What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise
by George Cary Eggleston · English · Gutenberg #50811 · 440,342 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise
Author: George Cary Eggleston
Illustrator: H. C. Edwards
Release date: December 31, 2015 [eBook #50811]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50811
Credits: Produced by Giovanni Fini, David Edwards and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI: THE STORY OF A CAROLINA CRUISE ***
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI
THE STORY OF A CAROLINA CRUISE
BOOKS FOR BOYS
BY
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
Each Handsomely Illustrated. Price of Each Volume, $1.50
THE LAST OF THE FLATBOATS. A Story of the Mississippi and Its
Interesting Family of Rivers.
CAMP VENTURE. A Story of the Virginia Mountains. Adventures among the
“Moonshiners.”
THE BALE MARKED CIRCLE X. A Blockade-Running Adventure.
JACK SHELBY. A Story of the Indiana Backwoods.
LONG KNIVES. The Story of How They Won the West. A Tale of George
Rogers Clark’s Expedition.
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI. The Story of a Carolina Cruise. A Tale of
Sport and Adventure.
_For Sale by All Booksellers, or Sent Postpaid on Receipt of Price by
the Publishers_
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., BOSTON
[Illustration: AS TOM TUGGED HARD AT ONE OF THE LARGER ROOTS, THE KEG
SUDDENLY FELL TO PIECES.—_Page 353._]
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI
THE STORY OF A CAROLINA CRUISE
BY
GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON
ILLUSTRATED BY H. C. EDWARDS
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Published, April, 1911
Copyright, 1911
BY LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
_All rights reserved_
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI
NORWOOD PRESS
BERWICK & SMITH CO.
NORWOOD, MASS.
U. S. A.
I INSCRIBE THIS STORY WITH AFFECTION TO
[Illustration]
GEORGE DUNN EGGLESTON
MY GRANDSON, IN THE BELIEF THAT WHEN HE GROWS
OLD ENOUGH HE WILL WANT TO KNOW “WHAT HAPPENED
AT QUASI,” AND WILL READ THE BOOK BY WAY OF
FINDING OUT
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTERSTATE CHUMMING 3
II. THE STORY OF QUASI 15
III. A PROGRAMME SUBJECT TO CIRCUMSTANCES 25
IV. TOM FIGHTS IT OUT 30
V. A RATHER BAD NIGHT 39
VI. A LITTLE SPORT BY THE WAY 54
VII. AN ENEMY IN CAMP 67
VIII. CAL BEGINS TO DO THINGS 76
IX. A FANCY SHOT 89
X. TOM’S DISCOVERIES 97
XI. PERILOUS SPYING 108
XII. TOM’S DARING VENTURE 119
XIII. CAL’S EXPERIENCE AS THE PRODIGAL SON 135
XIV. CAL RELATES A FABLE 149
XV. CAL GATHERS THE MANNA 156
XVI. FOG-BOUND 164
XVII. THE OBLIGATION OF A GENTLEMAN 174
XVIII. FIGHT OR FAIR PLAY 182
XIX. WHY LARRY WAS READY FOR BATTLE 191
XX. ABOARD THE CUTTER 197
XXI. TOM’S SCOUTING SCHEME 204
XXII. TOM DISCOVERS THINGS 212
XXIII. TOM AND THE MAN WITH THE GAME LEG 222
XXIV. THE LAME MAN’S CONFESSION 230
XXV. A SIGNAL OF DISTRESS 238
XXVI. AN UNEXPECTED INTERRUPTION 246
XXVII. THE HERMIT OF QUASI 258
XXVIII. RUDOLF DUNBAR’S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF 265
XXIX. TOM FINDS THINGS 271
XXX. DUNBAR TALKS AND SLEEPS 283
XXXI. DUNBAR’S STRANGE BEHAVIOR 295
XXXII. A RAINY DAY WITH DUNBAR 306
XXXIII. A GREAT CATASTROPHE 316
XXXIV. MAROONED AT QUASI 331
XXXV. AGAIN TOM FINDS SOMETHING 339
XXXVI. WHAT THE EARTH GAVE UP 350
XXXVII. TOM’S FINAL “FIND” 360
ILLUSTRATIONS
As Tom tugged hard at one of the larger
roots, the keg suddenly fell to pieces
(Page 353) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Dick, Cal, and Tom searched the man’s clothes 72
“In my haste I forgot to conceal my gun” 126
“Stand where you are or we’ll shoot” 182
“No, ’tain’t no use. I’ve got to take my medicine” 226
A minute more, it would have been too late 320
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI
THE STORY OF A CAROLINA CRUISE
WHAT HAPPENED AT QUASI
THE STORY OF A CAROLINA CRUISE
I
INTERSTATE CHUMMING
IT was hot in Charleston—intensely hot—with not a breath of air
in motion anywhere. The glossy leaves of the magnolia trees in the
grounds that surrounded the Rutledge house drooped despairingly in the
withering, scorching, blistering sunlight of a summer afternoon in the
year 1886. The cocker spaniel in the courtyard panted with tongue out,
between the dips he took at brief intervals in the water-vat provided
for his use. A glance down King Street showed no living creature, man
or beast, astir in Charleston’s busiest thoroughfare.
In the upper verandah of the Rutledge mansion, four boys, as lightly
dressed as propriety permitted, were doing their best to keep endurably
cool and three of them were succeeding. The fourth was making a
dismal failure of the attempt. He was Richard Wentworth of Boston,
and he naturally knew little of the arts by which the people of hot
climates manage to endure torrid weather with tolerable comfort and
satisfaction. He kept his blood excited by the exertion of violently
fanning himself. While the others sat perfectly still in bamboo chairs,
or lay motionless on joggling boards, Dick Wentworth was constantly
stirring about in search of a cooler place which he did not find.
Presently he went for the fourth or fifth time to the end of the porch,
where he could see a part of the street by peering through the great
green jalousies or slatted shutters that barred out the fierce sunlight.
“What do you do that for, Dick?” asked Lawrence Rutledge in a languid
tone and without lifting his head from the head-rest of the joggling
board.
“What do I do what for?” asked Dick in return.
“Why run to the end of the verandah every five minutes? What do you
do it for? Don’t you know it’s hot? Don’t you realize that violent
exertion like that is unfit for weather like this? Why, I regard
unnecessary winking as exercise altogether too strenuous at such a
time, and so I don’t open my eyes except in little slits, and I do even
that only when I must. You see, I’m doing my best to keep cool, while
you are stirring about all the time and fretting and fuming in a way
that would set a kettle boiling. Why do you do it?”
“Oh, I’m only observing, in a strange land,” answered Dick, sinking
into a wicker chair. “I’ll be quiet, now that I have found out the
facts.”
“What are they, Dick?” asked Tom Garnett, otherwise known to his
companions as “the Virginia delegation,” he being the only Virginian in
the group. “What have you found out?”
“Only that the cobblestones, with which the street out there is paved,
have been vulcanized, just as dentists treat rubber mouth plates.
Otherwise they would melt.”
“I’d laugh at that joke, Dick, if I dared risk the exertion,” drawled
Calhoun Rutledge, the fourth boy in the group, and Lawrence Rutledge’s
twin brother. “Ah, there it comes!” he exclaimed, rolling off his
joggling board and busying himself with turning the broad slats of the
jalousies so as to admit the cool sea breeze that had set in with the
turning of the tide.
Lawrence—or “Larry”—Rutledge did the same, and Tom Garnett slid out
of his bamboo chair, stretched himself and exclaimed:
“Well, that _is_ a relief!”
Dick Wentworth sat still, not realizing the sudden change until a stiff
breeze streaming in through the blinds blew straight into his face,
bearing with it a delicious odor from the cape jessamines that grew
thickly about the house. Then he rose and hurried to an open lattice,
quite as if he had expected to discover there some huge bellows or some
gigantic electric fan stirring the air into rapid motion.
“What has happened?” he asked in astonishment.
“Nothing, except that the tide has turned,” answered Larry.
“But the breeze? Where does that come from?”
“From the sea. It always comes in with the flood-tide, and we’ve been
waiting for it. Pull on your coat or stand out of the draught; the
sudden change might give you a cold.”
“Then you don’t have to melt for whole days at a time, but get a little
relief like this, now and then?”
“We don’t melt at all. We don’t suffer half as much from hot weather as
the people of northern cities do—particularly New York.”
“But why not, if you have to undergo a grilling like this every day?”
“It doesn’t happen every day, or anything like every day. It never
lasts long and we know how to endure it.”
“How? I’m anxious to learn. I may be put on the broiler again and I
want to be prepared.”
“Well, we begin by recognizing facts and meeting them sensibly. It is
always hot here in the sun, during the summer months, and so we don’t
go out into the glare during the torrid hours. From about eleven till
four o’clock nobody thinks of quitting the coolest, shadiest place he
can find, while in northern cities those are the busiest hours of the
day, even when the mercury is in the nineties. We do what we have to
do in the early forenoon and the late afternoon. During the heat and
burden of the day we keep still, avoiding exertion of every kind as we
might shun pestilence or poison. The result is that sun strokes and
heat prostrations are unknown here, while at the north during every hot
spell your newspapers print long columns of the names of persons who
have fallen victims.”
“Then again,” added Calhoun, “we build for hot weather while you build
to meet arctic blasts. We set our houses separately in large plots of
ground, while you pack yours as close together as possible. We provide
ourselves with broad verandahs and bury ourselves in shade, while you
are planning your heating apparatus and doubling up your window sashes
to keep the cold out.”
“It distresses me sorely,” broke in Larry, “to interrupt an interesting
discussion to which I have contributed all the wisdom I care to spare,
but the sun is more than half way down the western slope of the
firmament, and if we are to get the dory into the water this afternoon
it is high time for us to be wending our way through Spring Street to
the neighborhood of Gadsden’s Green—so called, I believe, because some
Gadsden of ancient times intended it to become green.”
The four boys had been classmates for several years in a noted
preparatory school in Virginia. Dick Wentworth had been sent thither
four years before for the sake of his threatened health. He had
quickly grown strong again in the kindly climate of Virginia, but in
the meanwhile he had learned to like his school and his schoolmates,
particularly the two Rutledges and the Virginia boy, Tom Garnett. He
had therefore remained at the school throughout the preparatory course.
Their school days were at an end now, all of them having passed their
college entrance examinations; but they planned to be classmates still,
all attending the same university at the North.
They were to spend the rest of the summer vacation together, with the
Charleston home of the Rutledge boys for their base of operations,
while campaigning for sport and adventure far and wide on the coast.
That accounted for the dory. No boat of that type had ever been seen on
the Carolina coast, but Larry and Cal Rutledge had learned to know its
cruising qualities while on a visit to Dick Wentworth during the summer
before, and this year their father had given them a dory, specially
built to his order at Swampscott and shipped south by a coasting
steamer.
When she arrived, she had only a priming coat of dirty-looking white
paint upon her, and the boys promptly set to work painting her in a
little boathouse of theirs on the Ashley river side of the city. The
new paint was dry now and the boat was ready to take the water.
“She’s a beauty and no mistake,” said Cal as the group studied her
lines and examined her rather elaborate lockers and other fittings.
“Yes, she’s all that,” responded his brother, “and we’ll try her paces
to-morrow morning.”
“Not if she’s like all the other dories I’ve had anything to do with,”
answered Dick. “She’s been out of water ever since she left her cradle,
and it’ll take some time for her to soak up.”
“Oh, of course she’ll leak a little, even after a night in the water,”
said Cal, with his peculiar drawl which always made whatever he said
sound about equally like a mocking joke and the profoundest philosophy.
“But who minds getting his feet wet in warm salt water?”
“Leak a little?” responded Dick; “leak a little? Why, she’ll fill
herself half full within five minutes after we shove her in, and if we
get into her to-morrow morning the other half will follow suit. It’ll
take two days at least to make her seams tight.”
“Why didn’t the caulkers put more oakum into her seams, then?” queried
Tom, whose acquaintance with boats was very scant. “I should think
they’d jam and cram every seam so full that the boat would be water
tight from the first.”
“Perhaps they would,” languidly drawled Cal, “if they knew no more
about such things than you do, Tom.”
“How much do you know, Cal?” sharply asked the other.
“Oh, not much—not half or a quarter as much as Dick does. But a part
of the little that I know is the fact that when you wet a dry, white
cedar board it swells, and the further fact that when you soak dry
oakum in water, it swells a great deal more. It is my conviction that
if a boat were caulked to water tightness while she was dry and then
put into the water, the swelling would warp and split and twist her
into a very fair imitation of a tall silk hat after a crazy mule has
danced the highland fling upon it.”
“Oh, I see, of course. But will she be really tight after she swells
up?”
“As tight as a drum. But we’ll take some oakum along, and a caulking
tool or two, and a pot of white lead, so that if she gets a jolt of any
kind and springs a leak we can haul her out and repair damages. We’ll
take a little pot of paint, too, in one of the lockers.”
“There’ll be time enough after supper,” interrupted Larry, “to discuss
everything like that, and we must be prompt at supper, too, for you
know father is to leave for the North to-night to meet mother on Cape
Cod and his ship sails at midnight. So get hold of the boat, every
fellow of you, and let’s shove her in.”
The launching was done within a minute or two, and after that the dory
rocked herself to sleep—that’s what Cal said.
“She’s certainly a beauty,” said Dick Wentworth. “And of course she’s
better finished and finer every way than any dory I ever saw. You know,
Tom, dories up north are rough fishing boats. This one is finished
like a yacht, and—”
“Oh, she’s hunky dory,” answered Tom, lapsing into slang.
“That’s what we’ll name her, then,” drawled Cal. “She’s certainly
‘hunky’ and she’s a dory, and if that doesn’t make her the _Hunkydory_,
I’d very much like to know what s-o-x spells.”
There was a little laugh all round. As the incoming water floated the
bottom boards, the name of the boat was unanimously adopted, and after
another admiring look at her, the four hurried away to supper. On the
way Dick explained to Tom that a dory is built for sailing or rowing in
rough seas, and running ashore through the surf on shelving beaches.
“That accounts for the peculiar shape of her narrow, flat bottom, her
heavy overhang at bow and stern, her widely sloping sides, and for the
still odder shape and set of her centre board and rudder. She can come
head-on to a beach, and as she glides up the sloping sand it shuts up
her centre board and lifts her rudder out of its sockets without the
least danger of injuring either. In the water a dory is as nervous as a
schoolgirl in a thunder storm. The least wind pressure on her sails or
the least shifting of her passengers or cargo, sends her heeling over
almost to her beam ends, but she is very hard to capsize, because her
gunwales are so built out that they act as bilge keels.”
“I’d understand all that a good deal better,” answered Tom, laughing,
“if I had the smallest notion what the words mean. I have a vague idea
that I know what a rudder is, but when you talk of centre boards,
overhangs, gunwales, and bilge keels, you tow me out beyond my depth.”
“Never mind,” said Cal. “Wait till we get you out on the water, you
land lubber, and then Dick can give you a rudimentary course of
instruction in nautical nomenclature. Just now there is neither time
nor occasion to think about anything but the broiled spring chickens
and plates full of rice that we’re to have for supper, with a casual
reflection upon the okra, the green peas and the sliced tomatoes that
will escort them into our presence.”
In an aside to Dick Wentworth—but spoken so that all could hear—Tom
said:
“I don’t believe Cal can help talking that way. I think if he were
drowning he’d put his cries of ‘help’ into elaborate sentences.”
“Certainly, I should do precisely that,” answered Cal. “Why not? Our
thoughts are the children of our brains, and I think enough of my
brain-children to dress them as well as I can.”
In part, Cal’s explanation was correct enough. But his habit of
elaborate speech was, in fact, also meant to be mildly humorous. This
was especially so when he deliberately overdressed his brain-children
in ponderous words and stilted phrases.
They were at the Rutledge mansion by this time, however, and further
chatter was cut off by a negro servant’s announcement that “Supper’s
ready an’ yo’ fathah’s a waitin’.”
II
THE STORY OF QUASI
MAJOR RUTLEDGE entertained the boys at supper with accounts of his own
experiences along the coast during the war, and incidentally gave them
a good deal of detailed information likely to be useful to them in
their journeyings. But he gave them no instructions and no cautions. He
firmly believed that youths of their age and intelligence ought to know
how to take care of themselves, and that if they did not it was high
time for them to learn in the school of experience. He knew these to be
courageous boys, manly, self-reliant, intelligent, and tactful. He was,
therefore, disposed to leave them to their own devices, trusting to
their wits to meet any emergencies that might arise.
One bit of assistance of great value he did give them, namely, a
complete set of coast charts, prepared by the government officials at
Washington.
“You see,” he explained to the two visitors, “this is a very low-lying
coast, interlaced by a tangled network of rivers, creeks, inlets,
bayous, and the like, so that in many places it is difficult even for
persons intimately familiar with its intricacies to find their way. My
boys know the geography of it fairly well, but you’ll find they will
have frequent need to consult the charts. I’ve had them encased in
water-tight tin receptacles.”
“May I ask a question?” interjected Tom Garnett, as he minutely scanned
one of the charts.
“Certainly, as many as you like.”
“What do those little figures mean that are dotted thickly all over the
sheets?”
“They show the depth of water at every spot, at mean high tide. You’ll
find them useful—particularly in making short cuts. You see, Tom, many
of the narrowest of our creeks are very deep, and many broad bays very
shallow in places. Besides, there are mud banks scattered all about,
some of them under water all the time, others under it only at high
tide. You boys don’t want to get stuck on them, and you won’t, if you
study the figures on your charts closely. By the way, Larry, how much
water does your boat draw?”
“Three feet, six inches, when loaded, with the centre board down—six
inches, perhaps, when light, with the board up.”
“There, Tom, you see how easily the chart soundings may save you a
lot of trouble. There may be times when you can save miles of sailing
by laying your course over sunken sandbars if sailing before the wind,
though you couldn’t pass over them at all if sailing on the wind.”
“But what difference does the way of sailing make? You see, I am very
ignorant, Major Rutledge.”
“You’ll learn fast enough, because you aren’t afraid to ask questions.
Now to answer your last one; when you sail before the wind you’ll have
no need of your centre board and can draw it up, making your draught
only six or eight inches, while on the wind you must have the centre
board down—my boys will explain that when you’re all afloat—so if
you are sailing with the wind dead astern, or nearly so, it will be
safe enough to lay a course that offers you only two or three feet
of water in its shoalest parts, while if the wind is abeam, or in a
beating direction, you must keep your centre board down and stick to
deeper channels. However, the boys will soon teach you all that on the
journey. They’re better sailors than I am.”
Then, turning to his own sons, he said:
“I have arranged with my bank to honor any checks either of you may
draw. So if you have need of more money than you take with you, you’ll
know how to get it. Any planter or merchant down the coast will cash
your checks for you. Now I must say good-bye to all of you, as I have
many things to do before leaving. I wish all of you a very jolly time.”
With that he quitted the room, but a few minutes later he opened the
door to say:
“If you get that far down the coast, boys, I wish you would take a look
over Quasi and see that there are no squatters there.”
When he had gone, Cal said:
“Wonder if father hopes to win yet in that Quasi matter, after all
these years?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Larry. “Anyhow, we’ll go that far
down, if only to gratify his wish.”
“Is Quasi a town?” asked Dick, whose curiosity was awakened by the
oddity of the name.
“No. It’s a plantation, and one with a story.”
Dick asked no more questions, but presently Cal said to his brother:
“Why don’t you go on, Larry, and tell him all about it? I have always
been taught by my pastors and masters, and most other people I have
ever known, that it is exceedingly bad manners to talk in enigmas
before guests. Besides, there’s no secret about this. Everybody in
South Carolina who ever heard the name Rutledge knows all about Quasi.
Go on and tell the fellows, lest they think our family has a skeleton
in some one or other of its closets, and is cherishing some dark,
mysterious secret.”
“Why don’t you tell it yourself, Cal? You know the story as well as I
do.”
“Because, oh my brother, it was your remark that aroused the curiosity
which it is our hospitable duty to satisfy. I do not wish to trespass
upon your privileges or take your obligations upon myself. Go on! There
is harkening all about you. You have your audience and your theme. We
hang upon your lips.”
“Oh, it isn’t much of a story, but I may as well tell it,” said Larry,
smiling at his brother’s ponderous speech.
“Quasi is a very large plantation occupying the end of a peninsula.
Except on the mainland side a dozen miles of salt water, mud banks
and marsh islands, separate it from the nearest land. On the mainland
side there is a marsh two or three miles wide and a thousand miles
deep, I think. At any rate, it is utterly impassable—a mere mass of
semi-liquid mud, though it looks solid enough with its growth of tall
salt marsh grass covering its ugliness and hiding its treachery. The
point might as well be an island, so far as possibilities of approach
to it are concerned, and in effect it is an island, or quasi an island.
I suppose some humorous old owner of it had that in mind when he named
it Quasi.
“It is sea island cotton land of the very finest and richest kind, and
when it was cultivated it was better worth working than a gold mine.
