Phil found that it was exactly as the Beaver had told him, and that he could follow the Lady Ondatra quite easily through the winding tunnels, or branched canals, which had their entrances under the water. The one through which the Ondatra led him sloped upward gradually for quite a long distance; it ended in a wide chamber in which there were three other openings. The centre of it was nearly filled by a luxurious couch of water-lily leaves and sedges, where, curled up snugly and fast asleep, four baby Ondatras lay with their faces hidden. They were like little Beavers, Phil thought, and just about the size of full-grown mice.
Their mother spoke in a hushed whisper lest she should disturb them.
"I'm glad that you think we are pleasant creatures," She said. "We do harm to no one, and live on roots and leaves, perfectly happy if we are but let alone. We dread the fall—it is then that the hunters most often come, though sometimes they visit us in the spring. Ah me!"
"Are they after you, too?" cried Phil compassionately. "You are so small that I shouldn't have thought your skins would be much good to them!"
"Our fur, which is used in making hats, is highly esteemed," said the Lady Ondatra stiffly, "and our flesh, though musky, of such excellent flavour that the natives prefer us to Wild Duck."
Phil guessed that she was hurt, and did his best to soothe her by admiring her babies. No mother could have resisted this.
"Tell me all about the hunters—that is, if you don't mind," he said with diffidence, when they had quite made friends.
The Lady Ondatra did not mind. She seemed to take a fearful joy in describing the perils she had escaped, though she knew quite well that when the summer was over she might have to go through them all again.
"Sometimes they take us in traps," she said, "which they arrange so that in our struggles for freedom we are jerked into the water and drowned, for we cannot live without air for any length of time. The nature of our abode depends entirely upon the soil, and we do not always build. The Ondatras who make their homes altogether in burrows, they capture by stopping up all their air holes except one, and seizing them when they come up to breathe. When we live in marshy places we build winter houses, just as the Beavers do, though ours are not so strong, and less than three feet high above the surface of the swamp. When the ice freezes over them we make breathing holes in it, and protect these from the frost by a covering of mud. If the frost is so hard that our holes cannot be kept open, we die from suffocation."
"But you are safe from the hunters in your winter houses?"