Vagabond Adventures

by Ralph Keeler

I sculled out well toward the middle of the stream, exulting, boy-like, in the wild freedom of the voyage; heading diagonally against the current, but, otherwise, taking very little heed whither the prow of my boat was pointing. Suddenly I noticed a commotion on the shore I had left, and looked curiously among the people there for the cause. Every one seemed now pointing and hallooing at me. It must be, I concluded, they were applauding my skill and daring; and, thus encouraged, I sculled more lustily than ever, with my back still toward the bow of my boat.

Not many moments afterward I heard, rising above the other noises of the busy life around and on the river, a queer, rumbling sound in the water ahead of me. I turned to find a large steamboat making directly toward me, under full speed, and not more than two or three rods away. I dropped my oar and stood paralyzed with the sudden danger and the utter hopelessness of escape.

The people on the steamer seemed nearly as terrified as myself, for they shouted and waved their hands and arms in the wildest manner. The bow of the large vessel just grazed that of my little one when the great paddle-wheels were stopped. The swell caused by the motion of the steamer struck the small craft and threw it clear of the wheel; and the Niagara, for that was her name, passed by on her voyage.

If the wheel had been stopped twenty seconds later, my boat and myself would most certainly have been drawn into it, and circumstances over which I could have had no control would, in all probability, have prevented me from writing out this faithful account of my adventures.

I now put my boat about and sculled for shore, abandoning my scheme of foreign travel and exploration. The long and difficult struggle with the current which ensued should have been enough, without the terrible fright I had experienced, to bring me, I think, to a realizing sense of the wildness and madness of my undertaking. Finally reaching the dock and making the yawl fast to the sand-scow, I exchanged a very sheepish sort of smile for the good-humored or sympathetic one of the young man, her captain, and strolled off leisurely over the wharf, out of the way of the curious people who had been the witnesses of my exploit.

In a remarkably short time thereafter I was engaged again in rolling myself about on the top of the white-fish barrels; thinking no more of my hairbreadth escape, or of what was to become of me in the immediate future. Twenty minutes, as nearly as I can recollect, were about as long as any direst misfortune, at that period, could cloud the brightness of my young hope. This utter recklessness I can scarcely understand now. It requires, I suppose, more years and experience than I had then to learn the knack of despairing.

At least, I know I was in the full delight of my first freedom, and, in all these boyish wanderings, the fact that I was in need of a meal or a night’s lodging would occur to me, almost always, as a sudden inspiration, and only at the usual hour for the meal or for going to bed. The joy of my solitary, Robinson-Crusoe life, on the wharves and among the white-fish barrels, was so strong upon me that I suffered much less than would at first be imagined from the hunger which sometimes filled the long intervals between one meal and the next.

I have just used the words “solitary life,” and I have used them advisedly; for I can remember only one juvenile friend whom I ever picked up as a companion in my vagrancy, and that was an urchin of Irish descent. We met on the wharf, at Detroit, if my memory does not fail me, some days after the events just chronicled. He was the first and last whom I took into my boyish confidence, for the companionship was not harmonious, and ended in the disaster of a bloody nose, which he inflicted on me at parting. This, with the black eye which I bestowed in turn upon him, was, I believe, the only ceremony observed on the occasion of our mutual leave-taking.

Toward evening of the day of my narrow escape in the yawl of the sand-scow, I drew from my pocket the crackers thrown to me that morning, at Toledo, from the pantry of the Baltic, and seated myself on the wharf overlooking the clear river to eat them, feeding the minnows with the crumbs. When it began to be dark, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no place to sleep. I am sure that up to that moment the subject of my prospective lodgings had not crossed my mind. I arose, and, brushing the last fragments of my crackers down to my fellow-vagabonds, the minnows, I walked toward the place where the sand-scow was moored.

I remembered now the good-natured face of the young fellow who had so willingly loaned me his small boat and never scolded me for the peril to which I had exposed it, as well as myself. Arrived in the little cabin of the scow, I found him already retired. I had conscientious scruples about begging, and imagined I was doing nothing of the kind when I made the simple affirmative statement of my case. Indeed, I would not have had time to append any request to my first sentence, for the young man, in his prompt kindness, told me, as soon as he had heard I had no lodging of my own, that I was welcome to share his, making for me, while he spoke, a place on the loose hay which formed his bed.