I. The Tale of Probable Adventure
Adventure narratives are essentially boys' stories—the grammar and high school boys who are past the "foolishness" of fairy tales and even of Oriental wonder stories, but are not yet appreciative of realism, the quiet reflection of humdrum life. For many decades The Youth's Companion has furnished among its other good things excellent stories of adventure probable and actual. Stevenson's masterpiece is, of course, one of the two top-notches of excellence in the extended form of this type of story. How the species may be historically but a modification of the voyages imaginaires is obviously suggested no less by "Treasure Island" than by "Robinson Crusoe." It is the short form of this type that we are dealing with at present.
Definition
Stories of probable adventure are narratives of exciting and extraordinary events that, though really fictitious, might have happened. We can tell many of them from true adventures only by the testimony of the authors. "Captain Singleton's Tour Across Africa," critics have said, seems to the general reader quite as true an account as Stanley's; while the "Memoirs of a Cavalier," which records the adventures of a soldier in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, was long mistaken for autobiography.
The writing of a probable adventure
To write a tale of this kind you must put yourself into the mood of the bold hunter or traveller. You must imagine exciting things. Many of your own experiences have just missed being astounding. Add what-might-have-been, and you have a story of the type we are discussing. You catch the bear or the bear catches you. You swim across a turbulent river. You spend the night on an iceberg. You coast down the frightful curves of the twenty-five miles of the Benguet road with the steering gear of your automobile entirely useless. Remember, though, that the adventure must seem real, however much you have drawn on your reading and imagination. You must know enough of animal, plant, and human life, and of geography, to be particular here and there and thus give verisimilitude to your pictures. In order to get a subject, suppose you think of what you consider the bravest physical act; then build up around it a swift, crisp narrative. You may use technical terms once in a while, such as a nervous story-teller would be likely to fling off and then explain; only be sure they are intelligible very soon.
An ordinary imagination supplemented by a "Baedeker" will enable any one to construct an acceptable probable adventure. Superior excellence will lie in the diction and style.
A warning
Because of the prevalence of this kind of narrative, you will need to guard yourself with especial care against the temptation to plagiarize. Be sure that your certification of authorship really tells the truth. It is easier to be original than you think; as George Bernard Shaw says, any man with brains can more easily compose a story or a play than steal one.
A Fight with a Bear
One day, being in a forest a few leagues from Dusseldorf, as Gerard was walking like one in a dream, thinking of Margaret and scarce seeing the road he trod, his companion laid a hand on his shoulder, and strung his cross-bow with glittering eye. "Hush!" said he, in a low whisper that startled Gerard more than thunder. Gerard grasped his axe tight, and shook a little; he heard a rustling in the wood hard by, and at the same moment Denys sprang into the wood, and his crossbow went to his shoulder, even as he jumped. Twang! went the metal string; and after an instant's suspense he roared, "Run forward, guard the road! he is hit! he is hit!"
Gerard darted forward, and, as he ran, a young bear burst out of the wood right upon him; finding itself intercepted, it went upon its hind legs with a snarl, and, though not half-grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay groveling, with Gerard hacking it.
"Hallo, stop! You are mad to spoil the meat."
"I took it for a robber," said Gerard, panting. "I mean I had made ready for a robber, so I could not hold my hand."
"Ay, these chattering travelers have stuffed your head full of thieves and assassins; they have not got a real live robber in their whole nation. Nay, I'll carry the beast; bear you, though, my cross-bow."
"We will carry it by turns, then," said Gerard, "for 'tis a heavy load; poor thing, how its blood drips. Why did we slay it?"
"For supper and the reward the baillie of the next town shall give us."
"And for that it must die, when it had but just begun to live; and perchance it hath a mother that will miss it sore this night, and loves it as ours love us; more than mine does me."
"What, know you not that his mother was caught in a pitfall last month, and her skin is now at the tanner's? and his father was stuck full of clothyard shafts t'other day, and died like Julius Cæsar, with his hands folded on his bosom, and a dead dog in each of them?"
But Gerard would not view it jestingly. "Why, then," said he, "we have killed one of God's creatures that was all alone in the world—as I am this day, in this strange land."
