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TWO KNAPSACKS:
A Novel of Canadian Summer Life.
by
J. CAWDOR BELL.
Toronto
The Williamson Book Co., Ltd.
Entered, according to the Act of the Parliament of Canada, in
the year eighteen hundred and ninety-two, by the Williamson Book
Company, Limited, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
The Publishers have extreme pleasure in placing this novel, by a new and
promising native author, before the reading public of Canada. They will
be greatly disappointed if it does not at once take its place among the
best products of Canadian writers. While the work has peculiar interest
for Torontonians and dwellers in the districts so graphically described,
its admirable character drawings of many "sorts and conditions" of our
people--its extremely clever dialect, representing Irish, Scotch,
English, Canadian, French, Southern and Negro speech, and the working
out of its story, which is done in such a way as would credit an
experienced romancer--should insure the book a welcome in very many
homes. The literary flavour is all that can be desired; the author
evidencing a quite remarkable acquaintance with English Literature,
especially with Wordsworth, the Poet of the Lake Country.
TWO KNAPSACKS:
A Novel of Canadian Summer Life.
by
J. CAWDOR BELL.
CHAPTER I.
The Friends--The Knapsacks--The Queen's Wharf--The Northern
Railway--Belle Ewart--The _Susan Thomas_, Captain and Crew--Musical
Performance--The Sly Dog--Misunderstanding--Kempenfeldt Bay.
Eugene Coristine and Farquhar Wilkinson were youngish bachelors and
fellow members of the Victoria and Albert Literary Society. Thither, on
Wednesday evenings, when respectable church-members were wending their
way to weekly service, they hastened regularly, to meet with a band of
like-minded young men, and spend a literary hour or two. In various
degrees of fluency they debated the questions of the day; they read
essays with a wide range of style and topic; they gave readings from
popular authors, and contributed airy creations in prose and in verse to
the Society's manuscript magazine. Wilkinson, the older and more sedate
of the two, who wore a tightly-buttoned blue frock coat and an eyeglass,
was a schoolmaster, pretty well up in the Toronto Public Schools.
Coristine was a lawyer in full practice, but his name did not appear on
the card of the firm which profited by his services. He was taller than
his friend, more jauntily dressed, and was of a more mercurial
temperament than the schoolmaster, for whom, however, he entertained a
profound respect. Different as they were, they were linked together by
an ardent love of literature, especially poetry, by scientific pursuits,
Coristine as a botanist, and Wilkinson as a dabbler in geology, and by
a firm determination to resist, or rather to shun, the allurements of
female society. Many lady teachers wielded the pointer in rooms not far
removed from those in which Mr. Wilkinson held sway, but he did not
condescend to be on terms even of bowing acquaintance with any one of
them. There were several young lady typewriters of respectable city
connections in the offices of Messrs. Tyler, Woodruff and White, but the
young Irish lawyer passed them by without a glance. These bachelors were
of the opinion that women were bringing the dignity of law and education
to the dogs.
It was a Wednesday evening in the beginning of July, and the heat was
still great in the city. Few people ventured out to the evening
services, and fewer still found their way to the Victoria and Albert
hall; in fact, there was not a quorum, and, as the constitution stated
that, in such a case, the meeting should be adjourned, it was adjourned
accordingly. Coristine lit a cigar in the porch, and Wilkinson, who did
not smoke, but said he liked the odour of good tobacco, took his arm for
a walk along the well-lit streets. They agreed that it was time to be
out of town. Coristine said: "Let us go together; I'll see one of the
old duffers and get a fortnight's leave." Wilkinson had his holidays, so
he eagerly answered: "Done! but where shall we go? Oh, not to any female
fashion resort." At this Coristine put on the best misanthropic air he
could call up, with a cigar between his lips, and then, as if struck by
a happy thought, dug his elbow into his companion's side and ejaculated:
"Some quiet country place where there's good fishing." Wilkinson
demurred, for he was no fisherman. The sound of a military band stopped
the conversation. It came into sight, the bandsmen with torches in their
headgear, and, after it, surrounded and accompanied by all the small
boys and shop-girls in the town, came the Royals, in heavy marching
order. The friends stood in a shop doorway until the crowd passed by,
and then, just as soon as a voice could be distinctly heard, the
schoolmaster clapped his companion on the shoulder and cried, "Eureka!"
Coristine thought the music had been too much for his usually staid and
deliberate friend. "Well, old Archimedes, and what is it you've found?
Not any new geometrical problems, I hope." "Listen to me," said the
dominie, in a tone of accustomed authority, and the lawyer listened.
"You've heard Napoleon or somebody else say that every soldier of France
carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack?"
"Never heard the gentleman in my life, and don't believe it, either."
"Well, well, never mind about that; but I got my idea out of a
knapsack."
"Now, what's the use of your saying that, when its myself knows that you
haven't got such a thing to bless yourself with?"
"I got it out of a soldier's--a volunteer's knapsack, man."
"O, you thief of the world! And where have you got it hid away?"
"In my head."
"O rubbish and nonsense--a knapsack in your head!"
"No, but the idea."
"And where's the knapsack?"
"On the grenadier's back."
