Jim Leonard's stable used to stand on the flat near the river, and on a
rise of ground above it stood Jim Leonard's log-cabin. The boys called it
Jim Leonard's log-cabin, but it was really his mother's, and the stable
was hers, too. It was a log stable, but up where the gable began the logs
stopped, and it was weather-boarded the rest of the way, and the roof was
shingled.
Jim Leonard said it was all logs once, and that the roof was loose
clap-boards, held down by logs that ran across them, like the roofs in the
early times, before there were shingles or nails, or anything, in the
country. But none of the oldest boys had ever seen it like that, and you
had to take Jim Leonard's word for it if you wanted to believe it. The
little fellows nearly all did; but everybody said afterwards it was a good
thing for Jim Leonard that it was not that kind of roof when he had his
hair-breadth escape on it. He said himself that he would not have cared if
it had been; but that was when it was all over, and his mother had whipped
him, and everything, and he was telling the boys about it.
He said that in his Pirate Book lots of fellows on rafts got to land when
they were shipwrecked, and that the old-fashioned roof would have been
just like a raft, anyway, and he could have steered it right across the
river to Delorac's Island as easy! Pony Baker thought very likely he
could, but Hen Billard said:
"Well, why didn't you do it, with the kind of a roof you had?"
Some of the boys mocked Jim Leonard; but a good many of them thought he
could have done it if he could have got into the eddy that there was over
by the island. If he could have landed there, once, he could have camped
out and lived on fish till the river fell.
It was that spring, about fifty-four years ago, when the freshet, which
always came in the spring, was the worst that anybody could remember. The
country above the Boy's Town was under water, for miles and miles. The
river bottoms were flooded so that the corn had to be all planted over
again when the water went down. The freshet tore away pieces of orchard,
and apple-trees in bloom came sailing along with logs and fence rails and
chicken-coops, and pretty soon dead cows and horses. There was a dog
chained to a dog-kennel that went by, howling awfully; the boys would have
given anything if they could have saved him, but the yellow river whirled
him out of sight behind the middle pier of the bridge, which everybody was
watching from the bank, expecting it to go any minute. The water was up
within four or five feet of the bridge, and the boys believed that if a
good big log had come along and hit it, the bridge would have been knocked
loose from its piers and carried down the river.
Perhaps it would, and perhaps it would not. The boys all ran to watch it
as soon as school was out, and stayed till they had to go to supper. After
supper some of their mothers let them come back and stay till bedtime, if
they would promise to keep a full yard back from the edge of the bank.
They could not be sure just how much a yard was, and they nearly all sat
down on the edge and let their legs hang over.
Jim Leonard was there, holloing and running up and down the bank, and
showing the other boys things away out in the river that nobody else could
see; he said he saw a man out there. He had not been to supper, and he had
not been to school all day, which might have been the reason why he would
rather stay with the men and watch the bridge than go home to supper; his
mother would have been waiting for him with a sucker from the pear-tree.
He told the boys that while they were gone he went out with one of the men
on the bridge as far as the middle pier, and it shook like a leaf; he
showed with his hand how it shook.
Jim Leonard was a fellow who believed he did all kinds of things that he
would like to have done; and the big boys just laughed. That made Jim
Leonard mad, and he said that as soon as the bridge began to go, he was
going to run out on it and go with it; and then they would see whether he
was a liar or not! They mocked him and danced round him till he cried. But
Pony Baker, who had come with his father, believed that Jim Leonard would
really have done it; and at any rate, he felt sorry for him when Jim
cried.
He stayed later than any of the little fellows, because his father was
with him, and even all the big boys had gone home except Hen Billard, when
Pony left Jim Leonard on the bank and stumbled sleepily away, with his
hand in his father's.
When Pony was gone, Hen Billard said: "Well, going to stay all night,
Jim?"
And Jim Leonard answered back, as cross as could be, "Yes, I am!" And he
said the men who were sitting up to watch the bridge were going to give
him some of their coffee, and that would keep him awake. But perhaps he
thought this because he wanted some coffee so badly. He was awfully
hungry, for he had not had anything since breakfast, except a piece of
bread-and-butter that he got Pony Baker to bring him in his pocket when
he came down from school at noontime.
