CHAPTER XI A COLD HOUSE

 "Will you please show these children how you cut ice, and store it away, so you can sell it when the hot summer days come?" asked Daddy Blake of one of the many men who, with horses and strange machinery¹, were gathered in a little sheltered cove² of the lake.

 

"To be sure I will," the man answered. "Just come over here and you will see it all."

 

"Oh, but look at the water!" cried Mab, as she pointed³ to a place where the ice had been cut, and taken out, leaving a stretch of black water.

 

"I won't let you fall in that," promised the man. "The ice is so thick this year, on account of the cold, that you could go close to the edge of the hole, and the ice would not break with you. See, there is a man riding on an ice cake just as if it were a raft of wood."

 

"Oh, so he is!" cried Hal, as he saw a man, with big boots and a long pole, standing⁴ on a glittering white ice-raft. The man was poling himself along in the water, just as Daddy Blake had pushed the boat along when he was spearing eels⁵ in the Summer.

 

"He looks just like a picture I saw, of a Polar bear on his cake of ice, up at the North Pole," spoke⁶ Charlie, "only he isn't a bear, of course," the little boy added quickly, thinking the man might think he was calling him names. The head ice man, and several others, laughed when they heard this.

 

"Now, I'll show you how we cut ice, beginning at the beginning," said the head man, or foreman, as he is called.

 

"Of course," the foreman went on, "we have to wait until the ice freezes thick enough so we men, and the horses won't break through it. When it is about eighteen inches thick, or, better still, two feet, we begin to cut. First we mark it off into even squares, like those on a checker board. A horse is hitched⁷ to a marking machine, which is like a board with sharp spikes⁹ in it, each spike⁸ being twenty-four inches from the one next to it. The spikes are very sharp.

 

"The horse is driven across the ice one way, making a lot of long, deep scratches in the ice, where the scratches criss-cross one another they make squares."

 

"What is that for?" Hal wanted to know.

 

"That," the foreman explained, "is so the cakes of ice will be all the same size, nice and square and even, and will fit closely together when we pile them in the ice house. If we had the cakes of ice of all different shapes and sizes they would not pile up evenly, and we would waste too much room."

 

"I see!" cried Mab. "It's just like the building blocks I had when I was a little girl."

 

"That's it!" laughed the foreman. "You remember how nicely you could pile your blocks into the box, when you put them all in evenly and nicely. But if you threw them in quickly, without stopping to make them straight, they would pile up helter-skelter, and maybe only half of them would fit. It is that way with the ice blocks."

 

"What do you do after you mark off the ice into squares?" Charlie

Johnson asked.

"Then men come along with big saws, that have very large teeth, and they saw out each block. Sometimes we cut the marking lines in the ice so deeply that a few blows from an axe¹⁰ will break the blocks up nice and even, and we don't have to saw them.

 

"Then, after the cakes are separated, they are floated down to a little dock, and carried up into the store house. Come we will go look at that store house now. But button up your coats well, for it is very cold in this ice store house."

 

The foreman led Daddy Blake and the children to a big house, five times as large as the one where the Blake family lived. Running up to this ice house from the ground near the lake, was a long incline, like a toboggan slide, or a long wooden hill. And clanking up this wooden hill was an endless chain, with strips of wood fastened across it.

 

The chain was something like the moving stairways which are in some department stores instead of elevators. Only, instead of square, flat stairs there were these cross pieces of wood, to hold the cakes of ice from slipping down the toboggan slide back into the lake again.

 

Men would float the ice cakes up to the end of the wooden hill. Then, with sharp iron hooks, they would pull and haul on the cakes until they were caught on one of these cross pieces. Then the engine that moved this endless chain, would puff¹¹ and grunt¹², and up would slide the glittering ice, cake after cake.

 

At the top of the incline other men were waiting. They used their sharp hooks to pull the ice cakes off the endless chain, upon a platform of boards, and from there the cakes were slid along into the store house, where they were stacked in piles up to the roof, there to stay until they were needed in the hot summer, to make ice cream, lemonade and ice cream cones¹³.

