CHAPTER XXIX
RESCUE
When Phil at last waked, Ed was putting supper on the table, and it wasrather a late supper too, for the boys had purposely postponed it inorder to let Phil get all the sleep possible. He had in fact slept forfully eight hours.
"Well, how do you feel now, skipper?" asked Will.
"I don't know exactly," answered the boy, yawning and stretching."Stupid for the most part, hungry for the rest of it. I say, what timeof day or night is it?"
"It's about eight thirty P.M.," answered Constant, pulling out hisantique Swiss watch and consulting it.
"Yes, but _what_ P.M.? What day is it? When did I go to sleep?"
The boys soon straightened things out in their captain's temporarilybewildered mind. The effort to do so was aided by the sight and smell ofa great platter which Ed at that moment set upon the table. It held a"boiled dinner." There was a juicy brisket of corned beef on top. Underit were peeled and boiled potatoes, boiled turnips still retaining theirshape, and beneath all was the last cabbage on board, the remains of apurchase made at Memphis a week or ten days before, though to the boysit seemed many moons past.
As Phil eyed the savory dish he became for the first time fully awake.
"I say, fellows," he broke out, "what does this mean? Why didn't youhave this sort of thing for dinner instead of keeping it for supper?"
"Because you weren't awake at dinner time to help us eat it, Phil. It'sthe last really good meal we're likely to see for days to come, andwe--"
"You see," broke in Irv Strong, "we're bound to build you up again,Phil, if we have to do it with a hammer and nails. But how recklesslyyou expose your country breeding!" as he helped all round; "if you werecaptain of an ocean liner now instead of a flatboat, you would know thatdinner before six o'clock is impossible to civilized man, and that theactual dinner hour in all those regions where dress coats and cultureprevail, ranges from seven to eight o'clock."
"You are unjust in your mockery, Irv," said Ed. "And by that you in yourturn simply expose your provincialism--and ours, too."
"How?" asked Irv, chuckling to think that he had succeeded in divertingthe conversation from channels in which it might easily have becomeemotional. For all the boys had been for hours under a strain of severeanxiety on Phil's account. They were full of admiration for theself-sacrificing way in which he had worked and thought and planned forthe common welfare. They had been touched to the heart by his exhaustionafter his strenuous work was done, and they had been anxious all thatafternoon, lest the breakdown of his strength should prove to belasting. His appetite at supper relieved that fear, but the very reliefmade them all the more disposed to be a trifle tender toward him. Irvhad prevented a scene, so he didn't mind Ed's criticism.
"How's that, Ed?"
"Why, when you sneer at people because their customs are different fromthose that we are used to, don't you see you are just as narrow-mindedas they are when they sneer at us because our customs are not theirs."
"Oh, I didn't mean to sneer," said Irv. "But, of course, it does seemodd for people to eat dinner at six or seven o'clock in the evening,instead of eating it about noon."
"Not a bit of it. The dinner hour is a matter of convenience. In alittle town like ours it is convenient for everybody to go home todinner at noon, and so everybody does it. In a big city where peoplelive five or ten miles away from their places of business, it isimpossible. In such cities business doesn't begin till nine or teno'clock in the morning, when the banks and exchanges open, and it is inevery way handier to have dinner after the day's work is done. Ourhabits are just as odd to city people as theirs are to us."
"Oh, yes, I see that," said Irv, "and 'Farmer Hayseed' is just assnobbish when he laughs at 'them city folks' as the city people are whenthey ridicule him. It reminds me of the nursery story about the townmouse and the country mouse."
"How about the leaks, fellows?" asked Phil, who was now quite himselfagain.
"There aren't any to speak of," reported Irv. "We've gone over the wholebottom of the boat now, stopping every little crack, and now she's asdry as a bone. Five minutes' pumping in an hour is quite enough."
"All right!" said the captain. "Then we'll take off her bandages in themorning. With that tarpaulin wrapped around her she looks like SallyHopper when she comes to school with a toothache and a swelled jaw boundup in flannel."
But the next morning brought with it some other and more pressing workthan that of removing the tarpaulin.
At daylight the boat was floating easily and rapidly down the middle ofthe overflowed river, when Phil, who was on deck, saw half a mile ahead,a group of people huddled together upon a small patch of ground thatprotruded above the water. It was, in fact, the top of one of those veryhigh Indian mounds that abound in the Sunflower swamp country.
Calling the other boys on deck, Phil took a skiff and rowed ahead asrapidly as he could. When he reached the little patch of dry land,which was circular in shape, and did not exceed twenty feet in diameter,he found a family of people in a woful state of destitution andwretchedness.
They had no fire and no fuel. They had been for several days withoutfood and were now so weak that they could scarcely speak above awhisper. The party consisted of a father, a mother, three big-eyedchildren, and a negro man.
The negro man, great stalwart fellow that he was, was now the mostexhausted one of the party, while the youngest of the children, whom theothers called "Baby," as if she were yet too small to carry a name ofher own, was still chipper and full of interest in the strange thingsabout her when she was taken on board the flatboat.
The work of rescue occupied a considerable time and cost the boys somevery hard work. The people on the mound were too feeble from hunger andlong exposure even to help in their own deliverance. The negro man hadto be lifted bodily into a skiff and laid out at full length upon itsbottom. The rest, except "Baby" were not in much better condition. Theman could walk indeed, in an unsteady way, but he was so dazed in hismind that it required force to keep him from dropping out of the skiffon the way to the flatboat.
The woman and the two older children were chewing strips of leather, cutfrom the man's boot tops. The baby continually sucked its thumb.
People in such condition are very difficult to manage. They arephysically incapable of doing anything to help themselves, and mentallyjust alert enough to interfere querulously with the efforts of others tohelp them. To get such a company into frail, unsteady skiffs, to rowthem away to the flatboat, and then to "hoist them aboard," as Philcalled the operation, required quite two hours of very hard work, but itwas accomplished at last.
