_In which Clarence Esmond, alone and deserted, tries to pray;
and his parents defer their trip to the Coast._
After all, Clarence was but fourteen years of age. He was brave beyond
his years. He had a craving for adventure. But, picture to yourself a
lad in a thin blue bathing suit, in an oarless boat, alone on a great
river. Clarence was really a good swimmer. He was at home in any lake;
he had disported many a time in the salt water; but a river with its
unknown dangers was new to him. The fear of the unknown, therefore,
coupled with the warning of the butcher’s boy, kept him in the boat,
when in fact he could easily have made the shore. Adventure is all very
well in its way, but one likes to meet that fair goddess with reassuring
companions. No wonder, then, that the boy broke down.
For some minutes he continued to sob. His grief was poignant. Chancing
to glance over the side of the boat, he saw his features, tear-stained
and swollen, reflected in the clear water. It was the first time that he
had ever seen his reflection when he was in heavy grief. He looked
again, and then suddenly broke into a laugh.
“Never say die,” he muttered to himself, and forthwith, putting his
elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he began to meditate.
What would his parents think about it? They would search, they would
find his clothes upon the river bank and conclude naturally that he was
drowned. Perhaps, however, Master Abe would reassure them on that point.
Clarence did not know that Abe, having taken to the bushes and making
his way into the interior of Iowa, had already dickered with a farmer’s
boy for an old pair of overalls and was now doing his best to put as
wide a distance between himself and McGregor as possible.
Once more Clarence raised his head and looked about him. The sun was now
in mid-heaven and, shining down upon the boy’s unprotected calves and
shoulders, promised to leave the memory of that adventurous day in
scarlet characters upon his tender skin. On one side flowed the
Wisconsin into the Mississippi; on the other the Iowa hills frowned down
on him. The river itself was clear of craft. Water, water, everywhere;
and standing sentinel over the mighty stream the hills of two sovereign
states. Hotter and hotter fell the rays of the sun.
“Lord, have mercy on me,” exclaimed Clarence. He really prayed as he
uttered these words.
Clarence, it must be confessed, knew very little of prayer. They did not
specialize on that form of devotion—nor, in fact, on any form of
devotion—at the academy of which for two years he had been a shining
ornament. Vainly did he try to cudgel his brain for some other prayer.
Even the Our Father, recited in tender years at his mother’s knee, he
had forgotten.
The sun grew hotter; it was getting almost unbearable. Clarence was
driven to action. After some effort, in which he skinned his knuckles,
he succeeded in dislodging one of the two boards serving as seats.
Placing this next to the others he threw himself below, doubled up so as
to get himself as much as possible under the welcome shade, and—happy
memory—murmured:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep:
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.”
In saying these homely but beautiful lines, our adventurer had no
intention of courting slumber. Nevertheless, he was sound asleep in ten
minutes. The incidents of the morning, the climb up the hill, the
rowing, the brush with the tramp—all these things, combined with the
fact that he had stayed up late the night before and had risen that
morning at five o’clock, sent him into a slumber the sounder for the
quiet and the freshness of the great river.
* * * * *
About the same hour in which Clarence had snuggled low down in the boat
and presently fallen into deep slumber, a gentleman came hurrying down
to the McGregor boat-landing. He was a rather handsome man in the prime
of life, dressed in a manner that showed he belonged to the
many-tailored East. He was pulling at his mustache, gazing anxiously all
about him, and betraying in many ways nervousness and anxiety.
“Beg pardon,” he began, addressing a group of men and women who were
waiting for the ferry-boat that plied between McGregor and Prairie du
Chien, “but have any of you chanced to see a boy of fourteen in a white
sailor suit about here? He’s my son.”
“Did you say a white sailor suit?” asked a man of middle age.
“Yes.”
“Why, I think I saw a boy dressed that way this morning. As I was coming
down the street, towards nine o’clock, I saw a boat going down stream
with two people in it. First, I thought the one rowing was a girl; I
took another look, and I could almost swear it was a boy dressed in
white. They were gone down some distance, and so I couldn’t say for
sure.”
