[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]
Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1896. FIVE CENTS A
COPY.
VOL. XVIII.--NO. 893. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.
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[Illustration]
THE BOY WRECKERS.
BY W. O. STODDARD.
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE-CORNERED BOAT.
"It goes through the water like a wedge," said Pete. "Old Captain Kroom
had it made for himself. That's why it's so wide."
It was "so wide" only at the stern, and it narrowed to a blunt edge at
the prow. All of its lines were pretty nearly straight. Its bottom was
as flat as a floor. At its forward end it was decked over for about two
and a half feet. It was a bit of deck that might serve for a seat, but
in the middle of it was a round hole, and from this there stood up a
straight stick nine feet high.
"There's a pretty long boom for that mast," said Pete. "When the sail's
on it's a kind of cat-boat. Old Kroom won't row a stroke if he can help
it."
"Well," said Sam, "I guess I wouldn't, either. But won't it tip over
with a sail?"
"No, sirree," replied Pete, confidently. "It needn't ever tip over. Why,
if you know how to sail a boat, you won't let yourself be upset."
"Boys," roared a deep husky voice behind them, "what are you doing with
my boat?"
They both whirled around instantly.
"We weren't touching it, Captain Kroom," said Pete. "I met him up in the
village, and he wants to go fishing. He says his name is Sam Williams.
We've bought some clams and some sand-worms."
"Both of you get right in," commanded Captain Kroom. "I guess he's a
city fellow. We'll show him some fishing. Pete, put in that pail of live
bait. They're prime minnows. Sam, take the sail and boom and lay them
forward, ready for me. Jump, now! the tide's turning. If we don't get
right out across the bay we won't catch a bite."
"Sam," said Pete, as his companion seemed to hesitate, "pitch in. He
knows fish."
The two boys were not so much unlike in their height and age, but there
was hardly any other resemblance between them. Sam had no need to tell
anybody that he did not belong on that shore. He was too nobbily
dressed, his dark hair was too smooth, and his hands were too white.
There was some healthy sunburn on his face, but it was nothing to the
tan on Pete's. Besides, Pete was red-headed, and had a full supply of
freckles. What was more, his rig, from his straw hat that turned up in
front, down to his bare feet, was as unlike as could be to Sam's neatly
fitting navy blue. Nevertheless, they were a bright-looking pair, and
Sam stepped ahead quickly enough, after his momentary flush of rebellion
at being "ordered around."
The fact was that old Captain Kroom was "bossy." It was his boat, to be
sure, but he stood there and looked in all directions, as if he owned
the bay, if not also the sand-bar on the further side of it, and the
Atlantic Ocean beyond that.
He was a very large man, and very heavy. The three-cornered boat hardly
seemed to feel the weight of Pete and Sam when they went into it with
the bait and fishing-tackle and the other things. It rocked, of course,
but it was steady enough, as if it were accustomed to boys, and did not
mind having them on board. When, however, Captain Kroom finished his
observations of the sea and the sky, and very deliberately put one foot
into the boat at the stern, that end began to go down.
"Hold hard, boys," he said; "I'm a-comin'. Steady, now."
His other foot came in, and he at once sat down upon the stern seat; but
at the same moment Sam, at the prow, felt as if he and the mast and sail
were going up.
"Boys," said Captain Kroom, "I'm glad you're here. Keep well forrard,
and it'll kind o' trim the boat. Pete, you and Sam can 'tend to the
sail. Cast her loose from the wharf. Give her her head."
"Sam," said Pete, "let the sail swing right out. You and I'll have to
row till we get out of the creek."
"No, you won't--not with this breeze," growled the Captain. "Give me the
ropes. We'll dance right along."
"He knows how to handle a boat, Sam," said Pete. "He can get out all
there is in her."
Right at the shore of the mainland there was a kind of small shut-in
harbor. It had a rickety old wharf, at which the boat had been fastened.
Other boats were there, hitched a little way out from the wharf. Some of
them were pretty good sized sailing-boats. Straight across the harbor,
the patch of open water in front of the wharf, was a wide reach of
rushes, and among them wound the narrow crooked ribbon of water that
Pete called "the creek." Outside were the dancing waves of the bay, and
there was bright sunshine everywhere.
If it was all a kind of every-day affair to Pete, it was not so to his
friend, and Sam's eyes were glistening with excitement. "Ain't I glad I
met you!" seemed to almost burst from him; but Pete's reply was uttered
in a very matter-of-fact tone.
"You'd better be glad that Captain Kroom came. We wanted a boat, too,
but it's the best kind of luck to have a man that knows fish. I've known
lots of fellows like you come out here to fish, and that didn't catch a
thing."
"Up with her!" shouted the Captain, and in a moment the sail was full.
In spite of the two boys forward, the boat was inclined to lift its
nose, but away it went slipping into the creek, and making swift headway
along the crooks and turns among the rushes.
The steering and the management of the sail were all in the hands of the
old fisherman. It almost seemed as if the wind must be, too. There was
enough of that, and the boat went this way, that way, so far as Sam
could see, with very little regard to the direction the breeze came
from. He said so to Pete.
"Guess so," replied the 'longshore boy. "He knows his boat. So long as a
wind isn't dead ahead, he doesn't care. But he hates oars. So do I."
There the oars lay, along the sides of the boat, two of them; but an oar
stands for work, and Sam was quite willing to let the sail work for him.
