Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 61226-h.htm or 61226-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61226/pg61226-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/61226/61226-h.zip)
Images of the original pages are available through
Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/arkof1803storyof00step
Transcriber’s note:
Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores
(_italics_).
THE ARK OF 1803
A Story Of Louisiana Purchase Times
by
C. A. STEPHENS
[Illustration]
Illustrated by H. Burgess
New York
A. S. BARNES & COMPANY
1904
Copyright, 1904
by
A. S. BARNES & CO.
May, 1904
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY 1
CHAPTER II.
THE ARK IS LAUNCHED 26
CHAPTER III.
JIMMY LEAVES FISH CREEK 51
CHAPTER IV.
JIMMY SAVES A STRANGER 68
CHAPTER V.
UNCLE AMASA’S NEWS 84
CHAPTER VI.
A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER” 106
CHAPTER VII.
THE CAVE ROBBERS 129
CHAPTER VIII.
THE TORNADO 154
CHAPTER IX.
THE LANDSLIDE 181
CHAPTER X.
“SAM HOKOMOKE” 202
CHAPTER XI.
THE HEAD 227
CHAPTER XII.
NEW ORLEANS 260
CHAPTER XIII.
“VIVE NAPOLEON” 301
CHAPTER XIV.
CONCLUSION 320
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
--------------
PAGE
“HEY, WHAT? FORGIVE THEM!” 22
“YOU WILL SURELY COME BACK THEN?” 91
“HERE’S YOUR TURKEY GOBBLER!” 128
A “KEEL” FROM ST. LOUIS CAME ALONGSIDE 170
“GUESS WHO HE IS! GUESS!” 202
“HOW GOT YE BY THE FORT?” 268
IN ITS PLACE ROSE THE STARS AND STRIPES 293
“NAPOLEON IS HERE! VIVE NAPOLEON!” 319
“THEY ARE GOING TO CALL AT OUR LANDING!” 334
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ARK OF 1803
CHAPTER I
THE MASTER’S HOLIDAY
“He’s taking holidays enough. I guess he can give us one,” said Moses
Ayer, signing his name laboriously uphill.
“One licking more likely,” said Lewis Hoyt. He grinned as he took the
big smooth-faced chip from Moses and added his signature. “Here, Molly,
it’s your turn. Remember, you want to leave room for all the others that
can possibly squeeze on.”
“If I couldn’t write smaller than that I wouldn’t sign,” retorted Molly
Royce over his shoulder. “He’s got to stand treat and that’s all there
is to it.”
While the three signers were busy at the master’s table, a little cloud
of turkey feathers broke suddenly over a group of boys and girls who
were gathered round the fireplace of the big schoolhouse. Jimmy
Claiborne had thrown a handful of the feathers he was plucking at Louis
Gist.
Louis, who was busy with another turkey, dropped it and sprang at Jimmy.
Jimmy dodged among the others. The benches were overturned. In a moment
a skirmish had broken out and the school was a mass of dodging figures,
laughs and screams.
“Stop that racket,” cried Moses Ayer, pounding on the master’s table.
“Listen here!—Jimmy Claiborne, you and Louis stop your fussing and come
and sign this petition. Quit fooling. He may be banging at the door any
minute.”
“Louis says Marion Royce don’t want me to go on the ark,” shouted Jimmy,
“and I want to know if it’s true.”
“Come and sign,” yelled Moses. “The ark won’t be starting for a month
and this petition goes into effect to-day. Quit your squabbling and come
here.”
“I tell you you _won’t_ go to New Orleans on the ark,” screamed Louis
Gist, swinging his turkey round his head as he charged with it.
“Never mind New Orleans, I tell you,” cried Moses, reaching after Jimmy
as Jimmy dodged the turkey swung at him. “Look out what you’re doing!”
He caught at the turkey to ward it off, tripped over a puncheon, and
went over, dragging the turkey and its holder with him.
Lewis Hoyt was still grinning. He caught the passing Jimmy by a fringe
of his buckskin and drew him to the master’s desk.
“Sign here, if you’ve got sense enough,” he said. “You look as if you’d
been rolling in a torn feather bed. If I were Marion Royce I’d leave you
two muddle-heads behind even if I had to fill your places with girls.”
