BIM GROWLS.
During the following day, while these letters were on their way to the
little Iowa town in which the principal actors in this story were
playing at such cross-purposes, active preparations were being made on
board the _Whatnot_ for the first exhibition of its panorama. In those
days the panorama filled the place now taken by the stereopticon; and
though its crude pictures lacked the photographic truth of lantern
slides, they were by no means devoid of interest. In fact, their
gorgeousness of color, and the vagueness of detail that allowed each to
represent several scenes, according to the pleasure of the lecturer,
rendered them quite as popular, if not so instructive, as their modern
successors.
The success of a panorama, however, depended largely upon the person
who explained its pictures. If he were witty, and knew how to tell the
good story of which each one was certain to remind him, all went well,
and the fame of that panorama spread far and wide. If, on the other
hand, he was prosy, and offered only dry explanations of his pictures,
the impatient river-town audience did not hesitate to express their
dissatisfaction, and the exhibition was apt to close with a riot.
All this was well known to Cap'n Cod; but twenty years of absence from
the stage had caused him to lose sight of his first and only
humiliating appearance before an audience, and had restored all his
youthful confidence in his own abilities. He was therefore to be the
lecturer of his own show, while Winn and Solon were to enter the
treadmill, and supply, as well as they could, the place of a mule in
furnishing power to move the heavy roll of paintings. Sabella was also
to remain out of sight, but was to grind out music from the hand-organ
whenever it might be needed. This was only a temporary position, and
would be filled by either Winn or Solon after a mule had been obtained
for the treadmill. Sabella's real duty was to dress Don Blossom, and
see that he went on the stage at the proper time.
The hour for giving these arrangements a public test finally arrived.
By eight o'clock the exhibition hall of the _Whatnot_ was packed with
an audience that contained a number of raftsmen and steamboat hands
from the water-front. These were good-naturedly noisy, and indulged in
cat-calls, stampings, and other manifestations of their impatience for
the curtain to rise. An occasional lull in the tumult allowed the
droning notes of the "Sweet By-and-By," then new and extremely popular,
to be heard, as they were slowly ground out from the hand-organ by the
invisible Sabella.
At length they ceased; the little drop-curtain was slowly rolled up so
as to expose the first picture, and Cap'n Cod, pointer in hand, in all
the glory of the blue swallow-tail with brass buttons, stepped on the
stage. His appearance was greeted with a silence that was almost
painful in its contrast with the previous tumult.
Now for the neat introductory speech that the old man had prepared so
carefully and rehearsed until he knew every word by heart. He stepped
forward, and gazed appealingly at the silent audience; but no word came
from his dry lips. He swallowed convulsively, and appeared to be
struggling with himself. A titter of laughter sounded from the back of
the room. The old man's face became fiery red and then deathly pale.
He looked helplessly and pitifully from side to side.
"Wind him up!" shouted a voice.
"He's stopped short, never to go again," called another.
"He's an old fraud, and his show's a fake!"
"Speech! speech!"
"No; a song! Let old dot-and-carry-one give us a song!"
"Oh, shut up! Don't you see he's a ballet-dancer?"
And so the derisive jeerings of this audience, like those of another
twenty years before, hailed Cap'n Cod's second failure. His confidence
in himself, his years of experience, the memory of what he ought to
say, all vanished the moment he faced that mass of upturned faces, and
he was once more the dumb, trembling Codringhampton of twenty years
before. A mist swam before his eyes, he groped blindly with his hands,
the derisive yells of the river-men, who were endeavoring to secure
their money's worth of amusement from this pitiful spectacle, grew
fainter and fainter in his ears. He tottered backward, and would have
fallen, had not a young man from the audience sprang to his assistance.
Very tenderly he helped the old man from the stage and into the
friendly shadows of the side scenes. In another moment he reappeared.
With flashing eyes he stepped in front of the turbulent audience and
held up his hand. The curiosity of the river-men was sufficient to
produce an almost instant silence, which in another second might have
changed into an angry roar.
Who was this young fellow? What business had he to interfere with
their fun? What was he going to say? He'd better be careful! They
were not in a humor to be trifled with.
For a moment he looked steadily at them.
Then he said:
"Boys, I am surprised, and if I thought for a moment that you really
meant to worry that old man, I should be ashamed of you. But I know
you didn't. It was only your fun. He has been a soldier, and lost a
leg fighting for you and me and to preserve the glorious Union, that
you and I are prouder of than anything else in life. He has a daughter
in there too--a young girl, for whom he is trying to make a living with
this show. I saw her just now, and if you could have seen the look of
distress and terror on her face as she sprang to the old man's side you
would feel as I do about this business. Yon would know, as I do, that
this was no fake, but a square--A, number one--show, packed full and
running over with good things, worth ten times the price of admission.
