Phaeton Rogers: A Novel of Boy Life

by Rossiter Johnson

CHAPTER VII.

PHAETON'S CHARIOT.

Ned and I pushed on the project for a printing-office with great energy. We made the acquaintance of a man named Alvord, who kept a job office—where they never seemed to be in a hurry, as they always were in the newspaper offices—and was never unwilling to answer questions or sell us old type. It was great fun to explore the mysteries of his establishment. I think he liked boys as much as Jack-in-the-Box did, and I'm sure it was a pleasure to us, in laying out Ned's capital, to pay so much of it to so pleasant a man.

But energy without skill is like zeal without knowledge; in fact, it is about the same thing, and we couldn't really make much progress till Phaeton should take hold; and he would have nothing to do with it till he had finished his apparatus for "a horizontal balloon-ascension," which he was at work upon every minute that he could spare from sleep and meals.

With the help of the carriage-maker and the blacksmith, and Ned's capital—which he drew upon much more freely than had been bargained for—he constructed a low, broad, skeleton-like carriage, the body of which was hung below the axles of the wheels, instead of above them, and almost touched the ground. This was to prevent it from tipping over easily. The front axle turned on a swivel, and was controlled by two stout handles, by means of which the carriage could be steered. On the front of the box were three iron hooks. At the back there was a single hook. The wheels were pretty large, but the whole was made as light as possible.

When it was finished, Phaeton brought it home and put it away carefully in the wood-shed.

"I am afraid," said he, "that somebody will steal this car, or come in and damage it, unless we put a lock on this wood-shed door."

"Who would want to steal it or damage it?" said Ned.

"The Dublin boys," said Phaeton, half under his breath. "Two of them were seen prowling around here the other day."

One section of the town, which was divided from ours by the deep gorge of the river, was popularly known as Dublin, and the boys who lived there, though probably very much like other boys, were always considered by us as our natural enemies—plotters against the peace of boy society, capable of the most treacherous designs and the darkest deeds ever perpetrated in the juvenile world. Every piece of mischief not obviously to be accounted for in any other way, was laid to the Dublin boys as a matter of course.

"But we haven't any padlock," said Ned, "except that old brass one, and the key of that is lost, and we couldn't turn it when we had it."

"I suppose we shall have to buy a new one," said Phaeton.

"All right—buy one," said Ned.

"I haven't any money," said Phaeton.

"Nor I," said Ned—"spent the last cent for a beautiful little font of Tuscan type; weighed just five pounds, fifteen cents a pound—nothing the matter with it, only the Es are gone."

"The Es are gone?" said Phaeton. "Do you mean to say that you have been buying a font of type with no Es in it?"

"Yes; why? What's the harm in that?" said Ned. "You don't expect everything to be perfect when you buy things second-hand."

"Of course not," said Phaeton; "but what can you do without Es? If the Qs or the Xs were gone, it wouldn't so much matter; but there's hardly a word that hasn't at least one E in it. Just count the Es on a page of any book. And you've been fooling away your money on a font of type with no Es! Mr. Alvord ought to be ashamed of himself to cheat a boy like that."

"You needn't be scolding me for fooling away the money," said Ned. "What have you been doing, I should like to know? Fooling away the money on that old torrid-zontal balloon thing, which will probably make a shipwreck of you the first time you try it. And, besides, I didn't buy the type of Mr. Alvord."

"Where did you get it?"

"Bought it of a boy that I met on the stairs when I was coming down from Alvord's."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know. He lives on one of those cross-streets down by the aqueduct. I went to his house with him to get the type. He said he used to have a little office, but his father wouldn't let him keep it any more, just because the baby ate some of the ink."

"It's too bad," said Phaeton; "the type will never be of any use. What do you suppose could have become of the Es?"

"I don't know," said Ned, a little morosely, "unless the baby sister ate them too."

"They'd set rather heavy on her stomach," said Phaeton. "But how are we going to get a lock for this door?"

"I don't see that we can get one at all," said Ned.

I suggested that the door of the wood-shed might be nailed up, to keep out the Dublin boys, till we had a chance to get a padlock.

"That's a first-rate idea," said Phaeton, and he at once brought out the hammer and nail-box, and began to nail up the door. It was a heavy, panelled door, which had evidently come from some old mansion that was torn down.

"It's as well to make it strong while we're about it," said he; "for if those fellows should come, they'd pry it open if they could," and he put in a few more nails.

