off from them. And often ‘mid the raging of the elements, they fancied they could distinguish familiar voices calling upon their names. “If our father had not been near, Wolfe would not have come hither.”
“Ah, if our father should have perished in this fearful storm,” said Catharine, weeping, “or have been starved to death while seeking for us!” and Catharine covered her face and wept more bitterly.
But Louis would not listen to such melancholy forebodings. Their fathers were both brave hardy men, accustomed to every sort of danger and privation; they were able to take care of themselves. Yes, he was sure they were not far off; it was this unlucky storm coming on that had prevented them from meeting.
“To-morrow, ma chère, will be a glorious day after the storm; it will be a joyful one too, we shall go out with Wolfe, and he will find his master, and then—oh, yes! I dare say my dear father will be with yours. They will have taken good heed to the track, and we shall soon see our dear mothers and chère petite Louise.”
The storm lasted till past midnight, when it gradually subsided, and the poor wanderers glad to see the murky clouds roll off, and the stars peep forth among their broken masses; but they were reduced to a pitiful state, the hurricane having beaten down their little hut, and their garments were drenched with rain. However, the boys made a good fire with some bark and boughs they had in store; there were a few sparks in their back log unextinguished, and this they gladly fanned up into a blaze, with which they dried their wet clothes, and warmed themselves. The air was now cool almost to chilliness, and for some days the weather remained unsettled, and the sky overcast with clouds, while the lake presented a leaden hue, crested with white mimic waves.
They soon set to work to make another hut, and found close to the head of the ravine a great pine uprooted, affording them large pieces of bark, which proved very serviceable in thatching the sides of the hut. The boys employed themselves in this work, while Catharine cooked the fish they had caught the night before, with a share of which old Wolfe seemed to be mightily well pleased. After they had breakfasted, they all went up towards the high table-land above the ravine, with Wolfe, to look round in hope of getting sight of their friends from Cold Springs, but though they kept an anxious look out in every direction, they returned, towards evening, tired and hopeless. Hector had killed a red squirrel, and a partridge which Wolfe “treed,”—that is, stood barking at the foot of the tree in which it had perched,—and the supply of meat was a seasonable change. They also noticed, and marked, with the axe, several trees where there were bees, intending to come in the cold weather, and cut them down. Louis’s father was a great and successful bee-hunter; and Louis rather prided himself on having learned something of his father’s skill in that line. Here, where flowers were so abundant and water plentiful, the wild bees seemed to be abundant also; besides, the open space between the trees, admitting the warm sunbeam freely, was favourable both for the bees and the flowers on which they fed, and Louis talked joyfully of the fine stores of honey they should collect in the fell. He had taught little Fanchon, a small French spaniel of his father’s, to find out the trees where the bees hived, and also the nests of the ground-bees, and she would bark at the foot of the tree, or scratch with her feet on the ground, as the other dogs barked at the squirrels or the woodchucks; but Fanchon was far away, and Wolfe was old, and would learn no new tricks, so Louis knew he had nothing but his own observation and the axe to depend upon for procuring honey.
The boys had been unsuccessful for some days past in fishing; neither perch nor sunfish, pink roach nor mud-pouts [FN: All these fish are indigenous to the fresh waters of Canada.] were to be caught. However, they found water-mussels by groping in the sand, and cray-fish among the gravel at the edge of the water only; the last pinched their fingers very spitefully. The mussels were not very palateable, for want of salt; but hungry folks must not be dainty, and Louis declared them very good when well roasted, covered up with hot embers. “The fish-hawks,” said he, “set us a good example, for they eat them, and so do the eagles and herons. I watched one the other day with a mussel in his bill; he flew to a high tree, let his prey fall, and immediately darted down to secure it; but I drove him off, and, to my great amusement, perceived the wise fellow had just let it fall on a stone, which had cracked the shell for him just in the right place. I often see shells lying at the foot of trees, far up the hills, where these birds must have left them. There is one large thick-shelled mussel, that I have found several times with a round hole drilled through the shell, just as if it had been done with a small auger, doubtless the work of some bird with a strong beak.”
“Do you remember,” said Catharine, “the fine pink mussel-shell that Hec. picked up in the little corn-field last year; it had a hole in one of the shells too; [FN: This ingenious mode of cracking the shells of mussels is common to many birds. The crow (Corvus corone) has been long known by American naturalists to break the thick shells of the river mussels, by letting them fall from a height on to rocks and stones.] and when my uncle saw it, he said it must have been dropped by some large bird, a fish-hawk possibly, or a heron, and brought from the great lake, as it had been taken out of some deep water, the mussels in our creeks being quite thin-shelled and white.”
“Do you remember what a quantity of large fish bones we found in the eagle’s nest on the top of our hill, Louis?” said Hector.