JASPER BROOK
The second day at Halcyon was celebrated by a picnic at Jasper Falls.
After breakfast the girls busied themselves in preparing their luncheon.
Jean came out of the kitchen with a small guide-basket on her back, a
frying-pan in one hand and an iron spoon in the other, followed by
Cecily with a fishing basket.
“Jean Lennox, what on earth are you doing with that frying-pan?” called
Betty.
“Ask Cece,” said Jean.
“Don’t you wish you knew what I’ve got in here?” said Cecily, and when
Betty and Frances tried to peep through the opening in the cover Jean
whacked them with her spoon.
“We’re going to have flapjacks!” guessed Betty. “Cecily has the flour
and Jean has the maple-syrup.”
“Which she will proceed to spill down the waterfall, while composing an
ode to Jasper Brook,” added Carol.
“There’s lettuce inside there; I saw it through the hole,” said Frances.
“We’re going to have lobster salad!”
“You don’t catch lobsters in lakes, or fry salad, my dear,” returned
Cecily. “And you might as well stop guessing, for I won’t tell you a
thing about it.”
“Oh! My rifle! I must have it to fire salutes from the top of the falls!
I’d better carry it loaded, in case we should meet a catamount,” said
Carol, mischievously, as she picked up her treasure under the very nose
of Fräulein Bunsen.
“Nein, Carolchen! You leave dat gun at home,” said Fräulein with
decision. “Mrs. Brook, please lock up dat weapon where she cannot find
it. She vill kill us all and herself too!” Carol laughed and
good-naturedly laid down the alarming instrument of destruction.
With Cecily and Roderick Dhu as guides the campers started on their walk
along the wooded edge of the lake. At every step there was something to
make lovers of nature look or listen with delight. Green velvet cushions
of moss and “hairy-caps” bordered the trail. Wild strawberries, nestling
among the cool leaves, kept the girls swooping down like birds of prey.
Tiny hats and umbrellas of fungus, red, yellow, creamy and brown, dotted
the way; and even every old decaying stump was in gala dress, decked
with scarlet-tipped Cladonia, or its sister with the fairy goblets.
Overhead the thrushes were in glorious voice, and the air was full of
sweet bird-calls.
After skirting the lake for about a mile they came to a blazed
beech-tree with a sign saying, “To Jasper Falls.” The trail which ran
from the foot of the tree led deep into the woods away from the lake.
Following the little path they came to the most winsome and enchanting
brook that ever parched one’s throat by the mere sound of its rushing.
The girls filled the tin cups which hung from their belts and drank, or
lay on the margin and put their lips to the swift-flowing stream; and
the pure cold water would have been worth a journey through the desert
of Sahara, Eunice said.
Jasper Brook had won its name from the polished rocks that glowed ruddy
and golden brown in its bed. Sometimes these formed a path of
stepping-stones, and sometimes they broke the stream into little rapids
that eddied and foamed and swirled. Sometimes they lay, smooth and
shining, at the bottom of a mirror-like pool, and sometimes they rose in
boulders over which the girls had to scramble as they made their way up
the brook.
Beyond a bend the falls stood revealed in all their beauty. First and
lowest of all, a miniature Niagara, the color of jade where it slipped
smoothly over a great rock, and a cloud of sparkling foam where it
broke. Then, above, a ledge of the living rock, over which the brook
glided clear as glass. Higher yet, a cascade, hanging in a shimmering
silver veil over a cliff at the right—a Swiss Staubbach, as Fräulein
called it. This was Jasper Brook, as it descended over a natural
staircase of rock. With much scrambling and slipping and laughing the
trampers made the ascent along the very edge, and sometimes, indeed, in
the stream itself.
“Isn’t it beautiful! I’d like to stand right under those darling falls
and let them come down on top of me!” cried Jean, climbing upon a rock
near the “Staubbach.” “Come up here where you can feel the spray! It’s
as good as a shower-bath!” From the ledge above, the cascade fell in a
shower of mist to the pool at her feet, the cool drops sprinkling her
face. The rest of the vanguard scrambled up beside her.
“What are you tying a knot in your handkerchief for, Joan of Arc?”
Cecily asked presently.
“‘Curiosity killed the cat,’” quoted Jean.
“I know what it’s for,” said Carol. “That knot’s a reminder to write a
poem on the ‘Staubbach.’ I knew the Muse was awake when I asked Jean if
she wasn’t getting soaked in the spray, and she smiled seraphically and
dreamily answered, ‘Um!’ I haven’t had the honor of _two_ visits from a
poet without learning to read the signs. Excelsior! Let’s scramble on!”
“Let’s name all the different falls and rocks and things we come to,”
Jean proposed. “Let’s name _this_, ‘Silver Sword Falls,’ and _that_ can
be ‘Golden Shield Pool.’ It’s quite a goldy color, and it’s shaped like
a shield.”
“I think it’s shaped much more like a dishpan,” said practical Cecily.
“Let’s name the places for ourselves,” Betty suggested, resuming the
march up the stony path.
“All right! We’ll call this ‘Betty’s Toboggan Slide,’” replied Cecily.
For Betty suddenly slipped backward on the slippery incline.
