Kitabı oku: «What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise», sayfa 14
XXXII
A RAINY DAY WITH DUNBAR
Dunbar was in excellent spirits that evening. He seemed indeed like one who has had some specially good fortune happen to him, or one suddenly relieved of some distress or sore annoyance.
Throughout the evening he talked with the boys in a way that greatly interested them. He made no display of learning, but they easily discovered that his information was both vast and varied, and better still, that his thinking was sound, and that he was a master of the art of so presenting his thought that others easily grasped and appreciated it.
When at last the evening was completely gone, he bade his companions a cheery good night, saying that he would go over to the bluff and sleep near the catalpa tree.
“You see there are no sand flies to-night,” he explained, “and I like to smell the salt water as I sleep.”
“What do you make of him, Larry?” Dick asked as soon as their guest was beyond hearing.
“I don’t know. I’m puzzled. What’s your opinion?”
“Put it in the plural, for I’ve a different opinion every time I think about it at all.”
“Anyhow,” said Tom, “he must be crazy. Just think – ”
“Yes,” interrupted Cal, “but just think also how soundly he thinks. Let’s just call him eccentric and let it go at that. And who wouldn’t be eccentric, after living alone in the woods for so long?”
“After all,” Dick responded, “we’re not a commission in lunacy, and we’re not under the smallest necessity of defining his mental condition.”
“No,” Cal assented; “it’s a good deal better to enjoy his company and his talk than to bother our heads about the condition of his. He’s one of the most agreeable men I ever met – bright, cheerful, good natured, scrupulously courteous, and about the most interesting talker I ever listened to. So I for one give up trying to answer conundrums, and I’m going to bed. I wouldn’t if he were here to go on talking, but after an evening with him to lead the conversation, I find you fellows dull and uninteresting. Good night. Oh, by the way, I’ll slip away from here about daylight and get some pan fish for breakfast.”
Early as Cal was in setting out, he found Dunbar on the shore ready to go with him.
“I hope to get a shark,” the naturalist said, “one big enough to show a well-developed jaw, and they’re apt to bite at this early hour. I’ve a line in the boat there with a copper wire snell.”
“Are you specially interested in sharks?”
“Oh, no, not ordinarily. It is only that I must make a careful drawing or two, illustrative of the mechanical structure and action of a shark’s jaw and teeth, to go with an article I’m writing on the general subject of teeth in fishes, and I wish to draw the illustrations from life rather than from memory. It will rain to-day, and I’m going to avail myself of your hospitality and make the drawings under your shelter.”
“Then perhaps you’ll let us see them?”
“Yes, of course, and all the other drawings I have in my portfolio, if they interest you.”
“They will, if you will explain and expound a little.”
Dunbar gave a pleased little chuckle as he answered:
“I’ll do that to your heart’s content. You know, I really think I like to hear myself talk sometimes.”
“Why shouldn’t you? Your talk would delight anybody else.”
“Here’s my shark,” excitedly cried Dunbar, as he played the fish. “He’s nearly three feet long, too – a bigger one than I hoped for. Now if I can only land him.”
“I’ll help you,” said Cal, leaning over the rail with a barbed gaff hook in his hand. “Play him over this way – there, now once more around – here he is safe and sound.”
As he spoke he lifted the savage-looking creature into the boat and Dunbar managed, with some little difficulty, to free the hook from his jaws without himself having a thumb or finger bitten off.
“Not a tooth broken!” he exclaimed with delight. “I’ll dissect out the entire bony structure of the head to-day and make a drawing of it. Then I’m going to pack it carefully in a little box that I’ll whittle out, and present it – if you don’t mind – to young Wentworth. He may perhaps value it as a souvenir of his visit to Quasi.”
Cal assented more than gladly, and the two busied themselves during the next half hour completing their catch of whiting and croakers for breakfast. When they reached the camp the rain Dunbar had predicted had set in.
As soon as breakfast was over Dunbar redeemed his promise to show the boys his lockers.
