IN THE FOG
“Green-y blue, blue-y green,
Best-est fire that ever was seen!”
chanted Ronald in the Lighthouse sitting-room one foggy evening in the
late summer.
It was indeed one of the “best-est,” if not the _very_ bestest fire
that ever was seen, for it was built of driftwood from some old
copper-bottomed wreck and the flickering flames were pale blue-y green
like a robin’s egg, deep green-y blue like a peacock’s breast, yellow
as star-shine and sunset clouds, while underneath glowed a deep red,
with now and then a purple bloom upon it.
“I picked up the wood on the shore this morning,” said Mr. McLean,
looking at the fire with satisfaction, “and brought it up with the oil
on the car with Jenny Lind. It must have come from the wreck of the old
_Hamburg_.”
“When was she wrecked, Father?” asked Ronald.
“Oh, long ago, before our time. It was on a night just like this,
probably,” looking with a shiver at the blank, white-covered windows.
“The Captain of the _Hamburg_ was steering straight for us, they say,
hoping to catch sight of the Light through the mist, but his aim was
too good and he sent his ship right into the hundred-foot channel
between the islands and a sunken rock did the rest. The men were all
saved, I believe, but the good ship lies there still, or most of it,
only the water is so deep that you can’t even see the topmasts.
“God help the poor folk at sea, to-night!” sighed Mrs. McLean, “and we
so cozy here!”
It was the usual evening party at the Lighthouse, Margaret McLean
knitting, her husband smoking and reading his book, and Lesley and
Ronald playing checkers at the table. Nothing could have been more
secure or peaceful, for Jim Crow was there, perched on a chair-back in
the corner, half-asleep, and it was known that Jenny Lind was safely
reposing in her stable, after a delightful day spent in doing next to
nothing.
The fog had been lying about in thin trails across the sky for many
hours, but had waited till night to mass its forces together into a
thick blanket, white as a roll of cotton and as dense. The Light, so
Father said, could hardly be seen a hundred yards from the tower, so
the steam fog-signal had been started and was sending out its long
shrieks of melancholy warning, “Dan--ger! Dan--ger-r-r! Keep awa-a-a-y!
Keep a-w-a-a-a-a-y!”
It was well that the little family had its own resources on such a
night, for though the Lighthouse tender brought letters and papers only
once in two months, there were a number of well-selected books on hand
and these could always be read and re-read. There was a Government
cable, of course, to the mainland, but it was not supposed to be used
save for danger, death, disaster, doctors, and drugs, and the longing
for a daily paper could not be classed under any of these heads.
“A-a-a-a-h! A-a-a-a-h!” groaned the fog-signal and Mrs. McLean looked
up from her work. “Did you happen to notice, Father,” she asked,
“in the last ‘San Francisco Chronicle’ we had, that story about the
eight-year-old boy out in Wyoming that an eagle tried to carry off?”
“Yes, I believe I spoke of it at the time. What makes you think of it
now?”
“Why, because Stumpy read it, too, and he was saying when he was up
here to-day that it was a ‘foolishness,’ as he called it, and no bird
could carry such a weight.”
“Oh, that’s not so,” said Mr. McLean, decidedly, while the children
dropped their checkers and pricked up their ears for a story. “I don’t
know about a good-sized boy, but we know that an eagle could carry a
small one. My idea is that they can lift as much in proportion to their
weight as a hawk or a horned owl, and I’ve known a horned owl to snatch
up a large house-cat and make off with it.
“My belief is that if hawks or owls can carry more than twice their
weight--and everybody knows they can--that an eagle could do as
much, or more, perhaps. Once, when I was a lad, I found an eagle
lying helpless on his back in the road shot through the body with a
rifle-ball, poor creature. I was kind of afraid of him, he looked so
fierce, and I up-ended a long road skid and dropped it on him. Before
it reached him he stretched up and caught it in his claws and held it
up the length of his legs above him. I walked up on the skid and stood
over him, and he easily held me and the skid, which I should judge
would weigh more than twenty pounds. I took pains to be weighed myself
that same day and tipped the scales at one hundred and nineteen pounds.
You tell Stumpy that, and tell him to put a stick in the claw of a
wounded eagle and let him grasp a small tree with the other and a man
must be stronger than ever I was to take the stick away from him.”
Ronald had left the table as soon as eagles, hawks, and horned owls had
begun to fly through the conversation and now leaned on the arm of his
father’s chair.
“I should think, Daddy,” he said in his wheedling way, “that it would
be a good night to tell us that story about the baby that was carried
off to Garrison Mountain when you were a little boy in Maine. I haven’t
heard it, I do think, more’n once since I lived in this country.”