"Then the grenadier has the knapsack, and you the idea: I thought you
said the idea was in the knapsack."
"So it was; but I took it out, don't you see? My idea is the idea of a
knapsack on a man's back--on two men's backs--on your back and on mine."
"With a marshal's baton inside?"
"No; with an extra flannel shirt inside--and some socks, and a flask,
and some little book to read by the way; that's what I want."
"It'll be mortal heavy and hot this boiling weather."
"Not a bit. You can make one out of cardboard and patent cloth, just as
light as a feather, and costing you next to nothing."
"And where will you be going with your knapsack? Will it be parading
through the streets with the volunteers you would be after?"
"Go? We will go on a pedestrian tour through the finest scenery
available." This was said correctly and with great dignity. It had the
effect of sobering the incredulous Coristine, who said: "I tell ye,
Farquhar, my boy, that's a fine idea of yours, barring the heat; but I
suppose we can rest where we like and go when we like, and, if the
knapsacks get to be a nuisance, express 'em through, C.O.D. Well, I'll
sleep over it, and let you know to-morrow when I can get away." So the
pair separated, to retire for the night and dream a knapsack nightmare.
Coristine's leave did not come till the following Tuesday, so that
Friday, Saturday and Monday--or parts of them, at least--could be
devoted to the work of preparation. Good, strong, but not too heavy,
tweed walking suits were ordered, and a couple of elegant flannel shirts
that would not show the dirt were laid in; a pair of stout, easy boots
was picked out, and a comfortable felt hat, with brim enough to keep off
the sun. Then the lawyer bought his cardboard and his patent cloth and
straps, and spent Saturday evening with his friend and a sharp penknife,
bringing the knapsacks into shape. The scientists made a mistake in
producing black and shiny articles, well calculated to attract the heat.
White canvas would have been far better. But Wilkinson had taken his
model from the military, hence it had to be black. The folded ends of
the patent cloth, which looked like leather, were next to the wearer's
back, so that what was visible to the general public was a very
respectable looking flat surface, fastened round the shoulders with
becoming straps, equally dark in hue. "Sure, Farquhar, it's pack-men the
ignorant hayseeds will be taking us for," said Coristine, when the
prospective pedestrians had strapped on their shiny baggage holders. "I
do not agree with you there," replied the schoolmaster; "Oxford and
Cambridgemen, and the best _litterateurs_ of England, do Wales and
Cornwall, the Lakes and the Trossachs, to say nothing of Europe, dressed
just as we are." "All right, old man, but I'm thinking I'll add a
bandanna handkerchief and a blackthorn. They'll come in handy to carry
the fossils over your shoulder. There now, I've forgot the printers'
paper and the strap flower press for my specimens. True, there's Monday
for that; but I'm afraid I'll have to shave the boards of the flower
press down, or it'll be a sorry burden for a poor, tired botanist. Good
night to you, my bouchal boy, and it's a pack you might throw into a
corner of your sack." "Cards!" replied Wilkinson; "no sir, but my
pocket chess box will be at your service." "Chess be hanged," said the
lawyer; "but, see here, are they checkers when you turn them upside
down? If they are, it's I'm your man."
On Tuesday morning, about eight o'clock, there appeared at the Brock
Street Station of the Northern Railway, two well-dressed men with shiny
knapsacks on their shoulders. They had no blackthorns, for Wilkinson had
said it would be much more romantic to cut their own sticks in the bush,
to which Coristine had replied that, if the bush was as full of
mosquitos as one he had known, he would cut his stick fast enough. They
were the astonishment, rather than the admiration, of all beholders, who
regarded them as agents, and characterized the way in which they carried
their samples as the latest thing from the States. For a commencement,
this was humiliating, so that the jaunty lawyer twisted his moustache
fiercely, and felt inclined to quarrel with the self-possessed,
clean-shaven space between Wilkinson's elaborate side-whiskers. But the
pedagogue, in his suavest manner, remarked that Cicero, in his _De
Natura Deorum_, makes Cotta call the common herd both fools and
lunatics, whose opinion is of no moment whatever. "Why, then," he asked,
"should we trouble our minds with what it pleases them to think? It is
for us to educate public opinion--to enlighten the darkness of the
masses. Besides, if you look about, you will see that those who are
doing the giggling are girls, sir, positively girls."
"Your hand on that, Farquhar, my boy; if it keeps the hussies off, I'll
wear a knapsack every day of my life."
Coristine did not know where he was going, being subject to the superior
wisdom and topographical knowledge of his companion, who appeared in the
row that besieged the window of the ticket office. "Two for Belle
Ewart," he demanded, when his turn came.
"Trains don't run to Belle Ewart now; you had better take Lefroy, the
nearest point."
"All right; two for Lefroy."