“I’m going over there now,” he said, “to get some paper, pencils and drawing board. Suppose you go with me, if you want to see some of my woodland devices.”
They assented gladly. They were very curious to see where and how their guest cared for his perishable properties, the more because their own search for the lockers had completely failed.
The matter proved simple enough. Dunbar led them a little way into the woods and then, falling upon his knees, crawled into the end of a huge hollow log. After he had reached the farther end of the hollow part he lighted a little bunch of fat pine splinters to serve as a torch, and invited his companions to look in. They saw that he had scraped away all the decaying wood inside the log, leaving its hard shell as a bare wall. In this he had fitted a number of little wooden hooks, to each of which some of his belongings were suspended.
It was a curious collection. There were cards covered with butterflies, moths and beetles, each impaled upon a large pin. There were the beaks and talons of various birds of prey, each carefully labeled. There were bunches of feathers of various hues, some dried botanical specimens and much else of similar sorts.
From the farther end of the hollow he brought forth several compact little portfolios, each so arranged that no rain could penetrate it when all were bound together and carried like a knapsack.
“I’ll take two of these portfolios with me to your shelter,” he said, taking them under his arm. “One of them contains the writing and drawing materials that I shall need to-day. The other is filled with my drawings of various interesting objects. Some of them may be interesting to you during this rainy day, and each has a description appended which will enable you to understand the meaning of it.”
But the boys had a rather brief time over the drawings that day. They ran through a part of the portfolio while Dunbar was writing, but after an hour he put his writing aside and began dissecting the shark’s head, stopping now and then to make a little sketch of some detail. After that the boys had no eyes but for the work he was doing and no ears but for the things he said.
“You see there are comparatively few species of fish that have any teeth at all. They have no need of teeth and therefore have never developed them.”
“But why is that,” asked Tom; “I should think some of the toothless varieties of fish would have developed teeth accidentally, as it were.”
“Development is never accidental in that sense, Tom. It is Nature’s uniform law that every species of living thing, animal or vegetable, shall tend to develop whatever is useful to it, and nothing else. That is Nature’s plan for the perpetuation of life and the improvement of species.”
After pausing in close attention to some detail of his work, Dunbar went on:
“You can see the same dominant principle at work in the varying forms of teeth developed by different species. The sheepshead needs teeth only for the purpose of crushing the shells of barnacles and the like, and in that way getting at its food. So in a sheepshead’s mouth you find none but crushing teeth. The shark, as you see, has pointed teeth so arranged in rows that one row closes down between two other rows in the opposite jaw, and by a muscular arrangement the shark can work one jaw to right and left with lightning-like rapidity, making the saw-like row of teeth cut through almost anything after the manner of a reaping machine. Then there is the pike. He has teeth altogether different from either of the others. The pike swallows very large fish in proportion to his own size, and his need is of teeth that will prevent his prey from wriggling out of his mouth and escaping while he is slowly trying to swallow it. Accordingly his teeth are as small and as sharp as cambric needles. Moreover, he has them everywhere in his mouth – on his lips, on his tongue, and even in his throat. However, this is no time for a lecture. If you are interested in the subject you can study it better by looking into fishes’ mouths than by listening to anybody talk or by reading books on the subject.”
Again Dunbar paused in order that his attention might be closely concentrated upon some delicate detail of his work.
When the strain upon his attention seemed at last to relax, Cal ventured to say something – and it was startling to his comrades.
“Of course you’re right about the books on such subjects,” he said. “For example, the most interesting of all facts about fish isn’t so much as mentioned in any book I can find, though I’ve searched through several libraries for it.”
“What is your fact?” asked Dunbar, suspending his work to listen.
“Why that fish do not die natural deaths. Not one of them in a million ever does that.”
