THE river is coming up at the rate of an inch an hour!” announced Mr. Miller, reading from the evening paper. “At one o’clock it was eighteen feet, and reports from the north indicate the highest water ever known on the Upper Mississippi.”
“Hurrah!” cheered Ned, who was sitting on the porch steps, waiting for supper, and had heard through the open window.
“Why, Ned!” rebuked his mother. “Think of all the suffering this means!”
“Well, anyway, the river’s booming,” ventured Ned, abashed. “It’s even with the railroad tracks. I was down looking at it after school.”
“I’m sorry for the poor people on the flats—the lowlands must be flooded,” continued Mrs. Miller.
“But they tie their houses to trees with ropes, and move into the second stories, and go about on rafts,” explained Ned, to whom such a plight was not without fun.
“Still, I fancy that these people don’t find their fix very amusing, Ned,” commented his father. “Nor is it humorous to the merchants to have their cellars swamped and their goods damaged.”
Ned temporarily subsided—meekly convinced of the serious phase of a freshet, but nevertheless seeing sport in prospect.
“Say, father,” he blurted out, in the midst of supper, “Hal——”
“Neddie! How often have I told you not to address anybody with ‘say’?” interrupted his mother, severely.
“Oh!” admitted Ned, guilt in his tones. Rallying from the setback he resumed:
“I only wanted to ask if I couldn’t go over on Eagle Island to-morrow with Hal, in our boat. It’s all under water, and every one has moved off.”
“I have no special objection,” answered his father, “if you’ll promise to be careful.”
“Neddie, do be careful,” implored his mother. “You surely will, won’t you?”
“Of course,” assured Ned. “But, pshaw, there isn’t any danger. You couldn’t tip over the boat if you tried!”
“However, I wouldn’t try, if I were you,” remarked his father. Then he added, teasingly:
“We’ll let him have this Saturday for his fun, Helen, and next Saturday he’ll have some wood to pile! I’ve ordered eleven loads, and it will be hauled during the week.”
“Oh, father! Eleven loads!” exclaimed Ned, in dismay.
The next day, Saturday, dawned clear and soft, a typical June morning. Ned turned out early, and had most of his chores done before breakfast, despite the fact that a double supply of wood was necessary for the kitchen stove, in order to last over Sunday.
When, at eight o’clock, Hal Lucas whistled for him, in front, he was ready to start. Stuffing his lunch, wrapped in two packages, into his side coat-pockets, he rushed through the house, kissing his mother on his way, and out of the gate.
“Now, be careful, Ned!” called his mother, after him.
“I will,” he shouted. “Good-bye.”
Mrs. Miller stood on the porch, watching the two boys as they merrily trudged off. Ned had many a time asserted, with truth, that although he might go upon the river every day for fifty years, each time his mother would be worried about him until he came home again. A mother’s heart is a very anxious heart.
Ned and Hal hastened down the street. Ahead of them they could see the river sparkling under the rays of the sun. Ordinarily it was not visible from this distance; but at present, far out of its bed, it was right on a level with the railroad skirting it.
“My! She’s on a tear, isn’t she!” said Hal, enthusiastically.
“If ever she gets over the tracks she’ll come whooping, my father says,” responded Ned. “She’s higher than the street, now!”
Without question the river was, to use Hal’s expression, “on a tear.” People along the Mississippi expect, as a matter of course, high water in the spring and early summer. Moderate high water is welcomed. It enables the logging companies to float their stranded logs; it washes clean the banks and the lowlands, carrying away tons of stuff that otherwise might breed illness; it is one of nature’s thorough purifiers.
But here was a “June rise” with a vengeance. Up in the northern pineries the heavy snows of the past winter were melting all at once beneath long-continued rains. Every stream was a torrent, pouring its swollen tide into the Mississippi. As a consequence of this hearty diet, the old Father of Waters had increased his girth enormously. Never was a prize grunter fattened so rapidly.
His bulk began to take up more room than was comfortable for his neighbors. Some persons were forced to flee for their lives; others were prepared to leave their homes at a moment’s notice. Whole towns were in danger of being flooded.
At Beaufort the sewers were being filled and the water, creeping through them, flowed out far inland. Cellars were being invaded; and seeping up, the crafty flood inundated great tracts of street and yard in the lower-lying resident portions of the town.
When, after school on the previous afternoon, Ned had gone down to look at the river, there had been hardly any water inside the tracks at the foot of Maple Street. But this morning the boys found quite a pond had gathered during the night. In places the board walks on either hand were afloat, and children were running back and forth over them, shouting with delight as the water spurted up between the cracks.
“She’s soaking through,” commented Hal.
Ned nodded, and saying, “Come on,” deliberately continued on the route, over the wavy, unsteady walk. Hal followed. Both boys disdained to hurry their pace one bit, even to avoid wet feet. They deemed that a show of dignity was necessary, to impress the scampering, screaming youngsters who were spectators.
With a spring they leaped the open space between the end of the walk and the railroad embankment. Their feet sank deep into the mushy cinders as they scrambled to the top.
This was four tracks wide, and usually was a good stone’s throw from the river’s edge. To-day the water was lapping at the rails. North and south were scattered gangs of men with shovels, watching to patch the slightest break. Seemingly the embankment was all that kept the water from rushing into the principal streets.
Ned and Hal stood and gazed in silent wonder at the scene before them. The river was not that friendly river to which they were accustomed. It was a sullen, menacing monster, without a single familiar aspect. The water was an opaque, ugly yellow, and was thickly charged with sediment. Extending as far as eye could reach it swept past, bearing on its mighty breast trunks of trees, pieces of lumber, fragments of buildings, and not infrequently an entire shed or small house.
There was no levee, no shore, no anything—save water. The big Diamond Jo warehouse, with its basement story completely submerged, was secured by a hawser encircling it.
Commodore Jones’ little fish-market and boats-to-hire establishment, a few rods below, also was anchored by a rope. The water was within a couple of inches of its platform; but nevertheless, river threatening each moment to carry him away, here sat the commodore, smoking his pipe.
The boys strolled to a point on the embankment opposite him.
“Good-morning, commodore,” they called.
“Mornin’, young fellers,” responded the commodore. “Better not come crost them planks,” he admonished, indicating the narrow bridge which connected his quarters with the land.
“We don’t want to,” replied Ned. “How’s the water? Still rising?”
“No,” answered the commodore. “She ain’t raised any since midnight. I look for her to begin to go down pretty soon, now. She’s fallin’ up north.”
“Do you think the embankment will hold?” asked Hal, anxiously.
“Certain, ’less we have an east wind,” assured the commodore, between his puffs. “East wind would pile up the waves an’ no knowin’ what would happen.”
“I guess we’ll go out in our boat,” announced Ned.
“Well, it’s there with them others under the lee of the warehouse,” said the commodore, with a jerk of his pipe toward the cluster of skiffs tied along the embankment, in the angle formed by the end of the steamboat building, and thus shielded from the current. “Reckon I wouldn’t take no chances though, if I was you. River’s full of drift-wood.”
The commodore was a stoical, gruff old veteran of the Mississippi—whereby his title—and this advice was no small concession.
“We’ll be careful,” cried Hal.
“Oh, it’s safe enough,” grunted the commodore, lapsing into the apparent surliness which covered a really kind heart.
The boys proceeded to their boat, and unlocked its painter from the larger chain to which all the boats were fastened.
The craft of which they were joint owners was of that type known on the Mississippi as scull-boat or sink-boat. It was low and flat, with a smooth, dish-shaped keel, sharp prow, and overhanging stern. Its bows were decked, and a combing ran along the gunwale.
It was a very convenient, reliable boat. Under the decked bows could be stowed a surprising amount of stuff. Being made from thin strips of cedar, it was exceedingly buoyant and light; and in consequence of its width and “flatness,” sitting as it did so low in the water, capsizing was almost impossible. As an extra precaution, however, Mr. Miller and Mr. Lucas had caused air-cylinders of copper to be inserted, inside the bows.
There were no seats or thwarts. The boys sprawled about on the straw in the bottom. The one who rowed sat on a soap-box; the one who sculled—for in the stern was a hole for a sculling-oar—perched on the gunwale.
You see, the boat was so steady that it did not much matter how the persons in it acted.
Sometimes the boys rowed, sometimes they sculled, and sometimes, if in a hurry or fought by a strong current, they both rowed and sculled. When not in use the boat was quartered with Commodore Jones.
Hal jumped in, shipped the single pair of oars, and then plumped into the stern; Ned shoved off, and squatting on the soap-box applied himself to navigating, for it happened to be his turn.
“Watch out for the lath!” cautioned Hal.
“Say—I bet you it’s from the Beaufort Lumber Company’s yards!” exclaimed Ned, twisting his head to look over the bows.
Countless bunches of lath, extending up the river as far as the boys could see, were passing down in a long, straight string. A few vigorous strokes with the oars shot the boat out of the eddy formed by the warehouse, and into the current, and carried them through the line of lath. Now the craft was clear of obstructions.
Eagle Island was a large tract of heavily wooded land, reaching down river from off the lower end of town. It was four miles in length, and half a mile or more in breadth. Paper-mill Slough separated it from the mainland. Quite a settlement of wood-choppers, small farmers, and mill employees lived upon it; and with its nuts, its fishing, and its other attractions, it was a favorite resort for the Beaufort youth.
The powerful current of the freshet swept the voyagers rapidly onward. In a moment they had passed under the bridge, against the piers of which the water boiled and swirled. On the nearer shore they caught a glimpse, here and there, of shanties held in place by ropes, and of their tenants paddling about the thresholds in skiffs. The river appeared to be among the lumber piles of the Mosher Lumber Company, even!
Of the farther shore nothing was to be seen. The water stretched in this direction for miles and miles, only a fringe of willows marking its ordinary bounds.
And now they were beyond the lumber yards, and had entered Paper-mill Slough.
The head of Eagle Island was still high and dry, above the reach of the flood. The current, split by the promontory, was not so swift in the slough as in the river proper.
The boys kept close to the island, and presently the ground had so descended that the water was rushing in among the trees.
“Where will we go in?” asked Ned.
“Oh, anywhere,” replied Hal; adding: “Let’s go in here.”
“Well, then, you scull,” said Ned, dealing the boat a sudden twist with the left-hand oar, and sending it obliquely into the woods.
With a quick motion he unshipped the oars from their locks and himself from the soap-box, and sitting comfortably on the straw, his back against the half-deck of the bows, he took it easy.
Between the hickories and the oaks glided the nimble craft, the screw-like movement of the sculling oar, deftly managed by Hal, giving it an agreeable wriggling, rocking motion.
The water varied in depth. In some places the oar-blade touched bottom; again no bottom was to be found. Above the surface in the shallows the tops of weeds and bushes swayed with the current. Not a sound of human life was heard. The only noises to break the silence were the twitterings of uneasy birds amidst the branches of the trees, and once in a while a slight scrape from the boat’s prow as Hal steered through a narrow channel.
It was an enchanted island, spellbound by the freshet.
“Doesn’t it seem queer, though!” commented Ned, after they had gone a short distance, upon a zigzag course.
“I should say!” agreed Hal, letting the boat drift, and with eyes and ears drinking in the novelty of it all. “Where will we make for?”
“I don’t care,” responded Ned. “See! there’s a barn.”
Sure enough, directly ahead was a small, unpainted, weather-beaten barn just visible between the tree-trunks. Hal began to scull gently, and as they drew nearer they saw a house, also, not far from it.
The scene was rather pathetic—this home, lonely and deserted, standing waist-deep in the midst of the waters, its only companions the silent forest trees.
“The folks who lived here must have skipped in a big hurry,” observed Ned. “They didn’t even stop to close their up-stairs windows.”
“Perhaps that’s the way they got out,” suggested Hal.
“I hear a dog!” suddenly Ned exclaimed.
“He’s shut in the house,” said Hal, poising his oar and listening.
“Poor fellow! He’s around somewhere, that’s sure,” agreed Ned. “Let’s go nearer and see about him.”
With the howling of the dog to urge them, they sculled forward. First in their path was the barn; and with a change in their angle of view Ned cried:
“There he is! He’s in the loft!”
True enough. In the square doorway of the barn-loft was a medium size brown dog, peering out to catch their coming. Evidently he had heard their voices, and had howled for help.
“Now, I call that a shame!” declared Ned.
The dog howled back that indeed it was.
“Let’s rescue him,” proposed Hal, laying hold of a sapling, to keep the boat where the dog might see them, while they discussed him. “Why, he must be half starved!”
“Unless the family left him on purpose, and put some stuff in there for him to eat,” hazarded Ned.
“Then he ate it all up at once—dogs never save, like a cat,” rejoined Hal, sagely. “Besides, I don’t believe his folks did that—they simply deserted him, because they were scared.”
“But how can we get at him?” queried Ned.
Hal released his hold on the sapling, and sculled across to the barn. The dog, seeing them move toward him, whined frantically, and craned his neck to watch them.
They rasped along the gray boards of the barn until they came to a door, the upper half of which was out of water.
“See if you can open it,” said Hal. “Perhaps we can go in with the boat, to the stairs.”
“Padlocked,” informed Ned, briefly, and in disgust. “That proves it! They left him here on purpose.”
“No, sir-ee!” Hal insisted. “They never thought of the barn—they skipped after it had been locked for the night.”
They made a circuit of the barn, but there was no other door; and although within easy reach there was a window, of dirty panes, it was quite too narrow for entrance. Besides, the water hereabouts was five feet deep, as Ned found by sounding with an oar, and there was no knowing what disagreeable surprise the inside of the barn might offer to a person dropping through the window.
He peered through the dingy glass, and as well as he could scanned the dim, shadowy interior, faintly shown by the light which penetrated between the boards.
“Anyway, I’m glad a horse or cow isn’t in there,” he said.
They had passed out of the dog’s sight, and he was howling piteously, thinking that he had lost them.
“We’re coming,” shouted Ned; and they hastened to station themselves again at the sapling where the dog could see them.
This comforted him, and his howling changed to whines of greeting.
“Poor doggie,” spoke Hal to him. “I wish we could help you out of your fix.”
“Jump,” called Ned.
The two boys tried in vain by coaxing and commanding to make the dog jump from the window. It was only about eight feet to the surface of the water, and although he seemed to know just what they wanted, he could not muster spunk for the leap. He barked and whined, and crouched and stretched, one end willing but the other end afraid; and on the very brink he always balked.
“Well,” remarked Hal, finally, “I don’t see what we can do—we can’t get up there, and you won’t come down here. So we’ll have to leave you. I hope somebody will come after you pretty soon.”
