Jeb Hutton : the story of a Georgia boy / by James B. Connolly ; illustrated by M.J. Burns

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"O-HO-HO! 0-HO-HO!'

EVERY BOY'S LIBRARY BOY SCOUT EDITION
JEB HUTTON
The Story of a Georgia Boy
BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY
niuitntad by
M. J. Burns
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS Published by Arrangement with Ciuurle* Scribner's Sons.

COFVMGHT, 1902, BY CHAKI.ES SCWBNER'S SONS
r

CONTENTS

<num>
L THE MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-

1

n. IN THE WOODS

12

m. JEB'S FATHER .....

21

IV. JEB'S FAREWELL TO THE PLANTATION

25

v. LEAVING HOME .

VL THE "MAGGIE" STEAMS AWAY .

30

vn. THE INCIDENT ON THE "MAGGIE" .

44

vin. THE "MAGGIE" BUNS ON A SAND-BAB

55

IX. THE LIGHT-MINDED KELLY .

66

x. JEB REPORTS AT THE ENGINEER OFFICE 74

XL JEB AND KELLY EXCHANGE IDEAS

83

xn. EARLY MORNING STUDIES BY KELLY

91

xm. THE TUG "SWEETBRIEB" .

98

xrv. THE CAPTAIN OF THE "SWEETBRIEB"

104

xv. JEB'S FIRST DAY ON THE RIVER

114

XVI. THE HANDLING OF THE " SWEETBBIEB " 122

xvn. SOME HOBBIES OF KELLY'S .

132

xvra. A PROMISE OF POETRY

146

v

n

CONTENTS

XDL NOT EXACTLY POETBT .... 154 XX. AT FORT PUIASKI ..... 170 XXL SEINING AT TTBBE ..... 178
xxn. TECB TKOTTBLES OF ELIJAH . . . 186
XXLLL THE EXPLOSION AT FOBT PCLASXI . . 200 XXIV. A SUGGESTION FOB THANKSGIVING . . 209
XXV. Tax ADVENT OF BUSTER .... 216 XXVL THB APOTHEOSIS OF BTTSTBR . . . 224
xxvn. THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE . . 234
XXVUL A RACE TO TOTOW ..... 249 XXIX. REIXT'S STORT OF HIS FIGHT TINKER THE SCOTT ...... 259
XXX. BETWEEN Two FRIENDS .... 268 XXXI. AND FBTENDS MUST *ABT . . . 282

JEB BUTTON
THE STOBT OF A GEORGIA EOT

CHAPTER I
f
THE MTflTTAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT

A BIO, sandy-haired, awkward-looking boy, bear

ing a shot-gun, stood on the Georgia bank of

the Savannah River and watched a stern-wheeled

steamer as she swung into the bight of the

river above him and came churning down the

stream through the mists of the morning. There

were still signs of the recent freshet, and, where

the boy stood, the stream was all but level with

the bank.

"She's the government snag-boat, the Ogle-

thorpe" said the boy, he half turned toward a

negro standing behind him in the brush, "and

out there in the middle} where they think there's

twenty or thirty feet of water, there's a big

limb of a tree that they can't see, I reckon,

*

1

JEB BUTTON
judging by the way they're a-whooping along. Look at 'em, Crees."
" They sutt'nly is a-comin'," assented the darky, "an' if dey hits dat tree "
"Ho, look out!" hallooed the boy, "look out!" He dropped his gun, waved his arms, and pointed out to where a foot or so of a pro truding branch might serve to warn the pilot, if he could but be made to see it, of hidden danger.
The man in the wheel-house heard the boy's call and, heeding the warning, signalled the en gineer to reverse the engines, but his action was just too late to prevent a mishap. The bow of the steamer did not exactly catch on the pro truding branch, but she had been going at such speed that the momentum forced her extreme forward part low and upturned at the stem over and past the obstructing limb, which, catch ing the bottom of the boat farther aft, probably twenty-five feet or so from the stem, seemed to find a weak spot and to penetrate the not overstout planking. There was a bump, a 'rebound, a grinding, and a wrenching, another jump, and the steamer came to a stop, so far as her prog ress ahead was concerned, with her stern swing ing out of line.
2

MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT
A deck-hand below sung out that her bottom must be stove in, and the mate at once began to give his opinion as to how matters stood with her.
"She 'pears to be filling, I should say, by the sound of the water under her." He looked at the pilot, who had come hurrying down from the wheel-house. " Captain, hadn't we better run her ashore somewhere?"
"I don't know about that. There's nothing but deep water 'round here. If I was sure I could find a sand-bar near here, I'd try to run her up high and dry. Now four miles further down at Sawyer's Creek there's a nice little sand-bar."
"But she won't stay afloat till then, do you think, Captain?"
"I'm afraid she mightn't. Here you, Si," he turned to one of the colored hands, " you're something of a swimmer. Drop over and look under her bottom and see what the damage is, and where. Lively now."
"Yes, suh." The negro stripped and dropped over, and all waited in silence until he reappeared.
"What does it look like, Si?" demanded the pilot.
" Lawd, Captain, I dunno. So dark down dere 3

JEB HUTTON
an' creepy t'ings rub agin mah laigs. I'se afraid, Captain."
"Afraid? Bah! Here you, Henry, see if you can do a little better than Si. Be quick, now!"
The second negro, a more determined man in appearance, stripped and dropped over. He did not stay much longer than the first, and when he came up it was with his arms and face scratched and bleeding, and himself almost blub bering.
"Captain, I can't do it, nohow. Mah hugs ah' mah ahms done get all choked up in dat tree, an' I got scart."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed the pilot, "ain't there one real good swimmer or diver in this whole crew?" He looked over his crew, but nobody responded.
The big boy on the bank heard the pilot's impatient exclamation. He only waited long enough to be certain that none of the snagboat's men cared for the job, before he called out, "Oh, Captain, wait a minute," and sliding out of his boots, his blue woollen shirt, his cordu roy trousers, and the rest of his clothes, he poised a moment on the bank and dove into the yellow river. It was hardly fifty yards to
4

MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT
the steam-boat, and in half a minute he was alongside and clutching her guard-rail. "I reckon you'd better have a saw ready for me to take down, Captain."
"A saw?" queried Captain Nelson. "Why, yes to saw off that limb that must be holding your boat." "Oh-h I begin to see," exclaimed the pilot. "A saw? Yes, sir. Saws'11 be ready a dozen, if you want 'em." "No, just one, if it's well filed," replied the big lad. "But wait till I come up." He took a full breath and dropped under. " Good soul alive!" exclaimed Captain Nelson, as he saw the lad disappear, "good soul alive! but there's a boy of action for you. While the rest of us have been guessing at things, he's thought it all out. I hope nothing'll happen to him." The big boy stayed under the water for what seemed a long period of time to the waiting crew, and when he reappeared he seemed as if about to have an apoplectic attack, so red was his face and neck and the usual whites of his eyes; but, as a matter of fact, except for his looks, he was calm as could be.
5

JEB BUTTON
" That bough went through her bottom and is wedged in tight so tight that there isn't so much water getting in."
"Not very much, eh? S'pose we backed off now, son think it would come out?"
"It might, but " "She'd fill by way of the hole, you think?" "I reckon she would, Captain." "Well, that won't do, will it? Could you saw it off, do you think? That was your idea, warn't it to saw it off?" "Yes, sir." "But could you stay down long enough to cut it off?" "I reckon so, Captain. Not at one time, but maybe in two or three or four times." "And will you try it?" "Yes, sir." "Good. And wait we'll make this line fast to you so we can pull you up in a hurry when you pull on it." "All right, sir. And could you have another saw ready if this one gives out or breaks?" " We certainly can." "All right, sir." Down went the big boy again, this time with a saw in one hand, and the
6

MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT
pilot's admiring eyes fixed on the ripples he left behind. "Good soul alive!" he said to his mate, " did you get a good look at the chest of him? Why, he must have the lungs of a horse."
"He sure must," assented the mate. "Seems to me I c'n make out that saw buzzin' down there. It's mighty lucky he happened along."
"Yes, it is," agreed the captain. "And we ought to do something for him. He looks like he might be a poor boy."
The boy in question bobbed up just then. "It's mighty dark down there," he volunteered cheerfully, "mighty dark, and I 'most cut off one of my fingers one time; but it ain't a bit cold, that's one good thing. It's cold up here in the air, though oogh!" He dropped below again.
Two more trips, and the boy came up to say, " Captain, if you'll give me some strands of old tarred rope and a chisel, I'll try to jam it in around where the bough is cut off and maybe it'll help to keep it tight."
They gave him the old rope and the chisel, and he disappeared like some kind of water animal When he came up again, he hung on the edge of the guard-rail, with his chest and
7

JEB HUTTON
sliouldeis high up and his legs kicking in the water. "All through," he announced.
"Come aboard," said the captain, heartily. He blushed the least bit and shook his head. M-m "
"Why not?" "No clothes. And I got to go back, anyway. My boy Crees is waiting for me, and we've got a long day before us. Good-by." "Here, wait! What's your name?" "Hutton Jeb Hutton." "Where are you from?" "Upham's Landing, just above. Good-by." "Wait wait! We haven't paid you yet for your work." "Pay for that little thing?" "That little thing? That's no little thing. You must put in a bill. Have you got a father?" "A father? Well, I just reckon I have." "Well, you must tell him to send in a bill to Major Mulieh, United States Engineer Office, Savannah. Tell your father, will you?" "M-m popper wouldn't like it. He wouldn't let me. M-m why, I like to be in the water. I'm in the water hours sometimes. So you see
8

MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT

it wasn't anything to cut off that snag, and I

wouldn't take money for it. No, indeed, popper

wouldn't like it."

" He wouldn't, eh ? Well, you must hare a

queer kind of a father."

" No, he's not," flared up the boy.

"There now, I didn't mean that. Don't get

mad. Good soul alive, but don't get mad. I don't

want you coming aboard here and throwing me

into the river, which I know you could do

same's if I was a sack of guano. How old are

you?"

"Nineteen."

.

" Tou're the right age for a real boy. What do

you do up here what kind of work? "

" Oh, help popper on the plantation, and shoot

and fish and read and loaf around isn't much

doing up this way."

"See here, you'll get a letter from Savannah

in a few days. I have an idea that Major Mulich

would give you a chance if you'd care to try

river and harbor work dredging or jetty work,

you know. How would you like to try that?"

"I'd like it," said the boy, promptly. "I'd give

something pretty for the chance. I've thought of

it often; but they used to say that unless you know

9

JEB HUTTON
somebody in one of. those offices, it warn't any use to try to get in."
"Well, that's so sometimes, maybe. But you'll get a letter, and you think it over you and your father about what I say, won't you ? "
" Yes, indeed, sir, and thank you." "That's all right then. You're getting cold. Good-by." " Good-by, sir." The boy kicked off and started for the bank. The pilot rang some bells, the boat backed off and then started to go ahead. As she ploughed on her way, with everything seemingly all right with, her, the pilot waved his band to the boy, who was by this time on the bank and getting into his clothes. Jeb waved his hand in return and watched the snag-boat until she rounded the next bend in the river. "I reckon she's going to Savannah now, Crees," commented the boy. "I wonder if a fellow like me could get a job there and maybe make some money and get ahead some in the world?" " Yo' ain't gwine away, Mister Jeb? " inquired the negro, apprehensively. " I don't know, Crees. I don't think so, and I don't know's I want to; but I'll have to leave here
10

MISHAP TO THE GOVERNMENT SNAG-BOAT sometime if ever I'm going to be of any use in the world."
" O Lawd!" sighed the darky. To' mua'n't, Mister Jeb, 'deed yo' mus'n't. How'11 yo' daddy like dat, an' what'll him have to say, Mister Jeb ? "
" He won't like it, I know; but if I get a chance, he'll say I must go, Crees. I know popper."
" Your popper er mighty fine man, Mister Jeb." "Mighty fine? I should say. No other boy 'round here that I know has a popper like mine," said the boy, proudly. " No, suh, dey isn't," said Crees, emphatically. Soon the boy was dressed, and the two were off to continue their interrupted hunting trip.
11

CHAPTER II
nr THE WOODS
IT was on a fine sunny morning in December, two weeks after the incident of the snag-boat, and Jeb Hutton, with his negro helper, was beating the woods on the Carolina side of the Savannah River.
In long-topped rubber-boots, which reached well up on the thighs of his corduroy trousers and were strapped to the belt at his waist, with blue woollen shirt turned up at the neck and a wide-brimmed felt hat, from beneath which stuck out his rather plentiful sandy hair in this rough dress, all well worn, with a knife stuck in his belt and a shot-gun under his arm, striding along at a pace that kept the shorterlegged negro on the lope, the boy looked like one who could be counted on for hard service.
The boy and the negro made their way in rapid fashion through woods and across clear ings, with the big boy doing the shooting and
12

IN THE WOODS
the negro the retrieving and game-bearing. vThe two attended strictly to the matter in hand, except when now and then the boy would invol untarily slacken up to take in more fully the life of the woods about him. The balsamic odor of the pines, the cheerful chirping and piping of the myriads of small birds hidden in the tree boughs, the swirling of the brown dead leaves at his feet, the occasional shadowy flitting of some small creature across the path, the treble of a far-away brook all this and the impal pable life that stirs a person when he gets into regions where nature has not been tampered with all this was getting into Jeb'a soul. He was a natural boy, wholesome and clean-thinking, and this was a fine sunny morning in the piny woods of a Southern state. " M-m," he breathed; "but it's fine, ain't it, Crees?"
"It suah is, Mister Jeb," affirmed the negro, without quite knowing what it was that was fine. The game-bag that hung on his back was bulging roundly with the spoils of the morn ing's hunt, and Crees thought that possibly Mister Jeb referred to that.
They made their way rapidly, and had worked over a large space of ground, with the muscular
13

JEB BUTTON
darky panting under the weight of the spoil, when they came to the bank of the Savannah, which ran directly east and west here. The snn, now even with the tops of the southern bank of trees, told them that it was high noon and full time to start for home.
Their route now lay beyond the river. That they had no bateau in which to cross did not bother them. They selected two logs that they discovered on the river bank and rolled them into a quiet inlet, where they would not have to contend with the disturbing current of the main channel. Here they collected armfuls of smaller ' limbs, trimming them roughly; to these they added bunches of tough vines and placed them all on the low bank, where a man working in the water might easily reach them. Jeb then went a little way into the woods, and with his heavy hunting-knife hacked down two saplings, about twenty feet in length and slender. From these he chipped boughs and twigs and then returned to the negro, whom he found waist deep in the muddy stream below, gazing proudly for the moment on his handiwork. "What yo' t'ink o' dat, Mister Jeb?" inquired Crees.
The tall lad saw that the raw material had U

Df THE WOODS
been converted into a craft of serviceable qual ity, if not of aesthetic appearance. The two big ten-foot logs, having been laid parallel, about six feet apart, made a bottom of impregnable solidity; and boughs, being laid crosswise and fastened to the heavy logs by vines which were wrapped and twisted about the timbers in curves, formed a deck not at all graceful, but strong enough to hold over the severest ferry on the Savannah. The spaces between the crossing boughs were filled in with a network of vines, which made a yielding but safe deck whereon they could trust gun and bag, and on which they could count for good footing also. This raft was made stronger than was usual for a single passage; 'for just now the Savannah was angry and swollen from recent floods, and the current increased beyond its ordinary speed.
"What you t'ink o' him, Mister Jeb?" re peated the darky, who tried to soften an air of pride as he looked up at his leader.
"Very good, Croesus. She's not a cup de fender, to be sure, but she'll serve to 'to tide us o'er the ferry,' as that man. said in the poem."
Each now took a side of the impromptu raft,
15

JEB HUTTON
and, using his sapling as a pole, pushed hard against the bottom of the river. The trick in navigating such craft is to hold one's footing and keep an even balance on the rough deck. These two were experts at that game and had small fear of a wetting. They were whirled round and round in the surging current, but a few minutes of active work brought them to the other shore. Having landed, they gave their vessel a push into the river, where they watched it regretfully, tossing and swirling, until it fell away below Dead Man's Point.
Jeb and Croesus now halted for dinner. They had been fasting since five o'clock that morning, had tramped over twenty miles, and were now a dozen miles from home.
From the game-bag they took four plump partridges. Leaving the negro to pick and dress these at the high spot chosen to camp on, Jeb went back to the river, where he cut up and trimmed a willow wand. From a small box in his hunting-shirt he took a hook and line. He looked about for bait and spied a hopping frog near the water's edge. A piece of red flannel lured the frog on to the bank, where he was pounced on. It seemed cruel to cut up the
16

IN THE WOODS

croaking fellow while yet alive, but Jeb needed

fish for dinner and a frog's wriggling legs are

tempting morsels to anything that swims. Soon

he had half a dozen of the swimming creatures

brim and trout. These he brought to Croesus,

who split and dressed them deftly, in time for

the fire that Jeb built and for which the precious

little flat box in his shirt pocket supplied the

matches.

Together the two Nimrods broiled their game.

Again the little flat box was opened, now for a

pinch of salt to season the food. Dining in this

fashion, after a morning's hard work through

woods, bog, and creek, is such good luck as falls

only to those who are young, healthy, and ardent.

That the two had a full bag was further sauce

for their appetites. The birds and the fish for

the dinner were divided equally, two birds and

three fish to each. Croesus dived into his with

sharp fingers, which were as pointed prongs.

Jeb was somewhat more fastidious. He took a

combination knife and fork from his trousers'

pocket; and if the fork had to wait on the knife,

and vice versa, yet he managed to eat with

great relish and a speed almost equal to that of

his factotum.

c

17

JEB HTJTTON
At this place where they were camping a wagon road came close to the river so close that their fire was in plain view of any passing traveller. But so little traffic was done thereabout that, when they were about to leave, they listened with some curiosity to the dull pounding of hoofs coming toward them down Little Sandy Road. They looked up to see a young negro man, mounted without stirrups or saddle, on a heavy, awkward mule now nearing them. When he was yet fifty yards away he yelled a greeting, his arms waving across each other like the claws of an excited crab.
"Mister Jeb! oh, Mister Jeb! Yo' paw done tol' me to say if I seed you dat dere was er 'portant letter for yo' frum Savahnnah."
"From Savannah, Jeff?" repeated the instantly interested Jeb.
"Yes, sub.. Yo' paw done tol' me frum d' U-ni-ted States In-ji-neers Offos, an' he said 'twuz 'portant to you very 'portant. He done tol' me fo' times."
" Thank you, Jeff. Croesus, I'm going straight home. I'll leave my gun for you to bring along with the birds. I may have to take the Maggie to-night for Savannah and I don't want to lose,
18

HT THE WOODS
any time. And give Jeff two of the fattest ducks and a brace of partridges." Jeb swung excitedly on bis heel and started down the road.
Jeff turned to Croesus haughtily. "Two o' dem fat buds, did you hear 'urn, nigger, two o' dem plumpy, fat ones. Lemme pick 'em, nigger." There was great force of domination compressed in the " nigger."
" Lemme be, nigger yo'self. I'll pick dese yer buds, Big Eye," retorted Croesus, applying a general term of contempt for hoggish negroes. " All dese yer buds is fat. Mister Jeb an' me don' shoot no odder kind. Hear dat, Big Eye? Mister Jeb an' maself don' shoot no odder kind. No, suh. We know where to get 'um, me an' Mister Jeb does all plumpy an' juicy." Croesus and Jeff both squeezed their eyelashes together at that last sweet word so rich in toothsome connotation. "Here's yo' buds, nigger."
Jeff held his birds up before his gobble eyes, now diving his face close up to take in their details, and again drawing his head back to ob serve the general effect. He poked a black forefinger into their feathery breasts to feel the fatness.
19

JEB BUTTON
" M-m-m," singing through Ms closed thick lips, " ain't dey fat do'! Ain't dey fat!" squealing in delight. " Hi, nigger, come yer an' feel dese buds, feel dese buds, Crees, dat Mister Jeb done give me for steppin' on mah way an' tellin' 'bout dat 'portant letter. Feel dese fat rascals, m-m-m! Wait till I get 'em a-fryin'! Law 'Mighty," with a drooling gurgle, "won't dey a-sizzle in de pahn for supper dis yer evenin'! Feel dese fat buds, nigger, afore I go 'long." At this, Jeff swung the birds under the other's nose, who pushed them away with the contempt befitting one who wallows in birds every day in the shooting season.
"Go 'long home, boy, an' don' bodder me. Why, we's got a bagful yer. I'm gwine 'long."
Jeffs admiration of the juicy plumpness of his birds simmered down to quiet chuckles and gur gling squeals as his mule ambled off. Croesus fol lowed after his young master, who was now almost out of sight down the road.
20

CHAPTER m
JEB'S FATHER
HOTJJING to his lope, Jeb came to where the road turned sharply to the right, away from the river, whereat he dove to the left into a faint foot path in the woods. He had to be content with a rapid walk here, sweeping through obstructing bushes with strong arms, and plunging into low boughs with lowered head. After two hours he came to the wagon road again. This he followed until it brought him to the corner of an extensive furrowed field, that showed the tumbled ridges of the past season's ploughing and the withered stocks of the last cotton harvest.
At the farther corner of the field was a planked, unshingled, one-and-a-half story house, with the usual outside chimney of the country thereabout. This house, though of fair size for that region, and bearing a look of trimness superior to its vicinity, yet left unconstructed much that many might think necessary to a home. But no such finicky notions entered the head of the youth now rapidly approaching the house on the edge of the
21

JEB HUTTON
clearing. His idea of a home was simple enough, but very clear and dear to him. Where he lived with his father, there was his home.
In the haze of the settling twilight the boy's keen eyes made out the booted, rough-ckd figure of a tall man in the doorway of the house. The boy hallooed a long, musical, rather high-pitched " O-ho-ho! o-ho-ho! pop-per!" long drawn out, waving his wide-brimmed gray hat in rhythm to his ringing notes. The man in the door way hallooed back a great bass " O-ho-ho! o-hoho, Jeb!" and swung a beckoning arm; and down the path, which turned so as to lead by the back of the house, Jeb came running, and around the corner he plumped, suddenly and excitedly, into his father's arms.
The lad threw his arms about his father and pushed him through the doorway, much as he would handle a companion of his own age. The big man with the grayness in his hair and beard looked well able to offer stout resistance did he care, but he seemed more content to enjoy the young one's play.
"Ho, son, ho! You're getting stronger every day, and shooting up like a young pine. Why, lad, a little while ago I could eat hominy off your
22

JEB'S FATHER
head, but now now I have to reach up almost to ruffle your hair." The father was patting his boy's head with a pride he could not conceal.
" Oh, popper! Your old boy Jeff met me at Johnson's Reach and told me you had a letter from Savannah for me. Is it from Major Mulich? I came straight home and ran all the way so's not to lose any time."
The father smiled into the youth's eager eyes. He stepped back to the mantel of the fireplace and handed over a long envelope with some official printing on the upper right-hand corner, where, on unofficial envelopes, one generally finds postage stamps.
Jeb took the envelope and ripped it open with a trembling finger. As he was about to unfold the sheet within, he looked up suddenly at his father and just surprised the sadness in the old eyes. The boy held the paper behind him. "Popper, perhaps it is not a place he offers me; but, anyway, before I look let us say I won't go. Will we, popper? After all, popper, what if I don't get ahead in the world, as they call it? I have only you to please, and maybe right here at home is the place where I can please you best." Jeb spoke with troubled voice.
23

JEB HUTTON
The father putted his son's cheek, then stroked softly the hand he held within his own. "Jeb, we've lived for each other since your mother died. You hardly remember your mother, Jeb; but she wished to live for you, to make life brighter for you. Since she died, things have gone differently; but I know what she hoped for you, and it was not that you should rust away here away from what is best for you. Jeb, I reckon I'd do a heap for you, and you would for me; surely we can bear to live apart for a time, for a time, Jeb, and even for a long time, too, if necessary." He put down the boy's protesting arms. "You must not plod dully here all your life. You must not. See where I am, Jeb. If this chance is offered you, take it, and be thankful."
Jeb appeared anything but the resolute young hunter of the morning, as he now unfolded the letter. He gazed out through the door, through the shadows into the dim woods beyond, then long and silently at the blazing fire, before he looked again at his father's face, where shade and light were mingled. Almost regretfully he turned to the letter from the government office in Savannah.
24

CHAPTER IV
JIB'S FABEWELI, TO THE PLANTATION
JEB knelt before the grate, and by the flicker ing light of the pine-log fire read the letter. He read it several times before he handed it to his father. "It's the position I wrote for, popper. Read it and see what you think."
" You read it for me, Jeb. Being good news, it'll sound better read out loud."
"It's dated at the United States Engineer Office in Savannah and addressed to me at Upham's Landing. Then it goes on:
"'Sis: Your application for a position on harbor work has been favorably considered. You will please report for duty to this office at ten o'clock on the morn ing of December 10th.
it t yery respectfully, "<R. D. MTOICH,
"'Major, Corps of Engineers, U.S.A.'"
"It's short, ain't it? Sort of sharp, too. I reckon it's a real military man wrote that, Jeb."
"That's the way of those army officers," said 25

JEB HUTTON
Jeb, sagely. "People that know them say they never waste any words in their letters. And they expect that you'll do just as they say right on the jump, as they do themselves when they're bossed by bigger men."
"Right on the jump, Jeb that's so and December 10th. And to-day's the 8th, ain't it? "
" So it is, popper. My, but I'll have to hurry." " You surely will. But you can make it. The Maggie^ be by here to-night, and she'll make it in time. Let's see to-night, to-morrow, and next" day. She'll make it; she'll be due in Savannah about seven o'clock on the morning of the 10th. Plenty of time, plenty of time; but you'll need to be getting ready. We'll have sup per, and then we'll begin to pack up and get to the landing. The Maggie's due here at one o'clock to-night, but, of course, she ain't always on time. What with something wrong with her boilers or fire-boxes or rudder, or running on sand-bars, or something or other; but generally she gets around after a time, and we'll want to be down about midnight to meet her." Jeb helped his father with the supper, which was eaten in silence. Supper over, he went out doors to take a farewell look at the plantation.
26

JEB'S FAREWELL TO THE PLANTATION
He patted the mules with a gentle hand. They received it with deference. Mules are gentle spirits; they may have oceans of latent affection within them, but they are too shy to let it be known to casual acquaintances. Jeb had always treated them with kindness; but now he was almost affectionate toward them and gave them cane sugar besides. The gray one became weak at once under Jeb's petting; but the black mule, scenting log-hauling after stable hours, kicked his heels high and took across the field to the edge of the woods, where he nibbled a deli cate after-dessert of dried cotton plants and other dead and gone vegetation, with a wary, cautious side glance toward Jeb, who looked after him sadly.
The cows, too, were petted. Native Georgia cows of the red clay country may not be as rich in color, or in cream, as are the more celebrated breeds of more northerly climates, but they have all the mild affection of their species for the hand that caresses them, and now they licked Jeb's hand with much feeling. Perhaps they tasted traces of cane sugar there; but sugar is not best for cows. So a few turnips were fed, and eaten in thankful calmness.
27

JEB HUTTON
The pigs now came in for an unusual portion of nutritious corn stalks, potato peelings, and a gen eral assortment of table scraps all rich food to pigs and sweet to the porcine palate. As they grunted gratefully, Jeb felt his heart go out to them. They were the real Georgia hog: not fat dimpled darlings, but creatures of bold spirit and independent ways, that could outrun the longest legged mule over the hardest clay road or through the softest mushy bog; not helpless things, fit only for prize shows, county fairs, or banquet tables, but bold warriors, able and ready to give hard battle to the intruding alligator or the growl ing black bear of the swamp. To-night they were quiet as lambs, except for energetic scoops of their double-barrelled snouts and frequent agitations of their vibrant tails, curling spirally. The round moon shone through the woods by the creek way, lighting shoulders, ribs, and other protruding points and edges of the dear young shoats. Jeb loved every bone in their bodies to-night.
When he came around to Cleopatra, nursing her young litter in the little house in the yard, he almost cried. He picked her up so that she might catch every accent in his voice.
"Cleo, good Cleo." The dog whimpered at 28

JBB'S FAREWELL TO THE PLANTATION
the strange tone in her master's voice. "If I'd only known this morning that this was coming, we'd hare gone to the woods together to-day. You wanted to come, didn't you, Cleo? And I wouldn't take you and my last day here. And we missed you, Creea and I. We did, Cleo; yes, indeed, we did. But I'll be back before many months, Cleo, and then you shall show me your children grown into fine big puppies, and we'll take them out and teach them to stand steady under the gun, and to nose out the partridge, and the woodcock, and the wild duck, when they think they're safe in clover. Oh, we'll be proud of those pups yet and the bear, Cleo, the bear! We'll go after one to gether again, won't we, Cleo? I reckon. Listen, Cleo." Jeb imitated the growl of the black swamp bear into the loose ear of the setter. The dog raised herself in his arms and growled too; she sniffed this way and that, nose up and hair bristling. Jeb soothed her painful eager ness. "Steady, Cleo, steady!" He smoothed the dog's coat and set her down carefully again.
*fow the proud mother brought to him in her teeth every whimpering puppy of the litter and laid them at his feet. Jeb patted each one in
29

JEB HUTTON
torn, then carefully replaced them in the straw. But he had to go at last. He heard the cheer ful whistle of Croesus coming across from the west side of the field. The dog cried piteously as he left; she felt that something unusual was about to happen something beyond her ken, but not for her good nor to the advantage of those little ones. Jeb calmed her, petted her nurslings, and slipped away.
The cheerful whistle of Croasus changed to a mournful wail when he was told of Jeb's near departure.
"Mister Jeb, what'll we-uns do up yer 'thout you? Who's agwine to fin' all dem cummin' places to hunt an' fish? What's you gwine to do down Savahnnah for buds and b'ars? No b'ars in de city, Mister Jeb no, suh! An' what's dis boy Crees agwine to do when you done gone?" Poor Crees leaned against the fence and gazed drearily at the moon.
"Don't you worry now, Crees. You'll have all the hunting and fishing yon want, I know, even when I'm not here. Any of the hunters from the North who come here every winter will be glad to get you for a guide as soon as they find out yon would care to work for them.
30

JEB'S FAREWELL TO THE PLANTATION
It will be better for you in the long run, Crees. You can soon own another little cotton field."
"I don' want no huntin' wid dem Yahnkee tourisses," flared up Crees. "Dey don' know 'bout huntin'. Yo' paw say here d' odder day dat all dey need is er brahss bahn' or er little mo' t' eat, an' dey could hahve a barbercue when dey go huntin'. I don' want no little cotton fiel', Mister Jeb," said the inconsolable Croesus. "I'se got er little fiel' an' she plenty big 'nough to hoe now mo' dan any lone nigger wanter look arter. Den yo' paw's owned mah daddy 'fore de wah, an' I b'longs right yer." Croesus was beginning to assert his rights. " Wha' fer I wanter go off wid Yahnkee tourisses who don' know er partridge frum er duck 'dout dey 'xamine 'em an' look at er pickcher book an' den at 'er fedders an' den hahve to ahxe er nigger man er poor nigger man Mister Jeb, who don' know er A frum er B?" CKBSUS, conjuring this vision of book-learned ignorance, must have seen it drawn plainly on the face of the moon, for he snorted with dis dain ; then followed with a wild howl of lamenta tion that stirred the kennel, the stable, and the
31

JEB BUTTON
pig-pen profoundly. A sense of impending de sertion was stealing over poor Crees.
It took a long talk and many soft words to pacify the negro so that he was fit to attend to the harnessing of the mules. It was diversion to his grief to chase the black mule over the plantation; and it was a chastening of his sor row, after he caught him, to beat him with a stalk of sugar-cane to the rhythm of a rag-time negro lament in a low, minor key with staccato variations.
After consoling Croesus, Jeb whispered some thing to his father, who nodded, but somewhat sadly. Jeb went back along the path that had brought Mm home from his hunting. Up the road a short distance he ran, and through the underbrush he stole until he came to a tiny glade, from which the light was almost ex cluded by the thickness of the cedars that cir cled and sheltered it. Here the hanging branches of Spanish moss that drooped low from their boughs were in solemn congruity with the char acter of the spot. The moonlight that crept into the place would hardly have furnished suf ficient light for a stranger to find his way about. But Jeb knew the way, and to the farther side
32

JEB'S FAREWELL TO THE PLANTATION he went and there knelt and prayed, and, pos sibly, wept. Arising, he banked fresh branches of cedar all about and above the mound, knelt again, was silent awhile, then came slowly away.
33

CHAPTER V
LEAVING HOME
JEB'S packing did not take long. He decided to wear his best suit of mixed colors, which had cost him a week's hunting, and had been bought at Augusta during the Christmas holidays of a year back. Jeb had grown since that time, but still he felt, for all that, that this suit, with a pair of new tan shoes and an extra pair of black trousers, were the things for a crisis; and now, in Jeb's estimation, was surely a crisis. A soft gray hat, of superior stuff and Baltimore make, with quartering dents in the crown, was as good as anything in Jeb's neighborhood. Only a month before, Fred Durham had faced a mar riage and. a honeymoon trip to Augusta in just such a hat. Upon the recommendation of the younger Hardwick, of Hardwick Bros., who had sold the hat to Fred, Jeb had bought one for himself, and he was well pleased with it. Could
34

LEAVING HOME
he only wear it on the side of the head with Fred's easy grace, he would have felt even greater happiness. But Jeb's head was not huilt that way and it took him a long time to suppress what he called the hump of his hair so that the graceful thing would stay on at all. He was driven to turpentine soap at times, which reduced to flatness the curls in his locks. Turpentine soap, fairly applied, will almost take the curl and bounce out of a steel spring.
The everyday suit and extra black trousers, with three neckties of assorted colors, Hardwick's selection, and four pairs of heavy stock ings put away, there still remained a large hollow in the deep, limp-sided, patent-leather valise. Into the yawning hole it was decided to stuff most of Jeb's favorite books. A rhetoric, an algebra, Stephen's "Short History of the United States," which was about the size of a family Bible, a treatise on surveying, an unabridged dictionary and a smaller one for the pocket, a life of George Washington (with an Indian mas sacre on the front cover where G. W. is doing deadly execution with the shoulder end of a musket), a French reader, a German grammar and reader (very large, giving all the rules
35

JEB BUTTON
without exception, and numerous reading exer cises for every rule) these and a copy of the Bible, in very fine print and flexible covers of black and gold, were in the lot. Among the others was a large book pertaining to game and hunting, and game laws. One fat quarto on fishes and fishing, with fine colored plates, was noted as the delight of Croesus, and famed as the only book he ever opened more than, once.
At eleven o'clock Jeb left with his father and Croesus for the landing, two miles away. Driving off, the country boy could not help looking wistfully back at his old home. Many times in the past, after he had been up to Augusta, he might have wished for a little more elaborateness, but just now he knew he wouldn't have had it changed for any house the world could give him. Tender reminiscence was al ready beginning to soften its crudities. The rough, unplaned planks were not half bad to look at now, and that rough tracery of vine, now bare, was a wonderful thing in the blossom time. Those holes in the roof, which never would stay patched and were forever letting in the rain and the cold winter winds, were forgotten; in their
36

LEAVING HOME
place were delightful little chinks that admitted glimpses of the moving stars or the drifting moon, and that, in its quieter way, was almost as pleasant as hunting for birds, and certainly to be compared at times to the peaceful joy of fishing. Jeb recollected how, when he lay down at night in that little attic and waited for the stars to come in range with some favorite leak in the roof, he would gradually forget any little matter that had worried him during the day. There was one rift in the southwest corner, that seemed to attract more stars than all the rest put to gether, and through it Jeb always first saw Hie new moon. As the trail of moonlight came through he would follow it around the loft, but he never found where it went out, for he always fell asleep too early in the watch.
As they neared the river, it was seen that the effect of the late freshet was not yet gone by. The mules floundered up to their bellies in the mire, and the wheels sank up to the hubs. .Where the tires dug into the mud, the blact water spurted as if from a pressed sponge. They were glad to reach the landing and get within the heat of a blazing fire. At all land ings on Southern rivers a wood fire is built on
37

JEB HTJTTON
cold nights when a steamer is due; and around a fire of blazing fat pine logs, the Hutton party now gathered with the others of the neighbor hood and patiently awaited the arrival of the Maggie.

