Two little triangles of wrinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. Evidently he appreciated some comedy in this recital. Down near his feet, however, little Jim, his grandson, was visibly horror-stricken. His hands were clasped nervously, and his eyes were wide with astonishment at this terrible scandal, his most magnificent grandfather telling such a thing.
“That was at Chancellorsville. Of course, afterward I got kind of used to it. A man does. Lots of men, though, seem to feel all right from the start. I did, as soon as I ‘got on to it,’ as they say now; but at first I was pretty flustered. Now, there was young Jim Conklin, old Si Conklin’s son—that used to keep the tannery—you none of you recollect him—well, he went into it from the start just as if he was born to it. But with me it was different. I had to get used to it.”
When little Jim walked with his grandfather he was in the habit of skipping along on the stone pavement in front of the three stores and the hotel of the town and betting that he could avoid the cracks. But upon this day he walked soberly, with his hand gripping two of his grandfather’s fingers. Sometimes he kicked abstractedly at dandelions that curved over the walk. Any one could see that he was much troubled.
“There’s Sickles’s colt over in the medder, Jimmie,” said the old man. “Don’t you wish you owned one like him?”
“Um,” said the boy, with a strange lack of interest. He continued his reflections. Then finally he ventured: “Grandpa—now—was that true what you was telling those men?”
“What?” asked the grandfather. “What was I telling them?”
“Oh, about your running.”
“Why, yes, that was true enough, Jimmie. It was my first fight, and there was an awful lot of noise, you know.”
Jimmie seemed dazed that this idol, of its own will, should so totter. His stout boyish idealism was injured.
Presently the grandfather said: “Sickles’s colt is going for a drink. Don’t you wish you owned Sickles’s colt, Jimmie?”
The boy merely answered: “He ain’t as nice as our’n.” He lapsed then into another moody silence.
One of the hired men, a Swede, desired to drive to the county-seat for purposes of his own. The old man loaned a horse and an unwashed buggy. It appeared later that one of the purposes of the Swede was to get drunk.
After quelling some boisterous frolic of the farm hands and boys in the garret, the old man had that night gone peacefully to sleep, when he was aroused by clamoring at the kitchen door. He grabbed his trousers, and they waved out behind as he dashed forward. He could hear the voice of the Swede, screaming and blubbering. He pushed the wooden button, and, as the door flew open, the Swede, a maniac, stumbled inward, chattering, weeping, still screaming. “De barn fire! Fire! Fire! De barn fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
There was a swift and indescribable change in the old man. His face ceased instantly to be a face; it became a mask, a gray thing, with horror written about the mouth and eyes. He hoarsely shouted at the foot of the little rickety stairs, and immediately, it seemed, there came down an avalanche of men. No one knew that during this time the old lady had been standing in her night clothes at the bedroom door, yelling: “What’s th’ matter? What’s th’ matter? What’s th’ matter?”
When they dashed toward the barn it presented to their eyes its usual appearance, solemn, rather mystic in the black night. The Swede’s lantern was overturned at a point some yards in front of the barn doors. It contained a wild little conflagration of its own, and even in their excitement some of those who ran felt a gentle secondary vibration of the thrifty part of their minds at sight of this overturned lantern. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been a calamity.
But the cattle in the barn were trampling, trampling, trampling, and above this noise could be heard a humming like the song of innumerable bees. The old man hurled aside the great doors, and a yellow flame leaped out at one corner and sped and wavered frantically up the old gray wall. It was glad, terrible, this single flame, like the wild banner of deadly and triumphant foes.
The motley crowd from the garret had come with all the pails of the farm. They flung themselves upon the well. It was a leisurely old machine, long dwelling in indolence. It was in the habit of giving out water with a sort of reluctance. The men stormed at it, cursed it; but it continued to allow the buckets to be filled only after the wheezy windlass had howled many protests at the mad-handed men.
With his opened knife in his hand old Fleming himself had gone headlong into the barn, where the stifling smoke swirled with the air currents, and where could be heard in its fullness the terrible chorus of the flames, laden with tones of hate and death, a hymn of wonderful ferocity.