“It’s a great big shame, that’s what it is!” declared Ned. “We’ll bring you over some meat, won’t we, Hal!”
“Yes, indeed,” answered Hal, seizing upon the idea.
“One thing is sure—he won’t die from thirst!” said Ned, looking back regretfully, as they slowly sculled off.
The dog, seeing them go, lifted his nose and howled as if his heart was breaking.
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Hal. “He thinks we’re leaving him for good.”
“He’s going to jump! He’s going to jump!” cried Ned, suddenly. “Whistle!”
Yes, the dog was nerving himself to the feat. In desperation he fidgeted from side to side of the doorway, craning, running back and forth, and acting like a dog possessed.
The combined whistle of the boys was too much!
“Look!” shouted both at once.
With a last howl he was in mid-air, his legs outspread; and in a twinkling he had disappeared, amid a mighty splash, beneath the water.
“My—that must have hurt his stomach like sixty!” laughed Hal.
But the dog seemed not hurt a particle. In a moment, above the surface popped his head, and shaking it vigorously to clear his eyes and ears of water, yapping with eagerness and excitement he lined a course straight for the boat.
“Come on, come on, old fellow!” urged the boys.
“Yap, yap, yap, yap, yap!” said the dog.
And come he did, as fast as his legs and paws could send him, his chest cleaving the ripples, and a bubbly wake extending far behind him.
Speedily he had gained the boat, and Ned had pulled him in. Convinced that now he was saved, the dog went into perfect transports of happiness. He barked, he yelped, he whined, he snickered, he twisted his body into knots; he talked to one boy, and then to the other, and then to the two at once, telling them all about it; he flicked water over them with his whipping tail, and shaking himself doused them again until they were well-nigh as wet as he. And how he grinned!
“He’s laughing!” cried Hal.
Indeed, this was true. The pendant upper lip of the dog was wrinkled back, so that he was showing his white teeth in a ridiculous grin!
“Well!” remarked Ned, staring at him. “It doesn’t make him look very pretty, anyway.”
Which, also, was true, for the grin was like a snarl.
The dog, having paid his respects, cuddled himself on the straw of the bows, in the sun, and there blinked, now and then expressing his ecstasy by a contented little sigh.
“He knows we’ve got to keep him,” declared Hal. “We can’t throw him up into the loft again, and there’s no other place for him, except the boat.”
“I’m glad of it, too,” asserted Ned. “Those people don’t deserve a dog, after the way they’ve treated him! Do they, pup?”
The dog, hearing himself addressed, whimpered as if in memory of a dark past, and at the same time thumped his tail in celebration of a bright present.
“But maybe we’ll have to return him,” prophesied Hal, mechanically working the sculling oar. “He’s a pointer, and perhaps he’s valuable.”
“Do you suppose we can find the house again?” mused Ned.
“Our folks might make us try,” replied Hal. “Let’s scull away as hard as we can, without looking where we’re going. Then we’ll lose it.”
Acting upon his own suggestion Hall sculled stoutly, skimming aimlessly between the trees, and soon the house and barn were nowhere to be seen.
“There!” he panted, ceasing his exertions, and letting the boat drift. “Now where are we?”
“I give it up,” candidly confessed Ned. “The water changes everything so. But what’s the matter with eating? Aren’t you hungry?”
“Hungry!” exclaimed Hal. “You watch me.”
As the boys untied their packages of lunch the dog sat up in expectation. He was all eyes and mouth.
“He’s hungry, too,” declared Hal. “He heard us say ‘eat.’ Here—catch!”
He tossed a slice of bread at their canine charge, and down it went, apparently swallowed whole.
The lunch which had been intended for two did for three; the boys munched and the dog gobbled, and presently scarcely a crumb remained.
During this time the boat had been carried by the current, bumping into tree-trunks, and swinging to right and to left, with weeds and bushes scraping along its bottom and against its sides.
The boys lolled on the warm straw, and the dog, no doubt exhausted by his vigils in the barn-loft, went to sleep.
It was very pleasant, thus to float through the green woods, over ground which they so often had traversed afoot. Occasionally they saw other houses and barns, flooded and lifeless, and in all respects appearing much the same as the place at which the pointer had been discovered.
“Well, if the dog can go there again, all right,” murmured Hal. “I can’t.”
“I either,” declared Ned, drowsily.
At length the boat emerged into an open area, with only pond-lily pads and buds breaking the ripples.
“Hello!” spoke Hal. “This must be Beaver Lake, Ned.”
“So it is,” agreed Ned. “I believe we ought to turn back and strike for home, if we want to take things easy. If we go any farther we’ll have an awful job getting back.”
He seized the sculling oar, and swinging the craft around headed into the trees again.
“I’ll scull,” he said, “and when we reach the slough you can row.”
The return progress was slower, for the current was against them. Whenever Hal could help with the oars, he did, but at many points there was not room to use them. However, the current, while hindering, also served as a guide.
“The river’s falling!” suddenly cried Hal, pointing to a tree-trunk close at hand. “See there!”
A narrow margin of wet, marking where the water must have been, was visible on the bark, above the smooth tide.
“And there’s some mud!” he triumphantly added, at a strip of ooze from which the water had receded.
“Humph!” commented Ned; whether from pleasure or disappointment, was not clear.
Yes, the crest of the freshet had passed. Upon every tree within sight was the unmistakable sign.
But the dog in the bows of the boat slept on. He was not interested; for all he cared the flood might last forever. He was beyond its clutches.
The trip home was achieved by dint of incessant tugging and pulling. The boys crossed the slough, and then worked their way along the shore, where the current was not so fierce. Finally, with blistered hands and numb wrists they glided in behind the warehouse, whence they had started.
The dog, overjoyed, jumped out first; with a grunt of relief, they followed.
“Back, are you?” greeted Commodore Jones (who sat just as they had left him) when they approached with the oars.
“See what we found,” bade Ned, nodding toward the dog.
“Pointer pup, eh?” said the commodore. “Where’d you get him?”
“Somebody had left him in a barn half under water,” informed Hal; “on Eagle.”
“You don’t say!” responded the commodore, pityingly. “Sech a man ain’t fit to have a dog. You’d better keep him.”
“We’re going to,” answered the boys, in unison.
“What will we do about him?” asked Ned, as they were walking homeward. “Shall we draw lots to see which’ll take him?”
“N-n-no,” responded Hal, reluctantly. “You can have him. My mother says she won’t allow a dog about, or else I’d have had one long ago.”
“That’s too bad,” sympathized Ned. “At our house we all like dogs—at least, mother does if they don’t dig up her flowers.”
“You ought to call him Robinson Crusoe—Crusoe was wrecked on an island, you know,” suggested Hal.
“Or ‘Bob’ for short,” cried Ned, the idea appealing to him. “All right—you name him and I’ll have him.”
“I suppose so,” admitted Hal, ruefully.
When they parted at the street corner, the dog hesitated, uncertain which to accompany.
“Come on, Bob,” called Ned.
And Bob, quickly deciding, followed him.
THE river went down as rapidly as it had come up, but left upon the clap-boards of the Diamond Jo warehouse a line of mud in token of its visit. People in the low-lying portions of the city hastened to move back into their accustomed quarters, now soaked by the flood. Many a cellar was pumped out. And at the levee Commodore Jones’ flock of skiffs was once more tethered in its usual place before the little boat-house.
Much to Ned’s disgust the eleven loads of wood arrived promptly at the Miller premises—eleven great loads of wet slabs, making a mountain higher than the alley fence, and filling all the space between the wood-shed and the next back-yard!
These slabs were to be loosely laid, one upon another, in long, parallel piles, so that the air could circulate freely between them. When the wood had dried, it was to be split, and put in the shed, for use.
It seemed to Ned an endless task, to dispose of such a mass, stick by stick. However, he had accomplished it in previous summers, and although each June it loomed into sight afresh, yet somehow by pegging away he managed to struggle through it.
Having for several days dolefully eyed the mountain, on the morning of the Saturday succeeding the Bob rescue he began, with a groan, the base of his first pile. But he knew that groaning was of no use; he was expected to devote this Saturday morning, and the next Saturday morning, and two hours a day during the coming long vacation, to the work until it was finished.
Bob, having industriously trotted hither and thither through the yard, and having gazed right and left along the street, in search for amusement, came and sat on his haunches near Ned, and with a puzzled, wondering expression, surveyed his movements.
A week had effected quite a change in Bob’s appearance. The warm welcome which he had received at the Miller home, and the food and petting which he was being accorded, already had slicked his coat, and covered his ribs. That confidence in humanity which he had lost while confined in the barn on Eagle Island, now had returned to him. He was a very happy dog.
For a few moments he watched Ned intently. Presently, getting no encouragement to frolic, and doubtless disgusted that upon such a bright morning his master should be given to so stupid an employment, he curled up in the sun, against the wood-shed, and fitfully dozed—one eye at a time, in order that he might be on the alert, should something happen.
And something did happen!
Bob had been napping for but half an hour when suddenly the unearthly shriek of the fire-whistle pierced the still air. The Beaufort fire-whistle was a most appalling sound—running up and down the scales, at one instant a shrill tremulo, at another a deep bass. Under favorable conditions it could be heard, folks claimed, fifteen miles!
With the first note Ned poised in his hands the slab which he was transferring from heap to pile, and waited, breathless, to see whether it was the water-works’ alarm, or only a steamboat. With the second he dropped his slab, and straightened. Yes, indeed, it was the fire-whistle! Bob lifted his nose, and howled vigorously. This was the influence of the whistle upon all dogs within ear-shot: it made them howl and howl, but nobody knew why.
Ned scanned the horizon. In the southeast, topping the maples which bordered either side of the street, he caught a glimpse of a huge cloud of black smoke, sluggishly unfolding and spreading.
The spectacle electrified him. In a second he and Bob were rushing wildly through the yard, and out of the front gate.
“It’s the lumber yards—it’s Mosher’s lumber yards!” he cried, to his mother, who was standing, anxious-faced, on the porch.
“Oh, Ned!” she exclaimed.
No more wood piling on that day!
The pretty, modest resident street was all astir. Heads popped from windows, voices called and answered, and young and old hastened upon walk or horse-block, or into the road.
“It’s Mosher’s lumber yards!” was repeated, from lot to lot, and from corner to corner.
The bell of the Congregational church pealed forth its clamorous warning.
Two streams of people were set in motion—the one flowing tumultuously toward the cloud of smoke, the other speeding frantically for the nearest hose house, headquarters of the Pole Star Volunteers.
Ned, with Bob barking and leaping about him, fell in with the latter current. Very soon, you may be sure, he arrived at the hose house. He found a large throng of men and boys collected before the door.
“Where’s the key? They can’t find the key!” he heard announced from every side.
The town marshal mounted the steps of the outside stairs, so that he could look over the crowd.
“Does any one know where the key is?” he bellowed, searching the faces of the jostling mob which, brimming with excitement, was constantly increasing.
“Where’s the key? Who knows where the key is?” echoed the people, to each other, screaming the query as loud as they could.
“I know—it’s hanging behind the door in Fleischmann’s grocery!” volunteered a youngster of ten years, barefooted, in faded blue overalls and dingy checked waist. And off he scurried, importance showing in every flap of his overalls against his bare ankles.
“It’s in Fleischmann’s grocery—the boy’s gone to get it,” volleyed a chorus, to the marshal.
“Here it comes!” was shouted, in a moment. “Let the lad through—you fellows out there!”
A dozen hands reached to grasp the urchin by the shirt and pull him ahead.
“Pass up the key,” ordered the marshal.
“But I ain’t got it—it wasn’t there,” explained the boy, as rapidly as he could. “They said they didn’t have it any more!”
“Sold it for old iron, I bet you,” remarked a joker. His hearers laughed, and as this hit at Fleischmann went from mouth to mouth guffaws went, too.
“Break in the door! Bust the padlock!” suggested a stout, white-aproned man—Schmidt, the butcher.
“Smash a window and climb in,” suggested somebody else.
“What good would that do?” inquired Mr. Schmidt, scornfully.
“Here’s the key—here’s the key!” arose the cry, and the throng eddied and swirled as a man elbowed his path through to the door, and applied a key to the lock.
The crowd pressed forward when, with an impatient motion, the man jerked open the padlock, and hurled aside the sliding door. So many zealous helpers offered themselves that much confusion resulted.
“Keep out! Keep out! Hang it all, give us room!”
The mass upon the threshold separated violently to right and left, and out from the dim, cool interior (smelling strongly of damp rubber) was rolled the cart, guided by every person who could lay finger upon it.
Ere it had fairly emerged additional hands fought for the privilege of grasping the ropes attached to it. Shoved and buffeted and trod upon, Ned squirmed into the thick of the struggle, and was rewarded by feeling his fingers close upon a rope. But what was his position he did not know.
Now the cart burst away from the mob, and into the street. With a whoop and a hurrah, clangor of gong and tooting of trumpet, up the thoroughfare it trundled, drawn by two long lines of people—youth and age yoked in a common cause. Those unlucky and envious people who, owing to lack of space, were denied a place in the team, valiantly formed a running escort.
As it happened, Ned had been particularly favored when he had grabbed the rope, for his place was just behind the leader. This leader was “Sandy” Baxter, Beaufort’s foot-racer. He headed the two lines, and set the pace; next came Ned, on the right, and Tom Walker, the attorney, on the left. Who followed, Ned did not have time to see. He had all he could do to hold his own, and not prove a drag. However, hold it he did, for he was the best runner among all the boys of his neighborhood, and he had a reputation to sustain.
Furthermore, plain in view, straight down the street, was that ominous volume of smoke, ever swelling, like the terrible breath of a volcano. Wasn’t that enough to spur any boy’s legs? Certainly!
“Sandy” seemed not to care whether or not his team-mates could keep up with him. He started in at a tremendous gait, and he did not abate it in the slightest. He had no mercy. The lumber yards were burning!
Along the ropes short-winded persons began to fall out; some, grown clumsy through their exertions, stumbled on the heels of their file-leaders, thus promoting disorder and profanity.
“Spurt her up! All together!” urged the marshal, amid the lines.
“Hurroo! Hurroo!” responded his associates, with failing, husky voices.
A loosened tire of the cart rattled loudly.
“Clang!” sounded the rusty, cracked gong, at every turn of the wheels.
“Bow wow! Wow, wow, wow!” yelped Bob and several other canine enthusiasts, outstripping, now and then, the whole crew, and halting, with lolling tongue, for it to catch up.
