NEW YORK'S DEFENCES ON THE SOUND.
BY WILLIAM HEMMINGWAY.
One of the most interesting questions in a recent examination at the Royal Naval Academy at Woolwich, England, was: "How would you capture New York, approaching by way of Long Island Sound?" There is only one question that interests us more, and that is, How would New York's defenders along the Sound repel our enemy? The news from Washington that thrilled this country only a few days ago, and the possibility that we might after all really come to war, make the defence of the greatest city of America a problem of the most intense concern to every one of us.
Captain Howard Patterson told the readers of the Round Table, on March 13th of last year, how New York would be successfully defended from Sandy Hook. The arrangements for removing a fleet of men-of-war from the waters of New York Bay are so complete that no fair-minded invader could really ask for more.
But suppose some one should declare war against us to-morrow, and promptly send a fleet to take our richest city. Would the enemy walk into the trap so thoroughly prepared for him at Sandy Hook? The chances are rather that he would come down from Halifax and try to dodge in by way of Long Island Sound, where he thinks that very little has been prepared to check his advance. It is true, unfortunately, that the works to the eastward of New York are not nearly so efficient as those to the southward; yet there would be found in time of need enough men and guns to drive back the most formidable invasion any one might undertake.
If you will look at your map of Long Island Sound you will find several small islands scattered between Connecticut and the Long Island shore. Chief among them are Fishers and Plum islands. Upon every one of these islands mortar batteries will soon be placed, while the channels of the Sound itself will be full of submarine mines ten yards apart. For years the great drawback to the improvement of our coast defences has been the childish confidence of certain inland Congressmen that "American ingenuity" will always find a way to defend American interests. The haste that is being made to fortify our coasts to-day shows how ill-advised that confidence has been. If you speak about "American ingenuity" to an army or navy man, he probably will glare at you and turn purple. It has been their stumbling block for a very long time. Still, we are not quite so unprepared as our enemies believe.
Massachusetts. New York. Iowa. Texas. Indiana.
AMERICAN NAVY PROCEEDING UP EAST RIVER TO THE SOUND.
Imagine that the hostile fleet has arrived off the mouth of Long Island Sound on its errand of destruction and plunder. Its array of ships almost staggers belief. There are twelve battle-ships—veritable mountains of iron and steel—armed with rifled cannon of prodigious bore and wonderfully long range, as well as smaller guns of every degree. With them have come twenty-four armed cruisers, twelve torpedo-catchers—boats that run twenty-eight or thirty miles an hour—and a swarm of ordinary torpedo-boats that one might well describe as innumerable. The proud armada sails westward flaunting the enemy's ensign and trailing plumes of black smoke like vast banners. The attacking Admiral knows that beneath the dancing waters of the Sound there are hidden mines of deadly power, awaiting only the pressure of an electric key from the shore or the touch of a passing keel to blow his great ships into fragments. He sends out scouts—that is, lines of torpedo-boats twenty or thirty feet apart, trying to determine the channel. It is the duty of the crews of these swift, light-draught boats to drag for and explode the hidden mines, which are submerged at a depth of twenty feet so as to strike only the keels of great ships.
Where are the forts that shall check the invaders? From the conning-towers of the ships there can be seen no sign of fortification. The little islands lie peacefully basking in the balmy sunshine. The grass on their round-browed hills quivers gently in the breeze. But behind every one of those hills is a modern fort—a gigantic circular pit in the sand, with four arms running out from it at right angles. At the end of each arm is a pit big enough to hold four rifled mortars. These are short, wicked-looking guns that seem like long-range rifled cannon sawed off half-way down the barrel. From the moment the torpedo-catchers are within five miles the officers of the mortar batteries are watching them with range-finders.
Four miles; three and three-quarters; three and a half—then comes a thunderous uproar as if a mountain-side had fallen! The mortars on two islands send showers of bursting shells that fall upon the group of pretty white torpedo-boats, and blot them from the sea. The thing is done with startling quickness. Before one can count half a hundred the last vestige of the torpedo-destroyers has disappeared beneath the waves. The batteries on Plum Island and Fishers Island have rained destruction in an awful cross-fire.
The hostile Admiral sends out twenty torpedo-catchers in the wake of their lost fellows. Let us assume that by hard work, great pluck, and good fortune they have counter-mined and cleared the channel, and so made the way safe for the big ships. The men in the mortar-pits are almost unhurt at first. The opponents have had nothing to guide their retaliatory firing but the clouds of smoke from the pits. At last they get the range and silence the forts.
Governors Island. New York City. Hell Gate.
Willets Point. Fort Schuyler. Mortar Battery.
THE ENEMY'S FLEET APPROACHING THE NEW YORK END OF LONG ISLAND SOUND.
The fleet passes on, only a little crippled, but still wary of mines in the channel. The ships would be subject to a similar cross-fire from mortar batteries on either side of the Sound at every narrow part of the channel. Almost the entire journey down the Sound toward New York would be under a heavy bombardment. There are at least six places where the groups of mortars will be placed. It would not be proper to give their location here. There are also very heavy batteries of this description on Davids Island, which is a military post near New Rochelle, and on Sands Point, Long Island, about sixteen miles east of New York. Then there are the fortifications at Willets Point and Fort Schuyler still nearer to this city, and at a point where the Sound is only three-quarters of a mile wide.
If the enemy should live to come within range of these forts he would find that his troubles were only now beginning in earnest. The great 16-inch rifled guns at Willets Point have a seven-mile range, up past Stepping Stone Light and Execution Rock. They could easily dispose of any number of torpedo-boats trying to destroy submarine mines. More destructive than all these is the "dynamite gun," a tube of steel fifty feet long, and with a bore of fifteen inches. This throws a long cigar-shaped slug of explosive gelatine, more powerful than dynamite, and weighing about two hundred pounds. The shell is driven out of the gun by compressed air.