CHAPTER VI
THE "MAGGIE" STEAMS AWAY
HAVING warmed themselves sufficiently, Jeb and his father moved apart to talk of coming things, while Croesus stood on the outer circle about the fire, catching whiffs of heat as it surged outward from the superior white belt.
At length the warning whistle of the steamer was heard. Soon came the sound of the exhaust pipes. Her low-pressure engines puffed, chunk chunk chunk, then the beating of pad dles told that she was not far off. The red glare from an open fire-box came shooting around the bend. The Maggie followed. Next they heard one bell for half speed, then another bell, and in a few moments she bumped against the bank at the cleared spot known as Upham's Landing.
The mate took noisy command. His person ality seemed to fill all outdoors. "Ho, boy! throw them lines about them stumps. Stern

JEB HUTTON
line first, you black-faced, thick-roofed idjit stern line first. Now then, bow line lively, this river's a-runnin' to-night. Out with the gang-plank now. Come a-runnin', bullies, come a-runnin', this ain't no minuet." The Maggie was soon fast to the bank and ready for freight. Two negro hands were now stationed on the bank, one forward at the bow, and one amid ships of the steamer, each with a flaming fat pine torch held high to furnish the light whereby the passengers might find their way aboard and the freight be hurried on. There was a tremendous hustle and noise among those ashore who had freight to ship or freight to receive; the hurrying deck-hands were rushing back and forth between the boat and the bank, while the energetic mate seemed to be on the bank and in the boat, both places at the same time, in his efforts to preside over all things.
The Maggie was a wide, flat-bottomed steamer with two decks. The lower held the freight, and the engine and boiler. The upper deck contained state-rooms, cabin, and kitchen, and a small promenade space forward and aft of the living quarters. The hull of the Maggie was about 140 feet in length by 35 feet in width. She
40

THE "MAGGIE" STEAMS AWAY
had one large paddle-wheel, stuck on behind and unboxed. So light was her draught that she could navigate clear to Augusta in the dryest season. It was the humor of the men on the river to tell the untravelled people on the banks that the Maggie could run over the country on an extra heavy fall of dew, a statement founded only partly in fact, for the loaded Maggie drew three feet of water.
In ten minutes the hustling mate had de livered and taken all freight. During that time Jeb and his father had a final talk on the bank of the river, though neither had very much to say. Mr. Button's advice was summed up in his final sentence, "Don't do anything you'd be ashamed to have me know, Jeb, and every thing will be all right with you."
Jeb went on the upper deck with Croesus, who was carrying his valise. As Jeb turned to thank him, the darky held out a small something, that could not be clearly made out at first in the semi-darkness.
"Take um, Mister Jeb, take um. He bring you luck."
Jeb took it. "A rabbit foot, Crees?" He smiled; but, knowing what value the darky
41

JEB HUTTON
attached to that rabbit foot, he appreciated the weight of feeling that prompted the gift.
"Dat rabbit foot been in mah fam'ly er long time, Mister Jeb er long time. Dat day you killed er big b'ar what had most chocked me, dat rabbit foot war in mah pocket. Could'n' er die wid dat rabbit foot, do' you sutt'nly made a fine stahb er mighty fine stahb, Mister Jeb, you give Mister B'ar." Then lowering his voice: "You knows what dat is, Mister Jeb, 'deed you does de lef bin' foot of an ol' rabbit what I chase in er graveyard for mont's. In de full of er moon I killed um, an' 'twuz midnight an', Mister Jeb, you knows I'se er cross-eyed nigger."
Croesus solemnly turned his face toward Jeb and then toward the moon, that his eyes might be the better seen. There was no question about the angle of the X-rays that shot from the negro's eyes. Those crossed eyes were the birth-mark of Croesus's family. They sanctified the left hind foot of a rabbit shot in a grave yard, at midnight, in the full of the moon. Any Southern negro boy would buy policy tickets in confidence with such a charm on his person.
42

THE "MAGGIE" STEAMS AWAY Jeb placed the treasured rabbit foot carefully away in bis inside coat pocket, to the satisfac tion of Croesus. Jeb also thanked him warmly, and the darky leaped ashore as the Maggie pulled out. Slowly the boat moved down the stream. Then faster and faster she steamed. From the upper deck Jeb waved to his dear father and to CKBSUS. His last glimpse of the landing, before the next bend in the river shut it out, disclosed a tall figure with a hat waving high and a dying fire beyond a deserted fire at the edge of the woods, a fire left to neglect, to smoulder away. Jeb almost began to wish that he had never left home.
43

CHAPTER VH
THE INCIDENT ON THE "MA.GGIB"
IT was hours past Jeb's usual bedtime when he saw the last of the fire on the bank and that lone figure beside it; but for all that he had no desire to sleep. He continued to walk the after-deck for he could not say how long; but he wore out his first dejection in tramping back and forth, and after that he began to take an interest in the life of the river as he saw it from the boat that night.
First there was the mate of the Maggie, an interesting and awesome study to Jeb. He wore laced knee-boots, given him, it appeared, by a Northern traveller, who had been very much taken with his style. Of course he wore other things with the boots; but when Jeb sketched him from memory afterward, only the boots and an active-looking mouth came easily to him. From the calves to the chin Jeb drew from fancy except for a pair of hands in deep front
44

THE INCIDENT ON THE "MAGGIE"
pockets. Dressed so, and standing actively on the wide guard-rail of the boat, the mate looked a most efficient river-man.
In addition to his own work, the mate had. assumed for this trip some of the duties of the purser, who was sick. Some men, ordinary men, would have collapsed under the double pressure, or, possibly, refused to work, but this mate was none of these. When he felt the care begin to weigh him down, he took an extra brace and worried the deck-hands. He was what might be called a "hustler," with not too much faith in the unhurried hustling qualities of his own crew. He was a profitable man for the boat's owners.
All night Jeb watched the scenes at the dif ferent stopping places. Before reaching a land ing he could see the usual pine fire burning, with an elbowing crowd huddled around it. At these places the Maggie would stop for ten minutes to take on burlapped bales of white cotton, oily casks of turpentine, crusted barrels of resin, coops of cackling hens and subdued low-crowing roosters, tied-up squads of squeal ing pigs, and here and there a few passengers. It was during these periods that the mate dis-
45

JEB BUTTON
played his great executive powers in making landings and handling freight.
At six o'clock in the morning the passengers began to stir. These consisted largely of men native to the region, hunters, fishermen, farm ers, and others, bound for short trips generally. A few were going through to Savannah. Such, in nearly every jcase, were country storekeepers on business bent on one of their occasional trips to the city.
Mixed with the several grades of up-country people were three or four city drummers and two Northerners, the last of the kind that Croesus would have classed as " Yahnkee tourisses." The drummers were of the usual self-possessed, hus tling kind, talkative, inquisitive, questioning everybody, examining everything, and explaining all matters. These had travelled much through out that section, and the common type of char acter had long ago ceased to surprise them, but they never forgot that any of the company might have new information bearing on ferti lizers, corn, cotton, hogs, mules, the supply and demand thereof. What the farmers reaped last year and what they expected to reap the com ing year was grist for them, all to be ground
46

THE INCIDENT ON THE "MAGGIE"
in the devouring mill of business. They would praise the rustiest shot-gun on the boat as a marvel of its make and a very fine make if thereby they could awake in the owner the slightest sympathy for the beauties of a par ticular hob-nailed, cow-hide boot, warranted to outlast anything of its kind ever made, and pecul iarly adapted to withstand the stiff red clay of Georgia's up-country or the insinuating sandy soil of the coast regions.
The occasional tourists were usually on excur sions from temporary headquarters in Savannah or Augusta. They cultivated the native who had knowledge of any place where good shooting might be had. They could not get so close to the people as could the drummers, because their ignorance of the mental workings of the men with whom they were travelling forbade the sympathetic atmosphere that the commercial men cast about them.
What these people of the country, travelled or otherwise, huntsmen and fishermen of the woods and the rivers, lively drummers and wealthy tourists, were doing and saying with the novel sights and the situations to be seen at every landing absorbed Jeb's attention so com-
47

JEB HUTTON
pletely that he forgot the weariness of the long day in the woods and stayed awake all night through sheer interest in the life of it all.
At seven o'clock the passengers of the Maggie sat down to breakfast, with the mate at the head of the table. Jeb had the last seat on one side of the table. On Jeb's right was a little tourist, with a manner so dainty and sometimes so facetious in referring to ordinary things as already to have drawn to him the displeasure of a few matter-of-fact passengers. To the little man's right was a drummer. Opposite to them sat three typical characters from the river country, two of them good-natured looking enough, but the other the one occupying the end seat directly opposite Jeb was a fellow of great bulk, with a hard and brutal-looking face.
The dainty little tourist, having discovered that Jeb was well informed on guns and game, had warmed up toward him, although it was the grand physique and fine, frank look of Jeb that had led him to put his first question. The name of the chirping little fellow was John Wheelwright.
Wheelwright was now talking brightly to Jeb and helping himself to hominy between sentences.
48

THE nrCrDENT ON THE "MAGGIE"

The big, savage-looking man across the table

was hungrily waiting for a second helping of

the same hominy. He became impatient at the

ceremonious use of the common helping spoon

by the tourist and called out, "Now, Mister Man,

if you'll just hand over them grits when you're

done with usin' that dipper there, you'll oblige

me most mightily."

Wheelwright was startled at that, but imme

diately recovering his composure, began to look

up and down the table as if in search of some

thing. At last in surprise he gazed at the dish

in front of him. " Oh, yes, pardon me, you want

the hominy." In his blithest way he said it.

"No, I don't want no hominy. I want them

grits you're a-flirtin' with."

" My dear sir, allow me to correct you. This

cereal, colloquially referred to by you as grits,

may correctly be so called before cooking, but

after cooking it is more properly designated

hominy. Am I not right, Mr. Hutton ? " turning

to Jeb a sly but appealing look.

" I always call it hominy," answered Jeb, who,

although not over-anxious to indorse Wheel

wright's bantering talk, yet was disposed to re

sist the bullying voice of the big man.

*

49

JEB BUTTON
"Well, you two can fix it to suit yourselves, but I reckon I know grits. Hominy's hominy, and grits is grits, and them's grits, and I want 'em," said the hulking man, loudly. "And what's more," he continued belligerently, pound ing the table with the handle end of his knife, " when I get 'em I know how to eat 'em, and I don't hare to use no fork." The tone of the deepest manly scorn seemed to inspire the big man, and even an approval of these manly feelings seemed to boom along a line of four or five heads that were bent over to get a better view of the scene of contention.
Wheelwright, with his fork and its little load of hominy upraised, halted and looked about. "Oh, in that case, there is nothing more to be said," he answered. He noted a few unfriendly glances, and bis bright morning spirits became much dampened.
"Naw, there ain't not from you. You can take that any way you like." He glared over at Wheelwright, who drooped in abashed silence, and had no answer to make. In a fight with this brute the little man foresaw but small chance for himself.
"And if there's any one else who don't like 60

THE INCIDENT ON THE "MAGGIE"
my way of talkin', I'd be glad to hear from them." Then, throwing up his head as if it were a crest, throwing it up in such a manner that the loud crowing and the flapping of wings were almost heard, he added, "And any man who eats with a fork ain't no good." He em phasized the sentiment with a condemnatory oath. He had by this time worked himself up to a great heat, and he glared at Jeb, whose eyes, up to this time, he had directly avoided. The tourist was game too small now.
Jeb looked up with flushed face and quiver ing nerves, but with steady eyes. He replied quietly enough: "I eat with a fork because I don't know any better, I suppose. My popper eats with a fork, and I don't reckon you'd tell him he was no good you, nor anybody else." Jeb's face was strong with filial pride. "I don't like your talk, and I think you're a bully." Jeb stopped. He was but slightly in terested in the reference to forks except for the light it shed on the training of this brute, who doubted the good of ways that were his father's, but he felt that his agreeable little neighbor had been cruelly shamed.
"Why er you crowing, young dunghill 61

JEB HTTTTON
rooster, 111 trim your comb for you. Your father! I'd do that to your father," reaching over as if he would slap Jeb's face.
Jeb straightened in his chair stiff as steel. "You would? I reckon you would notl" he paused and choked "slap my face!" he threw the remains of his hominy into the man's face, and he followed this up by lunging over, swinging around the end of the table, bearing the big fellow to the floor, and there holding him fast.
There was spluttering and foaming from the body underneath Jeb. "Lemme up, you young whelp, an' I'll whale yer till yer can't see. Gimme a show," bellowed the hoarse voice.
"Well, I reckon 'tis fair to let you up," said Jeb, and stood up himself. He was tingling all over, but his first nervousness was gone, and he felt equal to the work in hand.
The other wrongly interpreted Jeb's polite gravity, and once on his feet, he struck out con fidently and threw himself viciously at Jeb, who met him more than halfway. It was a fierce clinch, a straining roll or two, then a mighty heave on Jeb's part and the man of grits was shot past the end of the table over to the other
52

THE INCIDENT ON THE "MAGGIE"
side and against a state-room door that gave in to the shock and let him down to the floor, not too gently, and with the considerable weight of Job's body on top.
There were expressions of deep admiration for Jeb at this performance, and when the big brute picked himself up, he met only coyert grins for his overthrow, or respectful nods for Jeb's ath letic force. Having tested that power, he knew, better than anybody could tell him, what it could do, so he took his lumbering limbs to the lower deck without further assumption of superior knowledge of table etiquette or anything else.
The passengers resumed their seats. Wheel wright was too nervous to finish, his breakfast, which puzzled Jeb, who, while he was excited and panting, could imagine no reason why he should not go on with his meal in pleasure and thankfulness.
The conflict caused much talk, in which a lit tle man, with long tails to his coat reaching down by his chair to the deck, said to the mate in a piping voice: "That there lad is Bill Button's boy, and the best wrastler for twenty mile around TJpham's Landing, either side of the Savannah. And a hand with a gun! m-m-m
63

JEB BUTTON and a hand in the water! Good soul alive! no telling what he could do in the water, and a fine head on him; hut, like his father, awful back ward to talk, shy-like and sets a heap o' store by his daddy, too. That big fellow oughtn'ter mentioned Jeb's daddy." The mate's eyes, in respectful curiosity, glanced down the table at Jeb, who was zestfully conveying a good-sized mess of hominy to his month with a fork.
64

CHAPTER VIII
THE "MA.GGIE" ETTNS ON A SANIHBAB
LATBE in the day Wheelwright offered Jeb his almost new, hammerless shot-gun. He pressed Jeb hard to take it, telling him that for himself he could afford a dozen of them in the year.
Jeb looked it over lovingly. It was a hand some affair of a celebrated make, a poem in its way, and listed, as Jeb knew by gun catalogues, at two hundred and fifty dollars the country over. Jeb himself believed in paying a good price and getting a good gun while one was about it; but his own gun was worth only forty dollars, though at that it was one of the best to be found at Upham's Landing. He threw this fine specimen up to his shoulder, dropped it, took a shell from Wheelwright's hand, loaded it me chanically and looked about. He saw a crow. Quick as thought the gun went to his shoulder and cracked out. A hundred yards ahead the crow fell and fluttered down into the water in line with the Maggie's bow.
66

JEB BUTTON
Jeb handed back the gun with a sigh. "I didn't mean to use it, and especially on a crow, but I just couldn't help it. It's a fine gun fine
but I couldn't take it. I did nothing to earn it, and besides I've got one, and don't really need it. Thank you just the same."
"I guess you're right you don't need it," said Wheelwright. "Look at that now," pointing to the dead bird in the swash of the steamer. "You've got an eye. Your kind could put shot in a milk can, swing it around your head, let it go, and hit something. I could shoot the week out at that crow, and at the end of the week he'd be caw ing back at me just the same. I'm the kind that need these things, not you, who'd get more game in an hour with a rusty old single-barrelled Revo lutionary muzzle-loader than I'd get in a week with a battery of gatling guns and the birds lined up in front of me. Still you'd better take it."
Jeb once more refused the gun, this time with decision, and the two talked about other things. Wheelwright was twenty-six years of age and had been to Yale three years. He intended to go back and get his degree sometime. Just now he was enjoying himself. Occasionally he wrote for the papers. Some day he hoped to be an editor
66

THE "MAGGIE"BUNS ON A SAND-BAB
of something, he didn't know just what a magazine or newspaper, serious or light, politics didn't matter. He had come South the past four winters and had been all over the United States. He had been to Europe twice, all over Europe, was thinking of running over there again next summer, to take another look at Norway, or Scotland, or Denmark, or some of those places.
Jeb marvelled at this young fellow who bore his wealth of travel so lightly and held so cheaply his chances for high education. Jeb brought i"' back to education.
"It must be fine to be at college, Mr. Wheel wright. Fd like to go."
" Like to ? Then why don't you ? " " I'm not prepared yet, and besides, I must get some money first. That's partly what I'm going to Savannah for now." "Prepared? money?" gasped Wheelwright. " Why, they're spending thousands to bring young men up to where you are now. Money? You don't need it. You'd make the crew or the eleven in a week. And you wouldn't do a thing to a sixteen-pound hammer." Jeb stared. "Make the crew and the eleven. What do you mean by that?"
57

JEB HUTTON
" The foot-ball team, and row against Harvard or Cornell. Why, man, all you need is your car fare to New Haven. And I'll lend you that or give it, if you'll take it. Why, so soon as you showed up at New Haven, you'd be kidnapped. Why there's foot-ball genius sticking out all over you. It's bulging through your shirt, your coat sleeve, your trouser legs. Every time you hunch yourself I can see a big hole between guard and centre on the other side. And you've got the eyes. There's ten yards through any line every time you look like yon did there for a second." Wheelwright stood off to get a better sense of this foot-ball genius who had never seen a grid iron.
Jeb smiled at this fanciful scheming of which he understood so little, although he felt stirred at the simple mention of it. After it was made clear to him, he thought modestly that he might be able to do something at that game. It seemed to offer opportunity for well-grown lads with ex pansive shoulders and other parts. He assured Wheelwright that he would think of the subject and gladly read anything that might be sent to him, and with that out of the way he asked ques tions about things that appeared to him to be of as
58

THE "MAGGIE" RUNS ON A SANI>-BAIt
much importance even as were foot-ball and row ing at college. And Wheelwright spent the remainder of the day in telling him about college life.
All that day the Maggie ploughed her intermit tent way. Nothing unusual happened until near midnight. Jeb had been feeling sleepy and was about to turn in. His hand was on the knob of his room door when he felt the deck lurch beneath him, and himself thrown against the door, although not violently. Some of the passengers even were only half awakened by the shock, so comparatively gentle was it, and fell to sleep again.
Many bells were rung, by the mate undoubtedly,, and a great deal of swearing was done, by the mate indisputably, and Jeb went outside. The Maggie was ashore. The unusual high water had misled the mate into piloting the steamer close to a deceptive shadow on the Georgia side of Hie river. The Maggie stuck, thereby spoiling the backwoods legend that she could run on a heavy dew. They tried to back her off, but it was no use. Drowned Cow Shoal was a very demon of a shoal, and it held the Maggie hard and fast.
An examination was made. The Maggie was uninjured, tight as a boiler, but high and dry on
59

JEB HtTTTON
the sand-bank. The mate's voice might have been the wail of a lost soul. There was nothing to do but unload some of the freight, and, thus light ened, try to float her off.
They would lose several hours by this little delay, but she would get into Savannah by noon or early in the afternoon of the next day, explained the mate to inquiring passengers between explo sive orders to his crew. Jeb listened feverishly. He was due in the Engineer Office at ten o'clock next morning. He took the letter from his pocket and read it again. "Report for duty to this office at ten o'clock on the morning of Decem ber 10th "; it stood out like a flaming sword.
Jeb bearded the raging mate. "Mr. Dwight, is there any way to get to Savannah by to-morrow morning?"
The mate was in fierce humor, but he had respect for Jeb. He answered almost civilly, "There's a train leaves Debb's Station at 10.30 in the morning."
" That's too late for me. Is there any other way?"
"Yes."
"What is it, please?" The busy mate grinned. "Cut through the
60

THE "MAGGIE" RUNS ON A SAND-BAR
swamp until you hit the railroad track and walk," said he.
"Thank you," said Jeb, "I'll do that." "You'll what?" The mate stared after Jeb in pity and surprise. Surely this boy knew noth ing of a swamp in freshet time. Five miles of a swamp and twenty miles of road. A pleasant night's travelling, indeed! He turned to his work ing negroes as more reasonable beings to talk to. Jeb went up to his room. He could think of no better scheme than to put a cord around his valise and tie it to his shoulders, knapsack fashion, with an extra twist or two about his waist for greater firmness. With this arranged he went down the stairs to the lower deck and started to go ashore. As he was walking the gang-plank the mate spied him.
" Hello, where are you going ? " "To Savannah."
"To Savannah? Now? Walking to Savan nah with that?" pointing to the huge valise on Jeb's back.
Jeb strained his neck trying to see over his shoulder what it was the mate referred to. After a moment of study he realized what the mate meant by "that."
61

JEB BUTTON
" Why, yes," he answered. "Bat twenty-five miles I" exclaimed the mate. "Twenty-five miles," repeated Jeb. "Why, I've tramped twenty-five miles many a time for just a few partridges." " Yes, but you never chased 'em with half a hun dred weight of baggage on your shoulders," re torted the mate. "You're a honey-maloo for muscle, son; but you don't know what you're tack ling this time." " Well, it is a little heavy for fast walking, and I don't feel much like it, to tell the truth, but you see I've got to get there," pleaded Jeb. " Well, if you must, you must, I reckon. Any way, I'm not big enough to make you back out, although I feel like it." Jeb walked on to the bank and headed up the narrow, straggling path that led into the swamp. He knew that the station lay due west from Drowned Cow Shoal, and that fixed firmly in his mind, he trudged on, with an occasional glimpse of the moon through the trees, and a rare sight of the path beneath to guide him. The five miles of swamp were five slow, linger ing miles, marked with irregular frequency by side steps and slippings, now to the north side, now to
62

THE "MAGGIE" BUNS ON A SAND-BAB
the south side, but every variation always into the juicy mud.
After a dreary pilgrimage through that Slough of Despond, three hours of painful toil it was, Jeb came to the railroad tracks. " Twenty miles more," he breathed, and headed to the south hope fully. After the squashy swamp it should be easy.
Miles were left behind, but there were long weary miles ahead. He stopped to rest, perhaps every half hour or so ; but he did not rest long, for fear of the drowsiness he felt coming on. " Ten o'clock on the morning of December 10th." He saw it as plainly as he saw the boughs on the trees a pine of woods by themselves on the typewritten page from Major Mulich. "I do wish I'd had some sleep since I left home, or that I warn't so tired," said Jeb.
" Ten o'clock!" was croaked from the edge of the swamp by some dissipated frogs that should have been asleep; it was whistled shrilly by some mocking- whippoorwills, out long after hours. It was whispered by the swaying boughs on the bend ing trees. It was ringing in his ears and stirring in his brain.
He trudged on, trying to follow the glint of the 63

JEB HTJTTON
rails, bat more often held to his course only by the feel of the sleepers tinder his feet. The moon, that might have cheered him somewhat and lit up his way, was now sunk below the top of the forest, and he had for company only the still, shadowy life of the woods at night the black ness of the swampy woods, with great bunches of straggly gray Spanish moss hanging haggardly from the branches, and the dull reflections of a lot of queer things in the pools of the same swamp. The trees looked like great distorted, headless, legless, bark-covered skeletons of many arms, bearded like witches, all swaying and moan ing drearily in time with the pestilential dirge of the malarial night wind.
To forget this chilly, lonely, horrid weariness, Jeb fell to counting steps and ties. Two steps to three ties it was at first, then three steps to four ties, then a step to a tie. How many ties to a mile at that rate ? and how many miles to Savan nah? One-quarter of the way now; another hour and it would be one-third. He found comfort in mentally seeing the fraction increase in size; but how slowly it grew! Soon it would be one-half, then three-fifths, three-quarters, four-fifths, seveneighths, nine-tenths, and then Savannah! But
64

HE TRUDGED ON.

THE "MAGGIE" RUNS ON A SAND-BAB that was in his mind only many long hours away that was. Here, under the stars, the steel rails and hickory ties were yet before him. And so he trudged on one, two, three, four, five, six, two thousand and odd to the mile; with eyes that were closing drowsily, and feet that were stumbling wearily, he trudged on.
65
I

CHAPTER IX
THE LIGHT-MINDED KELLY
Osr the morning of December 10th, in the draughting office of the United States Engineer Office, Savannah, there were three men. One was a busy worker, one was a busy joker, while the third man was divided between working and joking.
The busy man was Kenton, a solemn surveyor, just returned from operations in the field, and now plotting harbor lines on a great sheet of linen paper that was tacked down to an immense draw ing-table. The semi-worker, Harper, was casually pricking dots here and there on a sheet of profile paper, but giving most of his attention to Kelly, the tall, smooth-faced joker, who had been relating various recent happenings with much vividness, and who now wound up a long yarn with, "And we're done with that job, the old man says. And I'm glad of it. Yesterday I put dredge 6 in position, and to-morrow we begin mud-digging, or
66

THE LIGHT-MDTDED KELLY
dredging, as the official specifications have it. Oh, Kentie, I shan't be up to see you as often as I used to." He gave to the closing sentence a tone of dejection that was plainly meant to distract the busy Kenton.
The surveyor grunted. H-g-g-h," imitated the tall young man. " Does it hurt?" Kenton disdained to answer. He was lying on his stomach on the big table, beneath him a great length of linen paper, which stretched unconfined and level for a length of ten feet, and then curled up into a roll as big as a water-main. He was a fleshy man, who grunted as he revolved on the table, with his stomach for a pivot, at every degree of the circle he was making. His postures and movements were chosen for convenience in work ing rather than for stateliness of appearance. As he now turned about, or rolled laboriously, with the tall one waiting for his comment, he began to deliver words of advice, between lines of drawing, on the lightness of the other's ways. He ended a breathless two-minute discourse on dignity with such happy rhetorical illustrations that he felt im pelled to strain his neck muscles to look up and note the effect of his remarks. As he gazed about
67

JEB BUTTON
him now, his ordinarily good-looking face was very red, and his eyes were almost ready to pop out with ibis effort of turning to see without raising the head.
The tall youth called Harper's attention to this rather grotesque pose. "Isn't he a sweet, senatorial, and most august object to talk of dignity? You! Hi, Harper, look at him flopping round on that table like a stranded fish on a rock. When you poke your eyes in that way, Kenton, yon certainly do remind a fellow of a turtle popping his head out of his shell. S-ss go back there!" making a threat ening lunge at the surveyor. "With every nibful of ink you have to roll on your diameter and hack again like a cradle. And the bald spot on your koko. Oh, Kentie!" solicitously, "was it sitting under electric lights, or too much brain work, or the beating of many storms on your unprotected roof that wore the moss off your outside shingles? Ha?" The tall youth bent forward to catch the answer.
Kenton said nothing in direct reply. It was argument enough for any man's conversion just to call attention to Kelly's indefensible slang. He expressed his thoughts to Harper by a side
68

THE LIGHT-MINDED KELLY .
duck of his head toward Kelly, and some low spluttering sounds that were meant for expres sion of high-minded contempt.
Kelly himself interpreted those sounds and movements for Harper's special benefit. "He's trying to rock himself to sleep by that swing ing; that cooing gurgle is a lullaby thing of his babyhood days. Didn't I say he'd remind you of a cradle? See Mm roll on his rocker now." This was said much in the style of a lecturer who calls attention to the dashing of the seas and has stereopticon views to illustrate. "This," in a tone calculated to reach the farthest corners of the largest lecture hall and touching Kenton lightly on the hollow of his back, "this is a cradle the whole arrange ment. And this," bending low with a level squint along a T-square, "is what rocks the cradle." He pocked the surveyor in the side ribs and began to hum,
"' By, baby bunting, Papa's gone a-hunting.'"
The outraged map-maker felt compelled to resent that last prod. He slid backward until bis toes touched the 'floor, then dove around

JEB HUTT03ST
the head of the table and after Kelly, who jumped with great agility over and behind a vide desk flanked on either side by a chair.
"You see your enemy at bay," continued Kelly in his lecturer's voice, "in a strongly fortified position, seized upon in a moment of inspired genius. He fears not your might and defies your attacks." He moved three paper weights, a rule, a T-square, and a full ink-well to his side of the desk; and he transferred a caramel- he found there to his mouth. "With ammunition and food sufficient to withstand the longest siege, he bids you defiance and dares you to do your worst. With weapons of extraor dinary range and deadly effectiveness," mak ing a dive with the T-square and lifting a paper-weight, "he can at any time sweep the plains in front. With an impregnable rear," backing into the angle of the wall, "there is only one way open to an attack. If you have the blood of men within yon, come on. But you rush on to your doom," waving his arms warily.
Kenton was stabbing at Kelly with a roll of blue-print paper. Kelly was making useless attempts to land with his T-square, brandishing
70

THE LIGHT-MINDED KELLY
paper-weights, hopping up and down, and de claiming dramatically. Once he managed to poke Kenton in the stomach with his T-square.
"Ha, ha! a master stroke! Didst feel it? Another finger's width and I had pierced thy green and mouldy vitals. Ha, ha! come on, lay on, MacDufF, I care not how rough." He made a stab and his foot caught in the edge of a rug. "'Tis well for thee, Sir Percy, that me bungling foot slipped on the slippery sward, or widowed wife and orphaned child this night would weep in wild wailing, and would mourn thy meeting with the Black Shroud of Dundee hur-roo!"
This stirring .but bloodless combat might have lasted until now, for the besieger was in rare humor and the besieged in excellent spirits, if the colored messenger had not just entered with word that Mr. Kelly was wanted in the outer office.
That warrior of romance came from behind his intrenchments waving a white handkerchief aloft. " An armistice 1 an armistice! Not by wish of mine, Sir Percy, but in fair courtesy to others," indicating by a wave of his hand the larger office outside. "Another time, Sir Percy, and thou'lt rue the day," bowing yet lower to Kenton, who
71

JEB HTJTTQN
went back to his harbor lines in grumbling goodhumor. Kelly always outflanked him in these skirmishes.
" Mr. Kelly," said the chief clerk, when the former arrived in the outer office, " Major Mulich wishes to have Mr. Hutton, your new recorder, sent in to him as soon as he arrives. He's due here at ten o'clock."
"Well, it's now two minutes of ten," com mented Kelly, u and the right worshipful Mr. Hutton has yet to arrive. I suppose he'll come drifting in some time later with a tale of a stranded steamer. They all fall back on steamers, as if there were no railroads. But this is a gallant youth, they tell me, and helped Captain Nelson and the Oglefkorpe out of a bad hole a couple of weeks back. For such we might allow a minute or two. However, Mr. Crane, we might despatch the messenger to the outer battlement with in structions to scour the plain with unwavering eyes to see what may be in sight. Perchance some cloud of dust may hide our gallant knight."
The two had been standing near the grate fire during this light talk. They stood there until Mr. Crane, bethinking him of his work, moved over to resume his desk seat and the clock began
72

THE LIGHT-MINDED KELLY
to strike. "Ho, ho!" declaimed Kelly, at the sound, "the hour is at hand and our gallant lags. One, two, three, four " He turned to the colored messenger who entered just then, and said gravely:
"Faithful Scipio, hast seen aught of a strange youth, Jeb Button by name, without the castle walls? A youth of vast bulk, from all report, and not uncomely to the eye; hast seen aught of such an one, good Scipio?"
To the matter-of-fact Scipio, Kelly with his pranks was always more or less of a mystery, but this time he caught the drift of the question. "No, suh, I ain't seed no strange gen'man this mawnin', Mister Willie."
"'Tis passing strange and beyond the wit of man. However, the hour strikes, . again it strikes, from the highest turret of the castle, from the City Exchange, as they call it here, and yet he comes not. But in sooth, and for sooth, and because I've nothing else to do, here will I abide a space, that Sir Jebediah may have such grace as a gallant gentleman might crave, after the fatigue of travel, to make fair presence at court,"
73