“I guess Marion would be mighty glad to fill one of their places with a
girl,” gasped Moses Ayer, emerging from the little boys who had promptly
fallen over him when he tripped.
Everyone laughed and looked at Milly Ayer. She blushed and bent over her
book. She was one of the older girls who had sat quietly in the back
rows, paying no attention to the younger ones about the fire.
“Don’t mind him, Milly, he’s only your brother,” said Louis Gist. Now
that Jimmy Claiborne was captured he could return to finish plucking his
turkey at the fireside. “Won’t we have a grand barbecue, if the old
rascal doesn’t come!”
“We’ll have it even if he does come,” insisted Moses Ayer. “I guess an
old toper that can stay away from his school four days at a time hasn’t
much right to keep us from having a holiday. I guess he’s pretty lucky
to be allowed to teach here at all.”
Lewis Hoyt, who was patiently guiding Jimmy Claiborne’s hand through the
evolution of his long name, looked up.
“You can depend on it, Master Hempstead wouldn’t be here in Fish Creek
teaching us if he wasn’t addicted to the bowl. He’s a scholar, and some
day you’ll regret you didn’t appreciate what he’s tried to teach you.”
“Lewis is preaching again,” cried Moses. “What’s Master Hempstead taught
us except the way to the Marietta tavern?”
“Who needs to go to Marietta since the Claibornes bought their new
still,—except to hide himself?” asked Louis Gist.
There was a sudden silence over all the room. It was so quiet that Jimmy
Claiborne’s labored writing was heard, and all the older scholars
exchanged glances. The Claiborne still had been a bitter subject at Fish
Creek, and some of the older boys had said that it was already ruining
Jimmy Claiborne.
Lewis Hoyt held his hand closed over Jimmy’s as the silence fell,—a
silence timed by the steady booming of the puncheon mauls at the little
shipyard where the ark was building.
Jimmy’s hand trembled and stopped. Lewis steadily drove it to the
finishing of the name.
“I wish there wasn’t a still on the whole length of the Ohio river,”
Lewis said very quietly. “Come here, Louis Gist, it’s your turn to
sign.”
Jimmy Claiborne went back to the fire, sullen, red-faced and silent, and
while the incident was soon dismissed by the others he sat looking into
the fire or plucking savagely at the feathers of his turkey. He and
Louis had caught them that morning, just outside the schoolhouse, in
their turkey trap.
Over at the shipyard the treenail hammers sounded, blending their sharp
raps with the measured hollow strokes of the mauls. All the men on the
creek were working on the ark which young Captain Marion Royce was
building to go down to New Orleans with the spring “fresh.”
Jonas Sparks, the veteran shipwright, had come down from Marietta to
oversee the work. Even Gaffir Hoyt was working there, and Uncle Amasa
Claiborne, half of whose scalp the Indians had taken thirty years
before.
And Louis Gist had told Jimmy that Marion would not let him go. Jimmy
knew why. They were gradually coming to distrust him. He and Kenton and
MacAfee were one party in the Fish Creek school; Moses and Lewis and
Louis Gist another.
He wanted to go to New Orleans. He was entitled to. All winter long he
had planned it. Marion Royce would not dare refuse. But Louis’
unconsidered speech rankled in his bitter heart. He would have been glad
to escape into the woods, but he sat sullenly plucking his turkey for
the barbecue, entrenched behind his knowledge that he had as much right
in the schoolhouse as any of the others who chattered around him.
Free public schools had not yet been established in Ohio, but the
pioneer families maintained a “subscription school” for their children
in primitive schoolhouses of logs afterwards widely known as “Brush
College.” Here masters of greater or less merit taught school six days
in a week, with no holidays. Not a few, indeed, of the early
schoolmasters of this new region were men whom certain weaknesses of
character or appetite had exiled from the older walks of civilization.
Except for such infirmities many of them were instructors of remarkable
ability.
Master Hempstead’s foible was the all too common one of a fond and
apparently ungovernable liking for beverages which inebriate. On a
number of occasions he had dismissed school in the middle of the
forenoon, and after touching homilies to his pupils, had walked out and
not been seen again for several days. He had then reappeared, visibly
the “worse for wear.”