It is not at all likely that we could get together a fleet of battle-ships of sufficient numbers to cope with the enemy's great squadron. Still, the Maine, the Texas, and half a dozen other fighting ships, each one of which is equal to anything in the foreign navy, would be assembled in the Hudson River awaiting the arrival of the invaders. As soon as the news of their progress down the Sound was telegraphed to this city, they would steam up the East River, take their stations within the arc of the forts at Willets Point and Fort Schuyler, and add their broadsides to the defence of New York. Is there any fleet in the world that could force its way past such an opposition? No American thinks so.
RICK DALE.[1]
by KIRK MUNROE.
CHAPTER XI.
A VERY TRYING EXPERIENCE.
"Stop her! Stop the boat, quick! Bonny is overboard!" shouted Alaric, frantically, as he realized the nature of the catastrophe that had just occurred through his awkwardness. As he shouted he sprang to the jib-halyard, and casting it off allowed the sail to come down by the run; his sole idea of checking the headway of a sailing craft being to reduce her canvas.
He was about to let go both throat and peak halyards, and so bring down the big mainsail also, when, with a bellow of rage and a marvellous disregard of his lameness, Captain Duff rushed forward and snatched the ropes from the lad's hands.
"You thundering blockhead!" he roared. "What d'ye mean by lowering a sail without orders? H'ist it again! H'ist it, d'ye hear?"
"But Bonny is overboard," cried Alaric.
"And you want to leave him to drown? Don't ye know that if he's alive he's drifted astarn by this time? Ef you had any sense you'd be out in the dinghy looking fur him."
Alaric knew that the dinghy was the small boat towing behind the sloop, for he had heard the young mate call it by that name, and now he needed no further hint as to his duty. He had pushed Bonny overboard, and he must save him if that might still be done. If not, he was careless of what happened to himself. Nothing could be worse than, or so bad as, to go through life with the knowledge that he had caused the death of a fellow-being—one, too, whom he had already come to regard as a dear friend.
Thus thinking, he ran aft, cast loose the painter of the dinghy, drew the boat to the sloop's stern, and dropping into it, drifted away in the darkness. He had never rowed a boat, nor even handled a pair of oars, but he had seen others do so, and imagined it was easy enough.
It is not often that a first lesson of this kind is taken alone, at midnight, amid the tossing waters of an open sea, and it could not have happened now but for our poor lad's pitiful ignorance of all forms of athletics, including those in which every boy should be instructed.
Without a thought for himself, nor even a comprehension of his own peril, Alaric fitted the oars that he found in the bottom of the boat to their rowlocks, and began to pull manfully in what he supposed was the proper direction. He pulled first with one oar and then with the other; then making a wild stroke with both oars that missed the water entirely, he tumbled over backwards. Recovering himself, he prepared more cautiously for a new effort, and this time, instead of beating the air, thrust his oars almost straight down in the water. Then one entered it, while the other, missing it by a foot or so, flew back and struck him a violent blow.
Up to this time the lad had kept up a constant shouting of "Bonny! Oh, Bonny!" or "Hello, Bonny!" but that blow bereft him of so much breath that for a minute he had none left with which to shout.
Now, too, for the first time, he gained a vague idea of his own perilous situation. There was nothing in sight and nothing to be heard save the ceaseless dashing of waters and a melancholy moaning of wind. The sky was so overcast that not even a star could extend to him a cheery ray of light. The boy's heart sank, and he made another attempt at a shout, as much to raise his own spirits as with any hope of being heard. Only a husky cry resulted, for his voice was choked, and he again strove to row, with the thought that any form of action would be better than idleness amid such surroundings.
If his oars seemed vicious before, they were doubly so now that he was wearied, and they stubbornly resisted his efforts to make them work as he knew they could and ought. At length he let go of one of them for an instant while he wiped the trickling perspiration from his eyes. The moment it was released, the provoking bit of wood, as though possessed of a malicious instinct, slid from its rowlock, dropped into the water, and floated away. Alaric made a wild but ineffectual clutch after it that allowed a quantity of water to slop into the boat, and gave him the idea that it was sinking.
With an access of terror the poor lad sprang to his feet, and forgetful of the object that had brought him into his present situation, screamed, "Bonny! Oh, Bonny! Save me! Don't leave me here to drown!"
Then a spiteful wave so buffeted the boat that he was toppled over and fell sprawling in the bottom. That was the blackest and most despairing moment of his life; but even as it came to him he fancied he heard a whispered answer to his call, and lifted his head to listen. Yes, he heard it again, so faint and uncertain that it might be only the mocking scream of some sea-bird winging a swift flight through the blackness. Still the idea filled him with hope, and he called again with a cry so shrill and long-drawn that its intensity almost frightened him. Now the echoing hail was certain, and it came to him with the unmistakable accents of a human voice.
Again he shouted: "Bonny! Oh, Bonny!" and again came the answer, this time much nearer:
"Hello, Rick Dale! Hello!"
"Hello, Bonny! Hello!"
How could it be that Bonny had kept himself afloat so long? What wonderful powers of endurance he must possess! How should he reach him? There was but a single oar left, and surely no one could propel a boat with one oar. He tried awkwardly to paddle, but after a few seconds of fruitless labor gave this up in despair. What could he do? Must he sit there idle, knowing that his friend was drowning within sound of his voice, and for want of the aid that he could give if he only knew how? It was horrible and yet inevitable. He was helpless. Once more was his own peril forgotten, and his sole distress was for his friend. Again he shouted, with the energy of despair:
"Bonny! Oh, Bonny! Can't you get to me? I'm in a boat."
Then came something so startling and so astonishing that he was almost petrified with amazement. Instead of a weak despairing answer, coming from a long distance, there sounded a cheery hail from close at hand: "All right, old man! I'm coming. Cheer up."
What had happened? Was his friend endowed with supernatural powers that enabled him to traverse the sea at will?
Alaric gazed about him on all sides, almost doubting the evidence of his senses. Then, with a flutter of canvas and a rush of water from under her bows, the tall form of the sloop loomed out of the blackness almost beside him.
"Sing out, Rick. Where are you?"
"Here I am. Oh, Bonny, is it you?"
"Yes, of course. Look out! Catch this line."