 

"Oh, but it is cold in here!" cried Mab as they went in the place where the ice was kept. And indeed it was, for there were tons and tons—thousands of pounds—of the frozen cakes. From them arose a sort of steam, or mist, and through this mist the men could hardly be seen as they stacked away the ice. The men looked like shadows moving about in a cold fog on a frosty, cold, wintry morning.

 

"Bang! Bang! Clatter¹⁴! Smash! Crash!" went the cakes of ice as they came up the incline, and slid down the long wooden chutes, where the men hooked them off and piled them up. Pile after pile was made of the ice, until it was stacked up like an ice berg, inside the store house.

 

"Why doesn't the ice melt when the hot summer comes?" asked Hal.

 

"Because this building keeps the hot sun off the ice," explained the foreman. "Very little heat can get in our ice house, and it takes heat to melt ice. Of course some of it melts, but very little. Then, too, the building has two walls. In between the double walls is sawdust, and that sawdust helps to keep the heat out, and the cold in. It is like a refrigerator you see. Ice melts very slowly in a refrigerator because the cold is kept in, and the outside heat kept out."

 

"Oh, but it's cold here!" cried Mab shivering. "Let's go outside." And outside something very strange happened.

 

The children never would have believed it had they read it in a book. But as it really happened to them they knew that it was true, no matter how strange it was.

1 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

2 cove   

n.小海湾，小峡谷

参考例句：

• The shore line is wooded,olive-green,a pristine cove.岸边一带林木蓊郁，嫩绿一片，好一个山外的小海湾。
• I saw two children were playing in a cove.我看到两个小孩正在一个小海湾里玩耍。

3 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

4 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

5 eels   

abbr. 电子发射器定位系统（=electronic emitter location system）

参考例句：

• Eels have been on the feed in the Lower Thames. 鳗鱼在泰晤士河下游寻食。
• She bought some eels for dinner. 她买回一些鳗鱼做晚餐。

6 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

7 hitched   

（免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上

参考例句：

• They hitched a ride in a truck. 他们搭乘了一辆路过的货车。
• We hitched a ride in a truck yesterday. 我们昨天顺便搭乘了一辆卡车。

8 spike   

n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效

参考例句：

• The spike pierced the receipts and held them in order.那个钉子穿过那些收据并使之按顺序排列。
• They'll do anything to spike the guns of the opposition.他们会使出各种手段来挫败对手。

9 spikes   

n.穗( spike的名词复数 )；跑鞋；（防滑）鞋钉；尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 )；偷偷地给某人的饮料加入（更多）酒精（ 或药物）；把尖状物钉入；打乱某人的计划

参考例句：

• a row of iron spikes on a wall 墙头的一排尖铁
• There is a row of spikes on top of the prison wall to prevent the prisoners escaping. 监狱墙头装有一排尖钉，以防犯人逃跑。 来自《简明英汉词典》

10 axe   

n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减

参考例句：

• Be careful with that sharp axe.那把斧子很锋利，你要当心。
• The edge of this axe has turned.这把斧子卷了刃了。

11 puff   

n.一口(气)；一阵(风)；v.喷气，喘气

参考例句：

• He took a puff at his cigarette.他吸了一口香烟。
• They tried their best to puff the book they published.他们尽力吹捧他们出版的书。

12 grunt   

v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝

参考例句：

• He lifted the heavy suitcase with a grunt.他咕噜着把沉重的提箱拎了起来。
• I ask him what he think,but he just grunt.我问他在想什麽，他只哼了一声。

13 cones   

n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒

参考例句：

• In the pines squirrels commonly chew off and drop entire cones. 松树上的松鼠通常咬掉和弄落整个球果。 来自辞典例句
• Many children would rather eat ice cream from cones than from dishes. 许多小孩喜欢吃蛋卷冰淇淋胜过盘装冰淇淋。 来自辞典例句

14 clatter   

v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声

参考例句：

• The dishes and bowls slid together with a clatter.碟子碗碰得丁丁当当的。
• Don't clatter your knives and forks.别把刀叉碰得咔哒响。