CHAPTER X
JEB BKPOBTS AT THE ENGIKEEE OFFICE
KELLY was yet talking when steps were heard in the hall, and the echo of his last words had not yet died away, when a youthful but muddy and bedraggled Hercules stood in the open door. Swamp mud lay in thick layers over the shoes of the stranger and on his trousers to the knee, and the sweat was caked on his sun-burned face, which was set and grim and very tired-looking.
This young man, strange to those who were within the office, paused to swing an enormous bulging valise to the floor, then stepping heavily forward, and like one wholly unconscious of any incongruity of appearance, took from his inside pocket a letter which he carefully unfolded and laid on the desk before Mr. Crane. He took off his hat, dropped it on the valise, wiped his fore head dry, and said in a slow drawl: " My name is Hutton; I have come to report for duty, as that letter orders. I'm a minute or so late, but I really
74

JEB REPORTS AT THE ENGINEER OFFICE
couldn't help it." With that said he stepped back, while Mr. Crane glanced at the letter.
Kelly, looking on, wondered if the newcomer had heard that last sentence of his raillery. He decided in the affirmative; for, as he watched the youth glance from Mr. Crane to himself, he read in those eyes a tired challenge for somebody.
"He wants to pay off somebody for that Sir Jebediah," thought Kelly. He returned the de fiant glance of the country boy with such solem nity that Jeb looked to the chief clerk again as if he had settled something not quite to his liking. The challenge in his eyes rested steadily on Kelly again, who met it with a smile of fine good humor. Already Kelly was beginning to like his new assistant. "He seems to be all right," was Kelly's comment to himself.
The smile was noted by the exhausted, forlorn boy, and he smiled back, thinking to himself that this was an agreeable young man, and that a smile so pleasing1 was good to look at. This amiable-looking young man could not have toyed with his name Sir Jebediah indeed!
Mr. Crane looked up and said: "I am glad to see you, Mr. Hntton. This is Mr. Kelly,-to whom you will report."
76

JEB HUTTON
Jeb smiled again, but was yet puzzled. "And I am glad indeed to meet yon, Mr. Hutton. We've heard about you. You look tired won't you sit down?" Kelly*s voice was cordial. Jeb hesitated. This seemed to be the voice of the " Sir Jebediah " he had heard from the hall. He looked straight at Kelly, who had his hand extended still. Jeb started to say something a moment later he could not have said what it was he was going to say. But before he could get it out Kelly took his hand with a sincere grip and said, "Mr. Button, you do look tired, and you must sit down." And Jeb sat down. It was certainly the voice that had trifled with his name, tailing it out like a kite, which, even if he was from the conntry the challenge flared up in his brown eyes again, and the two looked at each other. They would have made a rare battle indeed of it. In that look each took accurate measure of the other. Jeb frowned, but Kelly laughed lightly, even merrily. He had such an unforced laugh that Jeb simply had to smile. In mock appeal Kelly went on, "And you'll let me survive on this earth for a space yet awhile, Sir Jebediah?
76

JEB EEPOETS AT THE ENGINEER OFFICE
Many, your worship, by your grace, truly the grace of a gallant gentleman, I breathe again. An it please your worship, I mil yet make amends. You shall see, I will yet make amends." He made a courtesy as he spoke, and went through a motion as if saluting with a sword, while Jeb looked on in bewilderment. This vivacious youth might have known him for years.
Kelly drew up a chair beside Jeb's. He seemed not to notice the splashed, muddy clothes or the streaked face or the disordered hair, but he gave a quizzical glance at the valise as he asked, "Excuse me, but you didn't walk all the way?"
"Oh, no," Jeb hastened to answer. "Oh, no, sir, not all the way. Only from Drowned Cow Shoal when the Maggie went ashore last night. That's opposite Debb's Station. That's why I am so late."
" Your pardon; I was joking when I asked you if you walked. But did you say from Debb's, twenty miles with " Kelly pointed a finger at the valise and concluded "with that store house?"
"Why, yes," said Jeb. Kelly walked over and lifted the valise, then looked up to Mr. Crane. "He's all right," he
77

JEB BUTTON
whispered, "take a look at him." The chief clerk gazed more critically at Jeb's dimensions and nodded acquiescently to Kelly.
Jeb heard the "all right" and felt glad. He supposed they meant that he was equal to the demands of the new position. Kelly came over to Jeb again. "You seem rather tired. You'd better come along and rest."
"No, I'm not tired a mite," protestingly. He straightened his drooping neck. "I'm ready to go to work."
"Go to work!" burst out Kelly, "you'll go to bed. But, first, you'd better see Major Mulich and then we'll look after you and your portable warehouse. Wait a minute." He disappeared beyond a closed door to the right.
He soon returned. "Walk in there." Jeb looked down at his shoes and trousers. "Tut," said Kelly, "don't worry about those sample borings. Major Mulich's interested in geology, anyway. Those various strata of mud will in terest him mightily. Take a full breath now that's right and hold it and go on in you're all right."
Jeb passed into the presence of the engineer whom he was so curious to see, and whose letter
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JEB REPORTS AT THE ENGINEER OFFICE
of appointment had brought him to Savannah, To his surprise Major Mulich got up and shook his hand warmly, and asked him to take a seat in such a cordial way that Jefo forgot about his shoes and trousers and the muck of the swamp that he knew was clinging to his clothes.
In accents of kindly precision Major Mulich began : " Mr. Button, you will please place your self under the orders of Mr. Kelly, who will ex plain to you the details of your work. Your position will be one of no great labor, but of some responsibility. I wish you to understand that I hare implicit confidence in you, and have not the slightest fear that this confidence will be mis placed. Your reputation as a young man of courage has preceded you. Of your intelligence I do not doubt, now that I hare seen you myself. I wish to thank you personally for the service you rendered to Captain Nelson of the Ogleikorpe two weeks ago. In your position you may be called upon to show a firm hand at times. From what I hare heard of you, and from what I see of you now, I judge that you will prove equal to any emergency that may arise in the execution of your duties. You will receive fifty dollars a month and your board and lodging while at work.
79

JEB HUTTON
You will submit your reports through Mr. Kelly4 who will give you any further information yon may need."
At that Major Mullet bowed. Jeb, knowing nothing of the etiquette of government offices, but feeling that this was the time to retire, re turned the bow and left with the impression that Major Mulich was a stern but kind man. Not near so pleasant as his father in manner, but how many men were like his father?
Outside the door Kelly said, "Well?" "He said I was to report to you." "That so?" "And that you would tell me what to do." "Well, so I wilL First, I take it you haven't been to breakfast. Have you? Don't dodge now have you?" "No, I haven't." "I thought not, and I rather think yon must be a bit hungry by this time. And so we'll get out. I'll fix you all right. Mr. Crane, if any body calls for me while I'm away, you might tell them in your blandest manner that I am attend ing to a small matter that bears indirectly on this important scheme of mud-digging off Tybee Knoll, and that I may be back after a time. And now,
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KELLY POINTED A FINGER AT THE VALISE AND CONCLUDED----"WITH THAT STOREHOUSE?

JEB BEPORTS AT THE ENGINEER OFFICE

my peripatetic friend, allow me." Kelly picked

up the valise and, brushing aside Jeb's interpos

I

ing arm, led the way down the stairs on the run,

whistling gayly. At the street door was a happy-

looking darky basking in the sun. " Here," said

Kelly to him, "take this and follow us. Don't

stop to think, or you'll lose a quarter--follow

us." The negro followed on like one hypnotized.

In five minutes Kelly's sharp pace brought them

to the porch of a roomy house, where he took

the valise from the boy, handed him a quarter,

and led the way up two flights of stairs and into

a high-studded room with soft carpets, mahogany

furniture, and several oil portraits.

Jeb gazed about and thought of his own rough-

boarded attic room with its single wood-shuttered

aperture for a window and the chinks in the

roof for ventilation--and the moon and the

stars.

He was smiling to himself, and was still some

what in doubt what this young man had brought

him there for. He soon learned.

"Now, you'll peel off--take a warm bath--

through that door there. And after the bath

you'll have breakfast and then go to bed and

sleep till the chickens roost, or rise, or later."

1

a

SI

I
JEB HUTTOK
Jeb would have murmured his thanks, hut his host pushed him into a chair.
" Wash first -- we'll talk afterward. Never mind the mud. That rug was put there especially to catch mud. It makes the finest kind of a mudcatcher. Rich mud like that will make that cen tury plant blossom. That's the century plant under your feet--that rug pattern. There's a change of clothes--pajamas and one thing or another. Anything you see and like, why use it." He went out the door, and Jeb could hear him piling down stairs in great bounds, three leaps to each flight.

CHAPTER XI
JEB AND KELLY EXCHANGE! IDEAS
JEB spent a blissful half-hour in warm water and soap-suds, dried and dressed himself in his host's pajamas. He reentered the room, where he was surprised to find a pine-knot fire in the grate and on a small table his breakfast -- some oranges, toast, a great plateful of sliced chicken, a dish of apple-butter, and a pot of coffee. Clear across the room the coffee stirred yearnings in Jeb's soul, and he marched toward the blaze in silent thankfulness. A footfall came to his ear, a hand from behind grabbed his right arm and thrust it through a sleeve, then the left through a sleeve, then tied around him a most gorgeous affair in red and blue, and a yellow that looked like green. It was Jeb's first experience in a bathrobe, although just then he did not know what it was, except that it was comfortable enough to die in. The irresistible
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JEB BUTTON
power behind pushed a rocker beneath him, and then moved the table to his side.
"Now then, son, pitch in and put the things away. In a little while you can proffer your thanks on a silver salver, or on the tray there. Hush, child, hush, or the bogy-man will hear you." Kelly frowned horribly.
The hungry boy ate of the good food, while his host stood by leaning against the mantle. Standing there so gravely, he gave Jeb a chance to notice that this young man was as tall as himself and not many years older. He was a large fellow, too. The longer Jeb gazed the larger Kelly grew in his eyes. A third party would have said that Kelly had the greater breadth with less than Jeb's circumference of shoulder; but being of a smoother and more supple type of physique, he did not show his size at a first glance. Watching the other be tween bites, Jeb felt himself thawing.
After a silence of some minutes, with hasty glances by Jeb, and a long steady gaze by Kelly, the latter said, "What do you weigh, if you don't mind?"
"Two hundred and twenty or thirty," said the puzzled Jeb, to whom it again occurred
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JEB ASD KELLY EXCHANGE IDEAS
that everybody seemed to want to know his weight. It was so on the boat. It had been Wheelwright's first question to him.
"My, but we'll have to put you on some eleven next fall." Again " the eleven." Wheel wright talked more of " the eleven " at Yale than of all other things. "They scour the hills and valleys for your weight and looseness," Wheel wright had said. Weight, indeed, must be a great factor on "the eleven."
"Andhow tall?" " I'm not sure of my height." "Well soon know. Just a second. I don't like to bother you when you're plainly so com fortable; but if you will stand against the wall therefor a second--head up. I've got it. Now you mark the top of my head with this pencil-- level now. Use the book for a right angle. Be careful, get it right." Kelly, on his toes, stood clear then and peered level at the mark. "Ah, I've a shade -- maybe half an inch--the better of you. It's the slippers -- you haven't any slippers on. I put the slippers by the rocker for you. Here, put on these slippers. Tight ? Are they? They're nines. Steady now. Let me see--quarter? No, an eighth--got you an
85

JEB BUTTON

I

eighth inch. But I won't stay there long. You must be growing?"
"Yes, popper says I'm growing." " I thought so. Ever wrestle ? " A little." " Come now--aren't you pretty good at it ? " "Well, tolerable. They said I was the best around Upham's. Nobody ever came there in the last year threw me," admitted the ingenuous Jeb. "I knew it, I knew it," in triumphant tones. "Oh, I've an eye for good specimens; don't anybody think I haven't. Sit down and finish your breakfast." He gave the fire a cheerful poke. "I tell yon, son, we'll have to try a fall pretty soon. We can't have one of your dis placement lying around useless. We'll have great battles yet. Do yon bar full Nelsons up your way?" " A full Nelson? I don't know what that is," faltered Jeb, with a sense that his backwoods defects were beginning to obtrude. "No ? Well, never mind, well bar it." Kelly said this in a judicious tone. "I broke three ribs for a man once," said Jeb, hoping to make up for his ignorance of fall Nelsons.
86

JBB AND KELLY EXCHANGE IDEAS
" Oh, you did ? Only three --wow! You'll do. I half regret conceding the full Nelsons; but never mind, there are some other holds."
Kelly went on to ply Jeb with questions about his country sports. The older youth took such a deep interest in all that Jeb said, and showed so much knowledge in outdoor things, that Jeb kindled into eloquence. He told of his father and his home; of Croesus and the plantation, and the woods about; of Cleopatra and her exploits; then -- this unconsciously at first and after an hour of warm interchange of ideas -- of his hopes and ambitions. Before he realized how he had run on, the clock struck one, and Jeb was suddenly startled into reserve again. Only to think how he had been talking! Three hours ago he had never seen or heard of this young fellow, and already he had spoken to him of things never breathed of before except to his father, and, perhaps, the rifts in the garret ceiling.
If Jeb really knew how much he had told his new friend, it would have astonished him. And yet this came, not because of any prying keenness of the other, but because Kelly's warm heart and sympathetic attention drew it out. Jeb was simply hungry for friendship from one of his
87

JEB HUTTOH
own age, and this young man, only a big boy like himself, supplied the need.
Jeb did not reason it out that way. He was not in fact really conscious of it. It would have sur prised him to know how deeply this young man had delved into the secret recesses of his heart, but so it was. After Jeb had done, Kelly knew, as well as if it had been written out, of the love that made father and son such great comrades; he knew that some day the father hoped to see Jeb a famous engineer, building bridges and great aqueducts; that the father's life had changed when Jeb's mother died. And many other things equally sacred he could divine. He even guessed some things that Jeb imagined he treasured to himself, and some things of which Jeb had as yet no conscious idea. Jeb's was a shy nature, and yet here was the outcome of only three hours' acquaintance.
Jeb jumped when the clock struck. " Don't I go back to the office soon?"
"You'll go back to bed soon, I think. Up two nights, and carrying a mule's load all of one of those nights, -- I guess the office will wait. Of course, we are two important cogs in the wheels of govern ment-- of course; but I shouldn't wonder if
88

JEB AND KELLY EXCHANGE IDEAS
they'll manage to turn without us somehow. They may jump a little in the revolving when they come to bear on the particular spot where we ought to be; but the jar won't be too painful for the rest of the machinery to stand."
In his bantering way Kelly ordered Jeb to roll into bed. " Now lie back there among the billowy, hillowy pillows. There, you see I'm poetic -- naturally so, too ; but I'm not encouraged. Kenton threw a paper-weight at me only this morning, when I put his outlines into soul-stirring verse. I know you're sleepy, so let me tell you of a banshee that appeared to the ancestors of an Irish ancestor of mine. It was in the days of Brian Boru, of whom you may have heard, or maybe not. No ? Well I'll have to lend you a book of Irish fairy tales. You'll understand better then the develop ment of the Gaelic imagination. These tales are fine reading in the woods of up-country rivers with crawling snakes and creeping alligators about. They help your eyesight as you come to the boat after a late trip to some country store. You'll see queer things where you never saw them before. But never mind that. This Brian Boru I'm going to tell you about was a great king in his day -- the greatest that ever lived, I think-- the greatest that
89

JEB HUTTOK Ireland ever had, anyway, and that is saying a good deal, for Ireland has had hundreds of kings, and the greatest of hundreds must have been a jewel. Even to this day eveiy Irishman, under certain conditions, can deport himself like any king. However, to get hack to Brian Boru -- " Jeb must have gone to sleep at about this point in the story, for he remembered no more of the Irish
90

CHAPTER XH
EAELT MOKKHTG STUDIES BY KKLLT
WHEN Jeb awoke he was alone. There was no sound save the crackling of pine knots in the grate. The sticks gave out a pleasant odor. By that and the crackling Jeb knew that they were freshly put there.
These first thoughts gave way to a sense of delicious comfort in his bed, which brought to his memory the first time he ever slept in new, freshginned cotton. His father had baled it loosely and held it awaiting transfer to the landing. Jeb had returned from a long, wet day of hard hunt ing and tramping, for supper and dry clothes. While he was toasting before the big burning logs, his father had hoisted the white cotton up to Jeb's garret, and there had made a great bed of it for him. When Jeb, who was then a young boy, fell into that cloudlike pile, he felt all soul -- soul that soon slumbered. Next day they had a great time waking him. Croesus returned from a
91

JEB HUTTON
baffled trip to say, "Mr. Button, I t'ink Mister Jeb's gwine to sleep de week out up dere."
Jeb hazily appreciated his present unaccustomed bliss too well to move at once, and would have gone off into a long, sweet revery, had he not sud denly thought of work. He bolted up in bed. What was he doing here? His arrival at the office and his trip to his present abode then occurred to him.
Sitting up in bed and looking about, he saw that another room opened off his. Some heavy, carpetlike stuff shaded the doorway. A thin bar of light came through the fringed slit between the two parts of the doorway drapery. He listened intently, and a low rustling now and then in formed him that somebody was in the other room.
Jeb arose, and walking toward the slit of light, pressed his head cautiously through the tasselled hangings. He saw a room furnished much like his own, but with the addition of a piano in a recess. A pine-wood fire was burning in the grate, as in his own. On a rug before the fire, at luxuri ous full length, lay his tall friend, making marks on a large paper pad, now consulting a book open under his hand, and again tapping his teeth thoughtfully with his pencil. Sometimes he
92

EARLY MOKJTOTG STUDIES BY KELLY
would figure rapidly and then shake his head negatively, varying the latter movement with a kicking up of his heels behind. The kicking up must have meant triumph, for a suppressed chuck ling always accompanied it.
After a long examination Jeb broke in, " Good evening, Mr. Kelly."
The recumbent one rolled on to his back, made two or three quick acrobatic contortions, and stood on his feet without having had recourse to the ordinary laborious method of slow rising. " Good morning, rather. But that doesn't matter. How's Brian Born?"
"Brian Boru? Brian Boru? Oh, yes," said Jeb, confusedly. " I reckon I must have gone -- to--to--sleep. I hope you're not offended. I was deeply interested, but--you see--I was very tired. Really--I was -- "
"Hush, hush," rejoined the other, smiling and waving a beckoning hand. "I purposely picked out a soothing tale and talked you to sleep. But if you care to hear the end of the story, I'll tell you."
"Indeed, I should." Jeb was genuinely eager to show his interest. .
"Well, how much of it did you hear yester day?"
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JEB HUTTON
**I think--he had got to be a king." "He had? Well, you must have been wide awake surely." "Oh, I'm glad!" ejaculated Jeb, who began to think that he might not have gone to sleep so very early in the tale after all. " Yes, wide awake. He started the story a king." Jeb said, "Oh!" He felt that he had slipped up somewhere. "Yes, but I'll finish it." "Do, please." "I will. He died." " Oh!" said Jeb again, " and he had no chance to do anything?" Kelly regarded Jeb with sudden suspicion. "No, he stayed dead." The embarrassed Jeb simply said, " Oh I" once more. He would have liked to prove his concern for Brian's fate, but he felt again that he had slipped up somewhere. After he had recovered his mental balance, Jeb asked, " What time is it, please? You said, 'Good morning,' just now." "It's nearly three. You have been sleeping most fifteen hours. At sleeping you are what some people up your way would call a honeymaloo. But we will let that pass. If yon are
94

EARLY MORNING STUDIES BY KELLY
the least bit drowsy, go back and try it again. You have more than an hour left."
"No, no, I'm not sleepy." "Not sleepy? Why, that's marvellous. But come nearer and let's discuss a little matter that I've been studying. Do you know anything about yachts?" " Well, I've heard about them, but don't really know anything about them." "No? that's a pity. Well, we'll let that prob lem slide to leeward, or to looard, as real nautical people say. I have a great idea for a cup defender. Some day I'm going to model a single^tieker, and submit it to the American Racing Club Committee. However, let it drift now. Do you ride a wheel ? " " A bicycle ? No, I never rode one." "My, but you're ripe for teaching! You've been growing up for me, and I'll begin to trim and prune you right now. Listen. I've been puzzling over comparative lengths of cranks and gearing of wheels. Now here's a six-inch crank with a seventy-two-inch gear, and here's a sixand-a-half inch crank with an eighty gear. Now I can pump an eighty gear all right, but with my style of physique I think I ought to take the seventytwo, for my wind is always good, and I can sprint in pretty fair shape. Do you follow me, Jebediah ? "
95

JEB HTJTTOIT
Jeb was palpably at sea; but Kelly, after a quiz zical glance at him, continued with an appearance of great seriousness. "This gearing of wheels is a serious question, my son. A six-inch and seventy-two gear, or six-and-a-half-inch crank with an eighty gear ? What would you say now?" He gazed thoughtfully at Jeb and then into the glowing grate.
Jeb looked to the face of his friend, wishing that he could help him, but not knowing how, and beginning to realize the incompleteness of a backwoods training, which taught him nothing of the subtle distinctions between high gears with long cranks and low gears with short cranks, he only sighed, and in his dejection he, too, gazed thoughtfully into the grate.
" Then again," said Kelly, abruptly coming out of his revery, " I am taller than the average and should perhaps ride the longer crank. With the longer crank one gets a greater leverage, admit ting of a higher gear with the same driving power, and perhaps also admitting equal 6r nearly equal rapidity in pedalling."
Kelly got that off smoothly and again gazed into the fire. Then with a shake of his head he sighed. " However, let's roll it by now. I'll try
96

EAULT MOENDTG STUDIES BY KELLY
them both my first spare day in town. But as for that cup defender--some day," he lowered his voice, and Jeb bent forward on his knees listening breathlessly, "some day I'm going to make a model that will revolutionize cup defenders. That is," he added parenthetically, "if she'll keep afloat. It's a new idea. But get into your clothes now, and when you are dressed we'll over haul a few designs from a book I've got. Your clothes are on the towel rack by the fire in your room. It makes a fine clothes-horse, that towel rack,--a little small, maybe--a pony size, but all right in a pinch."
Jeb went back to his room, where he found his clothes cleaned of all mud, dry, and well pressed, and neatly placed on the rack to one side of the fireplace. He gave mental thanks to his friend and hastened his dressing.
When he returned to the other room he saw the versatile Kelly still before the fire, but now with a wooden model of a sloop-rigged yacht, and a book of designs before him. For another half hour Jeb was instructed as to how sailing craft were handled, from the time of Noah's ark to the last international yacht race.
97

CHAPTER
THE TUG- " SWEETBBIER "
SHOKTX.Y after four o'clock Kelly descended to the floor below, where he followed a knock on the door by immediately pushing it open before him, and then ducking quickly. The innocent Jeb, who happened close behind, got a large, soft pil low full in the face. Jeb, who was rather stag gered at this form of greeting, stopped at the door to pick up the pillow and to compose his face, as if he were accustomed to that sort of welcome. Hearing a commotion inside, he stepped forward in time to see Kelly heave the pillow-thrower on the carpet, and there sit upon him squarely, and begin to jump np and down on his prostrate body joyously.
"Now will you be good?" asked Kelly, after a minute or so of this exercise.
" Yep, lemme up." "I don't know whether I will or not. A sweet way you have of receiving my friends. Here's

THE TUG "SWEETBBIEK"
Mr. Hutton nearly had his head knocked off. He may admire your novel manner of welcome, but I'm sure it's only his inherent good nature that allows him to smile so serenely. Mr. Hutton," -- Kelly looked up gravely, -- "this is Mr. Harper. Whenever we go down the river together it is my business to wake him. He's abrupt in his ways at times, as you may have surmised, but he's really not so savage as he appears at first sight."
Harper arose to explain how it happened that Jeb came to be struck with the pillow, and that having been made clear, they left the house.
They turned into a side street on the way, where George Krouptous, a Greek fruit-seller, kept bis stand. Kelly and Harper here aired their twelve words of modern Greek. They said, "Good morning," and "How is your health?" asked the price of the fruit, and inquired after the health of the wife and baby. It ended there, but even that much pleased the Greek immensely, while Jeb marvelled at their fluency in this strange tongue, so roundly did the pair roll out and pad their little vocabulary.
Harper and Kelly now calculated how much fruit they needed to meet hygienic laws for a
99

JEB BUTTON
week, and this quantity they bought. There were so many oranges, so many apples, each a pound of figs, four pounds of grapes, and some minor items.
Eating oranges for hygienic reasons, as they said, and also because they liked the taste of them, as they added, they passed down the street. Close to their own wharf they met a group of friends, --inspectors, tow-boat masters, engineers, deckhands, and so on. To them Harper and Kelly handed out their fruit. "The bags are getting heavy, and a sort of nuisance to carry," said Kelly. "There,"--after distribution they had just enough left to go in one bag, -- " we'll save what's left for old Deny, and for a couple of people on your tug, Harper. We must not forget them," and they passed on.
At Crook's Wharf the tug-boats, employed on the government work in the river and harbor, were lying side by side in four tiers, and there was much bustle going on. From butcher and grocer wagons, supplies of provisions were unload ing, and noisy icemen were rattling their tongs and skidding huge blocks of ice along the dock and down to the decks below; busy, earnest negroes, working by the ton, were furiously
100

THE TUG "SWEETBRZER"
shovelling coal aboard the two inner tugs, and canvas-covered distended hose pipe was conveying water to thirsty tanks. Pipes were hissing, and valves were shrieking under the pressure of hot, impatient steam, writhing to be off.
Above all could be heard the loud voices of half a dozen tow-boat masters, hoarse from the chill, and high-keyed by the crisp air of the rather cool December morning. By entreaties, prayers, and stiff commands, the masters were urging the importance of speed on the part of their crews.
A particularly loud and raucous voice, a voice of intense fervor, issued from the wheel-house of the tug that was to be Jeb's home on the river. This voice came from within a big man in an old pea-jacket and a cap, which, if its decorations spoke the truth, had once served to cover the head of a rear admiral of the American navy. The cap, though aged, still retained its silver shield and spread eagle, its crossed foul anchors of gold, its embroidered oak leaves, and something of the shape and dignity that originally belonged to it. The wearer of the cap--and the owner of the big voice as well -- was soon made known to Jeb as Captain Derry of the Sweefbrier.
101

JEB BUTTON
"How do, Mr. Kelly -- and Mr. Harper." Captain Deny drew his head into the pilot-house again. "Glad to know you, Mr. Hutton. Set around anywhere. And how do you feel, Mr. Kelly? Bless my soul, but I hope you ain't as dry as I be. What's that? Some fine cut? No! And for me, you say? Well, now, but it's every body's story on the river that I always loved you, Mr. Kelly, like you was my own son. There's somethin' about you that always do get close to me. Your tobacco, you say ? Oh, no, quit your foolery. 'Tain't a matter of tobacco. No, 'tain't that. Law' bless you, you all know better'n that. I don't know what I likes about you, young man, but I likes you. Now when I was with the Alabama Tigers in Longstreet's army, we had two fine young fellers, lieutenants, made me think o' you two. One tall like you, Mr. Kelly there; one shorter like you, Mr. Harper. An' for winnin' ways, Law* bless you, they was full up of winnin' ways. Well, we was one mawnin' like this, river about so, air about so, and sky" -- here Captain Deny, in looking out to verify his recollection of that morning with the Ala bama Tigers, had his eye drawn to a deck-hand who was coiling a line about a forward bitt on
102

THE TUG "SWEETBKDER"
the deck below. The man. was whistling gayly over a slovenly job, thinking his captain too busy to notice him. The captain at sight opened a spluttering blank fire on the poor fellow, who ended his job in jerks and jumps, in such a way as to suggest that he was dodging light cannon ading from somewhere above him.
After easing his mind old Deny drew his head in wearily. " Ain't it awful now, the ideas some men got about the way to do things? I can't understand it nohow. Well, I reckon we might's well be goin', now that everybody's here." He reached up and pulled the whistle cord. One short whistle indicated to his crew that lines were to be cast off. Harper seized this last mo ment to go to his own tug. Derry then gave the necessary bells to his engineer; and the Sweetbrier, working loose from the bunch, backed slowly away until well clear of the other tug boats, then half-circled away from the wharf and headed down the river.
103

CHAPTER XIV
THIC CAPTAIN' OF THE " S W KKTRRTTBR "
BEFORE the push of the propellers and the rush of a strong ebb tide, the Sweetbrier went flying down the stream. Kelly, taking old Berry's place at the wheel as if he were used to piloting the Sweetbrier, at once threw up a~port window, the better to see. It was not yet dawn, and down over the low marshland it was all gray, and above them, when they looked out, the sky was yet twinkling with stars. Ahead were the red and white range lights marking the course of the channel to the sea.
They had quenched the flame in the pilot house lamp when the tug put out from the wharf, and now the light from the binnacle was the only splash in the darkness within the house, save the flicker from old Perry's pipe, which quivered intermittently from the locker, whereon he sat smoking diligently.
Into this quietness the fresh salt-laden breeze 104
I

THE CAPTAIN OF THE " SWEETBBIEB,
from the sea came with dense, damp force, as it seemed to Jeb. This was his first breath of real salt air. It was a revelation to him,-- this salt air that bit into his blood,--and he in haled great chestfuls of it eagerly. It was the atmosphere of a newer, quicker life. His first thought of it was that it must be a fine thing to live on the salt sea and breathe in the salt air.
As they steamed along and it began to grow lighter, Kelly would take one hand from the wheel and point out places of interest--places that Jeb had heard of in his country home and read about in history.
They passed a long stretch of cotton, lum ber, and resin wharfs, one of them the largest resin wharf in the world. Twenty or more tramp steamers, with as many more big, square-rigged sailing fellows, were lying at the docks, flying all flags, -- German, English, Spanish, French, Nor wegian, Italian, and one lonely, stubby Dane, with a bold white cross on her blood-red pennant. A dozen or so of our own schooner-rigged coasters, with three and four, and one of five masts, easy .and long in the run, with low, light rails and square openings that yawned in their bows, were
105

JEB BUTTON
loading with white and yellow pine for Northern markets. Jeb's eyes grew large at the sight of all this.
Below the wharves they passed one feeble an tique fort that might have once withstood a siege of arms. "Fort Oglethorpe," said Kelly, "and beyond, if you look sharp, beyond the rice field there, you can make out redoubts that were thrown up to hinder Sherman's entry into Savan nah during the Civil War. Captain Derry fought for the Confederacy. Tell Mr. Hutton about those days, Captain."
"Please do, Captain," requested Jeb; "my popper fought for the South, too."
Captain Derry spoke feelingly of days in those trenches. Old Derry was the son of a slave owner, and between the wild periods of a rest less boyhood he had gathered some education, and when he felt in the mood could spin most interesting tales, to which casual relapses into negro dialect only seemed to give an original turn. "You c'n see the mists are in there yet-- the mists o' malaria." He pointed toward the old rice fields on the Georgia shore. "There's malaria thirty odd year old set deep in me now, remindin' me of old times. I tell yon, people,"
106

THE CAPTAIN OF THE SWEETBBIER"
removing his pipe to point the stem at the marsh, " negroes, jest negroes is the only humans as e'n work in them sorts o' places an' come away whole. Negroes an' mules gets fat in rice fields. Now I remember once -- dog-gone, but it must be most time for coffee."
He whistled down the galley-tube, applied his ear, and then his loose lips. " Edward, yer's three humans up yer ready for hot coffee." Turning from the tube he went on. " I tell you, people, there's nothin' like coffee early in the mawnin' on these yer rivers. Keeps off chills and sich. Some prefers a leetle drop o' whiskey when the doctor orders. I think myself that a leetle drop does a heap o' good in hot coffee. Doctors recom mends it. I've tried it once or twice myself, and suffered no injurious reactions. P'raps if I had some now there's no telling I might try it, but I know by Mr. Button's face he don't drink, and Mr. Kelly don't drink, and I drinks so leetle myself that 'tain't wuth while to tote it."
Kelly, without turning his head from the wheel, said: " In my grip, Captain, there's a flask in a lower corner. That's my duty to the engineer on the dredge every trip to town; but I guess he won't mind his colleague taking a little nip."
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JEB HUTTON
"You're right on that, Mr. Kelly. Though the chiefs a Yank, an' I'm a Tarheel, an' we fit each other in the war, --he was navy on the North and me in the army of the Confederacy,--yet he's a gentleman every inch. I am divided be tween admiration and regard for the engineer of No. 6 dredge." Deny dug out the flask an' unscrewed the top. "In all my bawn days, and I'm nigh on sixty-four year," turning with genial gravity to Jeb, "I never met a man more alive to the eternal fitness o' things than that same David White, present company of co'se not to be brought up for comparison. In this case I know I ought to thank Mr. Kelly, this being his gift to the chief; but the chief never holds the glass to the light till arter he's had his first drink, and that's a gentleman, a gen tleman bawn, sir. I tell you, people, in the early mawnin', when the mists o' malaria is arisin' from the marsh like smoke from a wet wood fire, there's nothin' produces quite the same effect as the brand o' liquor which the chief loves, and which Mr. Kelly is good enough to supply. Now, I'll bet somethin' pretty this is Sullivan's Buck Deer, comes 'riginally in long narrer bottles with blue tops." The captain turned a confident face
108

THE CAPTAIN OP THE " S'WEETBKIER"

toward Kelly's back to hear his judgment

confirmed.

*

" Check," said Kelly, gravely. " You know the

different brands of liquors like your river ranges,

Captain."

The captain winked triumphantly at Jeb. To

account to him for this marvellous discernment,

old Deny explained: "I ought to know Buck

Deer. After you've been filterin' your throat

an' rinsin* your stomach with liquors for forty

year, you kinder get to sense 'em. Yes, sir.

And here's your coffee, gentlemen. Set it here,

Edward."

He turned the flask over his own cup with

careful deliberation, then stirred the stuff with

his spoon, being fastidiously careful as to the

proper blending of the two liquids.

"Well, gentlemen, here's how for you an' to

lots o' pleasant future meetin's." He took a

long pull that gurgled audibly from the unadul

terated stuff in the flask. Then at Ms leisure, in

more meditative fashion, he took his coffee --

long blanks filled in with instructive experiences

between sups. This method of slow coffee-

drinking was old Derry's method of best guard

ing against "fever an' aig."

