NED, THE SON OF WEBB: WHAT HE DID
[Illustration: "'THERE!' HE EXCLAIMED, AT LAST."]
NED, THE SON OF WEBB:
WHAT HE DID
BY
WILLIAM O. STODDARD
AUTHOR OF
"CROWDED OUT O' CROFIELD," "DESPATCH BOAT OF
THE WHISTLE," ETC.
Illustrated by
VICTOR A. SEARLES
[Illustration]
BOSTON
DANA ESTES & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1900_
BY DANA ESTES & COMPANY
Colonial Press:
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE WAR SPIRIT 11
II. NED WEBB'S OUTING 29
III. A VERY WIDE LAKE 53
IV. BEHIND THE TIMES 76
V. THE WAR SUMMONS 100
VI. THE SEA KING 118
VII. THE KEELS OF THE NORTHLAND 147
VIII. THE SCOUTING PARTY 173
IX. THE GREAT FULFORD FIGHT 191
X. THE COMING OF HAROLD THE SAXON 211
XI. THE BATTLE OF STAMFORD BRIDGE 233
XII. A RIDE IN OLD ENGLAND 259
XIII. THE HOST OF THE NORMANS 279
XIV. THE BATTLE OF SENLAC 302
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
"'THERE!' HE EXCLAIMED, AT LAST" _Frontispiece_
"'THERE ISN'T ANY SCHOOL-BOOK ABOUT THIS'" 37
"NED DID NOT SIT STILL AT ALL" 45
"JUNE DAYS ALWAYS GROW WARMER, RAPIDLY, IF
YOU ARE SHOVING A HAND-CART" 62
"WITH A STRONG MOTION THEN HE THREW HIS
HAWK UPWARD" 91
"HE WAS REALLY BUT JUST IN TIME, FOR THE
RUFFIAN STRUCK AT ONCE" 220
"FOR FATHER BRIAN'S AX CAME DOWN UPON
THAT MAN'S HELMET" 298
"NEAR HIM SAT KING HAROLD HIMSELF, UPON
HIS HOUSE, AS MOTIONLESS AS A BRONZE
IMAGE" 312
NED, THE SON OF WEBB.
CHAPTER I.
THE WAR SPIRIT.
"She's grand!" exclaimed Ned, enthusiastically. "Uncle Jack, the
_Kentucky_ could knock any other ironclad in all the world!"
"Perhaps she could," growled Uncle Jack, somewhat thoughtfully. "I'm
glad she is out of range of them, just now, though. I like her looks as
she is. It is best for them, too."
They were standing near the head of Pier Number One, North River,
gazing at the great line-of-battle ship as she steamed along slowly up
the stream.
"Those double turrets make her as tall as a house," said Ned. "There's
nothing else like her! See the long noses of those big guns!"
"That's what I came for," replied Uncle Jack. "I wanted to see her, and
now I have seen her I am more opposed to war than ever. I'm going to
join the Peace Society."
"I'd rather join the navy," said Ned. "But if a shell from one of those
guns should burst inside of another ship it would blow her sky-high."
"No!" responded his uncle, with firmness. "She would not go up to the
sky, she would go down to the bottom of the deep sea."
"She could do it, anyhow," said Ned, not explaining which of the two
ships he referred to.
It was evident that Uncle Jack was too deeply interested in the
_Kentucky_ to care for general conversation. For fear, however, that
he might not have read the papers, his somewhat excited nephew told
him that the steel-clad wonder of the sea had at least twelve thousand
horses in her steam engines. He also said that she was of twelve
thousand tons burden, but did not say whether that was the load she
could carry or whether it might be supposed to be her fighting weight.
"I wish I were captain of her," he declared, at last. "I'd like to
conquer England."
"I felt just so once," responded Uncle Jack. "There is more in England
that is worth capturing than there is anywhere else. You would need
more than one ship, though. I tried the experiment, but the English
beat me."
"Oh!" exclaimed Ned. "I know how you tried it. You went alone, though,
and without any _Kentucky_."
"No," said his uncle, "I didn't go alone. Your aunt went with me. So
did thousands of other brave Americans. They try it every year, and
they always come home beaten."
"Yes, sir!" said Ned. "They spend all their money, and are glad to get
back. They say the English can whip anything in all the world except
Americans. I'm going there, some day. I don't believe there is any
British ship that can whip the _Kentucky_."
"She certainly is magnificent," replied his uncle. "She is a tremendous
war machine. What we are ever to do with her, however, I don't care to
think of. I want her never to fire one of those guns. After all, Ned,
if one of her great steel bottom plates should get shaken loose and
drop out, that vast leviathan would sink, with all on board."
"I guess not," said Ned. "They would get away in the boats. Besides,
she isn't going to fall to pieces right away."
"All right," said his uncle. "We've seen her. Now let's go home."
They turned away and walked on across what the people of New York call
the Battery. They do so because here was a fort once. Part of it,
nearest the water, was made there two centuries ago. Another part,
more like a modern fort, was made later, and it was distinguished for
having been surrendered, back and forth, without firing one of its
guns in defence, more times than any other military post in America.
