Above the shallow water where the dam was built, the stream widened into a broad, deep pool. About fifty yards ahead, in the centre of this, was a tiny island. On its extreme edge Joe pointed out the beaver lodge. It was shaped something like a huge beehive, being about a dozen feet in diameter and five feet high. The outside seemed to be entirely covered with mud and fibrous roots, through which the sticks which formed its framework poked out here and there.
“The doors are all underwater,” said Cyrus, “and so far down that they’ll be beneath the ice when the stream freezes in winter. Otherwise the beavers could not reach their pile of food-wood, which they keep at the bottom, and would starve to death. They are clerks of the weather, if you like. They seem to know when the first hard frost is coming, and sink their stores a day or two before. Man has not yet discovered their mysterious knack of sinking wood, and keeping it stationary through many months.
“They feed on the inner bark of poplar, white birch, and willow trees. In autumn they fell these along the banks, generally so that they will fall into the water, tug and push them down-stream, and float them near to their lodges. If the trees are too big to be easily handled, they saw them into convenient lengths.”
“I call it tough luck, not being able to get a sight of the animals, after seeing so much of their works,” grumbled Royal.
“Ye might wait here till midnight, and not have any better,” said Joe. “That fellow’s tail was like a fire-alarm to them. They ain’t to home now, you bet! They’ve dusted out of their house as if it was on fire; and they’ve either dived to the bottom, or hidden themselves in holes along the bank. Guess we’d better be moving on. It’s a’most time to think about making camp.”
“The beavers have been working here!” exclaimed the guide a few minutes later, as he strode ahead. “These white birches were felled by ’em; and a dandy job they did too.”
He pointed to two slim birches which lay prone with their tops in the water, and to a third, the trunk of which was partly sawn through in more than one place. The ground was strewn with little clippings of timber, bearing the saw-marks of the beavers’ teeth. The boys gathered them up as curiosities.
“Oh, the skilful little animals can beat this work by long odds!” exclaimed Doc. “These trunks only measure from eight to twelve inches in circumference. I’ve seen a tree fully two feet round which was felled by them. Say, Joe! don’t you think we’d better camp to-night somewhere on the brûlée?”
“Just what I’m planning, Doc,” answered Joe. “We must be pretty near it now.”
A few minutes afterwards the party filed out of the dense woods, passed through a grove of young spruces, forded a brook which emptied itself into the stream they were following, and came upon a scene blasted, barren, and unutterably dreary.