AN UNEXPECTED DELIGHT
Sammy and Dot, held prisoners in the hold of the Nancy Hanks, made one painful discovery at least. They learned that without light the time passed with great slowness.
It seemed as though they had been in the dark many hours longer than was actually the case. They sat down side by side and seriously ate all the gumballs. These scarcely satisfied their youthful appetites and, anyway, as Dot said, it must be supper time.
So they ate all of the provisions they could possibly swallow. This attack made fearful inroads upon the stock of provisions. There was no cheese left, few of the animal crackers, and half of the peanut butter was literally "licked up," for they had to use their fingers.
"Ho!" said Sammy, "what's the odds? Fingers was made before spoons."
"Not our fingers, Sammy Pinkney," retorted Dot. "But maybe pirates don't mind about table manners."
Just then her boy comrade was not thinking much about the pirate play. If he had ever felt that he was fitted to rove the seas under the Jolly Roger banner, on a career of loot and bloodshed, he had quite got over the hallucination.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to get Dot home. He had a very decided belief that if his father interviewed him after this escapade something serious would happen to him.
Dot, having recovered from her first fright, and being blessed now with a very full stomach, began to nod. She finally fell fast asleep with her head on Sammy's shoulder. He let her sink down on the boards, putting the sack of potatoes and his jacket under her head for a pillow.
He could not sleep himself. Of course not! He must keep watch all night long. No knowing when the people who had stolen the barge might come and open the hatchway and attack them. Sammy was quite convinced that the man and the girl had illegally taken possession of the canalboat.
He sat beside the softly breathing Dot and listened to certain rustling sounds in the hold, wondering fearfully what they meant. It seemed to him that no rats could make such noises.
"Might be wolves—or snakes," thought the boy, and shivered desperately as he sat in the dark.
The canalboat continued to go its blundering way, and scarcely a sound from out-of-doors reached the little boy's ears. Captain Bill Quigg fell asleep at the rudder arm and only woke up now and then when he came close to losing his pipe from between his teeth. "Lowise" kept close at the heels of the ancient mules, urging them with voice and goad. The hound, misnamed Beauty, slept the unhappy sleep of the flea-ridden dog.
The thunderstorm had cleared the air. It was a beautiful afternoon. For although the children in the hold thought it long past their usual supper-time, it was nothing of the kind.
The air in the hold began to feel close and it made Sammy very sleepy as well as Dot. But the boy was faithful to his trust. He propped his eyelids open and manfully held his watch.
Frightened? Never more so, was Sammy Pinkney. But there was some pluck in the youngster and he felt he must put on a bold front before Dot.
As for the canalboat captain and his "crew," they apparently went the even tenor of their way. Cap'n Bill Quigg was not a very smart man—either physically or mentally. The blacksmith at Milton had told Luke Shepard the truth. Little Louise was the smartest member of the Quigg family, which consisted only of herself, her father and the hound dog, Beauty.
She practically "ran the business." In some way Quigg had become possessed of the old Nancy Hanks and the mules. He plodded back and forth from one end of the canal to the other, taking such freight as he could obtain. If there chanced to be no freight, as on this occasion, he was quite philosophical about it.
Louise worried. She was of a keen, anxious disposition, anyway. She showed it in her face—a hatchet-face at best behind the plentiful sprinkling of freckles that adorned it. But by no means was the face unattractive.
She had had little schooling—only such as she had obtained in winter when the Nancy Hanks was frozen up near a schoolhouse. Then she studied with avidity. Had she ever remained long enough for the teachers really to get acquainted with the shy, odd child, she might have made good friends. As it was, she knew few people well and was as ignorant of life as it was lived by comfortably situated people as a civilized human being could be.
She had begun to scheme and plan for daily existence, and to keep the wolf of hunger away from the door of the canalboat cabin, when she was a very little girl—no older than Dot Kenway herself, in fact. Now she seemed quite grown up when one talked with her, despite her crass ignorance upon most subjects.
This afternoon she paddled on in her bare feet through the mire of the towpath, while the thunder storm passed over and the sun came out again. As she urged on the mules she was planning for a delight that had never yet entered into her crippled life.
She had not urged her father to stop for the farmer's potatoes, whereas on any other occasion she would have insisted upon doing so. A dollar to be earned was an important thing to Louise Quigg.
But she had two half dollars saved and hidden away in the cabin. She had squeezed the sum out of her bits of housekeeping money during the past two months. For all that time the dead walls and hoardings about Durginville had been plastered with announcements of a happening the thought of which thrilled little Louise Quigg to the very tips of her fingers and toes.
When they reached the Bumstead Lock this afternoon there was a chance for the girl to leave the mules grazing beside the towpath while the water rose slowly in the basin, and she could board the boat and talk with Cap'n Bill.
The hound, awakened by her approach, began sniffing around the edge of the forward hatch cover.
"Wonder what Beauty smells there?" Louise said idly. But her mind was on something else. The captain shook his head without much reflection and, now more thoroughly awakened, lit his pipe again.
"I say, Pap!"
"Wal, Lowise?" he drawled.
"We're going to lay up to-night short of the soapworks at Durginville."
"Heh?" he demanded, somewhat surprised, but still drawling. "What for, Lowise?"
"I want to hitch there by the Lawton Pike."
"Lawsy, Lowise! you don't wanter do no sech thing," said Cap'n Bill.
"Yes I do, Pap."
