AN UNEXPECTED DELIGHT
Sammy and Dot, held prisoners in the hold of the _Nancy Hanks_, made one
painful discovery at least. They learned that without light the time
passed with great slowness.
It seemed as though they had been in the dark many hours longer than was
actually the case. They sat down side by side and seriously ate all the
gumballs. These scarcely satisfied their youthful appetites and, anyway,
as Dot said, it _must_ be supper time.
So they ate all of the provisions they could possibly swallow. This
attack made fearful inroads upon the stock of provisions. There was no
cheese left, few of the animal crackers, and half of the peanut butter
was literally "licked up," for they had to use their fingers.
"Ho!" said Sammy, "what's the odds? Fingers was made before spoons."
"Not our fingers, Sammy Pinkney," retorted Dot. "But maybe pirates don't
mind about table manners."
Just then her boy comrade was not thinking much about the pirate play.
If he had ever felt that he was fitted to rove the seas under the Jolly
Roger banner, on a career of loot and bloodshed, he had quite got over
the hallucination.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to get Dot home. He had a very decided
belief that if his father interviewed him after this escapade something
serious would happen to him.
Dot, having recovered from her first fright, and being blessed now with
a very full stomach, began to nod. She finally fell fast asleep with her
head on Sammy's shoulder. He let her sink down on the boards, putting
the sack of potatoes and his jacket under her head for a pillow.
He could not sleep himself. Of course not! He must keep watch all night
long. No knowing when the people who had stolen the barge might come and
open the hatchway and attack them. Sammy was quite convinced that the
man and the girl had illegally taken possession of the canalboat.
He sat beside the softly breathing Dot and listened to certain rustling
sounds in the hold, wondering fearfully what they meant. It seemed to
him that no rats could make such noises.
"Might be wolves--or snakes," thought the boy, and shivered desperately
as he sat in the dark.
The canalboat continued to go its blundering way, and scarcely a sound
from out-of-doors reached the little boy's ears. Captain Bill Quigg fell
asleep at the rudder arm and only woke up now and then when he came
close to losing his pipe from between his teeth. "Lowise" kept close at
the heels of the ancient mules, urging them with voice and goad. The
hound, misnamed Beauty, slept the unhappy sleep of the flea-ridden dog.
The thunderstorm had cleared the air. It was a beautiful afternoon. For
although the children in the hold thought it long past their usual
supper-time, it was nothing of the kind.
The air in the hold began to feel close and it made Sammy very sleepy as
well as Dot. But the boy was faithful to his trust. He propped his
eyelids open and manfully held his watch.
Frightened? Never more so, was Sammy Pinkney. But there was some pluck
in the youngster and he felt he must put on a bold front before Dot.
As for the canalboat captain and his "crew," they apparently went the
even tenor of their way. Cap'n Bill Quigg was not a very smart
man--either physically or mentally. The blacksmith at Milton had told
Luke Shepard the truth. Little Louise was the smartest member of the
Quigg family, which consisted only of herself, her father and the hound
dog, Beauty.
She practically "ran the business." In some way Quigg had become
possessed of the old _Nancy Hanks_ and the mules. He plodded back and
forth from one end of the canal to the other, taking such freight as he
could obtain. If there chanced to be no freight, as on this occasion, he
was quite philosophical about it.
Louise worried. She was of a keen, anxious disposition, anyway. She
showed it in her face--a hatchet-face at best behind the plentiful
sprinkling of freckles that adorned it. But by no means was the face
unattractive.
She had had little schooling--only such as she had obtained in winter
when the _Nancy Hanks_ was frozen up near a schoolhouse. Then she
studied with avidity. Had she ever remained long enough for the teachers
really to get acquainted with the shy, odd child, she might have made
good friends. As it was, she knew few people well and was as ignorant of
life as it was lived by comfortably situated people as a civilized human
being could be.
She had begun to scheme and plan for daily existence, and to keep the
wolf of hunger away from the door of the canalboat cabin, when she was a
very little girl--no older than Dot Kenway herself, in fact. Now she
seemed quite grown up when one talked with her, despite her crass
ignorance upon most subjects.
This afternoon she paddled on in her bare feet through the mire of the
towpath, while the thunder storm passed over and the sun came out again.
As she urged on the mules she was planning for a delight that had never
yet entered into her crippled life.
She had not urged her father to stop for the farmer's potatoes, whereas
on any other occasion she would have insisted upon doing so. A dollar
to be earned was an important thing to Louise Quigg.
But she had two half dollars saved and hidden away in the cabin. She had
squeezed the sum out of her bits of housekeeping money during the past
two months. For all that time the dead walls and hoardings about
Durginville had been plastered with announcements of a happening the
thought of which thrilled little Louise Quigg to the very tips of her
fingers and toes.
When they reached the Bumstead Lock this afternoon there was a chance
for the girl to leave the mules grazing beside the towpath while the
water rose slowly in the basin, and she could board the boat and talk
with Cap'n Bill.
The hound, awakened by her approach, began sniffing around the edge of
the forward hatch cover.
"Wonder what Beauty smells there?" Louise said idly. But her mind was on
something else. The captain shook his head without much reflection and,
now more thoroughly awakened, lit his pipe again.
"I say, Pap!"
"Wal, Lowise?" he drawled.
"We're going to lay up to-night short of the soapworks at Durginville."
"Heh?" he demanded, somewhat surprised, but still drawling. "What for,
Lowise?"
"I want to hitch there by the Lawton Pike."
"Lawsy, Lowise! you don't wanter do no sech thing," said Cap'n Bill.
"Yes I do, Pap."
