Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers. All Rights Reserved.

CROSSING THE XUACAXÉLLA.[1]

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES A. CURTIS, U. S. A.

I.

"Here, Frank, come and help push this gate. I can't start it alone."

"Wait a moment, Henry. Don't be in such a rush. I think I hear a horse coming down the Prescott road. I want to see if it's the express from La Paz."

The younger boy ceased his efforts to close the gates, and advancing a few steps before the entrance of the fort, looked up the valley to where the road from Prescott appeared from behind a spur of the foot-hills. The two boys, aged respectively fourteen and sixteen, were dressed in the army uniform, and wore gold-lace sergeant's chevrons upon their sleeves. Their white stripes were piped with red, and their cap cords and regimental badges were of the officers' pattern and quality.

A beautiful white setter, with liver-colored spots and ears, and mottled nose and paws, followed the boys and stood between them, nestling her delicate muzzle against the younger boy's hip, and responding to his caresses with waves of a plumy tail.

"Do you think we shall hear from father, Frank?"

"We ought to. He said, in his last letter, he was getting settled at the Presidio, and would soon send for us."

"Takes twelve days to bring a letter from San Francisco. I suppose it would take us longer to go there. Seems to me he might get ready for us while we are on the road," said Henry, lugubriously. "I'm getting mighty tired of opening and shutting these gates."

"You forget father has to visit all the posts where companies of his regiment are stationed. That will probably take him a month longer."

"And we must go on opening and closing gates and running errands in Arizona. Santa Fe was a good place for boys. But this is the pokiest place we've struck yet. But come; let's shut the gates, and watch for the expressman afterwards. We haven't much time before retreat."

The gates closed a stockaded post near Prescott, Arizona. Pine logs ten feet long had been set up vertically in the ground, two feet of them below the surface and eight above, enclosing an area of a thousand square feet, in which were store-rooms, offices, and quarters for two companies of soldiers and their officers. At corners diagonally opposite each other were two large block-house bastions commanding the flanks of the fort. The logs of the walls were faced on two sides, set close together, and were slotted every four feet for rifles. At one of the bastionless corners were double gates, also made of logs, bound by cross and diagonal bars, dove-tailed and pinned firmly to them. Each hung on huge triple hinges of iron.

The two boys went back to the gates, and setting their backs against one of them and digging their heels in the earth, swung it ponderously and slowly until its outer edge caught on a shelving log set in the middle of the entrance to support it and its fellow. Then, as the field music began to play, and the men to assemble in line for retreat roll-call, they swung the second gate in the same way, and braced the two with heavy timbers.

As the companies broke ranks, the boys went to the fifth log on the left of the gates and swung it back on its hinges. This was one of two secret posterns. On the inside of the wall, when closed, its location was easily noticeable on account of the hinges, latches, and braces; on the outside it looked like any other log. It had been sawed off close to the ground, and being over three feet in diameter, afforded a convenient night entrance to the fort. Their work being completed, the boys went to the Adjutant's office to report.

"Very well, sergeants," said the commanding officer; "no further duty will be required of you to-day."

Frank and Henry ran through the postern, and arrived on the crest of the bluff overlooking the Prescott road just as a horseman turned up the height. The news that the La Paz courier had arrived spread quickly through the quarters, and every man not on duty appeared outside the walls.

Joining the boy sergeants, I said,

"Boys, if you want to drop the job of opening and closing the gates, it can hereafter be done by the guard."

"Thank you, sir. We took the job, and we will stick to it," replied Sergeant Frank.

"I wonder if Samson could pack those gates off as easily as he did the gates of Gaza?" said Henry, seating himself on a log which had been rejected in the building, and taking Vic's head in his hip and fondling her silken ears.

"They are the heaviest gates I ever saw," said Frank.

"Then stop straining at them. Captain Bayard has several times suggested that you be relieved of the duty."

"We have swung them since they were hung, and we want to do it until we leave," continued Frank. "We can't remain here much longer. I think this express will bring an order for us to go to San Francisco."

"Very likely. It will be an agreeable change for you. Life here is not very enjoyable for boys."

"I should say not," said Henry. "At Santa Fe there was plenty of fun. Of course we had to study there; but that made play all the more pleasant. Then we could go hunting now and then, or gathering piñons; but here we can't look outside of the fort unless a dozen soldiers are along, for fear the Apaches will get us."

"But you can go to Prescott."

"Prescott!" in a tone of great contempt. "Twenty-one log cabins and stores, and not a boy in the place—only a dozen Pike County, Missouri, girls."

"And we can't go there with any comfort since Texas Dick and Jumping Jack stole Sancho and Chiquita," added Frank.

Further conversation was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of the expressman. A roan bronco galloped up the slope bearing a youthful rider wearing a light buckskin suit and a soft felt hat with a narrow brim. He was armed with a breech-loading carbine and two revolvers, and carried, attached to his saddle, a roll of blankets and a mail-pouch.

Dismounting, he detached the pouch, at the same time answering questions and giving us items of news later than any contained in his despatches.

After handing his pouch to the quartermaster-sergeant, his eyes fell upon the boy sergeants.

"I saw Texas Dick and Juan Brincos at Cisternas Negras," he said, addressing them.

"My! Did you, Mr. Baldwin?" exclaimed Henry, springing to his feet and approaching the courier. "Did they have our ponies?"

"You know I never saw your ponies; but Dick was mounted on a black, and Juan on a cream-color."

"Sancho!" said Frank.

"Chiquita!" said Henry.

"Do you know where they were bound?" asked Captain Bayard.

"I did not speak to them, nor did they see me. I dared not hold communication in a lonely place with such desperate characters. I learned from a friend of theirs at Date Creek that they were going to open a monte bank at La Paz."

"Then they are likely to stay there some time."

"Can't something be done, sir, to get the ponies back?" asked Frank.

"Perhaps so. I will consider the matter."

The mail was taken to the office of the Quartermaster, and soon distributed through the command. Among my letters was one from Colonel Burton, the father of the boy sergeants. He said he had expected to send for his sons by this mail, but additional detached service had been required of him which might delay their departure from Whipple for another month, if not longer. He informed me that a detail which I had received to duty as professor of military science and tactics in a boys' military school had been withheld by the Department Commander until my services could be spared at Fort Whipple, and that he thought the next mail or the one following it would bring an order relieving me and ordering me East. This would enable me to leave for the coast the first week in November.

Frank and Henry occupied quarters with me. Seated before our open fire I read their father's letter, and remarked that perhaps I should be able to accompany them to San Francisco, and if the Colonel consented to their request to go to the military school with me, we might take the same steamer for Panama and New York.

"Oh, won't that be too fine for anything!" exclaimed Henry. "Then I'll not have to leave Vicky here, after all."

Vic, upon hearing her name called, left her rug on the hearth and placed her nose on Henry's knee, and the boy stroked and patted her in his usual affectionate manner.

"Then you have been dreading to leave the doggie?" I asked.

"Yes; I dream all sorts of uncomfortable things about her. She is in trouble or I am, and I cannot rescue her and she cannot help me. Usually we are parting, and I see her far off, looking sadly back at me."

"Henry is not alone in dreading to part with Vic," said Frank. "We boys can never forget the scenes at Laguna and the Rio Carizo. She assisted in the recovery of Chiquita, and she helped rescue Manuel, Sapoya, and Henry from the Navajos."

"Nice little doggie. Nice little Vicky. Are you really going to San Francisco and the East with us!" said Henry, assuming at once that he was to accompany me to the military school. "I believe if I only had Chiquita back, and Frank had Sancho, I should be perfectly happy."

After a slight pause, during which the boy seemed to have relapsed into his former depression, Henry asked,

"Do they have cavalry drill at the school you're going to?"

"Yes; the superintendent keeps twenty light horses, and allows some of the cadets to keep animals. All are used in drill."

"And if we get our ponies back, I suppose we shall have to leave them here. Do you think, sir, there is any chance of our seeing them again?" asked Frank.

"Not unless some one can go to La Paz for them. Captain Bayard is going to see me after supper about a plan of his."

"I wonder what officer he will send?"

"I think, because he spoke to me, I am likely to go."

"Father would never stand the expense of sending them to the States, I suppose," said Henry, sadly.

"They could be got as far as the Missouri River without cost," I observed.

"How, please?"

"There is a Quartermaster's train due here in a few weeks—one started before the order transferring us to the Department of the Pacific was issued. It would cost nothing to send the ponies by the wagon-master to Fort Union, and there they could be transferred to another train to Fort Leavenworth."

"Frank, I've a scheme!" exclaimed the younger boy.

"What is it?"

"If the Lieutenant finds the ponies, let's send them to Manuel Perea and Sapoya on the Rio Grande. When they go to the military school they can take our horses and theirs, and we'll join the cavalry."

"That's so," said Frank. "Manuel wrote that if he went to school he should cross the plains with his uncle Miguel Otero, who is a freighter. He could take the whole outfit East for nothing. 'Twouldn't cost much from Kansas City to the school."

"But before you cook a hare you must catch him," said I.

"Yes, and I suppose there is small chance that we shall catch ours," said Frank, despondently.

The two boy sergeants had found life in Arizona scarcely monotonous, for the hostile Apaches made it lively enough, compelling us to build a defensible post, and look well to the protection of our stock. A few years later a large force, occupying many posts, found it difficult to maintain themselves against the Indians, so it cannot seem strange to the reader that our little garrison of a hundred soldiers should find it difficult to do much more than act on the defensive. Close confinement to the reservation chafed the boys. They had been interested in the building of the stockade, and had accompanied the parties engaged in felling the trees in the woods, and watched all the details of construction. When the great gates were hung they asked the privilege of closing them the first night of our occupancy, and when certain duties were assigned them in their capacity of sergeants, the opening and closing of the gates had been placed among them.

A ride to Prescott, two miles distant, was the longest the boys had taken unaccompanied by officers or soldiers. Two weeks before this story opens they had been invited to dine with the Governor of the Territory at the gubernatorial residence, except the Territorial Capitol the most imposing of the log edifices in the town. Governor Goodwin had made their call exceedingly pleasant, and they had remained his guests until tattoo. When the boys took leave of their host and went to the stable for their saddle-horses, they found them missing, with their saddles and bridles.