"You young milksop," roared Denys, "these things must not be looked at so, or not another bow would be drawn nor quarrel fly in the forest nor battlefield. Why, one of your kidney consorting with a troop of pike-men should turn them to a row of milk pails; it is ended; to Rome thou goest not alone; for never wouldst thou reach the Alps in a whole skin. I take thee to Remiremont, my native place, and there I marry thee to my young sister. She is blooming as a peach. Thou shakest thy head? Ah! I forgot; thou lovest elsewhere, and art a one-woman man, a creature to me scarce conceivable. Well, then, I shall find thee, not a wife, nor a leman, but a friend; some honest Burgundian who shall go with thee as far as Lyons; and much I doubt that honest fellow will be myself, into whose liquor thou hast dropped sundry powders to make me love thee; for erst I endured not doves in doublet and hose. From Lyons, I say, I can trust thee by ship to Italy, which being by all accounts the very stronghold of milksops, thou wilt there be safe; they will hear thy words, and make thee their duke in a twinkling."
Gerard sighed. "In sooth I love not to think of this Dusseldorf, where we are to part company, good friend."
They walked silently, each thinking of the separation at hand; the thought checked trifling conversation, and at these moments it is a relief to do something, however insignificant. Gerard asked Denys to lend him a bolt. "I have often shot with a long-bow, but never with one of these."
"Draw thy knife and cut this one out of the cub," said Denys slyly.
"Nay, nay, I want a clean one."
Denys gave him three out of his quiver.
Gerard strung the bow and leveled it at a bough that had fallen into the road at some distance. The power of the instrument surprised him; the short but thick steel bow jarred him to the very heel as it went off, and the swift steel shaft was invisible in its passage. Only the dead leaves, with which November had carpeted the narrow road, flew about on the other side of the bough.
"Ye aimed a thought too high," said Denys.
"What a deadly thing! No wonder it is driving out the long-bow—to Martin's much discontent."
"Ay, lad," said Denys, triumphantly, "it gains ground every day, in spite of their laws and their proclamations to keep up the yewen bow, because, forsooth, their grandsires shot with it, knowing no better. You see, Gerard, war is not pastime. Men will shoot at their enemies with the hittingest arm and the killingest, not with the longest and missingest."
"Then these new engines I hear of will put both bows down; for these, with a pinch of black dust and a leaden ball, and a child's finger, shall slay you Mars and Goliath and the Seven Champions."
"Pooh! pooh!" said Denys, warmly; "petrone nor harquebuss shall ever put down Sir Arbalest. Why, we can shoot ten times while they are putting their charcoal and their lead into their leathern smoke belchers, and then kindling their matches. All that is too fumbling for the field of battle; there a soldier's weapon needs be aye ready, like his heart."
Gerard did not answer, for his ear was attracted by a sound behind them. It was a peculiar sound, too, like something heavy, but not hard, rushing softly over the dead leaves. He turned round with some little curiosity. A colossal creature was coming down the road at about sixty paces distance.
He looked at it in a sort of calm stupor at first; but the next moment he turned ashy pale.
"Denys!" he cried. "O God! Denys!"
Denys whirled round.
It was a bear as big as a cart horse.
It was tearing along with its huge head down, running on a hot scent.
The very moment he saw it, Denys said in a sickening whisper:
"The cub!"
Oh! the concentrated horror of that one word, whispered hoarsely, with dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like a sudden stroke of lightning in the dark—the bloody trail, the murdered cub, the mother upon them, and it. DEATH.
All this in a moment of time. The next she saw them. Huge as she was, she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage); she raised her head big as a bull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them, scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.
"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot, useless.
"Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! Too late! Tree! tree!" and he dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and, as they fled, both men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.
With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.
Without taking her bloodshot eyes off those she was hunting, she smelt it all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead, quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever heard, nor dreamed to be in nature, and flew after Denys. She reared and struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.
Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep into the bark and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.
Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down he knew the bear would be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of him. Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.
"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long knife, and clenching his teeth, prepared to job the huge brute as soon as it should mount within reach.
Of this combat the result was not doubtful.
The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses of hair. The man was going to sting the bear, and the bear to crack the man like a nut.
Gerard's heart was better than his nerves. He saw his friend's mortal danger, and passed at once from fear to blindish rage. He slipped down his tree in a moment, caught up the cross-bow which he had dropped in the road, and, running furiously up, sent a bolt into the bear's body with a loud shout. The bear gave a snarl of rage and pain and turned its head irresolutely.
"Keep aloof," cried Denys, "or you are a dead man."