“But why do you think that, Cal? What proof is there – ”
“Why, the thing’s obvious on its face. A dead fish floats, doesn’t it? Well, in any good fishing water, such as the Adirondack lakes, where I fished with my father one summer, there are millions of fish – big and little – scores of millions, even hundreds of millions, if you count shiners and the other minnows, that of a clear day lie in banks from the bottom of the water to its surface. Now, if fish died natural deaths in anything like the proportion that all other living things do, the surface of such lakes would be constantly covered with dead fish. Right here at Quasi and in all these coast waters the same thing is true. Every creek mouth is full of fish and every shoal is alive with them, so that we know in advance when we go fishing that we can catch them as fast as we can take them off the hook. If any reasonable rate of natural mortality prevailed among them every flood tide would strew the shores with tons of dead fish. As nothing of the kind happens, it seems to me certain that as a rule fish do not die a natural death. In fact, most of them have no chance to do that, as they spend pretty nearly their entire time in swallowing each other alive.”
“You are a close observer, Cal. You ought to become a man of science,” said Dunbar with enthusiasm. “Science needs men of your kind.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Cal. “I imagine Science can get on very comfortably without any help of mine.”
“How did you come to notice all that, anyhow, Cal?” asked Dick.
“Oh, it didn’t take much to suggest that sort of thing, when the facts were staring me in the face. Besides, I may be all wrong. What do you think of my wild guess, Mr. Dunbar?”
“It isn’t a wild guess. Your conclusion may be right or wrong – I must think of the subject carefully before I can form any opinion as to that. But at any rate it is a conclusion reasoned out from a careful observation of facts, and that is nothing like a wild guess.”
Thus the conversation drifted on throughout the long rainy day, and when night came the boys were agreed that they had learned to know Dunbar and appreciate him more than they could have done in weeks of ordinary intercourse.
XXXIII
A GREAT CATASTROPHE
During the next fortnight or so the association between Dunbar and the boys was intimate and constant. When it rained, so that outdoor expeditions were not inviting, he toiled diligently at his writing and drawing, keeping up an interesting conversation in the meanwhile on all manner of subjects. In the evenings especially the talk around the fire was entertaining to the boys and Dunbar seemed to enjoy it as much as they. He was fond of “drawing them out” and listening to such revelations of personal character and capacity as their unrestrained discussions gave.
On fine days he made himself one of them, joining heartily in every task and enthusiastically sharing every sport afloat or afield. He was a good, strong oarsman and he could sail a boat as well as even Dick could. In hunting, his woodcraft was wonderfully ingenious, and among other things he taught the boys a dozen ways of securing game by trapping and snaring.
“You see,” he explained, “one is liable sometimes to be caught in the woods without his gun or without ammunition, and when that happens it is handy to know how to get game enough to eat in other ways than by shooting.”
During all this time he had no more of his strange moods. He never once fell into the peculiar slumber the boys had observed before, and he never absented himself from the company. Indeed, his enjoyment of human association seemed to be more than ordinarily keen.
Little by little his comrades let the memory of his former eccentricity fade out of their minds, or if they thought of it at all they dismissed it as a thing of no significance, due, doubtless, to habitual living in solitude.
One rainy afternoon he suddenly turned to the boys and asked:
“Does any one of you happen to know what day of the month this is? By my count it must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth of August.”
“My little calendar,” said Cal, drawing the card from a pocket and looking at it attentively for a moment, “takes the liberty of differing with you in opinion, Mr. Dunbar. It insists that this is the thirty-first day of August, of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six.”
Dunbar almost leaped to his feet in surprise. After a brief period of thought he turned to Larry and asked:
“I wonder if you boys would mind sailing with me over to the nearest postoffice town early to-morrow morning.”
“Why, you know, Mr. Dunbar,” Larry answered, “to-morrow morning is mortgaged. We’re all going out after that deer you’ve located. Won’t the next day answer just as well for your trip?”
“Unfortunately, no. I gave my word that I would post certain writings and drawings to the publisher not later than noon on September 1, and the printers simply must not be kept waiting. Of course, if you can’t – ”
“But we can and will,” answered Larry. “Your business is important – the deer hunt is of no consequence. But you’ll come back with us, will you not?”