Just then a young man of about twenty-one dressed in flannels joined the
group.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and am rowing
down the river from LaCrosse to Dubuque. This morning I locked my boat
here, leaving the oars in it, and went for breakfast and a little stroll
into the country back of McGregor. My boat has disappeared.”
“Was it painted green?” inquired the first informant, “and did it ride
rather high?”
“Yes, that’s the boat.”
“Well, the boat I saw, with, I thought, two boys in it, one in a white
sailor suit, must have been your boat.”
“Strange!” exclaimed Clarence’s father. “My boy, I am sure, would not do
such a thing.”
“What about the other boy?” said an old inhabitant. “There’s a
no-account fellow here-abouts named Abe Thompson. He was the butcher’s
boy and got fired early today. He’s disappeared this morning, too, and
I’ll bet my boots that he’s the one who went off in that boat.”
“That reminds me,” put in another member of the group. “When the St.
Paul came in here this morning, the passengers were all talking about a
small boy rowing a boat up near Pictured Rocks, who tried to cross their
bow. The Captain had to stop the steamboat and he said that the two boys
in that boat seemed anxious to commit suicide. When the Captain roared
at the oarsman and called him a jackass, the kid smiled and asked which
one of the two he was speaking to.”
“That was my son Clarence beyond a doubt,” said Mr. Esmond with the
suspicion of a smile. “It would be just like him to cut across the bow
of a steamboat, and that question of his makes it a dead certainty. The
boy sat up until one o’clock last night reading Treasure Island. He’s
very impressionable, and he left the house this morning with his heart
set upon meeting with an adventure of some sort or other. It’s near
twelve o’clock now, and we were to start for the coast at one-forty.
Can’t I get a motorboat around here somewhere?”
The man who had been the first to give information then spoke up.
“Sir,” he said, “I have a fairly good motorboat at the McGregor landing.
It will be a pleasure for me to do anything I can to help you.”
“Thank you a thousand times. Let’s get off at once. My name is Charles
Esmond.”
“And mine,” returned the other, “is John Dolan.” The two, as they made
their way to the motorboat, shook hands.
“This is awfully kind of you,” continued Mr. Esmond, as he seated
himself in the prow.
“It’s a pleasure, I assure you. I’ve really nothing to do at this
season, and so I pass most of my time on the river.”
As he spoke these words, the boat shot out into the water.
“Now,” continued Mr. Dolan, “as a working hypothesis, we may take it for
granted that those boys went to Pictured Rocks; everybody goes there. So
we’ll make for that place and reach it, I dare say, in six or seven
minutes.”
“I hope nothing has happened,” said the father. “This morning my wife
had a bad sick headache, and Clarence was overflowing with animal
spirits. We had promised him, the night before, a ride on the river and
a swim. He had never been on the Mississippi, and he was all eagerness.
To make matters worse, I got a telegram this morning to send on a report
on a Mexican mine—it’s my business, by the way, to study mines here, in
Mexico, and, in fact, almost anywhere. That report meant two or three
hours of hard work. So I told Clarence to run out and get some good
boatman, if he could, and go rowing. I cautioned him to be careful about
where he went swimming and not to go in alone. He promised me faithfully
to be back at twelve. Now I have no reason to think the boy would break
his word. In fact, I had an idea that he was truthful.”
“You talk of your boy,” observed Mr. Dolan, “as though you didn’t know
him very well.”
Mr. Esmond relaxed into a smile.
“It does sound funny, doesn’t it,” he said. “The fact of the matter is
that I really have very little first-hand knowledge of him. At the age
of five, Clarence learned how to read, and developed a most
extraordinary passion for books at once. If allowed, he read from the
time he got up till he went to bed. I never saw such a case of
precocity. It was next to impossible to get him to take exercise. His
mother did her best to restrain him, and I did my share too, though it
was very little, as I was away looking up mines nine months out of the
twelve. When the boy was eleven, it became clear that some radical
action had to be taken. I looked around for some school that would suit
or rather offset his idiosyncrasy. After no end of inquiries I
discovered Clermont Academy in New York State, where athletics were
everything and such studies as reading, grammar and arithmetic were a
sort of by-product. Clarence has been there for three years, and, up to
a week ago, his mother and I never saw him from the time of his
entrance. Well, he’s a changed boy. He is fairly stout, and muscular
beyond my most sanguine hopes. He is up in all sorts of games. In fact,
in his class—boys of twelve to fourteen—he’s the leader. All the same,
I blush to say that I really know very little about my boy.”
