"IT WOULD HAVE SEEMED LIKE NO MORE THAN A DARKER, SWIFTLY-MOVING SHADOW IN THE DARK WATER."
The Keeper of the Water-Gate
ome distance below the ice, through the clear, dark water of the quiet-running stream, a dim form went swimming swiftly. It was a sturdy, broad-headed, thick-furred form, a little more than a foot in length, with a naked, flattened tail almost as long as the body. It held its small, handlike forepaws tucked up under its chin, and swam with quick strokes of its strong hind legs and eel-like wrigglings of the muscular tail. It would have seemed like no more than a darker, swiftly-moving shadow in the dark water, save for a curious burden of air-bubbles which went with it. Its close under-fur, which the water could not penetrate, was thickly sprinkled with longer hairs, which the water seemed, as it were, to plaster down; and under these long hairs the air was caught in little silvery bubbles, which made the swimmer conspicuous even under two inches of clear ice and eighteen inches of running water.
As he went, the swimmer slanted downward and aimed for a round hole at the bottom of the bank. This hole was the water-gate of his winter citadel; and he, the keeper of it, was the biggest and pluckiest muskrat on the whole slow-winding length of Bitter Creek.
At this point Bitter Creek was about four feet deep and ten or twelve feet wide, with low, bushy shores subject to overflow at the slightest freshet. Winter, setting in suddenly with fierce frost, had caught it while its sluggish waters were still so high from the late autumn rains that the bushes and border grasses were all awash. Now the young ice, transparent and elastic, held them in firm fetters. The flat world of field and wood about Bitter Creek was frozen as hard as iron, and a biting gale, which carried a thin drift of dry, gritty snow, was lashing it pitilessly. The branches snapped and creaked under the cruel assault, and not a bird or beast was so hardy as to show its head abroad. But in the muskrat's world, there under the safe ice, all was as tranquil as a May morning. The long green and brown water-weeds swayed softly in the faint current, with here and there a silvery young chub or an olive-brown sucker feeding lazily among them. Under the projecting roots lurked water-snails, and small, black, scurrying beetles, and big-eyed, horn-jawed larvæ which would change next spring to aerial forms of radiance. And not one of them, muskrat, chub, or larva, cared one whit for the scourge of winter on the bleak world above the ice.
The big muskrat swam straight to the mouth of the hole, and plunged half-way into it. Then he suddenly changed his mind. Backing out abruptly, he darted up to the surface close under the edge of the bank. Along the edge of the bank the ice-roof slanted upward, the water having fallen several inches since the ice had set. This left a covered air space, about two inches in height, all along the fringes of the grass roots; and here the muskrat paused, head and shoulders half out of water, to take breath. He was panting heavily, having come a long way under water without stopping to empty and refill his long-suffering little lungs. Two inches over his head, on the other side of the ice, the thin, hard snow went driving and swirling, and he could hear the alders straining under the bitter wind. His little, bead-bright eyes, set deep in his furry face, gleamed with satisfaction over his comfortable security.
Having fully eased his lungs, the muskrat dived again to the bottom, and began to gnaw with fierce energy at a snaky mass of the roots of the yellow material. Having cut off a section about as long as himself, and more than an inch in thickness, he tugged at it fiercely to loosen the fibres which held it to the bottom. But this particular piece was more firmly anchored than he had expected to find it, and presently, feeling as if his lungs would burst, he was obliged to ascend to the air-space under the ice for a new breath. There he puffed and panted for perhaps a minute. But he had no thought of relinquishing that piece of succulent, crisp, white-hearted lily-root. As soon as he had rested, he swam down again, and gripping it savagely tore it loose at the first pull. Holding the prize lengthwise that it might not obstruct his entrance, he plunged into the hole in the bank, the round, black water-gate to his winter house.
The house was a most comfortable and strictly utilitarian structure. The entrance, dug with great and persistent toil from the very bottom of the bank, for the better discouragement of the muskrat's deadliest enemy, the mink, ran inward for nearly two feet, and then upward on a long slant some five or six feet through the natural soil. At this point the shore was dry land at the average level of the water; and over this exit, which was dry at the time of the building, the muskrat had raised his house.