109

JEB HtTTTOIT
Between the captain's snatches of talk, Kelly drew Jeb's attention to piles obtruding here and there. "Those with the lanterns on mark seri ous obstructions--sunken vessels and things of that sort. The dredges along here frequently pull up rusted chains, battered timbers, and other relics of Revolutionary and Civil War times when hostile fleets were feared."
It was getting lightsome, and the Sweetbrier was at a place in the river called Venus Point, when they went below for breakfast, leaving the wheel in charge of a deck-hand. When Jeb came out again, the tug was on Long Island Crossing and heading toward buoy No. 10 -- a conical, red-painted, dancing, hollow iron thing that bowed and rolled and spun about, lightly capering to the brisk wind and the swishing sea. Fifteen minutes more and they were alongside dredge No. 6.
Requesting Jeb to follow, Kelly stepped aboard and led the way to the after end of the dredge, and from there up a ladder to the upper deck, where in a small house were his quarters. A bunk and clothes closet took up two corners and one-third of this little house, which was possibly nine feet square. On the side wall above the
110

THE CAPTAIN OP THE " SWEETBBIER"
bunk two shot-guns were hung, together with a rifle, a pair of long-legged rubber boots, and a leather hunting-jacket. A small folding desk, topped by three loaded book-shelves, filled a third corner. In the fourth corner were a wash-stand and a small mirror--a very small mirror. Three windows and a door admitted plenty of light and air.
Tacked to the walls were photographs and prints of great sporting events -- the last inter national yacht race, the hist Princeton-Yale foot ball game, the last big college boat race -- with photographs of runners, junipers, weight throwers, and other athletes. Four unusually large photo graphs were tacked up just over the desk. One was a track athlete in costume; the second was a foot-ball player, in padded jersey and pants and heavy shin-guards; the third was of four men clearing a hurdle, legs thrown sideways, bodies up, features drawn, and eyes set; the fourth showed a group of three stalwart young men in light athletic costume, tight-fitting, sleeve less jerseys, spike shoes, and loose, high-cut run ning trousers. In the middle of this last group Jeb recognized Kelly, and he examined it with some interest.
Ill

JEB HUTTOIT
Kelly followed up Jeb's advance. "That's A photograph taken in Philadelphia two years ago, That fellow on the left won three intercollegiate championships in one day. The other two with him were just ordinary point-winners for their college. They shone only by reflected glory. The one on the left was the real thing. He could eat up the track when he got going. That foot-hall man was the greatest guard the game ever saw, I think. He never went to any college--just a born player. That hurdler in the lead in the next photo won the national championship that day -- they're clearing the last hurdle there. He held a world's record onee. The others you see were men I met at the various meets and with whom I swapped pictures later. Those athletic days -- m-m -- they were great days." Kelly sighed.
Jeb was about to ask Kelly what he did in the way of foot-ball, hurdling, and running, but Kelly drew his attention to a print from an illustrated weekly--a pointer dog poised tensely.
"That dog, now," said Kelly, with evident pride, "belongs to us, -- that is, to Harper. They say there are better dogs, but we never saw them. Harper was offered a thousand dollars
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THE CAPTAIN" OF THE SWEETBBIEB " for that dog, and he refused it. Refused it," repeated Kelly, that Jeb might really appreciate Harper's action. "I've heard of people paying a thousand dollars for a hunting dog, but here's Harper refuses a thousand dollars--refuses a thousand dollars for a hunting dog." Kelly gave Jeb time to grasp the subtile distinction. "And Harper," he raised his right arm impres sively, "Harper gets only a hundred dollars a month, and never has a copper ten days after pay-day. But then he couldn't sell Tricks -- no." Clearly, that was self-explanatory, with the picture of the dog before one. Kelly detailed Tricks's good points. "Some day," he con cluded, "we'll let you see him work." By the kindly beam in Kelly's eye, Jeb felt strongly that this was a great favor and he thanked his friend for the promise of some day seeing this marvel of a dog in action.
113
I

CHAPTER XV
JEB'S ITRST DAT ON THE BIVEB
KELLY now got into a suit of working corduroys And went below, where he found that fresh water was being pumped into the dredge's tanks.
" Our tanks," explained Kelly, " have to be filled twice every week. We could, of course, pump water from overboard; but here at the mouth of the river, even at high flood tide, the water is too brackish for the best results. Salt water leaves a crust on the inside of boilers, and in other ways is not exactly economical for steamgenerating purposes."
The pumping process was simple. The tug, ranged alongside the dredge, dipped one perfo rated capped end of a four-inch pipe into her reservoir and connected the other end to a pipe running to the dredge tanks. Steam was applied from the dredge, and water followed until En gineer White of the dredge said, " Enough."
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JEB'S FIRST DAY ON THE RIVER
During this operation Jeb had time to look over the clumsy-looking machine he was on. He found a rectangular, massive hull, 100 feet by 40 feet, with a hold almost entirely filled by a big boiler and ponderous machinery. In odd corners he found no end of extra parts,-- nuts, bolts, sheaves, snatch-blocks, swivel joints, valves, drifts, bitts, and so on. The names and uses of most of them were unknown to him until explained by Kelly. Even then he went away with confused notions of drums, piston roda, inspirators, safety-valves, and other important engine appliances. On deck was a house that covered the engine-room, galley, messroom, and men's quarters. Forward of the bouse was the great A-frame, supporting the long boom from which the immense dipper was swung.
When Kelly had shown Jeb over the dredge, he boarded the Sweetbrier to see him established. First came the selection of berths in the cabin. " Take your choice," said old Deny genially. At Kelly's suggestion, Jeb took the upper berth, leaving the lower and more accessible one to Captain Derry, who, though active enough for bis years, was yet heavy and somewhat fleshy of frame, and therefore likely to find it easier
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JEB HUTTON
to climb into a lower than an upper bunk. With that matter settled, Jeb was ready for work.
"Now," said Kelly, "let me tell you what you have to do- Your tug is to wait on dredge No. 6 and to furnish us with scows, lighters, or anything else we may want. You are concerned, however, with the mud, and with mud only." Kelly was as concise on official topics as he was apt to be loquacious on all other subjects. " We dig the mud, while you take it away and dump it within certain limits. These limits I shall point out to you on a plan that I shall give you. I will go out with you on your first trip to be certain you've got the marks right. When you give us an empty scow, note the number of it in your book and the time. When you remove it later to be dumped, note the time also and the scow's number again. Take the time you reach the dumping ground and the moment of discharge of material. If any material leaks out on the way to the dumping ground, note that, too, and estimate the number of yards so lost. Note anything that you think may have a bearing on your work. In emergencies use your good common sense. If you are worried, apply to me;
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JEB'S EIEST DAY ON THE RIVER
if I cannot be got at, and you have to act quickly, apply your judgment and stick to it."
At this moment Foreman Watson of the dredge called out to old Deny, "All ready for a scow, Cap."
"All right, sir." One short whistle to cast loose from the dredge, one bell to go ahead slowly, a second bell to increase the speed, and a jingle to give the engine all the steam in the box, and the Sweetbrier was off to the scow moorings. Here three lines were made fast to a scow, one from the Sweeibrier's forward bitt, one from her after bitt, and a third from her midship cleat. This snugged the scow up to the tug, which was soon back to the dredge, which in turn buttoned on to the empty scow in much the same manner as the tug had done.
The scow, which the dredge was soon to fill with sand and clay from the river bottom, was 120 feet by 30 feet over all, broken into four compartments or pockets -- somewhat V-shaped pockets, which were almost the width of the scow on top but narrowed down to a width of not more than five or six feet at the bottom, where they opened and closed by heavy swinging double
117

JEB HUTTOU
doors operated from above by heavy steel chains that wound up on an iron shaft.
No time was lost in getting to work. Men on contract dredging at so many cents per cubic yard do not generally fall into trances between daylight and dark, and in less than a minute after the hooking of the scow to the dredge work had begun.
The huge dipper, six tons in weight, was swung to one side and plunged to the bottom of the river with a great rattle of pulleys and chains. Immediately there came a swaying of poles and creaking of boom and frame guys above, that was usually an indication of the fierce griping going on at the bottom of the river. The engineer pulled one lever, then another, the drum inside the house was heard to revolve, the chain came rolling back through the sheaves, the long poles slid up through the collar-irons, and the enormous dipper, piled high with soft black mud, came creaking up, bubbling and dripping. Chunks the size of a man's body dropped off the heapedup top, while the water rushed through the holes in the sides and bottom of the dipper. It looked a great monster thing, this huge iron dipper, with clenched iron jaws that never lost their
118

JEB'S ITRST DAY ON THE RIVEB
grip until Foreman Wateon from his caboose swung the boom over, and, skilfully checking the bucket at the right space in the air, unlocked the teeth of the clamped shells and let the immense pile of mud drop into the end pocket of the scow with a plunk that resounded plumply and set into vibrant motion every timber in the solid wooden hull.
" Eight yards there," said old Derry, with an experienced, calculating eye, "and fine digging that there. Ought to make a leetle extry bonus here. Over thirty scows a week is extry money. Last week me an' the chief divided forty dollars extry. Those leetle bits o' feathering over an' above comes in handy to us fam'ly men. Ten or eleven scows to-day if nothin' breaks. I tell you, people, it takes Dave White to stir up the bottom. There's none of 'em gets out any more mud than old Dave."
" And there's none of them, so far as I know, that can get it out the way faster than Old Peoples either, Captain," said Kelly, smiling.
" We won't say nothin' 'bout that now, though there's somethin' due the i&weetbrier. She's a good tug, though Barker in the Belinda an' Murray with his little Moslem, each of 'em think
119

JEB BUTTON
they got a better, an' so maybe do two or three others on the river. But when a man's handled mud for fifteen year, why he jest nachally gets the hang o' things."
An hour sufficed to load the first scow, and Jeb was soon immersed in his work. Kelly went with him to the dumping grounds to point out the limits within which dredged material was to be placed, and also to indicate to Jeb some of the points that no map or book of instructions could quite make clear.
Nothing unusual occurred during the first day. Jeb had a magnificent opinion of his responsibility, to be sure, and once or twice came near getting on his dignity; but he had too much real common sense to do anything foolish. He twice routed Kelly out of his room to make sure of a point or two of his instructions, feeling a trifle ashamed as he did so, but bound to have matters right. And Kelly sent him back to the tug, each time feeling that he had saved the day.
" That's right," Kelly said at each of his visits, "ask questions. One of the things I'm here for is to answer questions for you--to make sure that you've got things right. Now let's see what it is." Patiently he went over with Jeb what he
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JEB'S ITR^T DAY ON THE KIVEB
had probably already explained before, but bound on his side that Jeb should get the correct way of it.
That night Jeb wrote a long letter to his father, brimful of confidence, hope, and affection, and statistics of great feats of towing and dredging as told him by Captain Deny. He further detailed two or three of Derry's surprising adventures in the Civil War, setting down date and place, with the hope that his father might be able to identify the incidents. Not the least part of the letter were some closely written pages regard ing his immediate superior, William Shields Kelly, who it seems had the most perplexing ways, who talked in the most heedless and most sensible manner in turn; who knew 'most everything and could do 'most anything; who was tall and very strong, and yet as kind and good as bis own dear father--almost. Jeb sat up until after midnight with that letter, and when he had it done found that there was not a single envelope in his collec tion that could take it all at once. So dividing it into two parts, he enclosed it in two envelopes, put them both under his pillow until morning should come, and then with happiness in his soul went to bed and to sleep.
121

CHAPTER XVI
THE HANDLING OF THE " SWEETBRIEB"
JEB, lying awake in his berth next morning, had just about decided to get up, when suddenly three long whistles from the dredge hastened bis moyements. He bounded into the air and at once bounded back again. His head had hit the roof of the cabin to remind him that he was not back in his own high-raftered attic room at home.
The three long whistles, Jeb remembered, meant that Foreman Watson of the dredge was ready to go to work, and that he wanted an empty scow placed alongside.
Before Jeb had got into his clothes he heard the bells in the engine-room next to him, and almost immediately the Sweeibrier was moving. Jeb stepped on deck, drew a bucket of water from the river, and set about his toilet -- a simple matter of washing his hands and ducking his head in the bucket, and then a quick towelling. Refreshed and eager, and feeling the responsibility of this
122

THE HANDLING OF THE " SWEETERIER "
new life, he was in the pilot-house before they reached the dredge.
Captain Deny was leaning lightly on the wheel. Years of steam-boating had made this work of tow ing mud-scows an almost mechanical function with him. The way he pushed the scow alongside the dredge into the mesh of crossing lines, whistling softly to himself all the while, without seeming to give either the dredge or the scow a more than careless glance, aroused Jeb's deep admiration. Old Derry ran his tug up at half speed until they were almost on top of the high starboard breastline. As Jeb saw this line over the tug's bow, and the tug still moving ahead, he ducked uncon sciously, half expecting to see the pilot-house car ried away. But at just the last possible moment two single bells followed by two quicker ones backed the tug almost before she had ceased going ahead. Jeb felt the sudden shiver and stiffening of the hull, and then the force of the "kick" of the propeller pulling them back.
Old Derry looked contemplatively out of the window at the breast-line chafing along the house and almost under his nose. He spat out at it casually and said, "Have to get a new line yer soon; this yer string's gettin' played out." Then
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JEB HTJTTON
going to the stern of the house he gave the bells that extricated his boat from the crossing lines in and above the water, without so much as himself having to put his hand to the wheel. It was for these little ways that Old Peoples drew one hundred dollars per month, when some of his colleagues were getting only eighty or ninety. Speed is money, with mud at sixteen cents per cubic yard discharged on the dumping ground.
Inspector Kelly from outside his room stopped to nod to Jeb pleasantly, and to throw a package of fine-cut tobacco at Derry as the Sweetbrier backed away, then went on bathing his upper body and neck from a bucket of water at his feet. A pair of Indian clubs suggested that he had already taken a little morning exercise.
Old Derry caught the tobacco and saluted-- two deft motions of one hand. Walking back to the pilot-house, he plunged a ripping finger and thumb into the corner and filled his mouth all in one long scoop. To get old Derry chewing was to get Tiitn talking.
"A fine young man, that Mr. Kelly. Never seed his like for exercise an' fishin' an' huntin'. Every mawnin' 'fore breakfast he's a-swingin' them clubs o' his. Some mawnin's 'fore sun-
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THE HANDLING OF THE SWEETBRIEK,"
up he's a-soakin' hisself in the river. He'll sit up all night for a few hauls o' fish in a seine. An' for huntin', Law' bless you, son, him and Mr. Harper'11 go off in the peltin' rain an' tramp all day, when they c'n get a day off, in the wet up to their knees in the marsh-land an' water, an' p'raps get no more'n four or five pair partridges. Not that they can't shoot, Law' bless you, they c'n shoot, an' they'll get 'em if they're there; but they ain't always there. Now we don't have to do that away up where I come from. Why, I've hunted ducks with cannon,--with cannon, son,-- killin' thousands at a single shot in Hookalooka Creek, south side o' Pamlico Sound. Cold mawnin's this time o' year they jest sets there in mill ions and billions in the shoal water where the good bottom feedin' is, an* they jest nachally hates to move. We used to have two little cannon on a launch--jest steam up and let 'em have it, one to starboard and one to port. Nothin' less'n a cannon could move them fellows. I tell you, people, that was shootin'." The captain smoothed his wrinkled forehead and cackled low with recol lection of that luxurious slaughtering.
Old Derry had a habit, as he gloated over some rich reminiscence, of cackling quietly to
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JEB HUTTON
himself. Sometimes he would detail an unusually good thing to Jeb, who soon came to learn that all Berry's stories had something of a grain of truth in them; but also that fancy ran riot in the old man's untrammelled imagination, and that much graceful, ornamental embellishment quite often buried deep the original and often times prosaic fact.
Jeb soon found the work attached to his posi tion to be merely nominal, and so, to fill up his time, he went ahead with his plans for studying out of books by night, and learning what could be learned of practical things from Derry in the daytime. The old captain, as has been said, knew all about his trade. He could almost take a scow to the dump blind folded. He had many little guides in the way of peculiarly marked piles on the jetty side, stakes on the floats, or ranges ashore. These made certain the location of the various shoals and "pockets." A pocket was a deep hole in the flats. It was to Captain Derry's advantage to fill these pockets up to the level of the sur rounding bottom first of all. But it was sometimes extremely difficult to get to these particularly deep places. The largest pocket
126

THE HANDLING OF THE "SWEETBEIEB,"
of all, called the Bottomless Pit, could only be reached at spring tides, and another, the Shark's Mouth, was almost as inaccessible; but the at tempts to reach them, successful or the re verse, gave Deny considerable practice in his art.
Jeb was not long in learning to steer a tug properly, a fairly simple matter, but it took a much longer time to learn to handle her with skill. It was not many weeks before Jeb could manage the Sweetbrier well enough to win Old Peoples's approval, and that was something to be proud of. The day that he took a scow to the Bottomless Pit, Kelly gave him a box of candy, and old Derry declared that he had a knack for "steam-boatin'," and might reach the Shark's Mouth yet.
Jeb was in and out of all corners of the tug. He spent much time in the engine and boiler rooms, peering into everything, examining, in quiring, with the fireman at his oilings, with the engineer over his couplings. He had respect for the engineer, merely because he knew so much about engines. He would squat on the floor of the engine-room by the hour, while the chief would sit on his bench and pull on his
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JEB HUTTON
pipe, recounting to this ideal listener the ex periences of thirty years of knocking about.
"I was on the Papoose in '68, running from Natchez down, when she blew up with sixtyeight passengers and more than twenty nigger servants. I was one of the seven men saved. I had a helper blew up -- 'bout your age." Jeb looked up startled. "A nice boy, too. He was blown to bits. Found him afterward with a piece of the boiler in a piece of him. I was only first fireman then, and, lucky for me, had gone up on deck just before to get a breath of fresh air. They said she carried more steam than the law allowed, and I s'pose she did, though I couldn't say, that in the evidence. The chief used to have a habit of hanging his coat over the gauges when things got exciting. We were racing that day, a faster boat --" the chief pulled away and Jeb noted with satisfaction that the Sweeibrier's gauge said only one hundred and five pounds, a pressure well within her limit.
The engineer's mind dwelt often and long on steam-boat explosions. Jeb had no idea there had been so many explosions in the world as the chief had been through and survived. He said something to that effect one day.
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THE HANDLING OF THE "SWEETBEIER"

" Yes, but you were brought up in the coun

try, weren't you?" asked the chief.

"Yes," said Jeb.

" I thought so," said the chief. " You see, up

in the country you don't get much of a chance

to see real steam-boatin'."

In his desire to become acquainted with the

practical workings of the tug, Jeb would do

some things that old Derry did not entirely ap

prove. Thus now and then he would shovel

coal below. Once he shovelled the better part

of three days, while the fireman lay in his bunk

complaining of cramps. Jeb might have been

shovelling coal indefinitely had not old Derry

mistrusted the fireman. He made an examina

tion, and then prescribed some medicine that

was not entirely pleasing, though admittedly ef

fective. The sick man got well right away, and

Jeb was relieved of his volunteer firing.

"Captain Derry's quite a success for a prac

titioner, ain't he?" asked the chief one morning

after this firing experience, while Jeb was study

ing a text-book on steam-engineering, borrowed

from Kelly's shelves. " I think the fireman

worked you all right for those three days,

though I didn't suspect him at first -- he rolled

K

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JEB HUTTON
about so natural. However," went on the chief, "a big husky fellow like you won't be hurt by a little work. Here's some books I found in my trunk you might like to look at. They're about steam-engineering."
In the back of one of these books loaned him by the engineer, he found a list of famous explosions. Some of these were identical in dates and names with those of the chief's personal experience as told by him; but the details, as set forth in the book tables, were not at all identical with the chiefs tales. The chiefs figures were much more impressive. Jeb showed these to him, but Marlin only smiled as one who did not need to read what was already so vividly impressed on his mind by actual experience. But when Jeb innocently wanted to compare the records in the book with the figures as recounted in the personal expe riences of the chief, that romancer's smile changed to a frown.
"Don't it beat all?" he would exclaim, "that people who write books make so many mistakes ? Now here was one, for instance, where I was right on the spot and saw every dead body come out of her--the Armada. I counted them, a hundred and fifty-four, and here's this man says how only thirty-
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THE HANDLING OF THE "SWEETBRIER" four were killed. It makes me mad to think that people who pretend to know how to write books make such mistakes," and the chief frowned again and puffed his pipe.
Jeb recounted some of these things to Kelly for explanation. "Don't you worry now," said that young man, "mistakes will get into books and also -- sometimes--come out of the mouths of men."
Still, though the engineer of the Sweetbrier, somewhat like his captain, was used to drawing the long bow, yet he knew his business, and as Derry could teach Jeb how to handle a tug, so could the engineer teach him many useful things about engines and the science of running a towboat.
131

CHAPTER XVH
SOME HOBBIES OP KELLY'S
BECAUSE of these inquiries into practical things, Jeb would come back to his school books with a fresher enjoyment. His ambition was increasing with bis days, and in his head ideas were now grow ing that would have astounded his old friends. Most of his thoughts, the weight of them, he tried to express in his letters to his father. Many of them he unconsciously betrayed to Kelly, who would encourage him openly and aid him in other ways unknown to Jeb. Kelly would often point out to him articles or incidents that bore on the matter just then filling the lad's mind. "That's queer," Jeb often found himself saying. "Only the other day I was thinking of that Tery thing and wondering how I could find out anything about it." He never suspected until long after how many hours Kelly spent in dig ging out information and presenting it in such a manner that it would dawn on Jeb in a natural, accidental sort of way, as it were.
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SOME HOBBIES OF EELLY'S
Kelly himself always had some hobby to worry over. He would get the whole fleet along the river interested in the strangest notions,--speed of the different tugs, mud-digging capacity of the various dredges, or something else.
It was the cup defenders that came the first that year, and in March he bought a squadron of toy boats that varied as to beam and draught, but were all of the same water-line length.
"You see, Jeb, there will be an international yacht race next fall up around Sandy Hook, and I'm going to fit up these models to some ideas of mine. Big John--our mate, you know--and the chief are helping me to cut the sails to my patterns and to rig them up generally. Charlie Thornessen and myself are altering the hulls a little. Wait a few weeks and you'll see."
This work kept the crew of the dredge in a tur moil all that month and the next. Kelly was not satisfied until the little boats looked like " sure enough" models, as he said. When they were done, they made a great show. Kelly had them all painted white with a gold stripe, after the prevail ing fashion of real cup defenders. It was May before they were afloat. Then one fine morning he towed them carefully from the dredge to the
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JEB BUTTON
dumping ground behind the North Jetty. It was a parade worth looking at--the long file of little cup defenders trailing behind Kelly's bateau. They reminded some wanderer among the crew -- one who had seen better days--of Newport in summer time. And the crew called them the White Squadron.
Kelly had laid out a slack-water fifty-fathom course over Red Indian flats, and on this most favorable day, he carefully timed each little de fender over the course. He made minute mem oranda of each trial in a big book, which gave a page to each model. It was this book that used to fill Jeb with awe every time he looked at the mere covers of it. It was almost as large as a suit-case and held a digest of original matter dug out from Kelly's own experience and research since his first year at college. It held the most weighty and the most frivolous subjects, in many cases most elaborately wrought out. Pedigrees of Dogs, the Casting of Great Guns, Feed for Chickens, Great Feats of Physical Endurance, Great Athletes, the Moon and Insanity, Yellow Fever Cures, Various Editions of the Bible, Evils of the Proctor System, Famous Duels, Meteoric Showers, Six Months on a Vegetable Diet, -- these were some headings that
134

SOME HOBBIES OP KELLY'S
Jeb remembered from his first perusal of the big book. He wondered that one man could write so many pages about all the things in there.
The little boats were rigged and sailed, and rerigged and re-sailed. By the wind, before the wind, and on a broad reach, -- they were tried on all points. Six American and six British models were there. Every little vessel had a name, and every name was appropriate to such swift, graceful things. Kelly had the crews of the tug and the dredge name them. Each man thereafter swore by his own vessel regardless of the model. By request of Charlie Thomessen, who was Kelly's favorite among the crew of the dredge, one par ticular beauty, the Viking's Bride, originally of English model, was altered to something near the Scandinavian idea of naval perfection.
The crew became saturated with yacht-racing lore. They worked, ate, and slept in an atmosphere of gaff and club topsails, spinnaker booms, centre boards, and queer rocker keels. They bet plugs of tobacco and pipes on each series of trials. Some times-- closely following pay-days -- they bet cash. They awaited the result of each trial until Kelly would announce it after carefully figuring out all the time allowances.
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JEB BUTTON
The outcome showed that the VUdng't Bride never got a place. Charlie Thoraessen was a sad man, and to cheer himself up he began to argue that his choice, the Bride, was intended for allaround courses. " As is eminently proper for real Viking ships," said Kelly consolingly to Charlie, who could make out nothing of long English words.
After the cup defenders came the investigation into the power of engines. Kelly gathered figures on areas of boilers, limits of steam pressure, sizes of engines, sizes and relative proportions of spur wheels, pinion wheels and drums, and other details for every dredge on the river. From these he evolved a lot of theories that bothered him until he felt impelled to go from one dredge to another during small delays on his own dredge and get the different engineers to run their engines as hard as they knew how. He would sit forward on a bitt or a pile of rope getting the time between dipper loads, while Jeb inside would be timing the engine strokes. The steam pressure and other little data would be taken at the same moment. The en gineer would pant and sweat with his recordbreaking exertions.
Kelly, after consulting his big book, would tell 136

SOME HOBBIES OP KELLY'S
the gasping engineer that the machine should have done hetter, that there was a leak somewhere--an important leak that should be inquired into. Ofi in his boat, with Charlie rowing, would Kelly and Jeb then go, leaving the worried foreman and engineer planning to spend the next week of nights on a still hunt for that lost power. The result of ten pages in the big book with the record of these researches was--Kelly told the crew this in con fidence--that when it came to mud-digging, day in and day out, hard or soft material, for style or for effect, there was nothing on the river to approach No. 6; and of all the crews there was only one, and Engineer Dave White was the king-pin of all the cabooses, -- which information, imparted in confidence, the crew of No. 6 received with great satisfaction. For a long time it had been burning in their minds that No. 6 was the best-equipped dredge, and that they themselves were the smartest crew on Savannah River, and to have these things proved beyond all doubt gratified their souls exceedingly.
During his dredge-machine studies, Kelly had put up plugs of tobacco for fast work in filling scow pockets. The appreciation with which the tobacco was received gave him the larger idea of
137

TEB BUTTON
having two silver loving cups with three handles, for the captain and engineer of the tug making the fastest run from the vicinity of Oyster Bed Red Light to Exchange Dock in Savannah -- about fourteen miles. This offer, made in the middle of October, and to be left open for sixty days, threatened to be the cause of more fierce rivalry than anything the contractor's fleet had known in a long time. The immediate fever re sulted in urgent requisitions on the superintend ent's office for good soft coal. Nothing would do but a certain approved famous brand that was hard to get, and expensive, too.
The method employed by old Deny to get this quick-steaming coal was a sample of the usual way of the tug-boat captains about this time. It was at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon in October -- the first Saturday after Kelly's an nouncement in regard to the loving cups to be put up--that the Sweeibriers master handed in his slip of the week's work.
"Fifty-two scows,--of the big fellows, too,-- why, that's not bad. Lead the fleet this week again, I'll bet." The contractor's agent smiled approvingly at Old Peoples.
"Pshaw," said Deny, "that ain't nothin' to 138

SOME HOBBIES OF KELLT'S
what the old lady c'n do." He spat into the cus pidor nearest the rail.
" No ? what's wrong ? Dredge can't keep you busy?"
" Oh, there's nothin' the matter with the dredge. Only jest it seems to me that a few cents more for coal, an' we'd have made it fiftysix or eight, sure's you're bawn."
" Isn't that Alabama coal any use? Don't she make steam fast enough?"
"Well, depends on what you want steam for. Now when Edward, the cook, wants to bile eggs, I reckon Alabama's good enough. Or if the fire man wants jest about heat enough in the fire-box to dry his old socks when he's got his feet wet, why then I reckon Alabama's good enough. But when it comes to keepin' the safety-Talve a-jumpin', why it's no more use than sidewalk brick. Every mawnin' our fireman shovels out a load o' slate an' clinkers, an' no more ashes among 'em than I could get from a pipeful o' plug-cut. And the Sweetbrier's gettin' so she can't steam fast enough to leave a wake you c'n make out without glasses. I don't blame Marlin. He gets so disgusted some days that he jest comes out an' sets on the rail an' cusses out that coal -- yes, sir, that Alabama
139

JEB BUTTON
coal's so disgustin'." Here Deny turned to his engineer, who sorrowfully bowed his head.
After every captain in the fleet had sung to him on this theme, the superintendent telegraphed for ten carloads of the much-wanted, quick-steaming Pocahontas coal, and thereafter peace settled over the river.
While all this was going on, Jeb was kept busy. With Kelly's spirit to guide his footsteps, he ran little risk of falling into a rat. Jeb found him self taking the deepest interest in many things that had been entirely strange to him before. He took lessons in club-swinging and boxing from Kelly, who would descant on many kindred things during resting spells; as, for instance, as to the difference between Charlie Thornessen in a boat and the stroke as practised by a college man. " One is probably as good as the other, allowing for the slide," said Kelly; "but the stroke of a crack professional in a shell--why, that's another thing."
Jeb began to understand why the young flood was the best time for fishing in some seasons and in some places around Tybee Knoll, and why it was the worst at other seasons and places thereabout. The science of the running high

SOME HOBBIES OF KELLY'S
jump, as exemplified by Mike Sweeney, and John Flanagan's way of throwing a sixteen-pound ham mer were made so plain to Jeb that he became anxious to study both matters for himself. There upon Kelly let him read the ten pages that the big book gave to these two subjects, and after it appeared that he had sufficiently assimilated the knowledge to be found therein, took him up to Fort Pulaski for demonstration of the theories. Jeb did not make any new records at the high jump, but he sent Kelly into a glow of enthusi asm by his hammer practice.
Why some leaves turned yellow, while othersturned red or purple or pink, was something that had often puzzled Jeb; but the big book had some satisfactory paragraphs on that matter too. Then there was a trifling matter of twenty-four solid pages dealing with modern rifles of standard makes -- a fat book which could be had from Washington for the mere request, as Kelly ex plained. On this matter there were also refer ences to thirty-four thick illustrated catalogues. Kelly dragged them out and helped Jeb to carry them over to the tug. It took Jeb nearly a week merely to acquaint himself superficially with the really subordinate subject of rifling in modern
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JBB BUTTON
hand-rifles; large arms were a separate tiling en tirely. Kelly explained the minutest details to Jeb when necessary, and Jeb, after he had ab sorbed it, felt that he could fashion a pretty good rifle himself.
There were less exhausting things than these. There were swimming, shooting, and rowing com petitions. Kelly could outrow Jeb with ease, but at swimming it was the other way around. Jeb in the water was a picture. Swimming was his hobby, and he knew all about the famous strokes of great swimmers. He could dive like a porpoise and stay under water until every body above began to feel uneasy. Once he dove from the top of the A-frame of the dredge, grabbed a handful of loam off bottom, swam under the dredge and scow together, bobbed up on the other side, and had the mud in his hand to show for it. Kelly asked him not to repeat the feat; Jeb's eyes looked altogether too bulg ing after it-
On pleasant nights during the long, late sum mer, Jeb occasionally set aside his studies and went aboard the dredge to talk to Kelly, whom he would usually find in the hammock on the house of the dredge, smoking his dear brierwood
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SOME HOBBIES OF KELLY'S
and gazing up at the Southern sky. Kelly had his fits of sentiment or quiet or queer feelings that Jeb couldn't understand fully. He would lie for hours smoking and saying nothing, just breathing and puffing and refilling his pipe.
So Jeb would often come upon him. But Kelly was never absent-minded with Jeb, once he knew that the lad was about. Whenever he discovered that Jeb had anything on his mind, he would sound the boy and, having located the something that Jeb wanted to get out, he would probe around until he hit upon it, and re lieved him of it. Whenever it looked as if Jeb might fall into homesickness, it was Kelly who would send for Harper and with him spend the hours long into the night in soft, absurd war bling. Kelly was not a singer, no more than Harper was a finished banjo player, but they would know what disquieted the boy, and know ing, would send t"'"i back to the tug and to bed with his heart lightened. Jeb never after ward heard a banjo under the moon or the stars, that his heart did not soften for those long, mellow nights on the Savannah River.
Jeb needed the memory of these nights and 143