The ticket agent looked at the attire of the speaker, and was about to
produce the cardboard slips, then hesitated as he glanced at the straps
and the top of the black erection on Wilkinson's shoulders, and
enquired, "Second class, eh?" The dominie was angry, his face
crimsoned, his hand shook with indignation. Being a moral man, he would
not use bad language, but he roared in his most stentorian academic
tone, a tone which appalled the young agent with rapid visions of
unfortunate school days, "Second Tom-cats! Does the company put you
there to insult gentlemen?" It was the agent's turn to redden, and then
to apologize, as he mildly laid the tickets down, without the usual
slap, and fumbled over their money. The feminine giggling redoubled, and
Coristine, who had regained his equilibrium, met his friend with a
hearty laugh, and the loud greeting, "O Lord, Wilks, didn't I tell you
the fools would be taking us for bagmen?" But Wilkinson's irritation was
deep, and he marched to the incoming train, ejaculating, "Fool, idiot,
puppy; I shall report him for incivility, according to the printed
invitation of the company. Second! ach! I was never so insulted in my
life."
There was room enough inside the car to give the travellers a double
seat, half for themselves and the other for their knapsacks. These
impedimenta being removed the occupants of the carriage became aware
that they were in the company of two good-looking men, of refined
features, and in plain but gentlemanly attire. The lady passengers
glanced at them, from time to time, with approbation not unmingled with
amusement, but no responsive glance came from the bachelors. Wilkinson
had opened his knapsack, and had taken out his pocket Wordsworth, the
true poet, he said, for an excursion. Coristine had a volume of Browning
in his kit, but left it there, and went into the smoking-car for an
after breakfast whiff. The car had been swept out that morning by the
joint efforts of a brakesman and the newsagent, so that it was less
hideously repulsive than at a later stage in the day, when tobacco
juice, orange peel, and scraps of newspapers made it unfit for a decent
pig. The lawyer took out his plug, more easily carried than cut tobacco,
and whittled it down with his knife to fill his handsome Turk's head
meerschaum. When all was ready, he discovered, to his infinite disgust,
that he had no matches nor pipe-lights of any description. The news
agent, Frank, a well-known character on the road, supplied him with a
box of Eddy's manufacture, for which he declined to receive payment.
However, he pressed his wares upon the grateful Coristine, recommending
warmly the Samantha books and Frank Stockton's stories. "Are there any
women in them?" asked the smoker. "Full of them," replied Frank; "Why,
Samantha is a woman." "Take them away, and bring me something
different." The news agent returned with a volume made up of cartoons
and other illustrations from _Puck_, and soon the Irishman was shaking
his sides over the adventures of Brudder Sunrise Waterbury and similar
fictitious characters. So absorbed was he in this trivial literature
that he failed to notice the entrance of an old man, respectably dressed
who took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and was preparing to
smoke his three inches of clay. He was aroused by the salutation and
request:--
"Good marnin', Sor, an' moight Oi be afther thrubblin' yeez for a loight
to my poipe?"
"Certainly, with pleasure; glad to be of any use to a fellow
countryman," replied Coristine, looking up, and perceiving that his new
acquaintance, though old and stooped, had a soldierly air. "You have
been in service?" he continued.
"Troth I have, puff, puff, now she's goin' aisy. Oi was in the Furren
Laygion in South Ameriky, an' my cornel was the foinest man you iver
see. It was Frinch he was by his anshesters, an' his name it was
Jewplesshy. Wan toime we was foightin' wid the Spanyerds an' the poor
deluded haythen Injuns, when a shpint bullet rickyshayed an' jumped into
my mouth, knockin' out the toot' ye'll percaive is missin' here. Will,
now, the cornel he was lookin' at me, an', fwhen Oi shput out the bullet
and the broken toot' on the ground, he roides up to me, and says, says
he, 'It's a brave bhoy, yeez are, Moikle Terry, an' here's a' suverin to
get a new toot' put in whin the war is over, says he. Oh, that suverin
wint to kape company wid a lot more that Oi'd be proud to see the face
av in my owld age. But, sorra a toot' did the dintist put in for me, for
fwhere wud the nate hole for the poipe have been thin, till me that,
now?"
Mr. Coristine failed to answer this conundrum, but continued the
conversation with the old soldier. He learnt that Michael had
accompanied his colonel to Canada, and, after serving him faithfully for
many years, had wept over his grave. One of the old man's sons was a
sergeant in the Royal Artillery, and his daughter was married to a
Scotch farmer named Carruthers, up in the County of Grey.
"She was a good gyurl, as nate an' swate as a picter, whin she lift the
cornel's lady's sarvice, an' wint an' tuk up wid Carruthers, a foine man
an' a sponsible, not a bit loike the common Scotch. Carruthers and her,
they axed me wud Oi go an' pay thim a visit, an' say to the comfort av
her young lady on the way."
"What young lady?" asked Coristine, and immediately repented the
question.
"Miss Jewplesshy, to be sure, the cornel's darter, and an illigant wan
she is, av she has to make her livin' by the wroitin'."
At this juncture, the lawyer, with lively satisfaction, hailed the
arrival of Frank, who came straight towards him.
"Are you Mr. Coristine, the lawyer?" he half whispered. "Yes; that's my
name," his victim replied, thinking that Wilkinson had sent him a
message.
"Well, there's a lady in the rear car wanted to know, and I said I'd
find out."
"Fwhat's that you'll be sayin' av a lady in the rare car, my lad?"
questioned the old soldier, who had overheard part of the conversation.