Next day inquiries in town elicited the information that two notorious scamps, Texas Dick and Juan Brincos, an American and Mexican, were missing, and it was the opinion of civil and military authorities that they had stolen the ponies. The boys took Vic to the Governor's, and showing her the tracks of her equine friends, she followed them several miles on the Skull Valley trail. It was plainly evident that the thieves had gone towards the Rio Colorado.

After supper I accompanied the commanding officer to his quarters. He told me that the express had brought him a communication from the Department Commander stating that, since Arizona had been transferred to the Department of the Pacific, our stores would be shipped from San Francisco to the mouth of the Colorado and up that stream by the boats of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company to La Paz. He said that he had decided to send me to La Paz to make arrangements with a freighter for the transportation of the supplies from the company's landing to Fort Whipple.

"And while you are in La Paz," said the Captain, "look up those horse-thieves, and turn them over to the civil authorities; but whether you catch them or not, be sure to bring back the boys' ponies."

"What do you think about letting the boys go with me?"

"No doubt they would like it. Would it be safe?"

"There have been no Indians seen on the route lately."

"But it may be the 'calm before the storm.'"

"The mail-courier, Baldwin, has seen no signs of them."

"So he told me. The excursion would be a treat to the boys, and might bring luck to your undertaking. I believe I will let them go with a strong escort. Tell the Adjutant to detail a corporal and any ten men you may select, and take an ambulance and driver."

"Shall I go by the Bill Williams Fork route or the one over the Xuacaxélla Desert?"

"The desert route is much the nearer, and the courier says there is water in the Hole-in-the-Plain. There was a rainfall there last week. That will give you water at the end of each day's drive."

I returned to my rooms, and looked over an itinerary of the route, with a schedule of distances and other information. After making myself familiar with all its peculiarities, I told Frank and Henry that if they desired to do so they might accompany me.

They were overjoyed at the prospect. Henry caught Vic by the fore-paws and began a waltz about the room. Then, sitting down, he held her head up between his palms and informed her that she was going to bring back Sancho and Chiquita.

"I think we better not take her, Henry," I said.

"Not take Vic? Why not, sir?"

"The road is long—six days going and six days returning—over a rough and dry region, and she will be in the way and a constant care to us."

"But perhaps we cannot find our horses without her. She will be sure to help us in some way; she always does," said Henry, emphatically.

"She certainly will be of much use to us if we have to make a search," added Frank. "She need be no care to you; Henry and I will look after her."

"I am sorry to disappoint you, boys, but I cannot take the dog. She will be left with Captain Bayard."

This decision made the boys very miserable for some time. They lavished more than their usual attentions and caresses upon Vic, seeming to look upon her as a much abused dog, whose privileges and rights had been tyrannically set aside without reason. They put her to bed in her box, both patting her repeatedly and whispering their sympathies in her ears. Then Frank asked,

"Have you ever been to La Paz?"

"I have never been beyond Date Creek in that direction," I replied.

"Is the Xuacaxélla really a desert?"

"Only in the absence of water. Grasses, cacti, and shrubbery not needing much moisture grow there. One of the geological surveys calls it Cactus Plain. It is one hundred miles long. There is water in a fissure of a mountain spur on one side called Cisternas Negras, or Black Tanks; but for the rest of the distance there was formerly no water except after a great rainfall in the depressions, a supply that quickly evaporates under a hot sun and in a dry atmosphere. A man named Tyson has lately sunk two wells thirty miles this side of La Paz."

"It was at the Black Tanks the expressman saw Texas Dick and Juan Brincos with our ponies," said Henry. "What a queer name that is—Juan Brincos, John Jumper, or Jumping Jack, as nearly every one calls him."

"He is well named; he has been jumping government stock for some years."

"I thought Western people always hung horse-thieves."

"Not when they steal from the government. They are apt to look upon army mules and horses as common property."

"Frank," said Henry, just before the boys fell asleep that night, "I felt almost sure we should recapture the ponies when I thought Vic was going; but now I'm afraid we never shall see them again."

[to be continued.]

BY LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, U.S.N.

(In Two Instalments.)

II.

A ship rat is not usually a cherished object of affection, but I knew of one, and here is the outline of his story: Once, in the quarterly overhauling of a frigate's main hold, a rat but a few days old was the only inmate found of a predatory colony which had scurried, been captured, or been carried away when the invaders entered. The ship's doctor, a tender soul, took nest and all to his room, rigged a crude but adequate feeding arrangement, and nursed and strengthened the baby rat into a healthy childhood. Nothing could have been tamer than the little gray creature, and it thrived lustily. It slept in the doctor's room, but made rambling adventures through the civilized plains of the ship, fearsomely avoiding the wilderness and deserts closed to man in the frames and timbers of her hull. At night it always awoke when the doctor came on shipboard, waited for a little food and fondling, and then slept peacefully until reveille sent it scampering to the steward for its breakfast. It kept the doctor's quarters clear of all winged insects, and made such a riot among the ants and roaches of the ward-room that the executive officer and mess caterer numbered it among their most efficient aids. It is unnecessary to say that no cats were allowed aft, and that the license and liberties of the officers' quarters were the cherished pleasure and hunting preserves of the rodent. Its affection for the doctor was unbounded, and it shared a particular fondness for the photographs of his children, peering through the glass at their innocent faces, and making a vantage-ground for its mid-day naps upon one of the largest of the frames which hung against the after-bulkhead of the officer's bunk.

One night, after a shore-going in a tropical port, the doctor lighted his candle at the ward-room lantern, and entering his room, heard a whirring note of anger over his bed. Looking up, he saw the little rat in a strange state of fury, its eyes burning like points of fire, its hair ruffled, and its legs gathered for a jump. Wondering at this unwonted excitement, the doctor called and whistled to it, and then turned to his bunk to throw back the bedclothes.

Just as his hand reached the upper covering he caught a strident shriek of anger and the whir of a flying body, and saw just beneath his uplifted hand the rat struggling in the bed with an animated ball of fuzzy black, bristling with clawlike tentacles that writhed convulsively. The struggle was sudden, sharp, short, and when it was over, the doctor saw, lying dead on his bed, one of the most savage and venomous scorpions of that region.

It had come on board probably in the unbarked fire-wood, and it worked its way aft through the hidden recesses of the timbers to the doctor's room. Had his hand ever touched the sheet where the scorpion lay hidden from him in the half-light, but visible to the rat, no power could have saved him from the poison of the sting which would have followed.

Of course his ratship was the hero of that day and of many days, and I should like to add that it went on in the pleasant lines of its youth, adding to its virtues hourly. But one night, when it had become big and strong, it strayed into the evil company of other rats, and went with them upon strange and perilous adventures. Gradually it forsook its civilization and life of simple honesty, and one mid-watch, close after four bells, it was found dead—a prey to a jealous ship cat, who caught it stealing warily towards a mess cheese forward.

Next in importance, but not chronologically, was a wonderful pig—not a euchre-playing, time-telling, disreputable suckling, but as plucky a four-legged shoat as ever thirsted for a miry spot or ran in windy weather with a straw in his mouth. What memories cluster around that intelligent suckling! What regrets filled our souls in after-days for his early flight!

By some lost correlation of ideas, pigs who go down to the sea are always dubbed "Dennis," and it is only a little less than mutiny to name them otherwise.

This Dennis, I regret to say, was smuggled aboard secretly just as we were leaving Talcahuana, in southern Chile—was stolen from the bosom of a most interesting family of brothers and sisters by a rogue of a steward, who afterward repeated the act on shipboard with distinguished results, except in this case our money, and not the pig, dramatically disappeared.

Dennis was discovered by his grunted protests against confinement shortly after we were under way—probably off Quiriquina Island, and too late to make restitution—and his beauty and developing intelligence so appealed to us that he was saved from a growling butcher to become an important member of our ship family. He was entered upon the cook's roster as Dennis O'Quiriquina, which was softened to O'Quiri, and then, in compliment to the land where his race is most prized, into Dennis O'Kerry—as Milesian a title as Brian Boru, of Clontarf, and all the sons of Heremon could have desired.

It must have been some time in March that he joined us, for I remember on St. Patrick's day, when the hills back of Valparaiso were echoing with the strains of "Garry-owen" and "The Connaughtman's Rambles," played by the flag-ship band, Dennis trotted aft at full speed, decked with green ribbons, and carrying a small clay pipe around his neck and the mealiest potato in the locker slung to his corkscrew of a tail. He appreciated the dignity of the time and place, for when we went to quarters he made a polite bow to the Captain, and for the first time in his life asserted and secured his rights as a quarter-deck. On occasions of special ceremony he had to be driven from the quarter-deck with contumely, but he never could be rooted from the spot, for regularly when the drum beat to quarters he came aft on a run to his station, blow high or blow low, fair weather or foul, and assumed to a mathematical nicety the spot selected on the saint's day.

He had his bath at daylight, and was washed and brushed and combed into a state of snowy whiteness which proclaimed the possibilities of piggy cleanliness, and then he feasted in dignified ease within the honored and exclusive precincts of the galley. During the day he lolled about the decks, generally in the wake of the spare spars, filled with the pride of placeship, and never awed from the career of his humor. He attended drills with praiseworthy punctuality, and was in nobody's watch and everybody's mess, which is the perfect flower of sea luxury. When night came, in his early days of leanness, he sought his hammock, and, later, his carefully prepared division tub; but after a time, when fatness clung to his bones, and no sailor's bed devices would hold him, he would airily promenade the deck, waking up a sailor here and there, until he found a shipmate fitted for his high nobility. I have frequently seen a man awake in the middle of the night, and, calling Dennis, give him half his blanket or pea-jacket, and then, with a contented grunt, Dennis would nestle snugly in his new bed, and sailor and pig sleep the sleep of the just, their mingled snores filling the still hours of the middle watch with a touching tale of boon companionship.