JEB HUTTON
of his father and of his more serious talks with Kelly to buoy him up when he grew lonely, as he sometimes did. He was always more or less under the influence of Kelly, who seemed ever to have the power to put him in such a frame of mind that the next letter that went to the wistful father up the river would speak of nothing but the gladness of the living present and the brightness of the dawning future. Up in the backwoods the father would read these letters over and over, -- every word and every line he knew, -- and, knowing his own boy, he knew what lay unwritten between the lines. A long letter came to Kelly one day -- a letter that he carried in his inside pocket a long time, so long that the leaves parted at the foldings from age and handling -- a letter that made Kelly look pensively over to the Sweetbrier and then out at his toy boats, his big book, his boxing-gloves, his pictures on the walls, and then sigh, "After all, there's something better than cup defenders and foolish notions to kill time."
Next Saturday in town he bought and gave Jeb a book of poems, a " Golden Treasury " book, which Jeb would have thought a queer gift if
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SOME HOBBIES OF KELLY'S it had come from anybody else than Kelly. He had never told even Kelly that he liked to read poetry, -- he had never read much of it, -- and he found this the most interesting book he had ever got hold of.
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CHAPTER XVin
A HROMISE OF POETKT
CLOSELY following that first book of poetry from Kelly came another, -- this one dealing mostly with the beauties of nature.
"It occurred to me," said Kelly,--he had just written Jeb's name on the fly-leaf, and was hand ing the volume over, --" that to a boy like you, brought up as you were almost in the woods shoot ing and tramping about, some of the things you'll find here might be interesting I know that the average outdoor boy is apt to sniff at poetry, unless it is about a battle or something else stirring, like Horatius--how valiantly he kept the bridge in the brave days of old -- or that American general at Bunker Hill -- remember how it is in your other book: --
"' Stand, the ground's your own, my braves; "Will ye give it tip to slaves?'
or that thing that Browning wrote: --
"' I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he,
I galloped, Dirct galloped, we galloped all three.'
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A PROMISE OP POETRY
Isn't that getting a move on from the first jump ? Or Bingen on the Rhine, or Fontenoy--remember those Irish soldiers at Fontenoy ? Of course you do. We remember a thing where there's some thing doing -- always.
" Well, all that kind of stuff is good. As long as you keep yourself saturated with that kind of poetry, you'll be all right. Even if you do drop your binomial theorems now and then to soak it in, there's not much harm done, provided you get back after a while to the old algebra. No, you'll never go far wrong because of reading poetry with blood and life in it. When you can't live it, why read it. Too much of it, and you may never amount to much as a man of action yourself, cer tainly never much as a money-maker, though so long as you drag a fair living out of the world--enough to eat, clothes to wear, moderate recreation, with books and one thing or another in the way of fun, some sort of a house to live in -- so long as you have that and try to live, do what's right by your neighbor, perhaps it doesn't matter much if you don't die rich. But in your reading of poetry, Jeb, you must read it all around.. Now in that other book it was stirring things,--battle, blood, deaths, wrecks at sea, serenading my lady, and all
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JEB HUTTON
that. This book takes in more of still life. Listen to this."
Kelly read from the book. He read for a half hour or so, before he thought to pull up and comment.
"Now, Jeb, if I could read poetry like some people, I could throw you into a trance with that; but even as it is, isn't it fine ? Doesn't it make you feel like throwing up your job and picking out a mossy bank by some rippling brook, where there are trees above and about, and song-birds making the air thrill -- doesn't it now ? "
"Why," said Jeb, "it is fine, isn't it? Do you know I used always to skip that kind; I had no idea there was so much in it."
"Well, Jeb, that's Wordsworth. He saw all that, and you and I are not the only kind of people, possibly, who could never see as much as Wordsworth did in his lakes and mountains, and possibly, too, we're not to blame altogether for not being able to see as much in a bit of natural scenery as he did. This section of the country isn't quite up to some other places in the world for beauty of landscape or for beauty of what there is. We have not--did I .ever tell you I was abroad once? Yes, indeed, and the trip broke me. Well,
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A PROMISE OP POETRY
we haven't here in this section anything to stand beside the Highlands of Scotland, the fjords of Norway, the Killarney district in Ireland, the Alps, or the Rockies in our own country -- we have nothing of that down here on this fiat coast. No verdured green hills, nor blue brooks that tinkle for us; but we have got here--and wher ever you see it you see it as the Lord first made it -- we have here, rolling at our feet, Old Ocean, and there's no discounting that--it is the real thing. It is always the real thing. Can't improve on the ocean, you know.
" So let us, this afternoon being Saturday, and we quitting work at four o'clock, take a run over to DafusMe on the Carolina shore where there is a fine surf, and pick out a wee palmetto upon the beach, and read a little of Wordsworth and those other fellows. We can dig out somebody that's strong on ocean things, as Wordsworth is on lakes and mountains, and we'll see how near we get to their idea of it, or how near they get to our idea of it, which is also an interesting, if conceited way of looking at it.
"The reason I thought of Dafuskie is because of Burden, the pay-clerk for the contractors, who will come by here between four and five o'clock
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JEB HUTTON
this afternoon, as he does every other Saturday to pay off the hands in the mat-camps on Dafuskie Island, where there are now three hun dred negroes at work chopping down trees and brush and making them into mattresses for the jetty work on the river here. We may get there before they knock off for the week, though even if we don't, by looking about, you can get an idea of the way they live.
"There are three hundred negroes over there, and some of them are pretty tough. As a refuge, a mat-camp is even better than a rail road section to a negro who has cut or robbed somebody in the city and wants to get out of sight of the police. The toughest of the tough drift down to Dafuskie to work in the con tractor's mat-camp. They are hidden away there, working in the thick woods. Once a week they come to headquarters to get orders on the com missary for supplies they may need. Every two weeks they are paid off. Sometimes there are disputes, and quite often trouble. You will have a chance to see the paying off. It is interesting. Burden -- he's the pay-clerk -- sits in the fore man's place behind the table. He will have a pile of money, bills and silver, before him on the table
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A PROMISE OF POETRY
to one side and on the other side a time-sheet which is checked off by the timekeeper of the camp. Two or three darkies will be allowed in the room at a time, and when they are done with, another bunch will be allowed to come in, and so on. Burden will take us over in his launch this afternoon and back to the city early in the morning, in plenty of time to go to church."
Burden came by in his naphtha launch at the expected time. He stopped at Kelly's signal, took Kelly and Jeb aboard, and continued his way over the river bar, past the end of North Jetty, across St. Catherine's Sound, and so on up to Dafuskie. As they neared the mouth of a creek that cut into the island, Kelly asked to be landed.
"You're on the wrong side of this creek if you want to go up to camp," said Burden as he put off again.
" But there is a foot-bridge, a couple of planks, up the way a little, isn't there ? " inquired Kelly.
" There is," answered Burden, " about a quarter of a mile up, when you want to cross over."
"And no other way?" asked Jeb. "None, unless you want to jump it," an swered Burden, "as your friend Kelly tried to
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JEB MUTTON
do once and missed his footing and fell back into the creek."
"Yes," said Kelly, "I remember it well. It had been raining. It was up here, not far from where the foot-bridge used to be, and where it is yet, isn't it, Burden?"
"The same place." "Well, Jeb, I tried to jump it where the foot ing on the bluff was not of the best. You need good footing for a jump like that." "How wide is it?" inquired Jeb. "Oh, anywhere from seventeen to twenty-one feet, according to where you take off. They said it was nineteen where I tried it." "And you ought to had it, too," put in Burden. "Ought to? I did have it, only I struck on a little clayey streak on the other side -- you know how clay is when it's wet? Well, back I went in -- dropped about fifteen feet." "Hurt you?" asked Jeb. "Hurt? Bless you, no. The creek was high then, not like it is now. But the sides were so steep there that I had to swim about an eighth of a mile before I could find a place to get out."
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A PEOMISE OF POETEY
"That's a good jump, isn't it--nineteen feet in your clothes?" inquired Jeb.
"In your everyday clothes and shoes? Well, that's about twenty-one or twenty-two with a cinder-path run, spike shoes, athletic rig, and a box of soft earth to land in. It's according to the kind of fellow jumping. Some can't jump at all in their everyday rig. But it isn't any great jump. But to do it offhand, right on the instant when somebody challenges you, without a rub-down, or limbering up, or a band playing, and a grand-stand, or anything like that, you know,--why, then it isn't so bad. Say, Burden, hadn't we better see you up to the camp with that bag of money?"
" Oh, no, thanks. Fll be up now in five minutes. I know a short cut, and I've a 38-self-cocker right here in my coat pocket. Be sure to be up in time for supper at the camp--seven o'clock." . "Oh, we'll be up by then, sure. We may be up to see you pay off. You'll begin paying off before supper, won't you?"
"Just as soon as I get up there." "All right--so long for a while." Kelly and Jeb went up on the beach. Burden steamed off around the bluff.
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CHAPTER XIX
NOT EXACTLY POETBY
KELLY led the way up the beach and picked out a handsome palmetto tree under which to stretch, while they should read something out of the book of poetry. But they did not read any poetry because, when they were ready for it, they discovered they did not have the book with them. Kelly thought Jeb had the book, and Jeb thought Kelly had it.
"Well," said Kelly, "that's a good one; it's back there in the launch with Burden. I hope he takes as good care of it as he does of his bag of money. If he does, we'll find it there when we get back. Well, if we can't read poetry, we'll have to do something else. Let's see. Here's a fine round stone that might do for a sixteenpound shot. It's bigger, but no heavier, and it will do nicely. Now if you can get that out forty or forty-one feet, like you did the shot at the Fort the other day, you'll be all right Try it."
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NOT EXACTLY POETET
They took a dozen or so puts and then tried some jumping. The shot-putting had been a pretty even thing; but the jumping was all in Kelly's favor, particularly the running broad jump. "That's a fine jump of yours," said Jeb, pacing it off.
"Fine, Jeb? Why, there was a fellow I used to know that could give me a foot or a foot and a half in the running broad jump," said Kelly, regarding his heel-prints in discouragement.
" Then I reckon I'm not much in jumping, am I?" said Jeb, smiling half mournfully, "if there's anybody can beat you like that, and seeing what you beat me."
" Oh, but he was a corker, a world beater, and you don't want to feel blue over that. You're a little -- just a little might heavy for a jumper," said Kelly, reassuringly. He put on his coat again.
"Do you know," he continued, "we'd better get on toward camp. Which way now is that foot-bridge? This way, isn't it? Yes. My, but I feel good. Don't you? What do you say now--here's a good stretch. I'll give you eight yards and run you a hundred--h-m--what do you say?"
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JEB HUTTQR
"All right," said Jeb, and took off his.coat. "All right," said Kelly, removing his, also. They paced and agreed on the distance and came back to the starting point and made ready. "The usual start," said Kelly. "Here's an old tomato can. I'll say, 'On your mark,' 'set,' throw the can into the air, and when we hear it hit the ground, we get away. I may get a little the best of it because I'm throwing the can, but 111 not try to watch it in the air. All ready, now?" "All ready. And 111 bet you the soda waters next time we're in the city on it." " Good soul alive!" exclaimed Kelly, repeating a favorite exclamation of Jeb's; "but what an awful sporty gent yon are! Make it a bag of pop corn on top of the soda water, and Fll go you." "Not pop-corn--ice-cream," interposed Jeb, thrilling at the prospect. "And ice-cream?" He stood up and looked back. "And ice-cream," agreed Kelly, without so much as a smile. "Twenty-cent plates--" "Wooh--but you'll have to run. All ready." Jeb crouched over. "On your marks," said Kelly, and both bent over, hands outspread.
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NOT EXACTLY POETRY
"Set," said Kelly, and both bent forward, all poised.
Up in the air went the tin can, but neither ever heard it come down, because, just as Kelly threw it, there was a racket and shouting as of men loudly cursing and somebody being beaten down.
"What's that?" called Kelly. " That way," Jeb pointed across the creek. His woodsman's eye was quicker than Kelly's. "I don't see," said Kelly. " There," said Jeb. "I'm going to cut down by the foot-bridge--I think it lies down that way -- and get news." "I see now--great Lord!--it's a gang of negroes, and it looks as if they're murdering somebody. Hear that?" Jeb would have been off, but Kelly called for him to wait for a moment. Two negroes burst out from the brush on the other side of the cut, and soon a third, an immensely big fellow, came running after them. "They must be looking for the foot-bridge, too," said Kelly, "and they must know where it is. They're going the other way -- up the creek. Let's turn, Jeb, and head them off."
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JEB BUTTON
"All right--they see us. And there's another one coming out of the brush."
"Yes -- and another one yet." "No--that's a white man. My, it's Burden I" "Good Lord, so it is, and his face looks all bloody! Two are going one way and two the other way. Jeb, maybe they don't know just where the foot-bridge is to cross. The big fellow is coming this way--he's got a bag -- Burden's bag with the money for the pay-roll! I'll head him and his partner off -- Burden's after them, too. Tou keep on, and if you find the foot-bridge, cross over. Fll cross over here and mix it with the big negro and the other one with him. Look at the size of him--he's big enough to crush an ox." " But how will you get across ? " "111 get over--keep on going, yon, and hurry, Jeb, hurry!" Jeb flew, but Kelly pulled up. He had de cided to attempt to jump the creek. He tossed off his vest, wound his suspenders around his waist, and gathered himself for his leap. The sight of the badly battered Burden running after the big negro hurried him. The big negro, then possibly within ten yards
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NOT EXACTLY POETBY
of the creek, waited for the enfeebled Burden. As poor Burden tried to grapple with him, he handed the bag to the other negro and struck Burden down. He struck Mm cruelly, once, twice, three tunes, and when Burden fell he dropped on to him and began to choke him. Kelly was then tearing down to the hank of the creek for his leap.
The big negro's companion, he who now held the bag of money, saw Kelly coming, but evi dently did not grasp Kelly's intention. He was still standing in astonishment on the edge of the bluff when Kelly leaped. At that he drew back and yelled. But it was too late. Kelly had landed fairly on top of the bluff--a good foot beyond the edge -- and was at Mm.
To smash this negro in the face and throw him to the earth was a quick matter with Kelly. He did not linger over that job. He was after the bag of money then. With the negro down, he forced the bag of money from his hands and tossed it into the brush.
The noise of this bit of action had by this time drawn the attention of the big negro, who, taking in the situation, left off choking Burden, then practically insensible, and started for Kelly.
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JEB HTJTTON
Kelly, of all things, loved brisk action, but he was a strategist, too, and he did not propose to entangle himself with this gigantic fellow while the other was there to help. So he drew away. The big fellow ran after him. Kelly dodged, led him away again, and then, seeing his foes separated, dashed for the smaller fellow. A feint with his left to draw the other, then a quick jolt in the jaw, and the smaller negro went over the edge and down into the cut.
"You won't climb out of there in a hurry, I'll bet. And now I'm ready for you." Kelly faced the big fellow.
"An' when I'm t'rough wid you, Mister Buckra Man, you'll be mo' daid dan dat odder one yander--see um?" He motioned signifi cantly to Burden's prostrate body.
" Wait and see," said Kelly. He was beginning to feel like doing some vicious pounding himself.
The negro half crouched, with arms widespread and hands half clenched, plainly with the intention of getting at close quarters. "When I gets hold o' yon wid dese hahn's " -- he gripped his fingers significantly.
" When you does--you won't do a thing to me, I suppose---when you does," said Kelly, jeeringly.
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" Yes, suh, when I does." He bit his words out

savagely.

" When -- you -- does -- " repeated Kelly, who,

while yet speaking, had begun to break ground

slowly and to work to the negro's right. When

he thought he might safely do so, he made a feint.

But the negro did not jump to it. Kelly tried

again. Still no advance from the negro. He tried

it again, but yet no careless move from the other.

Once more he tried, and the negro burst into a

guffaw. "I done seed dem tricks afo', up in

Augusty. I'se Black Rube."

" Oh!" said Kelly. " How foolish of me to try

to fool you." He dropped his hands in seeming

despair.

" Yes suh, -- foolish. I'll get you like I done

got dat odder mahn dere; an' when I gets you, I'll

tearyo' heart out -- yo' heart out." He dropped

his hands and began to grin hideously, and Kelly,

seeing the chance, was into him like a streak.

One smash of the left on the mouth split the joy

of the grin in two, and a right after it, on the

heart, sent the negro to earth. A dive, and he

had his man pinned, with a knee to his stomach,

both hands to his throat.

" And you'll tear my heart out, will you ? " said

H

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JEB BUTTON
Kelly, with both hands gripping fiercely, -- " and you'll tear my heart out?"
" Ugh-h," gurgled the negro. His tongue was beginning to come out of his mouth then, and his face to turn gray.
"And--you'll cut my heart out--so," said Kelly. "And you're Black Rube, that's wanted for four or five murders up the country, eh?" Kelly slackened his grip. "Now, what do you say?"
"Kelly," said a weak voice, and Burden tried to crawl over, " I think Button's in trouble down on the foot-bridge."
"Jeb?--is that so?" Kelly raised his head, and half stood up. Unconsciously he relaxed his grip on the negro, but in a moment had cause to remember him. The negro gave him a shove, jumped to his feet, and lunged for Kelly again.
Kelly ducked away, instinctively, then stood up, watched his chance, and dove in. They clinched, with arms around each other's waist.
" I wish I could help you," groaned Burden; " but I can't stand up."
" Don't worry," panted Kelly. " He's a power ful brute, but I'll get him. This Cumberland style of wrestling suits me."
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The two straggled. With both watchful, it was simply a case of who would hold out under the strain. The negro was more massive, but Kelly had the more dynamic energy. He wrig gled and squirmed like a live wire. The negro could not pin him in one position for five seconds running.
Kelly could think so much quicker than the other that gradually he got matters where he could apply a little ordinary skill. He gathered himself for a powerful effort, jumped closer into the negro, threw his right hip forward and in front of the other's left, forced his right arm up the other's back and around his neck, drew hard with his arms, and gave a mighty heave with his hip and back. The negro, cross-buttocked, went into the air and down to earth, with all of Kelly's weight on top of him.
Kelly had him fast. "And this time I don't let you up," he said. He choked off the negro's wind again, and when he had him half dazed, he rolled him to the edge of the cut and pushed him off. " Over with you," he said. " I've got to get rid of you, and if you are here when I get back, you'll get it hard." With that he rushed away to help Jeb. The last words he heard
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JEB BUTTON
from the negro were, "111 Trill yo' some odder day."
" All right," he called back cheerfully, and kept on running.
He met Jeb coming back, with one of his men walking submissively before him.
" Any trouble ? " inquired Kelly. " Not with me. One ran away. I chased him, and he jumped over the bluff and into the creek. This one got down on his knees when I caught him." " Bring him along, while I see after Burden." He ran back and found the pay-clerk still almost unconscious, but able to say that if they would give him a lift, he thought he could make his way back to camp. "That's the stuff, Burden. There's nothing like being game. Be game if it kills you. Wait a minute till we fix this fellow. Take the strings out of his shoes, Jeb, and tie his hands behind him. Then 111 go back and get my coat and vest and your coat, and then we'll start back for the matcamp. Some of them will be glad to see us, be cause by this time they must be thinking that their money's gone. I wonder where my man is." He looked over the bluff, but the big one was not there. "Mown," reported Kelly.
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KELLY HAD HIM FAST.

NOT EXACTLY POETRY
With the captured negro walking ahead, the bag of money hanging in Kelly's tight hand, and with his other hand and both of Jeb's to support Burden, they made their way slowly back to camp.
Burden did not feel able to attend to the work of paying off that night, so the foreman, aided by Kelly and Jeb, did it for him. The foreman sat behind the table with the money in front of him, and handed out what was due each man as he came up. Kelly sat beside him with a club at his hand, and a large revolver in the drawer. Jeb stood behind Kelly with another club. "If any more Black Rubes want to try to steal this money," said Kelly, " at least we'll give him a run for it."
That night Burden's bruises were attended to by the foreman and Kelly, who fixed him up as best they could from the supplies in the commis sary. After a night's sleep, he felt much better and started for Savannah on the launch, a very thankful man.
"It meant a lot to me--that money," said Burden. "It would come out of the firm, of course; but the loss of forty-five hundred and odd dollars--it wouldn't have helped me, and I am thankful to you both."
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JEB HUTTON
" But how did they ever get it? " " They caught me just as I was stepping ashore from the launch. I got off to make that short cut I spoke of, and they got me alone. I wasn't x yet out of the launch when they were on me. I drew my revolver, but the big negro hit my wrist with a club, and the revolver fell into the water. The wonder is that they didn't have any weapons, but they are not allowed to carry them while at work, and probably did not have a chance to go to their shacks and get them when they saw the launch coming. When they grabbed the money and knocked me back into the launch, they gave the launch a push out from the bank, and made off. That gave them a little start. I had to work the launch back again, and I did not catch up with them until just before we reached the old creek, where you saw us. That big fellow would have killed me that time, if you hadn't caught him like you did, Kelly." "And do yon suppose this is really Black Rube, the fellow they've been wanting up in Augusta?" " I do. He fits the description, now we've come to think of it, and that darky you brought along says he believes he is Black Rube all right. He says they were scared into helping him. He was
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NOT EXACTLY POETBY
to give them a hundred dollars apiece, and keep the rest himself. That fellow Jeb caught will be sent to the city to-morrow on a tug-boat probably, and sentenced to jail as soon as the court people can get around to him."
" Why do you take such people to work for you?" " We have to take what we can get sometimes, in order to get the work done. We can't look up the pedigree of every hand that asks for a job, and we catch some tough ones occasionally. But that Black Rube is the worst of the lot. He's a re vengeful fellow, and I wouldn't care to be in your shoes, Kelly. He'll feel worse toward you than toward me, because you made a monkey of him, and that will spread around. And a bad nigger of his kind, as you know, gets his standing among the darkies, largely because of his personal prowess; there's a lot that are proud to hide and feed his kind, you know, but they won't think so much of him now." "And where do you think he went to?" " Oh, up in the swamp somewhere. He'll come out when he thinks it's safe, and maybe get away to Carolina or somewhere else on the coast. But he won't forget you, Kelly. You didn't get a good look at him, did you, Hutton?"
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JEB BUTTON
"No--only a quick look at a distance." "Well, maybe you wouldn't know him again. But if yon see a big, strange nigger prowling around the river, down by the dredge way, I'd advise you to have an eye on him." "Do you think he'd kill anybody?" "Kill? He wouldn't wait a second if he could do it and get away." " Then if I see him, I'll shoot him," said Jeb. "Gracious, Jeb," said Kelly, "but you are the strangest boy. And only yesterday afternoon you wanted to run a foot-race for ice-cream." "But I don't often get a chance to eat ice cream. We never used to have any up our way," explained Jeb. "I know. But you kill men, I suppose? " said Kelly, laughingly. "No, I never did. But my popper did. And he says he'd kill again, if anybody tried to come on him as they did that time. He had a man staying with him; it was after the war, and men from the North had stirred up the negroes against a man that was popper's friend, and staying with him. I wasn't born then; but when they tried to take the man from popper's house, why popper shot them. There were two white men and two
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NOT EXACTLY POETRY negroes. The others went away and didn't trouble popper again."
Kelly said nothing to that. Bnt he regarded the boy seriously for a moment before speaking again. "But we didn't have that sprint yester day, did we?"
"And we didn't read poetry either," retorted Jeb.
"So we didn't. But we'll read it now. Bur den, have you got that book we left in the locker there yesterday afternoon?" And for the re mainder of the trip up the city Kelly read from Jeb's new book of poetry.
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CHAPTER XX
AT FORT PtTLASKI
IT was bat a few days after the adventure at Camp Dafuskie, and old Deny and Jeb were dis cussing, in the pilot-house of the tug, the habits of famous negro desperadoes, when they got a signal from Kelly, who was on the house of the dredge, to come aboard. The machine was lying idle at the time, and Jeb and old Deny naturally concluded that the dredge had broken down, a not unusual thing with dredges. " And only yester day," commented Deny, "Harper's dredge was laid up."
As they steamed alongside Kelly hailed them. " I say, but we're having a streak of luck. Half a dozen teeth just been broken off from one of our pinions; may have to get a new pinion wheel altogether, and it can't be done in less than two days--all day to-day and to-morrow and maybe another day. We'll go up and meet Harper at the Fort. He's been loose since yesterday noon."
170

AT FORT PULASKI
On his way to town, from where he was to bring back men and material necessary for the repairs on the dredge, old Derry dropped the two young men at Fort Pulaski. Here they found Harper, who was placidly fishing off the wharf. At sight of them he gathered his pole and line and also took his way up the smooth shell road to the old fort.
Fort Pulaski, a roomy, eight-sided, stone and brick structure, that had been built in Van Buren's administration, at a cost of one million dollars, was in the official keeping of a sergeant of ordnance, a tall, well-built negro, who carried a distinguish ing Indian bullet in his left leg, which was slightly out of plumb on that account, and always ready to remind him by its twinging that he was once a man of war. He dwelt within the fort, in the southwesterly corner, where his quarters were abutted on one side by a casemate, used as a gen eral storeroom, and on the other side by the magazine, in which lay dormant five tons or so of powder in kegs.
His wife, wife's mother, and a grown, ablebodied, lazy son subsisted on the official rations and warmed themselves with the official fuel. The son, cherished by the old soldier for alleged
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JEB BUTTON
poor health, spent most of his time wandering about the reservation. In spasms of energy he would now and then go fishing, and sometimes put off in his bateau and allow himself to paddle gently up and down the river, although the latter occupation was mostly by way of informing the people he met as to the very bad state of his health. But usually his languor allowed him no more exertion than was necessary to bask in .the warm sun around the fort walk. The doctor had prescribed rest and nourishing food, and the sick man's main exertions were to see that he got plenty of both.
Several of the casemates were boarded up at this time for the use of a survey party then em ployed in gauging the volume of water that flowed from the river into the sea. Every morn ing before sun-up this party, made up .of about twenty people, --surveyors, boatmen, a steam en gineer, a steersman, and the civil engineer in charge, --went out to the mouth of the river and there attended to their work. At night, after dark, they would come again and occupy the case mates, which, being already provided with huge fireplaces, needed only the camp beds, cook-stoves, and odds and ends of small furniture brought by
172

AT FORT PULASKI
the surrey party, to make decidedly comfortable quarters.
After picking out quarters for themselves and putting away their bundles, Kelly took command. "Jeb, you find some nice long piles somewhere out on the parade ground over by the sergeant's. If you will saw a couple of them into six-foot lengths, then split them up, bring them in here and stack them up by the fireplace, you will be making the hit of your life.
"And, Tom," turning to Harper, who was storing away his fishing gear, "will you look after the supper; everything needed is in that package we brought from the dredge,--coffee, bacon, tinned meat, sausages, bread, butter, jelly and what not, and eggs in that tin pail. If you will look out for supper I will go out and attend to a few odds and ends, and on the way back leave word for a couple of the survey party-- say Graves and Murphy -- to come in and have supper with us when they get in to-night. There will be five of us, but cook enough for ten. You know what a river crowd can do at table after they've been out on the jetty all day with maybe nothing but sandwiches and cold tea to hold them up, and we're not bad ourselves."
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JEB HTJTTON
Each set about his task. Kelly came back after half an hour or so with Murphy and Graves. Graves was set to building a fire, while Murphy joined Kelly in helping Jeb with the log-splitting. Shortly, considering the extent of the preparations, they were drawn up to the table and in deep admiration of Harper's cook ing. After they had told Harper this, and Murphy in particular had dilated on the merits of the tinned beef and boiled eggs, other matters were given attention.
" Well, Graves, how's that new bateau getting on?"
"Who ever raised that question?" inquired Harper, looking about.
Graves was generally an inspector on jetty construction, which work he understood quite well and attended to faithfully; but he did not begin to put into it the brain-racking thought that marked his building of small river boats.
"The bateau?" He was all animation. "You all want to come 'round after supper and take a peep. She's the prettiest thing I ever did, and I'm going to paint her red and green with yellow gunnels. Let me show you." He drew pencil and paper from his pocket and began to
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AT FORT PULASKI
draw plans. He did this skilfully enough, and to Jeb it was very interesting; but the others, having experienced something of Graves's long-winded enthusiasm before, and knowing the results of letting him run rampant on his theme, at once prepared to bring him to. Harper drew his attention to the biscuit,--how good they were and what a credit to his cooking, -- while Murphy insisted that he have another helping of sau sages at the same time that Kelly passed him a fried egg. Under the combined attack, Graves, who had a weakness for eating not less than for boat-building, dropped back in his seat with feel ings divided, and all was quiet for another mo ment.
"I don't suppose," said Murphy, "that you mud-diggers know that there's quail and other good things running 'round this fort here ? You ought to give Tricks a little exercise, Harper. He's getting so fat he can just barely waddle."
"Ah," said Harper, and "Ah," said Kelly, and both asked for further information between bites.
Supper over, all shared in the washing of the dishes, which was made a matter not entirely of drudgery by Graves, who, having a big basin
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JEB BUTTON
of warm water, would stop to float every other saucer and explain how each lacked the buoyancy of one of his own creations.
Then before the roaring fire the five stretched themselves comfortably, discussing boats, jetties, dredging, fishing, shooting, dogs, guns, bicycles, and a dozen other things that were only super ficially known to Jeb, who tried to absorb it all.
It was nearly eleven o'clock, and they were in the midst of a discussion of the different kinds of game to be met with on the sea islands of the Carolina coast, when steps were heard out side followed by a knock on the door.
"That's Nansen," said Harper. -"And who ever wants to drag the beach for fish had better get into his old clothes when Johnnie Nansen heaves in sight at this time of night."
A young fellow entered. He was the Johnnie Nansen referred to, a young lightkeeper quar tered in the fort, who had come to tell them that his sharpie and seine were ready at the south landing.
Graves did not feel that he could go. " There's a touch or two to be put on the bateau before I turn in, and I want to be up early, too, to give her another little touch before I go on the river. In
176

AT FORT PULASKI the morning, if you're loafing around, you, Kelly, and you, Harper, and you, Mr. Hutton, might like to step over and take a look at the bateau. She's in the second casemate the other side of the sergeant's quarters, if I'm not here to show you."
The others, only too glad to go, were soon fol lowing Nansen to the landing. Five minutes brought them to where Johnnie's little sharpie, the Beacon lAght^ was moored.
We'll try Tybee North Beach first. In this fresh breeze we'll run down, in no time," said Johnnie.
177

CHAPTER XXI
SEINING AT TYBEE
DOWN the south channel between Gockspur Dumping Ground and Tybee Island they went. " Jeb's kingdom," said Kelly, indicating the dump ing ground. Past the great Tybee Light they sailed, and around the north point. The water was fairly smooth here, and they had no trouble in coining to a quiet spot on the flats, just this side of where the surf began to stretch easterly in a long, white-topped ridge. Here they anchored the Beacon Light and, taking the seine and a basket with them, waded ashore.
The seine was a net which, when extended on the beach, lay fifty feet in length by five feet in average width. The ends were bound each with a wooden pole of about five feet in height. These were for the purpose of swinging the seine about. After it was stood upright and ready for action, the seine resembled a very stout tennis net.
The seine, being stretched in line with the beach 178

SEINING AT TTBEE
at the surf's edge, was ready for use. Kelly and Johnnie Nansen were to stay at the inner beach end; Harper and Jeb were to take the other end and swing it out in a full semicircle to the beach line again.
"That big boy will have a chance to hunch those shoulders of his," whispered Johnnie to Kelly, as Jeb and Harper waded in.
" Yes," said Kelly, " and perhaps he can't hunch 'em, too."
Murphy stayed on the beach to be ready with the basket. When the dragging was begun, Jeb, in his desire to sweep the bottom thoroughly, worked much harder than was necessary. He felt the battering of the surf up to his waist, and the suction of the undercurrent sweeping by his legs, but he simply "hunched those shoulders" and pushed on. Once he looked back at the path of his body through the sea--a twisting, gleaming, phosphorescent trail, like a white-bellied serpent writhing, half hidden, through streaks of light and shade.
That was a wonderful thing--the ocean. It always impressed the country lad. He felt that he was not so much at home in the salt sea as were the others. He had seen Kelly and Harper
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JEB MUTTON"
take a tipsy yawl and go out in a little blow just for the excitement. Jeb, with as much courage as the next, had gone with them; but to him that sort of adventure had seemed like flirting with fate. To him the sea was ever a majestic thing that was to be treated with respect. To-night, look at it! The white backs of the surf breaking all around him with their low, angry boom; then crashing in on the beach, beating the sand with heavy, persistent, pressing strokes; receding, only to advance with greater impetus, as the leaper takes the greater run for the greater bound. And yet these were the merriest little splutterings, choked vaporings of the breath of the Atlantic -- what an awful force that mighty power, that required great surging tides merely to mark its simple pulsing!
To the others, the great deep held less of strangeness. For its rolling, tossing, mighty emotion, they all had respect and reverence. Each had seen something of its awful majesty and terrific power; but for all that, they took it more as a matter of course than the country boy, who had never seen it until he had come down to the mouth of the river to work. Possibly, too, theirs were less primitive natures than Jeb's.
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SEINING AT TTBEE
After five hauls Nansen called a halt. They had fish in plenty now. "Enough to feed the Fort for days,--lighthouse, military, xand river departments," said Harper, who was ever figur ing on the lasting qualities of supplies. He threw the last of them into the basket as he spoke, and they boarded the Beacon LigJit with their catch.
"Now," said Johnnie, "we'll run over to South Jetty and get some oysters. I had some yesterday, and they were fine and fat. We'll flash this Beacon Light over the dumping ground to the training walls."
All hands took turns in climbing overboard and poking around with oyster tongs. The tide was half high and they easily reached the jagged clustered shells below. Two bushels were held to be enough for their purpose. "I tell you," said Murphy, "but people don't really know what fine feed we get down this way."
Twenty minutes' sailing from the jetty brought them to the landing, where, every man shoulder ing a package of some kind, they tramped happily back to quarters. Johnnie went at once to his bed, but the others dried off before the luxurious warmth and blaze of the big open fire.
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JEB HUTTON
Kelly soon threw on a few more sticks to avoid the necessity of lighting kerosene lamps. "They're plebeian and modern," said Kelly. "The knights of old would not have used them on their life."
"No," said Murphy, "but I, being no knight of old, will take one to find my way to bed. This is a night of the present, and a dark night -- good night."
Kelly and Harper now prepared to make themselves comfortable. In the luxury of very light clothing they pranced about the room. And seeing that Jeb showed signs of sleepiness, they bade him turn in on the cot in the corner.
Kelly saw that Jeb was comfortable and then executed a fantastic pirouette and put another log in the fire. "Makes a man feel like a mediaeval baron to have logs like these to burn in his fireplace. Imagine yourself, Tommie, the Count von Hoheneichensteinen in his ..ancestral halls, that have seen kings' revels and other junketings in days when laws were more lax and bothering priests less strict. To your baro nial castle in the depth of the Black Forest, let us say, you have just returned from casting in the deep pool by the dark beechwood. We
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SEINING AT TYBEE
are hungry and would eat, and drink incident ally, -- oh, wassail--hoch --prosit, --but the idle varlets, us expecting so prematurely not, are dice in the rear of the castle shaking. As our elec tric plant, frozen stiff from late wintry blasts, lacks circulation, we'll let them shake away. Win or lose, the Hoheneichensteinen supplies the dark beer from his huge vats in the cool, deep, fragrant cellar. Let's to our midnight orgies unattended. Noble Jebediah, willst of toasted bread and cheese and sausages to taste, with hot canned milk and juicy oysters for a chaser before thou retirest -- hein? Nein? Well, be it so. Count Thomas von Hoheneichen steinen and I, his humble friend, the captain of the Death Rangers, are men for all there be. To the Death Rangers we'll drink: --
u ' Through, leaving greaves and grieving leaves we tread; We slaughter as we go, We spare not, high nor low ; Our path is marked by many things, all dead.'
Sweet rest for thee, Sir Jebediah. May the good saints guard thy couch this night. In thy dreams think kindly of the valiant Count and his faithful friend, the Death Rangers' dark captain. Good night--good night."
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JEB HUTTON
As Jeb lay in his low bed, lie did not know whether it was a dream, or his distorted fancy that saw a tall demon, tinged with a red glare, toasting sausages and bread on a little pitch fork, whilst another shorter demon was tend ing to a small caldron from which the steam arose. They were boiling things alive in there --small things, little imps, or was it crabs? He could hear them squeal. Every now and then one of the demons would go into the darkness and come back with a long, lanky thing, which would be thrown into the flames with gleeful shakes and nods of their heads. At first Jeb thought this was some kind of rebellions devil; but after a time he came to believe that it must be a log of wood, which the tall and the short demon together would push back, and prod with the pitchfork when it tried to escape, while all about and over their bodies would fly the sparks, which these two seemed not to mind. After each cremation they would grin and bow to each other, and then again they would sing right merrily, holding aloft their sausages and waving their arms gro tesquely all the while.
Once they locked heads and, whispering to184