The cart had been hauled, in this manner, three blocks, when on a sudden an empty lumber-wagon dashed athwart its course, and came sharply to a standstill.
“Pass the ropes aboard, boys,” commanded the marshal. “Quick!”
The ropes were thrown into the wagon-box, were rudely fastened, the marshal and “Sandy” Baxter clambered in to watch them. “All right!” called a score of voices; the driver leaned forward from his seat and lashed his steeds, and very nearly before the cart had stopped it was once more upon its way, this time attached to the jolting, swaying wagon drawn at a gallop by the heavy horses.
The folk whose occupation had thus been taken from them pursued as best they might.
Ned, panting but determined, lustily labored on in the wake of the cart, Bob loping beside him. The smoke cloud waxed larger and larger. They could see an immense swarm of people collected apparently beneath it, and could hear a medley, now faint, now quite distinct, of shouts and cries.
The Congregational church bell was ringing without stop—just as if by this time all Beaufort was not thoroughly aroused and bound, helter-skelter, for the scene!
Five minutes more, and—
“Gee-whiz!” gasped Ned, transfixed with amazement.
He had reached his goal. Immediately before him lay the lumber yards. Over them rested that black canopy which had been visible from afar, and which, from a-near, was seen to be licked by leaping flames. The air was pungent with the odor of scorched pine. On this side of the railroad tracks which skirted the yards, at the north, were the onlookers; men, women and children—packing every vacant spot, occupying every point of vantage. Beyond the tracks, among the very piles, were the fire-fighters, like groups of pigmies attacking a blaze-vomiting giant.
Above the feverish cries of the spectators, above the hoarse shouts of the firemen, sounded the crackle and roar of the conflagration.
The entire district south of the tracks seemed doomed to be wiped out. Here, in the Mosher yards, were thousands upon thousands of feet of dry lumber. The fire fairly flew from pile to pile, and so intense was the heat that the pitchy material appeared to break into flames all at once, from within.
East of the yards was the river; but west was that section of the town known as South Beaufort, made up, mostly, of the homes of mill men and railroad men. Fine opportunity did these houses, close together and lightly constructed, offer to the fire!
At the outset little wind had been blowing; but the fire was creating a draft, forming a vortex into which poured the cool air in a regular gale. Enormous cinders whirled high aloft, to stream down everywhere. The whole town was endangered by them.
“Here comes Hal,” knocked Bob with his tail against his master’s leg.
“Hello, Bob,” called Hal, who was making for them through the crowd.
“Oh, Hal, isn’t this awful!” greeted Ned.
“I should say so!” replied Hal. “Let’s climb up on top of those box-cars, where we can see better.”
So they dodged over to some box-cars standing on the tracks which branched northward, along the river, and secured seats from which they had a view unobstructed by irritating heads and hats. Other persons had preceded them, but there was plenty of room, and dangling their feet down the end of a car they proceeded to watch and wait. Bob, after a number of fruitless efforts to scale the side of the car, sat on the ground and watched and waited, too. However, he was interested in the two boys, more than in the fire.
“There’s just dray-load after dray-load of goods being hauled out of South Beaufort,” said Hal. “I was over a while. The people are scared, I tell you!”
“Let’s go and help,” suggested Ned, stung by the idea.
“No use,” responded Hal. “They can’t get wagons enough, for love or money, to take what stuff is scattered round, already.”
“Say—if the fire ever gets into South Beaufort, it will cross the tracks, sure, and then—um-m-m!” exclaimed Ned, shaking his head.
“Then the whole town will burn!” faltered Hal, his face paling.
At this instant they perceived among the throng which they had just left a bustle of excitement. Then came to their ears a cheer, and another, and another; then a continuous uproar.
Everybody upon the box-cars stood up to peer and wonder.
“It’s the fire department from Sundale! See! Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted Hal, swinging his hat.
“Hurrah!” chimed in Ned, and all the others.
Sundale was the neighboring village—a rival save in time of need like this—two miles northward. Down the street, nearer and nearer, welcomed by cheer after cheer, came the two carts, their plunging horses, foam-flecked by their long run, exerting their last energy in one final spurt; down, down, “clang! clang! clang!” straight through the living lane and across the tracks. Hurrah!
“Bully for Sundale!” cried Ned.
“You bet!” agreed Hal; and none disputed.
“I hope they’ll do some good,” he added. “But, oh, look at it now, will you!”
The sight was superb, but it was frightful. Even during the short time that the boys had been on the car the fire had increased shockingly. It did not seem to jump from the top of one pile to another, but it seemed to devour entire piles at a gulp. Piles fifty, seventy, ninety feet high disappeared in a twinkling. Their boards curled and withered like leaves, as the fury of the fiery blast sucked them in.
“What’s the use of standing off and squirting at it!” grumbled Ned. “They aren’t stopping it!”
“And they can’t get close enough to reach it—and if they could the water would turn to steam before it struck!” said Hal. “I—I guess I ought to go home, Ned.”
He was almost crying, and his voice ended in a despairing little wail. Ned, too, felt a queer thrill of helplessness; but he answered, stoutly:
“Pshaw, Hal; they’ll stop it some way. They must, you know.”
“But Chicago burned up, Ned,” quavered Hal. “You needn’t go—your house wouldn’t burn until after ours. So you can stay, if you want to. My mother is scared to death——”
“Boom!”
“Listen! What is that?” interrupted Ned.
“Boom!”
“They’re blowing up the piles with dynamite!” asserted Ned, exultantly. “There’s another!”
“Do you think that will help?” queried Hal, doubtfully.
“Of course,” assured Ned. “It’s the only way. It will keep the fire from spreading, and make it burn down low where they can put it out with the hose. See? They’re blowing up the piles on the South Beaufort side. Then if they stop the fire from getting past the open space they’ve got it! Who cares for the lumber, so long as the houses don’t catch! And it can’t come this way, for the tracks are too wide, here, and south of it they can blow up more piles and stop it.”
Ned’s tones were so confident that Hal brightened, and said nothing farther about leaving.
Besides, new distractions occurred. Over the railroad bridge thundered a locomotive, twitching behind it a single flat car, and whistling long and shrill.
“Hartville! It’s from Hartville!” flew the report.
“Hurrah for Hartville!” cheered the spectators, the thousand voices drowning the shrieks of the proud engine.
“Well,” remarked Ned. “People in the other towns must think we’re all burned.”
“But isn’t it fine in them to send help!” exclaimed Hal.
“We’d do as much for them,” responded Ned.
Scarcely had the Hartville men arrived, when from up the river echoed the deep, excited whistle of a steamboat. The crowd turned its faces that way.
“It’s the ferry Lady Rose. She’s bringing the Lynnton department!” exclaimed Hal.
Down swept the ferry, the black smoke streaming from her stacks and trailing behind her in two tossing, ever-expanding plumes; her side-wheels turning at a prodigious rate; and her deck alive with people who answered cheer with cheer.
The Lady Rose effected a hasty landing just above the bridge, and her passengers, fire-laddies and spectators, tumbled ashore. Then followed two hose-carts; and right on the heels of the men from Hartville followed the men from Lynnton, to help save the town.
But although the assistance was welcome, now, at last, the tide had been stemmed. A wide line of lumber piles had been leveled, cutting off the flames in their mad career. A little wind set in from the west, driving the fire back toward the river. With hope renewed the firemen stubbornly stood their ground, arrayed between the angry blaze and the homes cowering just beyond.
And now the gallons of water being poured into the fire commenced to have an effect. Coals sizzled and blackened. Embers smouldered and died. Aided by the good wind, step by step the firemen advanced.
The day was won.
The fire lessened in volume; and seeing that the danger was past, the people who had watched began to slip away.
“Come on,” said Ned, at last. “We might as well go. It’s about over.”
They dropped off the car, and Bob, who had deemed the fire a very dull affair (for a dog) welcomed them loudly.
“My, I’m hungry!” declared Hal. “I wonder what time it is.”
Whereupon they found that it was half-past one; much after dinner time.
A LTHOUGH it had been subdued, and was deprived of its fangs, the fire continued to burn for several days. It burrowed deep into the sawdust, and lurked amid the great masses of black rubbish where once had been lumber and lath, as if loth to leave its mangled prey.
The out-of-town firemen returned home that evening, but all that night, and up to the middle of the next week, the Beaufort department kept streams playing upon the smoking ruins.
For a time these sorry-looking yards were regarded by Bob and Ned and other Beaufort youth as a very entertaining place. It was fun to explore the desolate area, and conjecture what had been on this spot, and what on that. No small spice of danger, too, was offered by the tempting, swaying run-ways and crumbling piles. But at length the sport palled, and the Beaufort boys sought elsewhere for amusement and occupation.
In regard to occupation, Ned did not have to seek far. At his back door-step were those eleven loads of wood. One Saturday had come and gone, and scarcely an impression had been made upon the grim mountain of slabs. This was the last week of school; another Saturday, and then he must pile every day until he had performed his duty. That done he would be free to do about as he pleased.
Could wishing have availed, those slabs would have been in Halifax very soon, consigned there by Ned. But of course Mr. Miller would have promptly ordered eleven more loads, and since in Beaufort were several lumber yards to draw upon, Ned’s case, even were Halifax to aid him, was hopeless.
He did what any sensible boy would have done; he pitched into the wood, working after school and all day Saturday, and by the opening of the vacation he had dug a great cave in the flank of the mountain. Like the majority of tasks, this one, when stoutly tackled, was not so big as it had appeared.
In regard to the amusement, this never could be lacking while the river flowed past the town. The warm rains and sun of the spring had taken the chill from the water, and had made it almost comfortable for swimming, when down had rushed the freshet, with its icy flood of melted snow, and had spoiled matters. Now the Mississippi was again at its ordinary level, and under the influence of the summer weather was rapidly assuming an agreeable temperature.
By the wireless telegraphy of boyhood the news that there was “good swimming” traversed Beaufort from end to end.
Ned, who had been fuming all the spring because his father had refused to let him go in until the water was warmer, and thus had deprived him of the glory of being among the first, received the tidings with rejoicing. Surely, June was not too early for bathing!
Bob was more callous about the news. You see, already he had indulged in a number of plunges, not to speak of the dive from the barn window; therefore his enthusiasm had cooled.
“Can’t I go swimming now, father?” begged Ned, immediately upon hearing the reports. “All the fellows have been in and they say the water is just as warm as milk! If you’d only stick your hand in it you’d see, yourself.”
“I haven’t had much of a chance to ‘stick my hand in it,’ yet, considering that my arm isn’t four blocks long—and that is the nearest I have been to the river, lately,” replied Mr. Miller, laughing. “But if ‘all the fellows’ say so, it must be true.”
“Hal’s father has let him go,” argued Ned, eagerly.
“I’ve nothing to do with Mr. Lucas’s notions—nor have they anything to do with me, Ned,” responded Mr. Miller. “The Miller affairs give me all that I can attend to. However, I guess, if you’ll be careful and not stay in too long, you can go ahead.”
“And don’t get in where it’s deep,” cautioned Mrs. Miller.
“Oh, pshaw, mother!” replied Ned. “Six feet is as bad as a mile—and it’s easier swimming where it’s real deep, too.”
“Well, I hate to have you go,” said his mother, stroking his hair. “You promise to be very careful, won’t you, and not bathe so often or stay in so long that it makes you weak, or——”
“Yes, mother. Don’t you be afraid,” he answered, giving her a hearty hug.
“And don’t neglect that wood,” suggested his father, with a twinkle in his eye.
“That’s for mornings; I have my afternoons ‘off,’” called back Ned, capering out of the house. In a second he stuck his head in through a window and cried: “I nearly forgot to say ‘thank you,’ father, didn’t I?”
“I believe you did, Ned,” assured his father; and Ned vanished.
“I really don’t see how it is possible that the water should be warm, so soon,” declared Mrs. Miller, anxiously, to her husband.
“I, either,” he replied, smiling. “But Ned can stand it if the other boys can. It won’t hurt him any.”
“I suppose not,” assented Mrs. Miller, doubtfully.
Well, to tell the fact, the water was not especially warm, in spite of what “all the fellows” had declared. It was as warm as milk—but that must have referred to old milk, not fresh; perhaps milk which had been in an ice-box.
At least, so Ned thought, when gingerly he started to wade out, for the first swim of the season. He stepped in, ankle-deep—and his toes curled, and his knees shook, and with a hasty exclamation he sprang back.
“Oh, jump in all at once!” urged Hal. “’Tisn’t cold; it’s fine,” and he paddled around to show his perfect satisfaction.
Ned was disappointed. When, on the way over in the boat, they had dabbled with their fingers, to test, the water had seemed just right; but now—ugh!
He tried again, and waded manfully until in above his knees; here he faltered. The other boys, who had been through the ordeal and were happy, began to splash him with chilling drops, so that his naked body shrank, and he shivered and begged.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” he chattered. “Only let me be, a minute.”
“Then wet over or we’ll douse you!” threatened his persecutors, menacing him, in a half-circle.
“I will! I will! Quit! Don’t you see I am?” implored Ned, wading a little farther. “Gimme a chance to wet my head so I won’t have cramp, can’t you?”
He stopped, and raising water in his hands dabbled it upon his chest and back and hair, trying to get used by degrees to the change. To his fingers the goose-flesh on him felt like stubble!
Bob, joining forces with the other scoffing spectators, raced along the shallows of the beach, barking his derision. Great cats! what a silly boy! He had been in and out of the water a dozen times.
Suddenly Ned drew a big breath, shut his eyes, and ducked under, sousing himself completely. He emerged choking, staggering, gasping, while his companions, tickled into spasms of merriment, wallowed and shrieked.
But Ned minded not; the worst was past. He boldly lunged ahead for a swim, and the water was not a bit cold.
Beaufort bathers had choice of three favorite resorts. First, there were the rafts, brought down by the steamboats for the mills, and laid up against the shore, waiting their turn to be sawed into lumber—and slabs for Ned to pile! Sometimes their outer edge extended clear to the channel, and to dive from here into the swift, dusky current thirty feet in depth was tremendously exhilarating. When you came to the surface you were fifteen or twenty yards below the point whence you had started.
At the lower end of the rafts was slack water, where you could swim with no fear of being carried away. An especially good feature about the rafts lay in the fact that the logs were nice and clean, and when you dressed you did not get sand in your stockings.
