Page:The Swiss Family Robinson, In Words of One Syllable.djvu/68

54 led by the smell, should come to claim their own.

We then put the gourd on the comb that held the swarm, and took care that the queen was not left out. By these means we soon got a hive of fine bees, and the trunk of the tree was left free for our use.

We had now to try the length of the hole. This we did with a long pole, and found it reach as far up as the branch on which our house stood.

"You see," said I to my sons, "that this tree has no sap in its trunk, but, like some that grow in the land we came from, it draws its means of life through the bark."

We now cut a square hole in that side of the trunk next the sea shore, and made one of the doors that we had brought from the ship to fit in the space. We then made the sides smooth all the way up, and with planks and the staves of some old casks, built up the stairs round a pole which we made fast in the ground. To do this we had to make a notch in the pole and one in the side of the trunk for each stair, and thus go up step by step till we came to the top. We had a good store of strong nails, and with them, and such tools as we brought back on the raft, which we had now learnt to use with some skill, we got on well with our task. Each day we spent a part of our time at what we could now call the farm, where the