The end of a rope came whizzing over the boat, and Alaric, catching it, held on tightly. He was seated on the middle thwart, and the moment a strain came on the line the boat turned broadside to it, heeled until water began to pour in over her gunwale, and Alaric, unable to hold on an instant longer, let go his hold.
He heard an exclamation of "Thundering lubber!" in Captain Duff's voice, and then the sloop was again lost to sight.
Again Alaric was in despair, though he could still hear the shouting of orders and a confused slatting of sails. After a little the sloop was put about, and a shouting to determine the locality of the drifting boat was recommenced. Still it seemed to Alaric a tedious while before she approached him for a second time, and Bonny once more sung out to him to stand by and catch a line.
"Make it fast in the bow this time," he called, as he flung the coil of rope.
Again Alaric succeeded in catching it, and, obeying instructions, he scrambled into the bow of the boat, where he knelt and clung to the line for dear life, not knowing how to make it fast.
In a moment there came a jerk that very nearly pulled him overboard; and the boat, with its bow low in the water from his weight, while its stern was in the air, took a wild sheer to one side. Again water poured in until she was nearly swamped, and again was the line torn from Alaric's grasp.
"You blamed idiot!" roared Captain Duff. "You don't desarve to be saved! I'll give ye just one more try, and ef you don't fetch the sloop that time we'll leave ye to navigate on your own hook."
As the previous manœuvres were repeated for a third time, poor Alaric, sitting helplessly in his water-logged dinghy, shivered with apprehension. How could he hold on to that cruel line that seemed only fitted to drag him to destruction? This time it took longer to find him, and he was hoarse with shouting before the Fancy again approached.
"He don't know enough to do anything with a line, Cap'n Duff," said Bonny, "So if you'll throw the sloop into the wind and heave her to, I'll bring the boat alongside."
With this, and without waiting for an answer, the plucky young sailor, who had already divested himself of most of his clothing, sprang into the black waters and swam toward the vaguely discerned boat. In another minute he had gained her, clambered in, and was asking the amazed occupant for the other oar.
"It's lost overboard," replied Alaric, gloomily, feeling that the case was now more desperate than ever. "Oh Bonny! Why—?"
"Never mind," cried the other, cheerily. "I can scull, and that will answer just as well as rowing. Perhaps better, for I can see where we are heading."
BONNY COMES TO THE RESCUE.
Alaric had deemed it impossible to propel a boat with a single oar; but now, to his amazement, Bonny sculled the dinghy ahead almost as rapidly as he could have rowed. The sloop was out of sight, but the flapping of her sails could be plainly heard, and five minutes later the young mate had laid his craft alongside.
Captain Duff was too angry for words, and fortunately too busy in getting his vessel on her course to pay any attention just then to the lad whose awkwardness and ignorance had caused all this trouble and delay.
"Skip for'ard," said Bonny, in a low tone, "and I'll come directly."
As Alaric, with a thankful heart, obeyed this injunction, he marvelled at the size and steadiness of the sloop, and wondered how he could ever have thought her small or unstable.
A few minutes later Bonny, only half dressed, joined him, and said, "If you'll lend me your trousers, old man, you can turn in for the rest of the night, and I'll stand your watch; mine are too wet to put on just yet, and I think you'll be safer below than on deck, anyway."
Like a person in a dream, and without asking one of the many questions suggesting themselves, Alaric obeyed. Earlier in that most eventful day he had regarded that dark and stuffy forecastle with disgust, and vowed he would never sleep in it. Now, as he snuggled shivering between the blankets of the first mate's own bunk, it seemed to him one of the coziest, warmest, and most comfortable sleeping-apartments he had ever known.
CHAPTER XII.
A LESSON IN KEDGING.
For a long time Alaric lay awake in his narrow bunk, listening to the gurgle of waters parted by the sloop's bow, but a few inches from his head, and reflecting upon the exciting incidents of the past hour. It had all been so terrible and yet so unreal. On one thing he determined. Never again would he enter a boat alone without having first learned how to row, and to swim also. How splendidly Bonny had come to his rescue, and yet how easily! What was it he had called making a boat go with only one oar? Alaric could not remember; but at any rate it was a wonderful thing to do, and he determined to master that art as well. What a lot he had to learn, anyhow, and how important it all was! He had longed for the ability to do such things, but never until now had he realized their value.
How well Bonny did them, and what a fine fellow he was, and how the heart of the poor rich boy warmed toward this self-reliant young friend of a day! Could it be but one day since their first meeting? It seemed as though he had known Bonny always. But how had the young sailor regained the sloop after being knocked overboard? That was unaccountable, and one of the most mysterious things Alaric had ever heard of. He longed for Bonny to come below, that he might ask just that one question; but the mate was otherwise engaged, and the crew finally dropped asleep.
Through the remainder of the night the sloop sailed swiftly on her course, but she could not make up for that lost hour, and by dawn, though she had passed the light on Admiralty Head, and was well to the southward of Port Townsend, the very stronghold of her enemies, for it is the port of entry for the sound, she was still far from the hiding-place in which her Captain had hoped to lie by for the day. However, he knew of another nearer at hand, though not so easy of access, and to this he directed the vessel's course.
It did not seem to Alaric that he had been asleep more than a few minutes when he was rudely awakened by being hauled out of his bunk and dropped on the forecastle floor. At the same time he became conscious of a voice saying:
"Wake up! Wake up, Rick Dale! I've been calling you for the last five minutes, and was beginning to think you were dead. Here it is daylight, with lots of work waiting, and you snoozing away as though you were a young man of elegant leisure. So tumble out in a hurry, or else you'll have the Cap'n down on you, and he's no light-weight when he's as mad as he is this morning."
Never before in all his luxurious life had Alaric been subjected to such rough treatment, and for a moment he was inclined to resent it; but a single glance at Bonny's smiling face, and a thought of how deeply he was indebted to this lad, caused him to change his mind and scramble to his feet.
"Here are your trousers," continued the young mate, "and the quicker you can jump into them the better, for we've a jolly bit of kedging to attend to, and need your assistance badly."
