The Doctor stretched himself as much as he dared without getting his feet in the water and sat up shivering. “I guess we have seen about all we are going to see this trip,” he said despondently. “We might as well go down here on dry ground where we can stretch ourselves and cook breakfast.”
“Don’t you suppose they are going to fix that blooming dam sometime?” Scott asked in disgust.
“Surely they’ll fix it,” the doctor replied confidently; “maybe they work in the daytime. We’ll come back again sometime, break the dam wide open, and hide on a platform in the trees. Maybe that would get them.”
Scott made a mental resolve that he would not make one of the party in the tree, but the little doctor’s ardor was so little dampened by the failure that he soon felt ashamed of himself.
“After all,” the doctor said reassuringly as they paddled back to camp, “we did not fail altogether. All scientific facts are collected slowly, one by one, and each new one is so much added to the sum of human knowledge. We have seen a beaver patrolman on his beat—even had some water splashed on us by him—and that’s more than any other scientist I know can say.”
CHAPTER XVIII
It was Saturday evening and the boys had gathered around the campfire on the lakeshore—for the breeze was rather chilly as it often was even in those summer months. Most of them had been working all day and were now content enough to lie idly by the fire listening lazily to the three-days-old baseball news or throwing gibes at Higby and Porter who were preparing for their nightly canoe trip to the Lodge.
“Gee,” Greenleaf said, “I wish something exciting would turn up.”
“Caught any more sick bear?” Steve asked sarcastically.
“That bear was the liveliest corpse you ever saw,” Greenleaf retorted. “The bears have not bothered any more lately, but I found a peach of a partridge nest this afternoon. Eleven eggs in it. And on the way home I found a mallard duck’s nest away up on the hill back of the dining hall. There were eleven eggs in that, too. You better get some pictures of them in the morning, Morris.”