It was given up once by the Dutch, twice by the British, and once by
the Americans. That was by General Washington, when the English troops
drove him and his ragged rebels out of New York. None of the fighting
that was done then was anywhere near the Battery.
Ned had something to say about that, as they went along, and about the
other forts around the harbour, of which he seemed to be very proud.
"My boy," remarked his uncle, "almost all of our New York forts are
back numbers. One steel canoe like the _Kentucky_, if she were English,
for instance, and if we were conquering England, could knock all of
those old-fashioned affairs about our ears."
"Well," said Ned, doubtfully, "so the _Kentucky_ or the _Oregon_ could
do for any old fort in Europe. I say, Uncle Jack, right here is the
lower end of all the elevated railways."
"Exactly," said his uncle; "and of the cable-cars that are hauled by
a steel rope underground. Away up yonder is the suspension bridge
from this city to Brooklyn. There will be a dozen of them, more or
less, before long. All over the upper part of town the trolley-cars
run by lightning on a string. I hate all these modern inventions and
innovations--I do! I hate railways up in the air on stilts, and I hate
express trains that go a mile a minute, and I hate these electric
lights. Why, Ned, when I was a boy, we were able to get first-rate
tallow-dip candles to read by. Nobody can have anything of that kind,
nowadays. Now, just look at those forty-story-chimney buildings!
Fellows who live at the top of those things have to be shot up. It's
awful!"
"I went up four of them," said Ned. "I wanted to know how it felt."
"Well," said Uncle Jack, "how did you feel?"
"I held my breath," replied Ned, "and I held on to the seat. I was glad
to get out, though, top and bottom. I suppose a fellow can get used to
it--"
"Ned," interrupted his uncle, "wait here a minute. I want to have a
little talk with a friend of mine in Chicago. What they won't do next,
with electricity and some things, I don't know."
They were in front of a long-distance telephone office, and Uncle Jack
went in. His conversation with his neighbour, a thousand miles away,
turned out a long one, and it was half an hour before he and his nephew
reached the patch of cleared land which still remains around the City
Hall.
"There!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "Hurrah! We're having first-rate luck,
Uncle Jack! That's the very thing I've been wanting to see!"
It was not another building, this time, and it was not altogether an
innovation. It was something warlike and terrible; for a battery of the
Fourth Regular Artillery, guns, ammunition wagons, all, was passing
through the city, down Broadway, on its journey to some new post of
duty.
"Those are three-inch calibre, long range guns," said Uncle Jack. "They
send shells ten miles or so, to split things. The gun-barrels are
longer than a fence-rail. For my part, I don't like 'em. They shoot too
far."
"They're the right thing to have," said Ned. "If I were going to
conquer England I'd want plenty of those guns."
"They'd be of no use at all to you, if you had them," said Uncle Jack.
"The London police wouldn't let you keep 'em. They'd take them right
away from you, as soon as you landed. You would be fined, too. It's
against English law for any fellow to carry such things around with
him."
Ned was silenced by that, for the time, and they both got into a
street-car, and went on up-town. There were plenty of things worth
seeing, all along, but the car was so crowded with passengers that they
were packed, as Uncle Jack complained, "like sardines in a box." So
they stood still, and hardly saw anything.
When at last they stepped out, and walked over toward one of the
gateways of Central Park, he growled again.
"There they go!" he exclaimed. "One--two--three--four of 'em. They
are those automobile carriages, that go without any horses. I like a
horse, myself. That is, if he's a good one, and pulls well in harness.
I was kicked half to death by one of my horses, once. I think he had
some kind of automobile in him. If you should ever happen to conquer
England, you'd get fine horses."
"That's what mother says," replied Ned. "She's a good American now,
but she was born in England. She says they have the best horses in the
world."
"Not by any means equal to ours," snapped Uncle Jack. "Ours are so fine
that we are going to preserve some of them for specimens, after we get
so that all our riding and pulling is done by steam and electricity. We
shall keep pictures of them, too, and statues, so that people who live
in such times as are to come may know what sort of animals horses used
to be."
Uncle Jack appeared to be in a bad state of mind, that day, for he went
on to denounce vigorously a long list of things. He even went so far as
to condemn the entire Anglo-Saxon race, English and American together.
"Look at it, Ned!" he said, with energy. "Not only do both of these
wretched nations come down to this new state of things, themselves,
including the newspapers and the magazines and the floods of books, but
they are clubbing together to force innovations upon all the rest of
the world. They are a partnership concern now, and which of them is the
meanest I don't know. The British are choking their inventions down the
throats of China, India, Africa, and a lot of other unlucky continents
and islands. We Americans are working in the same way with Cuba and
Porto Rico and the Philippines and Magatapatanglew."
"Where on earth is that?" asked Ned.
"Where is it?" sadly responded his uncle, shaking his head. "I really
don't know. Nobody else knows where half of these new places are, with
long-tail names. I've a kind of notion it's near the junction."