"I care not," and in a moment he had another bolt ready and shot it fiercely into the bear, screaming "Take that! that! that!"
Denys poured a volley of oaths down at him. "Get away, idiot!"
He was right; the bear finding so formidable and noisy a foe behind him, slipped growling down the tree, rending deep furrows in it as she slipped. Gerard ran back to his tree and climbed it swiftly. But while his legs were dangling some eight feet from the ground the bear came rearing and struck with her forepaw, and out flew a piece of bloody cloth from Gerard's hose. He climbed and climbed, and presently he heard as it were in the air a voice say, "Go out on the bough!" He looked, and there was a long massive branch before him shooting upwards at a slight angle; he threw his body across it, and by a series of convulsive efforts worked up it to the end.
Then he looked round panting.
The bear was mounting the tree on the other side. He heard her claws scrape; and saw her bulge on both sides of the massive tree. Her eye not being very quick, she reached the fork and passed it, mounting the main stem. Gerard drew breath more freely. The bear either heard him or found by scent she was wrong; she paused; presently she caught sight of him. She eyed him steadily, then quietly descended to the fork.
Slowly and cautiously she stretched out a paw and tried the bough. It was a stiff oak branch, sound as iron. Instinct taught the creature this; it crawled carefully out on the bough, growling savagely as it came.
Gerard looked wildly down. He was forty feet from the ground. Death below. Death moving slow but sure on him in a still more horrible form. His hair bristled. The sweat poured from him. He sat helpless, fascinated, tongue-tied.
As the fearful monster crawled growling towards him, incongruous thoughts coursed through his mind. Margaret, the Vulgate, where it speaks of the rage of a she-bear robbed of her whelps—Rome—Eternity.
The bear crawled on. And now the stupor of death fell on the doomed man; he saw the open jaws and bloodshot eyes coming, but in a mist.
As in a mist he heard a twang; he glanced down; Denys, white and silent as death, was shooting up at the bear. The bear snarled at the twang; but crawled on. Again the cross-bow twanged; and the bear snarled and came nearer. Again the cross-bow twanged, and the next moment the bear was close upon Gerard, where he sat, with hair standing stiff on end, and eyes starting from their sockets, palsied. The bear opened her jaws like a grave, and hot blood spouted from them upon Gerard as from a pump. The bough rocked. The wounded monster was reeling; it clung, it stuck its sickles of claws deep into the wood; it toppled, its claws held firm, but its body rolled off, and the sudden shock to the branch shook Gerard forward on his stomach with his face upon one of the bear's straining paws. At this, by a convulsive effort, she raised her head up, up, till he felt her hot fetid breath. Then huge teeth snapped together loudly close below him in the air, with a last effort of baffled hate. The ponderous carcass rent the claws out of the boughs; then pounded the earth with a tremendous thump. There was a shout of triumph below, and the very next instant a cry of dismay, for Gerard had swooned, and, without an attempt to save himself, rolled headlong from the perilous height.
Denys caught at Gerard and somewhat checked his fall; but it may be doubted whether this alone would have saved him from breaking his neck or a limb. His best friend now was the dying bear, on whose hairy carcass his head and shoulders descended. Denys tore him off her. It was needless. She panted still, and her limbs quivered, but a hare was not so harmless; and soon she breathed her last, and the judicious Denys propped Gerard up against her, being soft, and fanned him. He came to by degrees, but confused, and feeling the bear all round him, rolled away, yelling.
"Courage," cried Denys, "le diable est mort."
"Is it dead, quite dead?" inquired Gerard from behind a tree; for his courage was feverish, and the cold fit was on him just now, and had been for some time.
"Behold," said Denys, and pulled the brute's ear playfully, and opened her jaws and put in his head, with other insulting antics; in the midst of which Gerard was violently sick.
Denys laughed at him.
"What is the matter now?" said he; "also, why tumble off your perch just when we had won the day?"
"I swooned, I trow."
"But why?"
Not receiving an answer, he continued, "Green girls faint as soon as look at you, but then they choose time and place. What woman ever fainted up a tree?"
"She sent her nasty blood all over me. I think the smell must have overpowered me. Faugh! I hate blood."
"I do believe it potently."
"See what a mess she has made me!"
"But with her blood, not yours. I pity the enemy that strives to satisfy you."
"You need not to brag, Maitre Denys; I saw you under the tree, the color of your shirt."
"Let us distinguish," said Denys coloring; "it is permitted to tremble for a friend."