But an end came to all this happy time, for Dennis acquired undue fat and fell into moralizing, sedate, and dignified ways; then he lost his sense of humor, his fondness for fun, and at last he forgot the laboriously taught proprieties of ship etiquette and sea life. Could he have been dreaming of the lost wallowings of his race, the prizes of unalloyed wealth that lay in sun-bathed mires? The truth is, Dennis degenerated with his prosperity, and became touchy and captious. We would have borne with his ailments, for he had sailed thousands of miles with us, and had such a way of cocking his weather eye knowingly to wind'ard, such a rolling gait, and such a heroic fondness for 'baccy and lobscouse, that we would have cherished him to the end.

It was somewhere about the last of June, and we were at anchor off Papaete, in Tahiti, when the Captain said to me, in his quiet way, "You will have to send the pig ashore; the executive officer reports him unfit for duty."

Of course this sealed the fate of Dennis. So I sent for the man who looked out for him, and said: "Barbe, my lad, it will be the Fourth of July next week, and Dennis has to be turned ashore or eaten. If you wish, your mess may have him for dinner on that holiday."

Barbe glared at me in astonishment, almost in horror, as if I had suggested he was a steamboat sailor, and not a man-of-war's man born and bred, and then said, mournfully:

"WHY, SIR, I'D AS SOON EAT MY BROTHER AS THAT PIG."

"Why, sir, I'd as soon eat my brother as that pig—as that Dennis, sir. He's weathered o' all we have, and I'd as leave stick my knife into a babby as into that animal. Of course, sir, if it's go ashore, go it is, sir. But I'd like to make terms with the man that's to have him, so Dennis will get the treatment and the kindness he larned with us, sir."

It was as I had expected, and so the arrangements for his new home ashore were made.

Eheu, fugaces! Dennis went ashore the next day in the dingy—bag and hammock, ribbons, dhudeen, and potato—all the men clustering in the bridleports and gangways to see him off, and the officers waving a farewell from aft. As his pigship pulled under the bows I heard from forward a rousing cheer, which was the last ship greeting he was ever to know.

A countryman of ours had drifted into that land, and Dennis had been consigned to his care under a guarantee that his later days would be spent on a plantation inland and never killed.

DENNIS O'KERRY.

I drifted ashore next day, and there, lying in the shadow of a pandanus-tree on the shore line, his nose buried in his fore-trotters, and his eyes closed in weary waiting and sorrow, was Dennis. He looked up mournfully as I entered the ship-chandlers, and gave me a grunt of sullen recognition, as if he felt I were the author of his misery, or at least an aider and abettor of those who had sent him into exile. His new owner said he had moped from the beginning, at first wistfully roaming about, and at last settling into the morbidly melancholy condition in which I found him.

It happened, fortunately, to be liberty week for the men, and whilst we were discussing his woes the voices of some of our crew came from the landing. The transition was marvellous. Dennis sprang to his feet, gazed inquiringly seaward for a moment, and then as the men's voices grew nearer and louder, he twisted his tail into the rigidity of a corkscrew and bounded beachward, where the liberty party was skylarking by the jetty under the palm-trees.

No need to describe the meeting or the subsequent festivities. Dennis followed each party that came ashore, trotting after them into the back country, sleeping in the bush, and I believe enjoying the holiday more than they did. He was the first to welcome the coming party, the last to speed the going, filling his part of host with a grace and dignity in town, and an abandon and a freedom in the country, that awoke in after-days the tender regrets of his companions.

The frolic of Dennis and his friends lasted a scant week, and when the last boat-load left the beach he turned mournfully shoreward, unheeding the re-echoing cheers they gave him, and crawled, swaying port and starboard in his grief, slowly towards the loneliness of his new home. He fell into gloomy ways; he lost his fat and dignity; he seemed on the verge of a decline; he took himself seriously as a persecuted exile in a far land. Finally it was thought best to send him afield to his new labors, and his master tried to woo him countryward, but in vain. He had won his way into this American's heart, for when force was suggested he declined to tie the pig's legs together, and throw him into a cart as he would have done with a pig of less degree. He declared that Dennis was a gentleman by instinct, a little low in his mind, but still a gentleman, and that he could wait until Dennis might, as if in the gayety of a holiday, idly stray with him on some early morning to the plantation inland. But Dennis was obdurate and unhappy; and so the day before the ship sailed for Apia his old master, the ship's cook, and the boatswain's mate were sent to him, for it was known he would follow the trill of the bosun's call. When he heard the familiar voices and saw the blue shirts of his shipmates, and caught the bird-like whistle of the mate, he jumped to his feet, gave an ecstatic grunt, and ran among the trees wildly, with the fire of youth rioting in his trotters.

A two-wheeled cart was brought to the door, the driver took the reins, the bluejackets seated themselves in the stern-sheets, and with Dennis trotting gayly at the tail-board, the merry company waved a farewell to me as they went slowly down the Purumu Road into the heart of the land.

Just beyond the last police station of the town two roads join, one curving shoreward and the other winding through a wilderness of cocoanut groves up the gentle inclines of the island. Here the cart stopped for a moment, while the men, trilling a bright ballad of the sea, dismounted to weave a chaplet of hibiscus for the decoration of the jocund pig.

Then remounting, the cart pushed forward merrily, rounded the bend where the shrubbery met the archway of the trees, and Dennis passed hillward out of my life forever.

[ROSE PETALS.]

BY EMMA J. GRAY.

o save your rose petals and make a rose-bag for your room would be delightful.

While the rose is still fresh tear off its petals and scatter them thinly on a large platter. In this way expose them to the light. Every few hours pick up a handful and let them shower down, so as to expose both sides of the petals. The next day put them on a different platter, or you may use the same one provided you are careful to thoroughly dry it, for the plate will be very moist. The second day sprinkle a little salt over the petals, as this helps to purify them. Keep this treatment up until they are all dry, then put them in a thin muslin bag.

Cover the bag with violet, yellow, or pink china silk as best suits the color of your room. Tie it close at the top, as you would tie any other bag, and suspend it on a rocking-chair back, gas-fixture, or any convenient place. It will prove an attractive ornament as well as convey delicious odor. Use inch-wide satin ribbon the same color as the silk to tie the bag. Make a generous bow, with ends of irregular length. Cut the ends pointed or slanting, and this prevents the ribbon fraying.

Another way to use petals after they are dried would be to lay them between two pieces of pink cheese-cloth, cut the exact size of your bureau drawer. After the petals are in place knot the cheese-cloth, about two inches apart, all the way down and across with tiny bows of baby-width pink ribbon. This will help to keep the petals even; otherwise they would lay in a heap at one end. Put such a piece under your linen, and have it perfumed with roses.

It will take a great many roses to make either a fair-sized bag or drawer pad, but the dried petals may be saved and added to until you have enough. Keep them in a tightly covered china or glass receptacle. Never dry the petals on brass or other metals; dry them on marble, china, or glassware.

In the same way that rose petals are used try sweet-marjoram, lavender, or other pleasantly scented herbs or grasses. Besides being a delight to the eye and conveying delicate perfume, they may also serve as a reminder of a pleasant gift or enjoyable entertainment.

Try also balsam, pine, and hop bags. Make small ones not over ten inches long; cover with pretty silk, knot on narrow ribbon of a shade either complementary or to match, and suspend such from a chair back, door-knob, or curtain fixture.

A delicious bag would be made of pea-green silk or the green of the pine itself, and enlivened by a net-work of gold silk, the strings for which should be gold-colored satin or bullion thread.

[NURSERY BALLADS.]

A PERILOUS SPOT.

It's a dangerous place sometimes for those who don't know my nursery floor,
And I'd advise those who are timid at all to keep well outside the door;
There are lions at large, and bears and cows, and animals wild like that
Parading around most all the time, and a great big plooshy cat.
My Pa came into that room one day to see who was blowing the horn,
And before he looked where he walked he stepped on top of a unicorn;
And the fast express from old Bureauville—as fast as the wind it goes—
Came whistling over the carpet track, and ran right over his toes.
And when he jumped back to get out of the way a big man-of-war sailed by,
And clipped the end of his heel, it did, and a cannon-ball hit his eye,
A cannon-ball shot by General Zinc bombarding a Brownie band,
That peeped from the edge of the old soap-dish we keep on the oak wash-stand.
And once in the dark he tripped on the ark, and fell on the Ferris wheel,
And bumped his head on a wagon red, and broke off my steam-launch keel;
And when he got up to leave the room, the very first thing he knew
He got in the midst of some lead Arabs, and made a great hullaballoo.
And that's why I say it's a dangerous place for those who've not been there before,
With lions and boats and bears and carts strewn everywhere over the floor,
And unless I'm home when you visit me, there isn't a bit of a doubt,
Instead of a-venturing in there alone, you'd better by far keep out.
Carlyle Smith.

[TWO AGAINST A FLEET.]

Early in September, 1814, a British fleet sailed up the Penobscot River from Belfast to Bangor, robbing and destroying the farms and villages as they went along, and after they had caused great damage in Bangor, they turned about and sailed back again to the sea. Only once in this long and, from a British point of view, successful raid, did the Yankees get the better of their enemies, and this single instance was due to the bravery of one old man and his courageous wife.

The fleet was guided up the stream by a Tory pilot, and encountered no resistance until it reached the highlands of Cape Jellison, when a volley of musketry was discharged by a little band of Maine patriots, killing a number of sailors and soldiers who had been occupying conspicuous positions on the decks. The British replied with broadsides of grape-shot, riddling every house within striking distance, and silencing the flint-locks. But the incident had maddened the commander of the English squadron, and he gave orders to his gunners to take a shot at everything on shore as they proceeded. As a result many houses were struck and one cow was killed; the inhabitants, warned of the approaching fleet, having retired inland out of range.

Thus the Britishers had it all their own way until they came to a point called the Narrows, about a mile below Bucksport. Tall bluffs rise on both sides of the river here, and on the crest of one old David Grant lived in his little house with his wife. Grant was too old to go to the war, but he was not too old to resist the invaders. As soon as he saw the masts of the hostile ships coming around the bend, he got out his muskets and took up a good position in front of his house with a firm rest to aim on. From his point of vantage he could command the decks of the ships as they passed, and as soon as they came within gunshot he began to blaze away with his old shooting-irons, aiming at the officers who were gathered on the sterns of their vessels.