He was now sitting forward of the middle of the boat, looking ahead, but
every now and then he glanced back at Mr. Kroom. He looked all the
bigger and heavier for being in a boat and because he weighed it down.
It occurred to Sam that it probably would not tip over so easily with so
much human ballast to steady it.
"Queerest kind of beard," he said to himself. "His mustaches are awful."
Not that the beard was so very long, but it was stiff-haired and
curling, and it stuck out on all sides. Below his chin it came down in a
great gray bunch. That and his gray mustache and his jutting eyebrows
and the deep wrinkles across his forehead gave him a fierce look. It
grew worse every time he gave an order. His hands, too, were large,
hairy, and looked as if they had been stained like old mahogany. It was
not by any means a shallow boat, and it was not short, but it was not
exactly like anything else that Sam was familiar with, and he said so to
Pete.
"Of course it isn't," said Pete. "He'll go out to sea in it, where
nobody else'd dare to. But he knows the sea. He's been everywhere."
"Out, boys! We're out o' the creek!" shouted Captain Kroom, as if it
excited him to get clear of the rushes. "Hurrah! Troll, both of you! Get
out your lines! I won't fish; I'll sail. Quick!"
Sam felt as if something in Kroom's voice took hold of him and set him
going, it was so tremendously bossy.
"He's a captain," thought Sam. "He's been a ship-captain, and he's used
to ordering sailors. Guess they jumped."
That was what Pete had done, for he had the basket of tackle on his side
of the boat. She was dashing along now, right out into the bay, and she
rode the waves capitally. The sail swung away out and the boat leaned
over, but for all Sam could see, the stern with Captain Kroom in it sat
almost square on the water. No boat bends in the middle, but it had that
look.
"She's going!" exclaimed Pete. "Tell you what, Sam, the _Elephant_ can
outsail some of the fastest boats along shore. She's a ripper!"
"Out with your lines!" growled the Captain of the _Elephant_. "You won't
catch anything, but I like to see the lines out. No bluefish in the bay,
unless they came in last night."
Sam evidently felt very much as Captain Kroom did about having the
trolling-lines out, but Pete seemed entirely willing to let his city
acquaintance have the first line that was ready. Both of them had
already said enough to let Captain Kroom know that Sam's city relatives
were boarding at a sea-side hotel a mile or so up the coast, and that he
had visited the village that morning for the first time. There he had
met Pete, and they had agreed to go fishing together.
"Humph!" said Captain Kroom. "I always had to pick my crews anyhow I
could. Made sailors of 'em, though, after we got afloat."
The boys heard him, but Pete was making no haste with his line. He
remarked to Sam,
"If he says there are no bluefish, then there ain't any. He knows."
"None yesterday," came hoarsely from the stern of the boat. "What do you
know about fish? Did you ever catch a whale?"
"Never trolled for one," said Pete. "Guess you didn't, either."
They must have been old acquaintances, but Sam looked astonished to hear
Pete answer so tremendous a man in that free way.
"Didn't I?" grumbled thunderously out of the deep chest of Captain
Kroom. "Well, I did, then. Struck him, too, and made him tow my schooner
further than across this bay. What do you think of that?"
"What did you do with him?" exclaimed Sam. "Did he get away?"
"No, sir, he didn't get away," replied the Captain. "But he sounded, and
that's where the whale-line went."
"Sounded?" gasped Sam. "I didn't know a whale could holler."
"Holler?" put in Pete, with some contempt in his voice for the ignorance
of a city fellow. "He means the whale dove to the bottom."
"Don't know about the bottom," went on the Captain. "But he pulled out a
mile of line, and when he came up the harpoon was in him yet. We got
him."
"Oh!" said Sam. "You trolled for him with a harpoon. Oh! Hullo! I've got
a bite. Oh!"
His hook was a pretty big one, set firmly in a bone that Pete called a
"squid," and this had been glimmering over the waves astern while Pete
was getting his own line unsnarled.
"Hold hard!" shouted the Captain, as Sam tugged and strained.
"I can't," said Sam, as the line was jerked from his hand and began to
run out swiftly over the side of the boat. "He's getting away!"
"Lost him!" almost groaned Pete. "He pulled like a shark."
"More like a stick of timber," very quietly but gruffly remarked the
Captain. "I'll tack and see what it is."
He was swinging the boat around while he spoke, but the moment he had
done so he reached out and grasped the line which had been so suddenly
jerked away from Sam. It was running loosely now.
"Haul it in, boys," he shouted. "We'll see what's at the other end of
it."
"Biggest kind of fish!" said Sam. "It hurt my hands."
"Fish?" said the Captain. "Don't you know a fish-bite from a snag? You
will when you've catched more of 'em."
Nevertheless the boat could not go directly back upon its former trail,
and the line the boys were pulling in grew taut again. As soon as it
straightened, the Captain once more touched it, and his fingers told him
something, for he remarked:
"It's kind o' loose, too. There are lots of stuff floatin' 'round this
bay. It might be wreckage."
Sam was hardly enough of a seaman to get a clear idea from that, and he
stood up to watch. He was a pretty good-looking young fellow, with
bright dark eyes, and with, just now, a very enthusiastic, highly
colored face.
"I knew we'd have some kind of luck if we sailed with Captain Kroom,"
said Pete.
"Here we are!" shouted the Captain, and down dropped the sail as he
added: "Take the oars, Pete! Sam's catched a cod-lamper-eel."
Pete sprang to the oars with the activity of a monkey, and they were
instantly in the rowlocks.