But to get them aboard was only the beginning of the work of rescue.They were starving and they must be fed. Phil was for setting out theremainder of the last evening's boiled dinner at once and bidding themhelp themselves. But Irv's superior knowledge of such matters preventedthat disastrous blunder.
"Why, don't you know, Phil, that to give them even an ounce of solidfood now would be to kill them! Open a can of consomme, and heat itquick."
When the soup was ready he peppered it lavishly, explaining to Ed:--
"The problem is not merely to get food into their stomachs, but to gettheir stomachs to turn the food to some account after we've got itthere. In their weakened condition they can't digest anything solid, andit is a serious question whether their stomachs can even manage thisthin, watery soup. So I'm putting pepper into it as a 'bracer.' It willstimulate their stomachs to do their work."
As he explained, he fed the soup to the sufferers--a single spoonful toeach. They were clamorous for more, but Irv was resolute.
"Wait till I see how that goes," he said. "You can't have any more tillI say the word."
The children cried. The woman hysterically laughed and criedalternately. The man sat still with bowed head and with the tearstrickling down his face--whether tears of joy, of distress, or of mereweakness, it was hard to say.
The negro man was too far gone even to s
wallow. Irv had to turn him onhis back and literally pour a spoonful of soup down his throat. Then hesaid to Ed and Constant:--
"I'm afraid this man is dying. His hands are very cold and so are hisfeet--cold to the knees. Take some towels--no, here," seizing ablanket from one of the bunks,--"take this. Dip it into boilingwater,--fortunately we've got it ready,--wring the blanket out and wraphis feet and legs in it, from the knees down. Then take towels anddo the same for his hands. Pound him, too, punch him, roll himabout--bulldoze and kuklux him in every way you can till you get hisblood to going again! It's the only way to save the poor fellow's life."
By this time Irv deemed it safe to give each of his other patientsanother spoonful or two of the soup, and he even ventured to pour threemore spoonfuls down the throat of the negro.
"He's reviving a little," Irv explained. "And as a strong man, with arobust stomach accustomed to coarse food, he can stand more soup thanthe others."
Thus little by little Irv and Ed, with such assistance from the otherboys as they needed, slowly brought the starving party back to life. Asthe negro man had been the first to succumb to starvation,--perhapsbecause his robust physical nature demanded more food than moredelicately constructed bodies do,--so he was the first to recover. Bynightfall he was walking about on the deck, while all the rest werestill lying in the bunks below as invalids.
After awhile Irv stopped him.
"Did anybody ever tell you that you're an exceptional personage?"
"Lor' no, boss. Well, yes, some o' de black folks in de chu'ch done took'ceptions to me sometimes 'cause I wouldn't give enough to de cause, butfore de court, boss--"
"That isn't what I mean," broke in Irv, with smiles rippling all overhim, and running down even to his legs. "I mean, did anybody ever noticethat you were,--oh, well, never mind that; but tell me, would you like agood big slice of cold corned beef before you go to sleep?"
The negro answered in words. But his more emphatic answer was not one ofwords. He threw his arms around Irv in a giant's embrace that almostcrushed the youth's bones.
"There, that will do," said Irv. "You have an engagement as a cottoncompress or something of that sort, when you're at home, I suppose. Butnow, if I let you have a good big slice of cold corned beef to-night,will you eat it just as I tell you, take a bite when I tell you and atno other time, and stop whenever I tell you? Will you promise?"
"Shuah, sar, shuah," eagerly responded the man.
"But 'sure' isn't enough," replied Irv, half in amusement and half inseriousness, for he felt that his experiment was very risky, and hewanted to be able to regulate it, and stop it at any point. "Sure isn'tenough. Will you promise me on the isosceles triangle?"
"Yes, boss."
"On the grand panjandrum?"
"For shuah."
"And even on the parallelopipedon itself?"
"Shuah, boss. I dunno what dem names mean, but for shuah I'll do jes'what you tells me to if you'll lem' me have de meat."
Irv was satisfied. He went below and prepared a sandwich. Returning, heallowed the man to eat it in bites, with long intervals between. It notonly did no harm, it restored the man to such vitality that Phil decidedto get some information out of him as to the flatboat's whereabouts.
He learned first that the rescued family sleeping below was that of awell-to-do planter; that the flood, coming as it did as the result of acrevasse, and therefore suddenly, had taken them completely by surprise,in the middle of the night, four or five days ago; that they had withdifficulty escaped to the Indian mound in a field near by, and that theyhad not been able to take with them any food, or anything else exceptthe clothes they had on. This accounted for the fact that the woman woreonly a wrapper over her nightdress, that the man was nearly naked, andthat the children were clad only in their thin little nightgowns.
Then Phil learned that _The Last of the Flatboats_ was now in theTallahatchie River, as he had guessed, not far from the point where itenters the Yazoo, at Greenwood. A little study of the map showed Philthat if this were true, he might expect to reach Vicksburg within fouror five days, which in fact is what happened, not on the fourth orfifth, but on the sixth day thereafter, early in the morning.
In the mean time the crew and their guests had eaten up pretty nearlyall the boat's store of provisions, and _The Last of the Flatboats_ hadbeen stripped of her unsightly swaddling-cloth, the tarpaulin. Phil tiedher up at the landing near the historic town as proudly as if she hadnot run away, and misbehaved as she had done.
"She has only been showing us some of the wonders of the WonderfulRiver, that we should never otherwise have known anything about," hesaid.
But this is going far ahead of my story. The boys and their boat werestill in the Yazoo, nearly a week's journey above Vicksburg. So let usreturn to them.