"Too many folks goin' to be there. A slather of folks, Lowise. Why! the
circus grounds is right there. This is the day, ain't it?"
"That's it, Pap. I want to see the circus."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" the man stammered. "Circuses ain't for we folks."
"Yes they are, Pap."
"Ain't never been to one in all my life, Lowise," Cap'n Bill said
reflectively.
"No more ain't I," agreed the girl. "But I'm goin' to this one."
"You goin'?" he demanded, his amazement growing.
"Yes. And you're goin' too, Pap."
"Git out!" gasped Cap'n Bill, actually forgetting to pull on his pipe.
"Yes, you are," declared Louise Quigg, nodding her head. "I've got the
two half dollars. Beauty will stay and mind the boat. I jest got a taste
in my mouth for that circus. Seems to me, Pap, I'd jest _die_ if I
didn't see it."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" murmured Captain Bill Quigg, and was too amazed to say
anything more for an hour.
The _Nancy Hanks_ got through the lock and the mules picked up the slack
of the towrope again at Louise's vigorous suggestion. Inside the hold
Sammy and Dot both wondered about the stopping of the boat. Dot was
awakened by this.
"Sammy," she murmured, "is it morning? Have we been here all night?"
"I--I guess not, Dot. It can't be morning. Are you hungry?"
"No-o. I guess not," confessed the little girl.
"Then it can't be morning," Sammy declared, for what better time-keeper
can there be than a child's stomach?
"But aren't they going to let us out--not ever, Sammy?" wailed the
little girl.
"Pshaw! Of course they will. Some time they'll want to load up this old
boat. And then they'll have to open the door up there in the deck. So
we'll get out."
"But--but suppose it should be a long, long time?" breathed Dot,
thrilled with the awfulness of the thought.
"We got plenty to eat," Sammy said stoutly.
"Not now we haven't, Sammy," Dot reminded him. "We ate a lot."
"But there's all the potatoes--"
"I wouldn't like 'em raw," put in Dot, with decision. "And you can't
catch any fish as you were going to with your hook and line, Sammy. I
heard that girl that's with the other pirates," she added, "tell their
dog that he couldn't even catch rabbits along the canal. And what do you
think, Sammy Pinkney!"
"What?" he asked, drearily enough.
"Why, Sadie Goronofsky said last spring that she had an uncle that was a
rabbit. What do you think of that? I never heard of such a thing, did
you?"
"He was a rabbit, Dot?" gasped Sammy, brought to life by this strange
statement.
"That's just what she said. She said he was a rabbit, and he wore a
round black cap and had long whiskers--like our goat, I guess. And he
prayed--"
"Je-ru-sa-_lem_!" ejaculated Sammy.
"And the rabbit, Sadie's uncle, prayed," went on Dot, uninfluenced by
Sammy's ejaculation. "Now what do you think of that?"
Master Sammy was as ignorant of the Jewish ritual and synagogue officers
as was Dot Kenway. He burst out with disgust:
"I think Sadie Goronofsky was telling a fib, that's what _I_ think!"
"I'm afraid so," Dot concluded with a sigh. "But I don't like to think
so. I meant to ask Ruthie about it," and she shook her head again, still
much puzzled over Sadie's uncle who was a rabbi.
The day waned, and still the two little stowaways heard nothing from
above--not even the snuffing of the old hound about the hatch-cover.
They were buried it seemed out of the ken of other human beings. It made
them both feel very despondent. Sammy stuck to his guns and would not
cry; but after a while Dot sobbed herself to sleep again--with a great
luscious peach from Ruthie's basket of fruit, clutched in her hand and
staining the frock of the Alice-doll.
The _Nancy Hanks_ was finally brought to a mooring just across the canal
from the tented field where the circus was pitched. The dirty brown
canvas of the large and small tents showed that the circus had already
had a long season. Everything was tarnished and tawdry about the show at
this time of year. Even the ornate band wagon was shabby and the
vociferous calliope seemed to have the croup whenever it was played.
But people had come from far and near to see the show. Its wonders were
as fresh to the children as though the entertainment had just left
winter quarters, all spic and span.
From the deck of the _Nancy Hanks_ there looked to be hundreds and
hundreds of people wandering about the fields where the tents were
erected.
"Oh, come on, Pap, le's hurry!" exclaimed Louise Quigg, gaspingly. "Oh,
my! Everybody'll see everything all up before we get there!"
The mules were driven aboard over the gangplank and stabled in the
forward end of the house. The cabin door was locked and Beauty set on
guard. Without the first idea that they were leaving any other human
beings upon the barge when they left it, Louise and her father walked
toward the drawbridge on the edge of town, over which they had to pass
to reach the showgrounds.
Louise had hurriedly cooked supper on the other side of the partition
from the coop where the mules were stabled. The fire was not entirely
out when she had locked the door. Her desire to reach the showgrounds
early made the child careless for once in her cramped life.
The mules, quarreling over their supper, became more than usually
active. One mule bit the other, who promptly switched around, striving
to land both his heels upon his mate's ribs.
Instead, the kicking mule burst in the partition between the stable and
the living room, or cabin, of the _Nancy Hanks_. The flying planks
knocked over the stove and the live coals were spread abroad upon the
floor.
This began to smoke at once. Little flames soon began to lick along the
cracks between the deck planks. The mules brayed and became more uneasy.
They did not like the smell of the smoke; much less did they like the
vicinity of the flames which grew rapidly longer and hotter.
As for Beauty, the hound, her idea of watching the premises was to curl
down on an old coat of Quigg's on deck and sleep as soundly as though no
peril at all threatened the old canalboat and anybody who might be
aboard of it.