THE SPEARING OF ALFRED.
"The spears they carried, though entirely of wood, were dangerous
weapons," says the old writer in describing the armament of a tribe of
the South Sea islanders. "Their points are hardened by being subjected
to fire, and, in the hands of those fierce men, they are as deadly as
the assegai of the African."
This passage, which he had stumbled upon somewhere, was of deepest
interest to young Harlson. His armament, he felt, was not yet what it
should be. He had arrived at the dignity of a gun, it was true, but
that was quite another thing. What he needed was something especially
adapted for personal encounter and for any knight-errantry which
chanced to offer itself. He had imagined what might occur if he were
with Katie Welwood and they should be assailed by anything or anybody.
He had large ideas of what was a lover's duty, and was under the
impression, from what he had read, that a proper knight should go
always prepared for combat. So he had fashioned him a spear, a
formidable weapon contrived with great exactitude after the South Sea
island recipe. He had gone into the woods and selected a blue beech,
straight as could be found, and nearly an inch in thickness. From this
he had cut a length of perhaps ten feet, which, with infinite labor and
risk of jack-knife, he had whittled down to smoothness and to
whiteness. Upon one end he left as large a head as the sapling would
allow, and this, after shaving it into the fashion of a spear-blade, he
had plunged into the fire until it had begun to char. He had scraped
away the charring with a piece of broken glass, and, as a result of his
endeavors, had really a spear with a point of undoubted sharpness and
great hardness. He took huge pride in his new weapon, and carried it
to school with him for days and on his various woodland expeditions,
but there had come no chance to rescue any distressful maiden anywhere,
and the envy and admiration of the other boys had but resulted in
emulation and in the appearance of similar warlike gear among them.
He had tired of carrying the thing about, and had for some time left it
peacefully at home, leaning beside the hog-pen. Now all was different.
The time had come! He would have revenge, and have it in a gory way.
As the South Sea islanders treated their foes, his should be treated.
He would go upon the war-path, and as for Alf--well, he was sorry for
him in a general way, but all mercy was dead within his breast
specifically. He remembered something in the reader:
"'Die! spawn of our kindred! Die! traitor to Lara!'
As he spake, there was blood on the spear of Mudara!"
There must be blood, and he laid his plans with what he considered the
very height of savage craft and ingenuity.
The father of Alf was a sturdy man and good one, but he had a weakness.
He was the chief supporter in the neighborhood of the itinerant
minister who exhorted throughout this portion of the country, and he
had imbibed, perhaps, too much of a fancy for hearing himself talk at
revival meetings, and for hearing himself in long prayers at home. His
petitions covered a great range of subjects, and he was regular in
their presentation. The family prayers before breakfast every morning
were serious matters to the boys from one point of view, and not as
serious as they should have been from another. Present, and kneeling
at chairs about the room, they always were on these occasions, for the
order was imperative, and the father's arm was strong, and above the
door hung a strap of no light weight, constituting as it had once done
that portion of a horse's harness known technically as the bellyband.
So the boys were always there, each at his particular chair, and Grant
Harlson, who had been present at these orisons many a time, knew
exactly where Alf's chair was, and the attitude he must occupy. It was
close beside an open window, and his back was always toward the
opening, this particular attitude having been dictated by the father in
the vain hope of making his buoyant offspring more attentive if their
gaze were diverted from things outside. And all these circumstances
the dreadful savage from the South Sea islands was considering with
care. They are very regular in their habits in the country, and he
knew just the moment when the morning devotions would begin--some
fifteen minutes before the breakfast hour. He knew about how long he
would be in traversing the distance between his own house and the scene
of the coming tragedy, and the morning after his resolve was made he
bolted his own breakfast in a hurry, seized his spear, and scurried
down the wood road until he approached the verge of the Maitland
clearing. Then began a series of extraordinary movements.
Mr. Maitland's house stood close by the wood at one side of the
clearing, and Grant could easily have walked unperceived until within a
few yards of the place, had he but kept hidden by the trees; but such
was not his course. Right across the clearing, and passing near the
house, had been dug a great ditch a yard in depth, a year or two
before, with the intent of draining a piece of lowland lately
subjugated. This ditch had been overgrown with weeds until it was
almost hidden from sight, and now in summer time its bottom was but a
sandy surface. It was with the aid of this natural shelter that the
wily invader proposed to steal upon his enemy. Already he was lurking
near its entrance.