SEINING AT TYBEE
gather darkly, turned toward Jeb, and the tall one came and bent low over him. Jeb felt his hot breath on his face, but the demon seemed to bear no ill will; indeed Jeb, through his sleepy eyelids, thought he smiled. He stroked Jeb's hair back from his forehead, and Jeb imagined he saw him beckon to the, other demon and say: " The poor boy must feel lonesome at times. No mother -- only his father in the whole world. His mother died long, long ago. Perhaps he is dreaming of her now. Tom, it's for us to look after him and see that he's not crowded."
Then the two tucked the coverlet around the edge of Jeb's low bed. They went slowly back to the hearth then and sat there together in silence for a long time. Stricken with remorse perhaps, Jeb thought, for they put no more crea tures into the fire.
After a while Jeb saw that the blaze was dying out and that only a few crackling sparks were, left. Then he noted that the sparks died away and only a dull, red, slowly fading glow remained. Then he saw two devils,--he rubbed his eyes,--gliding shadows of devils, steal across the ring of dull light and vanish in the dark.
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CHAPTER XXH %
THE TBOUBLES OP ELIJAH
WHEN Jeb opened his eyes and looked about him, the bright sunlight was streaming through the window and across his cot, and the fireplace was filled with blazing logs as just before he turned in.
He dressed himself with a sense of great com fort, and with pleasing thoughts of the day before him. At eight o'clock, Johnnie Nansen would be free from his morning duties and then they were to start out and spend this ideal day in shooting, with a negro to carry the lunch along and the game coming, and Tricks, the celebrated Tricks, to retrieve in the marsh.
From the kitchen issued two voices in friendly rivalry,--Harper's carolling something in a smokechoked tenor, and Kelly's forcing its way through a heavy, solemn anthem in a bass that was meant to be impressively deep and vibrant. Each held his own independent way in seeming oblivion that any other song bird perched within reach.
- 186

THE TROUBLES OF ELIJAH
Jeb could plainly make out that Harper was cooking breakfast by the note of bis musical metre, broken to adjust bis voice to conditions of toasting and broiling. Low interjections, too, denoting progress or tbe reverse, but never quoted from any lyric poet, interfered witb the rhythm of his verse. Kelly was plainly setting the table. He beat a measure in tuneful accent to his own chanting, by dropping cups and saucers, knives and forks, in timely periods. Especially deep notes earned the resounding honor of plat ters or heavy bowls.
The sounds from within held on in slashing sweetness. But all things have an end, and even the throats of song birds grow weary and tired at times. Kelly looked through the connecting doorway.
"Good morning, Mister Jebediah. Didst find thy couch to be of downy softness, and slept thou well ? Here is one within who is blessed beyond the common with a throat of round, full-noted melody and soft, sweet trills and warblings. He carols gayly to the morning sun and pipes cheerily e'en as he turns the cakes with practised skill and a master hand. Slip to the door, good youth, and sound a merry note even unto the farthest bounds
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JEB BUTTON
of the outer battlements that morning fast may now be broke. Beshrew me, but 'tis passing strange our friends tarry so late. 'Twas not their hungry wont."
Jeb waved a pillow slip to Graves and Murphy, who, from down by the bateau, soon came steam ing up.
After breakfast, having learned that Johnnie Nansen could not be back from his lights before ten o'clock, they went down to see the new bateau, to offer advice and criticism. Murphy had to leave for the river.
After duly admiring her lines and construction, the question of painting the boat came up.
"I think Til paint her red and yellow with a top streak of green," said Graves, looking around for approval.
Kelly and Jeb thought that just the thing, and Graves and Harper started for the young lightkeeper's quarters across the parade ground for the paint, and. seated on two lime barrels just out side the casement containing the boat, Kelly and Jeb awaited their return. Kelly called Jeb's attention to a negro coming down the walk.
"Jeb, I want you to notice this fellow. He's the sergeant's only child, and a mental mosaic in
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THE TROUBLES OP ELIJAH
ignorance, credulity, and laziness. Fifteen years ago he had a spell of sickness, probably colic, be cause it was in June, when watermelons aren't quite ripe. His father took him to a quack doctor, Andromeus Spinner, who in some way un known had procured a medical degree. Andro meus mounted himself in the colored district of Frogtown in Savannah. He put his sign over the door and spectacles over his nose, and waited in his parlor for the flies. They came like mos quitoes in a marsh. Many even were proud to see one of their own race a doctor, and patronized him extensively. They would have brought sick dogs to him. He was a physician, this Andro meus, surgeon and all-around medicine man-- one that could cure the quick and worry the dead. He had grosses of little round, wood-sheathed bot tles in a case that looked like one of those spoolthread cabinets you see in dry goods stores-- prettily colored things. From this spool holder he could pick a remedy for anything in the printed list of diseases hung on the wall, and the list included everything. Sometimes, they used to say, he let a darky pick out his own disease from the printed list. They would spy a long name, and if it read well as the doctor sounded
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JEB HUTTON
it--then all right, that was the trouble. The list was in Latin--the Latin of Doctor Spinner, Jeb, was not the Latin of Cicero or Horace. One day, they say, a flash young buck who had been to school for one winter in his boyhood days, picked out ' Suicidium'; said he'd had it for a long time, and he could hardly see out of one eye on account of it. The doctor gave him a green spool and took his money, telling him, ' Be car'ful what yo' eat an' come in again soon.' A dollar a visit was his price.
"When business was dull he made charms and worked them off on the old negroes who still bow themselves about our Southern cities, and are yet expectant of another war that will make them all slaves again -- that kind, you know, that never think anything, only imagine vaguely. Such are very susceptible to occult influence, and they put more faith in the curved tooth of a snake or in the left hind foot of a properly slain rabbit than in kegs of quinine. In the old days, voodoo doctors, they say, held high jinks in the dark of the woods, around subdued midnight fires, for the cure of disease, and so I suspect that Andromens got most of his medical training to the beating of tom-toms and the dancing of half-
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THE TROUBLES OF ELIJAH
crazed, frothing, naked negroes in the full of the moon. However, he knew enough to convince the honest, affectionate sergeant that his boy needed careful home treatment and a weekly visit to him, Doctor Andromeus Spinner, at a dollar per. The home treatment is plenty of food and rest, and Elijah is seeing to it that he gets plenty of both. This is Elijah coming this way now. He is the honest sergeant's boy, and his father has been paying toll to Spinner for about two years now. He's a regular income to Spinner. The doctor told the father that there were heart and lung troubles and great danger of a decline. Elijah has heard him say that so often, that he almost believes in his own illness."
A strapping darky came up and lazily leaned against Graves's boat. He was a fat, oozy fel low, with shining features.
Kelly greeted him with gravity. " Good moming, Elijah."
"Good mawnin' to yo', Mister Willie." "You don't look well this morning, Elijah. Anything wrong?" "Yes, Mister Willie. I feels mighty bahd. Doctor say I must be car'ful, or fust thing 111 go off in er decline."
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JEB BUTTON
"Yes, and he told you not to work, and that's just what I hear you've been doing," said Kelly, sternly.
"'Bout me, Mister Willie? Me wuhk? No, suh, I doesn't," Elijah protested, -with a pained look to Kelly.
"Here's Nicodemus tells me this morning that you chopped firewood yesterday--and after what the doctor told you."
"No, Mister Willie, no, suh," indignantly. " You know Nicodemus -- er triflin' nigger." Elijah said this with lips that pushed out and flared in scorn of Nicodemus.
"But Isaiah Mitchell says he saw you rowing a boat one day last week." Kelly eyed Elijah suspiciously.
"Lemme tell yo' 'bout daht, suh," hastily. "'Twuz dis away. I pahddled down ter Tybee wid er tide -- wid er tide, please min', Mister Willie, wid er tide -- for to visit Miss Jeff'son, a lady what I knows. Didn't row er stroke, not er stroke. Well, I done mahk mah social call an' tuhned to come bahk. Well," with an up raised forefinger, "tide had dun tuhned agin an' agin," in pained surprise, "'n I hand no supper, an' I mighty hungry--mighty hungry, Mister
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THE TEOUBLES OP ELIJAH

Willie," very seriously, " 'n' I hahd to row bank.

Daht's how she happen, Mister Willie; 'deed you

knows me better'n daht, Mister Willie." Injured

truth rang plaintively in his voice.

"I'm glad to hear your explanation, 'Lije.

I always thought Isaiah was a little jealous of

you, and ready to belittle your worth."

"'Deed he do, Mister Willie. Si is werry

jealous o' me -- allus was. An' why? An' why,

Mister Willie? 'Cause he don' cut no ice

wid me in social suckles, dat's why, Mister

Willie."

"That's it. But you must not give him the

chance to pick flaws. You should take lunch

with you when you go visiting. Then you

would be independent of tides."

Elijah pondered. . "Ought to tahk er bite, I

know. But don' you t'ink, Mister Willie, daht de

coffee get cold?" This was suggested thought

fully with one ear cocked out to catch Mister

Willie's opinion.

"' Lije, you outflank me. You have the com

prehensible intellect of a Bacon."

"Yes, suh, yes, suh. Co'se I meant bacon, too,

-- 'n' hominy -- any wittles gits cold arter er

while in de air." Elijah respectfully insinuated

o

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JEB BUTTON
that for Mister Willie's judgment and awaited its effect with confidence.
" Yes, you're right, 'Lije. You seem to be up on the food question. How's your appetite?"
" Oh, I eats mah meals reg'lar, suh." "And sleep well? How many hours?" " Yes, suh, I sleeps sound. I tuhns in 'bout er hour arter suppuh an' gits up 'bout er hour 'fore breakfus'. Ol' lady wakes me up. She 'buses me shameful, Mister Willie. Doctor say I must sleep as long as I min' ter, but ol' lady don' let me." "But don't you sleep in the kitchen?" " Oh, yes, suh, right by de stove. Mighty snug by de stove," with a terminal appreciative low chuckle. "Well, but you would get up for breakfast, surely?" "'Deed, yes -- yes, suh. Doctor say I must be car'fol 'bout mah meals. Hahve ter hahve 'em reg'lar. But dis yer gittin' up er whole hour 'fore breakfns', Mister Willie, --" and 'Lije shook his head to indicate that words were things too weak for expression of his bruised, trampled feel ings: such could only be imagined by sympa thetic souls.
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THE TBOTJBLES OF ELIJAH
After a decent silence, Kelly said, "Elijah, I guess you'll live."
"T'ink so, Mister Willie? T'ink I live longer dan Doctor Spinner?" Hope spoke in his ques tion.
"Longer than Doctor Spinner? Why, Elijah, when Doctor Spinner's great grandchildren are mouldering in their graves, you'll be a living example to hear witness to the power of conser vation of energy. Why, Elijah, you're apt to break old Methuselah's record."
*'T'uselah?" Elijah bent his head and wrin kled his brow, placing a forefinger on the ex cited wrinkles to still their workings. After an impressive deliberation, he looked up. "Don* seem ter remembah daht 'T'uselah. How long he live, Mister Willie?"
"Nearly a thousand years," answered Kelly, very solemnly.
"Er t'ousand yeahs!" repeated Elijah, with .reverential wonder. He could not count above twenty, and had no idea what a thousand was, except that it was a vast number. "Er t'ou sand yeahs -- t'ink o' daht now! Daht a long, long time." Then getting down to known standards, "Wuz 'T'uselah older'n Sim Sere-
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JEB BUTTON
ven?" That Mister Willie might give the matter due deliberation, he added, "OF Sim oldes' ol' mahn in. Savahnnah."
"I don't know," said Kelly, slowly. "How old is old Sim?"
"'Deed I don' know, but he pow'ful ol'. His kinky wool wuz gray dat time Gin'ral Shtthman come down yer. Mah daddy tol' me. How long since Gin'ral Shuhman been yer, Mister Willie?"
"Long time, Elijah." " Huh ! den ol' Sim mighty ol' mahn." "Yes, indeed, 'Lije. He's an old sinner, sure enough." "OF as 'T'uselah, Mister Willie?"--this with hope. "No-o--let me see now." Kelly figured at some length on the barrel head, and then said with much deliberation, "No, not quite as old, 'Lije, not quite." " But if he takes car' an' gits his reg'lar witfles an' reg'lar sleep, an' keep hisself in de sun, ma'be he might beat 'T'uselah, Mister Willie?" Tena cious hope was getting hold of the negro's voice. "It's possible, 'Lije. But I don't know." Kelly shook his head doubtfully. "Methuselah
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THE TROUBLES OF ELIJAH
lived many days in the land. I would not want to say about old Sim."
" Yes, co'se you knows, Mister Willie, but ol' Screven er mighty ol' mahn." He shook his head and was quiet for some time, doubtless calculating on the chances of Sim's attaining Methuselah's age.
The subject interested Elijah so much that he might have gone to sleep over it, if Kelly hadn't interested him with, a fresh subject.
"'Lije, what's the sergeant doing with that keg of powder he rolled into his quarters this morn ing? Has he malevolent designs on us ? Has he turned traitor to his country, and does he contem plate blowing this magnificent memorial to our one-time war feeling to the upper regions and us with it--up to the blue heaven or otherwise? Does he, Elijah, does he ?" Kelly gave a fierce look at the man of sickness.
Elijah, who suspected Kelly of trifling, but was not certain, hastened to uphold the family credit.
" Daddy not goin' to wah. Daht powder for de sahn'-flies an' skeeters."
"AhI How does your daddy intend to per suade them? Hist thee, Jebediah, lest thou lose even a consonant of Elijah's answer. It may be
197

JEB BUTTON
that the wisdom of the warrior shall avail us later. Go on, Elijah, while thou art still with us on ^earth."
" Well, daddy, he open, a kag dis mawnin'. Den he take a hahn'ful o' powder from de kag in de corner o' de room an' carry urn to middle o' flo'. Dere he mix urn so; he po' watuh so an' he dahmp um so: den she buhn up slow an' mahk smoke." For each part of the process EHjah made appropriate gestures with his fingers and palms.
"Nothing could be clearer. Tour sire is a genius, 'Lije. How often does he construct these sacrificial pyres ? "
"De fires? 'Bout one a hour some days." Elijah, the sergeant's son, had a filial notion that this apparent extravagance in war supplies needed explanation, so he added, "Sahn' flies pow'ful t'ick an' sassy in sto'room, Mister Wfflie."
Kelly thoughtfully estimated the thickness of the wall that divided their casemate from the sergeant's storeroom. " Even eighteen-inch walls sometimes flop over," he mused. Then softly he said to Jeb, " Let's move to the other end of the casemate. It's nice and sunny there." The
198

THE TBOUBLES OF ELIJAH two moved off about fifty feet and made a seat of a board on a pile of bricks.
Kelly looked back to Elijah. "Come here, 'Lije, where it's warm and sunny and give your cold feet a sun bath."
199

CHAPTER XXm
THE EXPLOSION AT FOBT PULASKI
THE darky came and sat on the ground facing them. He saw a chance to get back to the 'great health question.
" Does yo' t'ink, Mister Willie, daht I like to die soon ? " Elijah's voice was plaintive.
" 'Lije, it's my belief that you won't die in a hurry if you hold to your present mode of living." Elijah brightened. "No, Elijah, if you hold to your present mode of living. In fact," continued Kelly, " how you're ever going to die I don't know. With pain I say it, I don't know, unless your internal machinery rusts and falls into powder-- impalpable powder." Kelly paused a moment to wateh the health preserver, who now wore a dark, troubled look, and then he went on. " Reflect on that, 'Lije." Then more tragically, "Reflect on that; there is -- "
Kelly said no more then, and for good reasons. He was hurled clear over the walk to the boom
200

THE EXPLOSION AT K)RT PTJLASKI
of a tremendous explosion. It was as a hundred simultaneous thunder-claps might sound; it rang in and out among the hollows of the fort walls, and came back in a dozen echoes.
The three were driven through the air into the parade ground twenty feet away, with bricks, lime, planks, and loose mortar flying with them. Jeb, slightly stunned, helped up Kelly, who seemed weak on one leg. Together they looked for Elijah. They found him beside a small knoll, face to the earth, kicking his heels to the sky and moaning as he kicked.
" Law' bless us an' save us, I'm daid. I knows I'm daid. Where's de doctor? Oh, I's so youngS Dere's oT Sim --O Mister Willie, I'm daid; I'll nevuh breade no mo', nevuh."
Kelly, hopping on one leg, could not resist this. He motioned to Jeb. They turned a bar rel of lime upside down on the prostrate negro, Kelly shrieking at the same time, "Rise, 'Lije, rise! The fort is blowing up. The magazine will soon go. If you care to live, fly! Spread your wings, 'Lije, and save yourself!" Kelly wound this up with sharp strokes of a limber lath, "Fly, fly, fly!" Elijah bounded to his feet and dashed for the sally port with his lime-
201

JEB BUTTON
covered head bent low. His feet beat quick time over the planks.
" He seems to have forgotten his heart trouble," said Kelly, as Elijah turned the corner.
Graves and Harper now came running up. " The bateau I was building has gone to smash," said Graves. From behind a pyramid of shot, as they listened to the bursting of small shells in the storeroom, they noticed, among the deTjris on the walk, the sergeant's head sticking out. They decided that he must be got out, and that at once.
They rolled two big water casks before them until they were abreast of the sergeant. Kelly and Harper watched their chance, made a dash around the end of one cask, and dragged him away. He asked after Elijah.
"He's all right," said Kelly. "He left here ten minutes ago, going west like a gull before a gale. He's miles away now."
The sergeant looked relieved. He asked after his wife and mother-in-law, but the rescuers were glum. "They must be inside," said Kelly; "well get them out at once." They placed the sergeant behind the pile of shot and rolled the water casks up to the storeroom again, this
202

THE EXPLOSION AT FORT PTTLASKI
time with Kelly inside one and Harper inside the other, Jeb and Graves pushing the casks from behind with their heads bent low.
Small one-inch shells were bursting about them in a lively manner, but the heavy oak staves served for fine bulwarks.
They had thought out an ingenious scheme for looking through the bung-holes for the missing ones. Soon a protesting voice from Harper said there was no bung-hole there. Graves answered that it must be there. "Who ever heard of a wine cask without a bung-hole?" said Graves. Another examination by Harper located the bung-hole under his feet, and, of course, out of range. Graves bounced the bar rel about until the bung-hole came in line with Harper's eyes. Kelly and Harper announced no women in sight.
The casks were rolled back. A conference decided that the women must have been buried tinder the kitchen ruins.
Once more they marshalled their barrels. Be^ hind the rolling intrenchments they scanned the kitchen ruins, but no women were seen. The small shells were still piping intermittently, like corks at a banquet. Amidst the light firing they
203

JEB HUTTON
heard a wail,--a long, low wail -- a discouraged but not despairing wail,--like the cry of a soul in purgatory rather than of one wholly lost.
"The magazine," shouted the rescuers. Back to the open parade ground they fell.
The usually closed doors of the magazine had been left open this day; but as they opened out on the walk and were guarded by a brick porch, there was no danger of penetrating shells, as no shells have yet been invented to chase around corners.
Approaching the magazine from the sally-port side, the four stole within the outer door. The wails were heard more clearly now. Removing their shoes to prevent possible sparks from the iron nails coming in contact with the flags of the floor, they passed within. Graves flashed his lantern light above and below and side ways. In a farther corner on a keg of powder sat the old lady. On another keg near by was the sergeant's wife. Both had their heads buried in their aprons, and were crooning and moaning and feebly ululating. Hope was ringing but weakly in their muffled voices.
Hearing the clang of the closing door, they uncovered their faces on which the shifting
204

THE EXPLOSION AT FORT PULASK1
light fell alternately. In the dark they could not make out their rescuers. Only this puzzling light was there, with moving, rustling sounds, as of animated silence. The two women howled like banshees.
Graves explained the situation to the fright ened women. They were overjoyed to hear that the sergeant was alive, and that the Fort would probably not blow up. The effect of the explo sion, it seemed, was to blow them out the kitchen door, but it had really damaged them no more than to confuse their ideas. They had ran into the magazine because it looked so dark, and seemed to offer a safe place to hide from the flying bricks and small shells.
The two were now escorted to the battered sergeant, who sorely needed their attention. Harper telephoned for a tug and a surgeon for the sergeant, whose body was marked by cuts in several places. But these minor injuries were nothing to the gallant soldier's fear of disfigure ment. " Will mah face be marked, do yon think, Mister Willie?" he asked of Kelly many times.
"Well," said that young man, "your burns may leave some traces, but nothing noticeable -- nothing noticeable, Sergeant." As the sergeant
205

JEB HUTTON
was a. coal-black negro, Kelly thought that this was an answer bordering on the truth, and very judicious withal.
The four carried the disabled sergeant to the north landing to await the tug. As they neared the wharf, they saw a boatman in the river. It turned out to be the invalid son, who had been resting on his oars in mid-stream, waiting for the magazine to blow up. He seemed not to be conscious that the others of the family might have been in great danger.
The tug arrived. After they had put the damaged sergeant aboard, and arranged for bis care and comfort, they returned to size up the damage. Jeb and Kelly were badly bruised. Jeb's coat sleeve was torn, and his shoulder cut and swollen. His ribs were blue and yellow on one side. Kelly's left knee was puffed out; his neck was cut, showing where something sharp had scaled it; his forehead bled, and his hips and back were lame. Otherwise both Jeb and Kelly were intact. After sounding themselves over again, Kelly said hopefully, " We seem to be still in the ring, Jeb, and I think it's the sense of this meeting that we got off lightly."
They returned to the esplanade inside (he Fort 206

THE EXPLOSION AT FORT PULASKI
and there waited behind their casks until the little shells quit cracking. They then entered and found the storeroom a wreck. The floor and wall at each end had been blown away. In imagina tion they saw where the powder trail ran from the barrel to the sergeant's little bonfire in the middle of the room. It was easy to picture a spark passing along a neglected trail of dropped powder to the open barrel, and then the sergeant getting hoisted through the window or door. They weren't agreed as to whether it was the door or the window.
"Perhaps he went through the wall," sug gested Graves.
"Through the wall and live?" asked Kelly. "Why not?" answered Graves. The kitchen was flattened to a heap of litter. The stove, dismembered, from whose snug warmth and shelter the old lady had driven her invalid grandson, "'bout er hour 'fore breakfus' every mawnin'," was scattered to the winds. Kettles, pans, and pots lay all over the lot, In the boat-building casemate they found the wrecked bateau -- Graves's pride. Of what was going to be the finest bateau ever launched on the river, they could not find two pieces that
207

JEB HUTTON
matched, to show that once they formed adjoining parts of a naval masterpiece. Bed and yellow paint marked the walls left standing. Graves picked up the few bits of the boat he found and put them aside in a neat little pile.
All thoughts of hunting were given up for the day. Graves felt sad for the loss of the boat, and Jeb and Kelly were hardly equal to han dling a gun. Jeb's shoulder was swelling more and more, while Kelly had free use of only one leg. But they could let Jeb look at Tricks. The one thousand dollar dog was paraded by the proud owner and his no less proud friends.
"What do you think?" said KeUy, after a long examination of fine points.
Jeb knew a good dog when he saw one, and now he proved his knowledge by words that tickled the sense of the others mightily. "I'll give you his photo," said Harper, " with his pedi gree on the back."
Kelly and Jeb attended to each other's bruises that night on the dredge, with a sense of thank fulness that things were no worse. If the day had not been pleasant, it had at least been lively.
208

CHAPTER XXIV

A SUGGESTION FOR THANKSGIVING

ONE fine afternoon -- the explosion at the Fort

was so recent a thing that it was yet almost ring

ing in their ears -- Jeb was reading history in

the pilot-house of the Sweetbrier when he heard

Kelly's voice hailing Captain Derry. The tug

was stopped, and soon that lively young man had

climbed over the rail and was on his way to the

upper deck.

"Mind that big negro that came near getting

away with Burden's money?" queried Kelly

before he was yet halfway up the stairs that led

to the house.

"Yes," answered Jeb and Derry together.

" Well, he's been identified from his description

as Black Rube beyond all question. It seems

he killed a storekeeper over in one of the' sea

islands on the Carolina coast, over near Beaufort

River, and also killed the storekeeper's boy,

who tried to prevent his escape with the money

p

209

JEB BUTTON
from the till. He was caught and identified, but got away again--he was armed this time."
" My soul, hut he's a had lot, ain't he ? " com mented Derry.
"Bad? He's a desperate nigger. If ever I run across him again, you may he sure I'll take no chances. I'll let drive if he so much as makes a move--that is," added Kelly with a grin, "if he don't get his in first. He can shoot like a flash, they say."
" Ifs an awful thing to kill a man, isn't it ? " said Jeb; " but in some cases, if your life was in danger, or a friend's life, say, it would be right to kiU him, wouldn't it ? "
" Don't you make no mistake there, son," said Derry. "If ever a brute like this Black Rube crosses your road and endangers your life, or, as you say, a friend's life, you just let him have it quick, with both barrels, if it's a shot gun that's handiest, and the whole magazine if it's a repeatin' rifle you got."
"The reason I'm so sore on him," explained Kelly, "is because he sent out word that he's going to shoot me. 'Look out,' he says, 'early in de mawnin.' or late at night--look out.' And I suppose I'd better be looking out. So if you see
210

A SUGGESTION FOE THANKSGIVING
Mr. Black Rube again, Jeb, why I'd consider it a favor if you'd pass the word along."
Jeb did not join in Kelly's smile. The matter seemed to him too serious to joke about.
Kelly, noting Jeb's soberness, turned the sub ject. " When are you going to try for those lov ing cups, Captain Deny? Last night, you know, the fedora brought the time down to fifty-nine minutes and some twenty odd seconds from No. 11 buoy to Exchange Dock. What do you say to that?"
" Well, I reckon if nobody don't beat that, they'll get the cups aboard the fedora. Our last run from No. 11 buoy was a minute slower 'n that, but the time ain't up, I reckon."
" No, it isn't. But you don't want to let them get away. They'll make great cups to drink peach cider out of, Cap. However, that isn't what I came to talk about particularly. Sit over here, Jeb, while I tell you. You see it's this."
Kelly walked with a limp, and as he laid him self in Jeb's hammock, he was careful to favor his left knee, which reminded him of that pleasant day at the Fort. Once comfortably settled, he broke into his subject in his usual direct fashion.
"Last night, Jeb, I had a long talk with the 211

JEB HUTTON
engineer of the dredge. "We swapped tobacco in an early chat in my room, and later in the more secret recesses of the boiler room. Now you might never suspect it, but the chief was born in a coun try town in New England -- in Quincy, Massachu setts, I think he said. He lived there until he was sixteen years old, when he ran away to Bos ton and to sea. Although he left home early in life, yet he's steeped in New England notions and is full of old legends about witches and switches, and Quaker hangings and Indian killings, and other things which you and I only read lightly of in our general American history. But his great est hobby is for the old New England customs. He's got great notions of Thanksgiving Day espe cially, which he says is the finest day of all the year, without barring Fourth of July or Christmas or Washington's birthday. On Thanksgiving Day all the young folk who have been off in the world making money hurry back to revive old memories and take dinner with the old mother and father. This Thanksgiving dinner, he says, is an institution which every decent New England family venerates. It's twenty years since he's been home, and his soul yearns for just one good, old-fashioned New England Thanksgiving
212

A SUGGESTION FOR THANKSGIVING
dinner. Bat it is out of the question for him to go home, for he can't afford to lose his joh. He left his thrifty ways behind him in Quincy, Massa chusetts, and has no money saved up for a vaca tion. He put it to me that we ought to celebrate the coming Thanksgiving in good Christian fash ion, by which I suppose he means New England fashion, with a tremendous dinner of turkey and fixings. He said that the Georgia woods hold some of the finest turkeys in the world. So I got thinking it over, Jeb, and I've made up my mind that, as we must be at work here on the river that day, owing to the itching of contractors for the almighty dollar, we might just as well have one of those turkey dinners and a general hurrah, such as the chief speaks of as being the proper thing up there in New England. Now no doubt, Jeb, you could send up to somebody near your home and have a big fat turkey shipped down here ?"
Jeb, ever anxious to be of use to Kelly in any manner whatever, said: "Popper has some of the finest turkeys in Georgia, I believe. I'll tell him to send Buster, the biggest and finest in the yard. Buster's the finest turkey for miles around, popper says in his letters. He's what you yourself would call a whale of a bird--such
213

JEB HUTTON
a comb and feathers! You don't know--they're all colors. Why," said the enthusiastic Jeb, "he's a honey-maloo of a turkey."
Kelly sat up and grasped Jeb's arm delightedly. "Buster's the very bird. I can see him now in red, black, and blue, purple and green. Send for him, Jeb, send for him! Don't waste a minute. Write a letter to your daddy now, and we'll have the contractor's launch take it up to mail when she goes to town this very after noon. We'll have a turkey dinner that'll make the chief think he's back on the farm in Quincy, Massachusetts, with his grandpa --with his grand pa's grandpa, so reminiscent will it be. I swan, we will--b'gosh, whoa!" Kelly bounced in the hammock with glee.
So Jeb wrote to his father of the urgency of the case, and asked hiTM to send down Buster, the pride of the flock.
Then the news got abroad that the steward of No. 6 was going to give a great Thanksgiv ing Day dinner, aided and abetted by Inspector Kelly. From the modest little tug Jessie to the more mature Fedora, thence via the brazen Timbrel to the stately, shapely Olivetta, went the news; the gentle Zephyr breathed it lightly to her
2U

A SUGGESTION FOR THANKSGIVING
sister tug the West Wind. From the Cross Tides to the Sea-buoy, a length of thirty miles, the word was passed that the steward of No. 6 had put himself on record for a Thanksgiving Day dinner, and that he was to be helped in all things by Mr. Kelly, that pattern of inspectors, and young Mr. Button, his good-natured assistant.
The fortunate crew of No. 6 were envied. When the news got out that Charlie Thornessen was going back to Norway and a sick father after an absence of ten years, he was besieged for information by candidates for his place. Charlie admitted his intended departure, but dashed hopes by refusing to leave until after the feast day.
"We iss to harf a great tinner on Tarnksgiffing," said Charlie; "unt Sweeten unt the ol' marn earn wait a little lonker." Then the candi dates became a little less clamorous. And the preparations, which had thus far consisted mainly of plans, went on merrily.
215

CHAPTER XXV
THE ADVENT OF BUSTER
a week elapsed after the conference be tween Kelly and Jeb when the bird arrived. As the contractor's launch steamed alongside, and the expected guest poked his head out between the slats of his crate, Kelly, by way of salute from the top of the dredge, blew three long whistles that quivered with joy.
When the proud turkey was liberated, he erected his fine head and moved about on long, high-stepping legs--truly an inspiration to look at. He was as gaudy as a member of the Abra ham Lincoln Light Infantry Colored Guards of Savannah on Emancipation Day, and as pom pously magnificent as the drum-major of a mili tary band on a holiday trip.
He was installed in an honored place close by the boiler drum on the engine-room deck, where the engineer--he who hailed from Quincy, Mas sachusetts--might keep an eye on him. He was treated with an attentive affection that evidently
216

THE ADVENT OP BUSTER
charmed him, he gobbled so. He lived on plush, as Kelly said. The hitherto monarch of the machine, a feliae beauty named Belvidere, Chris tian name Apollo, hid himself abashed after a short dazzled look at this greater glory. Visitors from afar came to see him; all paid due homage to his irresistible beauty, and went away sounding his praises; although some, particularly those from No. 2 dredge near by, might have been suspected of nourishing a germ of envy because of some of the remarks they made of him.
He became an institution. All the river craft as they passed hailed out inquiries and hopes for his health. He was coveted by many, and various attempts were made to kidnap him. One morn ing just before dawn, while the watchman was raking the fire-boxes below preparatory to getting up steam, the dredge was boarded for purposes inimical to the peace of Buster. So noiselessly did the conspirators move that the watchman did not hear their steps. But brave Buster gobbled and flapped so fiercely that the freebooters were scared away, and they hurried off in the dark. Those on No. 6 always believed that the raid was the work of No. 2, who had ever been envious of the good things that came to No. 6.
217

JEB HUTTON
After that attempt, the general esteem for Buster increased to something akin to reverence. There was not a night now that the watchman did not flash a hull's-eye at least every quarter hour through the galley window. He also kept a fire in the galley stove that Buster might be nicely warm during those hours when steam was low on the dredge. On several mornings the engineer got up at four o'clock to rake his own fires that the watchman might have more leisure to attend to Buster's early feeding. Kelly built a wire fence around him, and by cunning little electrical devices connected it to his own room, in case evil marauders with felonious designs on Buster might find the watchman asleep. Every night before he retired Kelly turned on the switch, and tamper ing with Buster's fence" any night when Kelly was aboard, at any time between 11 P.M. and 5 A.M., meant the reception by the guilty one of a load of No. 4 shot from an ancient smoothbore that scat tered beautifully. Nothing but far space escaped that gun when it cut loose. It was a great time for the proud beauty.
The matter of feed for Buster caused many weighty conferences between the steward and Kelly. He was tried on a diet of grits, corn, rice,
218

