SAM'S TRAVELLING FACTORY.
The boys marched steadily until sunset, when Sam called a halt and
selected a camping place for the night. He ordered a fire built and
himself superintended the preparation of supper, limiting the amount
of food cooked for each member of the party, a regulation which he
enforced strictly throughout the march, lest any of the boys should
imprudently eat their rations too fast, which, as their route lay
through woods and swamps in a part of the country scarcely at all
settled, would bring disaster upon the expedition of course. Sam had
calculated the march to last about ten days, but he hoped to
accomplish it within a briefer time. The supplies they had would last
ten days, and Sam hoped to add to them by killing game from time to
time, for although the party were unarmed, Sam knew ways of getting
game without gunpowder, and meant to put some of them in practice.
Toward evening of the first day out, he had stopped in a canebrake and
cut three well seasoned canes, selecting straight, tall ones, about an
inch in diameter, and taking care that they tapered as little and as
regularly as possible. Cutting them off at both ends and leaving them
about fifteen feet in length, he next cut three or four small canes,
very long and green ones, without flaw.
That night, as soon as supper was over he brought his canes to the
fire and laid them down, preparatory to beginning work upon them.
"What are you a goin' to do with them canes, Sam?" asked Billy
Bowlegs.
"What do you think, Billy?"
"Dog-gone ef I know," replied Billy.
"Suppose you quit saying 'dog-gone' Billy," said Sam. "It isn't a very
good thing to say, and you've said it thirty-two times this
afternoon."
"Have I? well, what's the odds if I have?"
"Well, it's a bad habit, and if you'll quit it, I'll give you one of
those canes when I get them ready."
"What 'er you goin' to make 'em into?"
"Guns," said Sam, working away as hard as he could with his
jack-knife.
"Guns! what sort o' guns? Powder'd burst 'em in a minute, and besides
we aint got no powder."
"No, but I'm going to make guns out of these canes, and I'm going to
kill something with them too."
"What sort o' guns?"
"Blow guns."
"What's a blow gun, Mas. Sam?" asked Joe, becoming interested, as all
the boy were now.
Sam was too busy to answer at the moment and so Tom, who had seen
Sam's blow guns at home, answered for him.
"He's going to burn out the joints and then make arrows with iron
points and some rabbit fur around the light ends. The fur fills up the
hole in the cane, and when he blows in the end it sends the arrow off
like a bullet. But Sam!" he cried, suddenly thinking of something.
"What is it?" asked the elder brother without looking up.
"What are you going to burn them out with?"
"With that little rod," answered Sam, tossing a bit of iron about six
inches long towards his brother, "I brought it with me on purpose."
"Well, but it won't reach; you've got to reach all the joints you
know, and the rod must be as long as the cane."
"Oh no, not by any means."
"Yes it must, of course it must," exclaimed all the boys in a breath.
"It's just like burning out a pipe stem with a wire."
"No it is not," replied Sam, smiling, "but suppose it is. I can burn
out a pipe stem with a wire half as long as the stem."
"How?" asked two or three boys at once.
"By burning first from one end and then from the other."
"Yes, that's so," answered Sid Russell slowly, drawling his words out
as if he had to drag them up through his long legs, "but that don't
tell how you're goin' to bore out a big cane, fifteen feet long with a
little iron rod not more 'n six or eight inches long."
"Well, if you will be patient a moment, I'll show you," answered Sam,
picking up the bit of iron. Trimming off the end of one of his small
green canes, Sam measured it by the iron rod and trimmed again. He
continued this process until he had the end of the cane a trifle
larger than the iron was. Then taking an iron tube or band out of his
pocket, he drove the iron rod firmly into it for the distance of about
half an inch, leaving the other end of the tube open. Into this he
forced the end of the small green cane and having made it firm he had
a rod about ten feet long.
"There," he said, "I have a rod long enough to reach a good deal more
than half way through either one of my big canes. It isn't iron except
at the end, and it doesn't need to be," and with that he thrust the
end of the bit of iron into the fire to heat.
"Now, Tom," he said, "you must burn the canes out while I do something
else."
I wonder if there is any boy who needs a fuller explanation than the
one which Sam has already given, of what was going forward. There may
be boys enough, for aught I know, who never went fishing in their
lives, and so do not know what canes, or reeds, or cane-poles, as
they are variously called, are like. I must explain, therefore, that
the canes which Sam proposed to burn out, were precisely such as those
that are commonly used as fishing rods. These canes grow all over the
South, in the swamps. They are, in fact, a kind of gigantic grass,
although the people who are most familiar with them do not dream of
the fact. The botanists call them a grass, at any rate, and the
botanists know. Each cane is a long, straight rod, tapering very
gently, with "joints," as they are called, about eight or ten inches
apart. These joints are simply places where the cane, outside, is a
little larger than it is between joints, while inside each joint
consists of a hard woody partition, across the hollow tube, which is
otherwise continuous. Sam's plan was simply to burn these partitions
away with a hot iron, which would convert the cane into a long,
slender, wooden tube, very hard, very light, and straight as an arrow.
Tom went to work at once to burn out the joints, a work which occupied
a good deal of time, as the iron had to be re-heated a great many
times. He worked very steadily, however with the assistance of two or
three of the boys, and managed during that first evening to get two of
the blow guns burned out.
Meantime Sam made an arrow, very small and only about ten inches long,
out of some dry cedar.
"Now," he said, "I want those of you who are not busy burning out the
canes, to go to work making arrows just like that, while I do
something else."
The boys went to work with a will, while Sam, going into the nearest
thicket, cut a green stick about three quarters of an inch in
diameter. Returning to the fire, he split one end of this stick for a
little way, converting it into a sort of rude pincer. He then unrolled
his blanket, and revealed to the astonished gaze of his companions
several pounds of horse shoe nails.
"What on earth are you goin' to do with them horse shoe nails?" asked
Hilly Bowlegs, looking up from the cedar arrow on which he was
working.
"I'm going to make arrow heads out of them," answered Sam, thrusting
several of them into the bed of coals.
With the side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer,
Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow
points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things
that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, was
blacksmithing, and he was really expert in the simpler arts of the
smith. He could shoe a horse, "point" a plow, or weld iron or steel,
very well indeed.
He had learned this as he had learned a good many other things, merely
because he thought that every young man should know how to do
tolerably well whatever he might sometime need to do, and in a new
country where shops are scarce and workmen are not always to be found,
there is no mechanical art which it is not sometimes very convenient
to know something about.
Sam wrought now so expertly that within less than an hour he had made
six arrow points. These he fitted to six of the arrows, and then he
suspended work for the evening, and marked progress on his map; that
is to say, he pricked on his map with a pin the course followed during
the afternoon, estimating the distance travelled as accurately as he
could.