TRUTH AND HONOR
FROM one o’clock till four in the afternoon that first day Number
Fifty-six thirty-five gave heed to the mechanism of a sewing machine,
and mended the rent clothes of the inmates. A large, rather kindly
woman was matron over him. By four o’clock he was doing fairly well,
and in a week’s time was accomplishing his simple machine sewing with
speed and neatness. And this became his allotted task. From four to six
o’clock the boys were allowed to play in the great yard, and here they
were as uproarious and irrepressible as Old Madmallet’s flock at home.
They marched to the washroom at six again, and thence once more to the
dining room, where they ate tea, bread and apple-sauce. From seven to
nine they studied the common branches of learning in the schoolroom,
presided over by that ugliest of men, the Lincoln-like Beaver Clegg.
At nine they went to bed, each in his clean little iron cot, with
its crackling straw mattress. Almost immediately Mr. Clegg came in,
listened to the monitors’ reports of the boys’ behavior during the day,
and extinguished the lights.
For fifteen minutes now the wards of the Juvenile Department were
allowed to talk and tell stories. Joshua, because he was new and
might have something fresh to offer, was called upon for a yarn,
story-telling being a favorite diversion of the inmates. So well
did he acquit himself, drawing without reserve upon his vivid
imagination because he was in total darkness and not obliged to face
his listeners, that his effort was hailed with a round of applause.
Later he became official story-teller of the department, and when
he had learned more of astronomy from Clegg’s teachings, he evolved
wondrous and fantastic tales of adventures in the planets, which were
the delight of his fellow-inmates. A gong sounded at fifteen minutes
after nine, and Joshua, in the middle of a story that had for its main
characters a boy and a girl who traveled West in a converted boxcar,
with a flatcar back yard coupled on next to it, was ordered to “dry
up” by the head monitor. And soon after the soft, regular breathing of
the very human little prisoners of the House of Refuge came from all
quarters of the room.
But Fifty-six thirty-five lay awake, staring up into the blackness, and
thought of a girl with reddish-golden hair and Oriental-topaz eyes. And
he was sore of heart, and the stiff white pillow under his head was
moist. Then a hand softly touched him and he heard the guarded words:
“Quiet, Joshua! Don’t make a sound. Get up softly and join me at the
door. We’re going up on the roof to view the moon.”
Walking noiselessly in his new bed slippers, Joshua Cole found the
entrance to the sleeping quarters, where Clegg awaited him. The
instructor led him to a remote part of the building, where they passed
through a door, and Joshua struck his toes against the foot of a flight
of stairs. Clegg closed the door behind them and lighted a candle, the
flickering blaze of which revealed a closed staircase leading to what
in nautical parlance would be called a booby hatch in the flat roof.
The night was bright with stars, and a big half-moon rode in the
heavens to guard them. Already Clegg had preceded his pupil with the
telescope, and had adjusted it on its tripod.
“Joshua,” said Clegg, in tones a trifle below normal, “I want you to
understand in the beginning that I am breaking the rules in taking
you from your bed. But I have considered the matter carefully and
have reached the decision that, in this case, I am entitled to make
my own rules. So long as we shall be engaged in an undertaking that
is praiseworthy, we shall be our own judges concerning what is right
and wrong. But I want you to fully understand the confidence that I am
placing in you and the risk that I am taking. Do you think you do?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“And I think that I can safely trust you,” said the master. “I thought
so from the first, or such an amazing idea never would have occurred
to me. You have made an unprecedented impression on me, Joshua, and it
seems unbelievable that I should bring you up here the night of your
first day in the institution. But I have done so, and here you are. I
perhaps should have waited until I know you better; but to-night, of
all nights in the month, is the best for observing the moon. We have a
nine-and-three-quarter-day moon to-night, Joshua, and I felt that the
opportunity ought not to be put off for an entire month. But repetition
of to-night’s--er--adventure, we’ll call it--will depend on how you
conduct yourself in school and with the other boys. Do you understand
that thoroughly?”
“Yes, sir,” said Joshua.