Gerard, for answer, flung his arm around Denys's neck in silence.
—Charles Reade.
From "The Cloister and the Hearth."
The Secret of the Jade Tlaloc
"If only this paper on jade were finished!" sighed tall, dignified, blond Dolores. "These notes sound so interesting. 'Jade implements,'" she read, "'found in Mexico—source of mineral not yet discovered—theory that implements are relics of Eastern invasion disproved—jade said to exist in America,' My! I do think jade is the most delightful subject for investigation."
"Um-m!" Elsa, who, like her Spanish mother, was small, quick, dark, and adventure-loving, did not consider jade a particularly fascinating topic for study. "Now if—we—a—we—a——" she ruminated.
"If we—a——?" Dolores's sentences were always clearly thought out before she spoke them.
"If we—a—now if we could finish that paper, we might be able to sell it, you know," Elsa went on. "We certainly haven't an enviably large fortune." She reached into one of the dark pigeon-holes of her father's ponderous desk. "Ook-ook!" she pursed up her full red lips, as she held a yellow scroll from her and gingerly flicked away the dust which had collected upon it since her father's death. "Now here's what I call interesting. An old letter or something, written on agave-leaf paper." From their long association with their father in his archeological researches, the girls had gained a more than superficial knowledge of Aztec customs and antiquities. "'We, the Aztecs, are a proud race,'" she readily translated. "'It is not for the Spaniards to glory in complete victory over us, for though they have conquered our bodies, they have not conquered our spirits. Well may they rejoice in the ruining of our beautiful cities. But when they search, and search in vain, for the wealth which they know has been ours, how they will rage! But their anger shall be as vain as their searching. Those of us who are left will not see the invaders glorying in what was once the splendor of the Aztecs. Rather will we bury, and hide from all future generations, if need be, the secrets of our riches. It is that my descendants may one day scoff at the descendants of those who have made me, who was a prince, a slave, that I am making this record. Among the mountains which the Spaniards have called the "Corderillas" is one in whose top is a hole of great depth, from which it is said, there once flowed streams of liquid fire, the vengeance of the gods upon the people. This mountain stands between two sister mountains of far greater height than itself, and is near the middle of the range.' Why, that might be Ahualtaper, right near here." Elsa had the topography of the country around their home very clearly mapped out in her mind.
Dolores nodded. "Go on," she said.
"'Half-way up the side which faces the rising sun,'" Elsa continued, "'is a ledge, upon which is a rock, apparently one with the mountainside, and in which, when viewed from a distance, can be seen a resemblance to the cross of Tlaloc. One day a descendant of mine will find and displace this rock; whereupon, the entrance to the tomb of my ancestors will be revealed. There are many such tombs and many such mountains as those which I have described, but which I have not named. However, in the particular burial place to which I refer is a jade image of the god Tlaloc. It is studded with valuable turquoise. Where this image is found will also be found what should be the source of untold wealth to the discoverer.
"'In warning, let me say that none but the eldest son of a family must ever know of this document; and should he be tempted, ever, to part with it, let him remember that bodily want is preferable to the curses of the dead!'"
The two girls remained silent for a few moments. "Well," asked Elsa, at last, "what do you think of that?"
Dolores turned again to the desk. "It is interesting," she replied, "but of what use can it ever be to us? We could never find the place. Why, we've been in dozens of burial grottos already, and they are all pretty much alike." She opened another drawer. "Here is father's diary."
The book fell open at the page upon which the last entry had been made. "'May 15'—the day father became ill—'poor wrinkled old Gomez died today,'" she read. "'He wanted to give me information about a jade Tlaloc, some famous image which has been lost. He tried with his last breath to do me the service of aiding me in my research. He gave me also a very ancient manuscript. I do not know where he got it. I hardly feel equal, to-night, to the task of translating it. Perhaps Elsa will do the translation tomorrow. If I could find such an idol, it would be of great value to me in my treatise on jade.'"
Elsa waited long enough only for Dolores to stop reading. "Dolores, we must find that idol."
Dolores looked gravely at her sister. "This is really a serious matter, Elsa. It would save us from the necessity of working if we could find it. But how can you and I alone accomplish anything? We should have to go into the mountains, and have a donkey, and camp in the open air, and——"
"Well," Elsa impatiently interrupted the enumeration of objections, "what of that? You and father and I used often to go into the mountains, and have a donkey, and camp in the open air; and father always depended more upon us than we upon him. You think it over while I get tea." Elsa left her sister sitting alone and looking out of the study windows to the solemn rugged Corderillas.