"It's the tall girl in the travelling duster and the blue ribbons that
wants to know if Mr. Coristine is here."
"Fwhat? my own dare young mishtress, Miss Ceshile Jewplesshy; shure it's
her that do have the blue ribbins, an' the dushter. Do yeez know that
swate young crathur, Sor?"
"I do not," replied Coristine abruptly, and added, _sotto voce_, "thank
goodness!" Then he relit his pipe, and buried his head in the Puck book,
from the contemplation of which the Irish veteran was too polite to seek
to withdraw his attention. In a few minutes, the door opened and closed
with a slam, and Wilkinson, pale and trembling, stood before him.
"Eugene, my dear friend," he stammered, "I'll never forgive myself for
leading you and me into a trap, a confounded, diabolical, deep-laid
trap, sir, a gin, a snare, a woman's wile. Let us get off anywhere, at
Aurora, Newmarket, Holland Landing, Scanlans, anywhere to escape these
harpies."
"What's the matter, old man?" enquired Coristine, with a poor attempt at
calmness.
"Matter!" replied Wilkinson, "it's this matter, that they have found us
out, and the girl with the cream coloured ribbons and crimson wrapper
has asked that villainous news-agent if my name is not Wilkinson, and if
I don't teach in the Sacheverell Street School. The rascal says her name
is Miss Marjorie Carmichael, the daughter of old Dr. Carmichael, that
was member for Vaughan, and that her friend, the long girl with the blue
ribbons, knows you. O, my dear friend, this is awful. Better be back in
Toronto than shut up in a railway car with two unblushing women."
"Stay here," said Coristine, making way for his friend, "they'll never
dare come into this car after us." Yet his eye followed the retreating
form of the South American warrior with apprehension. What if he should
bring his 'dare young misthress' and her friend into the atmosphere of
stale tobacco after their lawful game? Wilkinson sat down despairingly
and coughed. "I feel very like the least little nip," he said faintly,
"but it's in my knapsack, and I will not enter that car of foul
conspiracy again for all the knapsacks and flasks in the world."
Now, Coristine had smoked two big pipes, and felt that it was dry work,
but loyalty to his friend made him braver than any personal necessity
would have done. "It's sick you're looking, Farquhar, my dear," he said,
"and it's no friend of your's I'd be, and leave you without comfort in
such a time of trouble. Here's for the knapsack, and woe betide the man
or woman that stops me." So up he rose, and strode out of the car,
glowering fiercely at the second-class passengers and all the rest, till
he reached the vacated seats, from which he silently, and in deep inward
wrath, gathered up the creations of cardboard and patent cloth, and
retreated, grinding his teeth as he heard the veteran call out behind
him, "Would yeez moind comin' this way a bit, Mishter?" He paid no
attention to that officious old man, but hurried back to the
smoking-car, where he extracted Wilkinson's flask from its flannel
surroundings, removed the metal cup, poured out a stiff horn, and
diluted it at the filter. "Take this, old man," he said sternly,
pressing it to the lips of the sufferer, "it'll set you up like a new
pin." So the schoolmaster drank and was comforted, and Coristine took a
nip also, and they felt better, and laughed and joked, and said
simultaneously, "It's really too absurd about these girls, ha, ha!"
Apprehension made the time seem long to the travellers, who gazed out of
the windows upon a fine agricultural country, with rolling fields of
grain, well-kept orchards and substantial houses and barns. They admired
the church on the hill at Holland Landing, and the schoolmaster told his
friend of a big anchor that had got stuck fast there on its way to the
Georgian Bay in 1812. "I bet you the sailors wouldn't have left it
behind if it had been an anchor of Hollands," said Coristine, whereupon
Wilkinson remarked that his puns were intolerable. At Bradford the track
crossed the Holland River, hardly flowing between its flat, marshy banks
towards Lake Simcoe. "This," said the schoolmaster, "is early
Tennysonian scenery, a Canadian edition of the fens of Lincolnshire,"
but he regretted uttering the words when the lawyer agreed with him that
it was an of-fens-ive looking scene. But Lake Simcoe began to show up in
the distance to the right, and soon the gentlemanly conductor took their
tickets. "Leefroy," shouted the brakesman. They gathered up their
knapsacks, dropped off the smoker, and sped inside the station, out of
the windows of which they peered cautiously to see that no attempt at a
pursuit was made by the ladies and their military protector. The train
sped on its way northward, and feeling that, for a time, they were safe,
the pedestrians faced each other with a deep-drawn sigh of relief. The
station-master told them to walk back along the track till they met the
old side-line that used to go to Belle Ewart. So they helped each other
to strap on their knapsacks, and virtually began their pedestrian tour.
The station-master would have liked to detain them for explanations, but
they were unwilling to expose themselves to further misunderstanding.
Walking on a railway track is never very pleasant exercise, but this
old Belle Ewart track was an abomination of sand and broken rails and
irregular sleepers. Coristine tried to step in time over the rotting
cedar and hemlock ties, but, at the seventh step, stumbled and slid down
the gravel bank of the road-bed. "Where did the seven sleepers do their
sleeping, Wilks?" he enquired. "At Ephesus," was the curt reply. "Well,
if they didn't efface us both, they nearly did for one of us."
