This was the first really great storm we had had since our big hut was built, and the result of it, especially as it was followed by a period of rainy weather, was to make us leave work on our canoe before it was finished, and turn our hands to another task. Our hut, as I have said before, was built on a little level tract, above and below which the ground sloped, on the one side towards the cliffs, on the other to Brimstone Lake, as we called it, from its medicinal water. The slope above the hut was gradual, indeed, but it was a real slope all the same, and during this period of heavy rain the water swept down in a wide torrent from the heights, flowing past and through the hut, which was flooded, and very uncomfortable. We suffered in this way, Billy and I, more than our fowls, for they had poles to roost on. As for the pigs, we did not trouble about them, and I do think that the more sodden the ground the happier they were. We did our best, in dry intervals, to make our walls watertight, but could not wholly succeed in this, for the doorway faced the upper slope, and we could not by any means make the door fit so closely as to keep out the water. Since the floor of our hut was thus sodden, we could not sleep on it, but had to make our bed on the bench table, and very hard it was. [Sidenote: Cutting a Trench] It was a day or two before we thought of any means of curing this very disagreeable state of things, but then, all of a sudden, a notion came to us--whether first to Billy or to me I do not remember--of digging a trench round the hut, with outlets opening into the lake. We set about this at once, finding the earth easy to work, even with our rude spades, because it was so sodden, and after two or three days' work we had made a shallow trench about the upper end of the hut, shaped like a half-circle, so that when the rain-water fell down the slope it would be intercepted by the trench, and so carried into the lake. We observed again, at this time, that though the amount of water that flowed into the lake was very much greater than we had ever known before, yet the surface never rose above the certain level of which I have already spoken, and we were still very much puzzled to know, at least I was, how the surplus water was carried off; Billy saying that it didn't matter to us, and we shouldn't be any better off if we did know. My way of looking at things was different, and I own I felt a great curiosity always to learn the reasons and causes of matters which were not easy to understand. Yet it was, after all, little more than an accident which brought about the discovery of this matter, and of that I doubt not I shall tell in its place. [1] A rather long-winded allusion to refraction.--H.S. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH OF OUR ENTRENCHMENTS; OF THE LAUNCHING OF OUR CANOE, AND THE DEADLY PERIL THAT ATTENDED OUR FIRST VOYAGE