He flung a blanket over an old mare’s head, cut the halter close to the manger, led the mare to the door, and fairly kicked her out to safety. He returned with the same blanket, and rescued one of the workhorses. He took five horses out, and then came out himself, with his clothes bravely on fire. He had no whiskers, and very little hair on his head. They soused five pailfuls of water on him. His eldest son made a clean miss with the sixth pailful, because the old man had turned and was running down the decline and around to the basement of the barn, where were the stanchions of the cows. Some one noticed at the time that he ran very lamely, as if one of the frenzied horses had smashed his hip.
The cows, with their heads held in the heavy stanchions, had thrown themselves, strangled themselves, tangled themselves: done everything which the ingenuity of their exuberant fear could suggest to them.
Here, as at the well, the same thing happened to every man save one. Their hands went mad. They became incapable of everything save the power to rush into dangerous situations.
The old man released the cow nearest the door, and she, blind drunk with terror, crashed into the Swede. The Swede had been running to and fro babbling. He carried an empty milk pail, to which he clung with an unconscious, fierce enthusiasm. He shrieked like one lost as he went under the cow’s hoofs, and the milk pail, rolling across the floor, made a flash of silver in the gloom.
Old Fleming took a fork, beat off the cow, and dragged the paralyzed Swede to the open air. When they had rescued all the cows save one, which had so fastened herself that she could not be moved an inch, they returned to the front of the barn and stood sadly, breathing like men who had reached the final point of human effort.
Many people had come running. Someone had even gone to the church, and now, from the distance, rang the tocsin note of the old bell. There was a long flare of crimson on the sky, which made remote people speculate as to the whereabouts of the fire.
The long flames sang their drumming chorus in voices of the heaviest bass. The wind whirled clouds of smoke and cinders into the faces of the spectators. The form of the old barn was outlined in black amid these masses of orange-hued flames.
And then came this Swede again, crying as one who is the weapon of the sinister fates. “De colts! De colts! You have forgot de colts!”
Old Fleming staggered. It was true; they had forgotten the two colts in the box stalls at the back of the barn. “Boys,” he said, “I must try to get ’em out.” They clamored about him then, afraid for him, afraid of what they should see. Then they talked wildly each to each. “Why, it’s sure death!” “He would never get out!” “Why, it’s suicide for a man to go in there!” Old Fleming stared absent-mindedly at the open doors. “The poor little things,” he said. He rushed into the barn.
When the roof fell in, a great funnel of smoke swarmed toward the sky, as if the old man’s mighty spirit, released from its body—a little bottle—had swelled like the genie of fable. The smoke was tinted rose-hue from the flames, and perhaps the unutterable midnights of the universe will have no power to daunt the color of this soul.
August, 1896
[McClure’s Magazine, Vol. 7, pp. 222–224.]
* The Little Regiment.
THE SNAKE
Where the path wended across the ridge, the bushes of huckleberry and s
weet fern swarmed at it in two curling waves until it was a mere winding line traced through a tangle. There was no interference by clouds, and as the rays of the sun fell full upon the ridge, they called into voice innumerable insects which chanted the heat of the summer day in steady, throbbing, unending chorus.
A man and a dog came from the laurel thickets of the valley where the white brook brawled with the rocks. They followed the deep line of the path across the ridge. The dog—a large lemon-and-white setter—walked, tranquilly meditative, at his master’s heels.
Suddenly from some unknown and yet near place in advance there came a dry, shrill, whistling rattle that smote motion instantly from the limbs of the man and the dog. Like the fingers of a sudden death, this sound seemed to touch the man at the nape of the neck, at the top of the spine, and change him, as swift as thought, to a statue of listening horror, surprise, rage. The dog, too—the same icy hand was laid upon him, and he stood crouched and quivering, his jaw dropping, the froth of terror upon his lips, the light of hatred in his eyes.
Slowly the man moved his hands toward the bushes, but his glance did not turn from the place made sinister by the warning rattle. His fingers, unguided, sought for a stick of weight and strength. Presently they closed about one that seemed adequate, and holding this weapon poised before him, the man moved slowly forward, glaring. The dog, with his nervous nostrils fairly fluttering, moved warily, one foot at a time, after his master.