There are large tracts of original timber on it, and as it has been
abandoned and running wild for more than twenty years, even the young
tree growths are large and fine now.
“That is where the story begins. Quasi belonged to our grandfather
Rutledge. He didn’t live there, but he had the place under thorough
cultivation. When the war broke out my grandfather was one of the few
men in the South who doubted our side’s ability to win, and as no man
could foresee what financial disturbances might occur, he decided to
secure his two daughters—our father’s sisters, who were then young
girls—against all possibility of poverty, by giving Quasi to them in
their own right. ‘Then,’ he thought, ‘they will be comfortably well
off, no matter what happens.’ So he deeded Quasi to them.
“When the Federals succeeded, early in the war, in seizing upon the sea
island defences, establishing themselves at Beaufort, Hilton Head, and
other places, it was necessary for my grandfather to remove all the
negroes from Quasi, lest they be carried off by the enemy. The place
was therefore abandoned, but my grandfather said that, at any rate,
nobody could carry off the land, and that that would make my aunts
easy in their finances, whenever peace should come again. As he was a
hard-fighting officer, noted for his dare-devil recklessness of danger,
he did not think it likely that he would live to see the end. But he
believed he had made his daughters secure against poverty, and as for
my father, he thought him man enough to take care of himself.”
“The which he abundantly proved himself to be when the time came,”
interrupted Cal, with a note of pride in his tone.
“Oh, that was a matter of course,” answered Larry. “It’s a way the
Rutledges have always had. But that is no part of the story I’m
telling. During the last year of the war, when everything was going
against the South, grandfather saw clearly what the result must be,
and he understood the effect it would have upon his fortunes. He was a
well-to-do man—I may even say a wealthy one—but he foresaw that with
the negroes set free and the industries of the South paralyzed for the
time, his estate would be hopelessly insolvent. But like the brave man
that he was, he did not let these things trouble him. Believing that
his daughters were amply provided for, and that my father—who at the
age of twenty-five had fought his way from private to major—could look
out for himself, the grim old warrior went on with his soldierly work
and bothered not at all as to results.
“In the last months of the war, when the Southern armies were being
broken to pieces, the clerk’s office, in which his deeds of Quasi to my
aunts were recorded, was burned with all its contents. As evidence of
the gift to his daughters nothing remained except his original deeds,
and these might easily be destroyed in the clearly impending collapse
of everything. To put those deeds in some place of safety was now his
most earnest purpose. He took two or three days’ leave of absence,
hurried to Charleston, secured the precious papers and put them in a
place of safety—so safe a place, indeed, that to this day nobody has
ever found them. That was not his fault. For the moment he returned to
his post of command he sat down to write a letter to my aunts, telling
them what he had done and how to find the documents. He had not written
more than twenty lines when the enemy fell upon his command, and during
the fight that ensued, he was shot through the head and instantly
killed. His unfinished letter was sent to my aunts, but it threw no
light upon the hiding place he had selected.
“When the war ended, a few weeks later, the estate was insolvent, as my
grandfather had foreseen. In the eagerness to get hold of even a little
money to live upon, which was general at that time, my grandfather’s
creditors were ready to sell their claims upon the estate for any price
they could get, and two of the carrion crows called money-lenders
bought up all the outstanding obligations.
“When they brought suit for the possession of my grandfather’s
property, they included Quasi in their claim. When my father
protested that Quasi belonged to his sisters by deeds of gift
executed years before, he could offer no satisfactory proof of his
contention—nothing, indeed, except the testimony of certain persons
who could swear that the transfer had been a matter of general
understanding, often mentioned in their presence, and other evidence of
a similarly vague character.
“Of course this was not enough, but my father is a born fighter and
would not give up. He secured delay and set about searching everywhere
for the missing papers. In the meanwhile he was energetically working
to rebuild his own fortunes, and he succeeded. As soon as he had money
of his own to fight with, he employed the shrewdest and ablest lawyers
he could find to keep up the contest in behalf of his sisters. He has
kept that fight up until now, and will keep it up until he wins it or
dies. Of course he has himself amply provided for my aunts, so that it
isn’t the property but a principle he is fighting for.
“By the way, the shooting ought to be good at Quasi—the place has run
wild for so long and is so inaccessible to casual sportsmen. If the
rest of you agree, we’ll make our way down there with no long stops as
we go. Then we can take our time coming back.”
The others agreed, and after a little Dick Wentworth, who had remained
silent for a time, turned to Larry, saying:
“Why did you say it wasn’t much of a story, Larry?”
III
A PROGRAMME—SUBJECT TO CIRCUMSTANCES
THE _Hunkydory_ was an unusually large boat for a craft of that kind.
She was about twenty-five feet long, very wide amidships—as dories
always are—and capable of carrying a heavy load without much increase
in her draught of water. She was built of white cedar with a stout
oak frame, fastened with copper bolts and rivets, and fitted with
capacious, water-tight lockers at bow and stern, with narrower lockers
running along her sides at the bilge, for use in carrying tools and the
like.
She carried a broad mainsail and a large jib, and had rowlocks for four
pairs of oars. Sitting on the forward or after rowing thwart, where
she was narrow enough for sculls, one person could row her at a fair
rate of speed, so little resistance did her peculiar shape offer to the
water. With two pairs of oars, or better still, with all the rowlocks
in use, she seemed to offer no resistance at all.
It was the plan of the boys to depend upon the sails whenever there was
wind enough to make any progress at all, and ply the oars only when a
calm compelled them to do so.
“We’re in no sort of hurry,” explained Larry, “and it really makes no
difference whether we run one mile an hour or ten. There aren’t any
trains to catch down where we are going.”
“Just where are we going, Larry,” asked Dick. “We’ve never talked that
over, except in the vaguest way.”
“Show the boys, Cal,” said Larry, turning to his brother. “You’re
better at coast geography than I am.”
“Hydrography would be the more accurate word in this case,” slowly
answered Cal, “but it makes no difference.”
With that he lighted three or four more gas burners, and spread a large
map of the coast upon the table.
“Now let me invoke your earnest attention, young gentlemen,” he began.
“That’s the way the lecturers always introduce their talks, isn’t
it? You see before you a somewhat detailed map of the coast and its
waterways from Charleston, south to Brunswick, Georgia. It is grossly
inaccurate in some particulars and slightly but annoyingly so in
others! Fortunately your lecturer is possessed of a large and entirely
trustworthy fund of information, the garnerings, as it were, of
prolonged and repeated personal observation. He will be able to correct
the errors of the cartographer as he proceeds.
“We will take the Rutledge boathouse on the Ashley River near the foot
of Spring Street as our point of departure, if you please. _Enteuthen
exelauni_—pardon the lapse into Xenophontic Greek—I mean thence we
shall sail across the Ashley to the mouth of Wappoo Creek which, as you
see by the map, extends from Charleston Harbor to Stono Inlet or river,
separating James Island from the main. Thence we shall proceed up
Stono River, past John’s Island, and having thus disposed of James and
John—familiar characters in that well-remembered work of fiction, the
First Reader—we shall enter the so called North Edisto River, which
is, in fact, an inlet or estuary, and sail up until we reach the point
where the real Edisto River empties itself. Thence we shall proceed
down the inlet known as South Edisto River round Edisto Island, and,
by a little detour into the outside sea, pass into St. Helena Sound.
From that point on we shall have a tangled network of big and little
waterways to choose among, and we’ll run up and down as many of them
as tempt us with the promise of sport or adventure. We shall pass our
nights ashore, and most of our days also, for that matter. Wherever we
camp we will remain as long as we like. That is the programme. Like
the prices in a grocer’s catalogue and the schedules of a railway, it
is ‘subject to change without notice.’ That is to say, accident and
unforeseen circumstances may interfere with it at any time.”
“Yes, and we may ourselves change it,” said Larry. “Indeed, I propose
one change in it to start with.”
“What is it?” asked the others in chorus.
“Simply that we sail down the harbor first to give Dick and Tom a
glimpse of the points of interest there. We’ll load the boat first and
then, when we’ve made the circuit of the bay, we needn’t come back to
the boat house, but can go on down Wappoo cut.”
The plan commended itself and was adopted, and as soon as the
_Hunkydory’s_ seams were sufficiently soaked the boat was put in
readiness. There was not much cargo to be carried, as the boys intended
to depend mainly upon their guns and fishing tackle for food supplies.
A side of bacon, a water-tight firkin of rice, a box of salt, another
of coffee, a tin coffee-pot, and a few other cooking utensils were
about all. The tools and lanterns were snuggled into the places
prepared for them, an abundance of rope was bestowed, and the guns,
ammunition and fishing tackle completed the outfit. Each member of the
little company carried a large, well-stocked, damp-proof box of matches
in his pocket, and each had a large clasp knife. There were no forks or
plates, but the boat herself was well supplied with agate iron drinking
cups.
It was well after dark when the loading was finished and the boat in
readiness to begin her voyage. It was planned to set sail at sunrise,
and so the crew went early to the joggling boards for a night’s rest in
the breezy veranda.
“We’ll start if there’s a wind,” said Cal.
“We’ll start anyhow, wind or no wind,” answered Larry.
“Of course we will,” said Cal. “But you used the term ‘set sail.’ I
object to it as an attempt to describe or characterize the process of
making a start with the oars.”
“Be quiet, Cal, will you?” interjected Dick. “I was just falling into a
doze when you punched me in the ribs with that criticism.”
IV
TOM FIGHTS IT OUT
FORTUNATELY there was a breeze, rather light but sufficient, when the
sun rose next morning. The _Hunkydory_ was cast off and, with Cal at
the tiller, her sails filled, she heeled over and “slid on her side,”
as Tom described it, out of the Ashley River and on down the harbor
where the wind was so much fresher that all the ship’s company had to
brace themselves up against the windward gunwale, making live ballast
of themselves.
The course was a frequently changing one, because the Rutledge boys
wanted their guests to pass near all the points of interest, and also
because they wanted Dick Wentworth, who was the most expert sailor
in the company, to study the boat’s sailing peculiarities. To that
end Dick went to the helm as soon as the wind freshened, and while
following in a general way the sight-seeing course suggested by the
Rutledges, he made many brief departures from it in order to test this
or that peculiarity of the boat, for, as Larry explained to Tom,
“Every sailing craft has ways of her own, and you want to know what
they are.”
After an hour of experiment, Dick said:
“We’ll have to get some sand bags somewhere. We need more ballast,
especially around the mast. As she is, she shakes her head too much and
is inclined to slew off to leeward.”
“Let me take the tiller, then, and we’ll get what we need,” answered
Larry, going to the helm.
“Where?”
“At Fort Sumter. I know the officer in command there—in fact, he’s an
intimate friend of our family,—and he’ll provide us with what we need.
How much do you think?”
“About three hundred pounds—in fifty pound bags for distribution. Two
hundred might do, but three hundred won’t be too much, I think, and if
it is we can empty out the surplus.”
“How on earth can you tell a thing like that by mere guess work, Dick?”
queried Tom in astonishment.
“It isn’t mere guess work,” said Dick. “In fact, it isn’t guess work at
all.”
“What is it, then?”
“Experience and observation. You see, I’ve sailed many dories,
Tom, and I’ve studied the behavior of boats under mighty good sea
schoolmasters—the Gloucester fishermen—and so with a little feeling
of a boat in a wind I can judge pretty accurately what she needs in the
way of ballast, just as anybody who has sailed a boat much, can judge
how much wind to take and how much to spill.”
“I’d like to learn something about sailing if I could,” said Tom.
“You can and you shall,” broke in Cal. “Dick will teach you on this
trip, and Larry and I will act as his subordinate instructors, so that
before we get back from our wanderings you shall know how to handle a
boat as well as we do; that is to say, if you don’t manage to send us
all to Davy Jones during your apprenticeship. There’s a chance of that,
but we’ll take the risk.”
“Yes, and there’s no better time to begin than right now,” said Dick.
“That’s a ticklish landing Larry is about to make at Fort Sumter. Watch
it closely and see just how he does it. Making a landing is the most
difficult and dangerous thing one has to do in sailing.”
“Yes,” said Cal; “it’s like leaving off when you find you’re talking
too much. It’s hard to do.”
The little company tarried at the fort only long enough for the
soldiers to make and fill six canvas sand bags. When they were afloat
again and Dick had tested the bestowal of the ballast, he suggested
that Tom should take his first lesson at the tiller. Sitting close
beside him, the more expert youth directed him minutely until, after
perhaps an hour of instruction, during which Dick so chose his courses
as to give the novice both windward work and running to do, Tom could
really make a fair showing in handling the sails and the rudder. He
was still a trifle clumsy at the work and often somewhat unready and
uncertain in his movements, but Dick pronounced him an apt scholar, and
predicted his quick success in learning the art.
They were nearing the mouth of the harbor when Dick deemed it best
to suspend the lesson and handle the boat himself. The wind had
freshened still further, and a lumpy sea was coming in over the bar,
so that while there was no danger to a boat properly handled, a little
clumsiness might easily work mischief.
The boys were delighted with the behavior of the craft and were
gleefully commenting on it when Larry observed that Tom, instead of
bracing himself against the gunwale, was sitting limply on the bottom,
with a face as white as the newly made sail.
“I say, boys, Tom’s seasick,” he called out. “We’d better put about
and run in under the lee of Morris Island.”
“No, don’t,” answered Tom, feebly. “I’m not going to be a spoil-sport,
and I’ll fight this thing out. If I could only throw up my boots, I’d
be all right. I’m sure it’s my boots that sit so heavily on my stomach.”
“Good for you, Tom,” said Larry, “but we’ll run into stiller waters
anyhow. We don’t want you to suffer. If you were rid of this, I’d—”
He hesitated, and didn’t finish his sentence.
“What is it you’d do if I weren’t playing the baby this way?”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“No, it isn’t,” protested Tom, feeling his seasickness less because of
his determination to contest the point. “What is it you’d do? You shall
do it anyhow. If you don’t, I’ll jump overboard. I tell you I’m no
spoil-sport and I’m no whining baby to be coddled either. Tell me what
you had in mind.”
“Oh, it was only a sudden thought, and probably a foolish one. I was
seized with an insane desire to give the _Hunkydory_ a fair chance to
show what stuff she’s made of by running outside down the coast to the
mouth of Stono Inlet, instead of going back and making our way through
Wappoo creek.”
“Do it! Do it!” cried Tom, dragging himself up to his former posture.
“If you don’t do it I’ll quit the expedition and go home to be put into
pinafores again.”
“You’re a brick, Tom, and you shan’t be humiliated. We’ll make the
outside trip. It won’t take very long, and maybe you’ll get over the
worst of your sickness when we get outside.”
“If I don’t I’ll just grin and bear it,” answered Tom resolutely.
As the boat cleared the harbor and headed south, the sea grew much
calmer, though the breeze continued as before. It was the choking of
the channel that had made the water so “lumpy” at the harbor’s mouth.
Tom was the first to observe the relief, and before the dory slipped
into the calm waters of Stono Inlet he had only a trifling nausea to
remind him of his suffering.
“This is the fulfillment of prophecy number one,” he said to Cal, while
they were yet outside.
“What is?”
“Why this way of getting into Stono Inlet. You said our programme was
likely to be ‘changed without notice,’ and this is the first change.
You know it’s nearly always so. People very rarely carry out their
plans exactly.”
“I suppose not,” interrupted Larry as the Stono entrance was made,
“but I’ve a plan in mind that we’ll carry out just as I’ve made it, and
that not very long hence, either.”
“What is it, Larry?”
“Why to pick out a fit place for landing, go ashore, build a fire, and
have supper. Does it occur to you that we had breakfast at daylight and
that we’ve not had a bite to eat since, though it is nearly sunset?”
As he spoke, a bend of the shore line cut off what little breeze there
was, the sail flapped and the dory moved only with the tide.
“Lower away the sail,” he called to Cal and Dick, at the same time
hauling the boom inboard. “We must use the oars in making a landing,
and I see the place. We’ll camp for the night on the bluff just ahead.”
“Bluff?” asked Tom, scanning the shore. “I don’t see any bluff.”
“Why there—straight ahead, and not five hundred yards away.”
“Do you call that a bluff? Why, it isn’t three feet higher than the
low-lying land all around it.”
“After you’ve been a month on this coast,” said Cal, pulling at an oar,
“you’ll learn that after all, terms are purely relative as expressions
of human thought. We call that a bluff because it fronts the water
and is three feet higher than the general lay of the land. There
aren’t many places down here that can boast so great a superiority to
their surroundings. An elevation of ten feet we’d call high. It is all
comparative.”
“Well, my appetite isn’t comparative, at any rate,” said Tom. “It’s
both positive and superlative.”
“The usual sequel to an attack of seasickness, and I assure you—”
Cal never finished his assurance, whatever it was, for at that moment
the boat made her landing, and Larry, who acted as commander of the
expedition, quickly had everybody at work. The boat was to be secured
so that the rise and fall of the tide would do her no harm; wood was to
be gathered, a fire built and coffee made.
“And I am going out to see if I can’t get a few squirrels for supper,
while you fellows get some oysters and catch a few crabs if you can.
Oh, no, that’s too slow work. Take the cast net, Cal, and get a gallon
or so of shrimps, in case I don’t find any squirrels.”
“I can save you some trouble and disappointment on that score,” said
Cal, “by telling you now that you’ll get no squirrels and no game of
any other kind, unless perhaps you sprain your ankle or something and
get a game leg.”
“But why not? How do you know?”
“We’re too close to Charleston. The pot-hunters haven’t left so much as
a ground squirrel in these woods. I have been all over them and so I
know. Better take the cartridges out of your gun and try for some fish.
The tide’s right and you’ve an hour to do it in.”
Larry accepted the suggestion, and rowing the dory to a promising spot,
secured a dozen whiting within half the time at disposal.
Supper was eaten with that keen enjoyment which only a camping meal
ever gives, and with a crackling fire to stir enthusiasm, the boys
sat for hours telling stories and listening to Dick’s account of his
fishing trips along the northern shores, and his one summer’s camping
in the Maine woods.
V
A RATHER BAD NIGHT
DURING the next two or three days the expedition worked its way through
the tangled maze of big and little waterways, stopping only at night,
in order that they might the sooner reach a point where game was
plentiful.
At last Cal, who knew more about the matter than any one else in the
party, pointed out a vast forest-covered region that lay ahead, with a
broad stretch of water between.
“We’ll camp there for a day or two,” he said, “and get something
besides sea food to eat. There are deer there and wild turkeys, and
game birds, while squirrels and the like literally abound. I’ve hunted
there for a week at a time. It’s only about six miles from here, and
there’s a good breeze. We can easily make the run before night.”
Tom, who had by that time learned to handle the boat fairly well for a
novice, was at the tiller, and the others, a trifle too confident of
his skill perhaps, were paying scant attention to what he was doing.
The stretch of water they had to cross was generally deep, as the chart
showed, but there were a few shoals and mud banks to be avoided. While
the boys were eagerly listening to Cal’s description of the hunting
grounds ahead, the boat was speeding rapidly, with the sail trimmed
nearly flat, when there came a sudden flaw in the wind and Tom, in his
nervous anxiety to meet the difficulty managed to put the helm the
wrong way. A second later the dory was pushing her way through mud and
submerged marsh grass. Tom’s error had driven her, head on, upon one of
the grass covered mud banks.
Dick was instantly at work. Without waiting to haul the boom inboard,
he let go the throat and peak halyards, and the sails ran down while
the outer end of the boom buried itself in the mud.
“Now haul in the boom,” he said.
“Why didn’t you wait and do that first?” asked Tom, who was half out of
his wits with chagrin over his blunder.
“Because, with the centre board up, if we’d hauled it in against the
wind the boat would have rolled over and we should all have been
floundering.”
“But the centre board was down,” answered Tom.
“Look at it,” said Cal. “Doubtless it was down when we struck, but as
we slid up into the grass it was shut up like a jackknife.”
“Stop talking,” commanded Larry, “and get to the oars. It’s now or
never. If we don’t get clear of this within five minutes we’ll have
to lie here all night. The tide is just past full flood and the depth
will grow less every minute. Now then! All together and back her out of
this!”
With all their might the four boys backed with the oars, but the boat
refused to move. Dick shifted the ballast a little and they made
another effort, with no result except that Tom, in his well-nigh insane
eagerness to repair the damage done, managed to break an oar.
“It’s no use, fellows,” said Larry. “You might as well ship your oars.
We’re stuck for all night and must make the best of the situation.”
“Can’t we get out and push her off?” asked Tom in desperation.
“No. We’ve no bottom to stand on. The mud is too soft.”
“That’s one disadvantage in a dory,” said Dick, settling himself on a
thwart. “If we had a keel under us, we could have worked her free with
the oars.”
“If, yes, and perhaps,” broke in Cal, who was disposed to be cheerfully
philosophical under all circumstances. “What’s the use in iffing,
yessing and perhapsing? We’re unfortunate in being stuck on a mud bank
for the night, but stuck we are and there’s an end of that. We can’t
make the matter better by wishing, or regretting, or bemoaning our
fate, or making ourselves miserable in any other of the many ways that
evil ingenuity has devised for the needless chastisement of the spirit.