"I'll bring her around," he said; but Sam was leaning over the side of
the boat to get a glimpse of his "eel."
"Humph! Canvas! Old sail! Bit of spar!" growled the Captain. "I'll cut
Sam's squid loose. Sam, hand me that boat-hook."
It lay on the bottom, and hardly was it in the Captain's hand before the
three-cornered _Elephant_ began to lean over with his weight.
"'Twon't do," he said. "Fetch her starn around. This 'ere's a find.
Boys, there's been a wreck somewhere. It's a jib-topsail. That's a
spritsail-yard."
"He knows," said Pete; but Sam was in the dark as to how one piece of
half-sunken canvas could be distinguished from another.
"Steady, Pete! Pull!" commanded the Captain. "I'll get a good look at
it. It's worth towin' in; but we'll make this tide carry it as far as it
will. Pretty good bit of duck."
Sam saw no kind of water-fowl, but in an instant more he remembered
something, and said, "Cotton duck."
"English duck," said the Captain. "Pretty near new. And there's
something down there hitched to the spar. We don't need any fish to-day,
boys. I'll gear this fast to the boat, and then I'll gropple 'round."
He had spare rope enough in his three-cornered boat to make a hitch
with, and the _Elephant_ was quickly anchored to the all but sunken
prize. While he was doing that, however, and while Pete worked the oars,
Sam had not been idle. He had a very clear idea that whatever this might
be, he had caught it. Of course it belonged to them all, like any other
fish, but it had bitten upon his hook. Now that he had that back again,
he was disposed for more catching, but not one of his motions had
escaped the keen eyes of the Captain.
"That's it," he said to Sam, after making a fruitless sweep through the
water with his boat-hook. "You can gropple, too, but put on a sinker, or
it won't go down. Heaviest chunk of lead there is in my basket."
It was plain that he liked the quick and handy way with which Sam
followed his directions, for he said:
"I've known a young lubber like you, green as grass, turn out to be a
right good foremast hand. Tie it tight and swing it out. That's it. Let
it go down. There! Pull!"
"I've struck something!" said Sam, breathlessly; but even as he did so
he was thinking.
Wrecks? He had heard all sort of things concerning wrecks. What if a
sunken ship should be away down there? The Captain said this was a
topsail. He must know. Then there were lower sails. There were masts.
Every ship had a hull. What about drowned people? What if he were about
to pull up somebody that had been drowned?
It made a kind of cold chill run all over him, but he tugged upon his
line, and something at the end of it slowly yielded and came nearer.
Meantime the Captain plied his long-handled boat-hook, and now he
suddenly exclaimed:
"I've hitched on a hawser! Here she comes! Look out for the boat, Pete."
"Guess I'd better," said Pete, for the _Elephant_ was tipping around in
a most disorderly way, and the water was a trifle rough with waves.
"Only a rope," thought Sam, as the Captain's catch came in sight, but
the old sailor's eyes twinkled, and he said to himself,
"There's something at the other end of it."
"Sam!" exclaimed Pete. "You've struck a bundle! Haul it in!"
"Can't," said Sam. "I guess it's fastened to the rope the Captain
hooked."
"No, bub, it's hitched to the spar," said the Captain. "Cut it loose,
and in with it."
Sam pulled out his pocket-knife, but his fingers trembled so that he
hardly could open it. Then he reached over and began to cut away, but
before the bit of rope that held the bundle was severed the Captain
shouted:
"Wreck it is! Got another catch! It's a valise. There comes the spar,
all afloat. Hullo! That's too bad. Somehow I unhitched that sail. It's
gone to the bottom."
It was just so. The water-soaked canvas had been buoyed only by the
wood, and as soon as that was cut away it went down out of sight.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
[Illustration: CHILDREN OF THE CONGO.]
BY CYRUS C. ADAMS.
The schools for black boys and girls in the Congo country have a very
unusual feature that perhaps is not found in any other part of the
world. Some of these schools are exclusively for boys, and the others
for girls, and the intention is, when they grow up, to have them marry
one another, thus creating civilized families, who will help to improve
the people around them. Probably the young men and women will not think
this is a hardship, for it is believed they will prefer to choose their
wives or husbands from among those who have had some education, like
themselves; and if they do not, they will undoubtedly have the privilege
of choosing where they please. Whether this plan is wise or not, it
shows at least that the white race is beginning to think a good deal
about the black children in Africa; in fact, these coming men and women
are expected to help far more than their barbarous fathers and mothers
of to-day to civilize Africa.
[Illustration: SISTER OF CHARITY AND SOME OF HER PUPILS.]
If we were to visit Belgium this summer we should find many little black
girls from the Congo in the convents there learning to read and write,
sew and cook, and to do many other useful things. When they go back to
their homes it is expected that they will wear the garb of the Sisters
of Charity, and teach their people as the devoted white Sisters have
been doing since 1892; and if they do well, they will ultimately take
the place of those pale-faced women from Europe, who suffer from the
trying climate. Thus far one-fourth of all the girls in the chief Congo
Catholic school, the brightest among them, have been sent to Belgium for
years of training.
All through the French Congo we see the government officials keeping a
sharp lookout for the more promising sons of native chiefs; for some day
these boys will become the most influential natives in the country, and
so the French are gathering many of them into schools near their homes,
and are sending others to France to be educated. Of course they will not
all turn out exactly as the French hope they will.
