Tom Jarnagan, Junior/Chapter 5
Chapter V.
HOW TOM TURNED SAILOR AND WAS WRECKED.
When the proverb about the slow boiling of the "watched pot" was coined, it seems certain that its author had never waited somewhere in darkness and solitude for a laggard railway train.
Tom thought about it between-times, when the mosquitos permitted him to think of anything, and fancied he could construct a stronger figure of speech out of the experience of the dragging moments.
While it was light enough to distinguish the figures on its dial, he looked at his watch every two minutes. After dark each observation cost a match, and he began to wait for five minutes.
At the end of half an hour he came to his last match. As he was about to strike it he had a sudden attack of the castaway's economy, and put it away carefully against a time of greater need. Then he began to realize how very dark it was, and how solemn the silence of a swamp could be, despite the croaking of the frogs, the shriller din of the tree-toads, and the fine treble of uncounted insects.
Under such conditions inaction can hardly be borne, and he tried the "movement cure," getting up to stumble back and forth along the tracks until he missed his footing on the cross-ties and fell into a culvert. That was discouraging, and he crept back to the crossing and sat down again to fight it out with the mosquitos, and to wonder if in all the great books of the past there had ever been recorded another hour of such infinite length.
The wonder presently prompted a desire which soon grew into an overmastering temptation to use his last match in finding out how much shorter the hour had become. He withstood the suggestion till there was no more resistance in him, and then he said that he would count a hundred before yielding. Half-way through this brief delay he suddenly remembered that benighted travelers in stories are always able to tell the time by the sense of touch, and he stopped counting to try it.
The experiment was not a success. Try as he might to concentrate the acuteness of the other senses into that of touch, he could not tell whether it was twenty minutes to nine or a quarter to eight. The hands were nearly together, and, so far as his untrained fingers could determine, the two were of exactly the same length.
"It's no use; it's just made up, like everything else in stories," he said dismally. "I've got to light that last match, and when it's gone I'm done. I wish it were a mile long, so it would burn awhile. Wonder if I couldn't piece it—" He stopped suddenly and thumped his head with his fist. "Tom Jarnagan, you haven't sense enough to last overnight! Here you sit on a tie and kick about its being dark, when there's a whole worldful of fire-wood in reach and you have a match to light it with!"
After which criticism upon himself, he felt his way down the embankment to the driest spot he could find, and made a fire—though not without many qualms when it came to the point of striking the priceless match. But the tiny point of flame survived; the dry leaves caught and passed the blaze to the twigs; and the black darkness—and with it much of the loneliness of the swamp—retreated a few paces in every direction.
"What an everlasting booby I've been, all around!" he mused, when the fire was burning briskly and the pungent smoke from a hatful of pine-cones had begun to discourage the mosquitos. "I haven't done much but blunder from one thing to the next ever since that day when I let Harry get the mail! To think of being chased away off here into the woods by a bogus letter just because I wasn't sharp enough to look at the postmark! It's disgusting!"
Whereupon he kicked the fire by way of emphasis, and climbed the embankment to lay his ear to the ground to listen if haply the train might be coming. It was not; and for another half-hour he divided the time equally between keeping up his fire and listening with his head near the rail.
At eight-thirty poor Tom's long vigil ended. First there was a fine song in the metal of the rails; then came a distant muttering as of sustained thunder—an alien note that set the air a-trembling; and then a great yellow eye flashed into view, and the engineer of the approaching train woke the echoes with the crossing signal: rhaow! rhaow! rha-rhaow!
Tom kicked the fire into the nearest pool, and held himself in readiness for prompt action. He knew—what every one knows who has ever attempted to board a train at a crossing—that there is no telling just where the engineer will stop. So he stood poised for a quick dash, measuring the lessening speed of the oncoming eye, and fighting a grim battle with an unnerving fear that the train would stop before it came near to him.
Fortunately, chance favored him. The big engine came to a stand just opposite the embers of the fire, and Tom's dash was but a pair of car-lengths. None the less, the wheels began to turn again while he was scrambling up the steps of the smoking-car; and before he had found a seat, the train had clanked over the crossing-frogs and was speeding away toward the northern shore of Lake Chokota.