Let us ‘look forward not back, up and not down, out and not in,’ as
Dr. Hale puts it. Instead of thinking how much happier we might be if
we were spinning along over the water, let us think how much happier
we _shall_ be when we get out of this and set sail again. By the way,
what have we on board that we can eat before the shades of night begin
falling fast?”
“Well, if you will ‘look forward,’ as you’ve advised us all to do,”
said Dick Wentworth, “by which I mean if you will explore the forward
locker, you’ll find there a ten-pound can of sea biscuit, and half a
dozen gnarled and twisted bologna sausages of the imported variety,
warranted to keep in any climate and entirely capable of putting a
strain upon the digestion of an ostrich accustomed to dine on tenpenny
nails and the fragments of broken beer bottles.”
“Where on earth did they come from?” asked Larry. “I superintended the
lading of the boat—”
“Yes, I know you did, and I watched you. I observed that you had made
no provision for shipwreck and so I surreptitiously purchased and
bestowed these provisions myself. The old tars at Gloucester deeply
impressed it upon my mind that it is never safe to venture upon salt
water without a reserve supply of imperishable provisions to fall back
upon in case of accidents like this.”
“This isn’t an accident,” said Tom, who had been silent for an unusual
time; “it isn’t an accident; it’s the result of my stupidity and
nothing else, and I can never—”
“Now stop that, Tom!” commanded Cal; “stop it quick, or you’ll meet
with the accident of being chucked overboard. This was a mishap that
might occur to anyone, and if there was any fault in the case every
one of us is as much to blame as you are. You don’t profess to be an
expert sailor, and we know it. We ought some of us to have helped you
by observing things. Now quit blaming yourself, quit worrying and get
to work chewing bologna.”
“Thank you, Cal,” was all that Tom could say in reply, and all set to
work on what Dick called their “frugal meal,” adding:
“That phrase used to fool me. I found it in Sunday School books, where
some Scotch cotter and his interesting family sat down to eat scones or
porridge, and I thought it suggestive of something particularly good to
eat. Having the chronically unsatisfied appetite of a growing boy, the
thing made me hungry.”
“This bologna isn’t a bit bad after you’ve chewed enough of the dry out
of it to get the taste,” said Larry, cutting off several slices of the
smoke-hardened sausage.
“No,” said Dick, “it isn’t bad; but I judge from results that the
Dutchman who made it had rather an exalted opinion of garlic as a
flavoring.”
“Yes,” Cal answered, speaking slowly after his habit, “the thing
is thoroughly impregnated with the flavor and odor of the _allium
sativum_, and I was just revolving—”
“What’s that, Cal?” asked Larry, interrupting.
“What’s what?”
“Why, _allium_ something or other—the thing you mentioned.”
“Oh, you mean _allium sativum_? Why, that is the botanical name of the
cultivated garlic plant, you ignoramus.”
“Well, how did you come to know that? You never studied botany.”
“No, of course not. I’ll put myself to the trouble of explaining a
matter which would be obvious enough to you if you gave it proper
thought. I found the term in the dictionary a month or so ago when you
and I had some discussion as to the relationship between the garlic
and the onion. I may have been positive in such assertions as I found
it necessary to make in maintaining my side of the argument; doubtless
I was so; but I was not sufficiently confident of the soundness of
my views to make an open appeal to the dictionary. I consulted it
secretly, surreptitiously, meaning to fling it at your head if I found
that it sustained my contentions. As I found that it was strongly
prejudiced on your side, I refrained from dragging it into the
discussion. But I learned from it that garlic is _allium sativum_, and
I made up my mind to floor you with that morsel of erudition at the
first opportunity. This is it.”
“This is what?”
“Why, the first opportunity, to be sure. I’m glad it came now instead
of at some other time.”
“Why, Cal?”
“Why because we have about eleven hours of tedious waiting time
before us and must get rid of it in the best way we can. I’ve managed
to wear away several minutes of it by talking cheerful nonsense and
spreading it out over as many words as I could. I’ve noticed that
chatter helps mightily to pass away a tedious waiting time, and I’m
profoundly convinced that the very worst thing one can do in a case
like ours is to stretch the time out by grumbling and fretting. If ever
I’m sentenced to be hanged, I shall pass my last night pouring forth
drivelling idiocy, just by way of getting through what I suppose must
be rather a trying time to a condemned man.”
“By the way, Cal, you were just beginning to say something else when
Larry interrupted you to ask about the Latin name of garlic. You
said you were ‘just revolving.’ As you paused without any downward
inflection, and as you certainly were not turning around, I suppose you
meant you were just revolving something or other in your mind.”
“Your sagacity was not at fault, Tom, but my memory is. I was revolving
something in my mind, some nonsense I suppose, but what it was, I am
wholly unable to remember. Never mind; I’ll think of a hundred other
equally foolish things to say between now and midnight, and by that
time we’ll all be asleep, I suppose.”
It was entirely dark now, and Dick Wentworth lighted a lantern and
hoisted it as an anchor light.
“What’s the use, Dick, away out here?” asked one of the others.
“There may be no use in it,” replied Dick, “but a good seaman never
asks himself that question. He just does what the rules of navigation
require, and carries a clear conscience. If a ship has to stop in mid
ocean to repair her machinery even on the calmest and brightest of days
when the whole horizon is clear, the captain orders the three discs set
that mean ‘ship not under control.’ So we’ll let our anchor light do
its duty whether there is need of it or not.”
“That’s right in principle,” said Larry, “and after all it makes no
difference as that lantern hasn’t more than a spoonful of oil in it.
But most accidents, as they are called—”
Larry was not permitted to say what happened to “most accidents,” for
as he spoke Tom called out:
“Hello! it’s raining!”
“Yes—sprinkling,” answered Larry, holding out his hand to feel the
drops, “but it’ll be pouring in five minutes. We must hurry into our
oilskins. There! the anchor light has burned out and we must fumble in
the dark.”
With that he opened a receptacle and hurriedly dragged the yellow,
oil-stiffened garments out, saying as he did so:
“It’s too dark to see which is whose, but we’re all about of a size and
they don’t cut slickers to a very nice fit. So help yourselves and put
’em on as quickly as you can, for it’s beginning to pour down.”
The boys felt about in the dark until presently Cal called out:
“I say, fellows, I want to do some trading. I’ve got hold of three
pairs of trousers and two squams, but no coat. Who wants to swap a coat
for two pairs of trousers and a sou’wester?”
The exchanges were soon made and the waterproof garments donned, but
not before everybody had got pretty wet, for the rain was coming
down in torrents now, such as are never seen except in tropical or
subtropical regions.
The hurried performance served to divert the boys’ minds and cheer
their spirits for a while, but when the “slickers” were on and closely
fastened up, there was nothing to do but sit down again in the dismal
night and wait for the time to wear away.
“Now this is just what we needed,” said Cal, as soon as the others
began to grow silent and moody.
“What, the rain?”
“Yes. It helps to occupy the mind. It gives us something to think
about. It is a thing of interest. By adding to our wretchedness, it
teaches us the lesson that—”
“Oh, we don’t want any lessons, Cal; school’s out,” said Dick. “What I
want to know is whether you ever saw so heavy a rain before. I never
did. Why, there are no longer any drops—nothing but steady streams.
Did you ever see anything like it?”
“Often, and worse,” Larry answered. “This is only an ordinary summer
rain for this coast.”
“Well now, I understand—”
“Permit me to interrupt,” broke in Cal, “long enough to suggest that
the water in this boat is now half way between my ankles and my knees,
and I doubt the propriety of suffering it to rise any higher. Suppose
you pass the pump, Dick.”
Dick handed the pump to his companion, who was not long in clearing the
boat of the water. Then Tom took it and fitfully renewed the pumping
from time to time, by way of keeping her clear. After, perhaps, an
hour, the rain slackened to a drizzle far more depressing to the
spirits than the heavy downpour had been. The worst of the matter was
that the night was an intensely warm one, and the oilskin clothing
in which the boys were closely encased, was oppressive almost beyond
endurance. Presently Dick began unbuttoning his.
“What are you doing, Dick? “Tom asked as he heard the rustle.
“Opening the cerements that encase my person,” Dick answered.
“But what for?”
“Why, to keep from getting too wet. In these things the sweat that
flows through my skin is distinctly more dampening than the drizzling
rain.”
“I’d smile at that,” said Cal, “if it were worth while, as it isn’t.
We’re in the situation Charles Lamb pityingly imagined all mankind to
have been during the ages before candles were invented. If we crack a
joke after nightfall we must feel of our neighbor’s cheek to see if he
is smiling.”
The desire for sleep was strong upon all the company, and one by one
they settled themselves in the least uncomfortable positions possible
under the circumstances, and became silent in the hope of catching at
least a cat nap now and then. There was very little to be done in that
way, for the moment one part of the body was adjusted so that nothing
hurt it, a thwart or a rib, or the edge of the rail, or something else
would begin “digging holes,” as Larry said, in some other part.
Cal was the first to give up the attempt to sleep. After suffering as
much torture as he thought he was called upon to endure he undoubled
himself and sat upright. The rest soon followed his example, and Cal
thought it best to set conversation going again.
“After all,” he said meditatively, “this is precisely what we came to
seek.”
“What? The wretchedness of this night? I confess I am unable to take
that view of it,” answered Larry almost irritatedly.
“That is simply because your sunny temper is enshrouded in the murky
gloom of the night, and your customary ardor dampened by the drizzle.
You are not philosophical. You shouldn’t suffer external things to
disturb your spiritual calm. It does you much harm and no manner of
good. Besides, it is obvious that you judged and condemned my thought
without analyzing it.”
“How is that, Cal? Tell us about it,” said Dick. “Your prosing may put
us to sleep in spite of the angularity and intrusive impertinence of
everything we try to rest ourselves upon. Do your own analyzing and let
us have the benefit of it.”
“Oh, it’s simple enough. I indulged in the reflection that this sort
of thing is precisely what we set out on this expedition to find,
and it is so, if you’ll only think of it. We came in search of two
things—adventure and game. Surely this mud-bank experience is an
adventure, and I’m doing my best to persuade you fellows to be ‘game’
in its endurance.”
“That finishes us,” said Dick. “A pun is discouraging at all times; a
poor, weak-kneed, anæmic pun like that is simply disheartening, and
coming at a time of despondency like this, it reduces every fibre of
character to a pulp. I feel that under its influence my back bone has
been converted into guava jelly.”
“Your speech betrayeth you, Dick. I never heard you sling English more
vigorously than now. And you have regained your cheerfulness too, and
your capacity to take interest. Upon my word, I’ll think up another pun
and hurl it at you if it is to have any such effect as that.”
“While you’re doing it,” said Larry, “I’m going to get myself out of
the sweatbox I’ve been in all night. You may or may not have observed
it, but the rain has ceased, and the tide has turned and if I may be
permitted to quote Shakespeare, ‘The glow-worm shows the matin to be
near.’ In modern phrase, day is breaking, and within about two hours
the _Hunkydory_ will be afloat again.”
With the relief of doffing the oppressive oilskins, and the rapidly
coming daylight, the spirits of the little company revived, and it was
almost a jolly mood in which they made their second meal on hard ship
biscuit and still harder smoked bolognas.
VI
A LITTLE SPORT BY THE WAY
THE day had just asserted itself when Larry, looking out upon the broad
waters of a sound that lay between the dory and the point at which the
dory would have been if she had not gone aground, rather gleefully said:
“We’ll be out of our trouble sooner than we hoped. The _Hunkydory_ will
float well before the full flood.”
“Why do you think so, Larry?” asked Tom, who had not yet recovered
from his depression and was still blaming himself for the mishap and
doubting the possibility of an escape that morning.
“I don’t think it; I know,” answered Larry, beginning to shift ballast
in a way that would make backing off the mud bank easier.
“But how do you know?”
“Because there’s a high wind outside and it’s blowing on shore. Look at
the white caps out there where the water is open to the sea. We’re in
a sort of pocket here, and feel nothing more than a stiff breeze, but
it’s blowing great guns outside, and when that happens on an incoming
tide the water rises a good deal higher than usual. We’ll float before
the tide is at the full.”
“In my judgment we’re afloat now,” said Dick, who had been scrutinizing
the water just around them. “We’re resting on the marsh grass, that’s
all.”
“So we are,” said Cal, after scanning things a bit. “Let’s get to the
oars!”
“Better wait for five or ten minutes,” objected Dick. “We might foul
the rudder in backing off. Then we’d be in worse trouble than we were
before.”
“That’s so, Dick,” answered Cal, restraining his impatience and falling
at once into his peculiarly deliberate utterance. “That is certainly
so, and I have been pleased to observe, Dick, that many things you say
are so.”
“Thank you for the compliment, Cal, and for what it implies to the
contrary.”
“Pray don’t mention it. Take a look over the bow instead and see how
she lies now.”
In spite of their banter, that last ten minutes of waiting seemed
tediously long, especially to Tom, who wanted to feel the boat gliding
through the water again before forgiving himself for having run her
aground. At last the bow caught the force of the incoming flood, and
without help from anybody the dory lifted herself out of the grass and
drifted clear of the mud bank.
The centre board was quickly lowered, the sails hoisted, the burgee
run up to the masthead, and, as the _Hunkydory_ heeled over and began
plowing through the water with a swish, her crew set up a shout of glee
that told of young hearts glad again.
A kindly, gentle thought occurred to Dick Wentworth at that moment. It
was that by way of reassuring Tom and showing him that their confidence
in him was in no way shaken, they should call him to the helm at once.
Dick signalled his suggestion to Larry, by nodding and pointing to Tom,
whose eyes were turned away. Larry was quick to understand.
“I say, Tom,” he called out, “come to the tiller and finish your job.
It’s still your turn to navigate the craft.”
Tom hesitated for a second, but only for a second. Perhaps he
understood the kindly, generous meaning of the summons. However that
might be, he promptly responded, and taking the helm from Larry’s hand,
said, “Thank you, Larry—and all of you.”
That was all he said; indeed, it was all that he could say just then.
Suspecting something of the sort and dreading every manifestation of
emotion, as boys so often do, Larry quickly diverted all minds by
calling out:
“See there! Look! There’s a school of skipjacks breaking water dead
ahead. Let’s have some fun trolling for them. We haven’t any appointed
hours and we’re in no hurry, and trolling for skipjacks is prime sport.”
“What are they, anyhow?” asked Dick, who had become a good deal
interested in the strange varieties of fish he had seen for the first
time on the southern coast.
“Why, fish, of course. Did you think they were humming birds?”
“Well, I don’t know that I should have been greatly astonished if I had
found them to be something of that kind. Since you introduced me to
flying fish the other day, I’m prepared for anything. But what I wanted
to know was what sort of fish the skipjacks are.”
“Oh, that was it? Well, they’re what you call bluefish up north, I
believe. They are variously named along the coast—bluefish, jack
mackerel, horse mackerel, skipfish, skipjacks, and by some other names,
I believe, and they’re about as good fish to eat as any that swims in
salt water, by whatever name you call them.”
“Yes, I’ve eaten them as bluefish,” answered Dick. “They’re considered
a great dainty in Boston and up north generally.”
“They’re all that,” answered Larry, “and catching them is great sport
besides, as you’ll agree after you’ve had an hour or so of it. We must
have some bait first. Tom, run her in toward the mouth of the slough
you see on her starboard bow about a mile away. See it? There, where
the palmetto trees stand. That’s it. She’s heading straight at the
point I mean. Run her in there and bring her head into the wind. Then
we’ll find a good place and beach her, and I’ll go ashore with the cast
net and get a supply of shrimps.”
“Is it a wallflower or a widow you’re talking about, Larry?” languidly
asked Cal, while his brother was getting the cast net out and arranging
it for use.
“What do you mean, Cal? Some pestilent nonsense, I’ll be bound.”
“Not at all,” drawled Cal. “I was chivalrously concerned for the
unattached and unattended female of whom you’ve been speaking. You’ve
mentioned her six times, and always without an escort.”
“Oh, I see,” answered Larry, who was always quick to catch Cal’s rather
obscure jests. “Well, by the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘her,’ I meant the good
ship _Hunkydory_. She is now nearing the shore and if you don’t busy
yourself arranging trolling lines and have them ready by the time I
get back on board of her with a supply of shrimps, I’ll see to it that
you’re in no fit condition to get off another feeble-minded joke like
that for hours to come. There, Tom, give her just a capful of wind and
run her gently up that little scrap of sandy beach. No, no, don’t haul
your sheet so far—ease it off a bit, or she’ll run too far up the
shore. There! That’s better. The moment her nose touches let the sheet
run free. Good! Dick himself couldn’t have done that better.”
With that he sprang ashore, and with the heavily leaded cast net over
his arm and a galvanized iron bait pail in his hand, hurried along
the bank to the mouth of the slough, where he knew there would be
multitudes of shrimps gathered for purposes of feeding. After three
or four casts of the net he spread it, folded, over the top of his
bait bucket to keep the shrimps he had caught from jumping out. Within
fifteen minutes after leaping ashore he was back on board again with a
bucket full of the bait he wanted.
“Now, then,” he said to Dick and Tom, “Cal will show you how to do the
thing. I’ll sail the boat back and forth through the schools, spilling
wind so as to keep speed down. Oh, it’s great sport.”
“Well, you shall have your share of it then,” said Dick, carefully
coiling his line. “After I’ve tried it a little, and seen what sort of
sailing it needs, I’ll relieve you at the tiller and you shall take my
line.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Cal with a slower drawl than
usual by way of giving emphasis to his words. “Not if I see you first.
After Larry has run us through the school two or three times, missing
it more than half the time, I’ll take the tiller myself and give you a
real chance to hook a fish or two.”
Dick knew Cal well enough to understand that he was in earnest and that
there would be no use in protesting or arguing the matter. Besides
that, he hooked a big fish just at that moment, and was jerked nearly
off his feet. The strength of the pull astonished him for a moment. He
had never encountered a fish of any kind that could tug like that, and
for the moment he forgot that the dory was doing most of the pulling.
In the meanwhile he had lost his fish by holding his line too firmly
and dragging the hook out of its mouth.
“That’s your first lesson,” said Cal, as deliberately as if there had
been no exciting sport on hand, and with like deliberation letting his
own line slip slowly through his tightened fingers. “You must do it as
I am doing it now,” he continued. “You see, I have a fish at the other
end of my line and I want to bring him aboard. So instead of holding
as hard as a check post, I yield a little to the exigencies of the
situation, letting the line slip with difficulty through my fingers at
first and long enough to transmit the momentum of the boat to the fish.
Then, having got his finny excellency well started in the way he should
go, I encourage persistency in well doing on his part by drawing in
line. Never mind your own line now. We’ve run through the school and
Larry is heaving-to to let Tom and me land our fish. You observe that
Tom has so far profited by his close study of my performance that—yes,
he has landed the first fish, and here comes mine into the boat. You
can set her going again, Larry; I won’t drag a line this time, but
devote all my abilities to the instruction of Dick.”
On the next dash and the next no fish were hooked. Then, as the boat
sailed through the school again, Dick landed two beauties, and Tom one.
“That ends it for to-day,” said Larry, laying the boat’s course toward
the heavily wooded mainland at the point where Cal had suggested a stay
of several days for shooting.
“But why not make one more try?” eagerly asked Tom, whose enthusiasm in
the sport was thoroughly aroused; “haven’t we time enough?”
“Yes,” said Larry, “but we have fish enough also. The catch will last
us as long as we can keep the fish fresh, which isn’t very long in this
climate, and we never catch more fish or kill more game than we can
dispose of. It is unsportsmanlike to do that, and it is wanton cruelty
besides.”
“That’s sound, and sensible, and sportsmanlike,” said Dick,
approvingly. “And besides, we really haven’t any time to spare if we’re
going to stop on the island yonder for dinner, as we agreed, and—”
“And as at least one appetite aboard the _Hunkydory_ insists that we
shall,” interrupted Cal. “It’s after three o’clock now.”
“So say we all of us,” sang Tom to the familiar after-dinner tune, and
Larry shifted the course so as to head for an island nearly a mile
away.
There a hasty dinner was cooked and eaten, but hasty as it was, it
occupied more time in preparation than had been reckoned upon, so that
it was fully five o’clock when the dory was again cast off.
In the meanwhile the wind had sunk to a mere zephyr, scarcely
sufficient to give the heavy boat steerage way, and, late in the day,
as it was, the sun shone with a sweltering fervor that caused the boys
to look forward with dread to the prospect of having to resort to the
oars.
That time came quickly, and the sails, now useless in the hot, still
air, were reluctantly lowered.
A stretch of water, more than half a dozen miles in width, lay before
them, and the tide was strong against them. But they pluckily plied the
oars and the heavy boat slowly but surely overcame the distance.