Filled with curiosity as to what a "jolly bit of kedging" might be, and also pleased with the idea that he was not considered utterly useless, Alaric hastily dressed and hurried on deck. There the sight of a number of Chinamen recalled with a shock the nature of the craft on which he was shipped, and for an instant he was tempted to refuse further service as a member of her crew. A moment's reflection, however, convinced him that the present was not the time for such action, as it could only result in disaster to himself and in extra work being thrown upon Bonny.
The sun had not yet risen, and on one side a broad expanse of water was overlaid with a light mist. On the other side was a bold shore covered with forest to the water's edge, and penetrated by a narrow inlet, off the mouth of which the sloop lay becalmed.
Bonny was already in the dinghy, which held a coil of rope having a small anchor attached to one end. The other end was on board the sloop, and made fast to the bitts.
"When I reach the end of the line and heave the kedge overboard, you want to haul in on it," said the young mate, "and when the sloop is right over the kedge, let go your anchor. Do you understand?"
"Yes, I think so."
The tide had just turned ebb, and was beginning to run out from the inlet as Bonny dropped the kedge anchor overboard, and Alaric, beginning to pull with a hearty will on that long wet rope, experienced the first delights of kedging. Captain Duff, puffing at a short black pipe, sat by the tiller and steered, while the Chinese passengers, squatted about the deck, watched the lad's efforts with a stolid interest.
At length the end of the rope was reached, and Alaric, with aching back and smarting hands, but beaming with the consciousness of a duty well performed, imagined his task to be ended.
"Let go your anchor," ordered Captain Duff.
When this was done, and the cable made fast so that the sloop should not drift back when the kedge was lifted, Bonny heaved up the latter and got it into the dinghy. Then he sculled still farther into the inlet until the end of the long line was once more reached, when he again dropped the small anchor overboard, and poor Alaric found, to his dismay, that the whole tedious operation was to be repeated. In addition to what he had done before, the heavy riding anchor was now to be lifted from the bottom.
As the boy essayed to haul in its cable with his hands, Captain Duff, muttering something about a "lubberly swab," stumped forward, and showing him how to use the windlass for this purpose, condescended to hold the turn, while the perspiring lad pumped away at the iron lever. When the anchor was lifted, he was directed to again lay hold of the kedge-line and warp her along handsomely.
Alaric made signs to the Chinamen that they should help him; but they, being passengers who had paid for the privilege of idleness on this cruise, merely grinned and shook their heads. So the poor lad tugged at that heart-breaking line until his strength was so exhausted that the sloop ceased to make perceptible headway.
At this Captain Duff, who was again nodding over the tiller, suddenly woke up, rushed among his passengers with brandished crutch, roaring an order in pidgin English that caused them to jump in terror, lay hold of the line, and haul it in hand over hand.
Three times more was the whole weary operation repeated, until at length the sloop was snugly anchored behind a tree-grown point that effectually concealed her from anything passing in the sound.
"Nice healthy exercise, this kedging," remarked Bonny, cheerfully, as he came on board.
"You may call it that," responded Alaric, gloomily, "but I call it the most killing kind of work I ever heard of, and if there is any more of it to be done, somebody else has got to do it. I simply won't, and that's all there is about it."
"Oh, pshaw!" laughed the young mate, as he lighted a fire in the galley stove and began preparations for breakfast. "This morning's job was only child's play compared with some you'll have before you've been aboard here a month."
"Which I never will be," replied Alaric, "for I'm going to resign this very day. I suppose this is the United States and the end of the voyage, isn't it?"
"It's the States fast enough; but not the end of the run by a good bit. We've got another night's sail ahead of us before we come to that. But you mustn't think of resigning, as you call it, just as you are beginning to get the hang of sailoring. Think how lonely I should be without you to make things lively and interesting—as you did last night, for instance."
"I shall, though," replied Alaric, decidedly, "just as quick as we make a port; for if you think I'm going to remain in the smuggling business one minute longer than I can help, you're awfully mistaken. And what's more, you are going with me, and we'll hunt for another job—an honest one, I mean—together."
"I am, am I?" remarked Bonny. "After you calling me a pirate, too. I shouldn't think you'd care to associate with pirates."
"But I do care to associate with you," responded Alaric, earnestly, "for I know I couldn't get along at all without you. Besides, after the splendid way you came to my rescue last night, I don't want to try. But I say, Bonny, how did you ever manage to get back on board after tumbling—after I knocked you into the water? It seems to me the most mysterious thing I ever heard of."
"Oh, that was easy enough!" laughed the young mate, lifting the lid of a big kettle of rice that was boiling merrily as he spoke. "You see, I didn't wholly fall overboard. That is, I caught on the bobstay, and was climbing up again all right when you let the jib down on top of me, nearly knocking me into the water and smothering me at the same time. When I got out from under it you were gone, and a fine hunt we had for you, during which the old man got considerably excited. But all's well that ends well, as the Japs said after the war was over, so now if you'll make a pot of coffee, I'll get the pork ready for frying."
"But I don't know how to make coffee."
"Don't you? I thought everybody knew that. Never mind, though; I'll make the coffee while you fry the meat."
"I don't know how to do that, either."
"Don't you know how to cook anything?"
"No. I don't think I could boil water without spoiling it."
"Well," said Bonny, pityingly, "you certainly have got more to learn than any fellow old enough to walk alone that I ever knew."
The sloop remained in her snug hiding-place all that day, during which her Captain and first mate devoted most of their time to sleeping. The Chinamen spent the greater part of the day on shore, while Alaric, following Bonny's advice, made his first attempt at fishing. So long as he only got bites he had no trouble; but when he finally caught an enormous flounder his occupation was gone, for he had no second hook, and could not imagine how the fish was to be removed from the one to which it was attached. So he let it carefully down into the water again, and made the line fast until Bonny should wake. When that happened, and he triumphantly hauled in his line, he found, to his dismay, that his hook was bare, and that the fish had solved his problem for him.