THE ADVENT OF BUSTER
bread puddings, peanuts, fruit-cake, and yams baked in milk. Kelly read up all sorts of farm and poultry books in his search for " pointers " on poultry. He consulted cyclopaedias and bought current and back numbers of Farm and Poultry, the Farmer's Friend, and such publications. From these he got many new ideas--some of them very fine, he said. He had the steward mix rich custards and make up soft, sweet-corn boluses, feeding Buster with his own hand. Engineer White would sometimes stop the digging and come out of the caboose to see the process of feed ing, allowing, at the same time, the crew the privilege of standing around and looking on. Occasionally Kelly would let the foreman feed, and once, as a mark of great favor, the mate -- Big John--was allowed to serve him custard from a paper quill. A proud bird was Buster.
Once Kelly thought of feeding him on fish. The engineer couldn't remember that they ever served fish to domestic fowl on the old farm in Quincy, Massachusetts; no book or pamphlet said anything of fish as turkey food; but there was no reason why it shouldn't be good. It was nourishing to physical and mental man, rich in
219

JEB HUTTON
phosphorus for the brain, and other good things for the muscle and adipose tissue. Therefore, why should it not be good for Buster? "Why not?" queried Kelly. "Why not?" echoed the engineer. Moreover, the sea-gulls of the harbor and the buzzards of the beach fought hard for fish and thrived on it, and who were they that they should have fish and Buster go without? So Kelly caught a half-dozen puff-bodied, big-headed, new-hatched catfish and as many little long-tailed tommies. The steward, the engineer, the foreman, Kelly, Charlie Thornessen, O'Brien, and Lusk watched eagerly as the fish were dumped on the floor before Buster. The royal bird first eyed them, then sniffed at a full-necked baby catfish; going farther, he picked one up, and shook it once or twice tentatively, throwing his head well back to add grace and snap to his movements. He low ered his head in doubt, then shook the little fellow again more easily, to give it a fair trial. This seemed to determine him negatively, for with a final compound wriggle of his long stately neck he swung the "kLttie" over his head and into the starboard steam-box. "Whoo!" exclaimed the chief, and timidly tried a long-tailed tommy. Buster scratched a thoroughbred claw contemptu-
220

THE ADVENT OF BUSTER
ously on the deck, and stalked the length of his cord in disdainful rejection.
" Gosh," said the engineer. " Pshaw, them fish no good," said the steward, and disgustedly kicked the trial fish into the river. O'Brien and Lusk fell on the rest and booted the useless things overheard. Charlie saved one little tommy to swing it by its long tail far out into the channel with a low rejectful "Huh, Tommies iss no goot--no. They neffer wass." These were Coronation days for Buster. His feathers grew as glossy as a new-polished stove or a blue-barrelled rifle, while his plumpness rounded into obesity. "He'll weigh above thirty pounds by Thanksgiving Day," commented the chief. One dark day Buster seemed droopy. "Psy chological and telepathic, and therefore natural," was Kelly's explanation of this phenomenal symp tom; "he scents his finish." But the engineer protested that it was no such thing, that turkeys never acted, so in Massachusetts without a reason; whereat Kelly, saying, "That's good enough for me," took him to the Fort, that he might have the run of the grass there under Johnnie Nansen's protection. The engineer, accompanied
221

JEB HUTTON
by Kelly and Jeb, there visited him every night to look at his tongue, dreading the pip, and to get Johnnie's report of his daily actions. But four days of that absence were all that the crew of No. 6 could stand. Led by the steward and Charlie Thornessen, they asked for his recall. Kelly yielded at once, and there was great rejoic ing on his return. On the night of reinstallation on board the dredge, the idolatrous crew, as they smoked their pipes, circled about him and once more talked in low, happy tones. One said 'twas a pity that so fair a bird should have to die; but the months of the others only parted to drool anticipatingly. At this time it was only a week to Thanksgiving Day.
So things happened and so days flew until the night before the great day. Kelly and Jeb were to go to Savannah on the Sweeibrier to purchase some little luxuries for the next day's dinner; but Buster was not to be disturbed until the morning. He was to be allowed as long a respite as was consistent with good cooking.
The tug went to town that night with the steam singing in her pipes, and Marlin careless of the complaints from the safeiy-valve. The run from the dredge to the city Exchange Dock was
222

THE ADVENT OP BUSTER made in fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds, with the young flood tide. "Nigh half a minute shy of the Fedora's run, but we'll get them cups yet," said Deny, when they gave him the time. " We'll get 'em yet, we'll get 'em yet. There's two weeks yet."
On the dredge the night was one of sadness, mingled with anticipation of the great joy of the morrow. The steward proudly placed the bird in favoring postures; all were agreed on his rich juiciness and rare development of plump tissue. " He iss fine unt fat-- iss," chuckled Charlie Thornessen between two puffs of a pipe. The engineer discoursed long and reminiscently of his boyhood days in Massachusetts. His oration was sweetly melancholy. That night, each man of the crew took one last fond look, and then turned in to dream of Buster.
223

CHAPTER XXVI
THE APOTHEOSIS OF BUSTER
IK the city, Jeb forsook his room at his own boarding-house to be with Kelly for the entire evening. They sat up the greater part of the night and talked of many things, but chiefly of what would make the best stuffing for Buster. It was four o'clock when they strolled out in the dark and started for the dock, with Jeb carrying a large basket for purchases to be made.
They stopped at Greek George's fruit-stand for dates, nuts, raisins, oranges, figs, and other dain ties that go well with a turkey dinner. In this they had been instructed by the engineer. " You can't get too many," the engineer had said, and so Kelly said, "Fill the basket till the cover pops." The new young fellow at the store on this morning could speak but little English, but he knew enough for his business. He knew noth ing of figures of twelve, but all about a dozen or a half-dozen. Two for five, three for ten, and so
224

THE APOTHEOSIS OP BUSTER

on, were glib on his tongue. He could make

change for any kind of money. Even small three-

cent pieces failed to puzzle him. His stock was

of the very best -- "most best," he said. It oc

curred to Kelly and Jeb that the Greek's language

was strong in adjectives, and those of the superla

tive degree, largely. But this was an unsophisti

cated Greek--only three weeks in the country.

Of America he knew little, but of Hellas he knew

much. Those lemons there, for thirta the dozen,

were grown by George's brother, who had a grove

in the isle of--neither could catch the name.

"But in the JSgean Sea, no doubt--let it go,"

said Kelly. This brother was Loues, who grew

the finest lemons in all the Mediterranean. Yes,

there were other good lemons, most best lemons,

but none like these. No. This Loues must not

be confounded with the other Loues Krouptous,

who, although he had a fine place, paid not the

attention to his business--no. He went into the

mountains every year for two, three, four months,

and returned with many bags of drachmae. (Here

a shoulder and eyebrow movement hinted awful

things to Kelly and Jeb.)

" Can't you see that brigand, Jeb, coming

down the winding mountain pass with the glow

Q

225

JEB BUTTON
of the carmine dawn about him? A knight of the mountain passes he will be, in velveteen knickerbockers and a winding sash arrange ment, as long as a steamer's burgee, wrapped around his fat waist, with brass-bound pistols and knife stack in it most gracefully. And a velvet cloak. Did you ever -see 'Fra Diavolo'? No? Well, you must see it next time it comes to Savannah. Even if it's a ten, twenty, thirty show, you'll have to see 'Fra Diavolo.' And a broad-brimmed, high-pointed hat, with tin halffrancs or tobacco tags around the edge of the rim, and a hole in the chimney part, for ven tilation, I suppose, and over his shoulders a sawed-off, bell-mouthed gun. I know exactly the kind of a gun, Jeb. I fired one like it once at a bunch of alligators--a wide-muzzled gun. We fired it another time--two of us used to take turns at it--from a low duck boat into a flock of mallards. We killed one duck and a dozen or two of whitefish. The poor fish might have thought they were safe in the water, but they weren't, and they came floating to the top. The duck was shot sure enough--she sank from the weight of the lead; but the fish died from the concussion. It was shallow water. Do you
226

THE APOTHEOSIS OF BUSTER
know," whispered Kejly to Jeb, "I'm beginning to have quite a bit of respect for anybody that's got a real swell bandit for a relative. And do you know that the more I look at this fellow the more I'm beginning to think that we'd befcter watch out for ourselves. It seems to me, now that I look at him, that he's got a most wicked eye, and look at that scar on his cheek! See how the color comes and goes! or is it the gasolene light that's flaring? or is it a smutch from a blood orange ? Only that I fear to hurt his feelings by looking at him too closely, I'd -- "
"But it wasn't his relative that was the ban dit," interjected Jeb.
"Wasn't it? Why, so it wasn't," Kelly smiled slyly. "Anyway, let's hurry away to the dock. And how it's blowing! Must have been some thing doing in the way of wind down around Tybee Knoll last night. Let's hurry."
Over piles of nuts and bolts, anvils and iron hoops, sheet iron and boiler plate, they stumbled with the luck of men who take chances, until they reached the edge of Crook's wharf, where they found the Sweefbrier with the hot steam hissing as usual from her querulous valves.
The lovely Sweeibrier turned loose long before 227

JEB HUTTON
the rise of the sun on this November morning. Old Deny hugged the red ranges closely on the trip down, everything was so dark, and the pilot house was closed to the chill northeaster. It was barely light when they went by No. 4 dredge two miles astern of No. 6. On No. 2, which they next passed, the watchman swung his "all right'* lantern signal, slacked his port breast-line to the tug's tooting, and as she swept by he yelled something that sounded like "Buster."
"What did he say about Buster?" said Kelly. "I dunno," returned old Deny. "But I do know he'd like to get a bite o' Buster." " Wouldn't he like to, though," said Jeb. Then crushing a selfish feeling, " We might send No. 2 over some, if there's any left." "H there's any left?" repeated Derry. Merely his tone made a paragraph. " And they tried to steal him once," said Kelly. As they approached No. 6 something seemed to be wrong. As they got still closer, the signs of distress became even clearer. The dredge was riding from her stern anchor, which implied heavy weather the night before. Then they saw the flag at half-mast and noted the yawl-boat at the waist-davits with her side stove in. The
228

THE APOTHEOSIS OF BUSIER

stout hull of the machine showed no signs of

damage, but the heavy stern davits were down.

It then occurred to those on the tug that the

northeast wind of the previous night, which had

been but moderately felt in the city, must have

been a severe blow here at the mouth of the

river. As the tug drew still nearer, the watchers

in the pilot-house looked through the glasses

for gaps in the crew. They could not see the

engineer nor the steward and they voiced their

fears together. It was their joint belief that

the two ' men had been washed overboard and

lost. To confirm their belief, there was the flag

at half-mast, and the gloomy faces that met them

as the Sweetbrier came alongside.

'

"What's wrong?" helloed Kelly.

It was Foreman Watson who told the dismal

tale. "About midnight the wind started up from

the sou'west and made things howl for an hour

or so. Then she jumped to the northeast and

stirred things up more yet. The sea washed in

the galley, and the steward, in trying to save some

of his stuff, was washed overboard. Well, we

went out and picked him up, but in boarding the

machine the yawl got stove in and the steward

got jammed up. He'll be all right in a day or

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JEB BUTTON
two, bat he's in his bunk now. Bat that ain't the worst of it. The chief--"
"Yes, the chief--" gasped those on the tog, prepared now to hear of the engineer's death.
" The chief got his arm broken trying to save --to save--" stuttered Foreman Watson.
" To save whom--what ? " with awful misgiving. " Buster!" gasped Watson. " Buster's gone!" The silence was supreme for a moment. Then -- "Gone!" whispered Kelly. "Gone!" echoed Jeb. " Gone!" gasped old Deny incredulously, and * Buster gone!" from the tug's dazed crew, in a heavy, soulful chorus. The tug's crew expected a share of Buster. And a sympathetic groan went up from the crew of the dredge. No man felt quite equal to the occasion, and, with a fine sense of their weakness, all groaned again in spontaneous unison of despair. The crew of the tug looked at the crew of the dredge, and the crew of the dredge looked away. A pale, dejected face peeped out from the win dow above the steward's bunk; a wail was heard from the region of Quincy, Massachusetts; Charlie Thornessen crossed his arms on his breast, lowered
230

THE APOTHEOSIS OF BUSTER
his eyes, turned his face to the house, and all but cried as he once more whispered to himself of the cruel fate of Buster.
All were drooping under the weight of the gen eral woe, and they might have continued to re main depressed for an indefinitely long time, had not Kelly's natural huoyancy asserted itself early in the period of mourning. He first went in and stood the steward on his feet and ordered him to get such breakfast as he could. He fol lowed this by making a hot lemonade for all hands, with one of double strength for New England's exiled son. He stood up on the steambox, took off his hat, and began an oration.
"Now, boys, get together. A great calamity has passed over us. Buster's gone. He was a . wonder in his class, and the heavy-weight class at that; but he's gone, and may peace go with him. Here is breakfast; and there are good things in that basket. Here are lemons, hot water, sugar, and other things. Get together."
It was as he said, and they were long at the table. He himself went in and had a long talk with the engineer, who was very downcast.
Cheer up," said Kelly. " How can I ? " replied the chief. " Ain't it an
231

JEB BUTTON
awful affliction? I never heard of a turkey fail ing like that up in Massachusetts."
He grew tender toward the memory of Buster. He gulped out at short intervals, between swal lows of his lemonade, "Good old Buster--game old Buster--he deserved better. I swum he did, didn't he, Mr. Kelly?" To each ejaculation Kelly assented warmly.
Leaving the engineer, Kelly reentered the messroom to hear Charlie Thornessen recite how he and the chief saw Buster going down with the after-davit's port stanchion, to which they had made him fast that he might have plenty of fresh air for that last night on earth with his friends. Charlie told graphically how they had tried to save him, and how the chief got reckless and was washed after him ; how he himself swam for the stanchion, and reached for Buster only to miss him just as the game bird gobbled his death-cry -- a noble death-cry--the best Charlie had ever heard. The chief was picked up clinging to the stanchion, his arm broken and crying like a baby for Buster, who was nowhere in sight. The parted cord ex plained Buster's disappearance, and the engineer took to his bed and, being a moderate man, had behaved with great calmness. "Any oder
232

THE APOTHEOSIS OF BUSTER
marn woult half been full like a loated scow," said Charlie in admiration of the engineer's self-control.
Kelly soon got the men to work, with the fore man doing double duty for the time, but all the mud excavated that day would hardly have paid for the watchman's tobacco, and he, being a care ful, timid man, who feared heart trouble, was a light smoker. How the foreman accounted for the poor day's work to the contractor, or how Kelly explained the delay in his official report, is a mat ter for deep calculation or light guesswork, ac cording to temperament; but in any event it is immaterial to this history.
But they did not let the memory of Buster perish from the earth. On the wall of the engineroom of No. 6, within a fancy scroll just above the door, the crew caused to be painted a likeness of a high-crested, proud, and noble-looking turkey of splendid coloring, red and blue on deep bronze. Just below the painting they had lettered a solemn "Requieseat in Pace."
After consulting Kelly, Charlie translated the inscription when it was first flashed on the crew. " Hiss soul iss in heafen," said Charlie. " Glory," said the crew.
It was the apotheosis of Buster. 233

CHAPTER XXVH
THE ACCIDENT OUT THE DBEDGE
IT was the last day on which the tow-boats were to be allowed a trial for the loving cups, and Kelly had been aboard the Sweeibrier, discussing with Jeb and Captain Deny the probable outcome of this last attempt to get the cups. They had gone over the Sweeffmer from stem to stern, to see why she shouldn't outfoot the Fedora, and after that had gone out in a bateau and set a row of empty bottles along the tops of the piles. At one hundred and fifty yards, off-hand, quick firing, the bottles lasted but a short time. Watching them flash into fragments from the piles, one after the other, especially before the shooting of Jeb, who was remarkably fast getting his rifle up and Ms ball away, Deny had remarked, " If they was a row of men, now, they wouldn't stand a heap of a show, I'm thinkin'." After breaking the last bottle, Jeb had laid his rifle on the locker, with a "Be careful, everybody. That's loaded."
234

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE
The Sweetbrier had long returned from the dumping ground, and was swinging from her mooring buoy, stern up river and stem headjng to the sluggish flood tide. It was well along in the afternoon, with a light hreeze blowing in from the sea, and the sun was yet an hour above the marshland, on the Georgia shore.
Having sufficiently discussed the matter of the racing and shooting, they were now talking over a chance offered to Kelly to make a trip around the world in the handsome steam yacht, the Parting Friend, of Baltimore, which that very morning, with her owner and his sixteen-year-old son aboard, had gone up the river to the city of Savannah.
"Mr. Butler wrote me of this a month ago, from Baltimore," Kelly was saying. " He's going to stay here a day or two, then put south to St. Augustine, and be back again in a week or so. He'll go home then, and about New Tear's he'll leave here for the long trip. As tutor to his son, to prepare him for Tale, my work will be light, and I shall have a chance to look about a bit. As I want to see some of this globe, and I don't know when I'd get another chance so good, I think I ought to take this one."
Captain Deny, wrapped in smoke without and 235

JEB HUTTON
deep contemplation within, was resting against the spokes of the wheel. Kelly and Jeb were looking out of the windows in constrained silence, and, for want of something better in which to seem to be interested, were gazing idly toward the dredge. Both dreaded to face the coming separation, and' neither felt quite equal to the task of renewing the conversation, when they noted, simultane ously, that the dredge had stopped working. Slowly she swung her big bucket around, and let it drop easily on the end of the scow.
This incident relieved the tension on the nerves of the two friends.
"Toggle gave way, probably," said Jeb, who was gradually becoming acquainted with the workings of a dredging machine.
" Or key," suggested Kelly. " There go Charlie and John to fix it. Too bad Newman's laid up. He'd save half an hour right here; Charlie's a good hand, but it takes two men, and John isn't much use." And turning to Derry, "I hope it isn't anything that will detain your tug to-night, Captain', or otherwise interfere with her trying for the cups."
"My soul, I hope not," ejaculated Derry. "Her last chance to-night, too."
236

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE
They watched the men at work for a few minutes. Then Kelly turned to old Derry. " Cap, I wish you'd put me aboard the scow. I'd like to hammer on that thing myself. Too had to lose time now. It may delay us so that we shan't he able to get away with the others for the run up the river. Some of those others would be glad to see you out of it."
" Yes," said Deny, in a tone of pride, " they're all afraid of the Sweeibrier, an' everything's ready for her to do her prettiest to-night. That record of fifty-nine minutes an' twenty-seven seconds of the Fedora's will last, till just the minute we pass Exchange Dock to-night an' no longer. This steam-boat's cert'nly goin' to fly along this evenin'. Tou hear me, people. Jest two seconds now, Mr. Kelly, an' we'll be along side."
The Sweeibrier had not quite reached the scow when the dipper was swung clear and suspended over the water with Charlie and John hanging on tightly, John was afraid of that kind of work. Once he had slipped and nearly lost his life, and he never quite got over the fright of it.
Kelly knew of John's timidity, and so, when 237

JEB BUTTON
he stepped on the half-loaded scow, he called out: " Wait a minute, Charlie, and I'll help you on that. Don't you bother any more, John. Just hang on and I'll lend Charlie a hand."
He sprang easily over the eight feet or more of space between the scow and the dipper, and caught lightly but firmly on the edge of the bucket.
"Mr. Kelly do take more chances than enough 'round a dredge," remarked old Derry, as he watched Kelly regain his balance after his leap to the bucket. "Some day he'll have a bit o' bad luck, an' then I reckon somethin' '11 happen. It ain't no use talkin' to him. He'd say now if I was to speak to him, 'Oh, shucks, Cap, it's only a bath if I do fall over,' and that's all the satisfaction I'd get.
"Why, even the darkies rowin' up an' down the river can't help noticin' him sometimes. There was a feller came by here a minute ago goin' shootin' or somethin' over Dafuskie way; he had a rifle. Why, even that feller stops, an' I could see him starin' at Kelly surprised like when he jumps onto that dipper a minute ago. He oughtn't to do it, ought he, Mr. Button?"
238

THE ACCIDENT OS THE DEEDGE
"No, he ought to be more careful, maybe," admitted Jeb. " But is that the darky you mean over there by the North Jetty -- the fellow in the bateau that's watching now?"
" That's the feller--a big, black darky -- " "There's something about him reminds me of something or other--I can't think now just what," said Jeb. "Where are your glasses, Captain ? " Jeb adjusted the glasses and trained them on the darky over by the jetty. The work of repairing was slight, and Kelly soon signalled to foreman Watson that the dipper could be swung back to the scow again. "All right now, swing her back," was what he said; but before the foreman could put on steam to swing the bucket back Kelly made ready to jump. "Let me go first to see if it's really slippery," he said to Charlie and John. He stood poised to leap to the scow, ready to leap as 'he had done a hundred times before, but he never leaped this time. There was a sharp crack--they all heard it, and wondered what it meant. Only Jeb knew, and he was leaning out of the pilot-house with his rifle cocked. He saw the big negro orer by the jetty raise his rifle again. He whipped up his
239

JEB BUTTON
own, drew down and fired, just as Kelly toppled, tried to hold Ms feet on the edge of the bucket, shot forward and pitched down, with his head glancing along the edge of the scow as he fell. All saw that, and all saw Kelly go down splash ing; but only Jeb and Captain Deny saw the negro over by the jetty fall over the gunnel of the bateau, while the bateau capsized, and both darky and boat went floating off in the tide.
All hands were watching Kelly, and as he went down all closed toward the spot to see him come up, but no Kelly came up.
"He's sucked unter the scow," said Charlie, choking in his throat and crouching on the bucket ready to dive at a rising head.
Watching and waiting, no further word was said until Jeb, boots off and half stripped, jumped from the tug and ran to the edge of the scow and peered eagerly into the yellow water beneath.
" Open 3 and 4 pockets," said somebody. "Don't touch them," screamed Jeb. "They would drop and kill him. Mr. Watson," he called frantically, "what can we do? Is there no chance for him ? " "My boy, this flood tide is just about enough to pin him to the flat bottom of the scow, if he's
240

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DBEDGE

stunned. Probably he's sucked under that end

pocket well; if he ain't unconscious and can

fight loose, there's one hundred and twenty feet of

scow for him to pass under. He'll go in and out

of every well on the way; that is, if he don't stray

off under the dredge and be lost altogether. If he

stays in line with the scow, and with the doors of

the scow open, he'd have a chance; but to open the

pockets now, even the empty ones, might mean to

kill him, as you said. I can't see any hope for

him." The foreman looked sadly at Jeh, walked

to the edge of the scow, and gazed helplessly down

at the spot where Kelly had gone under.

"But he's under there now, fighting--fighting

for his life --such a life, too." Jeb, panting, now

began to throw off the rest of his clothes.

Stout old Deny now hud a hand on Jeb's arm.

"I'd take a chance with this oT carcass o' mine

if so be 'twould save him, but we c'n only wait for

his body to rise an* catch him then." He walked

back to the tug and leaned over the rail like a

man sick at heart.

Jeb said nothing, but he put the bight of a line

about his waist. Before they realized it, he was

poised for a dive.

"Charlie, hold the slack. Pay it out slow,

s

241

JEB BUTTON
When I pull twice, haul in hard and fast -- hard and fast, Charlie, as you love Mr. Kelly."
"Iss--I'll haul hart unt farst enough," said Charlie, who, with John, had just climbed down from the bucket.
"I'll stay down at least a half minute or so, Charlie," and Jeb dove.
"There's a foolish boy," muttered old Deny. " They'll be two o' them. But jest the same, he's a man--that boy."
In time came a pull on the rope, and Jeb fol lowed. He was breathing hard.
" How was it ? " Derry and Watson were bend ing over anxiously.
"I--couldn't -- see -r- even. It's--so--dark -- under there," groaned Jeb. He looked ready to cry, even as he was resting to gather his breath again.
"Once more, Charlie, for Mr. Kelly." Jeb dropped under. They saw him go down straight and clear, with everybody crowding to the edge of the scow and dredge.
There was a long suspense. " How long will he stay?" was being whispered around, when they saw Jeb come up again. He came up slowly and almost exhausted, and reaching weakly for the
242

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE
tug's guard. They helped him aboard, and as he lay down on the deck the blood was seen to be running from his nose. He closed his eyes, and for two minutes made no move whatever. Only his heaving chest and clenched fingers told that he had not fainted.
They thought he was through then, but sud denly he jumped on his feet again. This time he cast the line off him, and went to the other end of the scow. " If I'm going to get him, I'll get him without a line, I reckon." He muttered that not too clearly, but old Derry, standing close by, made out the words.
Jeb stood still for a moment, looking down. He seemed to shrink from something. He half turned away, clenched his hands .until his great arras corded, until his broad chest, torso, and great big limbs seemed to expand. His features grew rigid, eyes glowed, and lips set. " My soul," said Derry to Watson, " but ain't he a grand-looking boy!"
Jeb turned. "He must be alive. He's down there, somewhere, fighting, perhaps dying--and I'm up here looking down. He'd be there for me before this, and have me too, or stay there trying. No, Charlie, never mind the line. I'll go from this end and work against the tide."
243

JEB BUTTON
He stood on the edge of the scow, ten feet above the water. He straightened up, seemed to shiver, and turned to look at the others as though it were for the last time. Then he turned quickly, stiffened, and raised his arms high; again he looked a grand boy. He said "Now!" as if to himself, bent to spring, then drew back and shrieked, "There, O God, look at Will!"
Galvanized into sudden life, they saw, the length of the scow away, Kelly's head just above the surface, face up -- a blue and distorted face, closed eyes and frothy lips--an awful sight for friends to see. They were yet stiff with horror when the head sank slowly and out of their sight.
Jeb crouched in terror at that, with his nerve shaken. Then he became like an iron bar. The dread was gone at last. He dove forward --far out. He felt his heart jump as he leaped, but he steadied with the shock of the water and the excitement of the race -- a race for life -- now he would swim indeed!
Jeb raced. The left arm drove forward, cutting water like a steamer's stem, the right swung ahead and then down and back, pushing like a paddle and whipping the stream into a bubbly wake. He swam, with frenzy, with a double kick to every
244

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE
arm stroke. He was up to the spot where Kelly's head had first showed, when he saw it once again, now fifty feet farther on. This time the face came out only to the mouth, and Jeb knew Kelly was surely sinking. But once more he would have to rise, he knew -- didn't somebody say that drown ing men always come up three times? Jeb beat and whipped the tide furiously with his great arms, his broad shoulders smashed through and his legs were kicking convulsively, but machinelike. He never swam in grander form, never before with half the strength, never with speed approaching this. He must be near now. Could he have passed him? Jeb bore to the left, look ing out level from his eyes. The tide rushed by, and he heard dull far-away cries. They were shouting to him from the dredge and tog--he knew that; but with the song of the tide in his ears, the voices told Tiim nothing. Where was Will? Would he never rise again? Would his body stay below, to rot and make food for--No, not that. They would drag the river for him and get him yet--his body at least, and bury him under a green grave. Jeb ploughed ahead, when--he leaped half out of the water--there, there! four lengths away the head comes, just the hair and
246

JEB BUTTON
forehead. Down it went, the head he loved; one, two, three mighty strokes and Jeb dived with wide open eyes and arms. He saw a perpendicu lar, floating, blurred thing ahead. It was dim in the yellow water. " Ah, thank God!" He threw his arms before him and clutched the matted hair--Will's hair! He threw his arms about the body and bore it up to where there was air and life. He lilted the head up and supported it on the drifting tide. The blue-black face with the foam on the lips rested on the sun burned arm and shoulder. Jeb brushed away the froth, but it bubbled up again. Awful as it all was at the moment, Jeb, the shy and awkward, natural, country lad, could have kissed the face and cried for joy.
He heard a tug's warning whistle, and bewil dered he drew Will's body yet nearer to his own to shield it, and raised his arm in warning. A threat of its own spoke in the swing of the arm. In answer to that came a hoarse voice down the breeze.
" Steady, son, steady! Old Peoples's to the wheel. The ol' man's right yer. Hold him, son, hold him fast. Another beat o' your big heart, boy, an' all's welL"
246

HF, HEARD A TUG'S WARNING WHISTLE.

THE ACCIDENT ON THE DREDGE
The tog loomed up, and her bow drifted by. The bulging breast of her brushed Jeb's shoulder, lightly as a floating bubble oar" a smooth sea in the lightest of breezes.^/Old Deny was certainly at the wheel.
Martin and Charlie were standing on the guard of the tug. They lifted Kelly aboard and laid him on a mattress. Jeb had to be helped in too, -- his nerves were unstrung for a moment, --but he soon felt strong enough to lift Kelly's head and rest it on his knee.
A white, foamy steam gushed from Kelly's lips. A foot or more in height it gushed. Again and again it gushed, and then weaker and weaker, until it was only a bubbling froth on his lips. They made a pad of coats and vests then, and laid him face down on it, and began to force water from him. It came out in streams, but he remained lifeless so far as they could see. Then he was put on his back. Jeb, at his head, drew Kelly's arms back to their full length and then pressed them hard down to the hips again. Five, ten, and twenty minutes he worked, and yet no sign. Stall he kept on. He would have kept on until he dropped exhausted. Twenty minutes more, and then a gurgle.
247

JEB HUTTON " Glory," said old Deny, " did you hear that ? " Jeb eased up for a second to listen, then went on with fresh hope. Another gurgle, then further heavy, bubbly breathing deep down. A little while and there was a groan, wrung out from the soul it must have been, so hard it came; then Kelly's eyes opened, and the delighted Jeb kissed him. Kelly stared wonderingly at him, then with dawning intelligence. A weak hand crept out and clasped Jeb's, and a smile -- such a woe begone smile for the former happy one -- that Jejb wanted to cry. " He's alive an' all right," said Deny. "Iss," said Charlie, and danced on the deck.
248

CHAPTER
A RACE TO TOWS
JEB turned to Captain Derry. "We must run to town--and hurry. He's all right now.'*
Derry turned to his engineer. "Marlin, we're goin' to town. There's the Belinda waitin' for us up at the buoy. The Fedorcta started a'ready. They think they'll beat us this night, but Law' forgive 'em for their conceit. If they only knew what reason we got to hurry, they'd never think it for another second. Chief, it's up to you--an' doggone her, drive her."
"Tell 'em to keep a-shovellin' below and the Sweeibrier'U. do the rest," said Marlin. "She's got the best engine in the fleet. Only give her steam, Captain--give her steam. Hoo-lah, but it reminds me of old Mississippi days. The safety-valve's strapped and my hat's hung over the gauge--give her steam, Captain."
"Snake, you kalsomined idjit, get below an' shovel," said Deny. "You hear? Shovel!"
249

JEB HTTTTON
"Shovel? Huh, I'll show 'em how to shovel.' Watch this steamboat fly to-night. She'll a-fly, Cap, she'll a-fly."
Charlie Thornessen went below to help Snake make the steamboat fly. They took turns coming up on deck to see how Kelly was progressing. The one last up would give the other the news. Then the other would bob up and report in turn. They had verbal bulletins about twice a minute when they were not shovelling coal.
The Belinda was awaiting them at the buoy. Her safety-valve was also strapped down. The Moslem was also there. Derry waved his hand at them both as he came ripping by. Half a mile up the river was a tug-boat smoking furi ously, and possibly a furlong ahead of her again was another one, smoking yet more furi ously.
Deny whistled down the tube. "The Zephyr and Olivetta's just ahead."
"All right," came back Marlin's voice, "they won't be there long."
"An' the West WzncTs ahead of them again, an' goin' like a locomotive. How much steam we got?"
250

A RACE TO
"I dunno." "Dunno?--why not? "Because my hat's still a-hangin' over the gauge." "But you're sure we've got all that's comin' to us, Marlin?" " Oh, Captain Deny," said Marlin. That was all, but the unutterable reproach of it silenced the impatient Derry. That race up the river -- with Derry in the Sweetbrier trying to get away from the Zephyr and to overtake the others ahead, and the record at fifty-nine minutes and twenty-seven seconds -- became his great story in after days. Not be cause of the excitement of the race or the close competition -- there was very little of that. The Sweetbrier simply left the Zephyr and the OHvetta behind with every jump. From No. 11 black buoy passed on the port side to No. 10 red buoy passed on the starboard side is hardly half a mile, and yet in that time the Sweetbrier had left the Zephyr and OHvetta three good lengths to the rear; and after that the Sweefbrier seemed to gain even faster. She beat the Zephyr and then the OHvetta before she had been steaming twenty minutes, and she overhauled
251

JEB HTJTTON
the West Wind with her mile start, while yet three miles from town; and went on by as if that breezily named steamboat had a coalbarge in tow. " West Wind never was much in the way of a breeze so far's I know," com mented Deny, as he looked out from his pilot house and saw his rival drop behind. He swept after the Fedora and caught her at the resin wharf. "In an all-fired hurry, or I'd wait an' give you all a tow," he called over to the pilot house of the Fedora, and swung on ahead and up to his dock. He looked back to see where the rest of the fleet was. "Gave the Fedora 'most a mile an' beat her, an' there's some of 'em their lights ain't in sight yet. They're comin' along, though, I reckon," he concluded, in mock charity of expression. "Make ready so's to put Mr. Kelly ashore -- no time to be wasted."
"Fifty-seven minutes and five seconds from No. 11 buoy," said Marlin, coming out of the engine-room and putting one foot on the rail. "Will you certify that, Mr. Hutton? I guess none of 'em will dispute we broke the record and won them loving cups now."
"I reckon not," said Deny. "An' for old 252

A KACE TO TOWN
mud-boats that's pretty fair going, too. But you'd better put your hat on -- you'll catch cold."
"No, sir, no hat--not yet. I'm going to wait till she cools off before I take it off the gauge. Don't want to have to testify against myself in case anybody says we was carryin' more steam than the law allows."
"That's so," said Deny. "Doggone Marlin, but there's streaks o' wisdom runnin' through you."
It was during this talk and while the SweetIrier was being made fast that Jeb was sur prised to be hailed from the dock and told that there was a carriage waiting for him. With Kelly in his arms he followed Charlie's lantern over Exchange Dock and up to the carriage.
"I was told to tell you that everything is ready for him at his room--a doctor in wait ing," said the driver to Jeb.
" Then we'll go there at once." Jeb wondered how the news got ahead of the tug.
In the carriage Jeb held Kelly free from any jars and jolts along the way. Kelly was limp and weak and silent. Only now and then he pressed Jeb's hand.
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JEB HUTTON
At the house where Kelly roomed Jeb himself carried and laid Kelly on the bed, as the doctor indicated.
The physician looked curiously at the big, dishevelled lad. "This must be Mr. Hutton." Jeb bowed silently. "Well, Fm Doctor Harkness. Mr. Harper telephoned a half-hour ago from Fort Pulaski. He wants particulars after your friend Kelly is attended to, and says you must telephone him as socn as you can and stop at dredge No. 4 on the way back in the morning."
In a few minutes the doctor announced that Kelly was all right. "It was a terrific strain; but in a few days he'll be up, and in a week will be out and about as well as ever. I know him of old. You can't Ml Ms kind."
This was enough for Jeb, who rushed out to telephone Harper; and, that done, ran back to see what else might be done.
About midnight the doctor pumped a gallon or so of water out of Kelly, who was then quite weak, but inclined to be chipper in a feeble way. After the pumping process he looked curiously at the amount of salt water that had come out of him. " Quite a tank, ain't I, Doctor ? " But the doctor
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A RACE TO TOWS
said, "Hush, be quiet," and tucked his arms in and held toward him some stuff on a spoon. Kelly made a mouth at it, swallowed it down, looked up and winked, worked one foot free of the coverlet, wriggled his toes at Jeh, then rolled over on his side and fell asleep like a tired baby.
Jeb thereupon went down the street whistling blithely. Under a gaslight he stopped, put his finger to one ear, then drew it down. It was wet with blood. The strain of the trips under the scow was telling. Jeb tore his handkerchief, stuffed a strip in each ear, and went on his way still whistling blithely.
Deny was waiting for him aboard the Sweeibrier. " What news ? " hailed Derry. "All right," called out Jeb. " Thank God! " exclaimed Derry. " An' now, doggone, we'll run back to No. 6, as they'll all want to know how Mr. Kelly is, I reckon." On her return trip the Sweetbrier stopped long enough at No. 4 for Harper to come aboard,--to stay all night, he said,--and Derry kept on to his moorings. In the engine-room, where both young men were sitting on the floor, Jeb told the story of Kelly's escape--bald as to facts, but full as to feeling.
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JEB HTTTTOH
"I went down twice and couldn't get him. I was beginning to feel scared. Then he came up, and I went over again. I got there in time, and Captain Deny picked us up. I had a right sharp swim of it. The negro's bullet only just grazed him."
" You supply such a lot of detail," said Harper, dryly, "that of course a fellow ought to know all about it. However, I was down to No. 6, and they told me the story there, so I guess I know how it happened. Oh, they found the body of the negro. It was Black Rube all right; lucky yon fired as quick as you did--he hadn't many misses charged up to him."
"It's awful, isn't it?" shuddered Jeb, "to hare to kill a man."
"Yes," said Harper; "but better to Mil him than have him kill you or Kelly. Your bullet took him plumb between the eyes."
The two drifted into a long talk about Kelly and his ways. It was a case of two generous young men talking about a mutually admired third, and they ran on like a brook, gently tinkling, with never a promise of stopping. Harper told Jeb many things that were new to him--stories in which Kelly was the hero, of course, and in which Harper
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A RACE TO TOWN

played only a filling-in part -- stood in the wings,

as it were. Sitting cross-legged on the oil-cloth in

the engine-room, Harper narrated and Jeb listened,

a fine listener who threw in just enough comment

to incite a good historian to continue further. Jeb

felt hugely content that he had helped to lengthen

such a life.

