‘What are you going to do with it?’
“‘They can’t hear us, but we can make them see!’ she cried. ‘Hurry! Give
it to me—and your jack-knife!’
“I handed them to her, and she began to pick at the hem of her skirt with
the point of the knife.
“‘We need thread,’ she explained, excitedly, ‘and if this is a
chain-stitch on this hem we can get it!’ I lighted a match. ‘And it is,
Bob, it is!’ she cried. I realized that she had caught an end of thread
and was carefully ripping it out.
“‘Now, Bob,’ she commanded, handing me the card, ‘punch a hole in the
card and tie it through.’ Her voice was weak. From my own struggle to
keep my senses in the awful heat, I knew that she was nearly at the
collapsing point.
“‘What are you going to do with it?’ I gasped.
“‘The door!’ she answered, faintly. ‘Dangle the card through the crack
in the door!’ Then I understood her plan at last, and crawling painfully
over on my knees, I thrust the postal card down the little crack between
the door and the iron jamb.
“‘Pull it up and let it down!’ cried Margaret, with a final effort, and
I jiggled the string so that the paper would dance upon the wall outside.
My head swam with the effect of the terrible heat, and it seemed ages
before any one came.
“Then suddenly the latch was lifted, the door swung open, and in spite of
the blinding daylight which poured in I could see the astonished face of
old Carberry, the baker, peering in at us!
“I caught my sister’s dress, pulling her toward the opening with all the
strength that was left in me, and fell out after her into the old man’s
arms.
“That is why I say,” concluded Mr. Colchester, as he looked round upon
us with a smile, “that it was a girl’s wit that kept me from being baked
like a biscuit. And that is the reason why I say that a girl’s wit is the
best in a tight place—providing the place is tight enough.”
ON A SLIDE-BOARD
By Robert Barnes
At three o’clock on an August morning the press in the little
printing-office on the summit ceased its clatter, and Corey Green brought
out a bundle of _Stars_, wrapped in enameled cloth, to Bart Collamore.
“Here’s your five hundred,” said Corey, “hot from the types.”
“All right,” replied Bart “They’ll be on the hotel counters twenty miles
away by six.”
They walked down the platform before the Summit House. A dim light
illumined the office, but the rest of the long building was dark. Only
two other persons were awake—Frank Simmons, busy over the printing-press,
and Luke Martin, the hotel watchman.
Overhead an occasional star glimmered through the driving wrack, and the
low east disclosed the first faint tokens of a cloudy dawn; but in the
west frowned a vaporous battlement, black and threatening, from which
a strong wind was tearing detached masses and rolling them against the
mountainside. Now and then a few flakes of snow flew by on the raw gale.
Lifting his slide-board from the platform, Bart set it on the cog-rail
midway of the track.
This rail was bolted to a wooden centerpiece on the ties, and consisted
of two parallel strips of wrought angle-iron, connected by steel pins
three inches apart, on which the cogs of the engine worked. He turned the
nut on the brake-rod until the iron plates by means of which the speed of
the board was retarded were in position under the flanges of the rail.
Then he pulled on his gloves, jammed his cap down hard, and buttoned his
reefer up to his neck.
Corey glanced at the black western sky. “You’re liable to hit the storm
going down,” said he.
“Guess I can beat it out,” returned Bart. Seating himself on the
slide-board, with the bundle of papers between his knees, he gripped the
brake-handles. Almost of itself the board began moving.
“I’ll be at the Base House in ten minutes!” he called back, as he sped
away down the slope toward the north, while behind him the drone of the
wind almost drowned Corey’s shout.
“Good luck!”
The slide-board was the conveyance used by employés and trackmen in
descending the mountain railroad. Although perilous for a novice, it was
easy of management for an experienced hand. It was of seven-eighths-inch
spruce, ten inches wide, and something over a yard long. Three cleats
screwed across its top kept it from splitting. Underneath were two sets
of “shoes,” the forward of wood, the rear of iron, parallel strips half
an inch thick and four inches apart, just far enough for the top of the
cog-rail to slide between them.
As Bart slipped downward, the black buildings on the summit were blotted
out by driving clouds. Little by little he swerved westward, turning his
back to the dawn, hearing only the hoarse murmur of the rising gale and
the rattle of his board.