“I shall be delighted to do so if I may,” he answered. “I’m enjoying it here with you, and my work never before got on so well with so little toil over it. I shall like to come back with you and stay at Quasi as long as you boys do.”
“That’s good news – altogether good. How long are you likely to be detained at the village?”
“Only long enough to post my letter and the manuscript – not more than half an hour at the most.”
“Very well, then. We shall want to buy all the bread and that sort of thing there is to be had over there, but we can easily do that within your half hour. We’ll start about sunrise, and if the wind favors us we’ll be back by noon or a little later, and even if we have no wind, the oars will bring us back before nightfall.”
Dunbar at once set to work to arrange and pack the drawings he wished to send by mail, and as there were titles to write and explanatory paragraphs to revise, the work occupied him until supper time. In the meanwhile the boys prepared the boat, filled the water kegs, bestowed a supply of fishing tackle, and overhauled the rigging to see that every rope was clear and every pulley in free running order.
After supper there was not a very long evening for talk around the fire, for, with an early morning start in view, they must go early to their bunks.
They all rolled themselves in their blankets about nine o’clock and soon were sleeping soundly – the boys under the shelter and Dunbar under the starry sky – for the rain had passed away – by that side of the fire which was opposite the camp hut.
Their slumber had not lasted for an hour when suddenly they were awakened by a combination of disturbances amply sufficient, as Dick afterwards said, “to waken the denizens of a cemetery.”
The very earth was swaying under them and rocking back and forth like a boat lying side on to a swell. Deep down – miles beneath the surface it seemed, there was a roar which sounded to Cal like “forty thousand loose-jointed wagons pulled by runaway horses across a rheumatic bridge.”
As the boys sprang to their feet they found difficulty in standing erect, and before they could run out of their shelter, it plunged forward and fell into the fire, where the now dried palmete leaves which constituted its roof and walls, and the resinous pine poles of its framework, instantly blazed up in a fierce, crackling flame.
“Quick!” cried Dunbar, as Larry, Dick and Cal extricated themselves from the mass, “quick – help here! Tom is entangled in the ruins.”
The response was instantaneous, and before the rapidly-spreading flames could reach him, the other four had literally dragged their comrade from the confused mass of poles and vines in which he had been imprisoned. If the work of rescue had been prolonged for even a minute more, it would have been too late, and Tom would have been burned to a crisp. As it was, he was choking with smoke, coughing with a violence that threatened the rupture of his breathing apparatus somewhere, and so nearly smothered for want of air as to be only half conscious.
A bucket of water which Dunbar had dashed over him “set him going again,” as he afterwards described the process of recovering breath and consciousness, and as the paroxysms of coughing slowly ceased he stood erect by way of announcing a recovery which he was still unable to proclaim in words.
At that moment a second shock of earthquake occurred, a shock less violent than the first, but sufficient to topple Tom and Larry off their feet again.
It did no harm, chiefly because there was no further harm to do, and the little company busied themselves saving what they could of their belongings from the burning ruins.
After they had worked at this for ten minutes, a third shock came. It was feebler than either of the others, but just as the boys felt the earth swaying again there was an explosion under the burning mass, followed by a rapid succession of smaller explosions which scattered shot about in a way so dangerous that at Cal’s command all the company threw themselves prone upon the ground.
This lasted for perhaps a minute, and fortunately nobody received a charge of shot in his person from the bursting cartridges that had made the racket. Fortunately, too, the box of cartridges thus caught in the flames and destroyed was the only one involved in the catastrophe. The rest had been kept, not in the hut, but in the Hunkydory’s lockers.
But when they came to take account of their losses, which they did as soon as the first excitement had passed away, they found that the damage done had been considerable.
For one thing, their entire supply of meat was destroyed; so was their bread and their coffee.