Some years ago an African chief was killed in battle with the French
forces. One of his sons was sent to France. No black boy there makes
better progress in his studies, but visitors shake their heads when they
hear his answer to the question what he hopes to do in the world.
"I hope to live long enough," he sometimes says, "to avenge the death of
my father."
He will probably change his mind, and, at any rate, France will give him
no opportunity to make her any trouble.
Professor Drummond, after his visit to Africa, said he would like to get
inside an African for an afternoon, and see how he looked at different
things. Wouldn't we like to know just how these boys and girls feel, and
what they think, when they are suddenly landed, fresh from the depths of
a savage land, in the streets of Paris, Brussels, or Berlin, and see
more things in a day they never heard of than we do in a year? They
learn many things, as a baby does, by stern experience. When Von
François brought an eight-year-old boy from inner Africa to the sea, the
youngster chased along the beach in high glee, and before any one could
stop him, tried to refresh himself with a big swallow of ocean water.
This same boy, Pitti, thought the snow he saw falling in Berlin was a
swarm of butterflies. The first horse he saw terrified him, and the
Berlin newspapers told of his unbounded astonishment at the strange
dishes and viands on his master's table. What a marvellous change in the
condition of these children! Many of them were slaves, and some of them
had been brutally treated and even wounded by cruel slave-dealers.
To-day they have good homes, and the world is doing all it can to make
them intelligent and honorable men and women.
There are "street arabs," or homeless boys, in the Congo villages, just
as there are in New York city. They live on what they can pick up, and
it sharpens their wits to have to hustle for a living. It would take a
smart Yankee boy to beat some of these Congo youngsters in a trade. Even
a five-year-old will sometimes amass a little capital. Somehow he will
get hold of a string of beads. He may trade it for a small chicken,
which thrives under his nurturing care, and in a few months he can sell
the fowl for four strings of beads, quadrupling his capital. Pretty soon
he is able to buy a pig, which follows him like a dog, and sleeps in his
hut; and when piggy grows up his owner gets a good price for him in the
market.
I think you have never heard of Mr. Stanley's purchase of eighteen
little black boys for three cents apiece. He told me the story once, and
as I have never seen it in any of his books, I will tell it here. On the
upper Congo he met a slave gang that was likely to die of starvation,
for little food was to be had. His offer to the Arabs of a cotton
handkerchief for each of the little boys in the party was accepted. The
handkerchiefs had cost the explorer just three cents apiece, and it is
doubtful if slaves were ever purchased so cheaply before. The explorer
tucked his boys away in corners of his little steam-boat, and as he went
down the Congo he distributed them among the stations he had built
along the river-banks, and there the boys were taught to read and work.
He took one of them to England, where the lad soon learned to speak
English, and Mr. Stanley was surprised to find how much the boy could
tell him about the language, customs, and legends of the people he came
from, far up the Aruwimi River.
Young folks in Africa act a great deal as other boys and girls would do
under similar circumstances. If we were unfortunates who were surely
dying of hunger in a wilderness, perhaps we should be as glad as these
boys were to be sold for three cents apiece, if the change meant plenty
to eat and a kind master; and, if, free children as you are, you were
mistaken for slaves, I doubt if you could be more deeply grieved than
some untutored black children have been by such a blunder. On the lower
Niger lives Sanabu, daughter of a chief. Awhile ago, when the girl was
fourteen years old, she was permitted to accompany the French explorer
Mizon, because she knew several native dialects, besides a little
English and French, and was useful as an interpreter. One day a
Portuguese asked Mizon how much he had paid for his little slave, and
offered to buy her. Angry tears came to the child's eyes; but she
brushed them away, as she drew herself up with the air of a little
princess, and said: "I am no slave. I'm as free as you are. No one shall
ever sell me." Sanabu was taken to France, and all the French people
know the story of her life, and of her wanderings for a year as the
interpreter of an explorer.
Sanabu is not the only little girl who has gone with an explorer as
interpreter. In 1888 Mr. Paul Crampel brought to France the little
daughter of a chief. The explorer did not want the child, but he found
that the old African would be seriously offended if he did not accept
the unique present. "Go with the white man," said the stern old father,
as he led the trembling Niarinze to Crampel. "You have no longer a
father or mother. You are going to the white man's country."
Crampel's young wife welcomed the little girl in Paris, where she was to
learn to read and live out her days. But another fate was in store for
the bright young creature. The time came when France sent Crampel back
to Africa on a very difficult mission. He needed an interpreter among
the widely spread Pahuin tribe, who are believed to number a million
people. Niarinze was one of these people, and it was decided that she
should go back with the explorer as his interpreter. A great crowd on
the wharf saw them waving their handkerchiefs as the steamer bore them
away, and that was the last that their friends in France ever saw of
them. A few months later they were in an unknown country north of the
Congo, and there Crampel was stabbed to death by treacherous men. The
brave girl, rushing to his aid, seized a gun and shot dead one of the
men who were murdering her white friend. She was knocked down and
disarmed, and we do not know whether she ever rose again. Some of the
fugitives said she was killed on the spot; but there was a later report
that she was led away a slave, far north toward the Sahara Desert.
Do not some of these incidents show good qualities in these far-away
African boys and girls that should attract in their behalf the sympathy
and interest of more fortunate children in other lands? What boy could
do more to show love for his mother than the little ten-year-old on the
upper Congo whose thrilling story was told by Captain Coquilhat?