"Coristine, if you are going to talk in that childlish way, we had
better take opposite ends of the track; there are limits, sir."
"That's just what's troubling me; there are far too many limits. If this
is what you call pedestrianizing, I say, give me a good sidewalk or the
loan of an uneven pair of legs. It's dislocation of the hip or
inflammatory rheumatism of the knee-joint I'll be getting with this hop
and carry one navigation." Wilkinson plodded on in dignified silence,
till the sawmills of the deserted village came in sight, and, beyond it,
the blue green waters of Lake Simcoe. "Now," he said, "we shall take to
the water." "What?" enquired Coristine, "on our knapsacks?" to which his
companion answered, "No, on the excellent steamer _Emily May_."
There was no excellent steamer _Emily May_; there had not been for a
long time; it was a memory of the past. The railway had ruined
navigation. What was to be done? It would never do to retrace their
steps over the railroad ties, and the roads about Belle Ewart led
nowhere, while to track it along the hot lake shore was not to be
thought of. Wilkinson's plans had broken down; so Coristine left him at
the village hostelry, and sallied forth on exploration bent. In the
course of his wanderings he came to a lumber wharf, alongside which lay
an ancient schooner.
"Schooner ahoy!" he shouted, when a shock-headed man of uncertain middle
age poked his head up through a hatchway, and answered: "Ahoy yourself,
and see how you like it." This was discouraging, but not to a limb of
the law. Coristine half removed his wide awake, and said: "I have the
pleasure of addressing the captain of the ship _Susan Thomas_," the name
he had seen painted in gold letters on the stern.
"Not adzackly," replied the shock headed mariner, much mollified; "he's
my mate, and he'll be along as soon as he's made up his bundle. I'm
waitin' for him to sail this yere schooner."
"Where is the _Susan Thomas_ bound for?"
"For Kempenfeldt Bay, leastways Barrie."
"Could you take a couple of passengers, willing to pay properly for
their passage?"
"Dassent; it's agin the law; not but what I'd like to have yer, fer its
lonesome, times. Here comes the old man hisself; try him."
A stout grizzled man of between fifty and sixty came walking along the
wharf, with his bundle over his shoulder, and Coristine tried him. The
Captain was a man of few words, so, when the situation was explained, he
remarked: "Law don't allow freight boats to take money off passengers,
but law don't say how many hands I have to have, nor what I'm to pay 'em
or not to pay 'em. If you and your friend want to ship for the trip to
Barrie, you'd better hurry up, for we're going to start right away."
Coristine was filled with the wildest enthusiasm. He dashed back to the
hotel, the bar of which was covered with maps and old guide-books,
partly the property of Wilkinson, partly of mine host, who was lazily
helping him to lay out a route. "Hurry, hurry!" cried the excited
lawyer, as he swept the maps into his friend's open knapsack. Then he
yelled "hurroo!" and sang:--
For the ship, it is ready, and the wind is fair,
And I am bound for the sea, Mary Ann.
Like a whirlwind he swept Wilkinson and the two knapsacks out of the
hotel door, along the sawdust paths and on to the wharf just in time to
see the first sail set. "What in the name of common sense is the meaning
of this conduct?" asked the amazed schoolmaster as soon as he got his
breath.
"Meaning! why, we're indentured, you and I, as apprentice mariners on
board the good ship _Susan Thomas_, bound for Kempenfeldt Bay.
Brave Kempenfeldt is gone,
His victories are o'er;
And he and his eight hundred
Shall plough the waves no more.
But we'll plough them, Wilks, my boy. We'll splice the spanker boom,
and port the helm to starboard, and ship the taffrail on to the lee
scuppers of the after hatch, and dance hornpipes on the mizzen peak.
Hulloa, captain, here's my mate, up to all sorts of sea larks; he can
box the compass and do logarithm sums, and work navigation by single or
double entry." The schoolmaster blushed for his companion, at whose
exuberant spirits the sedate captain smiled, while the shock-headed man,
whom Coristine named The Crew, displayed a large set of fairly preserved
yellowish teeth, and guffawed loud and long.
"Do I understand, Captain, that you are willing to take us to Barrie in
your--ah--vessel?" asked Wilkinson, politely.
"Aye, aye, my man," answered the ancient mariner, "get your leg aboard,
for we're going to sail right away. Hi, you, Sylvanus there, give
another haul on them halliards afore you're too mighty ready to belay,
with your stupid cackle."
So the indentured apprentices and their knapsacks got on board, while
Sylvanus, _alias_ The Crew, stopped laughing, and put a pound or two
extra on to the halliards. "Wilks," said Coristine, "it'll puzzle the
women to find us out on our ocean home."