Second, there was the large sand-bar opposite the upper part of town. In low water this bar was enormous, comprising several acres. Its foot shelved rapidly, so that you could dive from the firm brink into six feet of beautiful, still water. The bar reached up-river, it seemed forever; and over the dry, fine sand, or splattering madly, with the water only to your ankles (keeping, of course, a sharp lookout for step-offs) and your flat soles sending the sparkling drops far and wide, you could run around until tired. The sand-bar was the best resort of the three.
In very low water, it was possible to wade from it to the mainland on the Beaufort side; and to swim to the other mainland was no trick at all, if you knew the shortest route.
Third, there was the sandy beach across the river. This was the place most popular; for although the water here was not so sweet and fresh as that of the rafts and bar, the beach was convenient, safe, and available throughout the season.
The rafts were not safe for the weak swimmer, because of the current; at a normal stage of water the bar was a mere uncertain patch; but the beach was always good-natured and ready.
At present it was to the beach that Ned and his chums went. Off the rafts the water was decidedly frigid; the sand-bar was just beginning to show its face, covered with a thin coating of mud left by the receding freshet—and how cold this water in the middle of the river was! The beach now held open house for Beauforters, young and old.
The boys went over every afternoon in Ned and Hal’s scull-boat and in skiffs. The entertainment afforded by the beach was endless. A quarter of a mile above, a point of land jutted out, thus throwing the current from the shore. In some places the beach sloped gently; in others it pitched abruptly into the water. You could wade or you could dive, or you could bravely launch yourself, paddle a short distance, and if you had aimed exactly right you could then let yourself down upon a shoal, with the water up to your neck, and the undertow tugging at your feet. Or you could swim straight out until into the current, and turning upon your back could deliciously float along as far as you deemed prudent, with the sky over your face, and the shore passing in review in the corner of an eye, and the saucy waves slapping at your nose.
Between times, here was the soft, hot sand in which to roll and bask.
Not to be omitted from the program were those times when a rafter, or a stern-wheeler packet, ploughed up stream (the up-boats raised the biggest swells), spreading in-shore long rollers and breakers whose oncoming was rapturously awaited by the bevy of bathers.
The beach resort was so well rummaged and understood, that rarely did a tragedy occur at it, and had Ned and his crowd stayed strictly within bounds they would not have met with this experience which is about to be related.
On an afternoon toward the last of June they were swimming at the beach; two boat-loads of them—Ned and Hal and Bob, Frank Dalby, Sam Dalrymple, Orrie Lukes, Tom Pearce, Phil Ruthers, Les Porter, and others. They had been skylarking to their hearts’ content; playing tag, leap-frogging into the water, or diving slily and catching an unsuspecting friend around the ankles. The scull-boat had been capsized, and much sport was found in coming up under it, where was air-space for breathing, and hooting for the benefit of the outsiders. The packet Pittsburg, which had the reputation of making the highest waves of any of the steamers save the rafter Reindeer, even had surged by, leaving behind her swells and joy.
All was peace and good humor, when a skiff was descried approaching.
The boys glanced only carelessly at it, until Ned exclaimed:
“Say! There comes the South Beaufort gang!”
His words put a damper upon the frolicking. All gazed uneasily, and fidgeted. The rough boys forming what was styled the “South Beaufort gang” were their regular enemies.
“Well, who cares?” demanded Tom Pearce, defiantly.
“That’s what I say,” chimed in Les Porter. “They don’t own the beach.”
“No; but they’ll try to run us off,” asserted Hal. “Those Sullivans are always spoiling for a fight, and they don’t fight fair, either.”
“They chaw raw beef on you, and paste mud at you,” complained Orrie Lukes, the smallest of the party.
“Eight of them,” remarked Sam Dalrymple, who had been counting. “The two Sullivans, and the Conners, and Big Mike Farr, and I don’t know who else.”
“I tell you, fellows,” suggested Ned; “we don’t want any trouble—let’s go down to the breakwater and fool.”
The plan met with some grumbling from Tom and Les and other stubborn spirits; but it won, and dumping their clothes into their skiff they made a change of base, wading and swimming and towing their boats, the scull-boat bottom up.
The South Beaufort gang did not follow them, but, disembarking upon the beach, went in swimming.
The breakwater was a few rods down stream. It was a long, stout parapet of heavy, square timbers laid end to end, bolted and braced. It extended up from the bridge, parallel with the shore, for two hundred yards, and was designed to aid the rafters in sliding their rafts through; it held the rafts off from the shore.
Behind it was water more or less shallow, and lukewarm from the sun. In front of it was deep water, and considerable current.
At the risk of getting numerous splinters some of the boys scaled the breakwater by running up the braces planted against it in the rear, the others amused themselves among the tiny bays and inlets formed between it and the shore line. Bob, after vainly trying to follow Ned to the top, decided that he would take a turn through the near-by woods.
The breakwater was amply broad enough to give secure footing. The boys lolled about upon it, the sunshine soaking them through and through, and the novelty of their high position adding to the fun.
“Come on; let’s dive, all together,” proposed Ned, briskly rousing to action.
“That’s right—all together,” seconded Tom.
Nobody opposed, and the six of them stood in a row.
“I’ll count, and at ‘three’ down we go,” said Ned. “Make ready——”
“Sam and I are going to jump; because when we dive head-first we get water up our nose,” explained Phil Ruthers.
“Aw, it’s only eight or ten feet!” protested Hal.
“Just the same, I’m not going to get water up my nose,” declared Sam, irritated.
“Make ready,” warned Ned, again; and the boys poised for the plunge.
“One—two—three!” cried Ned.
With six splashes, almost like one, they struck the water and disappeared, the four divers entering in regulation style, but Sam and Phil upright, each with one hand closing tight his precious nose.
In a moment heads bobbed, one after another, above the surface, their owners shaking them vigorously and snorting and blowing, while lustily swimming, hand over hand, for the breakwater.
This the boys climbed from in front by sticking their toes into the wide cracks between the lines of timbers, and by clinging to protruding bolts. Once more on the top, they were resting, and chaffing when, in a startled tone, Hal exclaimed:
“Why—where’s Tom?”
Quite so; where was Tom? Six figures had left the breakwater, but only five were upon it now! The boys looked at each other inquiringly.
“Maybe he’s with the other crowd,” volunteered Sam, and peering over he called down to ask. Tom wasn’t there.
“Perhaps he’s hiding, to scare us,” guessed Frank Dalby, weakly.
“No—Tom wouldn’t do that,” asserted Ned; and the faces of the boys grew pale. “He must be down there still!” leaning over and scanning the placid current. “I bet he never came up! Where was he standing?”
“He was right between Hal and me,” excitedly said Phil. “Wasn’t he, Hal? And I stood here—just exactly, because I remember it by the broken nut on this bolt.”
“Tom! Oh, Tom!” shouted Frank, hopelessly.
No answer. The news had passed to the remainder of the bathers, below, and a buzz of frightened talk arose.
“I’m going after him,” hurriedly announced Ned. “You fellows watch close. I reached bottom easy before.”
“So did I, so did I! Let me go! I’ll go!” came an eager chorus.
“I’m first,” replied Ned, with dogged firmness.“Get out of the way, Hal! If I find him you fellows can come down and help.”
Placing himself a little above where Tom had stood, he dived with all his might.
In a few kicks he brought up against the muddy bottom. Groping around about him in the cold, rayless regions, he suffered the current to bear him slowly along, now and then paddling enough to keep himself from rising.
He felt beneath him mud; nothing but mud; slimy, oozy, freezing mud with clam-shells and sticks and rocks embedded in it. Then, on a sudden, his hands felt something else—a smooth, not unfamiliar object—it was a leg—it was Tom! Yes, Tom!
Ned’s heart made a great leap of joy. With Tom in his arms he shot upward—it seemed an endless journey—and bursting, exhausted, but exulting, reached the surface.
The instant that he came in sight the boys—by this time the breakwater held them all—who had been watching and waiting, saw at once his burden, and swarmed to his rescue. They towed the unconscious Tom through a gap in the timbers, and stretched him in the sun upon the hot sand, and rubbed him, and rolled him, and worked so fiercely that in fifteen minutes he showed signs of life, again.
Another fifteen, and he moaned; at which Bob, who was much moved by the proceedings, howled in sympathy.
When he was able to sit up they bound his head, which was severely cut, dressed him, after a fashion, and hurried him in the skiff to town, Ned, as was fitting, happily nestling beside him, and the scull-boat desperately following in their wake.
A doctor sewed up Tom’s scalp, and it is a question who was the prouder—the boys of Ned, or Tom of his ten stitches.
As for Ned, himself—he was not proud, precisely; rather, he was thankful and satisfied.
The only thing that occurred to mar his pleasure was the action of Zulette—called Zu-zu—Tom’s little sister. She found him sitting by Tom’s chair, that evening, on the Pearce front porch; and with an “Oh, Ned! Aren’t you brave!” she ran up to him, and left on his face two tears and a kiss. Then she ran into the house, crying as hard as she could cry.
Ned wiped his cheek, and wished that she wouldn’t behave so silly. To be kissed by a girl—that was too much! And why was she crying, when Tom was safe!
After the merits of the various theories had been well argued, it was generally accepted that Tom had received his cut by striking a sunken pile. However, no one went down into the water to see. The accident put an end to diving off the breakwater.
WHEN, of the eleven loads of wood, about three were still unpiled, Ned began to feel need of a change of air. It seemed to him that the climate of Deep Creek, sixteen miles down the river, would be just the thing for him.
In short, he was stricken by his annual violent attack of the camping-out-fever—a malady very popular during the summer, in Beaufort.
Hal, too, was taken at the same time. The symptoms were a burning desire to get away from town, and into the woods; to lie around in old clothes, regardless of time, and free from all fuss; to amuse oneself as one pleased; to be lazy; to be uncivilized and unwashed; to row a boat, which is fun, instead of to pile wood, which is work.
The two boys compared notes, and agreed, Bob voting “yea,” that the sooner they left, the better. Deep Creek appealed to both as the proper locality; and Bob, it goes without comment, stood ready to follow them any place.
Hal, whose father was less strict as to chores than was Ned’s, was used to dropping into the Miller back yard, once in a while, mornings, and giving Ned the comfort of company at the wood-pile. This lightened Ned’s labors, but it did not hasten them, for there were moments when the talk grew so interesting that he forgot to keep the slabs moving.
The camping-out fever now interfered seriously with the progress of the piling. To make matters worse, these three remaining loads were the most stubborn, closely packed loads conceivable. So stubborn were they, that it was as if they grew each night, and thus made up what they had lost during the day!
Camping details all had been discussed and settled, and finally Hal, who had been impatiently awaiting the last hour of the heap, said boldly:
“Why don’t you ask your father to let you go anyway, Ned, and tell him you’ll pile the rest when you come home? It will have lots of time to dry before winter!”
“He won’t, I know,” replied Ned, sadly.
“Oh, I bet he will,” insisted Hal. “He doesn’t care when the wood’s piled, if it’s only dry in time.”
“Well, I’ll ask him,” sighed Ned. “But he won’t, I know.”
He mustered his courage, and at the table that noon he hinted:
“Tom Pearce and Joe Cluny and a lot of other fellows went camping this morning.”
“Yes?” responded his father, politely.
“I wish Hal and I could go,” continued Ned.
“But I thought you were going,” remarked Mr. Miller. “I thought you had arranged to go to Deep Creek.”
“I mean, I wish we could go right away, when fishing’s good,” explained Ned, squirming in his chair.
“What is hindering?” inquired his father, looking wondrous ignorant.
“The wood,” faltered Ned. Then he blurted: “Say—can’t I finish it when I come back? It’s just a little bit.”
“Neddie!” reproved his mother. “The idea of addressing your father with ‘say’!”
“Oh! The wood still hangs on, does it?” asked his father, innocently. “Well, Ned, since it is ‘just a little bit’ you can finish it up to-morrow, I should think, and have it off your hands. Besides, don’t you remember that I told you the wood must be piled, first, and the camping could follow?”
“Y-y-yes,” admitted Ned.
“If Hal is in such a hurry,” added his mother, “why don’t you suggest to him that he might help you out by piling, instead of hindering you by talking?”
Ned lapsed into silence. It was no use; the conversation had ended as he had expected. He had only proved that he knew his father much better than Hal did.
Yet, although Hal had failed on one tack, it was he who really brought the rescue, after all. When, within an hour, Ned reported to him the failure of plans for a truce, Hal thought an instant, and suddenly said:
“I tell you! I’ll come down early to-morrow morning, and we’ll jump into that wood and not stop ’til it’s finished!”
And to their great relief and no doubt to the surprise of the wood, the last slab had been laid in place before noon of the next day!
They spent that afternoon collecting their camping outfit.
This consisted of blankets and provisions, mainly, although Mrs. Miller made Ned, to his disgust, take a few extra articles of clothes. Mothers seem unable to grasp how little a boy needs, in that line, when camping in summer!
They gaily trundled a full wheelbarrow-load of stuff down to the Diamond Jo warehouse; then they returned up-town to buy a lot of canned goods, and coffee and sugar, with which to eke out the bread and potatoes and onions, etc., furnished by the home larders.
These store things also having been wheeled to the warehouse, nothing now was left to do but to wait until morning.
“Why, Ned—aren’t you going to have a tent?” exclaimed his mother, shocked.
“Of course not!” snorted Ned, in disdain. “There’s a shed we can go under if it rains.”
Mrs. Miller, in dismay, broke the news to her husband, but he merely laughed, and said, patting her shoulder:
“It won’t hurt them any. When they get enough they can come home.”
“It won’t hurt them any,” was a favorite remark of Mr. Miller’s. He had great faith in the happy-go-lucky ways of the average healthy boy, and his theory rarely was at fault.
But Mrs. Miller, not yet at ease, continued to hover around Ned, and ask him other anxious questions which seemed to him very foolish, but which to her seemed quite natural.
“Neddie, I really don’t believe you’re going to have plenty to eat!” she asserted.
“With two trot-lines? My, yes!” assured Ned. “Why, we can live on just fish!”
His words had such a ring of confidence that his mother—although “trot-lines” was a complete mystery to her—accepted them, and tried not to worry.
At half-past six the next morning Ned and Hal and Bob were at the warehouse, waiting for the steamer Harriett. The Harriett was a daily packet between Beaufort and Rapids City, forty miles below, and not only stopped at the towns between, but also would take on and put off passengers at points, wherever requested, along the shores.