One day a woman of the great Bangala tribe was crossing the Congo in a
canoe with her little boy. Kneeling in the dugout, she leaned over the
side as she bent to her paddle. Suddenly a huge crocodile came to the
surface, closed his jaws upon the mother's arm, and pulled her out of
the canoe. The one thought in the boy's mind, a thought that triumphed
over his terror, was that he must save his mother if he could. The
paddle drifted near, and he picked it up. He could see by the swell of
the water ahead where the crocodile was swimming with his prey, just
below the surface. He started in pursuit, wielding the paddle with all
his might.
[Illustration: WITH WHAT FRANTIC ENERGY THE BOY WORKED!]
The animal easily gained on the canoe, and finally, far in advance, he
pulled his victim out of the water upon the shore of an island. Then he
plunged into the river again and swam away, perhaps to find his mate and
share his prize with her. The boy paddled straight for the spot where
his poor mother lay. As he gained the shore he knew that she was either
dead or senseless. He leaned over her, and saw her terrible wounds. He
was not strong enough to carry her in his arms, but he could draw her to
the water's edge and pull and lift until the poor body was in the canoe.
With what frantic energy he worked! And he had need; for before he could
push off and point his boat homeward, he saw the crocodile up the river,
and coming nearer every moment.
When the crocodile had reached the shore, the canoe was well out in the
river. If the animal had not stopped to crawl out on the land and look
around for his victim, the boy's devotion would probably have cost him
his life. As it was, the crocodile had nearly overtaken the canoe, when
the boy's cries brought the villagers to the shore, and the shouts and
missiles frightened the angry pursuer away. The poor mother was dead,
but her little son, who had risked his life to save her, had at least
the satisfaction of knowing that her body would not be the food of
crocodiles.
"Don't you fire guns in your country when a baby is born?" asked a Congo
native of a missionary, who had rushed in great alarm when he heard a
volley fired.
"Come back," shouted the natives to him. "It's only a baby born, and
everybody is glad."
That white man was glad too it was only a baby. Many an African child,
more unfortunate than most of them, has been glad to be befriended by
the white men who are living in their country. Here is one among many
stories illustrating this.
One day, in Central Africa, Mr. Arnot found several girls in a slave
caravan, nearly dead from the hardships they had suffered. He bought
them for a few yards of cloth, and took them home. One of them, little
Mwepo, was very bright and happy, and was the favorite in the household.
Mr. Arnot went one day to dine with King Msidi. A little girl came into
the yard where they were sitting and threw herself at the King's feet.
When he bade her tell her troubles, she said she was a slave whom the
King's soldiers had taken from her home. She said her mistress treated
her so cruelly that she had run away to beg the King's protection. Arnot
was about to leave, and the sly old King told the girl to follow him if
she wanted a good home. So Arnot took her hand and led her to his
cottage, where Mwepo and the little stranger flew into each other's
arms, weeping as though their hearts would break. Three years before
they had been playing on the banks of the Luba River when slave-stealers
suddenly tore them from their homes and parents; but after many months
of suffering they had been reunited in the home of a white man.
GOLD, AND ITS USES.
If the average reader or thinker will devote a few minutes to the
subject of gold and its uses, and how much of it annually disappears by
wear, leaving no possible trace, he will find himself involved in some
extremely interesting calculations. If some genius would only invent a
power strong enough to attract to it the millions of invisible particles
that have, and are constantly being worn off the various articles
composed of that metal, what an immense amount would be recovered!
Where do these particles go? Here, there, everywhere: in your house, on
the streets, in the banks, business houses, stores, and wherever man
goes. As an instance of this the following is cited: There is at present
a veritable gold-mine being worked in an old watch-case factory in
Brooklyn. It occurred to the new purchasers of this property that during
the long years of manufacturing of gold watch-cases that took place
there, a large quantity of gold particles must have been absorbed by the
flooring, walls, furnace chimney, etc. So they went carefully to work
and tore the old building down bit by bit, and burnt and crushed the
material, afterwards assaying the ashes. So far something like $50,000
has been recovered. Say an ounce of this lost gold were recovered. If we
melted it down and gilded a fine silver wire, it would extend more than
thirteen hundred miles; or if nineteen ounces were recovered (which in
the form of a cube would be about one inch and a quarter square), it
would gild a wire long enough to compass the whole earth like a hoop.
If you pick up a gold-leaf, such as is used for gilding purposes, it
becomes a curiosity in your eyes when you realize that seventy-five
square inches of it weigh only one grain. Now the thousandth part of a
line, or inch, is easily visible through a common pocket-glass. Hence it
follows that when gold is reduced to the thinness of gold-leaf
1/50700000 of a grain of gold may be distinguished by the eye. But it is
claimed that 1/1400000000 of a grain of gold may be rendered visible.
Large quantities of gold are used in gilding portions of exteriors of
public and private buildings. For instance, if we take the Church of St.
Isaac at St. Petersburg, we find that it required the use of two hundred
and forty-seven pounds of gold to gild its five crosses. They can be
seen glittering at a distance of twenty-seven miles.
A STILTED COMBAT.
BY G. B. BURGIN,
AUTHOR OF "GASCOIGNE'S GHOST," ETC.
I.
Peele sat on the platform, surrounded by a group of youthful
sympathizers. "The fact is," he said, the light of battle in his eye,
"I'll either have Gough's gore, or he mine. Matters have come to a
crisis."