"Father showed me how to drive nails so as to make them hold," said I. "Let me show you;" and taking the hammer from his hand, I drove eight or ten more nails into the door, driving them in pairs, each pair slanting in opposite directions.

"That's a thing worth knowing," said Ned. "Let me practice on it a little."

He took the hammer, and drove one or two pairs in the manner I had shown him, and was so pleased with his success, that he kept on till he had used up all the nails in the box.

"No Dublin boy is going to get that car this night," said he, as he gave a final blow to the last nail.

"No," said Phaeton; "I think that's pretty safe."

As it began to rain, I was obliged to hurry home. That night, as I afterward learned, there was sorrow in the breast of the youngest member of the Rogers family. Little May Rogers, who never went to sleep without her favorite cat, Jemima, curled up on the foot of her little bed, couldn't go to sleep because Jemima was nowhere to be found in the house, and had not come when every outside door in turn was opened, and she was called from the vasty darkness. Even when Mrs. Rogers stood in the kitchen-door and rasped the carving-knife on the steel, Jemima failed to come bounding in. That was considered decisive as to her fate. The cat would be sure to come at that sound, if she were able to come at all.

But a much more serious commotion shook the family next morning. When Mr. Rogers went down to his breakfast, it was not ready; in fact, the kitchen fire was not made.

"How is this, Biddy?" said he to the cook.

"Sure, I couldn't help it, sir; I could get no kindlings."

"Why so, Biddy?"

"Because, sir, the wood-shed door's bewitched. I couldn't get it open. And everything outside is soakin' wet wid the rain, and so of course I couldn't kindle the fire."

Mr. Rogers walked out to the wood-shed door, and attempted to open it with an impatient and vigorous jerk, but the handle came off in his hand. Then he tried to get hold of it by the edge, but there wasn't a crack where he could insert his fingers. Then he took hold of it at the bottom, where there was considerable space, but it would not budge a hair. He was becoming a little excited, for he had an engagement to leave town by the early train. He went into the house for some sort of tool, and brought out the poker. Cutting a little hole with his pocket-knife at the edge of the door, he inserted the poker, and pried; but the poker bent double, and the door did not stir. Then he went in again, and brought out the stove-wrench. Cutting the hole a little larger, he pried at the door with the wrench; but the wrench was of cast-iron, and snapped in two.

"Biddy," said he, "I see a light at Robbins's,"—it was very early in the morning—"go over and borrow an axe."

Biddy soon returned with an axe, and Mr. Rogers tried to pry the door open with that, but only succeeded in breaking splinters from the edge.

"Biddy," said he, "bring a light, and let's see what ails it."

Biddy brought out a candle, but trembled so at the idea of letting out the witches, that she dropped it at Mr. Rogers's feet, and it struck on its lighted end and immediately went out.

Biddy made rapid apologies, and ran in for another candle. But Mr. Rogers would wait no longer. He raised the axe in fury, and began to slaughter the door, like a mediæval soldier before the gate of a besieged castle.

Slice after slice was torn off and flew inward, striking the opposite side of the shed; but the door as a whole would not fall. When a considerable hole had been made, a frightened cat, its eyes gleaming wildly, and its tail as large as a feather-duster, leaped out from the inner darkness, passing over Mr. Rogers's head, and knocking his hat off, landed somewhere in the yard, and immediately made for the woods. Biddy, who arrived on the ground with the second candle just in time to witness this performance, dropped the light again, and fled screaming into the house.

This aroused two neighbors, who threw up their windows, thrust their heads out, and, hearing the powerful blows of the axe, thought a maniac was abroad, and hallooed for the police.

The watchman on that beat, ever on the alert, waited only eight or nine minutes, till he could call four others to his aid, when all five of them started for the scene of the trouble. Separating after they had entered Mr. Rogers's gate, they made a little circuit through the yard, and cautiously approached him, two on each side, and one behind. As the one behind laid his hand on his shoulder, Mr. Rogers dropped the axe, whirled around, and "hauled off," as the boys say, but caught the gleam of the silver star on the policeman's breast, and dropped his fist.

"What do you want?" said he.

"If it's you, we don't want anything," said the policeman, who, of course, knew Mr. Rogers very well. "But we thought we wanted a crazy man."

"Then you might as well take me," said Mr. Rogers, "for I am pretty nearly crazy. The mischief has got into this door, so that it couldn't be opened, and the cook had no kindlings and I no breakfast; and I shall lose the early train, and if I don't reach Albany to-day, I can't tell how many dollars it will cost me, but a good many."

