“No-suh, Mr. Joe, I don’t min’ dat none. I ain’t been sleepin’. I been studyin’—bout dem bees, Mr. Joe. What I been studyin’ on is dis. Why can’t we-all make a sorter raft, an’ float dem bees down to whar you-all wants ’em?”
CHAPTER XVI
THE BEE RAFT
“A raft?” said Joe, astonished. “Nonsense, Sam. Why, it would take a raft as big as the whole bee-yard.”
“Plenty of dry cypress logs down yander, all ’long de bayou. We’d mighty soon make a big raft,” Sam persisted.
At this moment Bob also appeared out of the gloom, roused by the sound of talking.
“It mightn’t take such a big raft,” he said. “We could pack the hives close together. I believe Sam’s hit on something. Can’t we have a light?”
Joe thrust a few fragments of pine, and scraps of an old gum, sticky with wax and resin, into the fireplace, and struck a light. The leaky old cabin looked more cheerful as the flame flared up, and while the rain still roared on the roof they discussed the new scheme.
“Let’s figure how big a raft it would really take,” said Joe, taking a bit of pencil and a piece of smooth board. “A hive is sixteen by twenty inches square.”
A little calculation showed that the raft would need to be at least fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, to hold the bees, placed in four rows.
“But it’s only about thirty miles down to the place where we’d want to land them,” said Bob. “Then we’ll be only four miles from the railroad. Isn’t that right? I should think we could float that far in one day. The river runs smoothly, and the bees would hardly know they were being moved. I don’t think we’d even need to close the hives. It’s a lot better way than the steamboat, and then think of all the freight we’ll save.”