Just why he had to "lurk" at this particular juncture Grant could not
probably have told. There was not the slightest necessity for lurking.
There were no windows in the side of the house toward him, and no one
was visible about the place, but he knew what he had read, and he knew
that the savages of the South Sea islands were always addicted to
lurking just previous to springing upon their unsuspecting victims, and
he was bound to lurk and do it thoroughly. His manner of lurking
consisted, before he reached the clearing fence, in crouching very low
and creeping along in a most constrained and uncomfortable manner,
occasionally dropping to the ground slowly and with utter noiselessness
and rising again with equal caution. All this time the face of the
young man wore what he conceived to be an expression of most bloody
purpose craftily concealed. Upon reaching the fence, he shot his head
above it, and withdrew it with lightning-like rapidity, frightening
almost into convulsions, in her nest, a robin whose home was between
the rails in the immediate vicinity. Of course he could have looked
through the fence with greater ease, but that would have involved no
such dramatic effect. His sudden view of the landscape taken, the boy
climbed the fence, ran to the dry ditch, parted the overhanging weeds
and leaped down. Once in the dry waterway, he was utterly concealed
from view, even had any one been near; but that made no difference with
his precautions. He knew that after savages had lurked, they always
glided, and that what the writers describe as "a snake-like motion" was
something absolutely essential.
Spear in hand and creeping on his hands and knees, the destroyer
advanced along the drain, lying flat and wriggling with much patience
wherever a particularly clear stretch of sand presented itself. Half
way across the field he raised his head with a movement so slow that a
full minute was occupied in the performance, parted the weeds gently
and peered out to get his bearings and ascertain if any foemen were in
sight. There were no foemen, and his progress had been satisfactory.
The remainder of the desperate advance was made with no less adroitness
and success. At last there fell upon the ear of the avenger the sound
of a human voice. He was close to the house, and the morning exercises
had begun!
Here was the moment for the exhibition of all South Sea island craft,
and the moment was about at hand, too, for exhibition of the full
measure of a South Sea islander's ferocity! The islander glided from
the ditch, crept to the house and slowly put forth his head until he
could see around the corner. There, within three feet of him, back to
the window, kneeling beside his chair, was Alf, ostensibly paying deep
attention to his father's unctuous and sonorous sentences, though
really, as Grant could see, engaged in flicking kernels of corn at his
brother in another corner. His jeans trousers were, as a result of his
present attitude, drawn tightly across that portion of his body nearest
to the window, and never fairer mark was offered savage spear! Not a
moment did the avenger hesitate. He poised his weapon, took deadly
aim, and lunged!
Never was quiet of a summer morning broken more suddenly and
startlingly. A yell so loud, so wild, so blood-curdling, ascended from
within the farm-house, that even nature seemed to shiver for a moment.
Then came the rush of feet and the clamor of many voices. Out of doors
ran all the household, the father included, so appalling had been Alf's
cry of apparently mortal agony, to learn the source of all the trouble.
There was nothing to be seen. Not a living being was in sight. It
dawned upon the elders gradually that nothing very serious had
occurred, and the father and the females of the household went in to
breakfast, the exercises of the morning not being now renewed, while
Alf and his brother scoured the wood. Upon one leg of Alf's jeans
trousers appeared an artistic dab of red. He had been wounded, and for
days the sitting down and the uprising of him would be acts of care.
And where was the South Sea islander? Almost as he lunged he had
leaped backward around the corner of the house and run for the covered
ditch. Once in that covert, he did not "lurk" to any great extent. He
crawled away as rapidly as his hands and knees would carry him,
reasoning that the boys would, upon finding no one near the house, run
naturally to the wood in search of the enemy. They never thought of
the old ditch, though, later in the day, the thing occurred to them,
and an examination of the sandy bottom told the story. The edge of the
field was reached, the islander lying very low until he could climb the
fence in safety. Then he examined his fatal spear-point. It appeared
incarnadined. There was certainly blood on the spear of Mudara!
A week later Alf caught Grant, and, despite another valiant struggle,
licked him mercilessly. A year later the fortunes of war had turned
the other way. As they grew, these boys, like race-horses
well-matched, passed each other, physically, time and again, one now
surging to the front and then another, with no great difference at any
time between them.