“We shall not starve, anyhow,” Cal decided. “We can kill as much game as we need and as the bottom doesn’t seem to have dropped out of the sea, we can still catch fish, oysters, shrimps and crabs. As for bread, we still have Tom’s sweet potato patch to draw upon. There wasn’t more than a pound of coffee left, so that’s no great loss.”
For the rest, the very few clothes the boys had brought with them in addition to what they wore, were all lost, but they decided that they could get on without them – “Mr. Dunbar’s fashion.” Tom was the worst sufferer in that respect, as the garments he wore had been badly torn in his rescue from the fire, but he cheerfully announced:
“I can manage very well. I’ll decline all dinner, dance and other invitations that require a change from every-day dress. I’ll have some cards engraved announcing that ‘Mr. Thomas Garnett is detained at the South and will not be at home to receive his friends until further notice.’ Then I’ll borrow some of your beetle-detaining pins, Mr. Dunbar, and pin up the worst of the rents in my trousers.”
“We’ll do better than that, Tom,” the naturalist answered. “I’ve quite a little sewing kit tucked away in my log locker. You shall have needles, thread and a thimble whenever you wish to use them.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dunbar; but please spare me the thimble. I never could use a contrivance of that kind. Every time I have tried I have succeeded only in driving the needle into my hand and breaking it off well beneath the skin.”
“Boy like,” answered Dunbar. “You’re the victim of a traditional defect in our system of education.”
“Would you mind explaining?” asked Cal.
“Certainly not. I hold that the education of every human being ought to include a reasonable mastery of all the simple arts that one is likely to find useful in emergencies. We do not expect girls to become accountants, as a rule, but we do not on that account leave the multiplication table out of a girl’s school studies. In the same way we do not expect boys generally to do much sewing when they grow to manhood, but as every man is liable to meet emergencies in which a little skill in the use of needle, thread and scissors may make all the difference between comfort and discomfort, every boy ought to be taught plain sewing. However, we have other things to think of just now.”
“Indeed we have,” answered Cal, “and the most pressing one of those other things is to-morrow morning’s breakfast. Does it occur to any of you that, except the salt in the dory’s locker, we haven’t an ounce of food of any kind in our possession?”
“That is so,” “I hadn’t thought of that;” “and we’ll all be hungry, too, for of course we shall not sleep” – these were the responses that came quickly in answer to Cal’s suggestion.
“We’ll manage the matter in this way,” said Cal, quite as if no one else had spoken. “When ’yon grey streaks that fret the clouds give indication of the dawn,’ Mr. Dunbar will go fishing. As soon as it grows light enough for you to walk through the woods without breaking more than two or three necks apiece, the rest of you can take that big piece of tarpaulin, go out to Tom’s potato patch, and bring back a large supply of sweet potatoes. After breakfast one or two of us can go for some game, while the rest repair damages here. It will take two or three days to do that.”
As he spoke he looked about him as if to estimate the extent of the harm done.
“Hello!” he cried out a moment later. “That’s bad, very bad.”
“What is it, Cal?”
“Why, our well has completely disappeared – filled up to the level by the surrounding earth, which seems to have lost its head and in that way got itself ‘into a hole,’ just as people do when they forget discretion. That means that we’ve got to dig out the well to-day, and in the meantime drink that stuff from the spring down under the bluff. Our day’s work is cut out for us, sure enough.”
Tom had disappeared in the darkness while Cal was speaking, and as Cal continued to speak for a considerable time afterwards, marking out what Dick called a “programme of convenience,” he had not finished when Tom returned and in breathless excitement announced that the spring under the bluff was no more.
“The whole of that part of the bluff has slumped down to the beach,” he said, “and even the big catalpa tree is uprooted and overturned. Of course the spring is completely filled up, and we’ll all be half famished for water before we get the well dug out again.”