They had found no fresh water on the island, and there was very little
in the water kegs when they left it for their far-away destination. The
hard work of rowing against the tide in a hot atmosphere, made them all
thirsty, so that long before they reached their chosen landing place,
the last drop of the water was gone, with at least two more hours of
rowing in prospect.
“There’s a spring where I propose to land,” said Cal, by way of
reassuring his companions. “As I remember it, the water’s a bit
brackish, but it is drinkable at any rate.”
“Are you sure you can find the spot in the dark, Cal?” asked Larry,
with some anxiety in his voice. “For it’ll be pitch dark before we get
there.”
“Oh, yes, I can find it,” his brother answered.
“There’s a deep indentation in the coast there—an inlet, in fact,
which runs several miles up through the woods. We’ll run in toward the
shore presently and skirt along till we come to the mouth of the creek.
I’ll find it easily enough.”
But in spite of his assurances, the boys, now severely suffering with
thirst, had doubts, and to make sure, they approached the shore and
insisted that Cal should place himself on the bow, where he could see
the land as the boat skirted it.
This left three of them to handle four oars. One of them used a pair,
in the stern rowlocks, where the width of the boat was not too great
for sculls, while the other two plied each an oar amidships.
In their impatience, and tortured by thirst as they were, the three
oarsmen put their backs into the rowing and maintained a stroke that
sent the boat along at a greater speed than she had ever before made
with the oars alone. Still it seemed to them that their progress was
insufferably slow.
Presently Cal called to them: “Port—more to port—steady! there! we’re
in the creek and have only to round one bend of it. Starboard! Steady!
Way enough.”
A moment later the dory slid easily up a little sloping beach and
rested there.
“Where’s your spring, Cal?” the whole company cried in chorus, leaping
ashore.
“This way—here it is.”
The spring was a small pool, badly choked, but the boys threw
themselves down and drank of it greedily. It was not until their thirst
was considerably quenched that they began to observe how brackish the
water was. When the matter was mentioned at last, Cal dismissed it with
one of his profound discourses.
“I’ve drunk better water than that, I’ll admit; but I never drank any
water that I enjoyed more.” Then he added:
“You fellows are ungrateful, illogical, unfair, altogether
unreasonable. That water is so good that you never found out its
badness till after it had done you a better service than any other
water in the world ever did. Yet now you ungratefully revile its lately
discovered badness, while omitting to remember its previously enjoyed
and surpassing goodness. I am so ashamed of you that I’m going to
start a fire and get supper going. I for one want some coffee, and it
is going to be made of water from that spring, too. Those who object to
brackish coffee will simply have to go without.”
VII
AN ENEMY IN CAMP
NO sooner was the camp fire started than Cal went to the boat and
brought away a piece of tarpaulin, used to protect things against rain.
With this and a lighted lantern he started off through the thicket
toward the mouth of the little estuary, leaving Dick to make coffee and
fry fish, while Larry mixed a paste of corn meal, water and a little
salt, which he meant presently to spread into thin sheets and bake in
the hot embers, as soon as the fire should burn down sufficiently to
make a bed of coals.
As Cal was setting out, Tom, who had no particular duty to do at the
moment, asked:
“Where are you off to, Cal?”
“Come along with me and see,” Cal responded without answering the
direct question. “I may need your help. Suppose you bring the big bait
bucket with you. Empty the shrimps somewhere. They’re all too dead to
eat, but we may need ’em for bait.”
Tom accepted the invitation and the two were quickly beyond the bend
in the creek and well out of sight of the camp. As they neared the
open water, Cal stopped, held the lantern high above his head, and
looked about him as if in search of something. Presently he lowered the
lantern, cried out, “Ah, there it is,” and strode on rapidly through
the dense undergrowth.
Tom had no time to ask questions. He had enough to do to follow his
long-legged companion.
After a brief struggle with vines and undergrowths of every kind,
the pair came out upon a little sandy beach with a large oyster bank
behind it, and Tom had no further need to ask questions, for Cal spread
the tarpaulin out flat upon the sands, and both boys began gathering
oysters, not from the solid bank where thousands of them had their
shells tightly welded together, but from the water’s edge, and even
from the water itself wherever it did not exceed a foot or so in depth.
Cal explained that these submerged oysters, being nearly all the time
under salt water, and growing singly, or nearly so, were far fatter and
better than those in the bank or near its foot.
It did not take long to gather quite as many of the fat bivalves as the
two could conveniently carry in the tarpaulin and the bait pail, and as
Cal was tying up the corners of the cloth Tom began scrutinizing the
sandy beach at a point which the ordinary tides did not reach. As he
did so he observed a queer depression in the sand and asked Cal to come
and see what it meant.
After a single glance at it, Cal exclaimed gleefully:
“Good for you, Tom. This is the luckiest find yet.”
With that he placed the lantern in a favorable position, emptied the
bait pail, hurriedly knelt down, and with his hands began digging away
the sand.
“But what is it, Cal? What are you digging for?”
“I’ll show you in half a minute,” said the other, continuing to dig
diligently. Less than the half minute later he began drawing out of the
sand a multitude of snow-white eggs about the size of a walnut. As Tom
looked on in open-mouthed wonder, he thought there must be no end to
the supply.
“What are they, Cal?” the boy asked.
“Turtle’s eggs, and there’s a bait bucket full of them. You’ve made the
luckiest find of all, Tom,” he said again in congratulation.
“Are they good to eat?”
“Good to eat? Is anything you ever tasted good to eat? Why, Tom,
they’re about the rarest delicacy known to civilized man. In Charleston
they sell at fabulous prices, when there happen to be any there to
sell. Now we must hurry back to the fire, for the ash cakes must be
about done and the coffee made.”
After a moment or two of silence, Tom asked:
“Why did you think there was an oyster bank down there, Cal?”
“I noticed it as we came into the creek and I took pains to remember
its location. But here we are. See, fellows, what Tom has found! Now
bring on your coffee and your ash cakes and your fish, and we’ll feast
like a company of Homer’s warriors. It won’t take long to boil the eggs
in salt water—ten minutes is the allotted time, I believe, in the
case of turtle’s eggs, and during that time we can be eating the other
things and filling up with fire-opened oysters.”
With that he threw three or four oysters upon the coals, removing them
as soon as they opened and swallowing them from the shell. The others
followed his example.
Of course it really was an excellent supper the boys were eating out
there under the stars, but sharp-set hunger made it seem even better
than it was, and the contrast between it and the supper of bologna
sausages and hardtack of the night before, added greatly to the zest
of their feasting. They rejoiced, too, in being free, out there in
the woodlands, with no dismal rain to depress their spirits and no
restraint of any kind upon their liberty.
But they were all very tired after their sleepless night before and
their hard-working day, and without argument or discussion, one by one
of them stretched himself before the fire not long after supper, and
fell asleep. Cal remained awake longer than the rest, though he, too,
was lying flat upon his back, ready to welcome sleep as soon as it
should come to his eyelids.
Before it came he was moved by jealousy or mischief to disturb the
others with an admonition.
“You fellows are recklessly trifling with your health, every one of
you, and it is my duty to warn you of the consequences. In allowing
so brief a time to elapse between the consumption of food in generous
quantities, and your retirement to your couches, you are inviting
indigestion, courting bad dreams and recklessly risking the permanent
organic and functional impairment of your constitutions—to say nothing
of your by-laws, orders of business, rules of procedure and other
things that should be equally precious to you.”
“_Will_ you shut up, Cal?” muttered Dick, half awake. Tom remained
unconscious and Larry responded only with a snore.
Presently even Cal’s wakefulness yielded, his thoughts wandered, and he
fell into a sound slumber.
The woodlands were as still as woodlands at night ever are; the stars
shone brilliantly in a perfectly clear sky; the brush wood fire died
down to a mass of glowing coals and gray ashes, and still the weary
ship’s company slept on without waking or even moving.
Then something happened, and Larry, who was always alert, even in his
sleep, suddenly sat up, at the same time silently grasping the gun
that lay by his side. He was sure he had heard a noise in his sleep,
but now that he was wide awake, everything seemed profoundly still.
Nevertheless he waited and watched. Then suddenly he brought his gun to
his shoulder, and in sharp, ringing tones cried out:
“Drop that!”
Instantly all the boys were standing with their guns in hand, not
knowing what had happened, but ready to meet whatever might come. A
second or two later Larry, still sitting and aiming his gun over his
bent knees, called out again:
“Drop that, I say! Drop it instantly or I’ll shoot. I’ve got a bead on
you. Now throw up your hands! Quick, and no fooling.”
[Illustration: DICK, CAL, AND TOM SEARCHED THE MAN’S CLOTHES.
_Page 73._]
As he gave this command he rose and slowly advanced toward the dory,
keeping his gun levelled from his shoulder.
It was difficult to see anything, until Tom thought to throw a bunch
of dry brush upon the coals. As it blazed up the boys saw the man whom
Larry had held up. He was standing by the boat, his back toward them
and his hands, held up in obedience to Larry’s command.
“Now, boys, see what shooting irons he has about him,” directed Larry,
who stood with the muzzle of his shotgun less than three feet away from
the prisoner.
Dick, Cal and Tom searched the man’s clothes, but found no weapons
of any sort there. Tom was thoughtful enough to search his
long-legged leather boots, and from each of them he presently drew a
murderous-looking army revolver. Without saying a word, the boy sprung
the pistols open and emptied them of their cartridges, which he tossed
into the creek.
“Now you may let your hands down,” said Larry, at the same time
lowering his piece, but continuing to hold it with both barrels at full
cock.
“Cal, take care of that box of cartridges I made him drop, and take a
lantern and look the boat over. He may have done some damage before
trying to steal our ammunition.”
Up to this time the intruder, a huge man of evil countenance, had
spoken no word. Now he suddenly took the initiative.
“Who are you fellers, anyhow, and what are you a-doing here?” he asked.
“Curiously enough,” responded Cal, “those are precisely the questions
I was going to ask you. Suppose you answer first. Who are you and what
are you doing here?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” the intruder replied,
truculently.
“Perhaps you’d better reconsider that,” said Cal. “You’re a prisoner,
you know, caught in the act of stealing our ammunition, and we are
armed. We can chuck you into our boat and take you to a magistrate, who
will provide you with jail accommodations for a while. Give an account
of yourself. What did you come to our camp for?”
“I come,” he replied with somewhat less assurance in his tone, “to find
out who you fellers was, and what you’re a-doin’ here where you don’t
belong, and to give you fair warnin’ to git away from here jest as
quick as you know how. Ef you don’t, it’ll be a good deal the worse for
you.”
“We’ll do nothing of the kind,” broke in Larry. “We’re on land that
belongs to Mr. Hayward, a friend of ours, and we’re going to stay here
as long as we like.”
“You’ll do it at your own resk, then. You’ve got me hard and fast, but
they’s others besides me.”
“Now listen to me,” said Larry, rising and speaking sharply. “We’ve
got you hard and fast, as you say, and we could take you to jail or we
could hold you as a hostage, if you know what that means; but we’ll do
neither. We’re not afraid of you or the ‘others’ you mentioned. We are
going to turn you loose and dare you to do your worst. We’ve a right to
be where we are, and we’re going to stay here till we’re ready to go.
We’re armed, and we know how to shoot. But there’ll be no holding up
of hands the next time any of you invade our camp, and there’ll be no
challenging. It’ll be quick triggers. Now go! We expect to stay here
for three or four days. Go!”
The man moved off through the woods, with a peculiar limp in his left
leg, turning about when at a little distance, and shouting:
“It’ll be the worse for you! I’ve give you fair warnin’.”
VIII
CAL BEGINS TO DO THINGS
“WONDER what it all means,” said Tom, when the man had limped away
through the undergrowth and out of hearing.
“It means, for one thing,” said Cal, “that we’re practically in a state
of siege here. We must all be on the alert and never all sleep at once.”
“Yes,” said Larry, “and that isn’t enough. We must guard ourselves
against surprise by day as well as by night. As soon as it grows light
enough in the morning I’ll explore our surroundings and see what may
best be done. It is now a trifle after four o’clock, and we shan’t go
to sleep again. Why not have breakfast and make a long day of it. I
want to get some game, for one thing. I wonder if that fellow’s gang,
whoever they are, have cleaned all the wild things out of these woods.”
“You can rest easy as to that,” said Cal. “We’ll have something fit
to eat for dinner to-day, and I’ll have it here in time to cook it
properly for that meal. What I am wondering about is who those fellows
are, and what they are doing around here, and why they don’t want us
around.”
“Then you believe what that fellow said?” asked Dick. “You believe in
the existence of those others’ with whose vengeance he threatened us?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I don’t. There may be another man down here with that one,
fishing or hunting, but I don’t believe in the presence of a company of
them.”
“But why not, Dick?”
“Simply because it is unlikely. On its face it seems to me more likely
that, as we had caught that fellow stealing, he invented the formidable
and vengeful force theory just to scare us into letting him go. What
would there be for such a band as he suggests to do down here in these
lonely woods? What is there here to attract such a band?”
“I am not prepared to answer those questions,” said Cal. “I can’t
imagine what a gang of that sort could be doing here, or why they are
here, or anything about it. But it is my firm conviction that we have
need to keep cartridges in our guns and about our persons.”
“Oh, that’s of course,” answered Dick; “though if there is any such
gang and they don’t attack us early this morning, we needn’t look for
them before night, so we’ll have plenty of time for getting a good
supply of game.”
“All right,” said Cal. “And by way of making sure, as it’s coming on
daylight now, I’ll go and get that turkey gobbler I was speaking of.
I’ll be back to breakfast.”
With that Cal started off, gun in hand, leaving the rest to wonder.
“How can he be so confident of finding game?” Dick asked, with a note
of incredulity in his voice.
“I don’t know,” answered Larry, “but it’s nine chances in ten that
he’ll do it. He’s the wiliest hunter I ever knew, and with all his
chatter, he never says a thing of that kind without meaning it;
especially he never gives a positive promise unless he is confident of
his ability to fulfill it. So I expect to see him back here before we
have breakfast ready, with a turkey gobbler slung over his shoulders.”
“Why ‘gobbler,’ Larry?” Dick asked, looking up from the mortar in which
he was pounding the coffee.
“How do you mean, Dick?”
“Why, it wasn’t just a turkey that Cal promised us, but specifically a
gobbler, and now when you speak of it you also assume that the bird he
is to kill will be of the male sex. Why may it not be a turkey hen?”
“Why, he wouldn’t think of shooting a turkey hen at this time of year.
They’re bringing up their chicks now and they won’t be fit to eat for a
month yet. So if he brings any turkey with him it’ll be a bearded old
gobbler as fat as butter.”
At that moment a shot was heard at some distance. The next instant
there was another, after which all was still.
“I say, Larry, I don’t like that,” said Tom uneasily.
“Don’t like what?”
“Why, those two shots in quick succession. Maybe Cal has met some of
that gang and they’ve shot him. Hadn’t we better go to his assistance?”
“You may go if you are uneasy, Tom,” answered Larry; “but it isn’t at
all necessary I think. Cal knows how to take care of himself.”
“But how do you account for the two shots in such quick succession?”
“By the fact that Cal usually hunts with cartridges in both barrels of
his gun just as other people do. He may have missed at the first fire.
In that case he would take a second shot if he could get it.”
Tom was somewhat reassured by this suggestion, but he was not entirely
free from anxiety until ten minutes later when he heard the crackling
of dry branches under Cal’s big boots. A moment afterwards Cal himself
appeared, with two huge gobblers slung over his neck.
“So you got one with each barrel,” quietly commented Larry, feeling of
the birds to test their fatness.
“Yes, of course. That’s what I fired twice for. Did you imagine I’d
shoot the second barrel just for fun? By the way, isn’t breakfast
nearly ready? I’m pretty sharp set in this crisp morning air.”
“I must say, Cal,” said Dick, as the little company sat on the ground
to eat their breakfast, “you’re the very coolest hand I ever saw.
Why, if I had shot two big gobblers out of one flock of turkeys I’d
be tiring the rest of you with minute descriptions—more or less
inaccurate, perhaps—of just how I did it, and just how I felt while
doing it, and just how the turkeys behaved, and all the rest of it.”
“What’s the use?” asked Cal between sips of coffee. “The facts are
simple enough. We wanted some turkeys and I went out to get them. I
knew where they were roosting and I got there before time for them to
quit the roost. I shot one from the limb on which he had passed the
night. The others flew, of course, and I shot one of them on the wing.
That’s absolutely all there is to tell. I like to get my game when I
go for it but I never could see the use of holding a coroner’s inquest
over it.”
“What puzzles me,” said Tom, “is how on earth you knew just where those
turkeys were roosting. Did you just guess it?”
“No, of course not. If I had, I shouldn’t have been so ready to promise
you a gobbler as I was.”
“Then how did you know?”
“I saw the roost last night.”
“When, and how?”
“When you and I were out after the oysters. Do you remember that just
before we came out of the woods and upon the beach, I stopped and held
up the lantern and looked all around?”
“Yes, but you were looking for the oyster bed and you found it.”
“I was looking for the oyster bed, of course. But I was looking for
anything else there might be to see, too. I always do that. When I was
at the bow last night looking for the mouth of this creek I saw the
oyster bed, and marked its locality in my mind. In the same way, when
I was looking for the oyster bed with the lantern above my head, I saw
the turkey-roost and carefully made mental note of its surroundings
so that I might go straight to it this morning. Is there any other
gentleman in the company who would like to ask me questions with a view
to the satisfaction of his curiosity or the improvement of his mind?”
“I for one would like to ask you what else you saw this morning while
you were out after the turkeys,” answered Tom. “Apparently you never
look for one thing without finding some others of equal or superior
importance. Did you do anything of that sort this morning?”
“Yes, I think so. I made two observations, in fact, and both of them
seem to me to possess a certain measure of interest.”
Cal paused in his speech at this point and proceeded to eat his
breakfast quite as if the others had not been waiting for him to go on
with whatever it was that he had to tell.
“You’re the most provoking fellow I ever saw, Cal,” said Tom,
impatiently. “When you have nothing to say that is in the least worth
saying, you grind out words like a water mill, till you bury yourself
and the rest of us in the chaffy nonsense. But when you have something
to tell that we’re all eager to hear, you shut up like a clam at low
tide. Go on, can’t you?”
“I have always heard,” replied Cal, in leisurely fashion, as if his
only purpose had been to prevent the conversation from flagging, “that
one of the most necessary arts of the orator is that of getting his
audience into a condition of anxious waiting for his words before he
really says the thing they want to hear. I cannot myself claim the
title of orator, but I’m practicing and—”
“_Will_ you stop that nonsense, Cal, and tell us what you have in mind?
If not we’ll duck you in the creek.”
It was Larry who uttered this threat.
“I’ve had worse things than that happen to me,” answered Cal,
imperturbably. “The morning is sunny and the sea water on this coast
closely approximates tepidity. By the way, Dick, our higher water
temperature seems to mar the edibility of some fish that are deemed
good at the North. There’s what you call the weak fish—”
He stopped suddenly, for the reason that Dick had approached him from
behind, seized his shoulders and toppled him over upon the ground.
“Now tell us what we’re waiting to hear!” Dick commanded, still holding
his comrade down upon his back.
“My mouth’s full of sand,” Cal managed to say; “let me up and I’ll make
a clean breast of it, on honor.”
Dick loosed his hold, and as soon as Cal had rinsed his mouth, he
redeemed his promise.
“Well, the first thing I discovered was that there’s a promising young
deer at present haunting this neck of the woods, and we’re all going
out to involve it in controversy with us to-day, and then shoot it as
its just due for defying us in such impudent fashion.”
“Venison!” exclaimed Tom enthusiastically; “how my mouth waters for a
taste of its juiciness! But how do you know about it, Cal?”
“It isn’t venison yet,” slowly answered the other. “You are much too
hasty in jumping at conclusions. That deer will not be venison until
we find it and convert it into meat of that justly esteemed sort. Now
to answer your question; I discovered its tracks and followed them far
enough to know whither it was wending its way and about where to look
for it when you fellows quit your ceaseless talking and are ready for
the chase. There’s no great hurry, however, as the tracks were made
this morning and—”
“How do you know that?” interrupted Tom.
“I smelt them.”
“But how? I don’t understand.”
“It oughtn’t to be difficult for even you, Tom, to make out that if I
smelt the tracks, I employed my nose for that purpose. I usually smell
things in just that way.”
“Oh, pshaw, you know what I mean. I didn’t imagine any creature but a
well-trained hound could discover a scent in a deer’s track.”
“Obviously your imagination is in need of a reinforcement of facts
then. I’ll furnish them. In the middle of a deer’s foot there is a
little spot that bears an odor sweeter than that of attar of roses
and quite as pronounced. For that reason many young ladies, and some
who are not so young perhaps, like to keep a deer’s foot among their
daintiest lingerie. Now, when a deer puts his foot down it spreads
sufficiently to bring that perfumed spot in contact with the earth
and the track is delicately perfumed. When the odor is pronounced it
indicates that the track is newly made.