In the mean time there was much activity that day on board a certain revenue-cutter stationed in the upper sound, and shortly after dark, about the time the smuggler Fancy was again getting under way, several well-manned boats left the government vessel to spend the night in patrolling certain channels.
[to be continued.]
[MAPLE-SUGAR MAKING.]
BY CHRISTINE TERHUNE HERRICK.
The advent of the sugaring season is looked forward to with joy by the young people in those districts of New England where the sugar-maple grows freely. When the sap begins to flow they know that there will be fun galore, and they watch eagerly for the first mild days that will encourage the farmers to get out the sugar-buckets.
There is something in their anticipation, too, besides the mere thought of the regaling of their palates. The running of the sap means the end of the winter, with all which that has implied of cold and dreariness and isolation. True, there have been periods of glorious cold weather, when coasting and skating and straw rides in great sleighs over sparkling snow and under brilliant moonlight have made even life in winter worth living, but these bright spots have been oases in long deserts of dolefulness. There may be poetry and excitement in being snow-bound; there are only monotony and discomfort in being slush-bound.
"When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the north wind howls, and the doors are shut,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose."
And there are other trials unmentioned by the English poet which the New-Englander knows only too well. Frozen water-pipes, frozen fingers and toes, recurring colds caught in rooms that are too chilly for comfort or close and over-heated by coal stoves, and many more annoyances that, small enough when taken separately, make a formidable sum total when they all come at once.
IN A SUGAR CAMP.
But now the harbingers of spring are at hand. In sheltered places the trailing arbutus has begun to show its fragile blossoms, that "take the winds of March with beauty"; there is even here and there a stray violet; the mosses in damp places are a deliciously vivid green, and the grass is losing its sereness in hollows and on the edge of water-courses. The bluebird has been in evidence for some days, the song-sparrow's rippling note is heard, and there are rumors that a robin has been seen. The ways are still "heavy with mire and rut," but there is a not distant prospect of settled roads and good walking. There is a suggestion of spring in the air, in spite of the drifts of snow in the ravines and in the woods. The young people do not wish to see that snow go too fast, for it is essential to a part of their fun. For how could they "sugar off" without snow? Even the farmers would prefer hauling the sledge that carries the store tub, in which they collect the sap, over the snow than over the bare ground.
To the children and young people the thought of "sugaring off" is the chief one connected with the maple-sugar season. That is unless they live on farms and have to do their part in preparing the sap for market. The time means something quite different to the farmer and his men, who must tramp through snow and mud from tree to tree of the sugar orchard that is generally scattered over hill and dale, and seldom within a small radius, who must watch the sap-buckets and empty them before they overflow, who must bring the sap from the tree to the sugar-house and empty it into the great store tubs that await it. And even then their work is but just begun, for the shorter the space between the time the sap leaves the tree and its transformation into syrup and sugar, the better will be the quality of these. So the sap must not stand long in the store tubs before it is turned into the great evaporator over a roaring fire, where it is to be changed from what appears to be slightly sweetened water into thick, flavorous syrup. The improvement of methods in sugar manufacture no longer render it necessary that the boiling sap should be watched all night, as the sugar-makers had to do in the old days, when the sap was boiled in a great kettle swung over an open fire in the woods. Still the work is hard and absorbing, for the season is short and no time can be wasted.
The women have their share of the toil. To them it falls to boil down the syrup to the proper thickness for sending out as maple molasses or as sugar in cakes. They "sugar off" frequently, but it is only to ascertain whether the syrup has reached the stage where it can be taken from the fire, stirred until it granulates, and then turned into the little tins that mould it into the cakes familiar to us all.
That is what "sugaring off" means to the farmer and his wife. It means something quite different to the young people who have been planning for sugar parties long before the farmer thought of tapping his trees.
A sugar party is not a fall-dress affair. Evening clothes and low-cut gowns would be decidedly out of place in the farm-house kitchen, where the most important part of the entertainment comes off. The "best Sunday-go-to-meeting" garments fulfil all the requirements of the toilet.
A sugar party is very elastic so far as numbers are concerned. It may be either small or large, although as a rule the old principle of the more the merrier holds good here. Both sexes are represented, and the only essential qualities in a guest are a social spirit and a good digestion.
The place to thoroughly enjoy sugar-making is on a farm where they "sugar off" half a dozen times a day. It is the usual thing for a party of young people to arrange for a visit to a farm-house in the height of the sugar season, and they throw themselves into the fun of the hour with an abandon which proves the injustice of the charge that we, as a people, like the English, take our pleasure sadly. The girls and boys inspect the flowing of the sap, form a merry escort around the sledge that conveys the sap to the sugar-house, hang about the golden syrup boiling and bubbling in the big evaporator, and it is a noisy and jubilant crowd that gathers around the tin pans filled with snow, upon which is poured the smoking syrup that is, by contact with the snow, transformed into that delicious compound, "maple wax."
Three or four young people, each armed with a fork, may gather about a small pan, where the syrup lies in golden arabesques upon the white snow. It is very pretty to look at, very good to taste, and very sticky to handle. Unless it has been boiled to a point of brittleness where it snaps when touched by the fork—and this is unusual—it will cling to the tines in a fashion that gives new and literal meaning to the words, "Linked sweetness long-drawn out." The experienced sugar-eater has learned enough to give a dexterous turn of the fork that twists the wax about the prongs in a compact morsel, while the green hand struggles with the strung-out portion that falls to his share, and is forced to make desperate appeals for a knife or a spoon to break the tenuous fragment.
Even when the wax is on the fork all trouble is not over. The next thing is to eat it, and to achieve this operation with the grace and dignity one would desire is well-nigh impossible. The subject of the experiment looks at her fork and wonders whether it is better to nibble at the sugar or to make one huge mouthful of the whole lamp of delight. Woe be to her if she pursues the former course! Unless the sugar is exceptionally crisp, she will find that she has attached to her teeth one end of an unbreakable thread that stretches as do the fibres of a stringy Welsh rarebit. She understands how the spider feels when he spins a never-ending filament.
