RECTUS OPENS HIS EYES.
I was all right the next day, and we staid on deck most of the time,
standing around the smoke-stack when our noses got a little blue with
the cold. There were not many other people on deck. I was expecting
young Rectus to have his turn at sea-sickness, but he disappointed me.
He spent a good deal of his time calculating our position on a little
folding-map he had. He inquired how fast we were going, and then he
worked the whole thing out, from Sandy Hook to Savannah, marking on the
map the hours at which he ought to be at such and such a place. He tried
his best to get his map of the course all right, and made a good many
alterations, so that we were off Cape Charles several times in the
course of the day. Rectus had never been very good at calculations, and
I was glad to see that he was beginning to take an interest in such
things.
The next morning, just after day-break, we were awakened by a good deal
of tramping about on deck, over our heads, and we turned out, sharp, to
see what the matter was. Rectus wanted me to wait, after we were
dressed, until he could get out his map and calculate where we were, but
I couldn't stop for such nonsense, for I knew that his kind of
navigation didn't amount to much, and so we scrambled up on deck. The
ship was pitching and tossing worse than she had done yet. We had been
practising the "sea-leg" business the day before, and managed to walk
along pretty well; but this morning our sea-legs didn't work at all, and
we couldn't take a step without hanging on to something. When we got on
deck, we found that the first officer, or mate,--his name was
Randall,--with three or four sailors, was throwing the lead to see how
deep the water was. We hung on to a couple of stays and watched them. It
was a rousing big lead, a foot long, and the line ran out over a pulley
at the stern. A sailor took the lead a good way forward before he threw
it, so as to give it a chance to get to the bottom before the steamer
passed over it and began to tow it. When they pulled it in, we were
surprised to see that it took three men to do it. Then Mr. Randall
scooped out a piece of tallow that was in a hollow in the bottom of the
lead, and took it to show to the captain, whose room was on deck. I knew
this was one way they had of finding out where they were, for they
examined the sand or mud on the tallow, and so knew what sort of a
bottom they were going over; and all the different kinds of bottom were
marked out on their charts.
As Mr. Randall passed us, Rectus sung out to him, and asked him where we
were now.
"Off Hatteras," said he, quite shortly.
I didn't think Rectus should have bothered Mr. Randall with questions
when he was so busy; but after he went into the captain's room, the men
did not seem to have much to do, and I asked one of them how deep it
was.
"About seventeen fathoms," said he.
"Can we see Cape Hatteras?" I said, trying to get a good look landward
as the vessel rolled over that way.
"No," said the man. "We could see the light just before day-break, but
the weather's gettin' thick now, and we're keepin' out."
It was pretty thick to the west, that was true. All that I could see in
the distance was a very mixed-up picture of wave-tops and mist. I knew
that Cape Hatteras was one of the most dangerous points on the coast,
and that sailors were always glad when they had safely rounded it, and
so I began to take a good deal of interest in what was going on. There
was a pretty strong wind from the south-east, and we had no sail set at
all. Every now and then the steamer would get herself up on top of a big
wave, and then drop down, sideways, as if she were sliding off the top
of a house. The mate and the captain soon came out on deck together, and
the captain went forward to the pilot-house, while Mr. Randall came over
to his men, and they got ready to throw the lead again. It didn't seem
to me that the line ran out as far as it did the last time, and I think
I heard Mr. Randall say, "Fourteen." At any rate, a man was sent forward
to the pilot-house, and directly we heard the rudder-chains creaking,
and the big iron arms of the rudder, which were on deck, moved over
toward the landward side of the vessel, and I knew by that that the
captain was putting her head out to sea. Mr. Randall took out the tallow
from the lead and laid it in an empty bucket that was lashed to the
deck. He seemed to be more anxious now about the depth of water than
about the kind of bottom we were passing over. The lead was just about
to be thrown again, when Rectus, who had taken the tallow out of the
bucket, which stood near us, and had examined it pretty closely, started
off to speak to Mr. Randall, with the tallow in his hand.
[Illustration: "'HOLD YOUR TONGUE!' ROARED MR. RANDALL."]
"Look here!" said Rectus, holding on to the railing. "I'll tell you what
would be a sight better than tallow for your leads. Just you get some
fine, white Castile-soap, and----"
"Confound you!" roared Mr. Randall, turning savagely on him. "Hold your
tongue! For three cents I'd tie you to this line and drag the bottom
with you!"
Rectus made no answer. He didn't offer him the three cents, but came
away promptly, and put the piece of tallow back in the bucket. He didn't
get any comfort from me.
"Haven't you got any better sense," I said to him, "than to go, with
your nonsense, to the first officer at such a time as this? I never saw
such a boy!"
"But the soap _is_ better than the tallow," said Rectus. "It's finer and
whiter, and would take up the sand better."
"No, it wouldn't," I growled at him; "the water would wash it out in
half a minute. You needn't be trying to tell anybody on this ship what
they ought to do."
"But supposing----" said he.
"No," I exclaimed, in a way that made him jump, "there's no supposing
about it. If you know their business better than they do, why, just let
it stand that way. It wont hurt you."