"What junction?" inquired his nephew.
"Why!" exclaimed Uncle Jack. "The junction? You don't know? It is at
the corner where the Congo River crosses the Ganges. It is very near
the point where the Ural Mountains pour down into the Red Sea."
Ned was not entirely caught and mystified, this time, for he promptly
replied: "Oh, I know where that is! I've been to Grammar School
Sixty-eight. I know! It's down near the custom house."
"I declare!" said his uncle. "Boys know too much, anyhow, nowadays.
You would learn a great deal more, though, if you'd take an army and a
steamer, and go and conquer England. Your mother has dozens of cousins
there, too. But you had better buy return excursion tickets before you
start. That's what I did, and it helped me to get back home. Let's go
to dinner."
"It's about dinner-time," said Ned; and his uncle talked along as they
went.
"I like the English for one thing," he said. "They cook good dinners.
I hate 'em for another thing, though: if you go to an English
dinner-party, you have to wait till the last man gets there before
they will give you anything to eat. I conquered them a little on that,
anyhow, for I always went two hours late, myself. So I generally had to
wait only about half an hour or so."
Ned studied that matter until he thought he understood it. Afterward,
however, he was glad to be an American, when his own dinner came to the
table exactly on time. So did he and his uncle.
A long walk, and sightseeing, combined with plans for the conquest of
England, will surely prepare a healthy sixteen-year-old boy for his
dinner, especially if he is somewhat tall for his age and burly in
build. Ned was not quite prepared, nevertheless, for some things which
were coming upon him. He could not have expected, reasonably, that
his entire family would set him up for a mark and shoot at him. That
is what they did, and they fired at him from all around the table,
hitting him.
"Ned," began Uncle Jack, "I heard you! Where on earth did you learn to
speak Norwegian? Not at the grammar school."
"Why," said Ned, "I got it from old Erica. She has been in the house
since before I was born. She began with me when I was doing my first
words of any kind."
"Oh," said Uncle Jack, "that's it! I suppose even the Norway babies
catch it that way."
"I see," said his father. "It is about the same way with your Latin.
I used to talk Latin at you when you wore frocks. You are pretty well
up in it, for a boy only just graduated from a public school. Perhaps
it may be of use to you, some day; but I am afraid that your Norwegian
never will."
"Not unless he should go there, if he ever travels," said his mother.
"What he needs to do now is to get out into the country. He has been
cooped up in the city and held down over his books long enough."
"He must spend a few weeks at his grandfather's house," remarked his
Aunt Maria, with a severe expression. "He must go fishing. His health
requires it."
So said his sisters and his older brothers, and then Uncle Jack gave
him away entirely, telling of Ned's dealings with the _Kentucky_, and
with the other wonders they had seen that morning.
"You don't say so!" exclaimed his father. "He wishes to conquer
England! I know some English boys that could make him wish he were
hiding on board the _Kentucky_."
"Well," responded Ned, rebelliously, "I'm not so sure about that! I'm
captain of the baseball nine. I'm in on football, too. I can fence
first-rate, and I've had Pat McCool for a boxing master."
"Oh!" remarked Aunt Maria. "Now I know! That is why you came home
limping so horridly, a week ago Saturday. You had a pair of black
eyes, too--"
"That's nothing, Aunt Maria," interrupted Ned. "That was Jimmy Finley.
We were boxing barehanded. He got it as bad as I did, too."
"Edward," exclaimed his mother, "that is shocking! It is like fighting!
And you have been talking slang, too!"
"Well, mother," said Ned, respectfully, "I didn't mean to; but Jim is a
regular rusher to hit."
"Edward!" said his father. "Slang again? I must take you in hand,
myself."
"He is dreadful!" whispered one of his sisters. "He called Sallie
Hemans a bricktop. Her hair is red--"
"I see how it is," continued his father. "The sooner you are out in
the country, the better. Football, indeed! Baseball, fencing, boxing!
All that sort of thing! What you need is exercise. Fishing, I should
say, and plenty of good, fresh country air. Something beside books and
school."
"I'll tell you what, then," responded Ned. "I'll be glad enough to get
there. All the colts I rode last summer'll be a year older now. I'm
going to try 'em, and see if they can send me to grass, like they did
then."
"Edward! What grammar!" groaned his aunt. "His Grandmother Webb will
attend to that."
"I have my serious doubts," remarked Uncle Jack. "She has not
altogether reformed her own neighbourhood. The country is the place for
him, however. If he isn't sent away he may stir up a war with England,
and it would be expensive."
From that the table talk drifted back to the terrible battle-ships and
the new inventions.
"It is dreadful!" remarked Uncle Jack. "I used to think I knew,
generally, what I was eating, but I have given it up. They have
invented artificial eggs. The butter we get is a mystery; they make
almost anything out of corn. The newspapers are printed on stuff
that's made of cord-wood, and this new imitation silver is nothing but
potter's clay, boiled down, somehow. It tires me out to think of it
all."
"I don't care," said Ned. "Hurrah for the country, and for the colts,
and for some fishing!"