Another and another of the guides was set free, each one taking us deeper into the heart of the forest, until at last the bee-master suddenly stopped and held up his hand.
“Listen!” he said under his breath.
Above the rustling of the leaves, above the quiet stir of the undergrowth and the crooning of the stock-doves, a shrill insistent note came over to us on the gentle wind. The bee-man led the way silently into the darkest depths of the wood. Halting, listening, going swiftly forward in turn, at last he stopped at the foot of an old decayed elm-stump. The shrill note we had heard was much louder now, and right overhead. Following his pointing forefinger, I saw a dark cleft in the old trunk about twenty feet above; and round this a cloud of bees was circling, filling the air with their rich deep labour-song. At the same instant, with a note like the twang of a harp-string, a bee came at me and fastened a red-hot fish-hook into my cheek. The old bee-keeper laughed.
“Get this on as soon as you can,” he said, producing a pocketful of bee-veils, and handing me one from the bunch. “These are wild bees, thirty thousand of them, maybe; and we shall need all our armour to-day. Only wait till they find us out! But now rub your hands all over with this.”
Every man scrambled into his veil, and anointed his hands with the oil of wintergreen—the one abiding terror of vindictive bees. And then the real business of the day commenced.
The bee-master had strapped on his climbing-irons. Now he struck his way slowly up the tree, tapping the wood with the butt-end of a hatchet inch by inch as he went. At last he found what he wanted. The trunk rang hollow about a dozen feet from the ground. Immediately he began to cut it away. The noise of the hatchet woke all the echoes of the forest. The chips came fluttering to the earth. The rich murmur overhead changed to an angry buzzing. In a moment the bees were on the worker in a vortex of humming fury, covering his veil, his clothes, his hands. But he worked on unconcernedly until he had driven a large hole through the crust of the tree and laid bare the glistening honeycomb within. Now I saw him take from a sling-bag at his side handful after handful of some yellow substance and heap it into the cavity he had made. Then he struck a match, lighted the stuff, and came sliding swiftly to earth again. We all drew off and waited.
“That,” explained the bee-master, as he leaned on his woodman’s axe out of breath, “is cotton-waste, soaked in creosote, and then smothered in powdered brimstone. See! it is burning famously. The fumes will soon fill the hollow of the tree and settle the whole company. Then we shall cut away enough of the rotten wood above to get all the best of the combs out; there are eighty pounds of good honey up there, or I’m no bee-man. And then it’s back to the clover-field for more guide-bees, and away on a new scent.”
CHAPTER X
THE PHYSICIAN IN THE HIVE
It was a strange procession coming up the red-tiled path of the bee garden. The bee-master led the way in his Sunday clothes, followed by a gorgeous footman, powdered and cockaded, who carried an armful of wraps and cushions. Behind him walked two more, supporting between them a kind of carrying-chair, in which sat a florid old gentleman in a Scotch plaid shawl; and behind these again strode a silk-hatted, black-frocked man carefully regulating the progress of the cavalcade. Through the rain of autumn leaves, on the brisk October morning, I could see, afar off, a carriage waiting by the lane-side; a big old-fashioned family vehicle, with cockaded servants, a pair of champing greys, and a glitter of gold and scarlet on the panel, where the sunbeams struck on an elaborate coat-of-arms.
The whole procession made for the extracting-house, and all work stopped at its approach. The great centrifugal machine ceased its humming. The doors of the packing-room were closed, shutting as the din of saw and hammer. Over the stone floor in front of the furnace—where a big caldron of metheglin was simmering—a carpet was hastily unrolled, and a comfortable couch brought out and set close to the cheery blaze.