Guide-books say that the three and one-third miles from summit to base
may be covered by slide-board in twenty minutes. Actually, the record
is two minutes and forty-seven seconds. This can be appreciated when
one remembers that there is a drop of four thousand feet, and that the
average grade approximates one in four. Bart had made the trip some
hundreds of times in his fourteen years on the road. Every morning that
summer he had gone down before daybreak, in order that the little paper
printed on the peak might have early distribution among the various
hotels.
Faster and faster sped the board. The top of the rack was abundantly
lubricated with oil from the cogs of the engine, and the grade was
growing steeper. On the left a dim shaft flitted by, memorial of a life
lost by exposure on the mountain years before.
Bart put a little more pressure on his brakes. The stout birch handles,
somewhat smaller than baseball bats and about as long as the board
itself, were connected forward with the brake-rod running across the
front in a hollow wooden bar, and with an iron plate under each flange
of the rail. To retard his course, the rider simply pulled up on the
handles, which were directly under his arms, thus lifting the plates
against the flanges and pressing the board down harder on the top of the
rack.
The track curved northwest for the next fifteen hundred feet to the Gulf
Tank, a water cistern on the left. The grade varied from one in four to
one in eight. The wind, keen, strong, and shot with hurrying snowflakes,
stung even Bart’s seasoned face.
He had worked on the mountain long enough to know what was coming out of
that inky bank ahead.
Gulf Tank swept past, a square gray shadow, and the track gradually swung
west. And now he caught it in good earnest. The moan of the blast had
risen to a furious howling. Bullets of sleet pelted his cheeks. Right
before him rose a black wall, the edge of the real storm. It looked
almost as if it were solid. Catching his breath, he ducked his head, and
bolted straight into the heart of the tempest.
In a second it enveloped him, rain, snow, sleet and hail. His board
whizzed faster over the wet, slippery rail.
The grade increased, and he knew he had reached Long Trestle. Beyond lay
Jacob’s Ladder, the steepest place on the line, pitched considerably over
one in three. He must not go too fast there. It was more than a mile and
a half still to the bottom. If the board once got away from him—
Bart stiffened himself against the fierce blast, gripped the
brake-handles hard, and pulled up on them. A stream of sparks trailed out
on each side, as the plates bit at the flanges.
He was leaning well forward now, boring head foremost into the yelling
gale. His eyes were closed; he could not keep them open.
Now the Trestle was past, and the Ladder lay just ahead. He could tell
where he was by the feel of the track. His head was clear, his nerves
steady. All he needed to do was to keep a good hold on those handles, and
the board would soon carry him safely to the base.
Suddenly his speed increased. He had struck the Ladder. The grade at its
head was not far from one in two. Down he shot, lifting hard on the birch
bars.
What was that? It could not be that left brake-handle was buckling! Yes!
Something had given way. Up came his hand, higher, higher, higher, yet
there was no response of iron grinding against iron.
For just a second Bart felt sick.
The flange was only three-fourths of an inch wide. If that left plate
once got out from under it, he knew very well what would happen.
A single brake could never hold the board on the rail. On the next curve,
if not before, it would bound from the track with tremendous velocity,
and its rider would land somewhere on the rugged mountainside with a
broken neck. Somehow, if he cared to live, that plate must never lose its
grip on the flange.
The Ladder was four hundred feet long and thirty feet above the rocks at
its highest point. Bart was travelling forty miles an hour, so crossing
the trestle took less than ten seconds. Before he left it, he saw what he
must do.
Instinctively easing up on his right bar, so as to bring an even pressure
on both sides, he ran his left hand quickly forward down the birch stick,
to locate the break. Not many inches from the socket his fingers found
it, where a knurl, imperceptibly weakened by long use, had evidently
yielded at last.
Sitting where he did, he could just reach beyond the break by extending
his arm full length, and he could exert only a slight upward pull. If
he hoped to keep the board on the rail, he must immediately shift his
position, so that he might put out his full strength. Several short
curves were just ahead.
To change one’s place on a narrow board flying down a mountainside at
forty miles an hour through a pitch-black hurricane is no fool’s task.
Very carefully Bart hitched straight forward, until his knees were
upright, and he was able to lift strongly on the unbroken portion of the
bar. His speed was now simply terrific.