At the other end of the school-room "Grinny" Gough made an exactly
similar speech. From time to time these youthful Montagues and Capulets
glanced ruefully at a blackboard containing the following pregnant
information:
Composition to be written by every boy in the school, instead of
customary half-holiday.
SUBJECT:
Landes.--A maritime department in the southwest of France, on the
coast of the Bay of Biscay. It derives its name from the landes, or
marshy heaths, which occupy a considerable portion of its surface.
The capital of the department is Mont-de-Marsan, and its area 3599
square miles. The population in 1893 was 35,143.
Impositions must be handed in to Mr. Squinnige at evening
preparation.
Peele glanced ruefully at the blackboard. His look of disgust gradually
gave way to a broad grin of delight. Gough (he was pressing a metal
inkpot against a black eye) intercepted the grin, and looked more rueful
still.
"It seems to me," said Peele, again addressing his followers, "we're
going to have a jolly row."
"And all because of a few potatoes," said the Tadpole.
"And a girl," added Bates.
"Girls always do let a man in for rows," observed a youthful pessimist.
Peele checked his followers with a lordly wave of his hand. "I thought I
was in Ireland," he said, "I saw so many potatoes flying about, and
heard Squinnige say, 'Gentlemen, gentlemen, you forget yourselves as
gentlemen.'"
"He never forgets himself--especially at meals," said the Tadpole. "I
don't know how the row began. When I saw the other fellows chucking
taters I chucked too. I bagged Squinnige first shot; then he got under
the table and yowled."
"I began it myself," Peele admitted. "When I saw Polyhymnia [Miss
Wantage's real name was Polly, but Peele preferred "Polyhymnia" as being
more sonorous] giving that beast Gough two potatoes instead of one, I
didn't mean to say a word; but he pitched one into the fireplace, and I
couldn't help shying mine at his head. He shied back, and hit Squinnige,
and then you fellows all chipped in."
From which it will be gathered that the young gentlemen of Hutton Park
Academy were in a state of open rebellion. There were several causes to
account for this; but the chief among them was the rivalry which existed
between Peele and "Grinny" Gough with regard to Polyhymnia, who was
sixteen to their fourteen.
Dr. Wantage had a theory that to teach boys to be gentlemen they should
be subjected at an early age to the refining influence of feminine
society.
He was a widower. The only feminine society, therefore, that he could
provide for the young gentlemen under his charge was that of Polyhymnia,
who entered into his plans with the greatest gusto, and announced that
she was perfectly willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the
school. Had the Doctor been a suspicious man, he would have wondered at
this alacrity, but a work on Greek particles absorbed most of his time,
and he noticed nothing. Polyhymnia had only been home about a fortnight
from school, and was already beginning to find time hang heavily on her
hands. She hailed the Doctor's scheme with delight, and made her first
public entrance at the boys' dinner, and sat at the head of the table in
order to distribute the potatoes.
Peele, who was the first boy to enter the room, made her a lordly bow.
"Grinny" Gough came second, put one foot into a hole in the mat, and
tumbled heavily at his divinity's feet. The rest of the rank and file
made an awkward entrance over "Grinny" Gough's prostrate body, whilst
Peele conversed with Polyhymnia, and regarded his rival with lofty
contempt.
Polyhymnia declined to carve for the forty young gentlemen, but devoted
herself to the distribution of potatoes, boiled in their skins--the
potatoes' skins, not the young gentlemen's. On the first day of her
doing so each boy was about to devour his potato, when the Tadpole
noticed that Peele gracefully removed his from his plate, wrapped it up
in his handkerchief, bowed to Polyhymnia, and put it in his pocket--his
breast pocket. Polyhymnia blushed; this was true worship. Her blushes
were succeeded by others when the whole of Peele's faction proceeded to
follow their chief's example, each boy enfolding the precious potato in
a more or less dirty pocket-handkerchief. But after about three days'
persistent accumulation of potatoes, Nature asserted itself, and Peele's
followers felt that it was rather ridiculous to carry about a pound and
a half of uneaten vegetables in their pockets. On the fourth day, Gough,
with a vigorous sneer at Peele, had, as Peele explained, ostentatiously
pitched his extra potato into the fireplace. The next instant he
received the point of a particularly hard-skinned potato in his left
eye. Two moments later the battle became general, Peele standing in
front of Polyhymnia, and shielding her from flying missiles with heroic
devotion. Then Squinnige, the usher, came out from under the table, and
the result was the suppression of the customary half-holiday, and an
absurd "imposition" to be done about the Landes.
"Never heard of the blessed places," said the Tadpole, with a rueful
glance at the blackboard. "What are they, anyway?"
"Oh, it's easy enough," said Peele. "You fellows needn't trouble about
it. It's where every one goes about on stilts. Now just settle down and
do your 'impo,' or Squinnige'll be at us again. He's a victim to duty,
is Squinnige, and I want to make things easy for him."
At this moment Gough, surrounded by his faction, approached the
platform.
"Come down, and I'll lick your head off," he said to Peele.
Peele, who was an admirable boxer for his age, regarded Gough with
particular contempt.
"Squinnige would be at us before I'd blackened the other eye," he said
to Gough. "Name your weapons. We'll fight this thing out like
gentlemen."
Gough was staggered. If he did not assert himself his ascendency was
gone forever.
"I'd like to punch your head," he said; "but, as you say, when gentlemen
fight about a woman they don't do it with fists. Swords and pistols are
common. I'd like something worse."
Gough's followers crowded to the support of their chief with a thrill of
delight.