You'd know that it was just the bulliest show ever seen on this little
old river, and you'd turn in with a will to help me prove it. I am a
stranger, just arrived in town, and never set eyes on this outfit
before; but I'm willing to put up my last dollar on the fact that this
show is so much better than I've said that as soon as you've seen it
once, you'll want to see it right over again, you'll come to it every
evening that it stays here, and then you'll follow it down the river on
the chance of seeing it again. Hello, inside! Turn on your steam, and
set your whirligig to moving."
By this time the good-nature of the audience was fully restored, and,
amid encouraging cries of "That's the talk!" "Ring the jingle-bell and
give her a full head!" "Sweep her out into the current and toot your
horn, stranger!" the panorama began slowly to unroll. The young man
picked up the pointer, and the moment the second picture--a lurid scene
that Cap'n Cod had entitled "The Burning of Moscow"--was fully exposed
to view, he began:
"There you have it, gentlemen! One of the most thrilling events of
this century. The great San Francisco fire of '55. City swept clean
from the face of the earth, and built up again, finer than before,
inside of a month. I tell you, fellows, those Californians are
rustlers! Why, I met a man out in 'Frisco last month whom I knew, two
years ago, as a raftsman on this very river at twenty a month and
found. To-day he is worth a cool million of dollars, and if you want
to know how he made it, I'll let you into the secret."
And so the young stranger rattled on with story and joke, never pausing
to study the panoramic scenes as they moved slowly along, but giving
each the first title that suggested itself, and working in descriptions
to fit the titles. He kept it up for more than an hour; and when
Sabella, who was watching him from the side scenes with admiring
wonder, called out softly that the picture he was then describing was
the last, he gracefully dismissed as delighted an audience as ever
attended a river show, and disappeared with them.
[Illustration: Billy Brackett is a friend in need.]
Billy Brackett had come up the Illinois side of the river by rail and
stage, and had been ferried across to Mandrake just in time to be
attracted by the incipient riot aboard the _Whatnot_. Led to the scene
by curiosity, his generous indignation was aroused by the sight of the
helpless old man and his tormentors. Now, to avoid being thanked for
what he had done, he hurried away, released Bim from his confinement on
the wharf-boat, to that bow-legged animal's intense joy, and went to
the hotel for the night.
The next morning, when he came down into the office, the clerk handed
him Mrs. Caspar's letter. He stood by the desk and read it. Then he
read it again, with a frown of perplexity deepening on his forehead.
"Winn here, on board the _Mantel-piece_, and out of money! What can
Ellen mean? She must be losing her mind."
The young man was so engrossed with this letter that he paid no
attention to the other occupants of the room. Thus he did not see
Cap'n Cod and his niece enter the front door, nor notice that the
former was greeted by two men who had been talking earnestly together
and watching him with great interest. Nor did he see Sabella stoop to
pat Bim, who had gone to meet her. He did not notice the entrance a
moment later of a boy with a very puzzled expression of countenance and
an open letter in his hand. Neither did he see that the boy was
accompanied by the printer who had furnished his reward notices, and
who now pointed in his direction, saying, "That's him there. That's
Mr. Brickell."
At the same moment Sabella exclaimed, "Oh, Winn, here's Bim! Isn't he
a dear dog?" Then she too caught sight of Billy Brackett, and pulling
Cap'n Cod by the sleeve, whispered, "There he is, uncle. That is the
gentleman you have come to thank for helping us so splendidly last
evening."
While she was thus whispering into one ear, the night watchman of the
wharf-boat, who stood on the other side of the old man, was saying, in
a low tone, "Yes, sir. As I was just telling the Sheriff, that's the
man as stole his skiff, for I saw him when he landed here in it."
Sheriff Riley, who had only reached Mandrake half an hour before, was
staring at Winn, and saying to himself, "There's the young rascal now.
I knew it wasn't that other fellow, though somehow his face is
strangely familiar too."
There was a momentary hesitation on all sides. Then, as though moved
by a single impulse, Winn started towards Billy Brackett to ask him if
his name was Brickell, Cap'n Cod stepped up to express his heart-felt
gratitude for what he had done the evening before, and Sheriff Riley
moved towards Winn with the intention of arresting him. At this Bim,
recognizing the Sheriff, stationed himself in front of his preoccupied
master, erected the bristles on the back of his neck, and growled.