“Now that I have fully answered your intruded, if not intrusive
question, Tom, perhaps I may be permitted to finish the sentence you
interrupted.”
“Certainly, go on. Really, Cal, I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t. I was saying that there is no need of haste in
going after that deer, because the tracks were made this morning,
and the marshy thicket toward which the deer was making his way is
sufficiently rich in succulent grasses and juicy young cane to occupy
his mind for the entire day, and several days. A little later we’ll cut
off his retreat on the land side of the point, and if we don’t get him
the fault will be with our inexpertness with our guns.”
“That’s all right, Cal,” broke in Larry, “and I’m glad you’ve marked
down the deer; but just now I must be off to plan our defense. You’ve
taken so long to tell us about your first discovery that I can’t wait
to hear about the second.”
“Oh, yes, you can,” replied Cal. “It will save you a lot of trouble,
and I can tell it in about half a dozen words.”
“Go ahead and tell it, then.”
“It is simply that I have solved the whole problem of defense.”
“How? Tell us about it!”
“Why, just above our camp—up the creek a few hundred yards, there’s
a big gum tree, with an easily accessible crotch, comfortable to sit
in, from which the one playing sentinel can see everything we want to
see. He can look clear across this point and half a mile or more up
the creek, and by turning his head he can see the camp itself and the
_Hunkydory_ and even the soiled spots on your coats. All we’ve got to
do is to keep a sentinel in that gum tree, and nobody can approach our
camp unseen, whether he comes by land or by water. Come on and I’ll
show you.”
The whole company followed Cal, and after a minute inspection found the
lookout to be quite as satisfactory as he had represented it to be. But
Tom, who had made up his mind to acquire Cal’s habit of observation,
noticed some things about the place that aroused his curiosity. He
said nothing about them at the time, but resolved to read the riddle
of their meaning if he could. To that end he asked to be the first to
serve as sentinel.
“All right,” said Larry. “You can stay here till we’re ready to go
after that deer. Then I’ll take your place.”
“But why?”
“Oh, so that you may have your share in the deer hunt.”
“You needn’t either of you bother about that,” said Cal. “Our camp can
be seen all the way to the cane brake where the deer is browsing, and
also from one of the points at which a man must stand with his gun
when we drive the deer. So we shan’t need any other sentinel and we’ll
all go. With all of us together over there we’ll be ready to repel any
attack on ourselves, and if anybody invades the camp we’ll swoop down
upon him and exterminate him.”
There was a good deal to be done at the camp before going after the
deer. The turkeys were to be picked and dressed and one of them to be
roasted. Some fishing was to be done and it was necessary to put up
some sort of bush shelter for use in case of rain. So, leaving Tom as
sentinel, the other boys went back to the anchorage, and Tom began his
scrutiny of the things he had observed.
As a last injunction Larry said: “You can come in to dinner, Tom, when
I whistle through my fingers. If there’s nobody in sight then, we can
risk the dinner hour without a sentry.”
IX
A FANCY SHOT
THE things that had attracted Tom’s attention were so trifling in
themselves that only a person alertly observing would have noticed them
at all. Yet Tom thought they might have significance, and he was bent
upon finding out what that significance was.
First of all, he had observed that a little blind trail seemed to lead
westward from the tree, and in no other direction, as if it had been
made by someone who visited the tree and then returned by the way he
had come, going no farther in any direction. The trail was so blind
that Tom could not be sure it was a trail at all. If so, it had been
traversed very infrequently, and at rather long intervals. If it had
been the only suggestive thing seen, the boy would probably not have
given it a thought. But he observed also that the bark of the gum tree
was a trifle scarred at two points, suggesting that some one with heavy
boots on had recently climbed it.
As soon as the other boys had gone back to camp, Tom set to work to
make a closer inspection of his surroundings. He climbed the tree to
the crotch and looked about him. There was nothing there, but from that
height he could trace the little trail through the bushes for perhaps
fifty or a hundred yards. He satisfied himself in that way that it was
really a trail, made by the passage of some living thing, man or beast,
through the dense undergrowth.
“I’ll follow that trail after a while,” he resolved, “but I’ll say
nothing about it now. I might be laughed at for my pains. Not that I
mind that, of course. We fellows are well used to being laughed at
among ourselves. But when I say anything about this, I want to have
something to tell that is worth telling. After all, it may be only the
path of a deer or of one of the queer little wild horses—tackeys, they
call them—that live in the swamps. Or a wild hog may have made it. I
don’t know, and I’m not going to talk about the thing till I can talk
to some purpose.”
As he wriggled around in the crotch, he dropped his knife from his
pocket.
“That’s a reminder,” he reflected, “that people sometimes drop things
when they don’t intend to. If anybody else has been roosting up here
he may have dropped things, too. I’ll recover my knife and then I’ll
search around the tree.”
He was on the ground now, and having replaced his knife he began a
minute search of the space for ten or twenty feet around the tree. It
was thickly carpeted with the densely-growing vegetation that is always
quick to take possession of every unoccupied inch of ground in the far
southern swamps and woodlands. Searching such a space for small objects
was almost a hopeless task, and finding nothing, Tom was on the point
of giving up the attempt, when he trod upon something. Examining it,
he found it to be an old corncob pipe with a short cane stem. It was
blackened by long smoking, and that side of it which had lain next to
the ground had begun to decay. But there was half-burned tobacco in it
still.
From all these facts Tom thought it likely that the pipe, while still
alight, had been dropped from the tree, and that its owner had failed
to find it upon his descent.
“That means that somebody was using this tree for a lookout a good
while ago. I can’t imagine why or wherefore, but I mean to find out if
I can. Just now I hear Larry’s whistle calling me to dinner. I wonder
how he manages to make that shrill shrieking noise by putting two
fingers into his mouth and blowing between them. I must get him to
teach me the trick.”
It was decided at dinner that the deer hunt should occur as soon as
that meal was finished.
“The deer will be lying down, chewing the cud, at this time of day,”
explained Larry to his two guests, who had never shared a deer hunt,
“and so we shan’t disturb him in placing ourselves. What’s the nature
of the ground, Cal? Can three of us cover it while the fourth drives?”
“We must,” Cal answered. “It may give some one of us a very long shot,
but with nitro-powder cartridges these modern guns of ours will pitch
buckshot a long way. The marsh in which the deer is feeding is on a
sort of peninsula which is surrounded by water except on one side. That
land side is a rather narrow neck, narrow enough for three guns to
cover it, I think, if the guns are well handled. Fortunately the marsh
itself is small. If it weren’t we might drive all day, as we have no
dogs, without routing the deer out. As it is, I think I can start him,
and I’ll do the driving after I post you three at the three best points
of observation.”
“How do you ‘drive,’ as you call it, Cal?” Dick asked.
“Well, if we had dogs and horses, as we always do in a regular deer
hunt, the man appointed to drive would ride around to the farther side
of the swamp, and put the dogs into it. The dogs would scatter out
into an irregular line and zigzag to one side and the other in search
of the quarry. In that way they would advance till they found the deer
and set him running toward the line of men on the posts. Every one of
these would be intently looking and listening till the deer should come
running at top speed in an effort to dash past his enemies and escape.
The man on the post nearest where he breaks through is expected to
bring him down with a quick shot aimed at his side, just behind the
shoulder.”
“But what if he misses?”
“In that case the deer has won the game. As we have no dogs and there
are only four of us, I mean to post you three at the points I find best
suited, and then I’ll play hounds myself. I’ll go round to the farther
side of the little swamp, invade it as noisily as I can, whooping and
hallooing in the hope of getting the deer up. If I do, he’ll make a
dash to get out of the swamp, and if no one of you manages to shoot
him in the act, we’ll have none of that juicy venison that you, Tom,
thought you had almost in your mouth when I first told you that the
deer was here. Now let us be off. We’re burning daylight. Load with
buckshot cartridges.”
When the neck of the little peninsula was reached, Cal bade his
comrades wait at the point from which their camp could be seen, while
he should go over the ground and pick out the places to be occupied as
posts.
On his return he placed the others each at the point he had chosen for
him, taking care that Tom and Dick should have the places near which
the quarry was most likely to make his effort to break through.
“Now, you must keep perfectly still,” he admonished the two
inexperienced ones, “and keep both eyes and three ears, if you have so
many, wide open. You may see the deer without hearing him, or you may
hear him tearing through the bushes before you see him. That will give
you notice of his coming, but don’t let him fool you. He may not come
straight on from the spot at which you hear him. If he catches sight,
sound or smell of you, he’ll veer off in some other direction. So if
you hear him coming don’t move a muscle except those of your eyes.
“Now I’m off to drive. If I can, I’ll get him up and away. After that
everything will depend upon you.”
It was nearly half an hour before the boys heard Cal’s shoutings in the
distance, but slowly coming nearer. After that, in the eager watching
and waiting, the seconds seemed minutes, and the minutes dragged
themselves out into what seemed hours.
At last, however, Dick heard the deer breaking through bushes just
ahead of him. In another second the frightened creature burst into view
and Dick fired, missing the game, which instantly changed its course
and ran away toward its left, with the speed of the wind. Dick, in his
excited disappointment, fired his second barrel at a hopelessly long
range.
Almost immediately he heard a shot from Tom’s gun, and after that
all was still. Cal struggled out of the swamp, while Larry and Dick
made their way toward Tom’s post, “to hear,” Cal said, “just what
excuses the novices have invented on the spur of the moment by way of
accounting for their bad marksmanship.”
“I have none to offer,” said Dick, manfully. “I missed my shot, that’s
all.”
“How is it with you, Tom? What plea have you to offer?”
“None whatever,” answered Tom. “Yonder lies the deer by the side of the
fallen tree. He was taking a flying leap over it when I shot him—on
the wing, as it were.”
The congratulations that followed this complete surprise may be
imagined. Cal fairly “wreaked himself upon expression” in sounding his
praises of Tom’s superb marksmanship, and better still, his coolness
and calmness under circumstances, as Cal phrased it, “that might have
disturbed the equipoise of an Egyptian mummy’s nerve centres.”
Tom took all this congratulation and extravagance of praise modestly
and with as little show of emotion as he had manifested while making
his difficult shot.
Perhaps this was even more to his credit than the other. For this was
the first time Tom Garnett had ever seen a deer hunt, or a live deer,
either, for that matter.
X
TOM’S DISCOVERIES
AS no attack had been made upon the camp the boys gradually relaxed
the vigilance of their guard duty; but they still maintained a sentry
at the lookout tree at night and made occasional visits of observation
during the day, going to the tree sufficiently often to avoid being
taken by surprise.
“And what if they should attack us in daytime?” argued Dick. “We’d be
here, armed and ready for them.”
There was fishing to be done, and a game of chess or backgammon was
usually in progress. Moreover, like any other company of bright youths
accustomed to think, they had enough to talk about, many things to
explain to each other, many stories to tell, and many questions
to discuss. Thus the daytime sentry duty was reduced to nearly no
activity, except upon Tom’s part. He was apparently fond of going to
the lookout and remaining there sometimes for hours at a time.
The others did not know why he should care for that as for an
amusement. Tom did, but he said nothing. Tom was finding out something
that the others knew nothing about.
On the next morning but one after the deer hunt he had climbed to
the crotch of the tree to make a further study of the trail he had
discovered. After a little while he decided to climb farther up the
tree, in order to secure a better view.
From that loftier perch he saw something at a distance that deeply
interested him. It was a sort of hovel, so buried in undergrowth that
it would have been scarcely visible at all except to one looking from a
high place as he was.
But what interested him most was that presently he saw the lame
intruder of two nights before come out of the hovel and limp down
toward the shore, where, as Tom easily made out, there was a small,
crooked little cove running into the woods, not from the creek, but
from the broader water outside.
Tom lost sight of the man when he reached the cove, and so did not make
out what he was doing there, but after a time he saw him limp away
again and go back to the neighborhood of the hovel, which, however, he
did not enter or approach very nearly.
He loitered around for awhile, like one who must remain where he is,
but who has nothing to do there during an indefinitely long and tedious
waiting time. At last he stretched himself out on a log in the shadow
of the trees, as if to pass away the time in sleep.
Tom’s curiosity was by this time master of him. Having seen so much,
he was eager to see more. Accordingly he clambered down the tree, and,
with gun in hand, set out to follow the blind trail.
He moved silently from the first, and very cautiously toward the end of
his half-mile journey. He was careful not to tread upon any of the dry
sticks that might make a noise in breaking, and to permit no bush to
swish as he let it go.
At last he reached the neighborhood of the hovel, and, securing a
good hiding place in the dense undergrowth, minutely studied his
surroundings. The lame man lay still on his log and apparently asleep,
until after awhile the sun’s changing position brought his face into
the strong glare. Then he rose lazily, rubbing his eyes as if the sleep
were not yet out of them. Rising at last, with muttered maledictions
upon the heat, he limped over to a clump of palmetes and from among
them lifted a stone jug, from which he took a prolonged draught.
“That’s the stuff to brace a man up!” he muttered as he replaced the
jug in its hiding place.
Tom observed that there were nowhere any traces of a camp fire, present
or past, a fact that puzzled him at first, for obviously the man lived
there in the thicket, or at least remained there for prolonged periods
at a time, and, as Tom reflected, “he must eat.”
The man himself solved the riddle for him presently by going to another
of his hiding places and bringing thence a great handful of coarse ship
biscuit and a huge piece of cold pickled beef of the kind that sailors
call “salt-horse,” which he proceeded to devour.
“Obviously,” reflected Tom, “his food, such as it is, is brought to
him here already cooked. He makes no fire, probably because he fears
its light by night or the smoke of it by day might reveal his presence
here. But why does he stay here? What is he here for? Who are they
who bring him food, and when or how often do they come, and for what
purpose? It’s a Chinese puzzle, but I mean to work it out.”
Having made his observation of the place as minute as he could Tom
silently crept away, not walking in the trail, but through the bushes
near enough to let him see it and follow its winding course. He did
this lest by walking too often in the trail he should leave signs of
its recent use.
When he reached the lookout tree, to his surprise he found his three
comrades there.
“Hello! What are you fellows doing here?” he asked, breaking out of
the bushes and thus giving the first sign his comrades had had of his
approach, for even to the end of his little journey he had been at
pains to travel in absolute silence as an Indian on the war path does.
“Why, Tom, where have you been?” was the first greeting the others gave
him.
“We’ve been dreadfully uneasy about you,” Larry explained, “and when I
whistled through my fingers to call you to dinner and you didn’t come,
we hurried out here to look for you. Where _have_ you been and what
have you been doing?”
“I say, Larry, that reminds me that I want you to teach me the trick of
whistling through my fingers in that way. Will you?”
“I’ll teach you some things that are easier to learn than that,”
answered his companion, “if you try any more of Cal’s tricks of beating
round the bush. Why don’t you tell us where you’ve been and why, and
all the rest of it? Don’t you understand that we’ve been on tenterhooks
of anxiety about you for an hour?”
“Well, as I’m here, safe and sound, there is no further need of
anxiety, and as for your curiosity to hear what I have to tell, I’ll
relieve that while we’re at dinner. Come on! I’m hungry and I reckon
the rest of you are, too. Anyhow, what I’ve got to tell you is well
worth hearing, and I shall not tell you a word till we sit down on our
haunches and begin to enjoy again the flavor of that venison, broiled
on the live coals. You haven’t cooked it yet, have you?”
“No. We got the chops ready for the fire, and then I whistled for you,
so that we might all have them fresh from the coals. As you didn’t
come, we got uneasy and went to look for you. So come on and we’ll have
a late dinner and sharp appetites.”
No sooner were the juicy venison chops taken from the fire and served
upon a piece of bark that did duty as a platter than the demand for the
story of Tom’s morning adventure became clamorous.
With a chop in one hand and half an ash cake in the other, Tom told all
that he had done and seen, giving the details as the reader already
knows them. Then, after finishing the meal and washing his hands, face
and head in the salt water of the creek, he set forth the conclusions
and conjectures he had formed.
“In the first place,” he said, “I am certain that our late visitor—he
with the game leg—is the only person anywhere around. We are in no
danger of an attack, either by night or by day, until his comrades,
whoever they may be, come here and join him. We have no need of doing
sentry duty out there at the gum tree, except to keep a sufficient
lookout to make sure that we know when they do come. In my opinion that
will be at night sometime.”
“Why do you think so, Tom?”
“Simply because it is evident that they don’t come here for any good
or lawful purpose. If that lame fellow with the whisky jug is a fair
sample of the crew, they are the sort that prefer darkness to light
because their deeds are evil.”
“Who do you think they are, Tom?” asked Cal, “and what, in your
opinion, are they up to?”
“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”
“How, Tom?”
“By watching, and, if I don’t find out sooner, by being within sight
when they do come. I’m going to reconnoiter the place again to-night to
see what that fellow does down there. Perhaps I may make out something
from that. At any rate, it’s worth trying.”
“Why shouldn’t we all go with you?” Dick asked eagerly. “Then if by any
accident that evil-visaged person with the lame leg should discover
you, we’ll be there in force enough to handle him and the situation.
I’ve heard that one of your southern generals during the Civil War once
said that strategy is ‘getting there first with the most men.’ Why
shouldn’t we practice strategy?”
“Why, of course, I counted on that,” Tom answered. “I knew all you
fellows would want to go, and I reckon that’s our best plan. Anyhow,
we’ll try it.”
“Now,” said Cal, “I have something to report which I regard as of
some little importance, particularly as it means that the _Hunkydory_
will have to leave this port pretty soon—probably within the next
forty-eight hours, and possibly sooner.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Cal?” asked all the others together.
“Only that our spring is rapidly drying up, and as there is no other
fresh water supply within reach, we shall simply be obliged to quit
these parts as soon as we can get ourselves in shape to risk it.”
“To risk what?”
“Why, putting off in a boat on salt water. We can’t do that without
some fresh water on board. I’ve already begun the filling of the kegs
by thimblefuls. It promises to be a slow process, as the spring seems
unable to yield more than a gill or so at a time.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom, “we can get all the water we want by
digging a little anywhere around here. It doesn’t lie three feet below
the surface.”
“Neither does the fever,” answered Cal.
“How do you mean?”
“Why, I mean that the milky-looking water you find by digging a few
feet into the soil of these low-lying lands is poisonous. It is surface
water, an exudation from the mass of decaying vegetable matter that
constitutes the soil of the swamps. To drink it is to issue a pressing
invitation to fever, dysentery and other dangerous and deadly diseases,
to take up their permanent residence in our intestinal tracts.”
“But why isn’t the water of our spring just as bad?”
“Because it isn’t surface water at all, but spring water that comes
from a source very different from that of the swamp soil. You have
perhaps observed that the bottom of our spring is composed of clean,
white sand, through which the water rises. That sand was brought up by
that water from strata that lie far below the soil.”
“What makes it brackish, then?”
“It is brackish because a certain measure of sea water from the creek
there sipes into it. The sea water is filtered through the sand,
losing most of its salt in the process. You’ve noticed, perhaps, that
the spring water is more brackish at high than at low tide. That’s
because—”
“Oh, I see all that now. I hadn’t thought of it before. But really,
Cal, it seems rather hard that we must sail away from here just when
we’ve run up against something mysterious and interesting. Now, doesn’t
it?”
“Let me remind you,” answered Cal in his most elaborate manner of
mock-serious speaking, “that I am in nowise called upon to assume
responsibility for the vagaries of a casually encountered spring. I
did not bring up that spring. I had no part in its early education or
training. Presumably it is even my superior in age and experience. In
any case, I feel myself powerless to control or even to influence its
behavior. Moreover, I feel as keen a disappointment as you can in the
fact that we shall have to abandon our search for knowledge of the
purposes of our neighbor with the game leg. But it is not certain that
we shall have to sail away with that inquiry unfinished. It will take
a considerable time to fill our water kegs, and in the meanwhile we may
penetrate the mystery sooner than we expect. Anyhow, we’ll see what we
shall see to-night.”
XI
PERILOUS SPYING
AT Dick’s suggestion the boys cut a number of larger logs than usual
and placed them on their camp fire that evening before setting out on
their expedition.
“It will avert suspicion of what we are at,” Dick said in explanation
of his proposal. “So long as the camp fire burns up brightly nobody
seeing it from a distance will doubt that we are here. It isn’t much
trouble, anyhow.”
The night proved to be an unusually dark one, with an overcast sky,
threatening rain, and on the chance of that Cal rigged up the largest
tarpaulin the company owned and so arranged it as to conduct all
the water that might fall upon it into the bait pail and such other
receptacles as would hold it. “If it rains hard,” he explained, “we’ll
catch enough water before morning to fill both the kegs.”
Going to the big gum tree, Tom climbed to the top of it to see if
he could discover anything the little company might want to know.
After a careful scrutiny of the landscape to the west he came down
again, reporting that everything was quiet “in the region of our late
visitor’s country seat.”
