That night passed without disturbance, and in the morning a warm, gentle rain was falling. The roof of the cabin developed a leak, and Carl had to clamber up to make repairs. As the rain lasted all day, more leaks appeared hourly, and he was kept busy with his patching. Between times he went fishing in the river just behind the house. The trout bit ravenously, and he landed one fish that must have weighed nearly three pounds.
The next morning it cleared off warm and damp, and the moist heat caused a heavy honey-flow from the maples. The whole wilderness sprang suddenly into intense green. The raspberry bushes were already beginning to show tiny buds, but it would be weeks yet before these would open, and meanwhile the bees would probably need feeding.
Two days later the supplies that Bob had ordered arrived. They consisted chiefly of brood-frames in the flat, several thousand one-pound sections, and a large quantity of comb foundation.
This comb foundation is one of the most necessary things in a modern apiary. It consists of thin sheets of pure beeswax, about the thickness of blotting-paper and stamped with the impression of honey cells. When fixed in a frame or in a section and placed in a hive, the intelligent insects at once recognize its use and lengthen out the stamped indentations into accurate cells. A comb is thus produced very quickly, and with a great economy of honey and wax.
The wooden section-boxes were in the flat, and had to be folded up into squares, pressed firmly together, and a sheet of the thinnest foundation fastened in each with melted wax. This was delicate and tedious work, and kept the two apiarists busy for the next week.
All the lumber had to be made up into new hives, too, and the frames nailed together, filled with foundation, and placed in them. Carl had set up a work-bench in the barn, and he was busy there from morning to night with his carpentering, while Alice worked with the sections, preparing super after super to be placed on the hives whenever the main honey-flow should begin. They had too much to do to think much of either bears or wendigos, but three or four nights later Carl was awakened by a noise in the clearing. He had a confused impression that somebody had called to him. The next instant he heard a rattle of metal, and a sound of something thrashing about. He leaped up and pulled on his trousers.
“Alice!” he called. “Get up. Light the lantern, quick! Something’s in the trap!”
There was a crescent moon, but it gave only a feeble light, and as he rushed out with his shotgun cocked, he could see little. But as he approached the trap, he discerned a great, shapeless figure crouched over it, apparently struggling to get free from the jaws. Thrilling with excitement, Carl stopped, then crept a little nearer and raised his gun. He would have fired in another moment, but just then he caught the sound of a human voice. It was not a wild beast in the trap. It was a man!
The fellow was muttering in some unknown language, and no pleasant words, by the sound of them. Carl ran up, trembling at the narrow escape, and the figure straightened up to human proportions.
“Stand still!” Carl cried. “It’s all right. I’ll get you out.”