Marietta, then a vigorous young colony of farmers and shipwrights from
New England, was the Mecca to which Master Hempstead’s erratic
pilgrimages were directed; and it was from one of these, after an
absence of four days, that he was returning, in no very pleasant humor,
on the morning of our story.
In the meantime his little kingdom had run riot and tasted the sweets of
self-government. An exuberant hilarity indeed was in the air during
these first years of the century just past. Moreover, Ohio had become a
state that month, and daring schemes for capturing New Orleans from the
Spanish were on foot.
On every day of Master Hempstead’s absence his pupils, numbering
nineteen, of various ages, had assembled, in expectation of his
reappearance. They played “gool,” “I spy” and “hide-and-seek” in the
underbrush about the stumpy clearing. Of more interest still was a trap
for wild turkeys which the boys had constructed at a distance in the
woods.
This trap was a covered pen of stakes and brush, into which a “tunnel”
led from the outside. This subway, as well as the pen, was baited with
corn, and wild turkeys, which abounded in the forest, were thus allured
to enter. The two turkeys which the boys were plucking this morning had
been caught in this way.
It was the custom at these early subscription schools of Ohio for the
master to “stand a treat” on New Year’s Day, and provide, at his own
expense, a bushel of hickory nuts and ten pounds of candy. This coveted
festival Master Hempstead had ignored, much to the dissatisfaction of
his pupils; and now they determined to bring him to terms.
To guard against a surprise they had closed the door and barricaded it
with their benches, which consisted merely of rough “puncheons,” each
having four wooden pins for legs; and Moses Ayer, Lewis Hoyt and Molly
Royce had prepared a species of “round robin,” containing the demands of
the school, written laboriously on a large, smooth chip.
Such was the state of affairs when, at about ten in the forenoon, the
instructor entered the clearing where the schoolhouse stood, and was
promptly espied by more than one pair of sharp eyes at the one small,
four-pane window.
Beyond doubt the man was in bad plight. His indiscretions were heavy
upon him; a raging headache and many other aches oppressed him sorely;
his coonskin cap was pulled low over watery eyes. He noted the smoke
from the rock chimney and strode to the door.
But the latch-string, that ancient token of hospitality, had disappeared
within its hole, and the door itself was fast shut. He thundered at it
with his fist, but obtained no response, unless an ambiguous and
irritating snicker from within could be thus construed.
“Open the door! It is I, the master! Open this door!” he shouted.
Still no response; but now the window was pushed slowly aside, and out
through the hole there came a long stick, to the end of which was tied a
huge, fresh, white-walnut chip; on the smoothed side of this the master
at length noticed there was a black, coarse scrawl.
“What’s this?” exclaimed the irate pedagogue, starting backward as they
dangled the chip under his nose.
“Read it, master!” yelled a chorus of wild voices from within the dark
hole. “Read it, master! Ye can’t come in till ye do.”
With a snarl of disdain Master Hempstead snatched at the chip.
“‘Read it!’” he muttered. “That’s more than you could do yourselves, I
warrant. What blockhead of ye wrote this? What ignoramus of ye spelled
it?” In truth the spelling was not above reproach. But those were
pioneer days. The chip read as follows:
We the undersined Scollars of Fish Creke want and are determined
to have a Hollerday. You didn’t give us one at New Yere’s. You
can’t kepe school here again til you do. Ohio is a State. We
want to cellarbrate it. We dimmand that you get a bushel of
hickerry nuts, or wallnuts ten ponds of Candy and five ponds of
Raizeans. Say you will or you cant come in. Sine your name at
the bottom of this with your led pensel to let us know you mene
it and all will yit be wel. If you dont you cant never come in
here again for you are a bad-drinking Old Fellar.
Moses Ayer
Lewis Hoyt
Molly Royce
James Claiborne
Louis Gist
And all the rest of us.
This, as must be confessed, was hardly respectful or complimentary, but
these were rough times and these children had much to learn. Master
Hempstead was accustomed to the utmost consideration. The man of
learning had then, as now, the highest place in the regard of the
community, and his anger seethed, as, with the hastily adjusted aid of
his horn-bowed glasses, he perused this gage of rebellion.
