CHAPTER XXVI.
A SURPRISE—A SERENADE—A VISIT FROM STRANGERS—AN INVITATION TO BREAKFAST—A FASHIONABLE HOUR AND A BOUNTIFUL BILL OF FARE.
The evening was calm, and the lake slept in stirless beauty before us. The shadows of the mountains reached far out from the shore, lieing like a dark mantle upon the surface of the waters, above and beneath which the stars twinkled and glowed like the bright eyes of seraphs looking down from the arches above, and up from the depths below. The moon in her brightness sailed majestically up into the sky, throwing her silver light across the bosom of the lake; millions of fireflies flashed their tiny torches along the reedy shore; the solemn voices of the night birds came from out the forest; the call of the raccoon and the answer, the hooting of the owl, and the low murmur of the leaves, stirred by the light breeze that moved lazily among the tree-tops, old familiar music to us, were heard. This latter sound is always heard, even in the stillest and calmest nights. There may be no ripple upon the water; it may be moveless and smooth as a mirror, no breath of air may sweep across its surface, and yet in the old forest among the tree-tops, there is always that low ceaseless murmur, a soft whispering as if the spirits of the woods were holding, in hushed voices, communion together. We had retired for the night under the cover of our tents. My companion had sunk into slumber, and I was just in that dreamy state, half sleeping and half awake, which constitutes the very paradise of repose, when there came drifting across the lake the faint and far off strains of music, which, to my seeming, exceeded in sweetness anything I had ever heard. They came so soft and melodious, floating so gently over the water, and dying away so quietly in the old woods, that I could scarce persuade myself of their reality. For a while I lay luxuriating as in the delusion of a pleasant dream, as though the melody that was abroad on the air was the voices of angels chanting their lullaby into the charmed ear of the sleeper. Presently, Smith raised his head, supporting his cheek upon his hand, his elbow resting upon the ground, and after listening for a moment, opened his eyes in bewilderment exclaiming, as he looked in utter astonishment about him, "What, in the name of all that is mysterious, is that?"
Spalding and the Doctor followed, and their amazement was equalled only by their admiration when
"Oft in the stilly night"
came stealing in matchless harmony over the water, "A serenade from the Naiads, by Jupiter!" exclaimed Smith.
"A concert, by the Genii of the waters!" cried the
Doctor.
"Hush!" said Spalding, "we are trespassing upon fairy domain; the spirits of these old woods, these mountains and rock-bound lakes, are abroad, and well may they carol in their joyousness in a night like this."
In a little while the music changed, and
"Come o'er the moonlight sea"
came swelling over the lake. And again it changed and
"Come mariner down in the deep with me"
went gently and swiftly abroad on the air. The music ceased for a moment, and then two manly voices, of great depth and power, came floating to our ears to the words:
"'Farewell! Farewell! To thee, Araby's daughter,'
Thus warbled a Perl, beneath the deep sea,
'No pearl ever lay under Onan's dark water,
More pure in its shell than thy spirit in thee.'"
"That's flesh and blood, at least," exclaimed the Doctor, "and I propose to ascertain who are treating as to this charming serenade in the stillness of midnight."
We went down to the margin of the lake, and a few rods from the shore lay a little craft like our own, in which were seated two gentlemen, the one with a flute and the other with a violin. They had seen our campfire from their shanty on the other side of the lake, and had crossed over to surprise us with the melody of human music. And pleasantly indeed it sounded in the stillness and repose of that summer night in that wild region. The echoes that dwell among those old forests, those hills and beautiful lakes, had never been startled from their slumbers by such sounds before, and right merrily they carried them from hill to hill, and through the old woods, and over the calm surface of that sleeping lake, and with a joyousness, too, that told how welcome they were among those wild and primeval things.
After listening to their music for half an hour, we invited our new friends ashore. We found them to be two young gentlemen from Philadelphia, who had just graduated at one of the Eastern colleges, and who had concluded to spend a month among these mountains and lakes, before entering upon the study of the profession to which they were to devote themselves. They had been close friends from their childhood, and room-mates during their collegiate course. They had cultivated their taste for music, until few mere amateurs could equal their skill upon their respective instruments, or in harmony of voice. They were highly intelligent and courteous gentlemen, and if their future shall equal the promise of the present, they will make their mark in the world. We accepted, at parting, their invitation to breakfast with them on the morrow, and at one o'clock they left us to return to their shanty over the lake. We sent one of our boatmen to row them home; and as they started across the water, they treated us to a concert to which it was pleasant to listen. There is something surpassingly sweet in the music of the flute and violin in the hands of skillful performers; and yet, to my thinking, it falls far short of the melody of the human voice. I have listened to some of the most celebrated singers, and of the most distinguished performers, but it appears to me now, that I never, on any other occasion, heard the melody of the human voice, or instrumental music half so enchanting, as that which came floating over the lake on that calm summer night. There was a volume and compass about it which can never be reached in a concert room. It was not loud, but it seemed to fill all the air with its sweetness. It came over the senses like a pleasant dream, as it went swelling up to the hills that skirted the lake, floating away over the water, and dying away in lengthened cadence in the old forests. Every other sound was hushed; the voices of the night-birds were stilled; even the frogs along the shore suspended their bellowing, and all nature seemed listening to the new harmony that thus fell like enchantment upon the repose of midnight. The music grew fainter and fainter as it receded, until only an occasional strain, wavy and dream-like, came creeping like the voice of a spirit over the water, and then it was lost in the distance. The frogs resumed their roaring, the night-birds lifted up their voices; the raccoon called to his fellow, and was answered away off in the forest; the pile-driver hammered away at his stake, the old owl hooted solemnly from his perch, and we retired to our tents to talk over the romance of our serenade, and to dream of Ole Bull and the Swedish Nightingale.
