said Dick. Then instantly he began an apology for the reference to so
purely personal a matter, but Rudolf Dunbar interrupted him.
“No apology is due. I was voluntarily talking of my own personal
affairs, and your remark was entirely pertinent. My garments are made
of very costly fabrics, but as such materials endure all sorts of hard
usage and last for a very long time, I find it cheaper in the end to
buy only such; more important still is the convenience of it, to one
leading the sort of life I do. Instead of having to visit a tailor
three or four times a year, I have need of his services only at long
intervals. The garments I now have on were made for me in London three
years or so ago, and I have worn no others since. In the meanwhile
I have been up the Amazon for thousands of miles, besides visiting
Labrador and the southern coast of Greenland.
“That brings me to my principal item of expense, which is the passage
money I must pay in order to get to the regions I wish to explore. That
costs me a good deal at each considerable removal, but in the meanwhile
I have earned greatly more by my work.
“But pardon me for prosing so about myself. I’ll say not another word
now, so that you young gentlemen may be free to make whatever use
you wish of this superb day. I shall spend the greater part of it in
figuring some specimens with my colored crayons. Good morning!”
XXIX
TOM FINDS THINGS
AS soon as the visitor disappeared through a tangled growth of bushes,
Larry began marking out the duties of the day.
“First of all we must make ourselves comfortable,” he said, as if
reflecting.
“That means a bush shelter of some sort,” interrupted Tom.
“No, it doesn’t either,” Larry answered, in a tone of playfulness like
Tom’s own.
“What does it mean, then?”
“It means a shelter—not ‘of some sort’ as you say, but of a good sort.
The wind blows hard here sometimes as the place is so exposed to a
broad passage leading to the sea outside. So we must build something
that isn’t easily carried away by a squall.”
“It would mean a good many other things,” said Cal, “if I were the
architect selected to make designs, with front elevations, floor plans,
estimates and all the other things they do before beginning to put up
a building.”
“Why, of course, Cal, you are to direct the work,” answered Larry. “You
know more about such things than all the rest of us combined.”
“Well, then, first of all, our palatial country residence must face
directly away from the sea,” said Cal. “If it had its wide open side
in any other direction we’d be drenched inside of it every time a rain
came in from the sea, and that is where nearly all the hard rains come
from here. Then, again, if the hovel faced the wrong way it would be
filled full of smoke every time a sea breeze blew, and in this exposed
place that is nearly all the time. There are seventeen other good
and sufficient reasons for fronting the structure in the way I have
decreed, but the two I have mentioned are sufficient to occupy and
divert your young minds as we go on with the work. Now let all hands
except Larry busy themselves chopping crotched poles of the several
dimensions that I’ll mark here in the sand, for lack of other and more
civilized stationery.”
With a sharpened stick Cal began writing in the sand.
“Four poles, 12 feet long, and three or four inches thick.”
“But what do you want me to do, Cal?” asked Larry.
“Go fishing,” said Cal. “We must have some dinner after awhile. See if
you can’t bring in a sheepshead or some other fish weighing five or six
pounds and fit for roasting.”
In an instant Larry was off with cast net, shrimp bucket and some fish
lines.
Cal resumed his sand writing, cataloguing the various sorts and sizes
of poles wanted. Presently he stopped short, muttering:
“But then we’re not lumbermen, and the only tool we have to chop with
is our one poor little hand ax. It won’t take three of us to wield that
toy. Say, Tom, suppose you take your gun and see if you can’t get us
some game. We’ll do well enough with fish for dinner, but we must have
some meat for to-night. So go and get some. I know you’re half crazy
to be off in the woods shooting. Dick and I will work at the poles
and palmetes—that’s apt alliteration, but it was quite accidental, I
assure you. One can use the ax and the other cut palmete leaves with
his jackknife, exchanging jobs now and then. We’ll need a great stack
of the palmetes with which to cover the roof and three sides of our
mansion.”
“Yes, of course, and fortunately they grow very thick just out there
in the woods,” said Dick. “I saw them early this morning.”
“Yes, I know. I saw them yesterday when I picked out a place for the
camp. Our need of them was one of the considerations I had in mind. By
the way, Dick”—the two were busily at work now—“what do you think of
the professor’s plan of sleeping?”
“It saves him a lot of trouble,” Dick answered.