“You must study and learn things that are distasteful to you during
regular class hours. That will be the price of your lessons in
astronomy. Can you make that sacrifice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then--we’ll see. Now place your eye to the eye-piece, and
we’ll have a look at the moon.”
Joshua, at once eager and filled with awe, placed his eye to the
eye-piece. He caught his breath in boyish ecstasy as the great tinfoil
half-moon, chewed to lacelike filaments on its east and southeast
sides, was revealed to him as he never before had seen it. Immovable,
absolutely silent, he gazed in rapture, and all the mysticism of the
universe wrapped itself about him. He saw the wondrous craters, the
mountains, the sea bottoms, the plains, and his fancy peopled them with
strange adventurers bent on stranger quests--dream people who lived
dream lives and sought dream marvels in a land whose fabric was dreams.
“You perhaps are not aware, Joshua,” Clegg was saying softly in his
stilted, academic way, “that you are seeing the moon upside down, in
the natural way that we see all objects. Do you know that whatever you
see in this world you see upside down? But your eyes have adjusted
themselves, and they really appear to you as rightside up. This is
known to the science of optics by reason of men born blind suddenly
regaining their sight, when their unadjusted eyes see objects upside
down. Don’t ask me to explain it, for it is out of my field. But
remember that, as you now see the moon, north is south, and east is
west.
“Now, the dark areas that you see, Joshua, are flat plains and sea
bottoms. The bright areas are mountainous regions. There are nine
mountain chains on that portion of the moon which is visible to us
earth-dwellers. (And the most that we ever see of the moon’s surface is
about forty-seven per cent.) These nine mountain chains contain some
three thousand peaks, many of them between fifteen thousand and twenty
thousand feet in height. Though you are not able to see it now, there
is a mountain-peak on the southern edge of the moon which is thirty-six
thousand feet high. Mount Everest, as you probably remember from your
study of geography, is twenty-nine thousand feet in height, and is this
planet’s closest approach to the gigantic moon-mountain of which I
speak. Do you follow me, Joshua?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now observe that large crater in the south polar region, Joshua. Where
will you look for it?”
“’Way up on top, to the right--I mean, to the east?”
“Yes, that’s right--you are quick to comprehend. But remember, now,
that in reality that region is far to the south and west. Have you
found the crater--by far the largest to be seen?”
“Yes, sir--I think so.”
“What does it resemble? Do you see the smaller craters within the walls
of the larger one?”
“Yes, sir--I see ’em. And the one around ’em looks like where they
vaccinated me on the arm, when the place where the doctor scratched got
sore and was all eaten out.”
“Exactly, Joshua! Fine! A remarkable comparison. Well, Joshua, you
are observing the largest of the craters that are known to be on the
moon. This is the immense walled plain of Clavius. It is a hundred
and forty-three miles at its greatest length, and its floor covers
an area of sixteen thousand square miles. The State of Rhode Island
would scarcely cover its interior area. The crater-studded walls about
it have an elevation of seventeen thousand feet, which is more than
a thousand feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest
mountain in Europe.
“Now just a little above the center of the exposed area--er--of that
portion of the moon which is revealed to-night--you will see Tycho
quite plainly. This is another immense crater, fifty-four miles in
diameter, and with a depth of seventeen thousand feet. Lifting its
summit from this immense pit is a central mountain, which rises to an
elevation of six thousand feet. Do you follow me, Joshua?”
“Yes, sir--I guess so.”
Mr. Clegg became forgetful of his surroundings, forgetful of his pupil.
Carried away by his own lecture-like recital of the wonders viewed by
Joshua, he went on rapidly:
“There you view high walls and peaks thousands of feet above the
level of the surface. They catch the first gleams of the rising sun,
while many deep abysses yet remain in somber lunar night. Many of the
dish-shaped plains of this rugged region, once huge pots of boiling
rock or lava, are distinguished by no black shadows, having been
refilled to the rims; though a few of them still retain walls high
enough to throw black shadows eastward on the plains. Conspicuous
against the southeastern wall of Clavius is the vast black hole of
the ring-mountain Blancanus, fifty miles in diameter, at the bottom
of whose abysmal cavity no sunlight has ever shone--the deepest,
most cavernous pit known to man. Were the highest mountain-peak on
the earth--Mount Everest--standing on the forever darkened floor of
this pit, its lofty summit would rise but five thousand feet above
the ramparts of the encircling mountain-ring; for the black hole is
approximately twenty-four thousand feet in depth--about four thousand
feet deeper than Mount McKinley is high.”