The morning broke bright and balmy. A pleasant breeze swept lazily over the lake, lifting the thin mist that hung like a veil of gauze above the water. We left our tents standing, and crossed over to the shanty of our friends of the previous evening to breakfast. We found them living like princes. Their two boatmen had built them a log shanty; open in front, and covered with bark so as to be impervious to the rain, while within was a luxurious bed of boughs. Around the campfire were benches of hewn slabs, and a table of the same material. A few rods from the door a beautiful spring came bubbling up into a little basin of pure white sand, the water of which was limpid and cold almost as ice-water. They had been here for a week, hunting and fishing. They had employed their leisure in jerking the venison they had taken, of which they had some four or five bushels, and which they intended to take home with them, to serve, together with the skins of the deer they had slain, as trophies of their success.
They received us cordially, and we sat down to a breakfast, which, for variety, at least, rivalled the elaborate preparations of the Astor or the St. Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee, and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth compels me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, a drop or two of Old Cognac may have been added by way of relish, or to temper the effect of a hearty meal upon the delicate stomachs of some of the guests. We were exceedingly fashionable in our time for breakfasting this morning, and it was eleven o'clock before we rose from table. The sun was travelling through a cloudless sky, and his brightness lay like a mantle of glory upon the water, while his heat gave to the deep shadows of the old trees, whose long arms with their clustering foliage were interlocked above us, a peculiar charm. The description which we gave of the beautiful lake we had left the day before, the story of the moose and the bear we had killed, together with our quit-claim of the shanty we had, inhabited, brought our friends to the conclusion to drift that way for a week or so.
It was amusing to hear Smith relate the manner of capturing the bear, the glory of which achievement he had won by the tossing up of a dollar; how he had started out alone in one of the boats with his rifle to look into a little bay half a mile below the shanty, where be left the rest of us sleeping after dinner; and how, as he was floating along under the shadow of the hills, at the base of a wall of rocks some forty feet high, rising straight up from the water, he heard something walking just over the precipice; and how he picked up his rifle that lay in the bottom of the boat, to be ready for any emergency; and then how astonished he was to see a great black bear walk out into view along the edge of the rocks above, and how carefully he sighted him; and how, at the crack of his rifle, the animal came tumbling down the cliff, and how quick he reloaded and gave trim a settler in the shape of a second bullet; and how he tugged, and strained, and lifted to get him into the boat, and how astonished we all were when he returned with his prize to camp. While relating this wonderful achievement, he winked at the Doctor, as much as to say, "fair play; remember our compact; stand by me now." And the Doctor did stand by him, boldly endorsing, with a gravity that was refreshing, every invention of Smith's prolific imagination, on the subject of his slaughtering the bear.
We left our new friends in the afternoon; they to start in the morning for our old camping-ground on the lake above, and we down the stream on our retreat from the wilderness. We came back to our tents, after securing a string of trout from the mouth of the little stream across the bay. Our evening meal was over, and we sat around our campfire just as the sun was hiding himself behind the western highlands, when, from a little hollow in the forest behind us, and but a short way off, we heard the call of a raccoon. Martin started over the ridge with the dogs, and in five minutes he hallooed to us to come with our rifles for he had the animal "treed," and ready to be brought down at "a moment's warning." We went over to where he was, and sure enough, away up in the top of a tall birch, sat his coonship, looking quietly down upon the dogs that were baying at the foot of the tree.
"Gentlemen," said Spalding, "we will not all fire at this animal as we did at Smith's bear. One bullet is enough for him, and if he gets down among us, I think six men will be a match for one 'coon,' so we need not be inhuman through a sense of danger. Whose shot shall he be?"
"I move that Spalding have the first shot," said Smith; and the motion was carried.
"Do I understand you, gentlemen," Spalding inquired, adjusting himself, as if preparing to bring down the game, "that I am to have this first shot, and that no one is to fire until I have taken a fair shot at him?"
We all answered, "Yes."
"Are you perfectly agreed in this, and do you all pledge yourselves to abide the compact?" Spalding inquired again, bringing his rifle to a present, and looking up at the game.
"All agreed," we answered, with one voice.
"Very well, gentlemen," said Spalding, shouldering his rifle, "there's one life saved anyhow. That animal up there has been in great peril, but he's safe now. I don't intend to fire at him sooner than ten o'clock to-morrow, and if I understand our arrangements, we leave here in the morning at six."
"Sold, by Moses!" exclaimed Martin, as he broke out into a roar that you might have heard a mile; "I thought the Judge meant something, by the time he wasted in talkin' and gettin' ready to shoot."
"Spalding," inquired Smith, "do you expect us to keep this compact?"
"Of course I do," he replied; "did any of us peach when you opened so rich in the matter of your bear? Did any one break his compact with you on that subject? Absolve us from our agreement about the bear, and you may take my shot at that animal up in the tree."
"I wasn't born yesterday," Smith replied, "and I can't afford to exchange the glory of killing the bear in my own way, and baring three responsible endorsers, for the honor of shooting a coon. Gentlemen," he continued, "I move that that coon be permitted to take his own time to descend from his perch up in the tree-top there;" and the motion was carried unanimously.