At seven the Harriett came down from North Beaufort, where she was tied up at night, and thrust her nose upon the levee beside the warehouse. The two boys and Bob gladly scampered aboard, over the gangplank; the roustabouts carried on the two boxes containing the camp stuff, and while its owners nervously watched, hauled the scull-boat from the water, and stowed it, too, below deck. All the other freight having been cleaned up, the Harriett whistled for the bridge to open, and at the same time backed out.
At last the boys were off.
Commodore Jones had just settled himself on his little platform, for a morning smoke, and running up on the hurricane deck, they leaned out, toward him, as they passed, and called:
“Good-bye, Mr. Jones. Want any fish?”
“Good-bye,” he shouted, waving his pipe. “Yes; bring ’em—when you get ’em!”
Through the draw sped the Harriett, and on past the Mosher Lumber Mill (disfigured but busy), past Eagle Island (Bob not deigning a glance at his old homeplace), and on, with a stop or so, until soon the Deep Creek landing was right ahead.
This landing was at a government light upon a small peninsular. A few rods above, the Monga, a shallow but wide and swift stream, emptied into the Mississippi, and to reach the Deep Creek grounds it was necessary to cross. People who had no skiff with them signaled to Joe and Sam, fishermen who lived beside the creek, to come and ferry them over. Ned and Hal and Bob, however, had the scull-boat; and when they and their traps and their craft had been dumped ashore, all at once, and the Harriett was fussily hurrying away, they lost no time in loading up and pushing off.
Now, Deep Creek was not truly a creek. It was a narrow slough, extending parallel with the Mississippi, between an island and the shore. It was a popular resort for fishing parties, and a number of Beaufort men had erected a little cabin beside it, for use as a club-house.
Having passed the mouth of the Monga the boys entered the slough. Sam and Joe, always upon the outlook for a job when the Harriett was due, were standing in front of their shanty, and opposite them Hal and Ned rested on their oars, to ask:
“How’s fishing?”
“Good,” replied the brothers, together.
“Anybody else down here?” queried Ned.
Sam and Joe shook their heads, again together. They had this peculiarity, possibly from being so much in each other’s company, night and day. One thought appeared to do for both, and when they spoke, or laughed, or wagged their heads, they did so as one man! Considering that they lived by themselves, summer and winter, in their shanty on the bank of the slough, the wonder is, not that they grew to think alike, but that they did not grow to look alike, as well!
Sam had red hair and red whiskers and a red, freckled skin; Joe had iron-gray hair and whiskers, and a skin tanned deep as mahogany. Sam was quick-tempered; Joe was easy-going. Both were reserved in manner and chary of words.
The boys proceeded up the slough a quarter of a mile, and landed. Here they pitched their camp by tucking their boxes under a wild-grape arbor at the water’s edge, and sitting upon them. The sun was high, and the thick shade of the arbor was an agreeable relief from the hot row along the glassy bayou.
“This is better than any tent,” declared Ned. “Isn’t it!”
“Lots!” responded Hal, with enthusiasm. “Now let’s set our trot-lines.”
“All right,” agreed Ned.
Bob took no part in this conversation. While yet the scull-boat had been six feet from the bank he had leaped over the bows, and half-swimming, half-wading, had scrambled ashore, to disappear in the woods. Probably his doggy mind was bent upon discovering a nice camping spot, in advance of his chums. But he must have missed the grape-arbor and his chance, for here was the camp—and no Bob!
Fumbling in one of the boxes Ned pulled out the trot-lines, rolled in two big balls, and the bunch of hooks to be attached, and a large slab of liver for bait. Then he and Hal started off again in the scull-boat.
“Trot-lines” are long lines to which fish-hooks are hung, at near intervals, by pieces of cord. Some trot-lines are strung with a hundred or two hundred hooks. The boys’ lines were only three hundred feet in length, and they counted on hanging fifty hooks to each. The trot-lines were the size of window-cord, or braided clothes-line, and had been tarred so that they should not rot.
Ned and Hal slowly sculled up the slough, keeping their eyes open for good places at which to set out their lines. Presently they came to an old raft—or, rather, but a portion of a raft—lying along the island side of the bayou. It must have been in Deep Creek for years, because the logs were green with mossy growth. It was a peaceful old raft, dozing here, forgotten, with one edge high and dry among the island brush, and the other edge well out into the slough.
“Say—we can tie the lines to the raft!” proposed Ned, struck with the idea.
“I should smile!” assented Hal, slangily.
“One above and one below,” continued Ned. “Let’s fix the upper one first.”
As they skirted the outer logs, on ahead of them turtles, sunning themselves, slid hastily into the water, and the route of the boat was thus marked by a succession of splashes.
The boys were nearing the head of the raft, when Ned stopped sculling, and asked:
“What’s the matter with this?”
“It’s about right, I guess,” replied Hal. “We can tie to that pin.”
“Well,” said Ned, “I’ll hold the boat steady, and you fix the line.”
He turned the boat in hard against a log from which jutted a stout wooden pin almost touching the water. Hal, reaching over the bow, securely tied the end of his line. Then with a shove he sent the boat away, toward the middle of the slough, and Ned gently sculled until they had gone at right angles about twenty yards, with the line trailing between the boat and the raft.
Now Hal deftly attached the first hook by its two feet of cord, baited it with a bit of liver, and let it slide overboard. Three feet farther along the line he fastened another hook; and in this manner they went edging across the slough, until the fifty hooks had been tied on and baited.
The next step was to sink the line. Hal tied upon the free end two heavy coupling links which had been stored in under the bows. Ned sculled ahead, slightly up stream, to make allowance for the sluggish current, until the line, with its dangling hooks and liver, was fairly taut.
“There she goes!” remarked Hal; with a clink the coupling links disappeared beneath the surface, and the line followed.
They were on their way to the foot of the raft, to set out their second line, when a piercing howl from the main shore startled them. It was Bob, lonesome, disgusted and impatient, demanding that they return to land and to him. Where he had been, they did not know. But now he was sitting at the water’s brink, directly opposite them, and accusing them of deserting him.
“Bob, be quiet!” ordered Ned.
However, Bob, hearing the voice, and judging that his howling was to be in vain, decided that since they would not come to him he would go to them; whereupon with a yelp of defiance he plunged into the slough, and yapping at intervals laid a course for the boat.
“Go back, Bob! Go back, sir!” cried Ned.
“Let him come, Ned,” pleaded Hal. “He won’t do any harm.”
“He’ll only eat the liver, if he has half a chance, and hang himself on a hook!” exclaimed Ned. “Help me make him go back.”
Thus appealed to, Hal, understanding the situation, took sides with Ned against Bob, and the two boys yelled commands, and splashed with the oars.
Bob, wavering in the face of such a hostile reception, hesitated, swam in a circle, and finally sought the shore again. Here he contented himself with parading up and down, and venting his feelings by short, indignant barks.
The second trot-line was put out, from a point near the foot of the raft, by a method similar to that already told. Slanting athwart the depths of the slough the two lines now extended, ready for business. Satisfied, and also very hungry, the boys made for shore and the grape arbor, where they were joyously welcomed by Bob.
According to the height of the sun, as well as to their stomachs, it was ripe noon, and time for dinner. By common consent, in their outings, Hal, who had a knack in that direction, was the cook. It was Ned’s duty to provide the wood, and to attend to camp affairs generally outside of the meals.
Bob was watchman and sergeant-at-arms.
“What will we have?” inquired Hal.
“Oh, anything,” answered Ned; “just so we have it quick!”
“Bacon and potatoes, fried together,” proffered the cook.
And bacon and thin slices of potatoes, fried together in a skillet over a brisk little fire of branches and driftwood, it was!
“I tell you there’s nothing like bacon!” sighed Ned, scraping his tin plate.
“And potatoes!” sighed Hal, also scraping. (Who says that cooking spoils the appetite!)
Bob, having gobbled his share, was trying to lick the hot skillet!
“Do you know what we forgot?” exclaimed Ned, thunder-struck. “Coffee!”
“But if I’d had to make coffee you’d have had to wait a lot longer for dinner. It takes an age to boil water over a fire like that one,” explained Hal.
“Well, bacon and potatoes and slough water are good enough—in a hurry,” admitted Ned.
Bob cleaned the skillet and Ned the plates—the grease yielding before a liberal rubbing with wet mud—and Hal, digging a hole at the water’s edge, buried the fruit-jar containing their supply of butter, so that it should not melt too much.
This precaution having been taken, and the camp tidied, Hal mused, looking up toward the raft:
“I wonder if we’ve caught any fish, yet.”
“It’s too soon to go and see,” replied Ned, wistfully. “About four o’clock will be time enough to try. Let’s visit Sam and Joe.”
“Come on,” agreed Hal.
They found the Morgan brothers at home, and apparently glad to receive company. A large brindle dog was much less hospitable, and during the boys’ stay he and Bob kept up a constant exchange of sneers and threats. In fact, a pitched battle was only narrowly avoided—partly through the efforts of the Morgans, and partly because Bob would not stir from between Ned’s legs.
The atmosphere about the shanty was quite fishy, and fish scales were scattered everywhere. There also was another, much stronger odor, at which the three newcomers wrinkled their noses in disgust.
Joe was occupying a bench, puffing at his pipe; and sitting on a second bench, with a board across his lap, Sam, likewise puffing, was cutting into small square cakes what seemed to be a mass of dough.
“Howdy,” said the boys—Ned holding Bob by the collar.
The two men nodded gravely, and Joe, removing his pipe to knock out the ashes, remarked:
“Got your lines set all right? See you fussin’ ’long the logs a bit ago.”
“Yes, we thought we’d try a couple, just for fun,” responded Ned. “Do you think the raft is a good place?”
“W-w-well, I shouldn’t wonder but what it is, for a short line,” said Joe, filling his pipe.
“Will we get any fish, Joe?” queried Hal.
“Mebbe,” said Joe. “A few cats, like as not.”
“Say—what’s Sam doing?” questioned Ned, sniffing and frowning.
“He’s—makin’—dough—balls,” said Joe, between puffs of his freshly lighted pipe.
“Dough-balls!” repeated Hal, quite in the dark.
“Yep,” said Joe. “We take a lot o’ cheese and let it lay outdoors ’til it’s real old an’ then we mix it with flour, into a paste, an’ when it’s good an’ stiff we cut it into the right size for bait—like Sam’s doin’ now. Them’s dough-balls. Smell ’em?”
“Smell ’em!” cried both boys together.
“Well, the fish smell ’em, too,” said Joe, tersely.
“What you boys usin’?” inquired Sam, speaking for the first time since their appearance.
“Liver,” stated Hal.
“That’s better ’n dough-balls, I reckon,” grunted Sam. “But if you had four or five hunderd hooks to keep baited, you’d right soon run out o’ liver, I bet.”
“You see, we’ve only fifty hooks on each line,” explained Ned, modestly. “When we haven’t any liver we’re going to use frogs, and crawfish and things.”
“How often ought we to run the lines?” asked Hal. “Every four or five hours?”
“If you’re a might to,” replied Joe. “O’ course, we run ours only mornin’ an’ night, but it’s kinder more of a job than yours be! If I was you I’d run ’em ’bout five o’clock, an’ then ’long ’bout ten, again, to bait ’em for the night, an’ again arly in the mornin’, an’ mebbe at noon.”
“That’ll keep ’em baited in good shape,” put in Sam, “an’ you ought to get fish if there’s any ’round.”
“All right; much obliged,” responded the boys.
“In case you get more’n you can eat at one haul,” offered Joe, kindly, “there’s a fish-box, down in the water near that stake, that we ain’t using, and you can have it so’s to keep ’em alive, if you want to.”
“Sure; take it along,” urged Sam.
“I should say we would like it! It’s just the thing!” exclaimed the boys, delighted. “Much obliged.”
They hung around for a short time, and then, haunted by that fish-box, hastened back to camp—Bob growing braver and braver as they put distance between them and the brindled dog—to bring down their boat and get their prize.
Upon their return, with Joe’s help they loaded the water-soaked box, dripping from every slat, into their craft, and gleefully made off with it.
Soon they had it sunk and anchored in front of their grape arbor.
“I don’t suppose it’s more than three, yet,” hinted Hal, when, uncertain as to what to do next, to make time fly, they paused and wiped their hands on their trousers-legs.
“I suppose not,” agreed Ned, noting the height of the sun. “But don’t let’s wait till five, this time,” he proposed. “Let’s run the lines now, just for the fun of it.”
Hal needed no persuasion. Leaving Bob to be watchman over the camp, they pushed out again from shore.
AIMING for the foot of the old raft, from which the first of their two trot-lines had been set out, Hal and Ned cut diagonally across the bayou.
Not a waft of air riffled the water; the sun was reflected from it as from a looking-glass, right into their faces, and proceeded to turn their complexions redder and redder. All around, the heads of curious turtles dotted the surface, disappearing as the boat drew near, and popping out again when it had passed. Here and there a hungry gar or dog-fish leaped into sight for an instant, while numerous king-fishers, brave in their blue and white, plumped down, with mighty splashes, for minnows.
The perspiration rolled from the face of Hal, who was at the sculling-oar; dripped into his eyes, and dropped off the end of his crimsoning nose. Yet doubtless he felt cooler than did Ned, who, idle in the bows, simply was baking instead of boiling.
However, neither cared. The weather figured little, and they were more concerned over the immediate future than over the present.
“I bet you we don’t get a thing except dog-fish!” commented Hal, discouragingly.
“Oh, yes, we will,” returned Ned, with more hope. “That is,” he added, “unless the turtles and gars rob the hooks as fast as we bait up.”
“Well, may be; Sam and Joe seemed to think we would, anyway,” admitted Hal, blowing the beads from the tip of his nose.
They glided in against the raft, and Ned, reaching over, grasped the line.
“Feel anything?” queried Hal, eagerly, as Ned paused a moment.
“Seems kind of like it,” said Ned, fingering the line. “But perhaps it’s only the current jerking.”
He lifted the line and laid it across the bows; and squatting on the combing, beside it, gently pulled the boat, hand over hand, toward the first hook.
“Nothing on that hook,” remarked Hal, as presently the bit of cord by which it was suspended rose, slack and lifeless, out from the water. Then the hook itself dangled into view. No, it had nothing on it—not even bait.
As it came in-board Ned stuck a piece of liver on it and let it slide out again.
“Something’s coming!” he cried, jubilantly, his hands pausing upon the line. “I can feel it now, easy! See him jerk?”
“Hurrah!” shouted Hal, excitedly, edging forward, to be ready to help.
Hook two also was quite empty.
“Looks as though the slough’s having a good big feast of liver, anyway!” commented Ned, baiting.