Then the party set out on their exploring expedition. Tom, acting as
guide, followed the little blind trail, while the rest made their way
through the undergrowth on either side, keeping near enough to the
trail to hear even a whispered warning or direction if Tom should have
need to give any such.
Slowly, carefully, and in profound silence, they made their way to the
point from which Tom had watched the place during the day. Then, as had
been arranged in advance, the four stretched out their little line, so
as to see the place from different points of view.
At first there was not much to see, and on so dark a night even that
little could be seen only indistinctly and with difficulty. The “man
with the game leg,” as the boys called him, was moving about the place
in a leisurely fashion, but what he was doing none of the investigating
party could make out in the darkness, though they had crept very close
to the camp and were watching intently.
At last their watching and waiting were rewarded by a happening which
interested them, though they did not understand it. The man with the
game leg went into the hovel Tom had seen, and after remaining there
for a considerable time, came out again. As he did so the boys were
easily able to make out that he carried a dark lantern in his hand. It
was carefully closed, but there were little leaks of light from its
fastenings, as there always are from such contrivances when they are of
the common, cheap variety as this one obviously was.
Carrying it in his hand and still closed, the man limped off down the
trail that led toward the cove.
No sooner had he got well clear of the camp than the four watchers
began scrambling up the trees nearest to them for the sake of a better
view. There was nobody to hear them, but under the impulse of that
caution which their presence in such a place required of them, they
were careful to climb as silently as possible.
Very dimly, but with certainty, they could see the glow of the closed
dark lantern and in that way trace the man carrying it throughout his
brief journey.
When at last he reached the mouth of the cove where the view opened out
toward the broad inlet, he opened his lamp for a brief second, holding
it so that its gleam should show down the inlet to his right. A moment
later he flashed it again, this time straight across the broad inlet.
Presently he opened it for the third time, sending the flash up the
inlet.
The whole proceeding did not occupy half a minute, and after that all
remained in darkness except that the boys could still locate the dark
lantern by the dim halo of light that surrounded it.
For half an hour or more there were no further developments. The man
with the game leg seemed to be sitting still, waiting for time to pass
or for something to happen. At last he opened the lamp again, sending
its flash down the inlet as before. Then he showed his gleam straight
out upon the water.
This time the boys in the tree tops saw a brief answering gleam from
the open water half a mile or more from shore.
It was safe for the boys to speak now, and Tom thought it best for all
of them to come down out of the trees before the man with the game
leg, who had started slowly back toward the camp, should reach their
neighborhood.
“Come down off your roosts, fellows,” he directed, “and secrete
yourselves well in the bushes. The ‘others’ are coming to-night, sure
enough. Be careful to hide yourselves so that a flash from that dark
lantern won’t search you out. By the way, after they come and we see
all we can, we must get out of here. I can’t speak then, but notice
when you see me moving away, and follow my example. Now, no more
talking, even in a whisper.”
The man with the game leg did not return immediately, as Tom had
expected. Instead, he made his way up the bank of the cove and around
its bend, to a point only two or three hundred yards away. Obviously
that was to be the landing place, hidden as it was by the bend and the
dense forest growth from all possible observation on the part of boats
in the sound outside. The man with the game leg had gone to the mouth
of the cove only to send his signals to his companions outside. Now
that they had been seen and answered, he had gone to the landing-place,
there to await their coming.
Fortunately for the purposes of the boys, the landing was in full view
from their hiding place, and after the man with the game leg had gone
thither they had only that one point to watch while they waited.
The wait was a long one, and perhaps it seemed longer because a
drizzling rain had set in, soaking them to the skin. After a long time,
however, the man with the game leg turned his dark lantern and flashed
it once down the cove.
By its light the watchers made out three large boats slowly moving up
the cove, apparently with carefully muffled oars, as their strokes
could not be heard even at the short distance that now separated them
from their destination. As they approached the landing with obvious
care, there were frequent flashes from the dark lanterns that all of
them seemed to be carrying, and by these flashes Tom and his companions
saw that the boats were piled high with freight of some kind, so
bestowed as to occupy every inch of space except what was necessary for
the use of the men at the oars. Of these there were only two in each
boat, each plying a single oar, while a third, perched upon a freight
pile at the stern, was steering. Thus there were nine men in the three
boats, who, with the man on shore, constituted a rather formidable
company for four boys to face if they should decide to attack the
_Hunkydory’s_ camp, as the man with the game leg had threatened.
Whence the boats had come, Tom could not in any wise guess, and of
course he could not discuss the matter with his comrades while hiding
there in the bushes under a life-and-death necessity of keeping
perfectly silent. Two things he was sure of: the boats could not have
come very far, with only two oarsmen to each of them, and they could
not have traversed any but smooth waters, with their freight piled high
above their gunwales, as it was.
As soon as the boats were landed, the men began unloading them and
carrying their freight to the camp, which was evidently to be its
hiding place for a time at least. In the main it seemed to consist of
light boxes or packages, many of them bound together into single large
bundles which one man could carry. There were also some kegs, which
seemed pretty heavy, as the men carried them on their shoulders. But
it was difficult to make out anything more definite than this, as the
darkness was dispelled infrequently by flashes from a dark lantern, and
then only for a fraction of a second at a time.
When the greater part of the freight had been brought to the camp the
man who seemed to be in authority over the rest set some of them to
work bestowing it in the hovels, of which there appeared to be several,
each securely hidden in the thick undergrowth so that a person casually
passing that way would never have suspected their existence. Even
while this work was in progress the man in charge permitted as little
show of light as possible. When all was done a hamper of provisions was
brought from one of the boats, together with a demijohn, and the whole
crew assembled around the midnight spread, eating and drinking in the
dark, except when now and then it became necessary to permit a little
show of light for a moment.
At first they feasted in silence, too, but after awhile the liquor they
were drinking seemed to go to their heads and they quarreled among
themselves a good deal. Some of them wandered about now and then as if
searching the bushes jealously.
It was clearly time for the boys to leave the place and they watched
and listened for Tom’s beginning of the retreat. At last they heard
him moving and, assuming that he had begun the withdrawal, they all
cautiously crept away to the rear. As each was following a separate
trail there was no word spoken among them until Larry, Dick and Cal
came out of the bushes and joined each other at the gum tree.
“But where is Tom?” one of them asked.
Nobody knew. Nobody had seen or known anything about him since his
first stirring of the bushes had set the retreat in motion. They had
all heard a commotion in what they called “the scoundrels’ camp,” with
sounds as of angry quarreling and fighting; but they had heard nothing
of Tom.
The boys were in consternation.
“Do you suppose those scoundrels can have caught him?” asked Dick, with
horror in his tones.
“I don’t know,” Larry answered through his set teeth. “But there’s only
one thing to do.”
“Only one thing,” answered Dick. “We must go to his assistance, and if
they have him prisoner we must rescue him or all die trying. I for one
will never come back alive unless we bring him with us.”
“That’s of course,” said Cal, who for once spoke crisply, wasting no
words. “Wait a second, Larry! How many cartridges have you—each of
you?”
When they answered, Cal said:
“Here, take six more apiece. You may need ’em.”
As he spoke he took the extra cartridges from his pockets and hurriedly
distributed them. It was Cal’s rule in hunting never to be without
abundant ammunition.
“Now then, Larry,” he said, when the others had pocketed the
cartridges, “give your orders; you’re the captain.”
“All right! Come on at a run, but don’t trip and fall. There’s no time
to lose.”
Down the trail they went, not at a run, for running was impossible in
such a tangle of vines and bushes, but at as fast a trot as they could
manage. Suddenly there was a collision. Larry had met Tom “head on,”
as he afterwards said. Tom was making his way as fast as he could to
the gum tree, knowing that his friends would be in terror when they
missed him, while they were hurrying to his rescue. In the darkness and
the heavy downpour of rain he and Larry had failed to see or hear each
other till they came into actual collision.
“Where on earth have you been, Tom?”
“Why did you fellows retreat before the time?”
These were questions instantly exchanged.
“Why, you gave the signal, Tom. You began moving off and we followed as
agreed.”
“I understand now,” Tom answered, resuming the journey, “but it was
a mistake of signal. Come on out of here. Let’s go to camp and talk
it all over there. I’ve found out all about this thing and it’s
interesting.”
“What does it mean? Tell us!”
“Not here in the downpour. We’ll go to camp first and get under the
shelter and put on some dry clothes. My teeth are chattering and I
don’t care to imitate them. Come on!”
XII
TOM’S DARING VENTURE
TOM’S teeth were indeed chattering when the company reached their camp.
He was chilled “clear through,” he said, and his companions were very
uneasy. They feared, and not without reason, that he had contracted
a swamp fever, which always begins with a chill. To avoid that, the
Rutledge boys, who knew the coast and its dangers, had carefully kept
on or very near the salt water, and had chosen for their camp a spot
where there were no live oaks, no gray moss and no black sand. Still
Tom might have caught a fever.
Cal piled wood on the fire with a lavish hand, so that an abundance of
heat might be reflected into their dry bush shelter, the open side of
which faced the fire, and Dick busied himself searching out dry clothes
from the lockers, while Larry helped Tom to strip himself as speedily
as possible.
“Now run and jump into the creek,” he directed, as soon as the last of
Tom’s clothes were off. “The salt water is luke-warm or even warmer
than that. I’ll wring out your clothes while your bath is warming you,
and when you come out we’ll give you a rub down that would stimulate
circulation in a bronze statue. Hurry into the water, and don’t hurry
out too soon.”
By the time Tom had been rubbed down and had got into dry clothes, he
declared himself to be “as warm as a toast, as hungry as a schoolgirl,
and ready to stand a rigid examination as to the character and purposes
of our scoundrel friends down there.”
“Good!” exclaimed Larry. “That’s proof positive that you haven’t caught
the fever. I was afraid you might.”
“Fever? Why, I was as cold as the Arctic circle—but then perhaps you
keep your fevers on ice down here and serve ’em cold. You have so many
queer ways that nothing surprises me.”
Larry explained, and Tom laughed at him for his pains, for of course
Tom knew what he had meant.
It was well past midnight, and the others shared Tom’s hunger in full
measure, so they were not greatly disappointed when, in response to
their eager demands for the story he had to tell, he answered:
“I’ll tell you all about it when we get something to eat. Till then my
loquacity will closely resemble that of a clam.”
One of the party had killed some fat black squirrels during the
preceding day, and as these were already “dressed for the banquet,”
in Dick’s phrase, they were spread upon a mass of coals, and within a
brief while the meal—supper or breakfast, or post-midnight luncheon,
or whatever else it might be called—was ready to receive their
attention.
“Now, Tom, tell us!” demanded Larry, when their hunger was partially
appeased.
“Wait a minute,” interposed Dick. “Isn’t this rather risky?”
“What?”
“Why, sitting here on our haunches, rejoicing in the genial warmth
of the fire—over-genial, I should call it, as it’s blistering my
knees—and having no sentry out to see that the scoundrels don’t pounce
down on us by surprise.”
“There’s no more risk in it,” answered Tom, confidently, “than in
wearing socks, or playing dominoes, or trying to trace out the features
of the man in the moon.”
“But why not, Tom?”
“Because the scoundrels down there are all dead—dead drunk, I
mean—and they have all they can do just now in sleeping it off.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, entirely sure. You saw how they were drinking—half a pint of
rum at a dose, repeated every five minutes. Well, they kept that up
as long as they could find the way to their mouths. They had emptied
the demijohn before you fellows left, and not being satisfied, they
got out a keg of the fiery stuff, had a rough and tumble fight over
some question relating to it, beat each others’ faces into something
very much like Hamburger steaks, and then decided to let the keg
arbitrate the dispute. Four or five of them had been arbitrated into
a comatose state before I left, another was trying to sing something
about ‘Melinda,’ setting forth that he had ‘seen her at the windah,’
and was prepared to give his hat and boots if he could ‘only have been
dah.’ The rest were drunkenly silent as they sat there by an open dark
lantern which they had forgotten to close, I suppose, and drinking rum
from tin cups whenever they could remember to do so. They will give
nobody any trouble to-night.”
“But, Tom,” interposed Dick, “how do you know it was rum they were
drinking?”
“Now, see here,” said Tom, “I’d like to know who’s telling this story.
If I’m the one the rest of you had better let me tell it in my own way.
I was going to begin at the beginning and tell it straight through, but
your intrusive questions have switched me off the track. Now listen,
and I’ll tell you all I know and how I know it, and what I think of it,
and what I think you think of it, and all the rest of it.”
“Go ahead, Tom!” said Cal; “I’ll keep the peace for you; you’ll bear me
witness that I haven’t spoken a word since you began. Go on!”
“All right,” said Tom. “I thought you were about to give us a
disquisition when you began to say that, but you didn’t, so I’ll
forgive you. Well, you see when you fellows heard me moving out
there in the thicket and thought I was instituting a retreat, I was
only changing my base, as the military men say. I had seen something
that aroused my curiosity, and my curiosity is like a baby after
midnight—if you once rouse it, you simply can’t coax it to go to sleep
again.”
“What was it you had seen, Tom?” Larry began.
“Silence!” commanded Cal. “Tom has the floor.”
“Oh, I beg pardon—” Larry began apologetically.
“No, don’t do even that. Go on, Tom.”
“I will as soon as you two twin brothers cease your quarreling. As
I was saying, I had seen something that aroused my curiosity. As I
was peering through the bushes, looking toward the main body of the
roisterers, I saw the limping one slip away from the general company
and sneak off. He went very cautiously through the undergrowth to the
hovel nearest me and entered it, closing the door after him. I could
see a little pencil of light streaming out through a crack, so I knew
he had opened his lamp in there. After a little fumbling he came out
again, but he was so drunk he forgot to take his lamp with him, as I
discovered by the continued streaming out of that little pencil of
light.
“That was what aroused my curiosity. I wanted to know what was in that
hovel, and as the lame gentleman with the ‘load’ on had obligingly
left his lamp there for my accommodation, I resolved to embrace the
opportunity offered. I moved cautiously upon the enemy’s works. That
is to say, I crept forward toward the hovel. That’s what you fellows
mistook for the signal to retreat.
“Now I am convinced that our temporary neighbors, the scoundrels,
are disposed to be in all ways obliging. At any rate they had
considerately placed the door of the hovel so that it fronted my side
of the structure and not theirs. Thus, when I opened the door the light
from the burning lamp did not shine toward them and thus give the alarm.
“I entered the place and rather minutely examined its contents.”
“What was in there?” asked Cal, forgetting in his eagerness that he had
himself undertaken to prevent the interruption of Tom’s narrative by
questions from any source.
“I’ll tell you about that when I come to it. Story first, Cal.
“I had just finished my inspection when I heard footsteps of rather
uncertain purpose passing round the hovel toward the door, which of
course I had closed behind me. As there is only one door to that
hovel and it has no windows by which ‘lovers might enter or burglars
elope’—that’s wrong end first but it’s no matter—I realized that
there was no time to lose. I hurriedly settled down behind a pile of
cigar boxes—”
“Their plunder is cigars, then?” asked Dick, forgetting.
“I did not say so,” Tom answered teasingly. “I made no mention of
cigars, so far as I can remember. I spoke only of cigar boxes. They
might be filled with anything, you know. At any rate your interruption
has spoiled the most thrilling part of my narrative, which must now be
continued prosaically and without the dramatic fire and fervor I had
planned to put into it.
“My concealment was hasty and at best very imperfect. In my haste
I forgot to conceal my gun, which stuck up a foot or two above the
barrier of boxes that imperfectly hid my person. Fortunately, however,
the lame gentleman was too blind drunk even to see double and, as he
made no mention of the matter, I refrained from alluding to it.
“Apparently he had entered the hovel with a single purpose, namely, to
close his lantern and take it away. With what I cannot help regarding
as praiseworthy persistence, he carried out that purpose, giving heed
to nothing else. He omitted even to close the door after him, and as
the place was without heating apparatus of any kind—except rum for
internal combustion—I took my leave as soon as I felt confident that
the lame gentleman had either rejoined his comrades or had fallen
into dreamless slumber on his way to do so. My next adventure was the
head-on collision with Larry in the trail.”
[Illustration: “IN MY HASTE I FORGOT TO CONCEAL MY GUN.”
_Page 126._]
Tom paused, took another bite at the squirrel’s leg he had been eating
between sentences, and it seemed necessary to set him going again by
means of questions.
“Why don’t you go on, Tom? You haven’t told us yet what you found in
the hut.”
“I’m thirsty,” answered the boy. “Speaking is dry work, as you know, if
you ever read Hawthorn’s ‘A Rill from the Town Pump!’ Have we enough
water in the spring, Cal, for me to waste it in slaking my thirst?”
“We’ve caught all our things full, I reckon. I’ll see.”
When Cal returned he brought with him a small supply of rain water.
“What made you so long about it, Cal?” asked Larry. “We’re all waiting
for you.”
“So I see,” answered Cal. “I make all required apologies for having
kept this distinguished company waiting while I attended to some
matters that are even more vitally interesting to all of us than is
Tom’s promised inventory of the things discovered by him in the tents
of the wicked, if I may so designate a slab hovel in a cane brake.”
“What have you been doing, Cal? And why didn’t you call the rest of
us to help you?” asked Dick, whose New England conscience was apt to
scourge his spirit if he thought he had been doing less than his share
of whatever there was to do.
“I’ll reply to your questions in inverse order,” Cal replied. “I did
not call for help because I did not need help. In what I had to do one
person was as good as a dozen. I may have been a trifle slow about
it, but that is chiefly because water won’t run through a hole faster
than nature intended it to do. As for your other question, I’ve been
engaged in a job of water-supply engineering. All the receptacles I
set to catch water were nearly full, and as it still rains—a fact
that you may have observed for yourselves—I thought it best to empty
their contents into the water kegs and set them to catch more. As
nobody thought to bring a funnel along, I have had to resort to simpler
methods, and I have found that it is by no means easy to pour water
from a four-gallon bait pail into a one-inch bung hole without spilling
it. For the rest, Captain Larry, I beg to report that one of our water
kegs is now full and the other perhaps one-third full. I hope to catch
enough more water before the rain ceases to finish filling that keg and
to serve all camp purposes during the few hours that we shall probably
remain here.”
“Why, I should think we might stay as long as we like, now,” said Tom;
“this rain must have filled up our spring.”
“It has, and it has spoiled it for use for many days to come.”
“But how?” persisted Tom.
“Let me remind you, Tom, that we are all eagerly waiting for you to
tell us some things that are distinctly more interesting to us than
the condition and prospects of a swamp spring can be when we’ve enough
water for our present and immediate future need. Go on with your story.”
“Oh, the story is finished,” Tom replied, “but you want to hear about
the contents of the hovel. They consist in part of little kegs—three
or five gallon kegs, I should think—of Santa Cruz Rum. At least that’s
what I made out the letters branded on them to mean. These kegs are
lying on the ground in rows that impressed me as far more orderly than
the scoundrels themselves ever think of being. I should say there are
fifteen or twenty of the kegs in that hovel.
“The rest of the stuff consists of cigars in boxes, and the boxes are
carefully tied together in parcels—thirty boxes to the parcel. That’s
the way we all saw them carry them up from their boats.”
“Where on earth can they have got all that rum and all those cigars,
anyhow? And what do they bring them away down here in the woods for, I
wonder?” speculated Dick. “What’s your guess, Tom?”
“Pirates,” answered Tom; “and those things are their plunder.”
“Curious sort of pirates,” said Cal, scoffingly. “Unlike any pirates
I ever heard of. Why, Tom, did you ever hear of pirates contenting
themselves with taking the rum and cigars they found on the ships they
overhauled? You’ve got to guess two or three times more if you’re going
to guess right.”
“Well, what do you think they are?” asked Tom, a trifle disappointed to
find his theory bowled over so easily.
“Smugglers,” answered Cal. “And I don’t just think it either—I know.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Larry, “smugglers must bring their goods from
foreign ports, and we all know enough about boats to know that those
flat-bottomed tubs of theirs wouldn’t live five minutes in a little
blow on blue water.”
“No, nor five seconds either, and those precious rascals know all that
quite as well as we do. For that reason, among others, they refrain
from risking their valuable lives by venturing upon blue water.”
“Then how do they carry on their traffic?”
“I have often remonstrated with you, Larry, for your neglect to read
the newspapers. But for that you might have been as well informed on
this and other subjects as I am. About a month ago I read in a New York
newspaper that fell in my way a somewhat detailed account of the way in
which certain kinds of smuggling is carried on along the Atlantic and
Gulf coasts wherever the conditions are favorable, and the conditions
are nowhere so favorable as right here on this South Carolina coast,
where deep, but often very narrow and crooked, inlets and creeks open
from the broader waters of the sounds directly into densely wooded
regions that are often wholly unpeopled for many miles in every
direction.