Wilkinson saw the captain hauling at the halliards of the after-mainsail
and went to his assistance, while Coristine, doffing his coat, lent a
hand to The Crew, when, by their combined efforts, the sails were all
hoisted and the schooner floated away from the pier. The lawyer walked
over the deck with a nautical air, picking up all loose ends of rope and
coiling them neatly over his left arm. The coils he deposited carefully
about the feet of the masts, to the astonishment of Wilkinson, who
regarded his friend as a born seaman, and to the admiration of the
captain and The Crew. The schoolmaster felt that Wordsworth was not the
thing for the water; he should have brought Falconer or Byron. So he
stuck to the captain, who was a very intelligent man of his class, and
discussed with him the perils and advantages of lake navigation. They
neither of them smoked, nor, said the captain, did he often drink; when
he did, he liked to have it good. Thereupon Wilkinson produced what
remained in his flask, which his commanding officer took down neat at a
gulp, signifying, as he ruefully gazed upon the depleted vessel, that a
man might go long before he'd get such stuff as that. Then the
conversation turned on the prohibitory Scott Act, which opened the vials
of the old man's wrath, for making "the biggest lot of hypocrites and
law-breakers and unlicensed shebeens and drunkards the country had ever
seen." The schoolmaster, as in duty bound, tried to defend the Act, but
all in vain, so he was glad to change the subject and discuss the crops,
politics, and education. This conversation took place at what the
captain called "the hellum", against the tiller of which he occasionally
allowed his apprentice to lean his back while he attended to other work.
Wilkinson was proud. This was genuine navigation, this steering a large
vessel with your back; any mere landsman, he now saw, could coil up
ropes like Coristine. The subject of this reflection was quite happy in
the bow, chumming with The Crew. Smoking their pipes together, Sylvanus
confided to his apprentice that a sailor's life was the lonesomest life
out of jail, when the cap'n was that quiet and stand off like as one he
knowed that wasn't far away, nuther. Coristine sympathized with him.
"The bossest time that ever was on this yere old _Susan Thomas_," he
continued, "was last summer wonst when the cap'n's niece, she come along
fer a trip. There was another gal along with her, a regular stunner, she
was. Wot her name was I raley can't tell, 'cos that old owl of a cap'n,
whenever he'd speak to her, allers said Miss Do Please. I reckon that's
what she used to say to him, coaxin' like, and he kep' it up on her.
Well, we was becalmed three days right out on the lake, and I had to row
the blessed dingy in the bilin' sun over to Snake Island to get bread
and meat from the Snakes."
"From the snakes!" ejaculated Coristine, "why this beats Elijah's ravens
all to nothing."
"Oh, the Snakes is Injuns, and Miss Carmichael, that's the cap'n's gal,
says their rale name is Kinapick."
"Look here, Sylvanus, what did you say the captain's name is?"
"Oh, the old pill's name is Thomas, like the schooner, but, you see, he
married one of the pretty Carruthers gals, and a good match it was; for,
I tell ye, them Carruthers gals hold their heads mighty high. Why, the
ansomest of them married Dr. Carmichael that was member, and, of they
did say he married below him, there wasn't a prouder nor a handsomer
woman in all the country. There's a brother of the Carruthers gals lives
on a farm out in Grey, and he took up with a good lookin' Irish gal that
was lady's maid or some such truck. That's marryin' below yourself ef
you like, but, bless you, Miss Carmichael don't bear him no spite for
it. She goes and stays with him times in the holidays, just like she
does along o' the old man here. My! what a three days o' singin' and fun
it was when them two gals was aboard; never see nothing like it afore
nor sence."
"By George!" groaned the lawyer.
"What's up, Mister? turned sick, eh? smell o' the tar too much fer your
narves? It do make some city folks a bit squarmish. Wish I'd a drop o'
stuff for you, but we don't carry none; wouldn't do, you know."
Coristine was touched by the good fellow's kindness, and opened his
flask for their joint benefit, after which he felt better, and The Crew
said it made him like a four-year-old.
"Hi, Sylvanus, come aft here to your dog watch," cried the captain, and
The Crew retired, while his superior officer and Wilkinson came forward.
The former went down into the hold, leaving the dominie free for
conversation with his friend. "It's all up again, Wilks," said Coristine
sadly; "those two girls were on board this very schooner, no later than
last summer, and the one that spotted you is the captain's niece."
"I know," groaned Wilkinson; "did he not tell me that he had a niece, a
wonderfully fine girl, if he did say it, in the public schools, and made
me promise to look her up when I go back to town! This kind of thing
will be the death of me, Corry. Tell me, is your friend at the helm
another uncle?"
"Oh, no," laughed Coristine, "he's a simple-hearted, humble sort of
creature, who worships the boards these girls trod upon. He has a
tremendous respect for the Carmichaels. What a lucky thing it is they
didn't come on board at Belle Ewart! Do you think they'll be on hand at
Barrie?"
"I shouldn't wonder."
"Then, Wilks, I tell you what it is, we must slope. When it gets dark,
I'll slip over the stern into the dingy and bring her round to the side
for you; then we'll sail away for parts unknown."
"Corry, I am ashamed of you for imagining that I would lend myself to
base treachery, and robbery, or piracy rather, on the high seas, laying
us open, as you, a lawyer, must know, to penalties that would blast our
reputations and ruin our lives. No, sir, we must face our misfortune
like men. In the meanwhile, I will find out, from the captain, where his
niece and her friend are likely to be."
Coristine walked aft to The Crew, and served his apprenticeship to
sitting on the tiller and propelling the rudder thereby in the desired
direction. When he went wrong, while The Crew was lighting his pipe, the
flapping of the sails warned him to back the tiller to its proper place.