McLean laughed. “I’m no story-teller,” he said, “and a good thing I’m
not. What with Stumpy and his tales and your mother there and her
ballads, you children would never have learned to read if I’d told
stories, too.”
“Never you mind about my ballads,” advised Mother, good-humoredly. “You
like them just as well as the children do. Tell the boy about the
white-headed eagle. I’d like to hear it again, myself.”
“It was a good while ago it happened,” said McLean, “for it was not
long after my father and mother died and I was brought over from the
old country to an uncle on a farm in Maine.
“We knew that two old white-headed eagles built their nest every year
on a crag of Garrison Mountain in plain sight of the folks in the
valley and we heard them screaming over us every spring when they came
back to settle down again in the old homestead. The charcoal-burners in
the camps used to hear them, too, as they swooped down to the lowlands
for rushes and grass to line their nest, and when the great eggs were
laid and the mother was keeping them warm, many a lamb or little pig
did the old father eagle take her for her dinner. Mothers used to be
extra watchful of their babies for the first few weeks of spring, but
nothing ever did happen and of course they thought nothing ever would.”
“Would an eagle really like a baby better than a lamb?” asked Lesley,
fearfully.
“Why, no, of course not, child. It would only see something soft and
light that might be good to eat and snatch it up. Well, one warm
spring morning when the apple-trees were in bloom Mrs. Shadwell had set
her baby boy out to play on the grass in the care of his sister, and
had left him but a few moments when a shadow flew by the window; she
heard the flapping of great wings, cries and calls of distress, and
she rushed to the door just in time to see old Father Whitehead rise
into the air with the baby in his claws. There was nothing to do but
to scream and scream and to snatch the big dinner-horn and blow blast
after blast upon it to summon her husband and the charcoal-burners.
“The neighbors gathered in a few moments and plainly saw the giant bird
with the white bundle in his grasp circling toward his nest. It was
dreadful to see the agony of the parents and to hear the mother cry,
‘Oh, they’ll tear my Willie to pieces. Oh, save him, save him!’
“But how were they to save him? Many a time had the best marksmen of
the settlement tried to shoot the robber pair, but never had succeeded,
and it would be a terrible risk now to try and hit the old bird while
he carried the child in his grasp. Fortunately an old hunter--‘Dave,’
they called him; I never knew his other name--had lately come to the
settlement from the North woods where he had been trapping sable.
Luckily, he heard the horn-blast on the hills and knew it meant danger
of some kind.
“Reaching the valley, he saw the great bird overhead with his white
burden, saw the crowd of neighbors, and judged what had happened.
“He loaded his long rifle, ran toward the bridge where he could get
a better view of the eagles’ nest, leveled his piece on the rail and
knelt on the planking. The father followed him begging him to be
careful, to be careful, or he would kill the child, but old Dave waved
his hand for silence, watched the eagle as he soared upward and the
mother bird circling and screaming over the nest--and waited!
“I was only a boy, but I shall never forget the fright and the suspense
in the eyes of the neighbors while they waited for Dave’s shot. It was
a long range and the bullets fired by the best marksmen in the village
had always failed to reach it, hitherto.
“Would the old hunter have better success? Could he kill the bird and
not the child?
“At length the eagle slowly descended to the nest where his young ones
were clamoring for their dinner and, just as he reached the rocky
platform on which it was built, Dave fired.
“We held our breaths, but before the smoke from his rifle had
disappeared the head of the mighty bird was seen to fall. Dave waved
his hand again for silence and leveled his piece a second time, for
the mother was slowly circling down to see what was amiss in the nest.
The old man was a wonderful marksman, the best I shall ever see, for
he fired again just at the very moment when she was stretching out her
feet to alight and in a second we saw her tumble down the side of the
crag.”
“Oh, that was splendid!” cried Ronald, his eyes sparkling with
excitement, “and then the poor mother knew that her baby was safe.”
“Not at all,” answered McLean. “She knew nothing of the kind, and none
of us did. How did she know but the young eagles were big enough to
tear the child to pieces? How did she know he would not toss about and
roll over the cliff?
“No, the thing was to get him out of the nest, and to do that they had
to climb a crag that nobody had ever gone up, not the best man in the
settlement. And they wouldn’t have done it then, if it hadn’t been for
old Dave. I was one that helped the men carry the ladders and the ropes
to the foot of the crag. I saw them climb as far as they could get a
foothold and then set a ladder up into a gnarled oak that grew out of
the rocks above. Dave climbed to the oak, pulled up the ladder and set
it still farther up, lashing it to the oak-tree, while Shadwell--the
baby’s father, you know--clambered after him on another ladder the men
had brought. He followed Dave till they found a part of the cliff where
they could climb without ladders, and then, holding on by tough shrubs
that grew here and there, they dragged themselves up to the top of the
crag.