“This is the way they do it: Schooners and other small sea-going craft
load at West Indian ports and take out clearance papers for New York or
Halifax or some other big port which can be best reached by skirting
this coast. Under pretense of stress of weather, or shortness of water
or provisions, they put into some harbor of refuge like that sound out
there. They make no effort to land anything, and if questioned by the
revenue officers they can show perfectly regular papers. Then when
opportunity offers, their shore gangs—like the one over there—slip
out in the darkness, take on full loads of freight, and land it in some
secluded spot like the one down there, and the schooner sails away to
her destination.”
“But how do they get their goods from the woods to market?” Tom asked.
“By wagons, I suppose, and a little at a time. That doesn’t concern us
very deeply. What does concern us, is that we’ve got to get away from
here as soon as this rain stops. The clouds seem to be breaking, by the
way, and the wind has shifted to the northwest,” said Cal, stepping
out of the shelter to observe the weather. “It will clear pretty early
in the morning, I think, and in the meantime I for one want to get a
little sleep.”
“But what’s the hurry, Cal?” asked Tom. “Why can’t we stay here a day
or two longer? I’d like to see what the smugglers do when they come to.”
“There are several reasons for getting away at once,” answered Cal.
“For one thing, we’re running short of some necessary supplies and must
go to Beaufort to replenish our stores. Then there’s the question of
water supply. After I finish filling the kegs we’ll have barely enough
left to get through the day on.”
“But how has the rain put the spring out of commission, Cal?” asked
Tom. “You promised to explain that.”
“By filling it full of surface water. It will be a week or more before
the water there is fit to drink, at least as a steady diet.”
“There’s a much better reason than that,” said Larry.
“What is it?”
“Why, we must hurry to put ourselves in communication with the
authorities, so that they can come down on that place before the
scoundrels get away, or get their plunder away.”
“Yes,” said Tom, who was reluctant to leave the place and give up the
adventure, “I suppose we ought to do that.”
“Ought to? Why, we simply must. Every decent citizen owes it as a duty
to give notice of crime when he discovers it, and to aid the officers
of the law in stopping it. Civilized life would come to an end if
men generally refused to support the authorities in their efforts to
enforce the law. We’ve discovered a den of thieves, engaged in robbing
the Government—that is to say, robbing all of us. So we’ll get away
from here just as early in the morning as we can. Now let’s get some
sleep.”
It was easy to say, “Let’s get some sleep,” but not easy to get it
in the excited condition of mind that had come upon every member of
the little party. But, by keeping silence and lying still, the weary
fellows did manage to sleep a little after awhile, and it was the sun
shining full in their faces that at last aroused them to a busy day.
XIII
CAL’S EXPERIENCE AS THE PRODIGAL SON
BREAKFAST next morning was not a very satisfactory meal. There was
plenty of fish and game, of course, but there was little else. The
coffee supply had been used up, but the boys regarded that as a matter
of no consequence.
“Coffee is a mere luxury anyhow,” Dick said, “and we can go without it
as well as not. It isn’t like being without bread or substitutes for
bread. If we had some sweet potatoes now, or some rice—”
“The which we haven’t,” interrupted Cal. “No more can we get any here.
As for corn meal, we have enough for one more ash cake, but it is full
of weevil and, therefore, when we consume it we shall be eating the
bread of bitterness in an entirely literal sense. For quinine biscuit
would taste like cookies as compared with weevely corn bread. You were
wise in your generation, Dick, when you surreptitiously placed that
tin of ship biscuit on board, but your imagination lacked breadth and
comprehensiveness. It was not commensurate with our appetites, and so
the ship bread is all consumed and would have been if you’d brought
a barrel of it on board instead of that little tin box full. You
neglected that, however, and we must endure the consequences as best we
may.”
“For the present, yes,” said Larry; “but not for long. We must make all
the haste we can till we get to Beaufort and stock up again.”
“I know a trick worth two of that,” Cal said apart to Dick, but he did
not explain himself. Dick had found out, however, that Cal’s knowledge
of the region round about them and of the tortuous waterways that
interlaced the coast in every direction was singularly minute and
accurate. It was not until that morning, however, that Cal explained
to him how he had come to be so well versed in the geography and
hydrography of the region. It had been decided by Captain Larry that
before leaving their present camp that day the company should cook
enough food to last for a day or two, so that they might not have
to waste any time hunting or fishing while making as quick a trip
to Beaufort as they could. As there was very little game left after
breakfast, Cal and Dick set out with their guns to secure a supply
of squirrels and whatever else they could find, while Larry and Tom
should load the boat and catch some fish.
During this little shooting expedition some small manifestation of
Cal’s minute information prompted a question from Dick.
“How on earth, Cal, can you remember every little detail like that? And
how did you learn so much about things around here, anyhow?”
“I got that part of my education,” Cal answered, “partly by being a
very good boy and partly by being a very bad one. I’m inclined to
think the bad-boy influence contributed even more than the good-boy
experience to my store of information. As for remembering things,
that is a habit of mind easily cultivated, though the great majority
of people neglect it. It consists mainly in careful observation. When
people tell you they don’t remember things they have seen, or remember
them only vaguely, it usually means that they did not observe the
things seen. For example, I remembered where that spring of ours was
when we were all parched with thirst, and I knew how to go to it in
the dark. That was simply because when I first saw that spring and
quenched a very lively thirst there, I decided to remember it and its
surroundings in case I should ever have occasion to find it again.
So I looked carefully at everything round about from every point of
view. I observed that the spring lay just beyond the first bend of the
creek and that there was a cluster of big cypress trees very near it.
I noticed that the mouth of the creek lay between a little stretch of
beach on one side and a dense cane thicket on the other. In short, I
carefully observed all the bearings, and having done that, of course I
could never forget how to find the spring.”
“Do you always do that sort of thing when you think you may want to
find a place again?”
“Yes, of course. Indeed, I do it anyhow, whether there is any occasion
or not. For example, when I was visiting you in Boston last year
I noticed that there was a little dent in the silver cap over the
speaking tube in the dining-room, as if somebody had hit it a little
blow. The dent was triangular, I remember.”
“That’s because the thing I hit it with had a triangular face, for I
made that dent when I was a little fellow with a curious-looking tool
that a repairer of old furniture had in use there. It’s curious that
you should have noticed the dent, as it is very small and your back was
toward it as you sat at table.”
“Yes, but not as I entered the room. It was then that I saw it.”
“Then that sort of close observation is a habit of mind with you?”
“Yes. I suppose it is partly natural and partly cultivated. I don’t
know.”
The two had come by this time to that part of the woods that Tom had
named the “squirrel pasture,” and they were soon busy with their
guns. But as they walked back toward the camp, loaded with black and
gray squirrels, Dick came back to the subject, which seemed deeply to
interest him.
“I wonder, Cal,” he said, “if you would mind telling me about those two
epochs in your young life—the good-boy and the bad-boy periods?”
Cal laughed, half under his breath.
“It isn’t much to tell,” he replied; “but if you’re interested I’ll
tell you about it. You see the old families down here are a good
deal mixed up in their relationships, just as the old families in
Massachusetts are, because of frequent intermarriages. The Rutledges
and the Calhouns, and the Hugers, and the Huguenins, and Barnwells, and
Haywards, and the rest, are all more or less related to each other.
Indeed, there is such a tangle of relationships that I long ago gave up
trying to work out the puzzle. It is enough for you to know that the
particular Mr. Hayward who owns all this wild land around here and
half a dozen plantations besides is my kinsman—my mother’s uncle, I
believe. Anyhow, from my earliest childhood there was never anything
that I liked so well as visiting at Uncle Hayward’s. Perfect candor
compels me to say that I was not particularly fond of Uncle Hayward or
of any member of the family, for that matter. Uncle Hayward used to
take me for long rides on a marsh tackey by way of entertaining me in
the way he thought I liked best, and I resented that whenever I wanted
to do something else instead. He is one of the best and kindliest men
alive and I am very fond of him now, but when I was a little fellow
I thought he interfered with my own plans too much, and so I made up
my mind that I didn’t like him. As for the ladies of the family, I
detested them because they were always combing my hair and ‘dressing me
up’ when I didn’t want to be dressed up.
“Nevertheless, nothing delighted me like a prolonged visit at Uncle
Hayward’s. That was because I particularly appreciated an intimate
association with Sam. Sam was a black boy—or young man, rather—who
seemed to me to be the most delightfully accomplished person I had
ever known. He could roll his eyes up until only the white below the
iris was visible. He could stand on his head, walk on his hands, turn
handsprings, and disjoint himself in the most astonishing fashion
imaginable. He could move his scalp and wiggle his ears. His gifts and
accomplishments in such ways as these seemed to me without limit.
“As Uncle Hayward could never keep Sam out of the woods, he made up his
mind to assign him to duty in the woods as a sort of ranger. There was
plenty for Sam to do there, for besides all these vast tracts of wild
land, Uncle Hayward had a deer park consisting of many thousand acres
of woodland under a single fence. To watch for fires, to keep poachers
out, to catch and tame half a dozen marsh tackeys every now and then,
and a score of similar duties were assigned to Sam.
“When I was a little fellow my customary reward for being a
particularly ‘good boy’ for a season was permission to go into the
woods with Sam and live like a wild creature for weeks at a time. In
that way, and under Sam’s tuition, I learned much about these regions
and about the waterways, for Sam seemed always to know where a boat
of some kind lay hidden, and he and I became tireless navigators and
explorers.
“That, in brief, is the history of the ‘good-boy’ epoch. The story of
the other is a trifle more dramatic, perhaps. It occurred three or
four years ago when Larry and I were planning to go to Virginia to
prepare for college. I was fourteen or fifteen years old then and I had
continued to spend a part of every year down here in the woods with
Sam for guide, servant, and hunting factotum. At the time I speak of I
had some rather ‘lame ducks’ in my studies. The fact is, I had idled a
good deal, while Larry had mastered all the tasks set him. Accordingly,
when my father and mother went North that year—they go every summer on
account of mother’s health—Larry went up country to visit some of our
relatives there, while I decided to stay at home and work with a tutor
whom my father had hired for me.
“He and I lived alone in the house with only the servants, and I
found him to be in many ways disagreeable. He was an Englishman,
for one thing, and at that period of my life I had not yet got
over the detestation of Englishmen which the school histories and
revolutionary legends had instilled into my mind. He was brusque and
even unmannerly at times, judged by the standards of courtesy that we
Carolinians accept. More important than all else, he and I entertained
irreconcilable views as to our relations with each other. He thought he
was employed to be my master, while I held that he was hired only as my
tutor. This led to some friction, but we managed to get on together
for a time until I found that the difference of opinion between him
and me extended to other things than our personal relations. He seemed
to think himself not only my master but master of the house also in
my father’s absence. He did not know how to treat the servants. He
gave them orders in a harsh, peremptory way to which house servants in
Carolina are not accustomed. His manner with them was rather that of
an ox-driver toward his cattle than that of a gentleman dealing with
well-mannered and well-meaning servants.
“This grated on me, and I suppose I have a pretty well-defined temper
when occasion arouses it. The Rutledges generally have. At any rate
I one day remonstrated with the tutor on the subject, intending the
remonstrance to be all there was of the incident, but he answered me
in that tone of a master which I more and more resented. High words
followed, from which he learned my opinion of his character and manners
much more definitely than I had cared to express it before.
“At last he threatened me with a flogging, and picked up a cane with
which to administer it. I was mad all over and clear through by that
time. I had never had a flogging and I certainly would not submit to
one at his hands. But my anger had passed beyond expression in words
by that time. I did not feel the flush of it—I felt deathly pale
instead. I was no longer hot; on the contrary I was never cooler in
my life. I did not threaten my antagonist or give him warning as he
advanced toward me with the cane uplifted. I simply selected a certain
plank in the floor which I made up my mind should be his Rubicon. I
stood perfectly still, waiting for him to cross it.
“Presently he stepped across the line I had fixed upon. The instant he
did so I sprang upon him, delivering my blows so fast and furiously
that in two or three seconds he went down in a heap. He claimed to be
an expert boxer, and I suppose he was, but my attack was so sudden and
so unexpected that his science seemed to have no chance. At any rate,
he was so nearly ‘knocked out’ that he had no disposition to renew the
contest. He went to his room, washed himself, packed his trunk, leaving
it to be called for later, and left the house.
“Before leaving he wrote me a curt note, saying that he would
immediately get a warrant for my arrest on a charge of assault and
battery.
“That rather staggered me. I wouldn’t have given one inch in fear of
that man. No power on earth could have made me run away from him or
apologize to him or in any other way flinch from anything he might
do to me. But I had a terrifying misconception of the law and its
processes. I was only a fifteen-year-old boy, you know, and I knew
nothing whatever of legal proceedings; or rather, I knew just enough
about them to mislead my mind. I knew that a warrant meant arrest, and
as I lay abed worrying that night I convinced myself that if I should
be arrested when my father was not in Charleston to furnish bail for
me, I must lie in a loathsome jail until his return, forbidden to
communicate with anybody and compelled to live on a diet of bread and
water.
“I saw no way out except to keep out of reach of that warrant till my
father’s return, and the only secure way of doing that, I thought,
was to run away and live down here in the woods. So after lying awake
all night I got up at daybreak, got one of the servants to give
me breakfast and put up a luncheon for me. Then I took a little,
flat-bottomed skiff that I owned and made my way down here. I had
some money with me, but I did not dare go to any town, or village, or
country store, to buy anything lest the man with the warrant should
find out where I was. I learned where all the little negro settlements
were, however, and there I bought sweet potatoes and the like as I
needed them. I had my shotgun and fish lines with me, of course, and
so I had no difficulty in feeding myself. For amusement I wandered
about in every direction by land and water, and in that way greatly
improved my education in coast country geography.
“After a while I found myself running short of ammunition, and I didn’t
know how to procure a fresh supply. I was afraid to go to Beaufort, or
up to Grahamville, or Coosawhatchie, or anywhere else where there were
stores, and besides that I was in no fit condition to go anywhere. I
had forgotten to bring any clothes with me and what I had on were worn
literally to rags.
“Fortunately I had got acquainted with a negro boy who often brought me
vegetables and fruit and sold them to me for low prices. I suppose now
that he stole them, although that didn’t occur to me then.
“One day I hit upon the plan of sending him to Beaufort for ammunition.
He expressed doubt that anybody there would sell it to him, and I
shared the doubt. But it was my only chance, so I gave him some money
and sent him. He was gone for two days, during which I fired my last
cartridge at a deer and missed him. I had begun to think the negro
boy had simply pocketed the money and disappeared, never to return
again, but I consoled myself with the thought that there were plenty of
fish and oysters to be had, and that I could buy sweet potatoes and
vegetables.
“That night the negro boy returned, bringing me rather more ammunition
than I had sent for, and when I questioned him about the matter his
reply was that that was what the storekeeper had given him for the
money. Later, however, he confessed to me that finding nobody willing
to sell cartridges to him, he had simply stolen them and, being
prepared to bring me the goods I had sent for, he thought the money
he had saved in that way justly belonged to him. He had squandered it
for candy and in satisfaction of such other desires as possessed him.
Of course I paid the merchant afterwards, and equally of course it was
impossible to collect the amount from the boy.
“All that is an episode. One day by some chance I encountered Sam in my
wanderings, and he told me people were looking for me—that my father
had heard of my disappearance and had hurried back to Charleston.
“I went to Beaufort, bought some sort of clothes, and like the other
prodigal son, returned to my father. But he utterly failed to play his
part according to the story. Instead of falling on my neck, he laughed
at the clothes I wore. Instead of killing the fatted calf, he told me
to take a bath and put on something fit to wear. All that evening I
heard him chuckling under his breath as I related my experiences in
answer to his questions. Finally he said to me:
“‘You’ll do, Cal. I’ll never feel uneasy about you again. You know how
to take care of yourself.’
“There, Dick, you’ve heard the whole story, both of my righteousness
and of my wickedness.”
“And a mighty interesting story it has been to me,” Dick replied.
“Thank you for telling it.”
XIV
CAL RELATES A FABLE
THE _Hunkydory_ was completely loaded when Cal and Dick returned, and
there was nothing further to do except cook the fish and game, so that
there might be no need to stop anywhere to get dinner.
There was a fairly stiff breeze blowing when the anchors were weighed,
but sailing was impracticable until the boat should be well out of the
narrow creek, so all hands went to the oars.
When the land was cleared, Larry ordered that the oars be stowed
in their fastenings and the sails raised. Without discussion or
arrangement of any kind, Cal went to the helm. It seemed the proper
thing to do in view of his superior knowledge of the surroundings, but
Cal was not thinking of that. He had a plan and purpose of his own to
carry out, though he said nothing about the matter.
There was quite an hour of sailing necessary before the course could
be laid in the direction of the waterway that led toward Beaufort, and
when the time came for heading in that direction, Cal laid quite a
different course, heading for a shore that lay several miles away.
Larry was dozing in the forepeak and did not at first observe on what
course his brother was sailing. When at last he did notice it, he
assumed that something in the direction of the wind made Cal’s course
desirable, but after a glance at the sails he changed his mind.
“Why are you heading in that direction, Cal?” he asked, looking about
him. “Your course will take us several miles out of our way. Head her
toward the point of land over there where the palmettos are.”
Cal made no change and he waited a full minute before he answered. When
he did so it was in his most languid drawl.
“Larry,” he said, quite as if he had not heard a word that his brother
had uttered, “there was a schooner sailing down the Hudson River one
day. The captain of that craft was a Dutchman of phlegmatic temperament
and extreme obstinacy. The mate was a Yankee, noted for his alert
readiness of resource. The schooner was loaded with brick. The captain
was loaded with beer. The mate wasn’t loaded at all. It was the
captain’s business to steer and manage things in the after half of the
ship. It was the function of the mate to manage things forward. But
when the mate saw that the schooner’s course was carrying her straight
upon the rocks, he went aft and remonstrated with the captain. For
reply the captain said:
“‘Mate, you go forward and run your end of the schooner and leave me to
run my end.’
“The mate went forward and ordered the anchor heaved overboard. Then
going aft again, he said:
“‘Captain, I have anchored my end of the schooner; you can do what you
please with your end.’”
Cal ceased, as if he had finished speaking. The others laughed at the
story, and Larry said:
“What’s the moral of that yarn, Cal?”
“_Haec fabula docet_,” replied Cal, “that _I’m_ sailing the _Hunkydory_
just now; that I know where we are going and why.”
“Would you mind telling us, then?” demanded Larry.
“Not in the least. We are heading for the shore, on our lee; as for
why, there are several reasons: One is that the tide will turn pretty
soon, and when it does it will run out of the creek you want me to
enter as fast as it does out of the Bay of Fundy. Another is, that
the wind is falling and we shall have to take to the oars presently.
Another is, that I am persuaded it will be easier rowing across the
small current out here than against a tide that rushes out of the
creek like a mill tail. There are other and controlling reasons, but
I have already given you as many as your intellectual digestion can
assimilate. The rest will keep till we’re comfortably ashore. There,
that’s the last puff of the wind.”
With that he hauled the boom inboard, let go the halyards and left the
rudder-bar.
“It is now after three o’clock,” he said, while the others were
unstepping the mast, “and the distance is about three miles or a trifle
less. Rowing easily we shall have time after we get there to settle
ourselves comfortably before nightfall.”
“I suppose you’re right, of course,” Larry answered, “but it means
several more meals on meat and fish alone.”
“Better not cross that bridge till you come to it, Larry. You see we
might find manna over there, or some bread-fruit trees newly imported
from Tahiti—who knows?”
The others shared Larry’s regret as to the food prospect, but they all
recognized Cal’s superior knowledge of conditions as a controlling
consideration; so all rowed on in silence.
When at last they reached the neighborhood of the shore, Cal began
scrutinizing it closely as if searching for the landing place he had
selected in his mind. He was in fact looking for the very narrow and
cane-hidden entrance to a land-locked bay that he remembered very well.
Presently he turned into it and shot the boat through a channel that
one might have passed a dozen times without seeing it. It wound about
among the dense growths for a little way and then opened out into a
considerable little bay.
Here Cal directed the landing, but instead of arranging to anchor the
boat a little way from shore he put on all speed with the oars and ran
her hard and fast upon a gently sloping beach.
“What’s that for, Cal?” asked Dick, whose nautical instincts were
offended by the manœuvre.
“To save trouble,” Cal answered. “You see this is a considerable little
bay, and the entrance to it is so very narrow that before much of a
flood tide can run into the broad basin the time comes for it to turn
and run out again, so there is never a rise and fall of more than six
or eight inches in here. The boat will lie comfortably where she is so
long as we choose to stay here. We can reach her without much if any
wading, and we can shove her off into deep water whenever we like.”
“Is there a spring about here?” asked Tom, whose concern about water
supply had become specially active.
“No, but we can make one in fifteen minutes.”
Then selecting a sort of depression in the sandy beach about sixty
yards from the water’s edge, Cal said:
“We have only to scoop out a basin in the sand here—about three feet
deep as I reckon it, and we’ll have all the water we want.”
“But will it be good water?”
“Perfectly good. You see, Tom, this beach is composed of clean white
sand. The water in the bay sipes through it at a uniform level, and
we’ve only to dig down to that level in order to get at it.”