His wife stood by his side and loaded the guns as fast as she could. At the third shot fired by the old man, the defenders of the hill-top saw the man at the wheel of the foremost vessel throw up his hands and fall backward. Immediately the war-ship swung its nose around to the tide, and would have run ashore if the order had not been given to drop anchor. Grant had badly wounded the Tory, and the second vessel in the line had to take the lead of the fleet with a resident of the locality who sympathized with the British for pilot. During all this manœuvring, old David Grant was pouring buck-shot and bullets upon the ships, and both he and his wife shook their fists in defiance at the surprised Englishmen.

Presently a gun loaded with grape was run out on the deck of the flag-ship and fired at the house on the bluff, but the angle was too steep, and the charge lodged in the bank below. The British then began to clear away a boat, and a squad of marines gathered at the gangway to embark. Something went wrong with the davits, however, for the tackles did not seem to work easily, and Grant and his wife could see the officers storming about the deck, while the boat hung several feet above the river. When the old couple saw that they were about to be attacked in earnest they withdrew into their little house and closed the door. The house was built on the further side of a little field that sloped down to the edge of the bluff, and at the rear of the building and on both sides were thick clumps of trees. Shortly after Grant and his wife had retired from view, the British saw a man carrying a gun over his shoulder step out of the thicket on the north side and walk into the house through the front door. He had hardly gotten in when two more men fully armed stepped out of the trees from the other side and went into the house. After this, at intervals of a minute or less, one or two men came from the trees and went to Grant's assistance. All carried guns over their shoulders. The British officers from the ship watched the men as they came, and had counted fully fifty by the time the boat was ready to clear away. This caused them to hesitate about making an attack, for they realized that from the strong position on the bluff fifty armed patriots could hold a whole ship's crew at bay, and kill them off one by one as they struggled up the hill. The Commander, therefore, thought better of this plan, and ordered the marines aboard again, and, hoisting anchor, sailed off after the rest of the fleet up the river toward Bangor.

As the ship passed through the Narrows old David Grant and his brave wife ran along the bluff for almost a mile, shooting as fast as they could, and when they had no more gunpowder left, they shook their fists again at the invaders, and turned back toward their little home.

When the farmers gathered from all around to hear about the old couple's battle with the British, Grant told them how he went out of the house by the back door and skirted the clump of trees, and came out in front in sight of the enemy, and walked in at the front door. His wife dressed herself in some of her husband's clothes, and, taking a gun, performed the same trick, and sometimes they came separately, and sometimes they walked together; and sometimes they came from the north side, and sometimes they walked out from the trees on the south. It was this simple bit of strategy that saved the old couple and their home from the destructive attack of the British.

[THE TROLLEY SWIMMING TEACHER.]

BY WILLIAM HEMMINGWAY.

Swimming on a trolley-line sounds like an impossibility. It is a very real practical feat, nevertheless, and hundreds of New-Yorkers can tell you all about it from their own experience. No other way of learning how to swim is half so pleasant as the trolley-line plan. There is no fear of bobbing under and losing your breath and swallowing a quart of water. Once you buckle on your trolley belt, there you are, and there you stay, right on the surface of the water. It is as safe as sitting in a rocking-chair, and a thousand times more fun.

Fred L. Balmes, a young swimming-teacher, invented the trolley plan. He found that the usual scheme of putting a belt around the pupil's chest, running a line from the back of it to the end of a long pole, and then towing the pupil along like landing a big fish, was not apt to encourage learners. They always feared that the teacher would stub his toe, or look around suddenly, or in some other way forget to hold up the end of the pole. That, of course, meant a ducking; and a beginner in the gentle art of swimming would rather suffer ten beatings than one ducking. Nobody ever learned well by wearing an inflated rubber life-belt. The belt has too much floating power, and boys who wear one when beginning always kick too high thereafter, and send their feet splashing above the surface, which is very bad form. When I was a boy we used to go down to the Sandy Flats, where there was a long stretch of river only three feet deep. An expert (a boy who could swim about ten yards) upheld the pupil's chin on the palm of his hand, and yelled, "Now kick like a bull-frog!" If the pupil was too embarrassed to do this immediately and successfully, the expert always popped him under, and when he came up spluttering and shrieking, sent him down again for luck. The system was perfect—all but the cruel ducking.

HE MIGHT LIE THERE ALL DAY WITHOUT WETTING HIS MOUTH.

That sort of thing would not attract pupils to a swimming-school, so Fred Balmes tried to find the best substitute for the hand of the teacher under the chin of the taught. At last he hit upon the idea of running a wire along the pool two or three feet above the surface. Now, if there were only some way to hang the pupil to this wire so that he could move forward and backward and never be allowed to sink! A trolley was just the thing for that. Balmes bought a small metal wheel, with its rim deeply curved inward, so that it would not jump off the wire and become clogged. Hanging down from the axle of this wheel was a piece of brass that ended in a swivel. Balmes already had a broad canvas belt, with a ring at the upper part of it. He hooked the end of the swivel into the ring on the belt, and threw himself into the water. The trolley-line was a success. He splashed both hands and feet above the surface of the pool, but still he floated like thistle-down. Backward and forward he swam. The trolley rolled and creaked along the wire, and always held him up in precisely the right position. He might lie there all day if he chose without wetting his mouth. Not only can one learn to swim quickly by the trolley plan, but it is a fine way to learn how to float. Some of us are too thin ever to learn this branch of the art, but if any one possesses latent floating power, he may be sure that the trolley will develop it.

The inventor of this delightful way to learn swimming has not patented his trolley plan, so any one may use it. The wire can be rigged from side to side of any swimming-bath. It is best not to have the line more than fifty feet long, for a greater length than that will cause the wire to sag at the middle and let the pupil sink. In rigging the wire only one end should be wrapped fast around a post. The other end should be hitched to a stout rope and pulley-block. Before using the trolley the rope should be hauled as taut as possible and made fast securely. Then there will be a straight tight wire and no sagging.

If enough care is used, there is no reason why a trolley swimming line cannot be set up along a river-bank or the edge of a swimming-pond. In doing this, however, boys should not depend upon their own judgment. It is best by far to engage a competent man to set the posts and rig the wires. No matter how clever boys may be, they are not cautious enough to arrange against all the possibilities of danger. And it is necessary always to remember that in water is the most dangerous place to play.

A VIRGINIA CAVALIER.[2]

BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.

CHAPTER V.

ou are asking me more, sir," said Lance, with something like a grim smile on his countenance, "than I could tell you in a month, or two months. But I can tell you how the Duke of Marlborough looked in battle, for I belonged to the foot-soldiers, and we were generally standing still for a time, until the cavalry had showed us where we were wanted, and we could see the generals riding over the field. The Duke, you must know, sir, was not so very young when I served under him, but he was still the handsomest man in the British army. They say, when he was a lieutenant, that all the great ladies fell in love with him, and the one he married, I have read in a book, he was much in love with, but a deal more afraid of her than ever he was of the Grand Monarque and all his armies. They say it was a joke in England that the great Duke obeyed his Duchess and trembled at her word. But I dare say he is not the only man who ever ruled men and then let his wife rule him. The Duke was a noble sight at parade, with his splendid chestnut charger, his uniform of red and gold, his chapeau with plumes, and his great periwig. But, to my mind, he was a finer sight when the French artillery-men were ploughing up the ground—the French are monstrous good gunners, Mr. Washington, and hang on to their batteries like the devil—and the musketry screaming around, and that old fox Marshal Villars was hammering us in a dozen places at once. Then the Duke was as calm as a May morning, and was full of jokes with his officers, and whistling to himself a queer kind of a tune with no tune to it. But old Villars never caught him napping, and was caught napping himself once. That was the time we took Bouchain."

"Oh yes—about Bouchain."

"Well, sir, in the spring of 1711 the great Duke arrived in the Low Countries, and glad enough were all to see him—for not only, we knew, we could lick the French and Bavarians if we were under him, but the army was always paid when the great Duke commanded, and fed and clothed too. I remember, when he came back that time, he brought us forty thousand woollen shirts. The kings and queens thought that we, the common soldiers, did not know what was going on, but we knew the stay-at-homes were trying to ruin the Duke at court, and that he had hardly been treated civilly when he got to England, and that three colonels—Meredith, Macartney, and Heywood—had been cashiered for drinking 'confusion to the enemies of the Duke of Marlborough.' It was while he was away that the allied army—as ours and our allies was called—had got a handsome drubbing at Almanza, in Spain, and I can't say that any of us cried over it; only we thought we might get drubbed ourselves if the Duke didn't come back. So you may be sure, Mr. Washington, that when the news came that the whole army was to rendezvous at Orchies, and the Duke had landed in Holland on his way to us, we felt better.

"Marshal Villars had been all the winter throwing up redoubts and all sorts of works along his lines, from Bouchain, on the Scheldt, which lay here"—Lance stooped down at this and drew an imaginary line on the floor, and George got off the bed, and taking the candle, sat down on the floor, the better to understand—"along the Sanset, which runs this way. Lord, Mr. Washington, I'll have to use the boot-jack to show you about Bouchain and Arras."

"And here are the snuffers," eagerly added George, "for Arras; and here is my pocket-rule and a piece of chalk."

Lance seized the chalk. "The very thing, sir!" And he drew a very fair map upon the floor, George watching him with bright, intelligent eyes, and afterwards taking the chalk, straightened up Lance's rude sketch.

"IT'S A PLEASURE TO SHOW A YOUNG GENTLEMAN LIKE YOU, SIR, HOW IT WAS DONE."

"That's right, sir," said Lance, getting down on the floor himself. "It's a pleasure to show a young gentleman like you, sir, how it was done, because you have the understanding of it, if I may make bold to say so.

"Old Villars, then, being a monstrous sharp general, said to himself, 'Aha! I'll beat the long roll on Marlborough now,' and he had the astonishing impudence to call his lines 'Marlborough's ne plus ultra,' whatever that is; I don't know myself, but it is some sort of impudence in French."

George laughed a little to himself at Lance's notion of the old Latin phrase, but he was too much interested in the story to interrupt.

