“Don’t you see, Olly,” said Paul, “that some of its roots are hollow, rotten at the core?”
“Ah! boy—same with men as trees,” remarked the captain, moralising. “Rotten at the core—sure to come down, sooner or later. Lay that to heart, Olly.”
“If ever I do come down, daddy, I hope it won’t be with so much noise. Why, it went off like a cannon.”
“A cannon!” echoed the captain. “More like as if the main-mast o’ the world had gone by the board!”
“What if the gale should last a week?” asked Olly.
“Then we shall have to stay here a week,” returned Hendrick; “but there’s no fear of that. The fiercer the gale the sooner the calm. It won’t delay us long.”
The hunter was right. The day following found the party en route, with a clear sky, bright sun, and sharp calm air. But the art of snow-shoe walking, though easy enough, is not learned in an hour.
“They’re clumsy things to look at—more like small boats flattened than anything else,” remarked the captain, when Hendrick had fastened the strange but indispensable instruments on his feet—as he had already fastened those of the other two.
“Now look at me,” said Hendrick. “I’ll take a turn round of a few hundred yards to show you how. The chief thing you have to guard against is treading with one shoe on the edge of the other, at the same time you must not straddle. Just pass the inner edge of one shoe over the inner edge of the other, and walk very much as if you had no snow-shoes on at all—so.”
He stepped off at a round pace, the broad and long shoes keeping him so well on the surface of the snow that he sank only a few inches.