"I call this prime," said the Guinea-Pig. "Prime!" he repeated, smacking
his lips.
Peele waved his hand with lofty condescension.
"As you please," he said, glancing idly at the blackboard. Then a
thought struck him which did credit to his love of the dramatic.
"What do you say to stilts?" he asked.
"Stilts!" said Gough, in amazement. "You might as well talk of 80-ton
guns."
"Not at all," said Peele. "Quite customary in France. Much deadlier than
pistols."
"But how d'you do it?" asked the crestfallen Gough.
Peele shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, stand on one stilt and hit with the other," he said. "Gentlemen
generally leave details to their seconds."
"That's all very well," said Gough. "I didn't come over to England with
a Norman pig-driver, and ain't used to those things; but we can't make
fools of ourselves in the middle of the playground. If you can hit on a
way of working it without making asses of ourselves I'm game."
"All right," said Peele, loftily; "I'll work it out. The Tadpole acts
for me. I suppose the Guinea-Pig will do the same for you?"
"Yes," said Gough, sulkily, creeping away to his end of the school-room.
Peele's followers gathered round him again and began to worship.
"Of course it's all guff," said the Tadpole. "Nothing but a stork could
fight on one leg."
Peele again waved his hand.
"Can each of you fellows rake up a shilling?"
It being Saturday, the amount required was speedily subscribed, and
handed over with unquestioning faith to Peele.
"What are you going to do with it?" asked the Tadpole.
Peele sat down and hastily drew a pair of stilts. "I'll take this to the
village," he said, "and get Smith to make us forty pairs. Then I'll show
you fellows how to use them. It's often struck me we could play 'footer'
in this way and get a lot of fun out of it. Now, Tadpole, go and explain
to the enemy."
When the plan was explained to the enemy, the enemy immediately
acquiesced in it. About a week later Dr. Wantage was surprised to see
his pupils mounted on stilts and tumbling about in every direction. When
he came to the Tadpole, who sat on the ground, ruefully rubbing the back
of his head, the Doctor sternly ordered that big-headed youth to rise.
"What's the meaning of this tomfoolery, Wilkinson?" (the Tadpole's name
was Wilkinson) he demanded.
The Tadpole looked imploringly round at Peele, who at that moment
appeared on stilts which covered about six feet at a stride.
"It's this way, sir," Peele explained to the Doctor, as he leaped to the
ground. "Mr. Squinnige gave us an 'impo' on the Landes last Saturday,
where the people do everything on stilts. We got so interested in it,
we're going to play a football match on stilts when we've had a little
practice."
The Doctor looked round and saw half of his pupils reclining in various
involuntary attitudes on the ground, whilst ten or twelve others put
their stilts against the wall and tried in vain to get on them.
"Oh, very well, Peele," he said; "don't let your zeal carry you too far.
It will be awkward if half of you are laid up with broken arms and
legs." And the Doctor continued his way to a neighboring wood, there to
meditate on particles.
Polyhymnia could not understand this sudden craze for stilts. She
pressed Peele for an explanation.
"I'm sure you're at the bottom of it," said Polyhymnia, with emphasis.
"You are the worst boy I ever knew--and the handsomest," she added,
weakly.
"If you look in your glass," said Peele, "I think you'll find I'm not at
the bottom of it all. I wish you wouldn't speak to that beast Gough."
"Gough is full of good points," said Polyhymnia, angrily.
"So are a lot of other beasts," retorted Peele, more than ever decided
that the combat should be waged to the death.
A bogus match was played under the Doctor's nose one afternoon, in which
Peele's followers got decidedly the worst of it. Gough, emboldened by
triumph, proposed that Peele and himself should settle their differences
in Homeric combat then and there.
"I fight," retorted Peele, "when there is no chance of interruption."
This remark made the matter irrevocable, and the combat was fixed to
take place on the following Saturday afternoon, when it was known that
the Doctor would be away.
On the appointed afternoon all the boys in the school were drawn up into
two armies mounted on stilts.
Peele and Gough stalked into the middle of the playground, attended by
the Tadpole and the Guinea-Pig respectively, and ceremoniously bowed to
each other, although the feat was difficult.
Now that everything had gone so far, the Tadpole began to funk it.
"Hadn't you better let him off?" he said, apprehensively, to Peele.
"Say another word," threatened Peele, "and I'll begin on you."
[Illustration: THEN THE FIGHT COMMENCED.]
Then the fight commenced.
The Tadpole and the Guinea-Pig had drawn up a code regulating the manner
of the combat.
The combatants were not allowed to push against each other, but might
strike with one stilt, or thrust. Whenever one fell, it counted to his
opponent.
The two began shuffling warily round each other, like wrestlers waiting
for an opening. By a dexterous thrust of the right stilt Gough succeeded
in bringing Peele to the ground, amid derisive shouts from his
followers. Peele's face was badly scratched by the gravel, but he was on
his stilts again in a second.
In the next round he fought more warily, and balancing himself on one
foot, delivered a swashing blow at Gough's shoulder-blade. He was about
to follow it up as Gough wavered, but the Guinea-Pig came behind him,
and, utterly regardless of the laws of the duello, struck Peele a
crushing blow on the back of the head with his stilt.
Peele fell to the ground for the second time. There was a cry of horror,
as Polyhymnia, who had not accompanied her father, rushed up and
supported his head on her lap; whilst Gough stood moodily looking on at
his rival, and the abashed Guinea-Pig bolted, amid a shower of stilts
flung at him by the enraged boys.