Hen Billard said, "Well, I suppose I won't see you any more, Jim;
good-bye," and went away laughing; and after a while one of the men saw
Jim Leonard hanging about, and asked him what he wanted there, at that
time of night; and Jim could not say he wanted coffee, and so there was
nothing for him to do but go. There was nowhere for him to go but home,
and he sneaked off in the dark.
When he came in sight of the cabin he could not tell whether he would
rather have his mother waiting for him with a whipping and some supper, or
get to bed somehow with neither. He climbed softly over the back fence and
crept up to the back door, but it was fast; then he crept round to the
front door, and that was fast, too. There was no light in the house, and
it was perfectly still.
All of a sudden it struck him that he could sleep in the stable-loft, and
he thought what a fool he was not to have thought of it before. The notion
brightened him up so that he got the gourd that hung beside the well-curb
and took it out to the stable with him; for now he remembered that the cow
would be there, unless she was in somebody's garden-patch or corn-field.
He noticed as he walked down towards the stable that the freshet had come
up over the flat, and just before the door he had to wade. But he was in
his bare feet and he did not care; if he thought anything, he thought that
his mother would not come out to milk till the water went down, and he
would be safe till then from the whipping he must take, sooner or later,
for playing hooky.
Sure enough, the old cow was in the stable, and she gave Jim Leonard a
snort of welcome and then lowed anxiously. He fumbled through the dark to
her side, and began to milk her. She had been milked only a few hours
before, and so he got only a gourdful from her. But it was all strippings,
and rich as cream, and it was smoking warm. It seemed to Jim Leonard that
it went down to his very toes when he poured it into his throat, and it
made him feel so good that he did not know what to do.
There really was not anything for him to do but to climb up into the loft
by the ladder in the corner of the stable, and lie down on the old last
year's fodder. The rich, warm milk made Jim Leonard awfully sleepy, and he
dropped off almost as soon as his head touched the corn-stalks. The last
thing he remembered was the hoarse roar of the freshet outside, and that
was a lulling music in his ears.
The next thing he knew, and he hardly knew that, was a soft, jolting,
sinking motion, first to one side and then to another; then he seemed
to be going down, down, straight down, and then to be drifting off into
space. He rubbed his eyes, and found it was full daylight, although it
was the daylight of early morning; and while he lay looking out of the
stable-loft window and trying to make out what it all meant, he felt a
wash of cold water along his back, and his bed of fodder melted away under
him and around him, and some loose planks of the loft floor swam weltering
out of the window. Then he knew what had happened. The flood had stolen up
while he slept, and sapped the walls of the stable; the logs had given
way, one after another, and had let him down, with the roof, into the
water.
He got to his feet as well as he could, and floundered over the rising
and falling boards to the window in the floating gable. One look outside
showed him his mother's log-cabin safe on its rise of ground, and at the
corner the old cow, that must have escaped through the stable door he had
left open, and passed the night among the cabbages. She seemed to catch
sight of Jim Leonard when he put his head out, and she lowed to him.
Jim Leonard did not stop to make any answer. He clambered out of the
window and up onto the ridge of the roof, and there, in the company of a
large gray rat, he set out on the strangest voyage a boy ever made. In a
few moments the current swept him out into the middle of the river, and he
was sailing down between his native shore on one side and Delorac's Island
on the other.
All round him seethed and swirled the yellow flood in eddies and ripples,
where drift of all sorts danced and raced. His vessel, such as it was,
seemed seaworthy enough. It held securely together, fitting like a low,
wide cup over the water, and perhaps finding some buoyancy from the air
imprisoned in it above the window. But Jim Leonard was not satisfied, and
so far from being proud of his adventure, he was frightened worse even
than the rat which shared it. As soon as he could get his voice, he began
to shout for help to the houses on the empty shores, which seemed to fly
backward on both sides while he lay still on the gulf that swashed around
him, and tried to drown his voice before it swallowed him up. At the same
time the bridge, which had looked so far off when he first saw it, was
rushing swiftly towards him, and getting nearer and nearer.
He wondered what had become of all the people and all the boys. He thought
that if he were safe there on shore he should not be sleeping in bed while
somebody was out in the river on a roof, with nothing but a rat to care
whether he got drowned or not.