I was pretty mad, I must say, for I didn't want to see a fellow like
Rectus trying to run the ship. But you couldn't stay mad with Rectus
long. He didn't mean any wrong, and he gave no words back, and so, as
you might expect, we were all right again by breakfast-time.
The next morning we were surprised to feel how warm it was on deck. We
didn't need our overcoats. The sea was ever so much smoother, too. There
were two or three ladies on deck, who could walk pretty well.
About noon, I was standing on the upper deck, when I saw Rectus coming
toward me, looking very pale. He was generally a dark sort of a boy, and
it made a good deal of difference in him to look pale. I was sure he was
going to be sick, at last,--although it was rather queer for him to
knock under when the voyage was pretty nearly over,--and I began to
laugh, when he said to me, in a nervous sort of way:
"I tell you what it is, I believe that we've gone past the mouth of the
Savannah River. According to my calculations," said he, pointing to a
spot on his map, which he held in his hand, "we must be down about here,
off the Georgia coast."
I have said that I began to laugh, and now I kept on. I just sat down
and roared, so that the people looked at me.
"You needn't laugh," said Rectus. "I believe it's so."
"All right, my boy," said I; "but we wont tell the captain. Just let's
wait and have the fun of seeing him turn around and go back."
Rectus didn't say anything to this, but walked off with his map.
[Illustration: "RECTUS SHOWED ME THE MAP."]
Now, that boy was no fool. I believe that he was beginning to feel like
doing something, and, as he had never done anything before, he didn't
know how.
About twelve o'clock we reached the mouth of the Savannah (without
turning back), and sailed twenty miles up the river to the city.
We were the first two persons off that vessel, and we took a hack to the
hotel that the purser had recommended to us, and had the satisfaction of
reaching it about ten minutes ahead of the people who came in the
omnibus; although I don't know that that was of much use to us, as the
clerk gave us top rooms, any way.
We went pretty nearly all over Savannah that afternoon and the next day.
It's a beautiful city. There is a little public square at nearly every
corner, and one of the wide streets has a double row of big trees
running right down the middle of it, with grass under them, and, what
seemed stranger yet, the trees were all in leaf, little children were
playing on the grass, and the weather was warm and splendid. The gardens
in front of the houses were full of roses and all sorts of flowers in
blossom, and Rectus wanted to buy a straw hat and get his linen trousers
out of his trunk.
"No, sir," said I; "I'm not going around with a fellow wearing a straw
hat and linen breeches in January. You don't see anybody else wearing
them."
"No," said he; "but it's warm enough."
"You may think so," I answered; "but I guess they know their own
business best. This is their coldest season, and if they wore straw hats
and linen clothes now, what would they put on when the scorching hot
weather comes?"
Rectus didn't know, and that matter was dropped. There is a pretty park
at the back of the town, and we walked about it, and sat under the
trees, and looked at the flowers, and the fountain playing, and enjoyed
it ever so much. If it had been summer, and we had been at home, we
shouldn't have cared so much for these things; but sitting under trees,
and lounging about over the green grass, while our folks at home were up
to their eyes, or thereabouts, in snow and ice, delighted both of us,
especially Rectus. I never heard him talk so much.
We reached Savannah on Tuesday, and were to leave in the steamer for St.
Augustine Thursday afternoon. Thursday morning we went out to the
cemetery of Bonaventure, one of the loveliest places in the whole world,
where there are long avenues of live-oaks that stretch from one side of
the road to the other, like great covered arbors, and from every limb of
every tree hang great streamers of gray moss, four and five feet long.
It was just wonderful to look at. The whole place seemed dripping with
waving fringe. Rectus said it looked to him as if this was a graveyard
for old men, and that every old fellow had had to hang his beard on a
tree before he went down into his grave.
This was a curious idea for Rectus to have, and the colored man who was
driving us--we went out in style, in a barouche, but I wouldn't do that
kind of thing again without making a bargain beforehand--turned around
to look at him as if he thought he was a little crazy. Rectus was
certainly in high spirits. There was a sort of change coming over him.
His eyes had a sparkle in them that I never saw before. No one could
say that he didn't take interest in things now. I think the warm weather
had something to do with it.
"I tell you what it is, Gordon," said he,--he still called me Gordon,
and I didn't insist on "Mr.," because I thought that, on the whole,
perhaps it wouldn't do,--"I'm waking up. I feel as if I had been asleep
all my life, and was just beginning to open my eyes."
A graveyard seemed a queer place to start out fresh in this way, but it
wasn't long before I found that, if Rectus hadn't really wakened up, he
could kick pretty hard in his sleep.
Nothing much happened on the trip down to St. Augustine, for we
travelled nearly all the way by night. Early the next morning we were
lying off that old half Spanish town, wishing the tide would rise so
that we could go in. There is a bar between two islands that lie in
front of the town, and you have to go over that to get into the harbor.
We were on the "Tigris," the Bahama steamer that touched at St.