“Yes, in one way. But if he had anything with him that water would
spoil, it would make more trouble than it saves. As he has nothing of
the kind—”
“How about his reserve ammunition? A man who depends upon his gun for
all his food must have a lot of cartridges somewhere.”
“That’s so, but his rifle is probably of very small calibre, so that a
good many cartridges can be packed in a small space. Of course we can’t
ask him.”
At that moment “the professor,” as Cal had called him, appeared, with
profuse apologies.
“It was really inexcusable,” he protested, “for me to go away as I did
when you young gentlemen had a shelter to build. I should have stayed
to help in the work, as I am to share in its advantages. But I am so
unused to providing shelter for myself that I quite forgot your larger
necessities. Fortunately I heard the blows of your ax and was reminded
of my duty. I have come at once to assist you.”
“Oh, you mustn’t think of that, Professor,” answered Cal. “We really
need no assistance. My brother and Tom have gone off for supplies of
meat and fish, but they’ll be back presently, and meanwhile we two can
use the only tools we have for this kind of work. Besides, you have
something of your own to do.”
“Nothing that may not be as well done at another time. I must insist
upon bearing my share of the work of constructing a camp which you have
been courteous enough to invite me to share.”
“But you don’t sleep under a roof—even a flimsy one of palmete
leaves,” objected Dick. “We invited you to join us here only because we
like good company.”
“Thank you for the compliment. No, I do not sleep under a roof, but
your roof will be a great convenience and comfort to me in other ways.”
“I don’t see—” Cal began, but Dunbar broke in.
“You don’t see how? No, of course not. How should you? But that is only
because you know so little of my tasks. I must write my scientific
reports and articles carefully and voluminously, and I must make
accurate color drawings of my specimens to accompany my text. I am
badly behind with my work in these ways, and the very best time to
bring up the arrears is of long, rainy days, when the living things
I must study—all of them except the fishes—are hidden away in such
shelters as they can find. But I cannot sit in the rain and write
or draw. That would only be to spoil materials of which I have all
too little already. So the rainy days are lost to me, or have been,
hitherto. Now that I am to enjoy your hospitality, I shall sit in your
shelter when it rains, and get a world of writing and drawing done.”
“Well, at any rate, we shall not need your help in this work, and
we have no tool for you to work with if we did. As to our little
hospitality, it mustn’t and doesn’t involve any obligation on your
part. If it did it wouldn’t be hospitality at all, but something very
different. Why not put in your time on your own work?”
“I would, if my head didn’t object,” the man of science answered rather
dejectedly, Cal thought, but with a smile.
“Have you a headache, then?” the youth asked, putting as much
sympathy into his tone as was possible to a robust specimen of young
manhood who had never had a headache in his life. “It must be very
distressing.”
“No, I haven’t a headache,” the professor answered. “I wish it was only
that. No, my head isn’t clear to-day, and when I try to work it gets
things jumbled up a bit. I tried this morning to write a scientific
account of the habits of a certain fish that these waters bear, and
somehow I got him out into the bushes using wings that I had never
observed before. Now I must go and catch another specimen of that fish
and examine it carefully to see if the wings are really there or not.
You see in cases of doubt a scientist dares not trust anything to
conjecture or memory. He must examine and make sure.”
So saying, the professor started off to catch the fish he wanted. He
had spoken in a half jocular tone and with a mischievous smile playing
about his lips, though his words were serious enough.
“What do you think, Dick?” Cal asked as soon as the man was well beyond
earshot; “is he a trifle ‘off’? has he lost some of his buttons?”
“Possibly, but I doubt it.”
“But what nonsense he talked!”
“Yes, I know. But did you observe his smile? He was only doing in his
way what you so often do in yours. Your smile often contradicts your
words—making its bow, as it were, to the nonsense you are uttering.
Yet we don’t suspect you of having slipped your cable.”
“I suppose that’s it,” said Cal, “but allow me to suggest that our
chatter cuts no palmetes, and we’re in need of a great number.”
By the time the needed poles and crotch sticks were cut and sharpened
for driving into the ground, Larry returned, bringing with him one huge
fish and a bucket full of croakers and whiting, all of which he had
dressed on the shore.
He wrapped the large fish in a mass of wet sea weed and buried it in
the hot ashes and coals to bake. After setting such other things to
cook as he thought necessary, he joined the others in the work of
setting up the poles and fastening their ends securely together with
vines as flexible as hempen rope. The wetter parts of the woodlands
yielded such vines in abundance, and as somewhat experienced sailors
the boys all knew how to tie knots that no strain could loosen.