When the conductor came through, Tom paid his fare to Carroll Bay and thought his troubles at an end,—the six-mile pull across the lake counted for nothing,—and he amused himself by picturing Manville's consternation when he should presently walk into the Richville hotel as if nothing unusual had happened.
Into the midst of this diversion came the voice of the brakeman calling his station; and Tom hastened out, once more to face the realities. A drop of rain plashed on his hand as he left the train, and he was surprised to find that the night which, fifteen miles away, had been calm and starlit was now darker than ever, with the wind rising in fitful little gusts.
There was no station at the cross-roads, but the lights of a farm-house twinkled among the trees a few rods distant, and thither Tom made his way. A white-haired man, carrying a tallow dip in an old-fashioned iron candlestick, came to the door. Tom made known his want in a single sentence, but the old man, when the sentence ended, shook his head in doubt.
"It's goin' to rain right down pretty soon," he predicted; "better stop with us overnight, an' go across in the morning."
Now, being once more fairly in sight of Richville, and within a mile or two of Japhet Rutherford, whom he would have to see in the morning, there was no good reason why Tom should refuse the kindly offer of hospitality; but it is not in human nature to do things so clearly sensible.
"I'm ever so much obliged, Mr. Lackner, but I guess I'll try it to-night, if you'll let me have your boat."
The old man demurred further: "The skiff's pretty heavy for a boy like you. S'pose you can han'le it if the wind gets up?"
"I'm not afraid," said Tom, muzzling the desire to boast of his greatest accomplishment. "Besides, I've just got to go; it's a—a matter of business, you know."
"It might be dang'rous; Chokoty gets pretty rough in some o' these summer storms," urged the farmer; but Tom was not to be daunted.
"I'll risk it, all the same, if you're not afraid to trust me with the boat," he insisted.
The old man made no further difficulties. "Just hold on till I get my hat and a lantern," he said; and Tom waited on the door-step.
A few minutes later they were standing on a rude pier at the lake-edge, and Tom was looking askance at a flat-bottomed, blunt-ended affair called by courtesy a skiff. In his imaginings he had pictured himself skimming across the lake in a canoe or light boat, pulling a long, swinging "thirty" or thereabout, and making the six miles in considerably less than an hour. The misshapen bateau, with single wooden thole-pins in lieu of rowlocks, and clumsy home-made sweeps with leather loops, was quite another matter. Yet he would not reconsider, though the hospitable farmer urged him again.
"No; I'm much obliged, and you're very kind, but I'll try it," he said stoutly, paying the boat-hire and dropping aboard the bateau. "I don't believe it's going to rain much; and, anyway, I've got to make it—rain or shine."
The farmer handed him the oars and shoved the bateau into clear water. "If ye've got to, ye've got to, I s'pose. I'll leave the lantern down here a spell, so 't ye can have it to steer by. Good night to ye, an' good luck."
Tom shipped the heavy oars, fitted himself uncomfortably between the thwart and the foot-brace, which were too far apart, and swung the clumsy craft into line with the lantern and the lights of Richville. As he did so a sharp gust flung a dash of rain in his face, and the trees on the bay shore began to sigh ominously.
He knew then he was in for a wetting, but that was a small thing compared with the recovery of his lost ground. Without reasoning it out in so many words, he felt that the moral effect of his sudden return would be to amaze his rivals and check Manville's plans. Wherefore he disregarded the warning of the trees, and put his mind upon the management of the bateau—a task which called for all his strength and skill, and soon demanded more of both than he had.
The real difficulties began when he had worked the boat out of the landlocked bay. There was no sea on in the open lake as yet, but the wind was coming in flattening squalls saturated with rain, and the bateau spun around in the gusts as if it were on a pivot. Tom stopped rowing long enough to eke out the distant foot-brace with the forward thwart, and to strip off his coat. Then he buckled down to his work, determined to worry through, if he had to make the six miles by inches.
There was a fine sense of exhilaration in his first grapple with the wind and the lake. Tom was young and strong, with enough soldier blood in his veins to make him obstinately brave and persistent in the thick of a fight. So for a time, while the wind came only in flaws and the sea kept down, he held the stroke steadily, keeping the tiny point of light on Lackner's pier fairly astern.