Under these circumstances she will probably find her chief consolation in the spectacle of her neighbor, who has attempted to take all the sugar on his fork at a single mouthful. He has sunk his teeth into the sugar, and it holds them as closely as it adheres to the fork. He struggles vainly to loosen his teeth or to withdraw the tines. Not until he casts dignity to the winds, and taking the fork in both hands, drags on it with main strength, does he release himself even partially. Then, as the sugar melts in his mouth, he finds himself free once more.
It will readily be imagined that with such scenes as these taking place all over the room there is no lack of fun. The amusement may not spring from a very high mental source, but it is pure, innocent jollity, and everybody enjoys it.
No one knows how much sugar he can devour, and live to tell the tale, until he has been on a Vermont farm in sugaring-time. At each sugaring off he will eat so much that he will declare he never wishes to see maple-sugar again so long as he lives. Nevertheless, when the syrup is ready to sugar off again, he is waiting to take his place among the rest and eat and eat until he is once more satiated. And this performance he repeats half a dozen times a day. Many persons claim that maple-sugar thus eaten makes them drowsy, but the fresh outer air soon dispels such sleepiness and gives them an appetite for more sugar.
One of the indispensable items of a sugaring off is a dish of pickles. The palates that have been surfeited with the cloying sweetness crave the relief of the acid. The advocates of the pickle-jar will assure you that after a pickle or two one can eat as much sugar as if he had not tasted it before, and a little observation and experiment leads one to believe that the theory is correct.
A pleasant variety is made by sprinkling the meats of butternuts, walnuts, or hickory-nuts on the snow, and covering these with the syrup, thus making a toothsome maple nut candy.
All these dainties are sampled at different intervals during the day in every household where sugar is made, but when evening comes there is usually a gathering of the young people at one or another farm-house. The country folk who have social instincts have little terror of long walks, and they think nothing of tramping a mile or more "across lots" over rough pasture-land, or along frozen roads, to a neighbor's where there is to be a sugar party. At such a function there are no refreshments demanded except the "maple wax" and pickles. Formality is altogether lacking. The guests gather about a long table, on which stand the milk-pans full of snow, and dip the syrup from the one big kettle boiling on the stove.
When they have satisfied themselves with sweets for the time, at least, they fall to playing games—such old-fashioned amusements as Twenty Questions, Consequences, Dumb Crambo, or the livelier Fox and Geese and Blindman's Buff. Occasionally Parcheesi, Lotto, and Backgammon will have their devotees, and rarely there will be games of cards. The party does not continue to a late hour. There must be a final sugaring off before the assembly breaks up for the night and muffle themselves for their long trudge homeward in the white moonlight or under the solemn stars.
[AN "OLD-FIELD" SCHOOL-GIRL.]
BY MARION HARLAND.
CHAPTER I.
Everybody spoke of it as an "old-field school"; but the only field in sight was one hundred acres in extent and always under cultivation. On the early October morning with which my story begins it was tender green with fall wheat growing fast under the warm Virginia sunshine. A "worm-fence" of rails separated it from the copse of sassafras and chinquapin bushes and scrub-oaks, beyond which was the clearing lying about the school-house door. Many generations of scholars had trampled this area into dust that had not put forth a blade of grass in the month's vacation just ended. But for two tough-lived aspens planted close to the steps of the small building there was not a sign of vegetation nearer to it than the belt of brushwood. The school-house was built of hewn logs, chinked with bits of wood half as long and twice as thick as a shingle. The spaces between these billets were filled in with mortar in which there was much red clay and little lime. Sun, rain, and wind had bleached the mortar to a dirty pink and darkened the logs to grayish-black. Upon two sides of the one-roomed building were windows running horizontally two-thirds of the way across the walls, and but one pane deep. A log had been sawed out, and a single long sash fitted into the space thus left. The sash hung from hinges made fast to the log above it, and when closed was hooked down to hasps set in the lower log. The inner walls and ceiling were plastered with the warmly colored mortar used in filling up the chinks. As far up as a boy could reach by standing upon a bench the mottled surface was covered with pencillings and charcoal scrawls. There was but one movable desk; that stood at the head of the room. It had a hinged cover with a padlock attached to it, and a wooden arm-chair was beside it. The rest of the room was furnished with backless benches of unpainted pine mellow-brown with age, a big stove at the right of the teacher's chair, and a row of tall stools ranged in front of a sloping shelf made fast to the wall behind the desk. Upon these the scholars sat when they had their writing-lessons.
A locust—"a dry-weather fly," the people thereabouts called it—had perched on the sill of the sunniest window, and sang shrilly. But for his chirp the room was very still until two men pushed back the door and strolled up the aisle. Their steps started up queer echoes, like whispers and titters, that chased one another from one corner to another; the locust stopped singing.
"Mrs. Duncombe sent a couple of women over yesterday to sweep and scrub," said the elder of the men. "It all looks fairly decent, I think."
He seated himself upon the teacher's desk, swinging one leg over a corner of it, the other foot upon the floor, and looked around the room, a smile half-humorous, half-pensive showing his white teeth and lighting up his eyes. He had a noble face; his age may have been fifty; his hair was iron-gray. As from the force of early habit he had pulled off his hat at the door, and now held it in his left hand, while with his right he tapped his boot with his riding-whip. This was Major Duncombe, of Greenfield, a fine specimen of the Virginia planter of 1840.
"All the learning I carried with me to college was flogged into me here," he went on, musingly. "Old Byars Lowton reigned supreme from this desk then. I have heard my father say that when Byars applied for the place, Colonel Barton, of Hurley, my nearest neighbor, said to him, 'Young gentleman, you are young and inexperienced. We should like to know something of your proposed principles of government. How do you mean to manage your school?' 'By switch and suasion, sir,' said Byars; 'specially switch.' The speech got him a berth he held for forty years, and in all that time his hand never lost its cunning"—laughing good-humoredly.