By the time that the dinner was cooked the framework of the shelter was
more than half done.
“We’ll knock off for dinner now,” Larry suggested, “and after dinner
the whole force will set to work finishing the framework and covering
it. There are bunks to be made, too, and filled with long gray moss,
so we’ll have a very full afternoon.”
“By the way, Professor,” asked Cal, as the man of science rejoined the
group, “are you quite sure you won’t let us make a bunk for you?”
“Oh, yes—quite sure.”
“Did you catch the fish you wanted to examine, or did he take to his
wings and fly away?”
“Oh, that was only my poor little jest. You didn’t take it seriously,
did you?”
Then, interrupting the reply that Cal had begun to make, he said
rapidly:
“But I did want to make another examination of the fish in question.
You see, when I examined a specimen a few days ago, my attention was
concentrated upon certain definite points, and when I casually observed
something that suggested the possibility of its having a sense of
taste, I went on with the other questions in my mind and quite forgot
to satisfy myself on this point. But when I sat down this morning to
write notes of my observations, the point came back to my mind, and I
saw that I must examine another specimen before writing at all. That is
what I meant by saying, in figurative speech, that my fish went flying
away among the bushes, or whatever else it was that I said.”
“But, Professor,” said Larry, “something you said about a fish’s sense
of taste just now awakens my curiosity. May I ask you—”
“Not now,” said Dick. “Let’s reserve all that for this evening after
supper. You see Tom isn’t here now, and he will want to hear it all.
Maybe the professor will let us turn loose our tongues to-night and ask
him the dozen questions we have in our minds.”
“Yes—a thousand, if you wish,” Dunbar answered. “I have studied fish
with more interest, perhaps, than I ever felt in investigating any
other subject, and naturally I like to air the results of my inquiries.”
Larry busied himself taking the dinner from the fire, and as he did so
Tom returned.
“Hello, Tom!” called out Cal as the boy was struggling through the
bushes back of the camp. “Just in time for dinner. Did you get anything
worth while?”
“Judge for yourself,” he replied, entering the open space and dropping
a huge turkey gobbler on the ground. “Isn’t that a beauty? Got him on
the wing, too. But I forgot, Cal, you don’t approve of post-mortem
chatter over game. One thing I must tell you, anyhow. I found a patch
of these and brought home some samples in my pockets to see if it’s
worth while to go after more.”
As he spoke he drew out a number of sweet potatoes and cast them down.
“Are there more to be had?” Larry asked eagerly.
“Yes, bushels of them—growing wild.”
“Good! Tom, you’ve a positive genius for finding precisely what we
want. Our supply of bread and bread substitutes is very scant, or
was before you made this discovery, and with all due respect for
your opinion, Professor, I am satisfied that we need a considerable
proportion of starchy foods to go with our meat.”
“Oh, I agree with you as to that,” quickly answered the professor.
“I have never doubted it. I only said that man, being an omnivorous
animal, can live upon an exclusive diet of meat just as he can live on
the starchy foods alone. I think I stated distinctly that he is better
off with both than with either alone.”
“You certainly did say that, Professor,” said Dick; “it is only that
Larry was inattentive at the time of your lecture. But I say, Tom, is
it far to your potato patch?”
“Only about half a mile or a little less.”
They were all busily eating dinner now, and for a minute there was
nothing more said. Presently Tom spoke:
“I say, Larry, which of you fellows can best be spared to go with me
after dinner, and help me bring in the deer?”
“What deer?” asked all in a breath.
“Why, the one I shot an hour or so ago. I managed to hang him up in a
tree out of reach of other animals, I think, but I suppose he ought to
be brought to camp pretty soon.”
Cal rose threateningly.
“I am strongly tempted to throw things at you, Tom Garnett,” he
began. “But there isn’t anything to throw except the ax, and if I
threw that I might incapacitate you for walking, and without your
assistance we might not be able to find that deer. What do you mean,
sir, by interrupting us at dinner with a surprise like that? Don’t you
realize that it is bad for the digestion? In plain language that even
your intelligence can perhaps grasp, why in the name of all that is
sensible, didn’t you tell us about the thing when you first came?”