But when the man came upon the snake, his body underwent a shock as if from a revelation, as if after all he had been ambushed. With a blanched face, he sprang forward, and his breath came in strained gasps, his chest heaving as if he were in the performance of an extraordinary muscular trial. His arm with the stick made a spasmodic, defensive gesture.
The snake had apparently been crossing the path in some mystic travel when to his sense there came the knowledge of the coming of his foes. The dull vibration perhaps informed him, and he flung his body to face the danger. He had no knowledge of paths; he had no wit to tell him to slink noiselessly into the bushes. He knew that his implacable enemies were approaching; no doubt they were seeking him, hunting him. And so he cried his cry, an incredibly swift jangle of tiny bells, as burdened with pathos as the hammering upon quaint cymbals by the Chinese at war—for, indeed, it was usually his death music.
“Beware! Beware! Beware!”
The man and the snake confronted each other. In the man’s eyes were hatred and fear. In the snake’s eyes were hatred and fear. These enemies maneuvered, each preparing to kill. It was to be a battle without mercy. Neither knew of mercy for such a situation. In the man was all the wild strength of the terror of his ancestors, of his race, of his kind. A deadly repulsion had been handed from man to man through long dim centuries. This was another detail of a war that had begun evidently when first there were men and snakes. Individuals who do not participate in this strife incur the investigations of scientists. Once there was a man and a snake who were friends, and at the end, the man lay dead with the marks of the snake’s caress just over his East Indian heart. In the formation of devices, hideous and horrible, Nature reached her supreme point in the making of the snake, so that priests who really paint hell well fill it with snakes instead of fire. These curving forms, these scintillant colorings create at once, upon sight, more relentless animosities than do shake barbaric tribes. To be born a snake is to be thrust into a place a-swarm with formidable foes. To gain an appreciation of it, view hell as pictured by priests who are really skillful.
As for this snake in the pathway, there was a double curve some inches back of its head, which, merely by the potency of its lines, made the man feel with tenfold eloquence the touch of the death-fingers at the nape of his neck. The reptile’s head was waving slowly from side to side and its hot eyes flashed like little murder-lights. Always in the air was the dry, shrill whistling of the rattles.
“Beware! Beware! Beware!”
The man made a preliminary feint with his stick. Instantly the snake’s heavy head and neck were bent back on the double curve and instantly the snake’s body shot forward in a low, straight, hard spring. The man jumped with a convulsive chatter and swung his stick. The blind, sweeping blow fell upon the snake’s head and hurled him so that steel-colored plates were for a moment uppermost. But he rallied swiftly, agilely, and again the head and neck bent back to the double curve, and the steaming, wide-open mouth made its desperate effort to reach its enemy. This attack, it could be seen, was despairing, but it was nevertheless impetuous, gallant, ferocious, of the same quality as the charge of the lone chief when the walls of white faces close upon him in the mountains. The stick swung unerringly again, and the snake, mutilated, torn, whirled himself into the last coil.
And now the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake, tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon this stick which was taking its life.
At the end, the man clutched his stick and stood watching in silence. The dog came slowly, and with infinite caution stretched his nose forward, sniffing. The hair upon his neck and back moved and ruffled as if a sharp wind was blowing. The last muscular quivers of the snake were causing the rattles to still sound their treble cry, the shrill, ringing war chant and hymn of the grave of the thing that faces foes at once countless, implacable, and superior.
“Well, Rover,” said the man, turning to the dog with a grin of victory, “we’ll carry Mr. Snake home to show the girls.”
His hands still trembled from the strain of the encounter, but he pried with his stick under the body of the snake and hoisted the limp thing upon it. He resumed his march along the path, and the dog walked, tranquilly meditative, at his master’s heels.
August, 1896
[The Pocket Magazine, Vol. 2, pp. 125–132.]