"Too many folks goin' to be there. A slather of folks, Lowise. Why! the circus grounds is right there. This is the day, ain't it?"
"That's it, Pap. I want to see the circus."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" the man stammered. "Circuses ain't for we folks."
"Yes they are, Pap."
"Ain't never been to one in all my life, Lowise," Cap'n Bill said reflectively.
"No more ain't I," agreed the girl. "But I'm goin' to this one."
"You goin'?" he demanded, his amazement growing.
"Yes. And you're goin' too, Pap."
"Git out!" gasped Cap'n Bill, actually forgetting to pull on his pipe.
"Yes, you are," declared Louise Quigg, nodding her head. "I've got the two half dollars. Beauty will stay and mind the boat. I jest got a taste in my mouth for that circus. Seems to me, Pap, I'd jest die if I didn't see it."
"Lawsy, Lowise!" murmured Captain Bill Quigg, and was too amazed to say anything more for an hour.
The Nancy Hanks got through the lock and the mules picked up the slack of the towrope again at Louise's vigorous suggestion. Inside the hold Sammy and Dot both wondered about the stopping of the boat. Dot was awakened by this.
"Sammy," she murmured, "is it morning? Have we been here all night?"
"I—I guess not, Dot. It can't be morning. Are you hungry?"
"No-o. I guess not," confessed the little girl.
"Then it can't be morning," Sammy declared, for what better time-keeper can there be than a child's stomach?
"But aren't they going to let us out—not ever, Sammy?" wailed the little girl.
"Pshaw! Of course they will. Some time they'll want to load up this old boat. And then they'll have to open the door up there in the deck. So we'll get out."
"But—but suppose it should be a long, long time?" breathed Dot, thrilled with the awfulness of the thought.
"We got plenty to eat," Sammy said stoutly.
"Not now we haven't, Sammy," Dot reminded him. "We ate a lot."
"But there's all the potatoes—"
"I wouldn't like 'em raw," put in Dot, with decision. "And you can't catch any fish as you were going to with your hook and line, Sammy. I heard that girl that's with the other pirates," she added, "tell their dog that he couldn't even catch rabbits along the canal. And what do you think, Sammy Pinkney!"
"What?" he asked, drearily enough.
"Why, Sadie Goronofsky said last spring that she had an uncle that was a rabbit. What do you think of that? I never heard of such a thing, did you?"
"He was a rabbit, Dot?" gasped Sammy, brought to life by this strange statement.
"That's just what she said. She said he was a rabbit, and he wore a round black cap and had long whiskers—like our goat, I guess. And he prayed—"
"Je-ru-sa-lem!" ejaculated Sammy.
"And the rabbit, Sadie's uncle, prayed," went on Dot, uninfluenced by Sammy's ejaculation. "Now what do you think of that?"
Master Sammy was as ignorant of the Jewish ritual and synagogue officers as was Dot Kenway. He burst out with disgust:
"I think Sadie Goronofsky was telling a fib, that's what I think!"
"I'm afraid so," Dot concluded with a sigh. "But I don't like to think so. I meant to ask Ruthie about it," and she shook her head again, still much puzzled over Sadie's uncle who was a rabbi.
The day waned, and still the two little stowaways heard nothing from above—not even the snuffing of the old hound about the hatch-cover. They were buried it seemed out of the ken of other human beings. It made them both feel very despondent. Sammy stuck to his guns and would not cry; but after a while Dot sobbed herself to sleep again—with a great luscious peach from Ruthie's basket of fruit, clutched in her hand and staining the frock of the Alice-doll.
The Nancy Hanks was finally brought to a mooring just across the canal from the tented field where the circus was pitched. The dirty brown canvas of the large and small tents showed that the circus had already had a long season. Everything was tarnished and tawdry about the show at this time of year. Even the ornate band wagon was shabby and the vociferous calliope seemed to have the croup whenever it was played.
But people had come from far and near to see the show. Its wonders were as fresh to the children as though the entertainment had just left winter quarters, all spic and span.
From the deck of the Nancy Hanks there looked to be hundreds and hundreds of people wandering about the fields where the tents were erected.
"Oh, come on, Pap, le's hurry!" exclaimed Louise Quigg, gaspingly. "Oh, my! Everybody'll see everything all up before we get there!"
The mules were driven aboard over the gangplank and stabled in the forward end of the house. The cabin door was locked and Beauty set on guard. Without the first idea that they were leaving any other human beings upon the barge when they left it, Louise and her father walked toward the drawbridge on the edge of town, over which they had to pass to reach the showgrounds.
Louise had hurriedly cooked supper on the other side of the partition from the coop where the mules were stabled. The fire was not entirely out when she had locked the door. Her desire to reach the showgrounds early made the child careless for once in her cramped life.
The mules, quarreling over their supper, became more than usually active. One mule bit the other, who promptly switched around, striving to land both his heels upon his mate's ribs.
Instead, the kicking mule burst in the partition between the stable and the living room, or cabin, of the Nancy Hanks. The flying planks knocked over the stove and the live coals were spread abroad upon the floor.
This began to smoke at once. Little flames soon began to lick along the cracks between the deck planks. The mules brayed and became more uneasy. They did not like the smell of the smoke; much less did they like the vicinity of the flames which grew rapidly longer and hotter.
As for Beauty, the hound, her idea of watching the premises was to curl down on an old coat of Quigg's on deck and sleep as soundly as though no peril at all threatened the old canalboat and anybody who might be aboard of it.