“I’ve associated with you, Cal, too long and too intimately to retain
a just appreciation of what is sensible. Anyhow, I wanted the fun of
springing the thing on you in that way. If you’ve finished your dinner,
we’ll be off after the venison. It isn’t half a mile away.”
XXX
DUNBAR TALKS AND SLEEPS
IT required nearly all the afternoon for Tom and Cal to bring the deer
to camp and dress it. In the meantime Larry, Dick and Dunbar—who
insisted upon helping and did his part very cleverly—worked upon the
shelter and the bunks inside. As a result the hut was ready for use
that night, though not quite finished in certain details.
By Larry’s orders no further work was to be done after supper, but
supper was to be late, as there was the turkey to be roasted, and he
wanted to roast it right. While he was preparing the bird for the fire,
Dick was rigging up a vine contrivance to serve in lieu of a spit, and
Tom and Cal employed the time in bringing a bushel or two of Tom’s wild
sweet potatoes to camp.
The turkey was suspended by a long vine from the limb of a tree, so
hung as to bring the fowl immediately in front of a fire built at
that point especially for this roasting. Dick had bethought him to
go to the dory and bring away a square of sheet copper, carried for
boat-repairing purposes. This he scoured to brightness with sand, after
which he fashioned it into a rude dripping pan, and placed it under
the turkey to catch the juices for basting purposes. There was nothing
remotely resembling a spoon in the camp or the boat, but Dick was handy
with his jackknife, and it did not take him long to whittle out a
long-handled wooden ladle with which to do the basting.
By another device of his the roasting fowl was kept turning as fast
or as slowly as might seem desirable. This device consisted of two
very slender vines attached to the supporting vine at a point several
feet above the fire. One of the “twirlers,” as Dick called the slender
vines, was wrapped several times around the supporting vine in one
direction and the other in the opposite way.
Sitting on opposite sides of the fire, and each grasping a “twirler,”
Dick and Larry kept the turkey turning first one way and then the other.
While they were engaged in this, an abundant supply of Tom’s sweet
potatoes were roasting in the ashes.
“Now we are at Quasi,” said Cal, just before the turkey was declared
“done to a turn”—“at Quasi, the object of all our hopes, the goal of
our endeavors, and the guiding star of all our aspirations during a
period of buffetings, trials and sore afflictions. We are securely at
Quasi, and our residence—which prosaic people might call a hut, hovel
or shanty, but which is to us a mansion—is practically finished. It
is only meet and fit, and in accordance with Homeric custom, that we
should celebrate the occasion and the toilsome achievements that have
made it possible, by all possible lavishness of feasting. All of which
means that I am going to make a pot of robust and red-hot coffee to
drink with the turkey and ‘taters.’”
It was a hungry company that sat down on the ground to eat that supper,
and if there was anything lacking in the bill of fare, such appetites
as theirs did not permit the boys to find out the fact.
“It is an inflexible rule of good housewives,” drawled Cal, when the
dinner was done, “that the ‘things’ as they call the dishes, pots,
pans, and the like, shall be cleared away and cleansed. So here goes,”
gathering up the palmete leaves that had served for plates and tossing
them, together with the bones and fragments of the feast, upon the
fire, where they quickly crackled into nothingness. “There aren’t any
cooking utensils, and as for these exquisitely shaped agate iron cups,
it is the function of each fellow to rinse the coffee out of his own.
Oh, yes, there’s the coffee pot I forgot it, and by way of impressing
the enormity of my fault upon a dull intelligence I’ll clean that
myself. A hurried scouring with some sand and water, followed by a
thorough rinsing, ought to do the business finely.”
“I say, Cal,” said Dick, “I wish you would remember that this is your
off night.”
“I confess I don’t understand. Do you mean that I shall leave the
coffee pot for some other member of the company to scour?”
“No. I mean this is your off night for word-slinging. The professor is
going to tell us some things and we want to hear him. So, ‘dry up.’”
“I bow my head in contriteness and deep humiliation. You have the
floor, Professor.”
“May I ask you young gentlemen not to call me ‘professor’?” Dunbar
asked very earnestly.
“Why, of course, we will do as you like about that,” answered Larry;
“we have been calling you ‘professor’ merely out of respect, and you
told us you were or had been a professor in a college.”