“Numskulls!” he shouted. “After all I have taught ye, to spell like
that! Y-e-r-e, year! R-a-i-z-e-a-n-s, raisins! T-i-l, till! P-o-n-d-s,
pounds! S-i-n-e, sign! O you young ignoramuses! You will go out into the
world and disgrace me!”
“Sign your name, master!” shrilled the unfeeling chorus inside.
“O you young vipers! Vipers whom I have cherished in my bosom! _Mox
anguis recreatus!_ Sting the hand that nourished you! And spell like
that!”
“Sign it, master! You got to sign it! H-i-l-l-e-l H-e-m-p-s-t-e-a-d,
Hillel Hempstead. Sign it!” still yelled the dissonant chorus within.
“Ingrates! Thankless cubs! Good instruction has been wasted on ye! Open
the door, that I may flog it out of ye!”
“No—no—no, master, you can’t come in!” retorted the young rebels. “You
have got to sign that, and promise not to whip us!”
“Compacts with a mob! Truces with rebels! Never!” shouted the wordy old
schoolmaster.
“Parley is at an end. Prepare to suffer. You shall have your deserts.”
Master Hempstead hurled the walnut chip back in at the window—where it
caused lively dodging of youthful heads—and made ready for active
operations.
At the wood-pile hard by lay a small hickory log, some ten feet in
length and four or five inches in diameter. Heaving this up in his arms,
he ran with it full tilt against the door, delivering a blow which made
the whole house tremble and started the latch-bar in its socket.
“Hear that, ungrateful hearts!” he vociferated. “I am now illustrating
to ye the principle of the battering-ram, which played so noble a part
in the wars of antiquity. Vespasian and Titus employed it against the
gates of stiff-necked Jerusalem. And thus do I batter in the gate of
this stronghold of young deviltry!”
He came _bang!_ against the door again, this time with such effect that
the latch gave way and the benches were pushed back.
Yet again the doughty pedagogue drew back, and panting hard, made
another staggering rush with his improvised ram. This time the shock was
so forceful that everything gave way, so suddenly that both master and
“ram” fell in headlong at the doorway.
The “principle,” indeed, was well illustrated; but Master Hempstead had
still to deal, hand to hand, with his youthful rebels.
Lewis, Moses and the others were athletic youngsters, and the master,
owing perhaps to his many “vacations” at Marietta, was at best somewhat
tottery.
The battle went sorely against him. With shouts of triumph they dragged
him forth into the yard, and holding him down in the snow, clamored loud
for his signature. Still, with reproaches, he refused it, calling down
upon them the vengeance of all known powers of good and evil.
But now an interruption occurred. Milly Ayer, who had thus far sat
quietly in the back row, now donned her hood in haste, and slipping
forth in the midst of the mêlée, ran down to the creek bank, where the
ark was being built, to summon aid.
“Help! help!” she cried, then waved her red hood to attract attention,
for her cries were drowned in the din of hammers below.
Young Captain Royce was the first to see and hear. Between Milly and
himself there had long existed a warm friendship.
“What is it, Milly? What’s happened?” he shouted, and all the hammers
stopped short.
“O Marion, come quick!” cried Milly. “They are fighting at the
schoolhouse!”
The young captain was half-way up the bluff before these words were all
spoken. The others followed him; even old Jonas Sparks, Gaffir Hoyt and
Uncle Amasa Claiborne hurried stiffly to the schoolhouse in the wake of
Marion Royce and Milly.
But the most sedate of them could but smile at the spectacle which was
there presented. Moses Ayer and Lewis Hoyt were holding Master Hempstead
fast with his back to a tree trunk, while Louis Gist was trying to bind
him to it with green hazel withes. The smaller boys, equally excited,
were endeavoring to bear a hand, and yelled like young redskins; while
Molly Royce and the other girls looked on with something akin to
enthusiasm.
“Here, here, boys! Do you know what you are doing?” the young captain
exclaimed.
“What’s the trouble?”
“He’s got to sign it!” shouted Moses, hotly.
“Yes, he’s got to!” yelled Lewis.
“Yes, Mack, help us make him sign it!” chimed in Molly Royce.