When hauling at the halliards, he had sung to his admiring companion in
toil the "Sailor's Shanty":--
My Polly said she'd marry me when I came home,
Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together;
But when I came I found she'd been and took my messmate Tom,
Yo hee, yo ho, haul all together.
Now, therefore, The Crew was urgent for a song to cheer up the
lonesomeness a bit, and the lawyer, nothing loath, sang with genuine
pathos:--
A baby was sleeping;
Its mother was weeping.
For her husband was far on the wide rolling sea.
When he came to the sea-ee-ee-ee-ee at the end of the third line, The
Crew, who had been keeping time with one foot on the deck and with one
hand on the tiller, aided him in rolling it forth, and, when the singing
was over, he characterized it as "pooty and suitin' like," by which he
meant that the references to the howling tempest and the raging billow
were appropriate to the present nautical circumstances. After much
persuasion The Crew was induced to add to the harmony of the evening.
His voice was strong, but, like many strong things, under imperfect
control; his tune was nowhere, and his intended pathetic unction was
simply maudlin. Coristine could recall but little of the long ballad to
which he listened, the story of a niggardly and irate father, who
followed and fought with the young knight that had carried off his
daughter. Two verses, however, could not escape his memory, on account
of the disinterested and filial light in which they made the young lady
appear:--
"O stay your hand," the old man cried,
A-lying on the ground,
"And you shall have my daughter,
And twenty thousand pound."
"Don't let him up, dear sweetheart,
The portion is too small."
"O stay your hand," the old man said,
"And you shall have it all."
The lawyer was loud in his admiration of this classical piece, and what
he afterwards found was The Crew's original and only tune. "That was the
kind of wife for a poor man," remarked Sylvanus, meditatively; "but she
was mighty hard on her old dad."
"They're a poor lot, the whole pack of them," said the lawyer, savagely,
thinking of the quandary in which he and his friend were placed.
"Who is?" asked The Crew.
"Why, the women, to be sure."
"Look here, Mister, my name may be Sylvanus, but I know I'm pretty
rough, for all that. But, rough as I am, I don't sit quiet and let any
man, no, not as good friends as you and me has been, say a word agin the
wimmen. When I think o' these yere gals as was in this blessed schooner
last summer, I feel it my juty, bein' I'm one o' them as helped to sail
her then, to stand up fer all wimmen kind, and, no offence meant. I
guess your own mother's one o' the good sort, now wasn't she?"
"I should say she is," replied Coristine; "there are splendid women in
the world, but they're all married."
"That don't stand to reason, nohow," said The Crew, with gravity, "'cos
there was a time wonst when they wasn't married, and if they was good
arter they was good afore. And, moreover, what was, is, and ever shall
be, Amen!"
"All right, Sylvanus, we won't quarrel over them, and to show I bear no
malice, I'll sing a song about the sex," whereupon he trolled out:
"Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen." Wilkinson came running aft
when he heard the strain, and cried: "Good heavens! Coristine, whatever
has got into you, are you mad or intoxicated?"
"I'll bet you your boots and your bottom dollar that he ain't that,
Mister," interposed The Crew, "fer you couldn't scare up liquor enough
on this yere _Susan Thomas_ to turn the head of a canary."
"We are exchanging musical treats," said Coristine in defence. "Sylvanus
here favoured me with an old ballad, not in the Percy collection, and I
have been giving him one of the songs from the dramatists."
"But about women!" protested the dominie.
"There ain't no songs that ain't got somethin' about women in 'em that's
wuth a cent," indignantly replied The Crew, and Wilkinson sullenly
retired to the bow.
When the captain emerged from the hold he was hardly recognizable.
Instead of his common sleeved waist coat and overalls, he was attired in
a dark blue suit of broadcloth, the vest and frock coat of which were
resplendent with gilt buttons. These clothes, with a befitting peaked
cap and a pair of polished boots, had evidently come out of the large
bundle he had brought from Belle Ewart, where the garments had probably
done Sunday duty, for a smaller bundle, which he now threw upon the
deck, contained his discarded working dress. Wilkinson was confirmed, by
the spectacle presented, in his dire suspicion that the captain's niece
would appear at Barrie, and, then and there, begin an acquaintance with
him that might have the most disastrous consequences. But hope springs
eternal in the human breast, as the poet says, so the schoolmaster
tackled the commander, congratulated him on his fine appearance, and
began to pump him as to the whereabouts of Miss Carmichael. The old
gentleman, for such he looked now, was somewhat vain in an off-hand sort
of way, and felt that he was quite the dominie's equal. He was cheerful,
even jovial, in spite of the contrary assertions of The Crew, as he
replied to Wilkinson's interrogations.
"Ah, you sly young dog," he said, "I see what you're at now. You'd like
to hear that the pair of them are waiting for us at Barrie; but they're
not. They've gone to stay with my brother-in-law, Carruthers, in the
County of Grey, where I'll go and see their pretty faces myself in a few
days."