"Marshal Villars had near sixty thousand men, and such a gang of ragamuffins, Mr. Washington, you never saw. But they'd rather fight than eat; and let an old soldier tell you, sir, whenever you meet the French, don't count on licking 'em because they are half starved and half naked; I believe they fight better the worse off they are for victuals and clothes. The Duke spent two or three weeks studying their works, and when he got through with it he knew more about them than Marshal Villars himself did. The summer had come, and the streams were no longer swollen, and the Duke begun to lay his plans to trap old Villars. The first thing he did was to have a lot of earth-works thrown up at the place where he did not intend to break through the French lines. The French, of course, got wind of this, and drew all their forces away from Vitry, where the Duke really meant to break through and cross the Sanset. All the Frenchmen were fooled, and Marshal Villars the worst of all. So when, one bright morning in July, the French scouts reported that Marlborough himself, with fifty squadrons of horse, was on the march for the earth-works he had made where he did not mean to cross, old Villars was cocksure he had him. The Duke with his fifty squadrons marched a good day's march away from Vitry, the French scampering off in his direction, and concentrating their troops just where the Duke wanted them. Meanwhile every mother's son of us was in marching order—the artillery ready, the pontoons ready, everybody and everything ready. About mid-day, seeing the French had been fooled, the order was given to march, and off we put for Vitry. As soon as we reached the river we laid the pontoons, and were drawn up on the bank just waiting for the word to cross. It was then late in the evening, but we had got news that the Duke had turned around, and was making for us as fast as the horses of his squadrons could lay their hoofs to the ground. About nine o'clock we saw the dust of the advance-guard down the highway; we heard the galloping of the horses long before. The instant the Duke appeared the crossing begun, and by sunrise thirty thousand men had crossed, and had joined General Hompesch's division of ten thousand between Oise and Estrum; and now we were within Villars's lines without striking a blow. 'Twas one of the greatest marches that ever was, Mr. Washington—ten leagues between nine in the evening and ten the next morning—thirty thousand infantry, artillery, cavalry, miners, and sappers.

"Villars found out what was in the wind about midnight, and at two o'clock in the morning he turned around, and the whole French army came in pursuit of us; and if you will believe it, sir, they marched better than we did, and by eleven o'clock in the morning the beggars were as near Bouchain as we; for Bouchain was what we were after. 'Twas a strong fortress, and the key to that part of France; and if we could get it we could walk to the heart of France any day we liked.

"Old Villars wanted to bring us to fight, but the Duke was too wary for him. He sat down before Bouchain, that had a large garrison of picked men, commanded by the bravest officers in the French army, with stores, guns, and ammunition in plenty. The Duke had to make a causeway over a morass before he could get at 'em at all, and there was Villars behind us, ready to cut us to pieces, and that stubborn fortress in front. It was the hardest siege I ever knew, though it was not the longest. The people at home were clamoring for the Duke to fight Villars instead of taking Bouchain; but the Duke knew that if he could get the fortress he would have the control of three great rivers—the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Lys—and then we could cut off any army the Grand Monarque could send against us. 'Tis a deal harder, sir, to keep men's spirits up in a siege than in a battle. The army would rather have been fighting Villars any day; but there we were, laying trenches, mounting our guns, and every day closing in on that town. The Duke was very anxious after a while to know what the condition of the town was within the bastions, and every young cornet and ensign in the army wanted to risk his skin by sneaking in and finding out. But while the Duke was turning this over in his mind it happened that the enemy sent us a flag of truce in regard to an armistice. The Duke did not want an armistice, but he wanted mightily to know how things were looking inside, so he agreed to send a flag of truce back. The French, though, are not to be easily outwitted, and they made it a condition that the officers sent with the flag be blindfolded. Three officers went in; but they had their sashes tied around their eyes, and the only thing they saw when they had been led blindfolded for a half-mile through the town and into the citadel was a very handsome room in which the commandant received them. They talked awhile, but did not come to any terms; and then the commandant very politely invited them to take some refreshment, and a regular feast was set out for them—just to make them think that provisions were plenty—and the French officers who dined with them ate scarcely anything. But they looked gaunt and hollow-eyed enough, and I warrant they fell to as soon as the English officers left. So, after all, Lord Fairfax was the one to get in."

"Was anybody with him?" asked George.

"Well, sir—the fact is, sir—I was with him."

George jumped up off the floor, and seizing Lance's hand, wrung it hard in his enthusiasm. Lance smiled one of his grim smiles.

"Young gentlemen are apt to think more of a little thing like that than it's worth," was the old soldier's commentary on this, as George again seated himself on the floor, and with eloquent and shining eyes besought Lance to tell him of his entrance into the besieged fortress.

"It was about a week after that, when one night, as I was toasting a piece of cheese on a ramrod over the fire, up comes quite a nice-looking young woman and begins to jabber to me in French. She had on a red petticoat and a blue bodice, like the peasant women in those parts wear, and a shawl around her, and a cap on her head; but she did not look like a peasant, but rather like a town milliner. She had a basket of eggs in her hand, as the people sometimes brought us to sell, though, poor things, they had very few eggs or chickens, or anything else. Now I could speak the French lingo tolerably, for I had served so many years where it was spoke, so we begun bargaining for the eggs, and she kept up a terrible chattering. At last we agreed on two pistoles for the lot, and I handed out the money, when suddenly she flew into a rage, threw the money in my face, and, what was worse, began to pelt me with sticks and stones, and even the eggs. That brought some of my comrades around, and, to my surprise, she begun to talk in a queer sort of French-English, saying I had cheated her, and a lot more stuff, and stamping on the ground, demanded to be taken to an officer. Just then two young officers happened to be passing, and they stopped to ask what the row was about. The young woman then poured forth her story, and I was in an ace of being put in the guard-house, when she whispered something to one of them, and he started as if he had been shot. Then he whispered it to the other one, and presently all three—the young woman and the two officers—begun to laugh as if they would crack their sides. This was not very pleasant for me, standing there like a post, with rage in my heart; the more so, when one of the officers, laughing still, told me it was all right, and I could go back to my cheese and ramrod, and they went off in one direction in the darkness and the young woman in another. They were hardly out of sight when back comes the young woman again. As you may think, I never wanted to clap my eyes on her again; but she slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Lance, my man, don't you know me?' and it was—it was—"

George was so eager at this point that he crawled on all fours up to Lance and gazed breathlessly into his face.

"It was Lord Fairfax dressed up as a woman! And he says, when I had come to myself a little, for I nearly dropped dead with surprise, 'If I can fool my own men and my own brother officers, I ought to be able to fool the Frenchmen into letting me into the town.' And sure enough, Mr. Washington, that was exactly what he did."

Lance paused to get the full dramatic effect of this. It was not wasted on his young listener, for George gave a gasp of astonishment that spoke volumes, and his first words, when speech returned to him, were,

"Go on—go on quick!"

"Well, sir, Lord Fairfax told me that he had a scheme to get in the town as a woman, and I was to go with him as his servant, because I could speak the lingo; and on the frontier there they have so many accents that they couldn't tell if you were a Dutchman or an Englishman or a Russian or a Prussian; and, besides, my lord said, my French had a High-Dutch twang that couldn't be excelled. He was a week thinking it over and practising in his tent. Of course he didn't tell but one or two persons what he was after; he meant it to be as secret as possible. So when he would send for me to his tent at night every crack and cranny would be stopped, and there would be just one or two young officers putting the Earl through his paces, as it were. He was a slim, handsome young man then, and when he got a woman's wig on, and a little rouge, and was dressed in the latest fashion, with a great hoop—for he meant to represent a lady, not a peasant woman—anybody would have taken him for a pretty young lady. The hoop and the sack and all the fallals a lady would wear were of real service to him, as he could wear his uniform under them, and so, if he should be found out and arrested, he would be entitled to be treated as a prisoner of war. If he had been caught in the French lines without his uniform, he would have been strung up in short order as a spy, according to the articles of war. I kept my uniform on too, but that was a simple matter, as I was only disguised by another suit of man's clothing put on over it.

"My lord had something else under his hoop besides his uniform—a good rapier, with a Toledo blade; and his lace neck-handkerchief was fastened with a jewelled dagger that was more than a toy. He was to be Madame Geoffroy in search of her husband, who was supposed to be in the garrison, and I was to be a great, stupid, faithful Alsacian servant, and my name was to be Jacques; and my name is Peter, sir. I had no arms, only a great stick; but there was a knob in that stick, and when I pulled out that knob I had a sword.

"We used to practise of a night in the tent. My lord had merriment in him then, and officers always like a lark; and it would have made you laugh, Mr. Washington, to have seen my lord, all dressed up as a woman, pretending to cry, and holding his handkerchief to his face while he rehearsed the story he was making up to the two young officers. It was a yarn all about the supposed Madame Geoffroy's travels in search of her husband, and her delight when she heard he was one of the officers of the Bouchain garrison; and of course she would be told by somebody that there was no such officer in the garrison, and then she was to give a screech and fall over, and I was to catch her and beg her to control herself. Oh, it was as good as play-acting! Often, when I have thought of that adventure, and have remembered how my lord looked then and how he looks now—so serious and grave, and as if he never played a prank in his life—I could hardly persuade myself it was the same man. Well, Mr. Washington, after we had got it all straight, one dark August night we ran the sentries—that is, we slipped past them in the dark. They thought we were deserters, although why anybody should desert from our camp, where we had both victuals and drink in plenty, to go to Bouchain, where they had neither, nobody could make out. However, we heard the shots cracking behind us as we managed to pick our way through the morass, and truly, sir, I think we were in more danger of our lives while crossing that morass in the dark between the English and French lines than at any other time. It was terrible work, but we managed to get to a solid piece of ground, covered with underbrush, where our outfit was concealed. Luckily we had to conceal our clothes, for we were covered with black mud, and we had a time scraping it off our hands and faces. At last, though, after half an hour's hard work there in the swamp, we were dressed. We then had to steal about a mile off, through the undergrowth, to the right of the French lines. This would have been easy enough for us except for my lord's toggery, but the little rents and stains we got upon us gave the more color to the story we had to tell of a long day's travel and many mishaps on the way.

