"I'll fix that all right," Tug said, showing some small forked and notched sticks he had cut out of oaken chips. "Come out with me, and I'll show you how to set a trap that will drop itself, or, rather, where the bird shuts his own prison door."
Gathering up Jim's blocks and slabs of ice, the whole party climbed to the top of the hummock, which, as I have said, was almost the only spot in the wide plain free from deep snow, and Tug went to work.
Making a little hole in the ice, he wedged into it a short, flat-topped peg, and packed a handful of snow about its base.
Then with the brick-like blocks of ice he arranged a hollow square around the peg. On top of the peg he laid the flattened side of the stem of a forked stick, like a letter
laid flat, and on top of that, as though it were a continuation of the peg, he set a post about ten inches high. Asking Aleck to hold these twigs in position for him, he took one of the slabs, lodged an end of it on the rim of the little wall made by his "bricks," and gently rested the other end upon the top of the post, which was held in its upright position under the pressure, at the same time keeping the
in place. This arranged, he spread crumbs about the trap and thickly inside. Then he announced it ready.