Mr. Rogers drew out his handkerchief, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

One of the policemen produced a bull's-eye lantern, and examined the ruined door, passing it up and down the edge where the outer frame, studded with many nails, still clung tightly to the jambs, all the central portion having been cut away in ragged slices.

"This door has been nailed up with a great many nails," said he.

"I can't imagine who would do that," said Mr. Rogers; "this isn't the first day of April."

Neither could the policemen. In fact, I have observed that policemen have very little imagination. In this instance, five of them, all imagining at once, could not imagine who nailed up that door. The nearest they could come to it was, that it was probably done with a heavy, blunt instrument, in the hands of some person or persons unknown.

When, later in the day, we boys stood contemplating what Ned called the "shipwreck of the door"—older people than he call all sorts of wrecks shipwrecks—he remarked that he didn't know what his father would say, if he should find out who did it.

Mr. Rogers had taken the next train for Albany.

"He will find out," said Phaeton; "for I shall tell him as soon as he gets home."

The day that his father returned, Phaeton told, at the tea-table, the whole story of how the door was bewitched. A week had then passed, and—such are the soothing influences of time—Mr. Rogers laughed heartily at the whole affair, and at his own excitement most of all.

"I had no idea," said Ned, solemnly, "that so much trouble could be caused by a few nails."

His mother thought "few" was good.

The next day I heard little May Rogers telling another child about it. This was her story:

"You see, brother Fay and brother Neddie, they drived a nail in the wood-shed door; and Biddy, she lended Mr. Robbins's axe; and then Papa, he got besited; and so we haven't any wood-shed door any more."

Meanwhile, the preparations for the horizontal balloon ascension had gone on. But, as Ned remarked long ago, nothing could be done without capital, and he was obliged to make another business call upon his Aunt Mercy.

"What's new down at your house?" said she, after the greetings were over.

"Nothing particular," said Ned.

"I hear that idiotic brother of yours has been cutting up a pretty caper," said Aunt Mercy, after a pause.

"What was it?" said Ned.

"Why, don't you know?"

"I don't know what you have been told, and I can't think of anything very bad that Fay has done."

"Gracious me!" said Aunt Mercy. "Don't you call it bad to go around slyly in the night and nail up every door and window in the house?"

"Yes, that would be pretty bad, Aunty. But Fay hasn't done so."

"You admit that it was bad, then?"

"Why, certainly—but it isn't true. Only one door was nailed up—the wood-shed door."

"I do believe you're standing up for him. But I tell you, a boy that would nail up one door would nail up a hundred."

"He might if he had nails enough," said Ned, in a low voice.

"That's just it," said Aunt Mercy. "That fellow would nail up just as many doors as he could get nails for. I've no doubt it was only the givin' out of the nails that prevented him from going through every house in the neighborhood. Mark my words, he'll come to some bad end. Don't you have anything to do with him, Edmund Burton."

Ned said he thought it would be rather hard not to have anything to do with his own brother.

"Yes, I suppose so," said Aunt Mercy. "But do the best you can."

"Yes, Aunty, I'll do my best."

"Now tell me," said she, "about your muddle. Have you made a muddle yet?"

I thought Ned might have answered conscientiously that he had made a muddle. But he said:

"No, Aunty, we've put that off for a while. We think it will be best to do some other things first."

"What are the other things?"

"One of them is a printing-office. We think of setting up a little printing-office to print little books and papers and cards and things, if we can get together enough money for it. It takes rather more capital than we have at present."

I suppose Aunt Mercy thought I was the other one besides himself included in Ned's "we."

"I should have supposed," said she, "that it was best to finish one muddle before going into another. But you know best, Edmund Burton. I have great confidence in your judgment." And she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, and seemed to be dreaming for some minutes. I doubt if she more than half knew which Edmund Burton she was talking to—the one who had long since gone down beneath the waters of a distant sea, or the young scapegrace who, without intending to represent anything falsely, had got so much money from her on false representations.

"I don't know how it is," said he to me one day. "I never intend to cheat Aunt Mercy; and yet, whenever I go to see her, things seem to fix themselves somehow so that she misunderstands. I guess it's her imagination."

"How much money do you need for your new muddle?" said she, when she came out of her reverie.

"Jack-in-the-Box says he thinks twenty-five or thirty dollars would fit up a good one," said Ned.

"Who is Jack-in-the-Box?"

"A gentleman connected with the railroad."