"You coward!" screamed Polyhymnia to Gough. "Oh, you base, cowardly
wretch; you daren't fight him yourself, so you got some one else to
attack him from behind. I'll never speak to you again."
Gough was too proud to exculpate himself at the expense of his
injudicious follower. Peele at last opened his eyes. "It wasn't his
fault," he said, magnanimous to the last; "don't let on to the Doctor,"
and fainted.
* * * * *
Peele remained a month in the sick-room. The first day he was able to
come down into the matron's parlor he found Gough there, gloomily
waiting for him.
"I've come," the latter explained, "to let you know I wasn't cad enough
to plan hitting you from behind."
Peele looked at him curiously.
"I never thought you were," he said.
"The Doctor fancies it was an accident," moodily continued Gough; "and
he's ordered all the stilts to be burned. Since then I've been thinking
things over." He hesitated. "We could finish this affair in the
holidays, on the sands at Boulogne. Perhaps pistols would be better;
stilts are too uncertain," he added, darkly. "You shall have first shot
to make up for this."
Polyhymnia entered the room.
"Shake hands," she commanded, "or I'll never speak to either of you
again. Besides, if you don't, I'll tell the Doctor all about it."
Dogged to the last, the foes reluctantly shook hands, and Gough left the
room. Polyhymnia remained, looking at Peele rather doubtfully.
She came a step or two nearer, but he did not glance at her.
"Philip!" she said. "Aren't you beginning rather early?"
Peele looked up.
Polyhymnia put out her hand, and insisted on his shaking hands with her.
"I've not given Gough a single potato since you were ill," she said;
"and I never, never will, as long as I live."
Peele began to feel better.
A LOYAL TRAITOR.
A STORY OF THE WAR OF 1812 BETWEEN AMERICA AND ENGLAND.
BY JAMES BARNES.
CHAPTER VII.
HARDSHIPS.
Now behold the third attempt that I have made to condense this part of
my narrative.
In desperation, for I wish to push on, I have adopted the measure of
giving but an outline of my personal history covering two years.
So I jump to a day in June, after I had been living in the little house
on Mountain Brook some seven months.
During this time I had been to Miller's Falls but once with my uncle,
but so insolently was I stared at that I did not care to withstand again
the ordeal of pointed fingers and the whispered conversations of the
curious. But now on this June day, here I was standing at the edge of
the pasture waiting for some one most impatiently.
From the door-step of Belair but one other dwelling was in sight; except
this, nothing but ranges of hill-tops. But a mile below lived a farmer
named Tanner, who managed by hard labor to gain his living from the
ground. But I was not waiting for him, nor for my uncle, nor for Gaston,
who, by-the-way, had been constituted, or had appointed himself, my
guardian to such an extent that I might at times, with no stretching of
the imagination, consider myself a prisoner. No, I was not waiting for
any of them, but for some one who soon hove in sight across the slope of
the opposite hill. It was a little girl of my own age, and the only
living being at that time who knew anything of my thoughts or life; and
they were both strange enough for a boy of fifteen to possess or to
endure.
Perhaps if I should tell of our conversation on this day it might
recount something that would show how things were with me. In our
meeting there was nothing but the friendship of two lads, to put the
case as it really appeared to be, and when she had climbed up on the top
rail of the fence beside me, and hooked the hollows of her feet behind
the bar to keep her balance, the way I was doing, we began, as children
do, to speak without preliminaries of any kind in the way of greetings.
"Why weren't you here this morning?" she said, as if accusing me.
"He had one of his fits on and kept me at work," I replied. "First I had
to practise with the small sword for two hours. If I don't look out he
will run me through some day. I almost wish he would."
"I heard you shooting," said the girl.
"Yes, he wouldn't let me off until I had placed three pistol balls
inside a horseshoe nailed to the side of the barn; but I'd rather do
that than go through the fencing."
"Down in the village and at our house every one says you're all
crack-brained up here," the girl said, making a grasp in the air at a
yellow butterfly that flittered over her head. "What else did you do?"
I was ashamed to say that I had been at my dancing-lesson, so I said: "I
had to translate four odes of Horace and learn all about a lot of stupid
people named De Brissac. I'm glad they had their heads cut off."
"Why did that happen to them?" asked the girl. "What did they cut their
heads off for?"
"Because they were nobles and offended the French Republicans by being
polite and well dressed and clean, my uncle says."
"Tell me all about it."
I had had the history of the great French revolution, at least one side
of it, drilled into me ever since my advent at Mountain Brook. I had
learned that my uncle had escaped to America from France, where he had
fought for the King, and that my mother and her twin sister had also
managed to get away from the frightful prison of La Conciergerie with
their lives, but that my grandfather, two uncles, and an aunt by
marriage had all lost their heads by the guillotine for the sole reason
that they were rich, very well dressed, and very polite indeed, so far
as I could make out.
I had learned by heart the family histories of any number of the great
noble families of France, and all of this I considered most dull work
indeed, and wasted time. However, the story that I related to Mary
Tanner, as we sat on the top rail of the fence, seemed to interest her
greatly.
"You see," I was saying, after I had finished spinning the long yarn,
"my name is not John Hurdiss at all; it is something else."
"What is it?" asked the girl.
"I have no idea," I replied; "but my uncle always calls me Jean, which
means John, and, to be honest, I don't think he knows himself."