RAFT STORY*
Captain William B. Hiller sails the bark Tillie B. His ship now lies in Erie Basin and both the captain and the Tillie B. are just recovering from a most singular adventure of the sea. When questioned, the captain was reticent; he is a sane and honest captain in the American merchant marine and he objects to gaining reputation as a purveyor of sea yarns. But there are many old salts in his forecastle and no old salt that lives could let slip a chance to tell what they saw when 500 miles off the coast of Labrador on the 1st day of last July.
It seems that the Tillie B. was bowling along on her course before a fair wind when the man forward espied something long and black some two points off the starboard bow. It was monstrous in size and lay quietly on the water awaiting the ship. The man at the bow was nonplussed for a moment. The thing was not land. It was not a ship. It was not a whale. It was not anything that enters into the ordinary vocabulary of a man at the bow. It was a mystery; that is all it could be called. Recollecting his business the lookout cried: “Something mysterious, sir, pint off the sta’board!”
The mate went to the rail and looking at the thing said: “It is not land! It is not a ship! It is not a whale! Then what is it?”
Everybody on deck went to the rail and looking at the thing said: “It is not land! It is not a ship! It is not a whale! Then what is it?”
Meanwhile the Tillie B. was sailing nearer and nearer to this formidable object. Finally the mate grew nervous and going to the cabin stairs called down to Captain Hiller.
“We’ve sighted something, sir, and it’s not land, it’s not a ship and it’s not a whale and we don’t know what it is.”
The captain came on deck and going to the rail looked at the object and said: “It’s not la—” But here he seized his speaking trumpet and an instant later the wild orders roared through the vessel: “Slip the trolley! Throw the ship onto a switch—send a man back with a flag—wire the superintendent—helltopay—this here’s a sea serpent!”
Immediately all was panic on board the Tillie B. Men rushed to a
nd fro dragging at ropes and blaspheming at their misfortune while the captain roared more orders than nine shiploads of sailors could possibly have obeyed. But before they could stop the ship she had sailed very close to the thing and the captain, going to the rail, said: “It is not land! It is not a ship! It is not a whale! It is NOT a sea serpent but may I have my own main-m’st stuffed down my throat if it is not the famous lumber raft which was lost in the North Atlantic some years ago and for which U.S.S. Enterprise and the revenue cutter Grant made such painful but useless search.”
And so Captain William B. Hiller, of the bark Tillie B., now lying in Erie Basin, solemnly states that on July 1st he discovered the celebrated raft some 500 miles off the coast of Labrador. It was headed southwest, he says, but was not making much more way than a foundry. The raft is larger than any ocean liner and it would be an ugly customer to meet under the conditions of a twenty knot gait and a dark night. The sea serpents do not object to navigation by ships but lumber rafts are more unreasonable.
John Leary, the lumber expert who first conceived the plan of transporting lumber at sea by means of a raft was recently interviewed at his Newton Creek sawmill. “I think Captain Hiller’s story to be very probable. I was employed personally in the construction of this raft and I know that it was constructed as strong—if not stronger—than many ocean steamers. Its general compactness and solidity made it almost as inseparable as one great massive log.
“This raft was the largest by some three hundred feet of any ever shipped by sea. In fact it was too large. Nothing like it is now attempted. It was constructed on an improvised dry dock at Two Rivers, Nova Scotia, in the fall of 1890 and launched on the plan of an Atlantic liner’s launching. The longest rafts we now undertake are 300 feet long and weigh about 4000 tons. The one we lost was 600 feet in length, longer than any liner. It weighed 10,000 tons. The method we used in constructing the monster was new and has been patented in this country, Canada and Europe. We now use it on a smaller scale. It took us just one day over six months to build the great raft and we required the steady employment of 55 men. The distinguishing feature of the system now patented——and what makes me feel positive that wherever the raft is, it is whole——is the method of fastening the structure together with chains. It is not a matter of merely bunching the logs and then binding them, as many might conclude. The method in fact is quite ingenious. For instance the strength is all concentrated in one long and powerful center chain. The raft may be towed by either termination of this chain. Side chains placed diagonally to the center are added at the ends so that the greater the force applied to the towline, the stronger the logs are drawn together and at every yard or so along the body, chains leading from the center line are brought through to the surface and after being carried over a distance of about six feet return to the center chain.