“But then, you see, they were too high up and old Dave had to rope the
father and lower him down to the nest which was built on a kind of
rocky platform below.”
“Oh, the poor mother!” sighed Mrs. McLean, “not knowing all that time
whether the child was alive or dead!”
“They very soon knew,” said her husband, “for when the father found the
child alive and unhurt, he held it up for us all to see, and then, what
a shout went up from the valley!”
“But how did they get the baby down?” questioned Ronald.
“Much the same way as Stumpy got you down from the rock the other
day; they roped him and lowered him into the arms of the men who were
waiting at the foot of the first ladder and there were plenty of arms
and good, strong ones too.
“Oh, it was a wonderful sight. I never shall forget it, though I
haven’t thought of it for years, and shouldn’t have now, if your mother
hadn’t read that story in the ‘Chronicle.’”
“Do you think,” Lesley asked her mother wistfully, “if the little
sister had been watching the baby, that maybe the eagle wouldn’t have
carried it off?”
“That I can’t say,” answered her mother, briskly; “an eagle is a
good-sized bird to fight, but I _can_ say that it’s past time for you
two to be in bed!”
* * * * *
Lesley did not fall asleep as quickly as usual that night, and when at
last she drowsed she awoke with a sudden start and a beating heart.
What had frightened her? She did not know, but she tiptoed to the
window to see if the fog had lifted and found that all was clear and
the Light shining bravely across the waters. The door between her
brother’s room and her own was always left open at night, for she had
had a care of him ever since he was a baby and she glanced through it
as she went back to bed. She stopped in amaze, for there was no dark
head on the pillow there. Where was Ronnie? She was in the room in a
minute, and looking in the closet, under the bed, in the corners, then
back in her own room where perhaps the boy might be hiding and trying
to frighten her. No, no Ronnie there.
She ran to her mother’s door with a cry, and Mrs. McLean, hearing,
lifted her head to say, “What is it, Lesley? Are you sick?”
“No, Mother, but I can’t find Ronnie,” with a little gasp of fear.
“Not find Ronnie!”--and in a moment Mrs. McLean had hurried on slippers
and an old shawl and was in her boy’s room. In another moment Malcolm
was there, too, gathering some clothing about him as he came, and
together they looked in every likely and unlikely place upstairs. Then
Malcolm hurried to the floor below, calling back that every door was
shut and bolted on the inside.
“The cellar!” cried Mrs. McLean, but no, that door was also closed and
bolted.
“He must be in the tower, then,” exclaimed Father, hurrying to the
second floor again, and Lesley and her mother followed him as he ran up
the corkscrew stairs to the Light.
All was peaceful there; the lamp blazed like a splendid sun and the
speckless glass protected it from all wandering breezes. All was
peaceful, but the little door in the masonry was open and the three
dived through it into the gallery that ran around the tower.
“Hush!” whispered Mrs. McLean, “don’t speak to him! He’s walking in his
sleep.”
That is just what the boy was doing, in fact--walking on the gallery in
his little white nightgown, his eyes fast closed, as calmly as if he
had been at play on the grass.
“Get behind him, quietly, Malcolm,” whispered Mrs. McLean again, “so
that he won’t fall, but don’t speak to him now. Let him alone and
perhaps he’ll come in, himself.”
They watched silently as Ronald came toward them, went back again and
then, with arms outstretched, seemed trying to climb the tower, still
with fast-closed eyes. Half-clothed and shivering in the night air,
they watched him make this attempt three times and then pass them by,
totally unconscious of their presence, slip in through the little door,
and make his way downstairs to bed.
The boy did not waken even when his mother wrapped the blankets more
closely about him, but slept on sweetly while the watchers hung above
his bed.
“Has he ever walked in his sleep before, Lesley?” asked Malcolm,
anxiously.
“No, Father, no; I never saw such a thing. He always talks in his sleep
a lot, you know, but he doesn’t get up.”
“It’s likely he won’t remember anything about this in the morning,
Lesley, and we’ll tell him when he comes downstairs,” said Mother.
“I’ll fasten his door now and then we’ll get some sleep. Thank Heaven,
we found him in time!”
In the morning when his astonishing feat had been related to Ronald,
he only half-believed it until the evidence of three pairs of eyes was
brought forward.
“What were you trying to do, Ronnie?” asked Lesley, curiously--“trying
to climb up the tower?”
“Oh, I remember!” cried the boy, “I remember now. It was a dream I had
and I was climbing up a rock to reach an eagle’s nest.”
“Then, in future,” said his father, good-humoredly, “as you seem
determined to climb by night as well as by day, you will please tie a
string to your toe when you go to bed and hitch the other end of it
to Lesley’s bedpost. Then, at least, you’ll have a companion when you
start on your midnight rambles.”