“But won’t it be salt water?”
“Slightly brackish, perhaps, or possibly not at all so. You see before
reaching this point it is filtered through sixty or seventy yards of
closely packed sand, which takes up all the salt and would take up all
other impurities if there were any, as there are not. Suppose you dig
for the water, Tom, while the other fellows make camp and pick up wood.
It’s very easy digging and it won’t take long. I’m going off a little
way to see what there is to see—and to look for the manna I spoke of a
while ago.”
So saying, Cal took up his gun and set out inland. It was more than
an hour before he returned and the dusk was falling. But to the
astonishment of the others a string of young negroes followed close
upon his heels, all carrying burdens of some sort, mostly poised upon
their heads.
XV
CAL GATHERS THE MANNA
WHEN Cal appeared at the head of his dusky little caravan the others
advanced to meet him and bombard him with a rapid fire of questions
as to where he had been, and what the negro boys were carrying, and
where he had discovered the source of supply, and whatever else their
curiosity suggested.
Instead of replying at once he asked.
“Did you find the water, Tom?”
“Yes, easily, and it isn’t brackish at all.”
“That’s excellent, and now let us eat, drink and be merry. I couldn’t
give you that injunction till I learned that we had the water for the
drinking part.”
Without waiting for him to finish his sentence the others busied
themselves in examining what the negroes had brought. As they did so,
Cal catalogued the supplies orally with comments:
“That bag contains a half bushel of rice—enough to serve us as
a breadstuff for a long time to come, as we require only three
teacupfuls—measured by guess—for a meal; the bag by the side of it is
badly out at elbows and knees, but it holds a fine supply of new sweet
potatoes which will help the endurance of the rice. What’s that? Oh,
that’s a little okra, and the red-turbaned old darky woman who sold
it to me carefully explained how to cook the mucilaginous vegetable.
As she delivered her instructions in the language of the Upper Congo,
I cannot say that my conception of the way in which okra should be
prepared for the table is especially clear, but we’ll find some way out
of that difficulty. Yes, the big bag on the right contains a few dozen
ears of green corn, and the one next to it is full of well-ripened
tomatoes, smooth of surface, shapely of contour and tempting to
the appetite. Finally, we have here half a dozen cantaloupes, or
‘mush millions,’ as the colored youth who supplied them called his
merchandise. Now scamper, you little vagabonds. I’ve paid you once for
toting the things and it is a matter of principle with me never to pay
twice for a single service.”
“Where on earth, Cal, did you find all these things?” asked Larry, the
others looking the same question out of their eyes as it were.
“I found them in the garden patches where they were grown,” he replied.
“That’s what I went out to do. They are the ‘manna,’ the finding of
which somewhere in this neighborhood I foreshadowed in answer to your
querulous predictions of an exclusively meat diet for some days to
come.”
As he spoke, Cal was throwing sweet potatoes into the fire and covering
them with red-hot ashes with glowing coals on top.
“You’re a most unsatisfactory fellow, Cal,” said Dick. “Why don’t you
tell us where you got the provender and how you happened to find so
rich a source of supply. Anybody else would be eager to talk about such
an exploit.”
“I’ll tell you,” Cal answered, “as soon as I get the potato roast
properly going. I’m hungry. Suppose you cut some cantaloupes for us to
eat while the potatoes are cooking.”
Not until he had half a melon in hand did Cal begin.
“There’s one of the finest rice plantations on all this coast about
a mile above here. Or rather, the plantation house is there. As for
the plantation itself, we’re sitting on it now. It belongs to Colonel
Huguenin, and of course the house is closed in summer.”
“Why?” interrupted Dick, whose thirst for information concerning
southern customs was insatiable.
“Do you really want me to interrupt my story of ‘How Cal Went Foraging’
in order to answer your interjected inquiry? If I must talk it’s all
one to me what I talk about. So make your choice.”
“Go on and tell us of the foraging. The other thing can wait.”
“Well, then; I happened to know of this plantation. I’ve bivouacked
on the shores of this bay before, and when I turned the _Hunkydory’s_
nose in this direction I was impelled by an intelligent purpose. I had
alluring visions of the things I could buy from the negroes up there at
the quarters.”
“Why didn’t you tell us then instead of getting off all that rigmarole
about rowing against the tide and the rest of it?” asked Larry, not
with irritation, but with a laugh, for the cantaloupe he was eating and
the smell of the sweet potatoes roasting in the ashes had put him and
the others into an entirely peaceful and contented frame of mind.
“I never like to raise hopes,” answered Cal, “that I cannot certainly
fulfill. Performance is better than promises—as much better as the
supper we are about to eat is better than a printed bill of fare.
Wonder how the potatoes are coming on?”
With that he dug one of the yams out of the ashes, examined it, and put
it back, saying:
“Five or six minutes more will do the business. I picked out the
smallest ones on purpose to hurry supper. Let’s set the table. Tom, if
your kettle of water is boiling, suppose you shuck some corn and plunge
it in it. It must boil from five to six minutes—just long enough to
get it thoroughly hot through. If it boils longer the sweetness all
goes out of it. Dick, won’t you wash some of the tomatoes while Larry
and I arrange the dishes?”
Arranging the dishes consisted in cutting a number of broad palmete
leaves, some to hold the supplies of food and others to serve as plates.
“I’m sorry I cannot offer you young gentlemen some fresh butter for
your corn and potatoes,” said Cal, as they sat down to supper, “but to
be perfectly candid with you, our cows seem to have deserted us and we
haven’t churned for several days past. After all, the corn and potatoes
will be very palatable with a little salt sprinkled upon them, and we
have plenty of salt. Don’t hesitate to help yourselves freely to it.”
“To my mind,” said Dick, “this is as good a supper as I ever ate.”
“That’s because of our sharp appetites,” answered Larry. “We’re hungry
enough to relish anything.”
“Appetite helps, of course,” said Dick, thoughtfully; “but so does
contrast. An hour ago we had all made up our minds to content ourselves
for many meals to come with the exclusive diet of fish and game, which
has been our lot for many meals past. To find ourselves eating a supper
like this instead is like waking from a bad dream and finding it only a
nightmare.”
“It would be better still not to have the nightmare,” answered Cal,
speaking more seriously than he usually did. “When you have a nightmare
it is usually your own fault, and pessimism is always so. You fellows
were pessimistic over the prospect of a supper you could not enjoy. As
you have a supper that you can enjoy, the suffering you inflicted upon
yourselves was wholly needless.”
“Yes, I know,” interposed Tom; “but we couldn’t know that you were
going to get all these good things for us.”
“No, of course not. But if you hadn’t allowed your pessimistic
forebodings to make you unhappy, you needn’t have been unhappy at
all. If things had turned out as you expected you’d have been unhappy
twice—once in lamenting your lot and once in suffering it. As it
is, you’ve been needlessly unhappy once and unexpectedly happy once,
instead of being happy all the while. I tell you optimism is the only
true philosophy.”
“I suppose it is,” Dick admitted, “but it leads to disappointment very
often.”
“Of course. But in that case you suffer the ill, whatever it is, only
once; while the pessimist suffers it both before it befalls and when it
comes. That involves a sheer waste of the power of endurance.”
Larry had forgotten to eat while his brother delivered this little
discourse, for he had never heard Cal talk in so serious a fashion.
Indeed, he had come to think of his brother as a trifler who could
never be persuaded to seriousness.
“Where on earth did you get that thought, Cal?” he asked, when Cal
ceased to speak.
“It is perfectly sound, isn’t it?” was the boy’s reply.
“I think it is. But where did you get it?”
“If it is sound, it doesn’t matter where I got it, or how. But to
satisfy your curiosity, I’ll tell you that I thought it out down here
in the woods when I was a runaway. I was so often in trouble as to what
was going to happen, and it so often happened that it didn’t happen
after all, that I got to wondering one day what was the use of worrying
about things that might never happen. I was alone in the woods, you
know, and I had plenty of time to think. So little by little I thought
out the optimistic philosophy and adopted it as the rule of my life.
Of course I could not formulate it then as I do now. I didn’t know
what the words ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’ meant, but my mind got a
good grasp upon the ideas underlying them. There! My sermon is done.
I have only to announce that there will be no more preaching at this
camp-meeting. I’m going to take a look at your well, Tom, and if the
water is as good as you say, I’m going to empty the rain water out of
the kegs and refill them. Rain water, you know, goes bad a good deal
sooner than other water—especially sand-filtered water.”
“I reckon Cal is right, Dick,” said Tom, when their companion was out
of earshot.
“Yes, of course he is, but did you ever stub your toe? It’s a little
bit hard to be optimistic on occasions like that.”
“I reckon that’s hardly what Cal meant—”
“Of course it isn’t. I was jesting.”
XVI
FOG BOUND
THE boys were not tired that evening, and after their abundant supper
they sat late talking and telling stories and “just being happy,” Dick
said. The day had been a torrid one, but in the evening there was a
chill in the air which made a crackling camp-fire welcome. When at last
they grew sleepy they simply rolled themselves in their blankets and
lay down upon the sand and under the stars. They had built no shelter,
as it was not their purpose to remain where they were except for a
single night.
It was not long after daylight when Tom, shivering, sprang up, saying:
“I’m cold—hello! What’s this? Fog?”
“Yes,” said Larry, “a visitor from the gulf stream. And it is almost
thick enough to cut, too. What shall we do?”
“Do? Why, make the best of it and be happy, of course,” answered Cal,
piling wood upon the embers to set the camp-fire going again. “The
first step in that direction is to get your blood circulating. Stir
around. Bring a bucket of water and set the kettle to boil—that is
to say, if you can open a trail through this fog and find the water
hole without falling into it. Whew! but this is a marrow-searching
atmosphere.”
The fog was indeed so dense that nothing could be seen at more than
twenty paces away, while the damp, penetrating chill set all teeth
chattering and kept them at it until rapid exercise set pulses going
again. Then came breakfast to “confirm the cure,” Dick suggested, and
the little company was comfortable again. That is to say, all of them
but Larry. He was obviously uneasy in his mind, so much so that he had
little relish for his breakfast.
“What’s the matter, Larry,” asked Tom, presently; “aren’t you warm yet?”
“Oh, yes, I’m warm enough, but there isn’t a breath of air stirring,
and this fog may last all day. What do you think, Cal?”
“I think that very likely. I’ve seen fogs like this that lasted two or
three days.”
“How on earth are we to get to Beaufort while it lasts?”
The question revealed the nature of Larry’s trouble.
“Why, of course we can’t do anything of the kind,” Cal answered. “We
should get lost in the fog and go butting into mud banks and unexpected
shoals. No. Till this fog clears away we can’t think of leaving the
altogether agreeable shore upon which a kindly fate has cast us. But
we can be happy while we stay, unless we make ourselves unhappy by
worrying. I know what is troubling you, Larry, and it’s nonsense to
worry about it. I often think I wouldn’t carry your conscience about
with me for thirty cents a month.”
“But, Cal, you see it is our duty to notify the revenue officers of our
discovery before those smugglers get away.”
“It may relieve your mind,” Cal answered in his usual roundabout
fashion, “to reflect that they can’t get away. If they were still
there when this fog came in from the sea, they will stay there till it
clears away again. So we are really losing no time. In addition to that
consolation, you should take comfort to yourself in the thought that
even if the revenue officers were in possession of the information we
have, they could do nothing till the fog lifts. So far as I know, at
least, they can see no farther through fog than other people can, and
shoals and mud banks are unlikely to respect their authority by keeping
out of the way of such craft as they may navigate.”
Suddenly Cal put aside his playful manner of speech, and became
thoroughly earnest.
“Think a minute, Larry. We have absolutely no official duty to do in
this matter. We are doing our best as good citizens to notify the
authorities. At present we can’t do it. There’s an end of that. We
have a pleasant bivouac here, with plenty of food and more where it
came from. Why shouldn’t we make the best of things and be happy? Why
should you go brooding around, making the rest of us miserable? I tell
you it’s nonsense. Cheer up, and give the rest of us a chance to enjoy
ourselves.”
“You are right, Cal,” Larry answered; “and I won’t spoil sport. I
didn’t mean to, and my worrying was foolish. By the way, what shall we
do to pass the time to-day?”
“Well, for one thing, we ought to put up a shelter. A fog like this is
very apt to end in soaking rain, and if it does that to-night, we’ll
sleep more comfortably under a roof of palmete leaves than out in the
open. However, there’s no hurry about that, and you can let Dick wallop
you at chess for an hour or so while Tom and I go foraging. You see
I’ve thought of a good many things that I ought to have bought last
night, but didn’t. Do you want to go along, Tom?”
Tom did, and as they started away, Cal called back:
“I say, Larry, suppose you put on a kettle of rice to boil for dinner
when the time comes. I think I’ll bring back something to eat with it.”
Then walking on with Tom by his side, he fell into his customary
drawling, half-frivolous mode of speech. Tom had expressed his pleasure
in the prospect of rice for dinner—rice cooked in the Carolina way, a
dish he had never tasted before his present visit began.
“Yes,” answered Cal, “I was tenderly and affectionately thinking of you
when I suggested the dish. And I had it in mind to make the occasion
memorable in another way. I remember very vividly how greatly—I will
not say greedily—you enjoyed the combination of rice and broiled
spring chicken while we were in Charleston. I remember that at first
you seemed disposed to scorn the rice under the mistaken impression
that rice must always be the pasty, mush-like mess that they made of it
at school. I remember how when I insisted upon filling your plate with
it you contemplated it with surprise, and, contemplating, tasted the
dainty result of proper cooking. After that all was plain sailing. I
had only to place half a broiled chicken upon the rice foundation in
your plate—half a chicken at a time I mean—and observe the gustatory
delight with which you devoted yourself to our favorite Carolina dish.”
“Oh, well, your Carolina way of cooking it makes rice good even when
you have no chicken to go with it. If the fog would thin itself down a
bit—”
“Which it won’t do in time for you to kill the squirrels you were
thinking of as a possible substitute for chicken. Perish the thought.
It is utterly unworthy. You and I are out after spring chickens, Tom.”
“Good! Do you think we can find any?”
“With the aid of the currency of our country as an excitant of the
negro imagination, we can.”
“You saw chickens at the negro quarters last night, then?”
“No, I did not. But I observed a large pan on a shelf in front of one
of the cabins, and with more curiosity than politeness I stood up on my
tiptoes and looked into it. Tom, that pan was more than half full of
chicken feed, and it was fresh at that. Knowing the habits of persons
of the colored persuasion, I am entirely certain that no one of them
would have taken the trouble to prepare that chicken feed unless he
was the happy possessor of chickens. I’m going to call upon the dusky
proprietor of that pan this morning.”
“That’s another case of noticing, Cal, and another proof of its value.
We are likely to have broiled spring chickens for dinner to-day just
because you observed that pan of chicken feed. What else did you notice
up there? I ask solely out of curiosity.”
“There wasn’t much else to observe. I saw some fig bushes but they’ve
been stripped. Otherwise we should have had some figs for breakfast
this morning. Just now I observe that the fog is manifesting a decided
tendency to resolve itself into rain, and if it does, that we must
satisfy Larry’s conscience by getting away from our present camp this
afternoon—or as soon as the fog is sufficiently cleared away. So you
and I must hurry on if we’re to have those broiled chickens.”
As results proved, Cal was mistaken in his reckoning of the time
necessary to dissipate the fog. It was merely taking the form of what
is known as a “Scotch mist,” which does not form itself into rain drops
and fall, but collects in drops upon whatever it touches, saturating
clothing even more speedily than actual rain does and making all but
the sunniest dispositions uncomfortable.
But even a Scotch mist condition served to thin the fog a little,
though by no means enough to make navigation possible. Larry watched
conditions anxiously, as Cal expected him to do, and his first question
when Cal and Tom returned with their chickens revealed his state of
mind.
“What do you think of it, Cal?” he asked.
“Of what? If you refer to the moon, I am satisfied in my own mind—”
“Pshaw! You know what I mean. Do be serious for once and tell me what
you think of the prospect?”
“Conscience bothering you again?”
“Yes. We must get away from here to-day if possible—and as soon as
possible.”
“Can’t you give us time to have dinner and cook some extra food for
consumption when we get hopelessly lost out there in the fog banks that
are still rolling in from the sea?”
“Oh, of course we can’t leave here till the fog clears away. But do you
think it ever will clear away?”
“It always has,” answered Cal, determined to laugh his brother out of
his brooding if he could not reason him out of it. “In such experience
as I have had with fogs I never yet encountered one that didn’t
ultimately disappear, did you?”
“But what do you think of the prospect?” persisted Larry.
“I can see so little of it through the fog,” Cal provokingly replied,
“that I am really unable to form an intelligent opinion of it. What I
do see is that you haven’t begun to make our shelter yet. In my opinion
it would be well to do so, if only to keep the chess board dry while
a game is in progress. Moreover, I have an interesting book or two
wrapped up in my oilskins, and if we are doomed to remain here over
night—”
“You don’t think then that—”
“Frankly, Larry, I don’t know anything about it. Neither do you, and
neither does anybody else. We’re in a very wet fog bank. We’ve got
to stay where we are till the weather changes. Don’t you think our
wisest course is to make ourselves as comfortable and keep ourselves as
cheerful as we can while it lasts.”
“Yes, of course, but it’s pretty hard you know to—”
“Not half as hard as chopping wood and ‘toting’ it in from the woods
over there, and that is what Tom and I are going to do after dinner as
our contribution to the general comfort. You’ll find yourself feeling
a great deal better if you busy yourself making a really comfortable
shelter while we’re at the other job. It may come on to rain torrents
this afternoon, and of course we won’t leave here in the boat if it
does.”
“That will do, Cal. I’m convinced, and I’m a trifle ashamed of myself
besides. I promise not to worry any more. I decree that we shall not
leave port in a rain storm, and unless the weather conditions become
favorable before four o’clock this afternoon we’ll not leave here any
how until to-morrow.”
XVII
THE OBLIGATION OF A GENTLEMAN
THE fog held throughout the day, changing to a deluge of rain about
nightfall, but Cal and Tom had provided an abundance of firewood, the
palmete shelter was waterproof, the long gray moss with which it was
carpeted was soft to loll upon, and the book from which they read
aloud by turns proved to be an amusing one. Larry kept his promise and
indulged in no further impatience.
When morning came the rain was still coming down in torrents, and it
was unanimously agreed that no attempt should be made to quit the place
until it should cease.
“An open rowboat in a heavy rain is about the wettest place
imaginable,” Dick said, and the experience of the rest had been such as
to confirm the judgment.
When at last a brisk westerly wind began to tear the clouds to pieces,
all agreed that Larry’s patience had fairly earned its reward, and all
hands worked hard to get as early a start as possible. It was two
o’clock in fact when they finally set sail, with Cal again at the helm
because he knew of a narrow but navigable passage which would enable
them to avoid the heavy ebb tide of the channel that Larry had selected
two days before. The tide would not begin to ebb for two or three hours
to come, and by taking this short cut Cal hoped to reach broad waters
before that time.
He did so in fact, but upon running out of the little creek he was
disappointed to find that a shift had given him a headwind to contend
with. There was nothing for it but to beat to windward, and the breeze
was so light that their progress was slow. Cal made the best of
conditions as he found them, according to his custom, but about sunset
the tide turned against him, and worse than that, the wind went down
with the sun, leaving not a breath to fill the sails.
Then Cal asked for orders.
“What is your wish, Captain Larry?” he asked. “Shall we take to the
oars and push on against the tide, or land for the night? Without a
favoring wind we can’t possibly make Beaufort to-night.”
“What do the rest of you say?” asked Larry, in some perplexity.
“Never mind what anybody else says,” broke in Cal, before the others
could answer. “This isn’t a debating club or an advisory council of
ancients, or anything else of the kind. We’re a ship’s company and you
are the captain; so give your orders.”
“Very well, we’ll run ashore. Do you know of a suitable place, Cal?”
“No, not from personal experience in these parts, but I’ve been
watching the coast-line over there to starboard, and I think I make out
the mouth of a small creek or inlet. The chart doesn’t show it very
distinctly, but it roughly indicates a number of small indentations in
the land, and the soundings given for all that shore seem satisfactory.”
“To the oars then,” said Larry, “and we’ll look for a landing place
somewhere over there. The whole shore seems to be heavily wooded. Pull
away.”
It was fully dark when Cal’s keen eyes found what he was looking
for, namely, the sheltered mouth of a small creek or inlet, heavily
overshadowed by woods and a tangled undergrowth.
Running into it the company landed on a small bluff-like bit of shore
and made things snug for the night. The heavy dew, so prevalent on
that coast, was already dripping from the trees, and the air was very
chill. To avoid the dew drippings the camp-fire was built close to the
margin of the inlet at a point where a little patch of star-studded sky
showed clear overhead.
The little company sat with their backs against a large fallen tree as
they ate their supper and planned an early start for the morrow. All
were eager to make the visit to Beauf
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/50811