“Be quiet, Molly!” replied Marion, putting his impetuous young sister
aside with one hand as he strode nearer. “We will see about this. Let
go, Lewis! Let go, Mose! Master Hempstead, what’s the matter here?”
The master, who had been kicking hard and hitting right and left at his
assailants, recovered his dignity and struck an attitude.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is such ingratitude!” he cried, in
injured accents. “These whom I have taught with so great patience, whose
dull wits I have fostered, lo, they have lifted up the heel against me!”
“But what is it, Master Hempstead, that they want you to sign?” asked
Marion, laughing in spite of himself.
“An exorbitant demand! Preposterous extortion! Stuck under my very nose
at the schoolhouse door on an illiterate chip!”
“And he’s got to sign it!” interrupted Mose.
“But what is it? Let’s see it,” said Marion.
With that, Jimmy Hoyt came running with the chip, which, on being read
aloud, caused Jonas Sparks and Uncle Amasa Claiborne, who had now come
up, to chuckle audibly.
“And I kinder reckon, master, that they was in a fair way to make ye put
yer name to it!” cried the old shipwright. “I guess ye better sign it.”
“No, no, but the rising gineration musn’t be incouraged to be sassy!”
cried Gaffir Hoyt. “They’re sassy enough now. Give ’em an inch and
they’ll take an ell.” Uncle Amasa agreed with him.
“Cut some switches and drub the young scamps,” said Uncle Amasa.
Public opinion being thus divided, every one, including Milly Ayer,
looked to Marion for the guiding word. Already this little community had
come to rely upon his judgment in emergencies.
The young captain laughed good-humoredly. “I don’t want to set my word
before that of my elders,” he said, “but drubbing isn’t always the best
medicine. The boys have been rough and hasty. But from all accounts,
Master Hempstead hasn’t set them quite so good an example of late as we
wish he would. Lewis, you and Mose and Molly must beg Master Hempstead’s
forgiveness for misusing him. If they do that, you will overlook it,
master, will you not?”
[Illustration:
“HEY, WHAT? FORGIVE THEM!”]
“Hey, what? Forgive them!” cried the still agitated pedagogue. “Forgive
them! Well, anything but their bad spelling! Anything but that!”
“Wal, master, that is a fault you must try to remedy!” cried old Jonas,
laughing. “Good spelling is the gift of Heaven. I only wish that it had
been given to me.”
“But the holiday!” exclaimed Molly. “We want the holiday!”
“What do you say, Master Hempstead?” Marion asked him, with much
respect. His manner did more than any words could have done to remind
the young people of the great regard in which a master was and should be
held. “A holiday to celebrate the admission of Ohio to the Union would
be no very bad thing, would it? Suppose you give them one and let us all
come to it.”
“But I haven’t the means. I’m a poor man!” protested the master. “Candy
and raisins cost good money at Marietta.”
“And so does gin and whisky!” muttered Moses, under his breath.
“Hush, Moses!” said Marion. He turned to the other older men. “How would
it be if we all give something, and have the celebration next month just
before the ark starts to New Orleans?”
The faces of the young people fell visibly at this suggestion of
postponement, but the motion was carried, and it was arranged that the
holiday should take place the day before the ark should leave for its
long adventurous voyage down the Mississippi.
The master pointed to the gaping schoolhouse doorway. “In, ye
renegades,” he ordered, and they trooped noisily in to straighten the
overturned benches and settle down to their study after the four days of
unofficial vacation.
Jimmy Claiborne did not follow them. He waited until the men were
starting back to the shipyard, then he stopped Marion Royce.
“Louis Gist says you won’t let me go on the ark,” he said, fixing the
young captain with his sombre, discontented eyes. “I guess Uncle Amasa
could make you, seeing what a share we’ve got in the cargo, but I just
wanted to ask you if it’s true—what Louis said—that you don’t want me.”
Marion wished, as he looked gravely at the boy, that the ark were not
taking the Claibornes’ share of the cargo at all, but he only said:
“That depends on yourself, Jimmy.”
Jimmy made no answer in words. He turned and strode off towards the
woods behind the schoolhouse clearing. Marion called to him, but he gave
no sign of hearing, and after waiting a moment longer Marion went back
to his work.
------------------------------------------------------------------------