Augustine on her way to Nassau, and she couldn't get over that bar until
high tide. We were dreadfully impatient, for we could see the old town,
with its trees, all green and bright, and its low, wide houses, and a
great light-house, marked like a barber's pole or a stick of
old-fashioned mint-candy, and, what was best of all, a splendid old
castle, or fort, built by the Spaniards three hundred years ago! We
declared we would go there the moment we set foot on shore. In fact, we
soon had about a dozen plans for seeing the town.
If we had been the pilots, we would have bumped that old steamer over
the bar, somehow or other, long before the real pilot started her in;
but we had to wait. When we did go in, and steamed along in front of the
old fort, we could see that it was gray and crumbling, and moss-covered
in places, and it was just like an oil-painting. The whole town, in
fact, was like an oil-painting to us.
The moment the stairs were put down, we scuffled ashore, and left the
steamer to go on to the Bahamas whenever she felt like it. We gave our
valises and trunk-checks to a negro man with a wagon, and told him to
take the baggage to a hotel that we could see from the wharf, and then
we started off for the fort. But on my way along the wharf I made up my
mind that, as the fort had been there for three hundred years, it would
probably stand a while longer, and that we had better go along with our
baggage, and see about getting a place to live in, for we were not going
to be in any hurry to leave St. Augustine.
We didn't go to any hotel at all. I had a letter of introduction to a
Mr. Cholott, and on our way up from the wharf, I heard some one call out
that name to a gentleman. So I remembered my letter, and went up and
gave it to him. He was a first-rate man, and when we told him where we
were going, we had quite a talk, and he said he would advise us to go to
a boarding-house. It would be cheaper, and if we were like most boys
that he knew, we'd like it better. He said that board could be had with
several families that he knew, and that some of the Minorcans took
boarders in the winter.
Of course, Rectus wanted to know, right away, what a Minorcan was. I
didn't think it was exactly the place to ask questions which probably
had long answers, but Mr. Cholott didn't seem to be in a hurry, and he
just started off and told us about the Minorcans. A chap called
Turnbull, more than a hundred years ago, brought over to Florida a lot
of the natives of the island of Minorca, in the Mediterranean, and began
a colony. But he was a mean sort of chap; he didn't care for anything
but making money out of the Minorcans, and it wasn't long before they
found it out, for he was really making slaves of them. So they just rose
up and rebelled, and left old Turnbull to run his colony by himself.
Served him right, too. They started off on their own accounts, and most
of them came to this town, where they settled, and have had a good time
ever since. There are a great many of them here now, descendants of the
original Minorcans, and they keep pretty much together and keep their
old name, too. They look a good deal like Spaniards, Mr. Cholott said,
and many of them are very excellent people.
Rectus took the greatest interest in these Minorcans, but we didn't take
board with any of them. We went to the house of a lady who was a friend
of Mr. Cholott, and she gave us a splendid room, that looked right out
over the harbor. We could see the islands, and the light-house, and the
bar with the surf outside, and even get a glimpse of the ocean. We saw
the "Tigris" going out over the bar. The captain wanted to get out on
the same tide he came in on, and he did not lose any time. As soon as
she got fairly out to sea, we hurried down, to go to the fort. But
first, Rectus said, we ought to go and buy straw hats. There were lots
of men with straw hats in St. Augustine. This was true, for it was just
as warm here as we have it in June, and we started off to look for a
straw-hat store.
We found that we were in one of the queerest towns in the world. Rectus
said it was all back-streets, and it looked something that way. The
streets were very narrow, and none of them had any pavement but sand and
powdered shell, and very few had any sidewalks. But they didn't seem to
be needed. Many of the houses had balconies on the second story, which
reached toward each other from both sides of the street, and this gave
the town a sociable appearance. There were lots of shops, and most of
them sold sea-beans. There were other things, like alligators' teeth,
and shells, and curiosities, but the great trade of the town seemed to
be in sea-beans.[A] Rectus and I each bought one for our watch-chains.
I think we tried on every straw hat in town, and we bought a couple in a
little house, where two or three young women were making them. Rectus
asked me, in a low voice, if I didn't think one of the young women was a
Mohican. I hushed him up, for it was none of his business if she was. I
had a good deal of trouble in making Rectus say "Minorcan." Whenever we
had met a dark-haired person, he had said to me: "Do you think that is a
Mohican?" It was a part of his old school disposition to get things
wrong in this way. But he never got angry when I corrected him. His
temper was perfect.
I bought a common-sized hat, but Rectus bought one that spread out far
and wide. It made him look like a Japanese umbrella. We stuffed our felt
hats into our pockets, and started for the fort. But I looked at my
watch and found it was supper-time. I had suspected it when I came out
of the hat-shop. The sea-trip and fine air here had given us tremendous
appetites, which our walk had sharpened.
So we turned back at once and hurried home, agreeing to begin square on
the fort the next day.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Sea-beans are seeds of a West Indian tree. They are of different
colors, very hard, and capable of being handsomely polished. They are
called "sea-beans" because great numbers of them drift up on the Florida
and adjacent coasts.