It was nearly dawn before Harper completed a

long tale, of a color with half a dozen others gone

before, all about Kelly.

" And now, Jeb, we'll lie down for an hour's sleep.

We'll have to work to-morrow-- or to-day rather --

just the same as ever. But what have you got in

your ears? "

" Oh, the river water got in them. It always

does when I dive. I'm soaking it up with a little

piece of cloth."

" The river got in your ears ? And since when

has the river run red ? Let's look beneath those

plugs. H-m-m. Now the first time you're in

town again -- that will be Saturday night--you

trot up to Doctor Harkness's and have that river

water looked into. You hear me, son? "

"Yes," said Jeb, meekly.

From where they lay Jeb could see the dredge

in the dimness of the dawn--an unshapely thing

s

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JEB HTJTTON with lights above and below. The huge dipper hung in front, swinging and creaking; the halfloaded scow, kept just as when Kelly fell under, was lying alongside, black and ugly, mud-covered, with slippery decks that seemed to shine. On the smooth, hard bed of the engine-room floor they rolled ever so little with the swaying of the tug as she pulled lightly at her moorings. The tide, again at flood, was rolling and lapping beneath them, rocking them to sleep; it was the flood tide that pinned Kelly under the scow, Jet) remembered. He starred Harper and to him whispered this thing about the flood tide.
"Yes," said Harper; "but he's safe from it
258

CHAPTER XXIX
KELLY'S STOET OF HIS FIGHT UNDER THE scow
IT was the second Wednesday in December that Kelly came so near to drowning. On the following Saturday the dredges as usual knocked off work at four o'clock. At six o'clock of that Saturday, Jeb was at Mrs. DriscolTs door inquir ing for Kelly.
Mr. Kelly was asleep, the maid told him, and the doctor had said that he must not be dis turbed; but Mr. Kelly had himself given orders that he was to be waked up for Mr. Button.
"Don't wake him up," said Jeb; "but I'd like to go up and look at him." He walked lightly upstairs and tip-toed into the room and gazed long at his friend. Kelly, somewhat pale, was breathing quietly, and Jeb went away happy.
Early next morning he called again. " Mr. Kelly is much better," said Mrs. Driscoll herself. " Step up and see him. I was just going up myself, but you go up instead and give him a surprise. He will hardly be looking for you so early."
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JEB HUTTON
Jeb crept up and knocked softly at the door. A deep " All right, -- entrez, Madame," answered him. He entered. Kelly was in a reclining chair, well wrapped up, with his feet to the fire. Jeb could just see the back of his head above the back of the chair. A small table at Kelly's elbow was covered with the remains of breakfast. Jeb, so glad that he didn't know just what to say, stopped at the threshold.
Without turning, Kelly said, " Mrs. Driscoll, I feel regenerated. I have eaten most luxuriously, and I offer you my fervent thanks. Should any body call for me, send him up without fear. And, my dear lady, pay no frightened attention to doctor's orders or your own motherly fears. I am in a thankful Christian spirit that fills me with admiration, and before the inevitable evapo ration of such unusual humility, would have all my friends see me and admire also."
Mrs. Driscoll seemed slow to reply, so Kelly shifted partly around. Seeing Jeb, he jumped up, grasped his hands, and forced him into the great chair, and dropped himself on the hassock at Jeb's feet. He held Jeb's hands between his own, patting them, looking up at Jeb and smil ing; and Jeb looked down at Kelly, and each
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KELLTS FIGHT UNDER THE SCOW
saw gladness and 307 in every line and curve of the other's features.
Jeb insisted on changing seats. " Well, Jeb, as you will. I don't suppose Mrs. Driscoll would like it, anyway, if she were to see me out of this crib. She calls it an invalid's chair. Jeb, the way that good, kind, motherly tyrant abused me yesterday and this morning was fearful to a timid nature like mine. She sent up some broth only this morning, ' By Doctor Harkness's orders,' she said. I believe she was ashamed to face me with it herself. I saw long days of slavery ahead--I, whose great-grandfather flashed his bright sword in British eyes more than one hundred years ago. I put on my bathrobe by way of a toga, -- mark that Roman toga, Jeb. Doesn't it smack of forums, free speech, and ancient liberty ? In my toga I descended to the infernal regions below, where I found the cook concocting palatable things, toothsome things, most delectable things -- but not for me. By the dreams of the Seven Sleepers, I said, I'd win a meal. Mrs. Driscoll was so afraid that I'd get a chill in my slippers, that I took them off and threatened to walk the cold floor in my bare feet. My strategy won. She got scared, the
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JEB HUTTON
blessed soul, and sent up dishes fit for a Roman senator -- peeled oranges on ice, chicken, two cute little sausages, toast, marmalade, coffee, and tilings. But, Jeb, you must forgive me for not knowing your step. I was looking for Mrs. Driscoll, and not expecting.you for an hour. Know ing that over to your boarding-house they don't set your breakfast until nine o'clock Sunday mornings, I supposed--but here, you haven't had your breakfast yet?"
In some shame Jeb admitted that he had hurried away without waiting for breakfast.
"Wanted to see how I was getting on? H-m-m--most reprehensible, as the doctor would say--must not be permitted to exist--such a condition--no, indeed. "Well, you'll try some of ours now, so as to taste the difference." Kelly raised his voice, " Ho, Charlotte, -- Charlotte of the Chocolate Cheek, -- O thou dusky one," he yelled, though not so robustly as he might have done a week back. 'No steps answering his call, he went to the window. " There she is down in the yard, practising a waltz step on the flags, and humming a popular air by way of time -- hear her ? She weighs the same as a cake of ice, -- two hun dred pounds; but she will practise only waltz steps."
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KELLY'S FIGHT UNDER THE SCOW
He threw up the sash. "O thou graceful one! as clear-throated as a thrush and as lightfooted as a fawn, so blithely carolling and so elastically stepping, 'twere a shame to disturb a nymph so engaging. But wouldst thou deign to tread a measure up two flights ? Forgive me, but 'tis a guest I would reverence, and the honor of our house demands it."
Kelly watched a moment. With a soliloquiz ing, "She doesn't know just what I'm saying, but the robustness of my voice moves her," he shut down the sash and waited.
When the ponderous Charlotte appeared, Kelly asked her to bring up breakfast for Mr. Hutton. "And don't forget the marmalade--and for the coffee, see to it that you bring up a goodly portion."
"A potion, Mister Willie?" asked Charlotte. "Potion? No, please. We've had a sufficiency of potions. 'Tis a portion we want now -- a quart, the coffee, a pot full, all you have in the kitchen." Kelly waved his hand, and Charlotte moved away.- She soon returned with breakfast. When Jeb had done eating, Kelly told his story of the accident. "I never heard the crack of the rifle, but I
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heard the ping of the bullet as it went by my ear. I knew at once what it meant. I remem bered then the crew speaHng of a big darky that had been loafing over around the North Jetty all that afternoon. But I'd forgotten all about Black Rube. When the bullet went by, just grazing the back of my head as it went, I said to myself at once, 'There'll be another one in the wake of that, and this is a time for disap pearing.' So I started to jump, but I jumped just a mite too soon. My feet were not fixed for a spring, and I slipped and plunged forward head first, instead of landing on my feet on the scow as I should have done. My shoes were muddy, too, and that helped me to slip. I felt myself going and tried to grab something, but my fingers caught only a slippery edge of mud. That broke the force of my fall, but did not prevent my head from getting a half-stunning rap. I know now that my head hit, -- Doctor Harkness told me,--but I wasn't certain then, at least I don't think I thought anything about it. I knew I went under. I took, instinctively I suppose, a long breath. My ideas were yet dim, when I found myself under a pocket of the scow, pinned there by the tide. I judged it to
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KELLTS FIGHT UNDER THE SCOW
be the first pocket of the four, and, fearing the long trip under the length of the scow, I tried to work out sideways, but the tendency of the tide to work into the pocket wells held me with such force that I could not break away. I must have been weak. I worked along into the sec ond pocket. By that time I felt the need of fresh breathing, and hoped that somebody would think to let down the pocket doors; but that hope changed to dread when I thought that if the doors were dropped down on my head it would be all day with me, for those big irontrimmed and bolted things weigh half a ton each. A half-ton crack on my head meant the end of it all for me. I know I struggled into the third well, scraping the barnacles from the bottom of the timbers as I went along. When I got to that well I knew that I could not hold out much longer, I wanted to breathe so much. It was at this time, I think now, that my ideas got twisted. I thought for a moment that this well was the last--so confused was I, with my ears ready to burst and my head to fly off. I was almost ready to give up, but not quite. The thought, confused though it was, that this was the last pocket helped me greatly. I swal-
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JEB HUTTON
lowed some water along about then. To get clear of that well I had to struggle hard. As I bumped along the bottom of the scow I swal lowed more water and began to feel relief. My head and chest felt easier, though the strain began to change to a feeling of strangling in the throat. Though I felt that I would soon be done for, the thought of the end of the scow being so near helped me wonderfully. When I shot up again into another pocket well and real ized I had made a mistake, I all but quit. First I thought I must have turned around and come back; but the tide was still from behind, so that could not be. A moment's confused thinking forced me to the right conclusion,--that I must have been mistaken in my previous count,--but it was awfully discouraging. I believed truly then that I could never last it out. The water was lapping in my mouth. I wondered drowsily if I had been under long, and would it last much longer. I wondered if my body would rise to the top, and would I be picked up. I thought it hard that a man had to fight so for a life and then not get it, -- a life I was just be ginning to care to live. The struggle grew harder, and I knew I could let myself- die so
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KELLT'S FIGHT UNDER THE SCOW
easily and without earthly discredit, too. The thought was tempting, but it came to me, Jeb, -- How would my friends take it? You, Jeb, and Harper, and some others. No father or mother have I, but I have some friends -- friends, Jeb. I fought off the strangling again, and made two or three more plunges with the water roaring in my ears and rushing into my throat. I felt myself come clear of the last pocket and brushing the level bottom under the stern of the scow. Then the water sluiced into my throat, -- my mouth wouldn't stay shut. I thought of nothing then but that it would soon be over. I felt myself borne along slowly with no boards above to hold me down -- wondered if I were rising now. The dark of the river changed to a green -- a clear green. Was it death or the light from above? I felt that per haps I might see the light once more. That was my last thought -- that possibly I might be allowed to see the light once more."
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CHAPTER XXX
BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS
DTTEING the latter part of this recital Jeb crouched tense and stiff at Kelly's feet. His eyes were moist, he panted for breath, and coughed dryly. That fight for life under the scow, as Kelly told it, was painfully vivid and real to him. He felt every throttled gasp in the deep below, he swallowed every mouthful of water with his drowning friend, -- his ears, eyes, and head ached with Kelly's under the scow. He gave a great sobbing sigh when Kelly had done; he dared not trust himself to speak.
After a long silent staring at the fire, Kelly went on. "There was a horrible drawn-out dream of torture, and I awoke to far-away, hushed, low voices, and you, Jeb, bending above me and looking down,--if you only knew how you looked then, Jeb,--then Charlie, Marlin, old Derry, and the others."
There was another quiet, and then Kelly asked Jeb to tell his story of the rescue.
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Jeb answered that there was nothing much to tell. He had gone under the scow twice, but could see nothing for the muddiness of the water. When the body had come to the surface, he had swum after it--a hard swim, yes; but nothing more than a case of hard swimming, and then a supporting of his body until Captain Derry came up in the Sweeibrier, and Charlie and Marlin hauled them aboard.
Jeb said this as calmly as he could and in constrained tones, but he could not hide it that he had been very much excited during his swim. Kelly looked down at Jeb. He was a keen reader of faces, -- this careless fellow Kelly,--a particularly keen reader of any expression on Jeb's face. He now picked up Jeb's hand and held it between his own. With Kelly this al ways meant that he was deeply moved. In this temper bis jibes and jokes fell away from him, and he became intensely earnest.
"That's very well recited, Jeb, nicely told; but the pith of that story--the heart of it, Jeb -- you cut out before you read it to me. Jeb," clasping nervous fingers and palms tightly about the big hand he held within bis own, "Jeb, I've heard that story told in different fashion,
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JEB BUTTON
heard it sung with some soul in it. Of course, you couldn't call Friday night or the night before, with your own work and mine to look after, bat Harper wrote a letter that reached me yes terday, and Captain Deny was here last night, with Charlie Thornessen and your engineer, Marlin--the three of them sitting here drinking hot lemonade out of the loving cups and talking all at once. They went into detail, and put a touch of color into what you did, Jeb; touched it here and there with a bit of sentiment, and when they got through, Jeb, by my halidom -- as Scott's knights used to say--but they made a warm picture of what you have just lined in cold, bare etching. Now, Jeb, just a bit more. When you went under that scow, you knew that you might be held under by the scow's suction. Tell me, Jeb, didn't you?"
"Why--why--I knew there was a chance of that--a little chance," correctingly.
" And you tried twice, didn't you, Jeb? " "Yes, twice--I think," admitted Jeb, like a witness for the other side. "Yes, Jeb. Twice you took the chance, and would have gone under the third time, only I came to the surface just then. And when you
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BETWEEN TWO FBIENDS
went after me as I arose for that last time, for all you knew I might have strangled you and carried you down with me. I'm no light weight, not even for Mr. Jeb Hutton, of Upham's Landing, to manage. And--"
" Oh, no, no," broke in Jeb, " you were helpless and senseless. You couldn't have struggled, indeed, you couldn't."
" Did you know I was helpless to struggle ? " "Why, I didn't think of that then. I was too excited, you know," pleaded Jeb. "There, I thought so. Now, Jeb, this matter must stand between you and me as it is. I don't know what I ever did that one like you, Jeb, should take a steep chance for me. You couldn't have done anything else, you say? No, Jeb, you couldn't," said Kelly, thoughtfully," and you'd have to do just that, or afterward suffer worse than merely dying could make you suffer. And I shall be much surprised if Jeb Hutton acts otherwise in a similar situation again. But the fact stays that you did this thing, and did it for me, and all I can hope for is that if you need a man's help sometime, I may be there and have the first chance." Kelly paused to study the fire. " The first chance at any cost to myself is my prayer. I think, Jeb, I can
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JEB BUTTON
say that honestly now, and I think it's about as much as I can say." He turned again to the fire.
Jeb felt like crying as Kelly spoke so,, and for a feeling that was beginning to trouble him he felt very much ashamed also. He shrank from the telling, but he could not bear to have Kelly rate him so high. If it were anybody else than Kelly, he wouldn't have felt so ashamed probably; but to let Kelly think so -- it was deception.
"Will," he said brokenly, "I want to tell you something --and I am almost afraid."
Kelly looked into the distressed face, then fell to patting Jeb's hand again. Jeb might have been a troubled child and Kelly the child's own father. " I'm not afraid to hear it. I have no fear of you, Jeb," he said confidently.
Jeb went on. "When I went under the scow the first time, I had a hard time under there. I got afraid and came up before I should. I was almost scared to go again, but I did go, and came up again before I ought to have, yon know. I hope you won't think hard of me, but I was seared for a while to go down again. I was on the edge of the scow a long time, almost afraid to thitt'k of it--I know I stood a long time get ting my nerve for another dive. I'm not sure --
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BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS

you won't be angry, Will, I hope -- I'm not sure

that I had won out with myself," faltered Jeh,

"when you came up. I'm not sure---no -- and

oh, but I felt such relief when you came up again

that time. My work was cut out for me then;

I couldn't escape it. It was horrible to think so,

wasn't it ? And you looked so deathlike, and lost

to us perhaps, but it gave me another chance; and,

Will, if I couldn't have saved you then, I -wouldn't

have minded staying with you. Not then I

wouldn't. I felt that way about it. But you don't

know how it feels to see you now all safe. But,

Will, if you won't hold it against me that once I

almost failed you as a friend,--for a little while I

was in doubt; but, indeed, should it come again,

I hope not to be found wanting."

Kelly did not answer at once, and it was in

some dread that Jeb watched him and waited.

Kelly had slipped onto a rug and was stirring the

fire lightly. His eyes followed the upward flying

sparks in deep abstraction. He nourished the blaze

again, picking up each single ember so carefully and

placing it on the heap so lightly, that he might

have been picking roses and banking them prettily

for his sweetheart's eyes ; and when he stirred the

fire, he might have been stirring human feelings,

T

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JEB HUTTON
which he wished to excite but not to wound. His absent look seemed the more surprising to Jeb, because it was so rare a thing to see Kelly in other than a careless mood.
But when Kelly did look up, Jeb felt his own face glow, and his own heart leap at the expression of Kelly's.
"Perhaps he still thinks well of me," he breathed to himself.
"Think hard of you, Jeb?" said Kelly, "think hard of you, Jeb? You simple-hearted hero! Why, Jeb, you're a big baby with a man's heart. Yon fail a friend? You couldn't if yon tried. Let me tell you something, Jeb, so that you'll know the kind of a gallery player it is of whom yon ask forgiveness."
Kelly arose, and from a drawer in a dressingcase took out a small package. This he undid, disclosing a large gold medal and a folded paper.
" Read the inscription on that medal, Jeb." Jeb read: --
Presented to WrLMAM S. KBLI.T for Heroic Bravery in Rescuing a Valuable Life at Great Personal Danger.
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BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS
The other side gave the date and place of res cue, name of rescued person, and of the society presenting it.
"That," said Kelly, "I keep locked up because I never earned it. I rescued that man, certainly, but there was little danger. I might have done it with more risk to my own life and less to his, only I didn't. I took the other way, because it seemed a sure thing to myself. At least if I couldn't get him, I ran but small risk myself. There was nobody by to see my first hesitation, but they were all there to see my gallant finish-- my' gallant deed,' mind. The man himself was insensible of my weakness at the time. He is grateful to me to this day. I never dodged any .of the praise at the time, and when that medal was given me with a lot of hullabaloo by fellow-mem bers of the big society of which he is president, there was an elaborate banquet and a profuse ladling out of panegyric. I sat there and took it all in--yes, and even made a speech, a depreca tory speech. It was charming in its modesty and reserve, so said one of the papers that printed it in full. Often, since then, I have wished that that fat, distinguished man had been equipped with a little more physical power and a grain
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JEB HUTTON
more nerve, so that he could have saved himself, and so allowed me to be saved from my worse self.
" Since that time, Jeb, I've come to see life in a bigger way. "When I saw things clearer, I tried to forget that thing. I hid the medal away, so that people wouldn't see it and ask questions about it. You see what a gorgeous thing it is-- silver, gold, and diamonds, and catches every body's eye. I began to have a horror of answering questions about it. I hold those target-shooting medals there higher than this. I tell you this, Jeb, and you are the first, and it is a great relief.
"I've been waiting for somebody to tell this to. I didn't know myself for whom I was wait ing to tell it to, but I see now that I was waiting for somebody who could stir me sufficiently to make me set my shame aside and confess. Oh, Jeb, if we only had by us always somebody for whom we felt a reverence that would swallow up the shame,--if we only had, Jeb, if we only had, --there'd be no secrets rusting our souls away. This thing goes from me now, for good and all."
First he took the folded parchment from the package. "Here's the certificate that came with it, the resolutions passed at the meeting and read at the banquet, more about 'daring' and 'high
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BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS
courage.' Now is a good time to lose some of these things. I don't want to run the risk any longer of dying with them in existence."
Kelly laid the parchment on the grate and watched the smoke rise, then the burst of flame. "Like my daring rescue, a blazing finish," he said. After the flame died, there was still the charred surface with the dim black lines upon it. This he mashed into black powder with strokes of the poker. "It's a satisfaction to pound that," he said. "And now for this," hammering the medal on the hearthstone until it was a shapeless mass. "There, that lets me out on that.
"When you spoke as you did," went on Kelly, after a pause, " of your feelings and fears, it made me feel ashamed that I hadn't been more frank. And don't you imagine for a moment, Jeb, that your fears of the outcome of another trip under the scow took me by surprise. I haven't been studying you for a year, Jeb, without coming pretty near to knowing what's inside of you,-- without having something like a clear idea of your character. And don't ever imagine again that our friends cherish us for our glittering quali ties. It is for the lovable qualities in us all that we are ready to die for them and they for us.
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JEB BUTTON
Our great public characters, Jeb, the admired ones of the earth, never won such friendship as have many men that were not known outside their own Tillages. I'm talking now of friendship, Jeb,--the only thing worth living for between man and man,--friendship, Jeb, not mere admira tion or idolatry. And for yourself, Jeb, don't ever again hesitate to confess an ignoble feeling, if, by confessing, yon can the more completely cast off the evil influence of it. You had nothing ignoble to tell me to-day; but you thought you had, and to tell that called for greater courage than even you showed you possessed when you dragged me from death. Jeb, Jeb, but I wish I had the inward courage you've got--the kind that is above shame is yours, Jeb."
Kelly sighed, then smiled again. "Great re liefs, these confessions, aren't they, Jeb?" He laughed low now, and Jeb, in clear sympathy, laughed with him.
All that morning they spoke of many things interesting to them both, and at last approached a subject that concerned Jeb more than any of the others.
Kelly said, " You know I've been expecting to go away. I spoke of it on the tug before that
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BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS
-- that bath the other day. Mr. Butler was here yesterday, taking a run up from St. Augustine on the Friend. I told him I'd be ready any time after Christmas. I don't want to miss Christ mas here if it can be avoided. We're going to be gone for two years, touring the world. I shall return here, of course; if not to work, then to see you and the others.
"For you, Jeb, things look bright. Major Mulich likes you. He said so. Some day, per haps next year, you may hare a chance on the jetty work. You can afford to wait awhile and do a little more quiet study in your spare time, of which you have plenty in your present place. In two years or so your way to college ought to be clear. It comes hard to break away, but it's all in life's living. Some day we may be so valued that we can plunk down anywhere we please, and feel sure of a fair living and a welcome -- perhaps."
Kelly's last word was said with a humorous twist of the mouth. He could never suppress his light manner for long. And yet he felt sorrowful and Jeb knew it. Jeb himself took Kelly's settled departure bravely and congratu lated his friend with sincerity mixed with regret. He tried not to look his dismay.
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JEB HUTTOtf
Kelly sighed for Jeb and, listening to Jeb's awkward sentences, caught himself in another sigh, and, at that, frowned.
"Jeb, we're getting rank. Two big, healthy brutes like you and me, sighing like chimney fires, throwing off enough sentiment to equip a girls' seminary. Every sentence has been a sigh. Every two sentences have been bridged with a sigh, -- whole bridges of sighs. The famous Bridge of Sighs isn't a patch to ours. Oh, no end of sighs."
They spent another while in going over their future plans. Jeb wanted to hear of the countries that Kelly expected to visit; but Kelly managed to get back to Jeb's work to come,--on the river and at college,--and to hold most of their dis cussion, to that.
"You must go to college, Jeb, if you can manage it in any way. It isn't necessary to a man's greatness that he go to college when he is young. It isn't necessary to his eternal salvation, nor even to attain the intellectual height that many people consider necessary to the make-up of what they are pleased to describe as a gentle man. I doubt if it's absolutely needful, so far as I can find out, for even so colorless a creation
280

BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS as a man of culture -- a man of culture and no more. Some of our greatest men, Jeb, were never inside a university until they came later in an honored life to accept an LLJ). degree from some faculty that feared to lose their bright reflection. But I want you to go, Jeb, because I want you to become an engineer, and without a college training I do not see how you are to become one. Come around again after you're back from church, and we'll finish it out."
After Jeb had gone, Kelly sat down and wrote a letter to Jeb's father. It was a letter of many pages, and gave Kelly much satisfaction when he read it over. " There ! that squares me with Mr. Hutton, senior, on letters. And if he ever had any doubt about owning the finest boy on earth, why this will remove it. But I don't think he really has any doubt."
281

CHAPTER
AND FBEEtirDS MUST PAET
IT was the last day of December,--the day on which Kelly was to leave Savannah,--and from the pilot-house of the Sweeibrier Jeb was rather forlornly contemplating the river that rolled before him.
Throughout all that day it had been in Jeb's sensitive mind that he owed much to Kelly. Not altogether in material progress did Jeb feel himself so much the debtor. Even with the memory of his arrival in Savannah still fresh within him, his appearance at the government office with his outlandish gripsack and the countrified clothes crusted in mud, Jeb did not feel grateful toward Kelly simply because he had made the ways of the world smoother for him; no, Jeb, for all his crudeness, looked higher than that. It was something better than that he felt he had absorbed from Kelly--something that was not to be weighed by material scales. How
282

AND FEIENDS MUST PART
he had resented that "Sir Jebediah" that first morning! And how he had intended that some body should be made to pay for it! And, although in his ancestral traditions the exaction of full payment for every fancied wrong had been a cardinal virtue, yet how quickly the kindlier and more genial spirit of the other had won him over!
During the whole year (Jeb was now beginning to realize it), that same kindly influence had ever been at work for his good. The shy, deterring manner, the awkward ways, the almost resentful bearing that marked Jeb's kind in their inter course with strangers, had almost entirely left him. The hard, outer crust had gradually melted beneath the warmth of the more genial nature. What a trial he must have been to Kelly at times! And how patiently, unsuspectingly, Kelly had labored with him. Jeb was beginning to see it.1 It was all coming clear now--now when his friend was going away, he was beginning to appreciate it.
Jeb knew that in his head now were ideas he could not have conceived a year before--that he never could have put there of himself; new hopes, new aspirations, and new ambitions not in discord with a life of help to others -- to friends. The
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JEB HUTTON
limit he had set for himself--how far behind it had dropped! And for that -- Kelly. And the greater ideas that he felt were giving im pulse to his actions. Only vaguely he could feel them stirring within him; but he knew they were there -- they were there as certainly as his heart was beating within his breast. And his heart was certainly beating within him. He was thinking of that time when Kelly came so near to drowning. Now he asked himself, Would he have gone under the scow for Kelly had the drowning man been of another stamp? or would he have made up his mind to go that last time, knowing as well as he did the chances of never coming up again? Jeb's faith in himself began to waver. "What was it that had spurred him on to his work? Was it not because he wanted to do what he knew Kelly would have done, had their positions been reversed? But once having done it, once having made good, he was aware that he had set up a standard that could never again be lowered. And to anybody else than Kelly would he have confessed the shame of bis hesitation ? Jeb knew that he would not. But having once overcome the shame "of telling such a thing, would he not find it easier
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AND FRIENDS MUST PART
henceforth to confess a similar weakness ? And in. confessing the weakness, would he not be taking the first great step in the mastery of it? Again Jeb saw the flush on Kelly's face when relating the story of the medal, and felt that no longer could he, any more than Kelly, pose for better than he was.
Oh, but two years would be a long time! But if Kelly had said it was hard, he had also said it was good. Only last night Kelly had told him that again. He hoped so. At least he would try to do Ms best; and if he tried hard, he might, perhaps, earn Kelly's commendation when the Parting Friend returned from her foreign cruise. To see the eyes light up, the face glow, the voice approve in no uncertain praise -- that was worth waiting for. But yet, two years would be a long time.
"Mr. Hutton! Mr. Hutton!" called out old Derry. Jeb, coming to himself, raised his head from his arms. He yet held his face away that Captain Derry might not see that he was very near to tears. Possibly that old phi losopher did not see -- certainly he took the most elaborate precautions not to see. His hand was on Jeb's shoulder lightly, but his face was reso-
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JEB HTJTTCXET
lately headed up the river, even while addressing1 Jeb.
" She's a-comin' -- the yacht's a-comin', Mr. Hutton. I was beginnin' to get afeard she wouldn't come along afore dark, but she's a-comin' at last."
And she was coming. The handsome white hull, with the varnished spars aloft and the golden stripe along the run, and the screw tear ing the river wide open, was coming down the river flying, with every tug and every dredge along the way blowing her three long whistles as she flew past. She returned every whistle with three long whistles of her own, and KeEy, in the shrouds, waved his hat long to every cheering crew.
Passing dredge No. 6 Kelly took his hat off and held it in his hand while he was in sight of her. The Sweetbrier had picked up the yacht off the dredge and was running with her then, and stayed with her until both had rounded the sea buoy. Here the tug slowed down to a drift, the yacht kept on toward the south, and "Good-by," said Jeb. "Good-by -- good-by," said Kelly.
From the pilot-house of the tug Jeb kept the 286

' CiOOD-UY, SAID JEB. " GOOD-BY, GOOU-BY, SAID KKI.LY

AND FRIENDS MUST PAUT
glasses on the figure of Kelly until there re mained only a speck of him against the shrouds. It was coming on to twilight then, and when he could no longer distinguish Kelly, he kept his glasses on the white hull until she had merged into the dry mist.
He did not know whether his signal would be seen, but he blew three long whistles and watched with his glasses.
The answer came. A long, white needle of steam marked the far-away purple for the in stant, spiking the sky like a thin church steeple -- another -- and another--and then broke-- and lumped--and the three low, white clouds floated off and were lost in the haze of that perfect day. Then down on the soft, south breeze to Job's listening ears seemed to come the three long, faint calls, echoing lingeringly. That to Jeb was the farewell of the Parting Friend, and the memory of it was long a part of his mental being.
****** On the steam yacht, when he had blown those last three whistles, and when he could no longer make out the hull of the Sweetbrier; when he could no longer discern the shore line
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JEB HTJTTON
of the mouth of the Savannah River; and could see nothing above the horizon to the north but the tall, white shaft of the lighthouse on Tybee Beach, Kelly came down from the rigging and paced the bridge, with his face ever turning toward the familiar scenes that he could see now only with his mind's eye.
"Poor Jeb, poor Jeb," be sighed. "But you'll be the lonely lad now. Many's the night that the ache in your heart will be the last thing with you before you fall asleep, and the remembrance of it the first thing with you in the morning. It's hard -- hard. You're an idealist, and you don't know it. You must have an idol, and you'll make a clay one serve if there's nothing better to hand. Ho -- oh -- maybe at that you're the best off, after all. You don't suspect, Jeb, what your faith meant to me ; but it kept me to the mark lots of times when I'd have fallen away. My prayer is that the next man you set up on a pedestal won't come tumbling down too soon. All your life you'll be setting them up and 'tis that will be keeping your soul green. But when they come tum bling down, as sometimes they must, I do hope they won't be shattered to pieces too small for
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AND FRIENDS MUST PART
your mending. You're greater yourself than any of your idols ever will be; but you don't know that, and I hope you'll never find it out. But you've a lot to go through for a while yet. By and by you'll remember it -- what you've gone through. And maybe on that account you'll try to set younger feet on the way. And you'll think you're a lonesome lad now -- and so you are too, but Jeb -- Jeb -- it's all for the best. Poor Jeb I you feel lonesome now -- and so do I in truth; but we'll get together again. And you'll be easily found. There's the big Tybee Light itself to point the way--there it goes, its white flash. Ships coming this way couldn't miss that light on the stormiest night. A first-class light, the coast book says, and you're beside it, Jeb. Well, well, and if friends must part, no fear we shan't find you again, Jeb." Kelly faced squarely aft now and looked at the light. "We know the course -- no fear we'll lose the way now. Good night."
With his hand waved in a last salute Kelly went below, and that night, for the first time since they knew each other, the sea rolled be tween Kelly and Jeb. But neither had. fe.ar of $he future.

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