"After a while, sir, we got out on the open highway, and then we took breath and made for the French sentries. I tied a white handkerchief on to my long stick, and we marched along until we got to the first outpost; and when the sentry levelled his piece and asked us 'Who goes there?' my lord advanced and said, in a woman's voice, 'A distressed lady.' The night was dark, but the sentry could see it was a lady, and then my lord said, 'I am Madame Geoffroy, the wife of a French officer, and I desire you to bring the officer of the guard to me at once.' That sounded straight enough, so the soldier took a little whistle from his belt and whistled, and pretty quickly a smart young lieutenant stepped up.

"The supposed Madame Geoffroy had then sunk upon the ground, pretending to be almost fainting with fatigue. And after this, Mr. Washington, I will make bold to call my lord Madame Geoffroy during the whole of this adventure; for nobody thought he was anything but a woman, and sometimes I had to rub my eyes and ask if I wasn't really named Jacques, and Madame Geoffroy and her big hoop and her lost husband weren't real.

"The Frenchmen are monstrous polite, as you know, sir, and when the lieutenant saw a lady sighing and moaning on the ground he took off his hat and bowed low, and asked what he could do for her.

"'Let me see the commandant of the garrison for only one moment!' cried Madame Geoffroy, clasping her hands. 'My husband—my poor, brave husband! Oh, sir, have some pity on a distracted woman, who has travelled nearly seven hundred leagues in search of her husband.'

"'Was your husband an officer in Marshal Villars's army, madame,' asked the lieutenant, bowing again.

"'He was—and is, I hope,' said madame. 'He was one of the King's Musketeers, but was taken prisoner at Oudenarde, and on being exchanged he joined Montbrasin's regiment because it was on the frontier; and since that day, a year ago, I have been unable to find any trace of him. I have strong hopes he is living, for I have no proof that he is dead; and knowing that Colonel Montbrasin is the commandant of the garrison of Bouchain, I have made my way here, with incredible difficulty, even through the English lines.' Now this was really a very clever speech, for the King's Musketeers was a crack regiment, being the Grand Monarque's own body-guard, and no man was admitted into it unless he was of the best blood of France. So the lieutenant thought Madame Geoffroy was a great lady.

"'Madame,' said he, 'it is not in my power to promise you an interview with the commandant, but I will conduct you with pleasure to my superior officer, who commands the main entrance to the town.'

"At that madame jumped up so sprightly and started to walk so fast that I was afraid the lieutenant would suspect her. But that is just like the French, Mr. Washington. One minute they are in the dolly dumps, so that you would think they could not live, and the next they are capering about and laughing and singing as if they never had the dolly dumps in their lives. Off we set for the main gate. We walked along the intrenchments, and I kept my eyes open, and in spite of the half-darkness I saw a good many things that they would rather we hadn't seen. Their works were in a bad way, and our siege-guns had done their duty.

"Arrived at the gate-house, the young lieutenant asked for the officer in command—Captain Saussier. So Captain Saussier came out, and madame went through all her story again. The captain ogled her, and it was all I could do to keep my countenance when I saw that the captain and the lieutenant were trying to cut one another out. They made no bones at all of taking her to see the commandant, particularly as she said she did not wish to stay, except until daylight the next morning; for in a besieged town they don't want any non-combatants to eat up the provender. But although they were willing enough for her to go in, they refused to let me. She made no objection to this, which surprised me; but in a moment she fell into one of those fits we had rehearsed for the commandant's benefit, when he should tell her, as we knew he would, that he had never seen or heard of her husband. I came forward then with smelling-salts, and presently she revived. That scared the officers a little, for the bravest officer in the world would rather be out of the way when a woman begins to cry and kick and scream. As soon as they led her towards the gate she had another fit, and as good a fit as I ever saw in my life, sir. Then I came running, of course, with the smelling-salts. The captain evidently did not want her on his hands entirely as long as she was in that condition, so he said perhaps—ahem!—it might be better to take her servant along.

"'Oh, my good faithful Jacques!' cried she. 'It would be a great comfort if I could have him with me in this trying time!' So they passed me in the gates along with her.

"She never stopped chattering for a moment while she was walking through the streets with the captain, telling a long rigmarole about her travels; but she used her eyes as well as I used mine. The town was horribly knocked to pieces—houses falling down, the streets encumbered with rubbish, and several breaches made in the walls. They had managed to repair the breaches after a fashion, for the French understand fortifications better than we do; but there was no doubt, from what we saw in that walk at nine o'clock at night, that the town and fortifications had suffered terribly. And there were no women or children to be seen, which showed that they had sent them all away; for some will remain in a besieged town as long as there is anything to feed them on.

"When we reached the citadel we noticed there were not near enough cannon to defend it; so we knew that they had been forced to take the guns to place on the ramparts. At last, after going through many long passages and winding stairs, we were ushered into the commandant's presence. He was a tall, soldierly-looking man, and he received madame very politely. The captain told the story of her tremendous efforts to get there and her trouble, madame all the time sighing and weeping. But here came in a frightful thing, sir. There had been a Captain Geoffroy, an officer in Marshal Villars's army, and I felt myself turning pale when the commandant offered to let madame remain in the town twenty-four hours, until he could find out something about this Geoffroy. But madame's wit saved her.

"'Pray,' said she, clasping her hands, 'what was this M. Geoffroy like?"

"'Tall,' said the commandant, 'with a swarthy skin and black hair.'

"'Ah,' cried she, muffling her face in her handkerchief, 'it could not have been my husband. He was short, and had light hair, and had lost a part of his right ear in a duel; it disfigured him very much.'

"'Then, madame,' answered the commandant, 'I can give you no further information, for that is the only Geoffroy in the army of whom I know anything, and from your description he cannot be your husband. I will make inquiries among my officers, but I can give you but little hope.'

"Madame sighed and groaned some more, and then said she would be ready to depart in the morning at daylight, to begin her search over again. The commandant offered her a room in the citadel, warning her that it would be necessary for her to get out before daybreak, as the English began their cannonading as soon as it was light enough to see the French lines. Madame agreed tearfully to this, and the commandant offered her some supper, smiling when he told her it was not exactly the kind of fare he was used to offering ladies. But she declined—we had not the heart to eat up anything from those poor devils. So she was shown to a room, and I lay down at the door and pretended to sleep; but you may depend upon it, sir, that neither one of us slept a wink. Towards daylight the captain of the guard came to waken us, and told us it was time to leave. The commandant was up to bid madame adieu, as they call it in the French lingo; and after thanking him for his politeness, madame was escorted to the gate, I following her, and thence as far as the picket-line. And here, after the officer had left us, for the first time we aroused suspicion. We were walking pretty fast, and something in the supposed lady's gait made the sentry suspect us. There was another soldier, not a sentry, with him, and this fellow called after us to stop. We were near the entrance to the bog then, and we knew the way across it, particularly as there was now daylight enough to see, so the only notice we took of him was to walk a little faster. The soldier followed us clear into the underbrush, when my lord—for so I will call him now—deliberately dropped his hoop and petticoat, revealing a pair of legs that evidently belonged to the British army, and a rapier, while from the waist up he wore a woman's sack, and had a hood on his head. The apparition dazed the soldier for a moment, when my lord made at him with the rapier, and he turned and ran—giving the alarm, however. We took to our heels and gained the causeway, when the French fired a regular fusillade after us, although not a shot struck; and our own people, seeing us running towards them, thought we were escaped prisoners, and we got within our own lines without trouble. My lord had some valuable information to give the Duke, and the adventure got out in the army and made a hero of him. The French kept monstrous quiet about it; you see, sir, we had taken the commandant himself in. My lord repaid his politeness, though, by sending him a box of wine, which we knew he needed for his sick; but the commandant was the most chagrined man in the French army. They made a sortie soon after that, but it did them no good, and within a week they surrendered. The Duke granted them all the honors of war, and the garrison marched out with drums beating and colors flying. They had made a gallant defence, and had not surrendered until they were starving. That was the end of my serving with the great Duke of Marlborough, for that was his last campaign. And soon after my lord left the army. And I'll be leaving his service by the toe of his boot if I don't go to him now, so good-night, sir, and excuse me if I have kept you out of bed too long."

With this Lance disappeared.

In a few minutes George was in bed, and for the first time a sudden shock of homesickness came to him. His mother would not come to him that night and kiss his forehead, as she always did. It almost drove away the story of the siege of Bouchain; but in a little while he had lapsed into a sleep, in which dreams came of Bouchain, and the Earl dressed up as Madame Geoffroy, and his mother sitting by the fire smiling, and Betty playing on the harpsichord, and then deep oblivion and the soundest of sleep.

[to be continued.]

[HOW TO START IN LIFE.]

FRUIT-GROWING—BY KIRK MUNROE.

In no other civilized country of the world is there so much fruit eaten as in the United States, consequently in no other is fruit-growing such an important and profitable industry. In proof of this, the great State of California is virtually given up to fruit-growing, and receives a greater annual revenue from its fruit trees and vines than from its gold-mines.

PACKING ORANGES IN CALIFORNIA.

Any reader of this article who wishes to become a fruit-grower, and who can have the use of a few square feet of ground, or even a box filled with earth, may begin at once by planting seeds, and so starting a nursery. Of course the first thing to be considered is the locality in which the orchard or grove is to stand. If the young grower lives in one of the Northern States, he will plant apple, pear, or cherry seeds. If in one of the Middle States or on the Pacific coast, he will add to these peaches, prunes—which are only a fine variety of plum—and grapes. In the Gulf States he will substitute fig-cuttings for apples; and in Florida, southern California, southern Texas, or southern Arizona he will plant all the orange and lemon seeds he can obtain. Even if his grove never gets beyond the nursery stage he may still reap a return from his venture, besides the pleasure that it has afforded him, for in every locality there is a steady demand for young fruit trees, which thus have a cash value from the moment they are sprouted.

There is one section of the United States, not yet mentioned, in which can be grown fruits rarer and more profitable than any of those already noted. I mean "semi-tropical Florida," or that portion of the peninsula lying below latitude 28°, which is the latitude of Tampa. North of this even the orange and pomello, which latter is known also as shaddock and grape-fruit, are not safe from cold, as was shown by the freezes of 1886 and 1895, while lemons and limes, which are even more tender than oranges, may not be planted with any hope that they will yield cash returns.