Where was Hen Billard, that always made fun so; or Archy Hawkins, that
pretended to be so good-natured; or Pony Baker, that seemed to like a
fellow so much? He began to call for them by name: "Hen Billard--_O_ Hen!
Help, help! Archy Hawkins, _O_ Archy! I'm drowning! Pony, Pony, _O_ Pony!
Don't you see me, Pony?"
He could see the top of Pony Baker's house, and he thought what a good,
kind man Pony's father was. Surely _he_ would try to save him; and
Jim Leonard began to yell: "O Mr. Baker! Look here, Mr. Baker! It's Jim
Leonard, and I'm floating down the river on a roof! Save me, Mr. Baker,
save me! Help, help, somebody! Fire! Fire! Fire! Murder! Fire!"
By this time he was about crazy, and did not half know what he was saying.
Just in front of where Hen Billard's grandmother lived, on the street that
ran along the top of the bank, the roof got caught in the branches of a
tree which had drifted down and stuck in the bottom of the river so that
the branches waved up and down as the current swashed through them. Jim
Leonard was glad of anything that would stop the roof, and at first he
thought he would get off on the tree. That was what the rat did. Perhaps
the rat thought Jim Leonard really was crazy and he had better let him
have the roof to himself; but the rat saw that he had made a mistake, and
he jumped back again after he had swung up and down on a limb two or three
times. Jim Leonard felt awfully when the rat first got into the tree, for
he remembered how it said in the Pirate Book that rats always leave a
sinking ship, and now he believed that he certainly was gone. But that
only made him hollo the louder, and he holloed so loud that at last he
made somebody hear.
It was Hen Billard's grandmother, and she put her head out of the window
with her night-cap on, to see what the matter was. Jim Leonard caught
sight of her and he screamed, "Fire, fire, fire! I'm drownding, Mrs.
Billard! Oh, do somebody come!"
Hen Billard's grandmother just gave one yell of "Fire! The world's
a-burnin' up, Hen Billard, and you layin' there sleepin' and not helpin'
a bit! Somebody's out there in the river!" and she rushed into the room
where Hen was, and shook him.
He bounced out of bed and pulled on his pantaloons, and was down-stairs in
a minute. He ran bareheaded over to the bank, and when Jim Leonard saw him
coming he holloed ten times as loud: "It's me, Hen! It's Jim Leonard! Oh,
do get somebody to come out and save me! Fire!"
As soon as Hen heard that, and felt sure it was not a dream, which he did
in about half a second, he began to yell, too, and to say: "How did you
get there? Fire, fire, fire! What are you on? Fire! Are you in a tree, or
what? Fire, fire! Are you in a flat-boat? Fire, fire, fire! If I had a
skiff--fire!"
He kept racing up and down the bank, and back and forth between the bank
and the houses. The river was almost up to the top of the bank, and it
looked a mile wide. Down at the bridge you could hardly see any light
between the water and the bridge.
Pretty soon people began to look out of their doors and windows, and Hen
Billard's grandmother kept screaming, "The world's a-burnin' up! The
river's on fire!" Then boys came out of their houses; and then men with
no hats on; and then women and girls, with their hair half down. The
fire-bells began to ring, and in less than five minutes both the fire
companies were on the shore, with the men at the brakes and the foremen
of the companies holloing through their trumpets.
Then Jim Leonard saw what a good thing it was that he had thought of
holloing fire. He felt sure now that they would save him somehow, and he
made up his mind to save the rat, too, and pet it, and maybe go around
and exhibit it. He would name it Bolivar; it was just the color of the
elephant Bolivar that came to the Boy's Town every year. These things
whirled through his brain while he watched two men setting out in a skiff
towards him.
They started from the shore a little above him, and they meant to row
slanting across to his tree, but the current, when they got fairly into
it, swept them far below, and they were glad to row back to land again
without ever getting anywhere near him. At the same time, the tree-top
where his roof was caught was pulled southward by a sudden rush of the
torrent; it opened, and the roof slipped out, with Jim Leonard and the rat
on it. They both joined in one squeal of despair as the river leaped
forward with them, and a dreadful "Oh!" went up from the people on the
bank.
