“Yes, that we do: nothing is anything to us.”
“Of course not,” said Bevis. “And if we can’t chop it down or blow it up, as we mean to, then we dig round it. O, Mark, I say! I forgot! Let’s dig a canal round it.”
“How silly we were never to think of that!” said Mark. “A canal is the very thing—from here to the creek.”
He meant where the stream curved to enclose the Peninsula: the proposed canal would make the voyage shorter.
“Cut some sticks—quick!” said Bevis. “We must plug out our canal—that is what they always do first, whether it is a canal, or a railway, or a drain, or anything. And I must draw a plan. I must get my pocket-book and pencil. Come on, Mark, and get the spade while I get my pencil.”
Off they ran. The Bailiff leaned on his hazel staff, one hand against the willow, and looked down into the water, as calmly as the sun itself reflected there. When he had looked awhile he shook his head and grunted: then he stumped away; and after a dozen yards or so, glanced back, grunted, and shook his head again. It could not be done. The tree was thick, the earth hard—no such thing: his sympathy, in a dull unspoken way, was with the immovable.
Mark went to work with the spade, throwing the turf he dug up into the brook; while Bevis, lying at full length on the grass, drew his plan of the canal. He drew two curving lines parallel, and half an inch apart, to represent the bend of the brook, and then two, as straight as he could manage, across, so as to shorten the distance, and avoid the obstruction. The rootlets of the grass held tight, when Mark tried to lift the spadeful he had dug, so that he could not tear them off.
He had to chop them at the side with his spade first, and then there was a root of the willow in the way; a very obstinate stout root, for which the little hatchet had to be brought to cut it. Under the softer turf the ground was very hard, as it had long been dry, so that by the time Bevis had drawn his plan and stuck in little sticks to show the course the canal was to take, Mark had only cleared about a foot square, and four or five inches deep, just at the edge of the bank, where he could thrust it into the stream.
“I have been thinking,” said Bevis as he came back from the other end of the line, “I have been thinking what we are, now we are making this canal?”
“Yes,” said Mark, “what are we?—they do not make canals on the Mississippi. Is this the Suez canal?”