“Hurry,” urged Hal; for now the line just beyond was dipping and surging, under the struggles of something on hook three.
“Say—it’s a turtle! A big soft-shell—I saw him!” exclaimed Ned.
“Oh, shucks!” responded Hal, disgusted. “Yes, there he is!” as a stout flapper darted up into sight and vanished again with a swirl.
Soon the line bent sharply over the side of the boat, and in the water under their eyes the boys could descry the sprawling disk of Mr. Turtle.
“How will I get him in?” asked Ned, perplexed.
“Why, lift him right out,” answered Hal.
Ned gingerly drew the prisoner to the surface, and then cried:
“The hook’s in his flapper! How do you suppose he ever got caught that way?”
“I don’t know,” replied Hal. “I guess he started to eat with his fingers.”
“Or else he put his foot in his mouth, and got hooked that way,” added Ned. “Did you say to lift him right out?”
“Sure,” said Hal.
“Supposing you do it,” suggested Ned, eyeing the turtle, whose flappers, armed with long claws, were striking in all directions as their owner strove to get away.
Hal thoughtfully surveyed the situation.
“We ought to have a landing-net,” he declared. “But put your hands under the edge of his shell, and throw him in. He won’t hurt you.”
“I’m not afraid of his biting me, but he scratches like fury. His claws are about a mile long!” observed Ned, dubiously preparing to follow Hal’s advice.
The turtle, for the moment, was quiet, possibly waiting for his embarrassed captors to do something. Ned suddenly grabbed him by the shell, and before he realized what was taking place had heaved him over the gunwale, into the boat.
The shock released the hook, which fell from the flapper, and now a very angry turtle was at large in quarters altogether too restricted to suit himself and two bare-legged youths.
The turtle was about the size of a wash pan. He was of the common sharp-nose, fresh-water variety, of a drabbish-gray, with a smooth shell flexible like cartilage. His legs were tremendously powerful, and with his long, snaky neck far extended, his eyes sparkling, and his mouth wide open, hissing with all his might he made straight toward the stern and at Hal.
“Look out!” warned Ned.
Narrowly escaping going overboard, Hal scrambled upon the combing, and ran along it until he had joined the laughing Ned, in the bows. Here, perched upon the decking which extended over this portion of the craft, they were out of harm’s way—that is, the turtle’s.
This individual, balked of a bite out of one of Hal’s browned legs, endeavored to climb up the side of the boat, but tumbled back time and again.
“I wish he’d go,” complained Ned. “We aren’t after turtles, to-day.”
“So do I,” agreed Hal, ruefully wiggling a big toe, which he had stubbed in his rapid flight. “We don’t need him.”
“I got him in—you get him out,” proposed Ned, shrewdly.
“Well, either he gets out, or we do,” declared Hal. And he tried to assist the unwelcome captive by putting an oar-blade under him. Every time, however, the turtle slid off, and meanwhile grew madder and madder—if such a condition were possible.
Hissing and clawing, he scurried over the bottom of the boat.
Finally his turtle cunning led him to settle upon the stern as the easiest point for escape; and never giving up he attacked the sloping board again and again, only to fall back. Each time that the boys would have boosted him with an oar-blade he turned and snapped, and appeared so ungrateful that they were fain to leave him to his own efforts.
At last he managed to insert the claws of a hind flapper into the little space left by the oar in the sculling-hole, and then was enabled to thrust one of his fore flappers over the edge of the stern.
Up he went. For an instant he balanced on the stern, his four legs and his stiff little tail, and his waving head all outstretched in air.
“Scat!” called Ned.
At the word Mr. Turtle disappeared with a fine splash.
“Good!” exclaimed Hal, much relieved.
“No more turtles come in this boat, do they, Hal!” vowed Ned. “Better to cut the line, and be rid of them.”
The boys now proceeded with their business—that of finding out what else their hooks had in store for them. Although the turtle was off, still the line swayed and sagged, denoting another catch a short distance ahead.
This proved to be on hook six.
“It’s nothing but a gar!” announced Ned, peering down as he neared the spot.
“Big one?” queried Hal, anxious for at least some consolation.
“No—just ordinary size,” said Ned, disdainfully. “What will we do with him?”
The gar was now lying on the surface of the water, beside the bows, only occasionally giving a slight squirm. Maybe he was tired; or maybe, as in the case of the turtle, he was waiting for an opportunity to do a little damage. He was about three feet long, and with his slim, round body, his wicked eyes, and his bill-like mouth armed with sharp teeth, he looked fully capable of taking care of himself. The hook was firmly embedded in the lower half of his long, bony snout.
Ned cautiously extended his hand, to try to release the barb—and the gar snapped viciously.
“I don’t believe we can get the hook out unless we kill him, and there’s no use doing that,” asserted Ned. “He’s too coarse to eat.”
“Fishermen break their bills, and throw them back again,” informed Hal.
“But that’s torture; it makes them starve to death,” replied Ned.
“Can’t you jerk out the hook?” asked Hal.
Ned attempted this, by towing the gar back and forth, and pulling on the hook at all angles. The fish submitted passively, and suddenly appealed to Ned as so helpless and so unhappy that with a quick impulse he severed the cord. With a flop of his tail the gar darted from sight.
“Get!” advised Ned.
He substituted another cord and hook, and both he and Hal felt relieved.
Their mercy was rewarded, for when they had run the line a few yards farther, they met with opposition in the shape of a dead weight which caused Ned to exert considerable strength to lift.
“Snag?” inquired Hal, anxiously, watching Ned raising the line inch by inch.
“Don’t know,” grunted Ned.
“Just our luck!” groaned Hal.
However, Hal was to be agreeably disappointed.The knot fastening the cord to which was suspended the hook came into view—and on the instant the water underneath it swirled violently.
“It’s a big cat! Come on, Hal, and grab him, or he’ll tear out the hook!” shouted Ned, wildly excited.
Carefully he seized the cord, and gently, so as not to frighten the fish, drew him alongside.
“He’s caught just through the edge of his lip! Watch out!” warned Ned.
Hal, regardless of any peril to himself, leaned far over. The victim, sluggish but far from sleepy, looked like a young whale. Hal boldly thrust his fingers in behind the cat’s gills, to haul him bodily over the gunwale; there was a sudden gigantic flurry, a splash, and presto, change! Instead of it being the cat in the boat, it was Hal in the slough!
Ned gazed in alarm; but before he could move to the rescue Hal’s head broke the surface a few yards off.
“Here’s an oar, Hal!” called Ned.
“Uh-uh!” protested Hal, shaking his head while he blew the water from his nostrils. “I’m all right. Did the fish get away?”
“I guess so—no, he didn’t, either!” announced Ned gladly.
“I’ll swim around to the other side of the boat, and you can be seeing if you can’t lift him in,” declared Hal. “Don’t you tumble over, too,” he added, as a caution.
The catfish seemed to be satisfied with what he had accomplished; and still about in the same spot, made no sign of farther trickiness.
However, Ned was very careful in approaching him. A moment, and the cat came over the one gunwale as Hal came over the other.
The hook, which had caught merely in one of the lips, where it had worn quite a hole, dropped while Ned was lifting, and there lay the victim in the bottom of the boat, free too late.
“A regular ‘yaller’ mud-cat,” laughed Ned. “Say—but we were lucky not to lose him. If he’d only had sense enough he might have got loose long ago.”
“I bet he weighs twenty pounds,” declared the dripping Hal.
“He’s all mouth!” returned Ned.
The boys gazed and gloated. The catfish, gasping in the sudden change from water to air, lay, after the fashion of his kind, inert and emotionless.
He was a very ugly animal, of a dirty yellow, and while he was not large for his species, he was the largest that the boys had ever caught. Indeed, he was quite a chunk of a fish. He was shaped somewhat like a flatiron; and, as Ned had remarked, he was about all mouth.
This mouth, which in appearance was a split severing his enormous head from side to side, was fringed with long feelers. His eyes, almost white, were small and piggish.
“Cut off his head, and there’s nothing left but his tail,” commented Ned, ruefully awakening to the fact that perhaps they had not made much of a catch, after all.
“Well, he’s better than turtles and gars,” replied Hal.
For the time being the capture of the prize had quite overshadowed Hal’s mishap; but now Ned eyed him, and snickered.
“Did you touch bottom?” he queried.
“No, sir-ee; I came up as quick as I could,” avowed Hal. “Do I look wet?” and he slapped his oozing thighs.
“Sort of,” admitted Ned. “Where’s your hat?”
“It must have kept on going down,” answered Hal. “But I don’t care. No—there it is. I feel fine,” he added, having rescued his hat with an oar. “You ought to go in—it’s great.”
“Guess I’ll wait a while,” smiled Ned.
“Well, in half an hour I’ll be as dry as you,” asserted Hal.
And he was.
The catfish was too unwieldy to be put in the soap-box seat (which they had upturned on bottom for a temporary hold-all), and stowing him under the decking of the bows, out of the sun, they investigated the remaining hooks upon the line. A large majority were stripped and empty, but two channel-cat and one blue-cat were taken. None of these weighed over six pounds; still, they were not seven-ninths head! No more turtles or gars were encountered.
The upper line yielded five catfish; another soft-shell turtle, caught, as had been his partner in distress, by the flapper; and a dogfish. The turtle released himself, much to the boys’ pleasure; but the dogfish did not. He had swallowed the hook, so that the cord passed through his cruel jaws, armed with their wicked teeth, into his stomach.
Unwilling to lose another hook, Ned solved the difficulty by quickly dispatching Mr. Dogfish by a smart blow over the spinal cord at the juncture of head and body, and made use of the otherwise worthless fellow by baiting hooks with his flesh.
Running the two lines had occupied at least two hours. As they turned campward Hal and Ned were conscious that nature’s dinner bell was sounding in their interiors.
Bob saw them coming. At first he was undecided whether to regard them as friends, or enemies. When Ned shouted to him, however, his canine sense told him that this was indeed the scull-boat, bearing his master; and breaking from his puzzled stare into a volley of whines and barks, he shortened the distance by venturing up to his back out into the water.
Then, when the boys sprang to land, he spattered them well for not having invited him. But who cared? They were about as wet and dirty as they could be, anyway!
As they disembarked, Sam and Joe pulled out, below, with their short, choppy fisherman strokes, bound for their own lines, which were not set in the bayou, but in the deep water, toward the main channel.
The boys waved at the pair, and Joe languidly waved back.
Now it remained to place in the fish-box the haul from the trot-lines, and to get supper. Hal volunteered to cook a fish if Ned would clean one, but Ned decided that this would make a painful delay.
He hastily started a fire of driftwood and branches, and until there should be coals upon which to put the frying-pan, he strolled with Bob back into the timber to look for more fuel.
Presently, unable to stay long away from the base of supplies, he returned to the camp. He had some news.
“You just ought to see!” he reported to Hal, who was squatting before the fire, frying potatoes and bacon together. “There’s a sort of dried swamp a little ways back in the woods, and it’s simply alive with young frogs. They’ll make splendid bait.”
“Let’s go and get a lot, after supper,” said Hal. “I don’t suppose the liver will be any good by morning. And, besides, it’s about all gone.”
Ned seated himself on the ground, and sniffed the air. Bob did the same.
“Nearly ready?” they asked—the one with his voice, the other with his dripping tongue, and glistening eyes, and nervous tail.
“Hold your plate,” commanded Hal. Ned eagerly obeyed; Bob, having no plate, gazed covetously. Hal shoveled out a generous portion from the hissing frying-pan, and saying: “Here, Bob,” laid another portion upon a slab of bark. The rest he kept.
Each boy poured for himself, from the tin pail, a pint cup of coffee, and all fell to. Bob went coffee-less—which no doubt was just as well, considering that at home neither he nor his master drank any coffee, let alone a pint cup full!
Still, out camping one does many things which would not agree with one at home.
The coffee was very hot. The bacon and potatoes were very hot. Bob circled his bark plate, with mingled anticipation and disgust; hunger urged him on, while the memory of a certain burning mouthful held him back. He suspected a trick.
At last, valor overcoming discretion, he plunged ahead, and gobbled as fast as he could, while his companions jeered.
The supper having been cleared away—and save rinsing the utensils there was no “clearing” to be done, after two hungry boys and a dog had scraped and licked—a frog hunt was inaugurated. Protected now by shoes and stockings, the boys, taking the willing Bob, proceeded to Ned’s swamp.
The sun was setting, a ball of dull red in the golden west, and as the three chums traversed the short patch lying between the dried marsh and their arbor upon the bank of the slough, already the wild-wood was growing dusky and subdued. Birds were darting to their homes, and were twittering their good-nights. A whippoorwill began to pipe in the island across the bayou. Mosquitoes rose from the under side of leaves, and here and there moths flitted aimlessly. The mooing of cows, as they were driven to the milking-place, floated in from distant pastures.
“Here we are,” announced Ned, pausing on the edge of a narrow open strip.
“Listen! What’s that funny noise?” exclaimed Hal, stopping stock still. Bob who had been soberly following at the boys’ heels, also stopped.
On the quiet atmosphere, almost from beneath their feet, rose a series of shrill little squeaks—somehow the oddest sounds that the trio ever had heard.
“Isn’t that funny!” whispered Ned. “What is it, do you think?”
Hal didn’t know. Bob didn’t know.
Carefully they peered about, through the vicinity, and found out.
“Oh, Ned—it’s a frog!” on a sudden called Hal. “Come quick, and see! Two garter snakes have got hold of him!”
Ned hastened over, and sure enough, there was a small frog in as tight a fix as ever a small frog could be! Each hind leg was deep in the maw of a garter snake; and now the two snakes, forced to suspend their swallowing operations, were lustily pulling in opposite directions, while his frogship, stretched between them, was shrieking for help.
“Oh, pshaw! Let’s rescue the poor thing,” cried Ned; and suiting his action to his word he struck one of the snakes a blow with a switch that he had in his hand. Startled, the snake dropped the frog—whereupon the other would have fled with the booty, had not Hal halted him and made him disgorge.
The frog, nothing daunted, hopped away. Bob turned himself his avenger. Wrinkling back his lips, with utmost disgust he seized the first snake, in its retreat, and gingerly clutching it between his teeth, while the saliva dripped from his unwilling jaws, shook it frantically until it fairly flew to pieces. The other snake, having for a moment bravely faced Hal and menaced him with its tongue, disappeared.
“Snakes?” spoke Ned, pointing. “Why, just look at them, will you!”