His companion had thrown himself into the wooden arm-chair, and while listening to the Major made good use of his eyes in scrutinizing room and contents. He smiled at the concluding sentence, a smile that curved his mouth upward and drew his brows together, deepening a crease which was always between them. "We shall not disagree there, I reckon," he said. "Martinet practice in the school-room is the wisest in the long-run."
He had a way of jerking out his words that agreed with the impression his face and frown made upon a girl who sat upon the floor in a far corner of the room, with a book upon her knees. She had made a nook for herself by setting one bench upon the top of another, and, herself unseen in the shadow, surveyed the two men through the space left between the benches. She knew one well, and the other was undoubtedly the new teacher who was to take charge of the school the next Monday. Her father had said the day before that he was at Greenfield. He had been in college with young Mr. Duncombe, and the families were old friends.
He was shorter than the Major by half a head, and slight in build. His head was large in proportion to the rest of the body; his forehead broad and thatched with straight straw-colored hair; his eyes were large, and a queer faint blue in color. When he spoke he pursed up his mouth and wagged his head slightly from side to side; in walking he swung his arms and held his head high. Like the instructor of the "switch and suasion" story, he looked very young, not over two-and-twenty.
Unaware of the disapproving gaze of the mouselike eyes, the new-comer resumed, "I was brought up in the old way myself, and see no reason to depart from it."
The Major's eyes ran over the slight figure and twinkled roguishly. "There will be some strapping fellows—pretty hard cases too—in the school, who might not be easy to drive," he said. "They are tolerably good boys in the main, if taken in the right way, with no more spirit than one likes to see in lads of their age. You'll have no trouble with the girls."
"I'm not so sure of that. They need flogging as much as their brothers, sometimes more, and take advantage of the public sentiment that shields them. As it does everywhere."
"I should hope so indeed!" answered the Major, promptly. "I have never laid the weight of a finger upon one of my daughters. My boys"—the twinkle returning to his eyes—"will tell you that I have licked them out of their boots times without number. That is the reason they are so well grown. Their sinews are strengthened and lengthened by exercise. Eh? What is it?"
The stranger had started up and pointed to the distant corner. "Who is that over there? Somebody has been eavesdropping!"
Before the terrified girl could scramble to her feet the two men were looking down at her over the uppermost bench.
"DON'T LOOK SO SCARED, CHILD! WE ARE NOT HUNTING YOU."
"Why! why! why!" uttered the Major. "Flea, is it you? What are you skulking in the corner for like an old hare in a hollow? Don't look so scared, child! We are not hunting you."
She was pulling herself up. She had been sitting with one foot doubled under her, and it had gone to sleep. She dropped a courtesy, first to the Major, then to his companion.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I didn't s'pose anybody would be here. I've often been here before. To read all alone, you know. Mother doesn't mind."
"What book is that?—the Bible?"
"No, sir; Shakespeare."
"So-ho-o!" The Major reached a long arm over the upper bench and brought up a large book that had lost the outer covers, the fly-leaves, and the title-page. "Where did this come from?"
"Father bought it at Mr. Harrison's sale, year before last. One back was off, and he said I might have it."
"And you've read the other back off since? How far have you got in it?"
"I've been through it twice and a half times."
"Twice and a half times, eh?"—with a whistle. "How old are you, may I ask?"
"Twelve and a half, sir."
"You are fond of fractions, it seems. Flea, this is Mr. Tayloe, who is going to teach you something besides Shakespeare next week. You saw Mr. Grigsby this morning, Mr. Tayloe. This young lady who has read Shakespeare twice and a half times and is twelve and a half years old is his daughter."
The girl courtesied again; Mr. Tayloe nodded and pursed up his mouth. The Major resumed his kindly raillery, dipping at random into the dogeared book with the look and touch of one familiar with its contents.
"What have you been reading to-day, my fractional damsel?"
"King Henry Fifth, sir."
"Whose son was he?"
"King Henry Fourth's, sir."
The girl was now quite at home with him and her subject. Her sallow face warmed and dimpled with enjoyment of the mock examination. She stood erect, her arms crossed upon the upper bench, her eyes dancing with amusement.
"Let me see. He was a nice, steady, well-behaved young fellow?"
"Very nice, sir, but he wasn't a bit steady. He was right wild before he got to be King. After that he was splendid."
"Humph! Didn't he steal the crown from the old gentleman's head before the breath was out of his body? I don't call that nice behavior."
"Because he thought his father was dead," cried the girl, forgetting jest and herself in defence of her hero. "If he had been dead, the crown would have belonged to his son. When Prince Henry found out that his father was only in a faint and was coming to, don't you remember how he knelt down and begged pardon, and said,
'There is your crown,
And He that wears the crown eternally—'
That meant God, you know,
'Long guard it yours?'
It wouldn't be fair to lay that up against him, sir."
The Major laid the book gently upon the bench, sighing as he did it. "You are right, my child," he said, in an altered tone. "An older book than Shakespeare says, 'Remember not the sins of my youth.' We won't be hard upon your dear Prince Hal. Your father tells me he is going to send three of you to school."
"Yes, sir. Bea and Dee and me."
"What!" ejaculated Mr. Tayloe, with a short, sharp laugh. He had not spoken during the Shakespearean talk, but fidgeted about the aisle, inspecting the notches and initials cut in the benches, and frowning at the inscriptions upon the walls. "And you called her 'Flea,' didn't you?" he continued. "I never heard anything more ridiculous. Haven't they Christian names?"
"Very Christian, I believe," answered the Major, invincibly good-natured. "At least I can answer for Dee, who was christened 'David.' I was his godfather. And your name, Flea, is—"
"Felicia, sir," said the girl, as he hesitated, "and my sister's is Beatrice."
Mr. Tayloe's laugh was almost a vulgar sniff, and he walked to the door, as if impatient to be gone.
"Well, good-morning to you," said the Major to Flea. "We won't interrupt your reading any longer. Mr. Tayloe is very much gratified to know that he will have such an intelligent and industrious scholar. You will be a comfort and a pride to him."
