CHAPTER XXI
An Enemy to the Rescue
The plan had been to set to work next morning to dig the house out of the snow; that is to say, to dig away a space around the cabin. But the Doctor forbade it.
"The more force we expend in work," he said, "the more food we must have, and as we have pretty nearly no food now, we absolutely mustn't expend any force unnecessarily. We must simply rest to-day, doing no more shoveling than is necessary to open a little larger area around the door, and to keep our path to the wood pile open."
That day, the next and the next were passed in idleness and with growing hunger. The snow ceased for a time on the second day, but the severe cold weather which alone could release the boys from their terrible plight, did not come. On the third day, the snow began to fall again in a pitiless and discouraging way, and by that time the food supply had run so low that the Doctor's dole of it was too small even to ward off the severe pangs of hunger.
Tom said that night: "Boys, I don't care what the consequences are, I'm going to break out of this to-morrow morning or perish in the attempt. I'd rather die in a snow bank, fighting for a chance, than sit here and slowly starve to death. My strength is already waning, and before it goes altogether I'm going to make an effort to get some food. If I wait longer I sha'n't have either the strength or the courage to go at all."
This time nobody interposed an objection, but foreseeing Tom's need, and knowing that he would accept nothing not shared equally by the others, the Doctor deliberately dealt out a larger supply of beans than usual that night. The meal was all gone. The pork had been eaten up, and after the Doctor gave out this supper, which it would take till eleven or twelve o'clock at night to cook, there was left only about two quarts of beans in the camp, and absolutely not an ounce of food of any other kind.
In ordinary circumstances, if the boys had been thus shut up in their cabin and deprived of physical activity, they would have held long talks and learned much. Especially they would have beset the Doctor with questions, the answers to which would have interested them. But now they were too hungry for material food, too starved of body and far too depressed in mind to care for conversation of any kind. They simply sat still and starved, in gloomy silence, and under the terrible oppression of hopelessness and helplessness. All but Little Tom. His courage survived, and as he sat before the fire waiting for the beans to cook, he was resolutely planning ways and means by which, if possible, to make the morrow's expedition successful. The chances, he knew, were a hundred to one against him, and he was trying, by the exercise of a careful foresight, to bring that one chance in a hundred within his grasp.
Presently he took off his boots and drove the heaviest nails there were in the camp into their heels, letting the heads protrude more than a quarter of an inch below the surface.
"What's that for, Tom?" asked Jack, in listless fashion.