Round a curve he whisked, leaning far inward in the fear that he might
ride the rail. Then, as his board settled down on a straightaway, he
pulled up with all his might.
To his horror, he found that with so short a leverage he could not press
the plate against the flange hard enough to check his speed.
The board was running away with him!
Bart knew every yard of that track, every pitch and curve, from the
engine-house at the summit to the Marshfield turntable; and he realized
that this was the most critical minute in all his years of railroading.
Two courses were open to him—he might stick to the board, or he might
roll off.
Which was the less dangerous?
If he rolled off at that speed, the best he could hope for would be a
fearful bruising, broken bones and insensibility. It would be hours
before rescuers could find him; and hours in that storm meant death.
If he stayed on, he took the chance of being hurled from the rail at some
curve; besides, what would happen when he reached the bottom, if he ever
did reach it?
He decided to stay on.
The slide-board took the curves at express speed. Time and again Bart
thought it was flying off. He wondered to find himself still sitting
hunched on the spruce, when Waumbek Tank slipped by. He knew it had
passed, although he did not see it.
But little more than a mile due west, and almost thirteen hundred feet
lower, lay the terminus. Was this to be his last ride on the line? In a
couple of minutes at the most the thing would be decided. Bart manned
himself for the finish.
On he shot, straining at the bars, head down through the pitch darkness.
He was dashing against a forty-mile gale at an equal speed; that was
equivalent to standing still in a hurricane blowing eighty miles. It
shrieked round him with indescribable fury, striving to hurl him backward
from his seat. His cap was torn away, and the sleet pattered like a
sand-blast on his bare skull.
Cold Spring Tank flitted past, and the last steep pitch was near,
seventeen hundred to the mile. In a moment Bart was rushing madly down
the descent. His head swam with the hideous speed. His board vibrated and
trembled as it hurtled along the track. All seemed unreal, uncanny. But
although dazed and buffeted, he never for an instant loosed his grip of
the bars. A “green” man might have lost his head, and that could have had
but one result.
Almost sooner than he could think, he was at the bottom of the pitch,
darting over the Ammonoosuc bridge. Only a few hundred feet more. The
track, he knew, was clear to its end, for cars and engines were housed
for the night. Now for one last, long, hard pull!
Deaf, blind, numb, exhausted, bent almost double, he drained his strength
to the dregs for a clutch on the handles; then he lifted, as if he would
tear the flange from the centerpiece.
There was a terrific shrieking as the iron surfaces ground together. Fire
followed each brake.
A building rushed by on the right—the carpenter-shop. Bart did not
actually see it, but he knew it was gone.
Then came the car-barn, the turntable, the engine-house and repair-shop,
and the long wood-shed. Less than thirty yards more! His speed was
slackening on the level grade, but it was still tremendous.
And now the laundry was past—the last building. Twenty-five feet beyond
it the cog-rail ended. Bart threw all that was left of himself into one
final, mighty wrench.
A second later he found himself rolling blindly along the ties, head
over heels and heels over head, cuffed, punched, battered, as if a dozen
flails were beating him at once on every part of his body. At last he
came to a stop, a bruised, dizzy heap.
After a little Bart sat up, tried his arms and legs, and found he could
get on his feet. He felt himself all over. Luckily his bones were well
padded with muscle, so none of them were broken.
The storm was still blowing forty miles an hour, but by contrast it
seemed to him to be almost over. He hunted until he found his bundle of
papers; it had been tied tightly, and had not burst open. Then he limped
up to the Base House.
“Here are your ‘_Stars_,’” said he to the driver of the team, shivering
outside. “I’ve done my part; now see if you can get ’em to Bethlehem
before six o’clock.”
THE CALL OF THE SEA
By Frederick Palmer
The only memory of his father that Franklin Thompson had was the
photograph of a young naval officer in uniform which his mother, with
tears in her eyes, often showed him. She died when Franklin was six,
leaving him, her only cause for living longer, to the care of his
father’s brother. When he realized how unwelcome he was in his new home,
the only solace he had in the world was the photograph. He would look at
it for an hour at a time, and read again and again the inscription on the
back.
Before he was quite alone in the world he had heard the sea a-calling. On
his holidays he would walk to the shore, and watch the ships go and come.