That swamp was fairly swarming with them, all, like the boys, out after frogs. A garter snake considers a young frog a dainty morsel, and some of the snakes were quite lumpy, from the unlucky victims that they had engulfed.
“Well, if this doesn’t beat the dickens!” declared Hal.
Bob could not bring himself to mouthing another of the snakes. He would pretend to pounce upon one, and would quickly spring away, his curling lips indicating his disgust.
Undaunted by the competition, the boys, urged on by the gathering darkness, hastened to collect their frogs and put them in the coffee pail! Bob was of not the slightest assistance. He loathed frogs as much as he did snakes, and actually frothed at them, so intense were his feelings.
“What do you think!” exclaimed Hal, presently. “Here’s a snake that had swallowed a frog, and when I came up he was so scared that he opened his mouth, and the frog scooted out again!”
“Don’t catch him,” cried Ned, referring to the frog. “He’s been dead once, and now he’s earned his life.”
So Hal allowed the resurrected frog to go his way, and it is to be hoped that the garter snakes were as obliging.
By the time the boys had secured some twenty-five or thirty of the tiny green frogs, each about half an inch in length, twilight had deepened into dusk, and trees and bushes were merged in shadows.
With a few stumbles over vines and roots they retraced their steps to the arbor. Then arose the question, where to keep the frogs, considering that the pail would be needed for the breakfast coffee!
The voices of men talking, and the snappy sound of oars shifting between thole pins drifted from the mouth of the bayou.
“Sam and Joe are just coming back. Let’s go down and report, and see if they haven’t something we can borrow, to put the frogs in,” proposed Ned.
So the three of them trudged along the bank, where a faint path had been worn. It was presumed that Bob, of course, knew what was up. But after they had gone far enough to indicate their goal, he suddenly awakened to the fact that the route was leading to the brindled dog, and refused to proceed farther. He sat on his tail, and pleaded with his two comrades not to expose themselves to insults from that vulgar fellow. As they refused to yield to him, he watched them until they were out of sight, and followed them with his mournful howls. Then, having done his duty, he returned to the grape arbor camp, and curled to sleep on Ned’s coat.
Soon, even had they been blind to the flickering light, and deaf to the muffled voices, by their noses alone the boys would have known that they were near the fishermen’s cabin. Sam and Joe were busy, with aid of a lantern, at their landing. Evidently they had just disembarked.
“Hullo, there!” hailed the boys.
“Hey!” cheerily answered Joe.
“Bow wow wow wow!” challenged the brindled dog—exactly as Bob had predicted!
Sam said nothing. Sam was not much of a talker.
The boys scrambled down to the landing. Joe was in the stern of the boat, handing out things to Sam, who was in the water beside it. Both men had on their hip rubber boots.
“What luck?” asked Hal.
“Not much,” replied Joe, without pausing in his operations. “What did you boys get?”
“Seven catfish,” informed Ned, trying to make his tone matter-of-fact.
“And two turtles and a gar and a dogfish,” added Hal.
“And two turtles, and a gar, and a dogfish, eh?” laughed Joe. “Well, I reckon that without ’em you beat us. Fish out where we be are gettin’ ’bout tired o’ dough-balls; ain’t that so, Sam?”
Sam grunted; giving the fish-box in front of him a kick into deeper water, he plashed to shore, and stumped up the slope to the cabin. Joe followed.
“Come in,” he invited, over his shoulder.
The boys entered. Sam was lighting a lamp in a bracket against the wall. The cabin was small and close, with its two bunks, its stove for cooking, and its walls hung with clothing and cooking and fishing utensils and decorated with prints. The room was bedchamber, kitchen and parlor, in one.
“We can’t stay, thank you,” spoke Ned, fancying that the two fishermen would want to attend to their own affairs. “Only, we caught a lot of frogs for bait, and haven’t anything to keep them in. Have you got an old bucket, or some tin cans, we can have?”
“Lot’s of ’em,” responded Joe. “Paw over that heap back of the shanty, and take what you want.”
“Better have the lantern,” advised Sam—speaking for the first time.
With the brindled dog continuing to eye them as if suspecting that they were stealing, Hal and Ned looked over the pile of refuse, and came upon an old tin pail which suited their purpose.
Having achieved this, and said good-night, they went back to camp, through the darkness; and they tripped so often, and stepped on so many rolling sticks, and stones, that they wished they had their own lantern along.
Upon hearing them approaching, the faithful Bob was in arms at once, resolved to save the camp, or die; but upon being reassured by Ned’s whistle and call, he advanced and greeted them with his usual wordiness, while he sniffed for traces of his down creek enemy.
With nothing especial to do, immediately, the boys sat on the bank, to wait. Now the woods behind and the water in front were black, and the trees across on the other side were but a vague mass. A whole colony of whippoorwills whistled from point to point incessantly, and two owls, one distant, one quite near, hooted a responsive duet. Bob whined and shivered, for the air was damp with the falling dew and the mist rising from the water. Beyond, in the channel of the river, sounded the soft exhaust of an ascending rafter.
Despite the attentions of numerous mosquitoes, Ned felt himself growing sleepy.
“Wonder what time it is,” he hazarded.
“Must be nearly nine,” said Hal.
“Sam said to run the lines again about ten, didn’t he?” inquired Ned.
“Yes, about ten, and early in the morning,” responded Hal, drowsily.
Conversation languished; and after an interval of silence, punctuated only by the spasmodic complaints of Bob, who was acting very babyish, Ned spoke up:
“Say—what’s the matter with running the lines now, and not waiting till ten. I’m pretty near asleep.”
“Let’s. So am I,” agreed Hal.
They lighted their lantern, and taking the liver, the frogs and the remains of the dogfish, tumbled into the scull-boat and pushed out. Behind them, upon shore, stayed Bob, the disconsolate, who was growing tired of always being “left.” He was positive that he was missing much fun.
The Deep Creek of night was decidedly different from the Deep Creek of day, just as the most open woods, in the light, are transformed into regular labyrinths, in the dark.
It was Ned’s turn to scull. It seemed to both boys that they never would reach the raft, so fast they appeared to glide, and yet so slow they were in arriving. And all was so eerie—black slough, black woods, black sky, and queer noises.
“There’s the raft, right ahead!” exclaimed Hal.
Whereupon they bumped into it.
The water, which was so playful as under the rays of the sun it lapped the mossy old logs, now was sullen and chill. Hal swung the lantern over, and speedily found the end of the trot-line.
They were forced to run the lines by feeling rather than by sight, for at best the beams of the lantern were shifty and uncertain. Either they had come again too soon, or the fish had gone to sleep, or were gorged with liver, for two medium-size catfish, one from each line, was the total yield.
The boys were a little disappointed. Out of the assortment of dainties at hand having baited afresh the empty hooks, they sculled back to camp, and Bob.
With most of their clothing on, and their coats for pillows, they rolled in their blankets, in the arbor, (Bob contentedly between them), and not even the over-sociable mosquitoes could hold them awake for more than five minutes and a quarter.
HE sun, from his station a little north of east, stared full into the grape arbor sleeping room, and shone on Hal’s still face. A fly hustled in, and buzzed about Hal’s nose. Hal frowned, and impatiently shook his head; but unable to rid himself of sun or fly, opened his eyes. At the same instant Ned, beside him, stirred and turned over, disturbing Bob, who had been very comfortable.
Both boys sat up and blinked. Bob stretched, shook himself, and strolled out.
“Say—we’d better get out and run those trot-lines!” yawned Ned. “We’ve overslept.”
“I should think so!” yawned back Hal.
“Do you know, when I woke, Bob was on my stomach. He must have been there all night!” announced Ned.
“He was keeping warm,” explained Hal.
“Well, he weighed about a ton,” responded Ned, unwilling to make light of it. “But then,” he added, “he kept me warm, too.”
The boys yawningly staggered to the water’s edge and made their toilet in a tin basin, with the scull-boat for a wash-stand. Already the sun was climbing high, and the gnats and flies and all the world of insect and bird were awake. Sam and Joe could be descried at work on their lines, far outside the mouth of the bayou.
Only the three tenants of Camp Grape Arbor were sluggards!
Of these Bob was the friskiest. Ned and Hal, while trying to be good natured, still were very irritable. They were stiff and lame, and spotted with mosquito bites. Their hands were painfully cracked from water and dirt and the oar, and their faces, burned by the sun, felt strangely leathery. Hal’s nose was peeling, and Ned, who foolishly had rolled up his sleeves, was the owner of a huge water blister half way between left wrist and elbow.
However, when they once more were in the boat, and had started for the lines—Bob again remaining alone in camp, a state at which he never failed to protest strongly—their spirits really rose, and they were happy.
“There’s the Harriett!” said Ned, as the mellow whistle of a steamboat signaling for a landing chimed in the distance, over the water.
“Then it must be about eight o’clock!” cried Hal, scandalized. “My! but we’re lazy!”
And to atone for their late rising he dug valiantly with the sculling oar.
Their morning’s haul consisted of five catfish, and, amid great rejoicing, a fine pickerel, for their fish-box; a soft shell turtle, who so easily released his own flapper, and swam off, that Ned declared he was one of the two they had caught yesterday, and was simply making his regular rounds; and a black bass, a mere minnow, whose greediness had led him to take into his mouth more than he could swallow. Him the boys let go, to grow.
As on previous occasions, all the other hooks were as bare of bait as of anything else, and Ned had to scrape together every scrap at hand to rebait them.
Upon their return to camp the hungry boys, with the ever-hungry Bob as assistant, had breakfast. Breakfast consisted of—bacon and potatoes and coffee. The critical Hal insisted that the coffee tasted “froggy”; just the same, he drank it!
For dinner they planned a much grander menu. But for the present, bacon and potatoes filled a crying need.
It was necessary to get more bait; and refreshed by their breakfast, the boys, having tidied camp to the extent of hanging their blankets upon some bushes in the sun to dry, went with Bob on another frog hunt. They found frogs, but no snakes; evidently the evening was the snakes’ special hour for foraging.
In their search they followed adown the little swamp which slanted in toward the river. It grew wetter as they proceeded, and they were about to leave it, when they heard a tremendous outburst of barks and growls from Bob.
“Here, Bob! We’re coming, Bob, old fellow!” they called, running helter-skelter to back him up, or scold him, whichever was proper.
Bob was in a great dilemma. He had run across an immense snapping-turtle, and did not know what to do with it. He was afraid to close with it, and yet he was unwilling to flee from it, therefore he had adopted the middle course of circling it at a respectful distance, and abusing it in dog language.
The turtle was a patriarch. His shell was thick and black and knobby, and the skin of his neck and legs was thick and black and warty. His claws were long and curving, and as with his head he slowly followed Bob’s antics, his deep-set eyes fairly flashed sparks, while he held his formidable mouth half open, as if hankering for a bite out of one of Bob’s legs. How he hissed, with a hoarse, gaspy hiss! He was so enraged that he filled the air with a musky odor.
“Isn’t he a whopper, though!” exclaimed Ned, grasping Bob, who, at the arrival of reinforcements, had waxed altogether too fierce for safety.
“I’d hate to have him get hold of me!” asserted Hal, poking at the monster with a stick. The turtle seized the stick with such a grip that he jerked it out of Hal’s hands, and Mr. Hal involuntarily jumped back a pace.
“Well, I guess we aren’t wanted here,” remarked Ned, laughing. “Come on, Bob.”
“Keep the stick,” called back Hal, as, dragging the reluctant Bob, they moved off, leaving the turtle, his jaws firmly clamped upon the piece of wood, in possession of the field of battle.
Having secured a supply of the hapless frogs, the boys took a short cut to pay their respects to Sam and Joe. Bob, after pretending that he was going back to have it out with the turtle, finally cooled down and trotted along with them. But he could not be induced to approach the shanty, and with an eye out for the brindled dog sat at a distance and sorrowfully waited.
Sam was on the muddy beach, mending the seine; Joe was moulding dough-balls, on the bench in front of the cabin.
“Good-morning,” said the boys.
“Mornin’,” replied Joe.
From the shady side of the shanty the brindled dog growled; from the beach Sam nodded.
“How’s fishin’?” asked Joe.
“Pretty good,” answered Ned. “Only, we overslept.”
“Thought you did. Seen you weren’t up when we went out, ’bout five o’clock,” said Joe.
“Going to try the net?” inquired Hal, looking at Sam and his task.
“Yes, thought we’d make a haul or two ‘crost the river this afternoon,” informed Joe. “Ever see a big seine laid?”
“I have,” said Ned.
“I haven’t,” said Hal.
“Better come along, then,” invited Joe.
“All right—much obliged,” responded Ned and Hal. “What time?”
“Oh, some’ers after dinner toward the shank o’ the afternoon,” replied Joe. “You watch, an’ when you see us gettin’ ready, you come down.”
With this in prospect the boys gleefully returned to camp, to run their trot-lines and to have an early dinner. The running of the lines was not especially a success, the haul being only two catfish; but the dinner was a great success, being baked potatoes and fried pickerel, pressed beef and coffee, and with dessert of toasted bread dipped in canned blueberries.
Before Sam and Joe showed signs of starting out, the boys had time to fit up a stove, by digging a hole in the top of the bank, covering it with a piece of sheet iron, and making an entrance at right angles, for fuel and draft.
It was quite a luxury to loll back, Ned against the mass of net heaped upon the fish-box built into the broad stern, and Hal in the narrowing bows, while Sam and Joe sped the boat across the ripply, sparkling river. Soon the wordy, left-handed compliments being exchanged between Bob, on guard at the grape arbor, and the brindled dog, on guard at the shanty, died away in the distance, and the eastern shore of the Mississippi came into plain view.
The boat landed on a wide, shelving, sandy beach, over which rose a line of bluffs. Hal piled ashore, followed by Sam, but Ned stayed in the stern and offered to “pay out” the net.
One end of the seine was passed to Sam, on shore; and then Joe slowly pulled away in a great circle, the seine dropping, fold after fold, into the water behind. Ned held himself ready to loosen any tangle; but there were no tangles. The net had been coiled just right, and he was not needed.
It did not take long to lay the thousand foot net, and Joe managed so well that when the circle, marked by its slender line of round corks, was complete, the boat was at the shore just below its former landing place. Weighted by lead at the bottom, and buoyed by corks at the top, the net now hung straight down from the surface, and formed a meshy wall.
Sam and Joe began to haul in, evenly and swiftly, from one end. Yard after yard the wet weave piled on the beach, and the circle gradually, but none the less surely, lessened.
“Looks like a water-haul,” commented Joe to Sam, scanning the water inside the circle for signs of prisoners.