Dolores did consider the matter, with the result that, after a few weeks of study, of consulting maps and plans, and of preparation for the journey, the sisters were ready to begin the daring exploit whose aim was to complete the investigations which their father had begun.
Clad in rough, unsightly denim, and leading a burro which carried a very considerable store of provisions, they clambered up the jagged sides of Ahualtapec; they tore their way through thickets and fell upon cacti.
"We're lost," panted Dolores, finally, as she pulled the many thorns from her clothing. "Elsa, we're lost."
They had stopped, at about noon on the tenth day of their trip, to rest, and again to consult their maps.
Elsa stood upon a ledge and looked across to where, between two lofty mountains, rising to the south of Ahualtapec, a smaller rock mass showed itself, like a much overgrown hill-the shell of a long extinct volcano, and a very counterpart of Ahualtapec.
"Dolores," she pointed straight before her, "do you remember? A stone in which, when viewed from a distance, can be seen a resemblance to the cross of Tlaloc?"
"Oh, dear," complained Dolores, dejectedly, "and all this time wasted!"
"Now, Dolores!" small Elsa turned about determinedly, "you ought to shout for joy, for that certainly must be it. The rocks are bare around that spot, and you can see it plainly from here. It's on a ledge, too, just like the one we're on. We will start this very minute, Dolores."
Delaying long enough only for Elsa, who had a fine sense of location, to impress upon her mind the position of the cross, they began once more the tedious scrambling, tearing, tumbling down slopes and up slopes, across streams and through, streams; but they did not lose themselves again.
"Do you suppose," Dolores anxiously asked, "that we can ever move it?" as she saw how the ages had packed, and hardened the damp soil about the base of the boulder.
"We must." Elsa was resolved not to be defeated. "We absolutely must," she reiterated.
"How?" demanded Dolores.
Elsa's reply was to unstrap a bag from the burro's back, to take from it two trowels, and silently to offer one to Dolores. No explanation was necessary. For five days the girls scraped and dug away the hardened soil from the lower part of the cross-shaped stone, until at last the block began to tremble as though about to fall.
"Dolores! Dolores! It's top heavy, bless it!" Elsa was enthusiastically, insanely happy.
The fact that the stone was top-heavy made it possible for the girls, by dint of much tugging, heaving, and pushing, to roll it over the ledge, and to send it bumping down the mountainside. A narrow passage, wide enough to admit only one at a time, was thus opened. Pine torches were lit. Even Dolores was excited. They squeezed into the entrance, Elsa first. They rushed through the short tunnel, until, at the end, Elsa stumbled and sank to her knees.
"Oh, my! Dolores, just look!" she was holding her torch down to see what had caused her fall. "It's it," she remarked, disregarding rhetoric, while she pointed to a small turquoise-studded image of Tlaloc, the Neptune of the Aztecs.
The girls carried the idol into the little ante-room which was always a part of the burial grotto of an Aztec noble family. How pleasant, how cool, and damp it seemed in here, after their hot toil outside. The sisters had been in too many tombs to know any fear, to have any feeling of the presence of the dead. Their own breathing sounded loud and labored amid the silence of the cave.
Dolores sat down on the moist floor, and examined the statues; she was thinking of the treasure; but Elsa, now that she was sure of finding the gold, or the jewels, or whatever the promise might have meant, desired to explore the grotto.
From the little ante-room she passed into the larger chamber. Here, for the first time, she felt chilled; she seemed so alone. She was sure she felt a ghost whisper near her. Her feet slipped on the wet earth. On the further side of the tomb she saw upon the ground an urn, on which rested a skull. By the shape of the urn and by the arrangement of the ornaments above it Elsa knew that it contained the ashes of a warrior. A drop of water splashed down from the ceiling and aroused her. She held her torch aloft. She looked unbelievingly at the roof. Then she walked slowly around the room, wonderingly, feeling and scrutinizing the walls.
"Dolores!" she called, "come quick!"
Dolores was not long in coming.
"And here is also what should be the source of untold wealth to the discoverer," Elsa was murmuring. "Dolores, do you see that green, that dull gray? How it shines? Don't you know, Dolores? It's jade, royal jade, Dolores!"
—Dorothea Knoblock.