Thus he talked on and on until young Joshua’s mind was a confused
blank, though his soul was leaping with happiness. And when at last the
master came down to earth and remarked that the hour was late, Joshua
followed him down the dark stairway without a word.
“Go back to your bed,” whispered Clegg as they reached the foot of
the flight. “To-morrow I shall give you photographs of the various
regions of the moon and lend you Flammarion’s _Astronomy_. Be patient,
Joshua--you will learn all that I know, and much more when you become a
man. That’s all for the present, Fifty-six thirty-five.”
That was the beginning of it. Now the boy Joshua, robbed of his
heritage, had a goal to work for, and he worked. Learning the common
school branches that he detested was the necessary means to a glorious
end, and before long he had proved to Clegg’s unbounded satisfaction
that with him the study of science was no mere boyish whim. No other
reward could have been offered which would have caused him to apply
himself so assiduously to arithmetic, grammar, and other distasteful
branches. More, he withstood many temptations to enter into youthful
pranks with the other boys, and when he stood aloof repeatedly they
grew to consider him a “mamma’s boy,” and treated him accordingly. In
that day the word “tony” stood in slang as an adjective to describe one
who considered himself above the common herd, and it soon was applied
to the young astronomer. They called him Tony among themselves, but
functionally he remained Fifty-six thirty-five to his last day in the
House of Refuge.
The fact that he was studious and diligently obeyed the rules and
regulations of the school brought him a T-and-H medal at the first
meeting of the board of directors after his commitment, and T and H
meant Truth and Honor. But the medal brought him more trouble than
satisfaction, for it placed him above his fellow-inmates in the
Juvenile Department and filled their young hearts with scorn and
rancor. From the presentation day onward Joshua’s lot was a hard one.
He was “framed” repeatedly--dark plots were laid for his undoing. Time
and again he was inveigled into compromising situations, skillfully
designed to get him into trouble and to break his record. But the word
of a T-and-H boy was accepted until he himself had proved that he
was unworthy to wear the medal. Joshua was shoved, slapped, pinched,
kicked stealthily, and twice a ruffianly youth much older than himself
deliberately spat in his face in an effort to madden him to the point
of resentment with his fists.
But for the sake of his promise to his benefactor Beaver Clegg, and
for the sake of the scientific knowledge that he longed to have, he
endured and suffered. Joshua was a fiery tempered lad--a fighter--to
which many an old schoolmate in the bygone days of Silvanus Madmallet
could attest. Never before had he allowed himself to be bullied and
browbeaten, but so great was his love for the mystic nights on the roof
with Clegg that he willingly made the sacrifice. He was being tempered
in the fire of life and, though he did not realize it, was building
up a character which was to become proof against the pettishness of
human nature in after years. When the second meeting of the board of
directors was called, Joshua was sent for. In the superintendent’s
office he stood before a body of grave-faced wiseacres, and, to his
surprise, he found that he knew several of them. They asked him many
questions, inquired into his record, and in the end informed him that
he would be paroled when his first year was over. They sent him back
during the play hour; and then it was that Joshua Cole performed one of
the most extraordinary feats of his boyhood.
A ball game was in progress in the playgrounds. Joshua looked eagerly
about as he drew near the players, and presently his glance alighted on
Number Twenty-three forty-four, a boy older and larger than himself,
the one who had spat in his face, willing to suffer punishment himself
if he could induce Joshua to fight. Straight toward him walked Number
Fifty-six thirty-five, and when he reached him he stood before him and
regarded him with his grave, gray-blue eyes, in which an intense fire
now flashed.
“Kid,” he said, “I’m goin’ to whip you for spittin’ in my face three
months ago. Get ready--I’m comin’!”