“Humph!” replied Sam.
The line of corks was now short and near, and still there had been not a single struggle to pass them. The surface stayed placid and smiling.
“Humph!” again said Sam.
The boys did not give up, but continued to gaze hopefully. It did not seem possible that there was nothing in the net.
However, such was the case.
“Water-haul!” declared Joe, finally.
“Humph,” repeated Sam.
“Pshaw!” exclaimed the boys, with disappointment, eyeing the empty seine as it lay on the sand.
“What do you mean by ‘water-haul’?” queried Hal.
“Water’s all we got, ain’t it, sonny?” responded Sam, sourly, throwing the net by armfuls into the boat.
“I reckon we don’t try again till the moon changes,” hinted Joe, with a sly wink at Ned. But as Hal refused to be hoaxed into asking more questions, after a slight pause he continued:
“Sam an’ me have got to go up to Newton for provisions an’ stuff. You boys can go or you can stay an’ we’ll take you in comin’ back.”
Newton was a river hamlet about two miles above.
“Better let ’em stay,” advised Sam, whom the “water-haul” appeared to have made very grumpy. “We’ve got enough to pull against the current, without them in too.”
“We’ll stay, of course,” spoke Ned.
“How long will you be gone?” inquired Hal.
“Oh, jest for a spell,” replied Joe.
“Don’t you forget us,” said Ned.
“Do you think they will?” asked Hal, growing nervous as he watched the two fishermen row away.
“Of course not!” assured Ned. “Say—I tell you what we’ll do. Let’s climb the bluffs, and while we’re exploring we can see Sam and Joe when they’re coming back.”
The river side of the bluffs had been cut away by running water until in many places the bare limestone was exposed, to form perpendicular cliffs. Between these cliffs were little gullies, thickly matted with the wild strawberry, the wild morning glory, the violet, and a thousand other woodland plants, all growing independent of man. Graceful and stately, against the gray walls rose and drooped the rock honeysuckle.
Eager to reach the crest, the boys scaled from foothold to foothold, and hot and breathless, speedily emerged upon the top. Here they stood and looked down upon the bird’s-eye view of land and water.
At their feet was the beach, much reduced in size, where they had witnessed the “water-haul.” North and south stretched the river, a broad ribbon of blue emblazoned with silver, and rent here and there by islands. Beyond, directly opposite them, was the mouth of the Monga, just above which, they knew, was the shanty and the brindled dog, and still farther above, the grape arbor and Bob.
On the hither side of the river Sam and Joe were plainly visible, making their way, in their skiff, along the shore line, where the shallows reduced the force of the current.
“My, but this is pretty, isn’t it!” sighed Hal.
“I should say so!” agreed Ned. “I don’t blame the Indians any for hating the white men who made them give it up.”
The two boys strolled along the crest, sparsely wooded with sentinel oaks, and covered with short turf which furnished forage for a few horses.
They had not gone far when they came upon quite a hole or pit, extending down through the black forest loam into the yellow clay beneath.
“Why was this dug, do you suppose?” remarked Hal.
“I don’t know,” said Ned, gazing into it, and pondering.
“There’s another,” cried Hal, pointing ahead.
So there was, and still another was visible, farther on.
“I tell you—these are Indian mounds, and people have been opening them to see what’s inside,” exclaimed Ned, positively.
“But I don’t see much ‘mound’ about them,” objected Hal.
However, a series of gentle little rises could be made out, each with its blunt top laid open, and its sides disfigured by heaps of dirt.
“What do they find in them?” asked Hal.
“Oh, skeletons, and arrow-heads, and things,” informed Ned. “But you have to dig good and deep; twenty feet, I guess.”
The boys scanned with a thrill of awe these relics of a passed people who loved thus to inter their chiefs on some lofty outlook, commanding wood and stream.
“It must have been mighty long ago,” mused Hal. “Here’s a stump of a tree that grew right out of the middle of one.”
He fell to work counting the rings.
“Two hundred and sixty!” he announced.
“Gee!” blurted Ned. “Come on,” he proposed, after a moment which both required in order fully to grasp the message of the stump. “Let’s poke around inside of one, and perhaps we’ll find some arrow-heads and stuff.”
He picked up a stout piece of branch, with a sharp end, and slid down into the first pit; Hal, similarly equipped, slid after.
The boys wielded their sticks well, but no trophies resulted. Evidently the mound had been well cleaned out, and nothing missed. They proceeded to the next, and the next. Time sped more rapidly than they were aware of. Suddenly Ned straightened up, in the third mound, and exclaimed:
“Say, Hal, do you know it’s getting dark?”
They hastily scrambled out of the hole. Not only was the sun low, but it was cloaked by a mass of dense, black cloud unfolding swiftly toward the zenith. An ominous growl of thunder rolled up the sky. Birds were twittering uneasily, and the slight breeze had died entirely away.
“Great Cæsar!” cried Hal. “I bet Sam and Joe have gone by, and we haven’t seen them!”
“No, they wouldn’t do that. They’d look for us, and yell!” assured Ned, stanchly. “But we’re going to have a big thunder-storm, that’s sure.”
“I wish they’d come,” murmured Hal, plaintively.
“Maybe they’ll wait until after the storm,” responded Ned. “Anyway, we’ve got to find some place where we can keep kind of dry, and watch the river, too.”
“Don’t you remember that cave we saw when we were climbing up?” asked Hal, struck with an idea. “What’s the matter with that?”
Nothing was the matter with it. It was a cavity worn out under a jutting slab of limestone—much as though the sloping ground had fallen away at this point. There was plenty of room to sit upright, for some distance back in it.
A short time the boys sat on their roof, so to speak, and hung their legs over the edge of the slab, while they noted the approach of the storm. Swiftly the cloud marched onward, foot by foot blotting out the blue. Vivid lightning played through the billows of heavy vapor, and the thunder pealed and mumbled.
Nearer came the devouring line of black. Birds were flying for shelter. A fresh breeze sprang up, blowing toward the advancing giant, as if he were sucking in the air. The river, upon which appeared not a sign of Sam and Joe, changed from silver to dull lead frosted by a multitude of white-caps.
“It’s pretty grand, isn’t it!” commented Ned, struck with the majesty of the storm, and with the novelty of their plight.
“Y-yes,” replied Hal; who, nevertheless, preferred to look upon the scene, however grand, from the neighborhood of some convenient house.
Until the very last moment they sat here; then, with the first spattering drops of rain, they dived for shelter. With flare of lightning, and crackle of thunder, and roar of wind, the rain descended in torrents; but only a whiff of spray now and then reached the boys, tucked in the farthermost recess of their cave.
It seemed as though the rain never would abate, for as often as it slackened, and the boys took hope, so often it was sure to be swelled by a gust of reinforcements. But finally it died to a drizzle, and Ned made bold to slip out and take a survey.
The storm was over, practically, but the dusk of evening was settling down in earnest.
“Who-oo-oo-oo-ee-ee!” shouted Ned, thinking that perhaps Sam and Joe might be within hearing, although he did not see any skiff.
No answer.
Hal came out, and joined him in another call, which brought no response but the echoes. Oppressed by the dampness and the rapidly waxing gloom, the boys felt a strange desolation.
“I wonder how Bob liked the storm,” spoke Ned, trying to be cheerful. “He must have been scared!”
“And all our things are just sopping! We left our blankets out to dry, you know,” mourned Hal.
“Say!” on the instant exclaimed Ned, fumbling in his pockets. “Do you know, I left my knife up there by one of those holes!”
“Oh, you can’t find it, now,” objected Hal, who somehow did not fancy being deserted, even for a moment, in this weird spot.
“Yes, I can,” flung back Ned, scrambling up the wet slope, and anon slipping and stumbling. “It’s by the second hole, where I sharpened my stick.”
Ned gained the crest at the same point where he and Hal had come out when they had climbed before. It was very still, up here; only the drip, drip, from the trees, and the soughing of the wind, breaking the quiet. It also was much darker and lonesomer than he had expected it would be, but he bravely trudged forward along the edge of the bluff toward the old mounds.
He started to whistle, but his “Marching Through Georgia” came to an abrupt stop right in the middle of the first chorus. What uncanny, harrowing sound was that? He halted, with one foot upraised, and peered ahead.
He was nearing the first of the opened mounds, when rising apparently out of the second he descried a dim, white Thing, spectral, wavering, menacing him with a series of ghastly noises.
The goose-flesh sprang out all over Ned’s body, as if he had been in swimming too long, a weakness seized on his knees, and he imagined that his hair was rising under his battered felt hat.
It occurred to him that, rightfully enough, the Indians did not approve of having their remains, which had slumbered through two centuries and a half, exposed by means of spades and crooked sticks in the hands of the pale-face. And having cautiously retreated backward, step by step, suddenly he turned and bolted as hard as he could run! He didn’t want his jack-knife.
Guided through the blackness more by guesswork than by sight, over the edge of the bluff he plunged, and fell, rather than ran, to the cave and the arms of Hal.
Hal had heard him coming, and received him with concern.
“What’s the matter, what’s the matter?” he demanded.
“There—there’s something white and funny in one of the mounds!” panted Ned. “When it saw me coming it made a noise at me—a regular ghost-noise—and—and I lit out.”
“Aw, shucks!” scoffed Hal.
“Well, you go up with me, and I’ll show you,” declared Ned, indignant. “Those mounds are graves, you know.”
Up he went, again, Hal readily accompanying.
“Listen!” whispered Ned, clutching him by the coat sleeve, when they had reached the top.
Those same dreadful sounds were being borne to them, amid the wailing of the night wind.
Hal caught him by the hand.
“Sh!” cautioned Ned; and they softly stole forward, their heart in their mouth.
Yes, the white Thing was there, just as Ned had predicted. They didn’t go very near.
Hal gave back a yard, and so did Ned. They were poised, all prepared to run like deer if a hostile movement was made against them, when from the beach below arose to them a strenuous yodling:
“Oooo-dle—loo-dle—loo-dle—loo-dle!”
Sam and Joe! The call broke the spell.
“Oooo-dle—loo-dle—loo-dle—loo-dle!” yodled the boys, fleeing as they shouted. Never had signal been so welcome.
“Thought we’d left you here for good, didn’t you?” queried Joe, when, having been piloted by shouts and a waving lantern the boys, stumbling, slipping, leaping, brought up beside the skiff, at the water’s edge.
“Say——” hailed Ned, with scant ceremony, “there’s some Indian graves up on the bluff, dug open, and now it’s dark there’s a big white thing in one of them, and we don’t know what it is.”
“It made an awful noise at us, and we think it’s a ghost,” added Hal.
“Wa-al, I’d like to look at it,” drawled Joe. “I never seen a ghost. Want to take a squint at it, Sam?”
“Naw,” replied Sam. “I wouldn’t climb them bluffs for ten thousand ghosts!”
Joe, lantern in hand, strode to the foot of the bluff.
“If it’s the genu-ine article, throw it down, an’ I’ll pass jedgment on it,” called Sam, after him. “A hundred foot drop won’t hurt a real ghost any, I reckon.”
With Hal and Ned close at his heels Joe ascended the steep slope, and at the top, warned by the two boys, paused to listen.
“There,” whispered his companions, breathlessly, as upon the thick air floated the mysterious sounds.
“By gorry, the noises are genu-ine, all right,” muttered Joe, astonished, and making in the direction whence they seemed to come.
“Perhaps the lantern will put it out, so he won’t see it,” whispered Hal to Ned, vaguely suspicious that ghosts cannot stand the light.
“Sh!” bade Ned.
However, the white thing was in the same position as when they last had seen it. Joe never paused, but walked right ahead, and boldly swung his lantern forward, reckless of consequences.
The boys, hard behind him, fully expected to behold some unearthly, awesome shape exposed to view.
With a shock, partly of relief, partly of disappointment, they found themselves gazing upon the protruding eyes, inquiring ears, kindly face, and flowing main and forelock, of a white horse, while from his nostrils issued strange snorts of appeal and alarm.
Only his head was visible above the mound. The remainder of him was inside.
“Oh, gee!” exclaimed both boys, in chagrin, wishing that they, instead of the horse, were in the hole—and out of sight.
Joe doubled over in a fit of laughter that caused him fairly to shake and wobble on his feet.
“Whoopee! Whoopee!” he gasped. “Nothin’ but an old white hoss, got stuck in a hole. Or mebbe it’s the hoss the Injun used to ride, and had buried with him, and it’s his night to come out. P’raps to-morrer night’ll be the Injun’s turn.”
“It—it looked like a ghost,” faltered Hal. Ned was tongue-tied in his shame.
“Git out o’ here!” urged Joe, circling the animal, and smiting him suddenly on the flank.
Under this sudden spur, with a grunt, a heave, and a volley of loud snorts, the horse, awakening from his silly lapse into helplessness, all at once plunged and reared, and was at last again on hard ground. Forthwith he began to graze.
“Now there’s room for the Injun to pop out, when he wants to,” chuckled Joe. “Come on, you ghost-finders, so he won’t be afraid.”
And, followed meekly by Hal and Ned, he returned to the boat.
Oh, how Sam jeered!
He and Joe never forgot. And thereafter, whenever they chanced upon Hal or Ned they would be sure to ask, slyly:
“Seen any ghosts lately?”
As if to atone for his past ill-nature, as they pulled in at the shanty landing, Sam—who really had a very kind heart—said, gruffly:
“You kids had better stop for a snack with us. Steak an’ taters is all we got, but that grape-arbor camp o’ yourn must be nigh drowned.”
The boys, with some misgivings lest Bob should find out, and feel hurt, accepted the invitation; and Hal frankly yielded the palm to Sam as a cook.
This seemed to tickle Sam more than anything else.
“Wa-al, I do know how to cook, a bit,” he granted, “seein’ as I’ve cooked for Joe an’ me for twenty odd year.”
Carrying a bone which Sam sent, with his compliments, to “the dog,” finally they arrived at their camp. Bob wanted to know where on earth they had been so long—but was hushed, in the midst of his noisy remarks, by the bone.
The camp, as Sam had predicted, was “drowned.” Nevertheless, the sun would repair all damage, inasmuch as the bread, the tenderest article of food in their cupboard, fortunately had escaped the wetting.
Before a huge bonfire the boys partially dried their blankets, and then retired to the near-by horse-shed to sleep.
Ere the mosquitoes had fully found them they were beyond annoyance, and roundly snoring, while about their heads the little wood mice rustled through the straw.
Not until morning did it occur to them that they had not found the missing knife!