It was the Captain's voice, who felt it a part of his duty to be the first "on deck" in the morning, but had a rival in his sister, who was quite as active as he.
"Merry Christmas! this what you call merry?" inquired Jim, fretfully, as with his finger he traced figures in the frost on the under side of the canvas.
"Well, let's try to make it as merry as we can," Katy cried, cheerfully, from the starboard corner of the stern-sheets.
"I know what I'm going to do," said Tug—"make bird-traps. I lay awake a long time in the night planning them."
"While you fellows talkee-talkee I'll build a fire;" and Aleck's tall form was soon bent over the heap of wood, where a blaze was quickly crackling. Tug and Jim followed, and all went out of doors, as was their custom, leaving Katy the whole igloo to herself for a little while.
Immediately after breakfast Tug began on his traps.
He had brought along with him as a part of his baggage what he sometimes called his gunsmith shop. It consisted of a square tin box that would hold about two quarts of chestnuts—if he had had any chestnuts to put in it, which he hadn't. Besides a bag of No. 6 shot, this box contained one of the strangest and most worthless collections of odds and ends of boyish hardware that could be imagined. A catalogue of it would be useless. Among other articles were a knife-blade that long ago had parted from its handle, a brad-awl in the same condition, and a broken bullet-mould bound together by a long winding of fine wire.
These three things the lad picked out and laid aside. Then he turned over the rest of the contents of the box until he had secured several tacks and brads of varied sizes, and a round piece of tin with holes in it. Next he discovered something which made him shout with a joy almost equal to his delight at finding the tree trunk. This best of all the finds, this forgotten treasure in the tin box, was a small coil of horse-hairs. They were the relics of a preparation he had made for a short camping trip into the woods three months before, while the October haze and bright cool air were playing among the rustling autumn leaves. How the scene came back to him! Now these hairs would serve him for a better use than mere amusement. He was carefully unwinding them when Jim rushed in to say that the snow-birds were around again.