“Yes, I know, and I thank you for your impulse of courtesy. I used the
word descriptively when I told you I had been a ‘professor’ of Natural
History. Used in that way it is inoffensive enough, but when employed
as a title—well, you know every tight-rope walker and every trapeze
performer calls himself ‘professor.’”
“Well, you must at least have a doctorate of some kind,” said Dick,
“and so you are entitled to be addressed as ‘Dr. Dunbar.’”
“No, not at all. Of course a number of colleges have offered me baubles
of that cheap sort—asking to make me ‘LL.D.,’ or ‘Ph. D.,’ or ‘L. H.
D.,’ or some other sham sort of a doctor, but I have always refused
upon principle. I hate shams, and as to these things, they seem to
me to work a grievous injustice. No man ought to be called ‘Doctor’
unless he has earned the degree by a prescribed course of study and
examinations. Honorary degrees are an affront to the men who have
won real degrees by years of hard study. With two or three hundred
colleges in this country, each scattering honorary degrees around and
multiplying them every year, all degrees have lost something of their
value and significance.”
“How shall we address you then?” asked Larry.
“Simply as ‘Mr. Dunbar.’ The President of the United States is entitled
to no other address than ‘Mr. President.’ In a republic certainly
‘Mr.’ ought to be title enough for any man. Call me ‘Mr. Dunbar,’
please.”
“Well, now, Mr. Dunbar, won’t you go on and tell us what you promised?”
“What was it? I have quite forgotten.”
“Why, you said you had been led to suspect that your fish—the kind
that takes wing and flies away into the bushes—had a sense of taste.
Did you mean to imply that fishes generally have no such sense?”
“Yes, certainly. There are very few fishes that have capacity of taste.
They have no need of it, as they bolt their food whole, and usually
alive. There are curious exceptions, and—”
“But, Mr. Dunbar,” interrupted Tom, “is it only because they swallow
their food whole that you think they have no sense of taste? Is there
any more certain way of finding out?”
“Yes, of course. The sense of taste is located in certain nerves,
called for that reason ‘gustatory nerves,’ or ‘taste goblets.’ Now,
as the fishes generally have no gustatory nerves or taste goblets, we
know positively that they do not and cannot taste their food. That is
definite; but the other reason I gave is sufficient in itself to settle
the matter. The gustatory nerves cannot taste any substance until it
is partially dissolved and brought into contact with them in its
dissolved state. You can test that for yourself by placing a dry lump
of sugar in your mouth. Until the saliva begins to dissolve it you can
no more recognize any taste in it than in a similar lump of marble.”
“But why do they eat so voraciously then? What pleasure do they find in
it?” asked Dick.
“Chiefly the pleasure of distending the stomach, but there is also
the natural craving of every living organism for sustenance, without
which it must suffer and die. That craving for sustenance is ordinarily
satisfied only by eating, but it may be satisfied in other ways.
Sometimes a man cannot swallow because of an obstruction in the canal
by which food reaches the stomach. In such cases the surgeons insert a
tube through the walls of the body and introduce food directly into the
stomach. That satisfies the desire for sustenance, though the patient
has not tasted anything. When a fish takes a run and jump at a minnow
and swallows it whole at a gulp, he is doing for himself much the same
thing that the surgeon does for his patient.”
“But, Mr. Dunbar,” Tom asked, “why is it then that the same species
of fish will take a particular kind of bait at one time of year and
won’t touch it at other times? In the very early spring I’ve caught
lots of perch on worms, while a little later they would take nothing
but live bait, and still later, when they were feeding on insects on
the surface, I’ve known them to nose even live bait out of their way,
refusing to take anything but the insects. If they don’t taste their
food, why do they behave in that way?”
“Frankly, I don’t know,” Dunbar answered. “I have formed many
conjectures on the subject, but all of them are unsatisfactory. Perhaps
somebody will solve the riddle some day, but at present I confess I
can’t answer it.”
Dunbar stopped as if he meant to say no more, and Tom became apologetic.
“Won’t you please go on, Mr. Dunbar? I’m sorry I interrupted.”
“Oh, but you must interrupt. If you don’t interpose with questions,
how am I to know whether I’ve made my meaning clear or not? And how am
I to know what else you wish to hear? No, no, no. Don’t withhold any
question that comes into your mind, or I shall feel that I’m making a
bore of myself by talking too much.”
“You spoke,” said Dick, “of certain fishes that are exceptions to the
rule.”