“Perhaps the lad is a genius,” suggested Mr. Dolan.
“Some of my friends have made that claim and accused me of trying to
clip his wings. All the same, I want my boy, genius or no genius, to
grow up to be a hale, hearty man.”
“Halloa!” exclaimed Dolan. He had turned the boat shoreward. Before the
eyes of both lay in full view on the bank two suits of clothes. The boat
had scarce touched the shore, when Mr. Esmond jumped from it and ran to
the spot where the clothes lay spread upon the ground.
“My God! These are my son’s,” he cried, gazing with dismay upon the
white sailor suit which he had caught up in his hands. His face
quivering with emotion, he stood stock still for a moment, then sank
upon the ground and buried his head in his hands.
“And this,” said John Dolan, looking closely at the abandoned overalls,
“belongs to that ne’er-do-well butcher’s boy. It looks bad. They must
have gone swimming here.”
Mr. Esmond arose and looked about.
“Where’s that boat they had?” he inquired.
“It may have drifted away,” answered John. “Or, more probably, that
butcher’s boy, who is a known thief, has hidden it somewhere. He knew
very well that there would be a search for it.”
“Say, Dolan, you’ll stand by me, won’t you? I am almost in despair; the
thing is so sudden.”
“I’ll do anything you want.”
“Well, you leave me here and run back to McGregor. Send word to my wife
that I am detained—don’t let her think or even suspect that our boy is
drowned—and to put off our trip to the Coast, as I cannot make the
train. Tell her to expect me and Clarence before supper. Then get the
proper officials of McGregor to come here at once and drag the river.
Hire any extra men you judge fit. Don’t bother about expense. Now go and
don’t lose a moment.”
Left alone, Mr. Esmond made a careful search, tracing the boy’s steps in
their ascent to Pictured Rocks. He went part of the way himself, crying
out at intervals, “Clarence! Clarence! Clarence!” There was no answer
save the echoes which to his anxious ears sounded far differently from
the “horns of elfland.”
Again and again he called. And yet Clarence was not so far away—hardly
half a mile down the river, locked in slumber, and, as it proved, in the
hands of that bright-eyed goddess of adventure whom the reckless lad had
not in vain wooed.
Returning to the shore, Mr. Esmond on further investigation traced his
boy’s footprints to the river’s banks. At this juncture, several
motorboats arrived, each carrying a number of men, and soon all were
busy dragging the river.
At six o’clock John Dolan insisted on bringing the despairing father
back to McGregor.
“Dolan,” he said, as they started upstream, “have you any religion?”
“I hope so. I’m a Catholic.”
“I don’t know what I am;—but my poor boy! His mother ought to be a
Catholic, but she was brought up from her tender years by Baptist
relations with the result that she’s got no more religion that I have.
When my boy was born, I started him out on the theory that he was not to
be taught any religion, but was to grow up without prejudices, and when
he was old enough, he was to choose for himself. All the religion he
ever got amounted to his saying the ‘Our Father’ and ‘Now I lay me down
to sleep.’ At that school he’s been going to there’s no religion taught
at all. I wish I had done differently. Think of his appearing before a
God he never thought of. Some of our theories look mighty nice in
ordinary circumstances. But now! My son is dead, and without any sort of
preparation.”
“We can pray for him; we can hope.”
“Well, if his soul is saved,” said Esmond gravely, “it’s not because of
me, it’s in spite of me.”
When the bereaved father reached the hotel, the despair in his eyes told
the tale to his wife. Let us drop a veil over that scene of sorrow—the
sudden loss of an only child.