South of the 28° line orange groves have thus far been safe from freezing, and with it begins the pineapple belt of Florida, that is destined to make the State even better known than have its orange groves. Below this line, too, guavas may be, and now are, grown at a profit.

Strange as it may seem to those only acquainted with northern Florida, this southern portion of the State is a very rocky country, and at first sight appears valueless for growing anything; but the rock is old coral filled with plant food, and so porous that tree roots penetrate it in every direction. From this section of the country, which includes the remarkable two-hundred-mile-long chain of islands known as the Florida Keys, the very first vegetables of the year reach Northern markets, shipments of tomatoes and egg-plants being made as early as Christmas. From here, too, comes the bulk of our pineapple supply; and here limes, guavas, and alligator pears grow with such readiness and luxuriance that they require but slight attention after once being planted.

Although this only semi-tropical portion of the United States is just now being penetrated by a railroad, its lands are already becoming very valuable for fruit-growing purposes, and command from ten to fifty dollars per acre; while to clear them in readiness for setting out fruit trees costs about forty dollars per acre more, so that the would-be grower must be prepared to spend nearly one hundred dollars per acre on his land before his orange, lemon, or lime grove, his alligator-pear, mango, or guava orchard, or his pineapple field, or "pine patch," as it is apt to be called, can be started. Then at least as much more money, and in some cases several times as much, must be expended on nursery stock, fertilizer, and labor before any returns can be expected. So, you see, fruit-growing is a business that requires capital to start it, the same as any other.

I should say that no one could hope to make fruit-growing profitable, and place it on such a footing that it would yield him an income for the rest of his life, without an investment of at least $5000. People have succeeded in making bearing groves for much less money; but they obtained their land for little or nothing, cleared it themselves, lived for years poorly housed, fed, and clad, and worked like slaves.

Even he who has the means necessary to make a grove must have enough more to support him until his trees come into bearing, or else be able to earn a living while waiting for that time to arrive. As I have already said, the fruit-grower may do this by raising vegetables between his rows of trees. By so doing he will not only gain a speedy return from his land, but his trees will be benefited by the constant working and fertilization of the soil. Better than vegetables, however, because more profitable, and directly in the line of fruit-growing, are strawberries. As I write, in January, the first strawberries are coming in, and are being readily sold at sixty cents per quart even here in Florida.

A PRUNE-TREE FARM.

After the would-be fruit-grower has secured land and provided himself with the means for making his grove or orchard, there are a few cast-iron rules that he must learn and follow in order to insure success. The most important of these is that no fruit tree will attain a thrifty growth without constant attention and an ample provision of both food and water. Young nursery stock should be at least two years old before being transplanted, and when set out they should never be placed less than twenty feet apart. The little trees should be set in well-mellowed soil, to the exact depth that they attained in the nursery. They should be given plenty of water to start with, trimmed of all their leaves, and the earth should be packed solidly about their roots. After this be careful not to give them too much water; just enough to keep the earth about them damp is sufficient.

A year or so after being set in its permanent place, and after it has put on a healthy new growth, all nursery stock should be budded from well-known varieties of its own kind. After this the young tree must be well fed at least once in six months; it must be protected from high winds, and its delicate surface roots must be guarded against extremes of either heat or cold. Both trunks and branches must be kept clean and free from sap-sucking insects by occasional washings or sprayings, and a thick body growth must be pruned out so as to insure a free circulation of light and air, as well as to encourage a stronger growth of terminal branches, which, in all trees, are the fruit bearers.

The South, including all the Gulf States, contains vast areas of cheap lands available for fruit culture, while semi-tropical Florida, lying south of latitude 27°, offers a vast and as yet but little developed field for three fruit crops, the cultivation of which is but just begun. Most important of these, at present, is the pineapple, which can be raised in no other part of the United States, and which is grown in fields or "patches" of five, ten, or twenty acres. The fruit, or "apple," occupies the centre of a plant two or three feet high, having bayonetlike spiny leaves. It is not propagated from seed, but by slips or miniature plants that spring from the base of the apple, and which in turn will bear fruit eighteen months after being set out. These slips are worth one cent or one and a half cents each, and ten or twelve thousand of them, of which two-thirds will produce fruit, may be planted to the acre. The harvest, or cutting season, begins in April and lasts until June, so that pineapples are brought into Northern markets at a time when they are most nearly destitute of other fruits. Although the pineapple is so perishable that, for shipment by sea, it must be cut some two weeks before it is ripe, and so has come to be regarded in the North as a sour, hard, and indigestible fruit, it is when allowed to ripen in its native field, after being mellowed by weeks of a tropical sun to a golden yellow, one of the richest, sweetest, and most luscious of all fruits.

Another valuable fruit of this remote region is the guava, whose tree, about the size of a peach, has straggling branches clad in a light brown bark of satiny smoothness. One hundred and fifty trees may be set to the acre. They require but little care, and will produce fruit when five or six years old. A thrifty tree should yield at least one bushel of fruit, worth from one dollar to one dollar and a half, while two and three bushels to the tree are not unusual. The guava is yellow, smooth-skinned, and about the size of a nectarine or a very large plum. Its interior is pink, and is filled with small seeds. While most of us are familiar with the dark-colored guava paste that, packed in small wooden boxes, comes from Cuba, comparatively few have tasted the delicious, beautifully clear guava jelly or the darker and richer guava marmalades of Florida. The demand for these is rapidly increasing. Each year sees the establishment of new factories for making them, and many thousands of acres may still be set to guavas without overstocking the market.

Most interesting of all South Florida fruits, because little cultivated, almost unknown outside of the tropics, and most highly appreciated when once introduced, is the alligator or aracado pear—the aguacate of Cuba. A very few alligator-pear trees are grown in sheltered spots of southern California; but South Florida, below latitude 26°, is the only section of the United States where it can be cultivated on a large scale and as a profitable crop. Here it grows as luxuriantly and with as little care as the guava, though it requires a greater depth of soil. The tree is tall, slender, and covered with a dense foliage of dark glossy green, while the ripened fruit, also green in color, is smooth-skinned and as large as a man's two fists. Inside is a great round stone or seed surrounded by a soft yellowish-green pulp, which, sprinkled with salt and eaten with a spoon, or made into a salad, is delicious beyond description. No one ever eats an alligator pear without wanting another, and the taste once acquired demands to be gratified regardless of expense. I have known fifty and even seventy-five cents apiece to be paid for these pears, and when I once asked a Broadway dealer which was the most expensive fruit in his store, he promptly answered, "Alligator pears."

I have said little concerning bananas, cocoanuts, or mangoes, all of which are raised in South Florida, because they grow better in the West Indies and Central America, where labor is much cheaper than in any part of the United States, and from which they will safely bear transportation by sea.

It is often asked by young would-be fruit-growers, "How much land ought a grove to contain, and what will be the returns?"

A safe answer is that both of these things must be governed by circumstances and conditions. As a rule, however, a thrifty five-acre grove or orchard will yield a living, one of ten acres a competence, and one containing one hundred acres wealth. This year Florida oranges are worth, on the tree, from two to four cents each; alligator pears, from five to ten cents apiece; limes, five cents; and lemons, ten cents per dozen; while pineapples will average fifty cents per dozen in the field. A twelve-year-old orange-tree properly cared for should yield one thousand oranges; alligator pears and mangoes half that number; and pineapples 600 dozen to the acre. In other words, fruit-growing ought to average a net profit of from $150 to $300 per acre, while it is not unusual for the profits to reach $500 per acre.

It must always be remembered, though, that such returns are only realized after years of patient waiting, hard labor intelligently applied, and under favorable conditions. Thus, while fruit-growing is a pleasant and safe business for persons of all ages and both sexes, and while the grove or orchard is better than a bank account as a pension for old age, it must be studied and prepared for the same as any other calling in life. For this reason I should strongly urge any young person intending to embark in it to serve at least a two years' apprenticeship, or while his nursery stock is growing, in some well-established grove of the kind that he proposes to make. Here, in addition to familiarizing himself with the routine work of the grove, he should study the chemistry of soils and fertilizers, the habits of such insects as may attack his trees, and the laws regulating the supply and demand of markets. In other words, success in fruit-growing can only be attained by following the self-same rules that lead to success in every line of business under the sun, and by the practice of industry and perseverance.

[A VERY FISHY FARM.]

ONE OF THE OLD SAILOR'S YARNS.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.

It was a sultry summer morning. The rays of the sun beat down with merciless power through an atmosphere which was saturated with humidity. The sea, flashing in long slanting lines of dazzling silver, melted away in the distance into a cloud of thick yellowish haze. There was no horizon-line, for this haze hung downward from the sky like a veil. It seemed to grow thicker and more dingy in appearance from hour to hour, and as it did so the atmosphere became more and more oppressive. The sunlight, which had blazed in clear white glory early in the day, became yellow and faint, but its heat did not diminish. On the contrary, it seemed to grow greater every minute. The sky had been a deep luminous blue early in the morning, but at eight o'clock great tufted white clouds, looking like gigantic masses of white cotton sailing through the air, began to rise out of the west. After a time they seemed to draw parts of the low haze upward with them, and hence, now and then, a dark shadow appeared among the expanses of white. The light breeze from the west was soft and hot, as if it had passed over a great lake of warm water.

In short, it was one of those mornings which precede an afternoon of thunder-showers and squalls. The fishing-boats were close to the beach, and the fishermen were watching the western sky closely, not wishing to be taken unawares by some sudden development of troublesome weather. Henry Hovey and his brother George voted that it was altogether too hot and stuffy to stay in the house, and they felt sure that, with so many indications of weather, their friend, the Old Sailor, would be down at the pier gazing out upon the ocean. Accordingly they set out for the pier, and there, as they had expected, they saw the experienced mariner sitting in his accustomed place. About two miles off shore there was a handsome iron bark drifting slowly along, clothed with snowy canvas to the very summits of her tall masts. Her long powerful hull was painted a light salmon tint, and was decorated with a broad lead-colored stripe marked with false port-holes. The gilded figure of a rampant unicorn could be distinguished under her bowsprit, while here and there along her deck the glitter of brass-work told that she was a highly finished craft. The Old Sailor was gazing at her intently, and, as the boys paused beside him, without turning his head or seeming to know that they were there, he suddenly said,

"An' wot kind o' wessel might that be?"

