Chapdelaine, his three sons and man, proceeded then to "make land."
The forest still pressed hard upon the buildings they had put up a
few years earlier: the little square house, the barn of planks that
gaped apart, the stable built of blackened logs and chinked with
rags and earth. Between the scanty fields of their clearing and the
darkly encircling woods lay a broad stretch which the ax had but
half-heartedly attacked. A few living trees had been cut for timber,
and the dead ones, sawn and split, fed the great stove for a whole
winter; but the place was a rough tangle of stumps and interlacing
roots, of fallen trees too far rotted to burn, of others dead but
still erect amid the alder scrub.

Thither the five men made their way one morning and set to work at
once, without a word, for every man's task had been settled
beforehand.

The father and Da'Be took their stand face to face on either side of
a tree, and their axes, helved with birch, began to swing in rhythm.
At first each hewed a deep notch, chopping steadily at the same spot
for some seconds, then the ax rose swiftly and fell obliquely on the
trunk a foot higher up; at every stroke a great chip flew, thick as
the hand, splitting away with the grain. When the cuts were nearly
meeting, one stopped and the other slowed down, leaving his ax in
the wood for a moment at every blow; the mere strip, by some miracle
still holding the tree erect, yielded at last, the trunk began to
lean and the two axmen stepped back a pace and watched it fall,
shouting at the same instant a warning of the danger.

It was then the turn of Edwige Legare and Esdras; when the tree was