"Queer name for a railroad director," said Aunt Mercy. "But I suppose you've blundered on it. French, very likely. Might be Jacquin Thibaux. (I studied French two terms at Madam Farron's.) Some of those old Huguenot names have got into strange shapes. But it doesn't matter. I dare say Monsieur Thibaux is right about it. I haven't any money with me to-night, but I'll send it over to you to-morrow. Don't let that ignorant brother of yours meddle with your printing-office; he'll misspell every word, and disgrace the family."

"I'll try to keep him straight," said Ned. "Good-night, Aunty."

"Good-night, Edmund Burton, my dear boy."

"I thought part of this capital," said I to Ned, as we walked away, "was for the horizontal balloon."

"So it is," said he; "but I couldn't explain that to Aunt Mercy, because Fay has never explained it to me. I have no idea how he's going to make that queer thing go."

When Phaeton was furnished with a little more money, we soon saw how the thing was to go. He built three enormous kites, six feet high. They were not bow-kites—the traditional kite always represented in pictures, but seldom used in our country. They were the far more powerful six-cornered kite, familiar to the boys of the Middle States. He certainly built them with great skill, and Ned and I had the pleasure of helping him—if holding the paste-cup and hunting for material to make the tails was helping.

As each was finished, Phaeton carefully stood it up in the wood-shed to dry, where there was no more danger of Dublin boys; for Mr. Rogers had sent a carpenter to put on a new door and furnish it with a lock. Nevertheless, Phaeton took the first kite to his room for the night, and put it against the wall behind the bed. But Ned, who tossed a great deal, managed to kick a hole through it in his sleep. After that, they were left in the wood-shed over night, where a similar misfortune befell the second. Biddy, breaking kindlings in an unscientific way with the hatchet, sent a piece of wood flying through the kite, tearing a large hole on what a sailor would call the starboard quarter.

When Phaeton complained of her carelessness, she seemed to think she had improved the kite, saying: "The two kites were not comrades before—but they are now."

When an enterprising boy attempts to carry out some little project of his own, it is astonishing to see how even the best natured household will seem to conspire against him. If he happens to leave a few of his things on the dining-room floor, they are carelessly stepped upon by his own mother, or swept out-of-doors by an ignorant servant. I have seen a boy trying to make a galvanic battery, and his sister looking on and fervently hoping it would fail, so that she could have the glass cups to put into her play-house.

However, Phaeton had about as little of this sort of thing to endure as any boy ever had. When the kites were finished and dry, and the holes patched up, and the tails hung, Phaeton said he was ready to harness up his team as soon as the wind was right.

"Which way do you want it?" said I.

"It must be a steady breeze, straight down the turnpike," said he.

One reason why Phaeton chose this road was, that here he would encounter no telegraph wires. At the railway crossing, two men, riding on loads of hay, had come in contact with the wires and been seriously hurt. Another repetition of the accident might have been prevented by raising the wires on higher poles, but the company had chosen rather to run them down the pole on one side, under the street, and up the next pole.

"But I don't see how these kites are going to work," said Ned, "if you fly them side by side, and hitch the strings to those three hooks."

"Why not?"

"Because they'll interfere with each other, and get all tangled up."

"You would think so," said Phaeton, "if you haven't made a study of kite-flying, as I have. If you look at a dozen boys flying their kites at once on the common, you will see that, no matter how near together two or three boys stand, their kites will not go in exactly the same direction. Either the strings will slant away from each other a little, or else they will cross."

"How do you account for that?" said Ned.

"I suppose it's because you never can make two kites exactly alike; or, if they are exactly alike, they are not hung precisely the same; and so the wind bears a little more on the left side of one, and a little more on the right side of the other."

"I guess that's so," said Ned. "And yet it seems to me it would be better to fly them tandem."

"How would you get them up?" said I.

"First get up one," said Ned. "And when it was well up, fasten the end of the string to the back of the next kite, and let that up, and do the same with the third. Then you would have a straight pull by the whole team in line."

"And the pull of all three kites would come on the last string, and probably break it," said Phaeton.

"I didn't think of that," said Ned. "I see your way is the best, after all. But hurry up and have it over with, for we want you to help us about the printing-office; we can't get along without you."

"It never will be 'over with,'" said Phaeton. "I shall ride out every fine day, when the wind is in the right direction."

"Why, is that all it's for?" said Ned—"merely your own amusement?"

"Not at all," said Phaeton. "It is a great invention, to be introduced all over the country. Better than a locomotive, because it will run on a common road. Better than horses, because it doesn't eat anything. But then, I'm going to enjoy it myself as much as I can. However, we'll find time for the printing."