“Don’t indulge in too hopeless a grief over the loss of the spring, Tom,” said Cal in his most confidently optimistic tone. “We can make another just as good anywhere down there in half an hour or less. That puddle held nothing but sea water that had leaked through the sand, partly filtering itself in doing so. We can dig a little hole anywhere down that way, and if we choose the right sort of place we’ll get better water than the spring ever yielded. I’ll look after that when Mr. Dunbar and I go fishing. We’ll have the sand out of this well by noon, too – it’s very loose and easily handled.”
“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom; “we haven’t a thing to dig with. The two shovels we had were in the hut.”
The others stood aghast; Cal faced the situation with hopeful confidence.
“That’s bad,” he commented. “Of course the handles are burned up, but the iron part remains, and even with the meagre supply of cutting tools we have – which is to say our jackknives and the little ax – we can fashion new ones. It will take valuable time, but we must reconcile ourselves to that.”
“Well, we must get to work at something – it’s hard to know where to begin,” said Larry in a despondent tone. “What’s the first thing to be done, Cal?”
“The first thing to be done is to cheer up; the next thing is to stay cheered up. You fellows are in the dumps worse than the well is, and you’ve got to get out of them if you have to lift yourselves out by the straps of your own boots. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Have we lived a life of easy luxury here at Quasi for so long that you’ve forgotten that this is an expedition in search of sport and adventure? Isn’t this earthquake overthrow an adventure of the liveliest sort? Isn’t the loss of our belongings by fire a particularly adventurous happening?”
“After all,” broke in Tom, who had a genuine relish for danger, difficulty and hardship, “after all, we’re not in half as bad a situation as we were when we faced the revenue officers from behind our log breastwork. Our lives were really in danger then, while now we have nothing worse than difficulty to face.”
“Yes, and a few months hence we’ll all remember this thing with joy and talk of it with glee.”
“You’re right about that,” said Dunbar, “and it is always so. I have gone through many trying experiences, and as I recall them the most severely trying of them are the ones I remember with the greatest pleasure. Besides, in this case the way of escape, even from such difficulties as lie before you, is wide open. The dory is at anchor down there and if you are so minded you can sail away from it all.”
“What! Turn tail and run!” exclaimed Tom, almost indignantly.
“No, we’re not thinking of that,” said Cal. “We’ll see the thing out, and, by the way, it’s growing daylight. Come, Mr. Dunbar! We have a pressing engagement with the fish and we must have an early breakfast this morning on all accounts. We have a lot to do, and you mustn’t be later than noon in reaching the postoffice, you know.”
“Oh, I’ve abandoned that,” responded Dunbar.
“But why?” asked Larry. “Of course we can’t go with you as we planned, but you can take the dory and make the trip for yourself. And perhaps you won’t mind taking some money along and buying out whatever food supplies the country store over there can furnish. We need bread especially, and coffee and – ”
“And a few pounds of cheese won’t come amiss,” added Dick.
“But I tell you I am not going,” said Dunbar. “I have accepted and enjoyed your hospitality when all was going well with you; do you suppose I’m going to abandon you even for a day, now that you’re in trouble and need all the help you can get?”
“Your reasoning is excellent,” said Cal, purposely lapsing into his old habit of elaborate speech, by way of relieving the tension that had made his comrades feel hurried and harassed; “your reasoning is excellent, but your premises are utterly wrong. You can help us mightily by sailing up to that postoffice town and bringing back the supplies we need, while you cannot help us at all by remaining here. We four are more than enough to keep the few tools we have left constantly busy. With a fifth person included in the construction gang, there would always be one of us who must idly hold his hands for want of anything to work with. No, Mr. Dunbar, the best service you can render to the common cause is to sail up to the village, redeem your promise by mailing your papers, and bring back all you can of provisions adapted to our use. So that’s settled, isn’t it, boys?”
Their answer left no room for further argument, and as the daylight was steadily growing stronger, the party separated, Cal and Dunbar going in quest of fish for breakfast, and the others struggling through tangled thickets toward the wild sweet potato field.
