CHAPTER XII
The Canadian Winter
"It aer jest blowin' an almighty gale, and there ain't nothing to do but feed and make our snowshoes," said Hank, when early on the following morning he and Joe looked out of the shack. "It aer a lucky thing fer us that we brought a tidy-sized piece of pork along with us, 'cos this gale might last fer days. Not as I think it will, but it might; and ef we hadn't had plenty of grub, gee! it would ha' been a bad case."
Such a prospect met Joe's gaze when he stood to his full height and, having helped to throw the snow away from the entrance of the shack, peered over the white edge before him! The trees on either hand were heavily laden with snow. Branches here and there had crashed to the ground and lay in an unrecognizable heap, save for a twig here or a stronger bough there thrusting a way upward into the light; for all around everything was covered, smoothly clad in an all-pervading vestment of white. Gorgeous blue shadows lurked here and there, the faintness of the colouring adding to its beauty. Long icicles, beside which those to be seen in England were but babies, hung from branches already overweighted, one, a ponderous fellow, drooping to within a few feet of the shack; for the heat of the fire had melted the snow as it fell upon a branch above, and had produced this monster with the help of the frost.
"You kin get in at breakfast," said Hank, looking about him with the manner of a man who saw nothing extraordinary about the transformation which had arrived since the day before. "The fire's been out this two hours, so you'd best start another."
Joe showed his want of experience at once, for he began to rake away the snow, so as to get down to the ashes of the fire he had built on the evening of their arrival. But Hank stopped him with a merry guffaw.
"That ain't the way," he said. "You start buildin' yer fire right here on top of the snow. It'll eat its way down. Yer see, ef you was to begin right down in a hole, there wouldn't be any sorter draught, and how's flames to get in at the damp wood ef you don't have draught to help 'em? But once they get movin', and things is hot, why, in course the fire burns its way slowly downward to the ground level, when there ain't sich draught required."
It was one of the sort of things Joe and many another new to this country, and to such quaint surroundings, would never have thought of, though he was quick to see the reason in Hank's explanation. He arranged his logs, therefore, on the top of the snow, and then removed them once more.
"Wall?" asked Hank, who seemed always to have one eye for our hero, whatever he happened to be doing himself. "What are the game now?"
"Too much draught, that's all," grinned Joe, blowing on his fingers, for an icy wind whirled the flakes about him. "Too much of it, Hank. Blow the fire out or set our shack alight. Fine that'd be—eh?"