"That," answered Henry, "is an iron or steel bark."

"Werry good, too," commented the Old Sailor. "An' wot canvas are she a-carryin' of?"

"Everything that will draw with a light wind abeam," said George, "even to a main-skysail."

"Werry good, too," declared the Old Sailor. "An' w'ich way are she a-headin'?"

"A little to the eastward of south, I should say," replied Henry.

"Not so werry good. She are a-headin' putty straight fur the Saragossa Sea, but, ef her skipper aren't crazy, she won't go there; 'cos w'y, it are not no place fur no sensible pusson to go, w'ich the same I know, havin' bin there in a bark edzackly like that one; but I ain't goin' no more, leastways not ef I know I'm goin', w'ich the same the other time I didn't."

"Oh," exclaimed George, quite carried away by this unwonted flow of eloquence, "please tell us all about that?"

"But wait a moment," interposed Henry. "Where is the Saragossa Sea? I don't remember that in my geography."

"The Saragossa Sea, my son," said the Old Sailor, gravely, "are not one o' them seas wot's surrounded by land. Contrariwise, it are surrounded by water."

"A sea surrounded by water!"

"Them are it. This 'ere sea are jess a part o' the Atlantic Ocean to the east'ard o' the West Injies. It are a place w'ere the current goes around in a sort o' ring, an' the sea-weed an' decayin' wegetables an' other sich truck out o' the Gulf gits out there, an' there it stays. It ain't s'posed to be a werry good sort o' place fur sailin', an' Cap'ns allers steers clear o' 't, onless, o' course, they gits blowed into 't by a storm, an' then steerin' don't clear nothin'. Nobody don't know werry much about that there place, 'ceptin' Cap'n Peleg Mahoney, Willum Smitzer, fust mate, the crew o' the iron bark Ham Bone, an' this 'ere werry identical Old Sailor wot are a-talkin' to ye."

The mariner paused for a moment to collect his memories, gazed keenly at the western sky, muttered something about clewing up a "bloomin' sky-scraper," and then started thus:

"The iron bark Ham Bone were a most wonderful trotter off the wind; but any other way she made so much leeway that she were mos' ginerally occipied in climbin' up hill from the place w'ere she ortn't to be to the place w'ere she ort, an' mos' ginerally not gittin' there. I shipped on to her in Liverpool as second mate, Willum Smitzer, him bein' a bloomin' Dutchman an' also fust mate. We wuz bound fur Jamaiky with a cargo o' plum-puddin', bottled soda, an' misfit clothes."

"Misfit clothes?"

"Yep. Ye see, the Jamaiky people is so werry Henglish that they prefers misfit clothes to any others, so them kind is allus sent there by the mother country, an' so the colony are kep' in a contented state o' mind. Waal, fur two weeks the Ham Bone didn't git along much faster'n that there yaller bark out yonder. The wind blowed mos'ly up an' down the mast, an' we wuz a-wallerin' along with all our light canvas set, an' not makin' more'n fifty to sixty mile a day. Howsumever, that were better'n wot were a-cookin' fur us. One mornin' it were jess like it are now, an' Cap'n Peleg Mahoney, w'ich the same he were a Frenchman, sez he to me, sez he, 'Eet vill be some sqvalls soon, yes, eh?' An' I sez to he, sez I, 'Oui, mownseer; you're dead right.' So he orders us to clew up an' furl the royals, an' ginerally to git ready for misbehavior o' the elements. Waal, sure 'nuff, 'bout six bells in the forenoon watch it got blacker'n a coal-bunker in the nor'west, an' afore seven bells down it came a-squealin' like ten thousand guinea-pigs struck by lightnin'. We wuz under nothin' but torps'ls, but we heeled over till the water were waist-deep along the lee rail. Then we righted, an' commenced fur to go ahead at a tearin' speed, an' off to leeward like a horseshoe crab. Waal, it jess blowed one squall arter another till four o'clock in the arternoon, an' then it fell flat calm, with a great big greasy swell a-runnin' out o' the no'theast, an' the byrometer indulgin' in disgraceful low conduck. Sez Cap'n Peleg Mahoney to Willum Smitzer, sez he, 'Eet vill be a bad gale, yes, eh?' An' Willum Smitzer, sez he to he, sez he, me a-hearin' of him, 'Ja woll,' w'ich are good Dutch fur 'Betcher life.' An' both on 'em was a-tellin' the truth.

"At six o'clock there were a white streak along the horizon in the no'theast, an' then the wind come, fust in little snorts, then in big puffs, an' last in a straight, howlin' gale. Cap'n Peleg Mahoney he hove the Ham Bone to on the starb'rd tack, an' then the bloomin' old hooker commenced slidin' off to leeward like a tissue-paper kite, only there weren't no string to keep her from goin' furder an' furder. Cap'n Peleg Mahoney he were on deck most o' the night, an' he talked a great deal o' French, w'ich the same I are not goin' to repeat. An' Willum Smitzer, the fust mate, he talked Dutch, an' there were a reg'lar Franco-Prussian war o' words. Howsumever, it didn't kill the wind, fur that bloomin' gale blowed right on end fur putty nigh a week. An' at the end o' that time there were sich a sea runnin' as I don't perpose fur to tell ye about; cos w'y, I ain't goin' to say nothin' wot might dammidge my repitation as a puffickly truthful pusson. All I kin say are that w'en the Ham Bone riz to one o' them seas we could hear the bottles o' soda fallin' over one another down in the hold, an' we had to lay flat down on the deck to keep from tumblin' off over the starn. That ain't no respectable weather fur to be out-doors in, but w'en the nearest port are more'n a capful o' degrees away, w'y, there ye are, an' there ye got to be, leastways till ye get blowed to s'm'otherwheres, an' that are wot.

"O' course the Ham Bone were hove to, but, bless ye! she made seven p'ints o' leeway, an' her drift were somethin' no human bein' could carkerlate. Waal, to git som'ers near to the crest o' this 'ere yarn wot I'm a-tellin' ye, at the end o' a week o' drivin' to leeward the lookout forrad sings out,

"'Land ho!'

"'Land! Pah!' sez Cap'n Peleg Mahoney, sez he. 'There ees not some land for one t'ousan' mile. Pouf!'

"'Aber ja!' yells the fust mate, Willum Smitzer, him bein' a bloomin' Dutchman; 'das ist land, nicht war?'

"The Cap'n he jumps to the lee bow, me a-follerin'. Waal, my son, ye 'ain't never seed nothin' like 't. The sea were full o' wegetables."

"Full of vegetables?" exclaimed Henry.

"Them's it. Onions an' beets an' pertaters an' queer fruits an' plants like cabbidges, only with leaves ten times as big, was a-floatin' on top o' the water. W'y, bless ye! a sea bruk over the starboard bow, bringin' one o' them there cabbidges with 't, an' it hit Willum Smitzer, an' knocked him down mos' beautiful fur to see. But that weren't the wust o' 't. Furder down to leeward we could see the waves a-breakin' in big hills o' spray on to some sort o' a beach that were dead flat. There weren't no hills nor nothin' behind it, but it looked jess like a perairie growed right out in the middle o' the sea.

"'Wot 'n 'arth are it?' sez I to the Cap'n, sez I.

"'Ze Saragossa Sea,' sez he to me, sez he.

"'An' ef we gets in, how does we get out?' sez I.

"'How I tell that?' sez he.

"An' that bein' so, there weren't no more to say. Waal, the Ham Bone druv down to leeward, an' the wegetables kep' a-gettin' thicker an' thicker, an' all kinds o' sea-weeds an' other sea-garden truck were mixed up with 'em. Ef the storm hadn' bin so heavy we'd 'a' stuck fast then. But seein' as how 'twere such a powerful gale, one smashin' big sea, about sixty feet high, picks up the old Ham Bone, an' carries her clean away over the edge o' the aforesaid beach, an' sets her down ca-plump about half a mile inland, w'ere she bruk through the crust, an' were wedged in jess like she mought 'a' bin in the ice up north. An' then we all seed that this 'ere perairie were nothin' but a bloomin' jam o' sea-weed, land plants, dead trees, wegetables, an' truck—all worked in so tight that they made a ginuwine solid crust on top o' the sea.

"'Sacré bleau!' sez the Cap'n, w'ich are French for 'I'm giggered'; an' Willum Smitzer he jess remarked, 'Warum und wohin?' w'ich are low Dutch for 'W'ere are I at?' An' me, I didn't say nothin'; cos w'y, there weren't no use. The nex' mornin' the gale were all over, an' there we was. I went to the mast-head fur to have a look, an' away down three miles furder into the bloomin' stuff than we was I seed another ship with her upper masts gone, w'ich the same I reported to Cap'n Peleg Mahoney. With that he sez he b'lieves we could walk on the bloomin' crust, an' he sends a hand over the side to try. Walk! W'y, blow me fur pickles ef ye couldn't 'a' built a house onto it. So the Cap'n he allows as how it were our dooty fur to l'arn wot we could about that there other ship. Accordin'ly him an' me an' Willum Smitzer started off together. We got about half-way w'en we seed men comin' from the other ship to meet us. That were mos' supprisin', cos she looked so fur in we thort she must 'a' bin there fur years. W'en the men come up one on 'em sings out,

"'Wot ship are that?'

"Cap'n Mahoney told him, an' then sez he, 'You're not bound fur nowhere now.' But Cap'n Mahoney sez he to he, sez he, 'We wuz comin' to see you.' An' sez I to he, sez I, 'How d'ye git hove so fur in?'

"'Oh, that are easy explained,' sez he to me, sez he; 'we got in four year ago, an' the bloomin' stuff are growed furder out since then.'

"'You bin here four years?' sez I.

"'Them's it,' sez he. 'Come along over an' see our farm.'