“This is ‘Carol Cascade,’” said Jean, as they stood on a flat rock
watching a wild little cataract foaming and boiling.
“It _does_ look like her,” said Eunice. “That’s just the way she rushes
pell-mell into things. Those little curly rapids do for her hair—it’s
always in a wild fly.”
“We’ll name that puddle ‘Una Pond.’ It’s so absent-minded, it’s
forgotten to move down the brook! It’s _you_ all over, Una,” returned
Carol.
“What’s the use of lugging this basket myself when I can hitch it on
Roderick?” said Frances. Charmed with this idea she lashed her basket on
the chieftain’s back, at which act of oppression he showed his
resentment by worrying the strap until he had slipped his badge of
servitude off into a small whirlpool, and the Mouse returned from
crawling into a cave in time to see her pretty new basket spin round and
round and then sail down the waterfall.
“Catch it! catch it! Frisky’s basket! It has _all_ our Saratoga
potatoes!” shrieked Betty to the girls below. But the runaway swept past
the hands that snatched for it till it reached a quiet pool, from which
Marion Gaylord rescued it. The basket was intact, but Frances mournfully
spread out upon a stone its once crisp contents, now water-soaked and
limp, and fit only to nourish the minnows that lived below the falls.
“You’re a horrid old thing, Roderick Dhu!” said she, slapping the dog,
as he applied an interested nose to the ruined delicacy. “Go away! You
needn’t think _you’re_ going to have any, just because you’ve spoilt it
for _us_!”
“Well, Frisk, it was your own fault!” said Cecily. “Rod isn’t used to
carrying baskets, are you, old petsy?”
Adventures, mishaps and frolics all along the climb were commemorated in
the names chosen for boulders, pools and rapids. There was “Roderick’s
Roll,” where the collie charged a chipmunk up a land-slide in a bank and
tumbled down with an avalanche of earth and stones; then “St. Cecilia’s
Organ,” where the rocks looked like slender organ-pipes; and “Nancy’s
Nest,” a little shelf, cushioned with moss, where Nancy found violets
and harebells growing. By the time the top of the falls was reached all
the members of the party had had their names immortalized in woodland
monuments.
A broad, flat ledge of stone at the head of Jasper Falls was selected
for the dining-table.
“Come and see the boiling spring before we unpack our luncheon,” said
Cecily.
“Boiling spring!” cried Pamela Kirkland. “Now, St. Cecilia, you haven’t
a _geyser_ here!”
“Is it a hot spring, really?” asked Gladys Pearson. “Do let’s see it!”
“Hot? It’s a _boiling_ spring!” Cecily declared. She led the way to a
little pool with a sandy bed, hidden away in the woods. A tiny jet of
water bubbled up through the sand, and she dipped in her cup and held it
out to Pamela with the warning, “Don’t burn your mouth!” Pamela blew to
cool the boiling draft and tasted it gingerly.
“Why, it’s icy cold!” she exclaimed. “Cecily Brook,—the idea of your
telling such a whopper! Take off your shield of truth this instant!”
“I told the truth,” St. Cecilia answered serenely. “It _is_ a boiling
spring. It _bubbles_! They always call bubbling springs _boiling_. Oh,
Pam! It was too funny to see you blow!”
“I don’t care—they _do_ have hot springs,” said Pamela.
“Never mind, Pamela. We’ll fool the others when they come up,” said
Gladys.
Three of the girls had slung tin pails on their shoulders, and Helen
Westover had carried a bottle of lemon juice. The boiling spring was
colder than the brook, so here the pails were filled, and going back to
their rock-table the girls spread out their luncheon and brewed their
lemonade.
Then Cecily opened her mysterious basket, and Jean recited in sepulchral
tones:
“They are neither man nor woman,
They are neither beast nor human,
They are—”
“Fish!” cried an enraptured chorus, as Cecily unrolled from the lettuce
leaf in which it had been swathed, a silvery little perch.
“Court and Jack brought them before breakfast,” said Cecily, unpacking
the basketful of fish, each one enveloped in a fresh lettuce leaf. “They
went fishing before sunrise, and they thought we’d like some perch and
bass for our picnic, so they brought us their whole catch. Aren’t they
cousins worth having?”
Court and Jack were given three cheers immediately, and voted the first
batch of candy made at Camp Huairarwee. Then came the fire-building and
fish-frying. The girls collected sticks, and Cecily being skilled in
wood lore, a scientific fire was soon blazing. She dropped little lumps
of butter into the frying-pan, and when they were melted and sizzling in
went the first half dozen of fish, to be deftly turned with the iron
spoon, and sprinkled by Frances with pepper and salt.
The first panful being done to a turn, the fish were doled out upon
lettuce leaves held up by starving maidens. No one missed the saratoga
chips at the banquet. There were those good old picnic standbys,
sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, and for dessert, large, sweet summer
apples, generous slices of maple-sugar cake and ice-cold lemonade.
“This would be a royal spread even if we were eating it in the
Hazelhurst dining-room,” said Nancy. “But there isn’t anything like a
fine old rushing, roaring waterfall for giving your luncheon a flavor!”