Each was a speaking individuality, which he would recognize should he
see it again. The salt breath was ever in his nostrils, the tang of salt
spray in his veins.
When he was eleven, his cousin Edward, five years his senior, received
the appointment to Annapolis. If Franklin felt any envy he stifled it.
The inscription on the photograph in his father’s own hand forbade that.
“Be honest; envy nobody; strive hard,” it ran.
Two years later Franklin knew that his school-days were at an end.
“I’ll look for a place for you to learn some business,” said his uncle,
as if the boy’s preferences for an occupation did not count.
Early the next morning Franklin went to the great bay near his home, as
he always did when he was heavy of heart. Three men-of-war, one a new
battle-ship, their white sides gleaming, rested their enormous weights
on the water as gently as swans. On the battle-ship it was visiting day.
From her side the monster reached down her big gangway, with holystoned
steps and immaculate rope, as a gallant officer offers his hand to a lady.
At the threshold of the deck Franklin paused, as one who suddenly
sees his dreams materialize in broad daylight. No one of the knots
of sightseers, going here and there with the spectators’ “Ahs!” and
occasional questions, noticed the boy, who stood immovable, noting every
detail of the leviathan. Each gun seemed to him a living thing.
He saw some jackies going about their appointed duties, and others under
the shade of the awnings aft, mending their clothes. The officer of the
deck must be the happiest man in the world, Franklin thought. He imagined
how his father must have looked, pacing back and forth in the same way.
Oh, if his father were only alive, then perhaps he, too, might go to
Annapolis! He looked up at the bridge and imagined himself in a great
storm, with the spray stinging his face and blinding his eyes, and the
mountain of steel as obedient to his commands as a bicycle to the turn of
the handle-bar.
“Wouldn’t you like to look around a bit?” asked a voice at his elbow.
Its owner, Franklin saw, was a boy of about his own age, dressed like the
jackies in summer white.
“Would I? Would I?” The way Franklin asked the question was answer
enough from any one boy to another.
“I guess you’ll do,” said his new friend, laughing. “My name’s Harry
Grimm. I’m a ’prentice.”
Harry showed how the ammunition was hoisted for the thirteen-inch gun by
touching a button; he slipped a dummy shell into the breech of one of
the three-inch rapid fires; but he was quite unable to answer all of his
guest’s questions.
Franklin did not leave the man-of-war until the last boat was going
ashore. That night he told his uncle of his desire to join the navy as an
apprentice.
Uncle William was in unusually bad temper. He thought a moment and then
said:
“I don’t believe you’ll ever be any use in business. Probably you’d
run away to sea if I got you a place. I’ll take you to the navy-yard
to-morrow.”
At any rate, Uncle William thought, he would be free from any further
responsibility or care for the boy. Nevertheless, he knew what Franklin’s
proud father or his proud mother, were either of them alive, would say.
That thought stung him a little.
While his cousin was at the school where officers are made, Franklin was
to be trained for a seaman. Edward would begin his career with rank and
position just beyond the highest grade that Franklin could ever attain.
Franklin must be ever on the forecastle side of the dividing line between
officer and man. He might rise to be a chief gunner, while Edward might
be an admiral.
But Franklin did not understand this. He was in the period of
light-hearted youth when the responsibility for his future rested on his
guardian’s shoulders. He was entirely under the spell of the call of the
sea.
A year later found him bound for South America on a small cruiser,
which continued around the Horn and on to Hongkong to join the Asiatic
squadron, which was even then preparing for the conflict with Spain. In
all that long voyage he had never once been seasick, and he had grown to
love the sea from familiarity as much as he had loved it in anticipation.
On that great morning when the American men-of-war ran into Manila Bay,
the executive officer set him to look for torpedo-boats. The story of how
he reported, with his hand to his cap in salute, “Torpedo-boat on our
starboard bow, sir; she’s sinking by the bow, sir; she’s sunk,” went the
round of the messes. After the battle came that long period of waiting
until the army took the city. When the sun was not as hot as an oven, the
clouds poured torrents that rose from the hot awnings in steam.
By this time Franklin had come to comprehend the separation of officer
and man as only actual service can reveal it. Sometimes, with cap in
hand, he had to pass through the ward-room and the officers’ quarters.
These, which had been his father’s portion, would be his cousin’s, but
could never be his.