Some of the firemen had run down to the bridge when they saw that the
skiff was not going to be of any use, and one of them had got out of the
window of the bridge onto the middle pier, with a long pole in his hand.
It had an iron hook at the end, and it was the kind of pole that the men
used to catch drift-wood with and drag it ashore. When the people saw Blue
Bob with that pole in his hand, they understood what he was up to. He was
going to wait till the water brought the roof with Jim Leonard on it down
to the bridge, and then catch the hook into the shingles and pull it up to
the pier. The strongest current set close in around the middle pier, and
the roof would have to pass on one side or the other. That was what Blue
Bob argued out in his mind when he decided that the skiff would never
reach Jim Leonard, and he knew that if he could not save him that way,
nothing could save him.
Blue Bob must have had a last name, but none of the little fellows knew
what it was. Everybody called him Blue Bob because he had such a thick,
black beard that when he was just shaved his face looked perfectly blue.
He knew all about the river and its ways, and if it had been of any use
to go out with a boat, he would have gone. That was what all the boys
said, when they followed Blue Bob to the bridge and saw him getting out
on the pier. He was the only person that the watchman had let go on the
bridge for two days.
The water was up within three feet of the floor, and if Jim Leonard's roof
slipped by Blue Bob's guard and passed under the bridge, it would scrape
Jim Leonard off, and that would be the last of him.
All the time the roof was coming nearer the bridge, sometimes slower,
sometimes faster, just as it got into an eddy or into the current; once it
seemed almost to stop, and swayed completely round; then it just darted
forward.
Blue Bob stood on the very point of the pier, where the strong stone-work
divided the current, and held his hooked pole ready to make a clutch at
the roof, whichever side it took. Jim Leonard saw him there, but although
he had been holloing and yelling and crying all the time, now he was
still. He wanted to say, "O Bob, save me!" but he could not make a sound.
It seemed to him that Bob was going to miss him when he made a lunge at
the roof on the right side of the pier; it seemed to him that the roof was
going down the left side; but he felt it quiver and stop, and then it gave
a loud crack and went to pieces, and flung itself away upon the whirling
and dancing flood. At first Jim Leonard thought he had gone with it; but
it was only the rat that tried to run up Blue Bob's pole, and slipped off
into the water; and then somehow Jim was hanging onto Blue Bob's hands and
scrambling onto the bridge.
Blue Bob always said he never saw any rat, and a good many people said
there never was any rat on the roof with Jim Leonard; they said that he
just made the rat up.
He did not mention the rat himself for several days; he told Pony Baker
that he did not think of it at first, he was so excited.
Pony asked his father what he thought, and Pony's father said that it
might have been the kind of rat that people see when they have been
drinking too much, and that Blue Bob had not seen it because he had signed
the temperance pledge.
But this was a good while after. At the time the people saw Jim Leonard
standing safe with Blue Bob on the pier, they set up a regular election
cheer, and they would have believed anything Jim Leonard said. They all
agreed that Blue Bob had a right to go home with Jim and take him to his
mother, for he had saved Jim's life, and he ought to have the credit of
it.
Before this, and while everybody supposed that Jim Leonard would surely be
drowned, some of the people had gone up to his mother's cabin to prepare
her for the worst. She did not seem to understand exactly, and she kept
round getting breakfast, with her old clay pipe in her mouth; but when she
got it through her head, she made an awful face, and dropped her pipe on
the door-stone and broke it; and then she threw her check apron over her
head and sat down and cried.
[Illustration: "'I'LL LEARN THAT LIMB TO SLEEP IN A COW-BARN!'"]
But it took so long for her to come to this that the people had not got
over comforting her and trying to make her believe that it was all for
the best, when Blue Bob came up through the bars with his hand on Jim's
shoulder, and about all the boys in town tagging after them.
Jim's mother heard the hurrahing and pulled off her apron, and saw that
Jim was safe and sound there before her. She gave him a look that made him
slip round behind Blue Bob, and she went in and got a table-knife, and she
came out and went to the pear-tree and cut a sucker.
She said, "I'll learn that limb to sleep in a cow-barn when he's got a
decent bed in the house!" and then she started to come towards Jim
Leonard.