Wilkinson swallowed the "sly young dog" for the sake of the
consolation, and, hurriedly making his way aft, communicated the joyful
news to Coristine. That gentleman much amused The Crew by throwing an
arm round the schoolmaster's waist and waltzing his unwilling partner
over the deck. All went merry as a marriage bell till the waltzers
struck a rope coil, when, owing to the dominie's struggles, they went
down together. Recovering themselves, they sat on deck glaring at each
other.
"You're a perfect idiot, Coristine."
"You're a regular old muff, Wilkinson."
The Crew, thinking this was a special pantomime got up impromptu for his
benefit, roared with laughter, and applauded on the tiller. He was about
to execute a hoedown within tiller limits to testify his sympathy with
the fun, when the captain appeared in all his Sunday finery.
"Let her away, you laughing hyena," he yelled to the unlucky Sylvanus,
who regained his mental balance and laid his back to the tiller the
other way.
"Sorry I've no chairs for you gentlemen," he remarked to the seated
travellers; "but I guess the deck's as soft as the wooden kind."
"Don't mention it, my dear captain," said Coristine, as he sprang to his
feet; "we were only taking the latitude and longitude, but it's hard
work on the bones."
"You allow yourself too much latitude, sir, both in your actions and in
your unjustifiable remarks," muttered the pedagogue, more slowly
assuming the perpendicular.
"Now, captain," cried the lawyer, "I leave it you, sir, as a judge of
language, good and bad. What is the worst thing to call a man, a muff or
an idiot!"
The captain toyed with the lanyard of his tortoise shell rimmed glasses,
then put them deliberately across his nose, coughed judiciously, and
gave his opinion:--
"An ijit is a man that's born without sense and can't keep himself, d'ye
see? But a muff is that stupid, like Sylvanus here, that he can't use
the sense he's got. That being the case, a muff is worse than an ijit."
"Mr. Wilkinson, I bow, as in duty bound, to the verdict of the court,
and humbly apologize for having called you something worse than an
idiot. In my poor opinion, sir, you are not worse than the unfortunate
creature thus described."
Wilkinson was about to retort, when The Crew called out that the
schooner was in the Bay, and that the lights of Barrie could be seen in
the distance.
"Keep to your helm, Sylvanus," growled the captain; "there's three pair
of eyes here as good as yourn, and I hope with more sense abaft 'em."
Sylvanus relapsed into silence of a modified kind, merely whistling in a
soft way his original copyright tune. As the travellers had never seen
Kempenfeldt Bay before, they admired it very much, and forgot their
little misunderstanding, while arm in arm they leaned over the bulwarks,
and quoted little snatches of poetry in one another's ears. The
twinkling lights of the town upon the cliffs suggested many a pleasing
passage, so that Wilkinson told his dear Corry he was more than repaid
for the trouble incident on their expedition by the sweet satisfaction
of gazing on such a scene in company with a kindred spirit of poesy. To
this his comrade replied, "Wilks, my dear boy, next to my mother you're
the best friend I ever hope to have."
"Let us cherish these sentiments for one another, kind friend, and the
cloud on the horizon of our tour will never rise to darken its happy
future," after which the learned dominie recited the words of Ducis:--
"_Noble et tendre amitié, je te chante en mes vers_."
"Murder!" cried Coristine, "Do you know that that Miss Jewplesshy, or Do
Please, or whatever her name is, is French?"
"O, Corry, Corry, how could you break in upon a scene of purest
friendship and nature worship like this with your wretched misses? O,
Corry, be a man!"
"The anchor's agoin' out," remarked The Crew, as he passed by; so the
travellers rushed to the capstan and got hold of the spikes. Out went
the cable, as Coristine sang:--
Do! my Johnny Boker,
I'm a poo-er sailor,
Do! my Johnny Boker,
Do!!!
The ship made fast, the captain said, "Sylvanus will take you gentlemen
ashore in the dingy. It only holds three, so I'll wait till he comes
back." The pedestrians protested, but in vain. Sylvanus should take them
ashore first. So they bade the captain good-bye with many thanks and
good wishes, and tumbled down into the dingy, which The Crew brought
round. The captain shouted from the bulwarks in an insinuating way,
"I'll keep my eye on you, Mr Wilkinson, trying to steal an old man's
niece away from him," at which the victim shuddered. Away went the dingy
some fifty yards or more, when Coristine called out, "Have you got the
knapsacks, Farquhar, my dear?"
"Why, bless me, no," he answered. "I thought you had them." "Row back
for your life, Sylvanus, to get the blessed knapsacks;" and Sylvanus,
patient creature, did as he was told. The captain threw them over the
side with another farewell speech, and then the dingy made for the bank,
while Coristine sang in a rich voice:--
Pull for the shore, sailor,
Pull for the shore.
They landed, and, much against The Crew's will, he was compelled to
receive a dollar from each of his passengers.
"I'll see you again," he said, as he rowed back for the captain. "I'll
see you again up in Grey, along of the old man and the gals, mark my
word if I don't."
"Glad to see you, Sylvy, old fresh (he was going to say 'old salt,' but
corrected himself in time), glad to see you anywhere," bawled the
lawyer, "but we've made a vow to dispense with female society in our
travels. Ta, ta!"