His fellow apprentices were quite content with the forecastle. They felt
more at home aft than they would forward. There was Charley, for example.
Charley studied as little as he might; he was always getting into
mischief, but was withal a bright, good-hearted fellow, with the makings
of a first-class seaman in him.
The boatswain, known as “Pete” in the forecastle and “Deering”
forward—and there you have his two names—used to fend off intrusion when
Franklin was busy with his books. All his studies had the requirements
for admission to Annapolis in view. Not that he expected ever to have his
learning put to the test. He knew no one, he had no hope of knowing any
one, who could secure for him the coveted appointment. It pleased him to
be ready.
One day, as he was bending over the little box which is at once a
seaman’s work-basket and wardrobe, the captain, who had strolled aft,
stopped by his side, and looking over his shoulder, saw a photograph.
“Why, that’s Thompson!” he exclaimed. “Is he any relation of yours?”
“My father, sir,” Franklin replied, as he sprang to his feet and saluted.
“I did not know that,” the captain repeated, thoughtfully.
He picked up the photograph, and scanned the face of his old messmate.
Afterward he never passed Franklin without a smiling glance. But that
glance, meant so kindly, had a sting. It seemed to say that he was in a
position unworthy of his father’s name.
When a visiting congressman of the United States came aboard the cruiser
as a guest, Pete instantly sought out Franklin, and taking him to one
side where he would not be overheard, said:
“Now’s your chance, my bully boy. A congressman can do ’most anything,
so they say. You go right up to this one and knock your cap smart as
you can, and tell him who your father was and that you want to go to
Annapolis.”
Franklin had not the courage or the presumption, whichever you call it;
Pete called it “gall.”
“If you won’t, sonny, I will.”
And when he saw the congressman sitting on the deck after general
quarters, he approached him with a eulogy as earnest as it was
picturesque. The congressman smiled, and asked to see Franklin.
“Now, sonny,” said Pete, “I’ve cleared the channel; go forward and do
your evolutions.”
As Franklin stood before the elderly, dignified man sitting beside the
captain on the captain’s deck, he felt himself to be quite the most
insignificant apprentice in the world. The congressman looked him over
keenly from head to foot, as if he were examining the texture of the
cloth on the back of his jacket.
“Do you want to go to Annapolis?”
Did he want to? Does the tender shoot of spring want the sunlight?
Franklin’s voice trembled with hope:
“Yes, sir. More than anything else in the world.”
“I’m not making any promises,” the congressman said, finally.
“Congressmen haven’t a pocketful of blanks to fill out whenever they see
a bright boy. I’ll see what I can do.”
When, by the rules of the navy, Franklin was supposed to be sound asleep
that night, he was wide awake, building air-castles. How long would he
have to wait before he heard from the congressman? Would he ever hear?
The statesman did not appear again aboard the cruiser for many days. In
the meantime, a new cadet, with his stripe fresh on his arm, came to the
cruiser. It was none other than Franklin’s own cousin, Edward. When they
met at drill there was no look of recognition in Edward’s face. Later, in
one of the intervals of the day which the forecastle may call its own,
the officer came aft and in a patronizing manner asked the apprentice how
he was getting on. When Franklin told him very well, Edward said it was
awkward for an officer to have a cousin in the forecastle, and walked
away. Franklin flushed at the remark, and repeated under his breath his
father’s advice, as the soldier of the old, superstitious days repeated
his talisman.
The next day Franklin had shore leave. On his way back to the quay he
saw his fellow apprentice, Charley, in bad company. He forgot all else
except his friend’s plight and his horror over it. When, finally, he had
separated Charley from the lounger who wanted to show the sailor boy
the town, the cruiser’s launch had gone. They had to hire a native to
row them out in a banka, which crept at a snail’s pace in the gathering
darkness.
For the first time in his life Franklin was among the accused who stood
at the mast the next morning to hear their sentences from the captain,
who acts as judge, and with the captain was the congressman. Franklin
saw his look of surprise as their eyes met. The captain spoke of his own
grief in delivering sentence of suspension from leave privilege for six
months.
Franklin’s head swam, and his cheeks were aflame. He could only reply
with a hoarse “Yes, sir.”
As he turned to go he heard the congressman say sarcastically that he did
not think “that boy was so very anxious to go to Annapolis.”