Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

He thrust a pistol into John’s hand and took him by the arm as the boys silently opened the door and passed out with the dogs. John found himself following. In the moonlight they crept along the shadow of the buildings out to the point where the woods crawled in almost to the barn. There the old man crept off to one side. For the moment the moon was obscured by a passing cloud. Then its light burst upon them, and John from his hiding-place distinctly saw three forms crawling slowly across the grassy field to the back of the barn. In the clear moonlight he could distinguish three white faces, peering through the deep grass. They would move slowly forward a few feet, and then halt, apparently to listen. The deaf man in this strange, lonely place, thought he saw three desperate men making their way to the barn buildings. This very thing had been described in one of the stories he had read; three mountaineers had crawled slowly through the grass to set fire to the barn. And it came to John’s mind that these three white-faced fiends were creeping up to burn down this home and then shoot down its occupants by the light from the burning! The nearest crawler came slowly to within two rods of John and raised his head to look about him. As viewed in the moonlight it seemed a hideous face, hardly human in its aspect.

John Harlow was a man of peace, and he had been cursing himself for having been brought into this neighborhood quarrel. It was none of his business, he told himself, but the sight of this cowardly wretch crawling up like a snake to fire the buildings was too much for Boston reserve, and John raised his pistol, took aim at that hateful white face and pulled the trigger. The figure seemed to throw itself in the air at the shot, and then it lay quiet, the ghastly face still in the moonlight.

As John fired there came a sharp volley from the other buildings, and the two other shapes lay still. A cloud passed over the moon, and through the darkness, feeling himself a murderer, John found his way back to the house, where the women were waiting with eager faces. They lighted the lamps once more and the men came tramping back, to hang their guns on the wall. They were all in great spirits, and the old man came to John’s chair and with much shouting and waving his hands, made the deaf man understand.

“You made a great shot. Got him right between the eyes. We got them all laid out on the grass—come out and see them.”

But John did not want to see these dead men! He was a murderer. He had killed a man, perhaps an innocent stranger who had never done him wrong. It was frightful, but even the women insisted that he come, so with his eyes shut John permitted himself to be drawn out to the hateful spot where those dead bodies were lying.

“There’s the one you got!” roared a voice in his ear.

“You must be a dead shot—look at him; see how white he is!”

And Harlow opened his eyes, expecting to see a picture which could never be erased from memory. There were the dead bodies on the grass before him in the lantern light. There were three big skunks with more than the usual amount of white about their faces and backs!

Harlow gazed at them, and his paralyzed mind slowly came back to normal working order. And then the light came. He had not taken part in any family feud. No one had tried to kill him. The people of that section were as kindly neighbors as any he had ever had in Boston. For some weeks the skunks had been stealing chickens, and the family had organized this successful defense. It was not the white face of a man that John had seen in the tangled grass, but the white head and back of a skunk. He was not a murderer—he was only a skunk-killer!

Most deaf men go through these “adventures in silence.” Many of them are not particularly thrilling, but they are sometimes exciting enough to let the imagination run away with us. In what follows I shall try to make it clear that most of our fears are imaginary—thin ghosts, stuffed lions, scarecrows (or skunks!) which stand beside the road to frighten us. For the deaf should know from experience that the only safety in life is to go on, no matter what dangers croakers or cowards may predict just around the curve.