"Possibly Mr. Tayloe may take a different view of the case," observed that gentleman, as they mounted the horses they had left tied to the aspen-trees. "I am afraid that young person will have to forget a great deal before she can learn anything. She is puffed up with the notion that she is a prodigy. I would wager my head that she suspected we would go to the school-house to-day, and planned to be found there with her Shakespeare. But what could one expect from the child of a father who turns an eleven-year-old girl loose in Shakespeare, and a mother who has her daughters christened Felicia and Beatrice, and nicknames them Flea and Bea?"
"Oh, come, now! you are hard upon my worthy overseer and his wife," rejoined the Major, diverted by the teacher's indignation. "They are excellent folks who mind their own business, attend church regularly, and mean to have their children well educated. Grigsby is a man of remarkable intelligence for his position—a great reader and a clear thinker. As to the nicknames, it is a trick of this region to deck up children in fancy names, and then, as if they were ashamed of the sentimentality, to make the high-sounding titles ridiculous by nicking and contorting them. The more absurd the nickname the tighter it sticks."
Mr. Tayloe made no immediate answer. They had left the copse flanking the school-house play-ground, and were pacing between the banks of a sunken red-clay road, topped by pines, when he broke the silence:
"The old-field school is a horrible leveller of social distinctions. Where else would your children and Mr. Barton's meet, as equals, those of an illiterate overseer? These things must be right in a so-called republic, but I confess they go against the grain with me."
"They dry straight," said the Major, oracularly. "If the planter's children cannot keep abreast, if not ahead, of the overseer's, they must fall behind in the race. In this country every man ought to have a fair chance."
When the sound of hoofs and voices died away upon her ears, Flea Grigsby pushed aside her barricade and came out of her hiding-place. Her fear in building it was that some mischievous boy or passing negro might peep in at the school-house door and disturb her reading and thinking.
Now that she had left her shadowy nook, it could be seen that she was tall for her age, thin, and dark. She had out-grown her frock of mixed blue homespun—"Virginia cloth," as it was called. Children then wore their skirts down to their heels. Flea's had been let down three times, each letting-down registering itself in a band of unfaded stuff, yet the hem left exposed a pair of slim ankles and bare brown feet. She had shoes and stockings at home for Sunday and holiday wear, and her mother had notified her yesterday that she was "getting too old to go to school barefoot." At home she and three younger children ran upon naked soles (except on Sundays) from the 1st of May to the 1st of November, and revelled in their freedom from cramping shoes.
Her cheeks were burning and her heart was thumping with vainglorious delight, such as she had never felt before. Major Duncombe—"the illustrious Major Duncombe," as she called him in her quaint bookish way—had pronounced her "industrious and intelligent." She hoped that he would say it at his own supper-table that evening, and that her dear Miss Em'ly would hear it. She could fancy how Miss Em'ly's eyes would flash and her pretty mouth smile at praises of the scholar who "just adored her."
Long afterward Flea recalled and thought it strange, in view of what happened in later months, that she should have thought so much of Miss Em'ly that October afternoon when she sat dreaming happily upon the log door-step of the school-house, the hundred-acre field of wheat at her right stretching away almost to the river, and before her, beyond the play-ground and belt of brushwood, the dark forest, in the depths of which she felt almost as much at home as in her father's house.
The day was unseasonably warm, and in the sultry stillness the dry-weather flies were fiercely defying the threats of a cloud that was rising from the west to swallow up the sun. The log door-step was quite hot to the girl's bare feet. The leaves of the scrub-oaks were red-brown, and those of the sumac scarlet, although there had been no frost as yet, and the colors dulled as the sunshine left them. The aspen leaves lay back against their stems, exposing their white linings. Every breath of air was hushed, as if the unrolling cloud were a gray blanket and suffocating the earth.
Presently a low growl of thunder seemed, as it passed, to deaden the calm.
"We are going to have a shower," Flea said, aloud, looking up.
She did not budge. She could not get home before the rain, and she was extremely comfortable where she was. Wrapping her bare arms about her knees—another of her "ways"—she hugged herself and her fancies, caring nothing for heat or threatening storm. From babyhood she had created a world of her own, and lived in it at least half of the time. She called this dreaming, for the lack of a better term, "playing ladies." Nobody else knew of the play, much less of the "ladies" in it. She believed that she had invented it, and in it she always took the chief part.
In her present day-dream Major Duncombe was a conspicuous actor, and the school-room was the stage. Under the new teacher prizes would be offered, and she would win them all. She had read of such things, and of examination day. She would coax her mother into giving her a new Swiss muslin frock—not an old one of Bea's. She had never had a really new Sunday frock of her very own. Bea grew as fast as she, and could not be outstripped. The frock would have a full "baby waist," low in the neck, and short-sleeved. There must be a pink ribbon sash with fringed ends. And perhaps her mother might buy for her a pair of India-cotton stockings, and slippers with rosettes upon them. At the imagination she hugged her knees the harder. She did not own a pair of "bought" stockings. Bea had but two pairs, and wore them upon grand occasions.
Thus dressed, she would leave her modest seat in the school-room and walk up the aisle when Major Duncombe, in his finest manner, called up "Miss Felicia Grigsby" to receive, first one, then another of the prizes offered for—say, reading, writing, history—and there ought to be a fourth. Four were none too many. Oh, for Shakespeare, of course! When all had been given, the Major would make a speech.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he would say, in his deep round voice, "as our revered preceptor will bear me witness" (here he would bow to Mr. Tayloe, who would bow and smile), "I told him six months ago that our fair young friend here would prove herself the most intelligent and industrious of his pupils. He is proud of her, ladies and gentlemen, and you and I, and indeed everybody in this county is—(or would 'are' sound better?)—justly proud of our distinguished citizen, Miss Felicia Jean Grigsby."
Then she would courtesy very low and gracefully, and say, in a voice mellow with emotion (another bookish phrase she had picked up), "You do me too much honor, I assure you, sir."
A tremendous roar of thunder awoke her. At the ripping and rending of the laden clouds the rain rushed down in a volume, washing out the view of everything in the landscape except the nearest bushes and the aspen-trees.