Suddenly the beacon went out in a fierce gust of wind and rain, and in the lull which followed it did not reappear. At first Tom thought it had been blown out. Then he glanced over his shoulder and saw what had happened. Instead of being dead ahead, the lights of the town were far to the westward; the bateau was drifting down the lake on the wind, in spite of all his hard work.
That was the beginning of the end. Tom flung himself upon the oars with desperate zeal, forgetting to save his strength, and succeeded only in exhausting himself in a dozen strokes. Having nothing to steer by, he soon lost the sense of direction; and when the short, choppy waves began to rise, the bateau reared and plunged and became wholly unmanageable.
Tom was but a fresh-water sailor, but he knew enough to try to keep the head of the yawing craft to the wind. The effort was successful until a thole-pin suddenly snapped short off at the gunwale, landing him on his back in the bottom of the boat, and deluging him with the crest of a wave which came aboard as the bateau fell off broadside to the wind.
After that it seemed to be only a question of moments. As if the breaking thole-pin had been a signal, the storm burst in spiteful fury. Crash upon crash of thunder roared overhead in quick succession, and the vivid play of the lightning was blinding. Tom thought it was all over with him, and clung to the thwart, waiting with what fortitude there was in him for the final plunge and the hand-to-hand struggle in the water.
He had been nearly drowned once, while learning to swim, and he remembered the sensations well enough not to fear them greatly; but it was hard to give up—to go out of life at its very beginning, leaving undone everything he had meant to do. But the crudest thought was that he should die defeated; that, after all his hard work, the Utah colony would go by default and his repentance and efforts in his father's behalf would come to naught.
The sharp regret of it stung like a blow, goading him into a fresh struggle for life, inspired now by a stronger motive than the fear of death. Taking advantage of a momentary lull, he tugged at the remaining oar with fierce energy; and when the blast swept down again he had heaved the bateau out of the trough. The boat hung for a palpitating second on the crest of the wave, and then slid away to leeward as Tom scrambled aft with the oar.
When the slide became a hissing rush in the darkness, breath-cutting but on an even keel, Tom's courage came back with reinforcements, and the fear of death receded. By taking a purchase on the angle of the stern he found he could keep the bateau before the gale with the single oar. He knew little of the size of the lake, and still less of its contour; but he doubted not he should shortly be flung ashore, and he prayed earnestly that it might be upon a shelving beach.
Without being able to gage it, he felt that the speed of the drifting bateau was something terrific; and, rather sooner than he had expected, the fact was rudely demonstrated. A black wall of forest rose up suddenly out of the duller darkness of the night; a smother of foam churned over the uptilted bow of the bateau; there was the crash and shock of a collision in mid-career; and Tom was flung upon the beach as if both the lake and the boat were sick of him.
He was on his feet in a moment, sore and bruised as to body and limb, but thankful to his finger-tips. The bateau had gone out with the receding wave, but it was cast up again on the next, and Tom seized and ran it ashore on the lift of the billow. Then he found his coat and set out to seek for shelter, wet, miserable, and bedraggled as any shipwrecked mariner, yet filled with such a fine glow of gratitude for his deliverance that discomforts went unnoticed.
A hundred yards from the bellowing lake he came to a road with a cultivated field beyond it. And a few paces along the road brought him to a farm-house, guarded by a vociferous dog. He made friends with the dog without any trouble, but he was afraid to approach the house unannounced; wherefore he stood at the gate and yelled until a light appeared at a window. Then the door opened, and some one called out in broken English to ask what was wanted.
Tom came up, patting the dog; and the man at the door seemed to accept this friendly overture with some displeasure.
"Aye bane gone to sell dat dawg," he said calmly. "Aye tank hay's make oop vid anybody."
Tom laughed, wet and miserable as he was. Then he told his plight, and asked for shelter and something to eat. The man at the door listened patiently; and when he was assured that Tom was a fellow-Christian in distress, and no vagrant, he nodded hospitably.
"Coom en da house," he said; "Aye tank you bane havin' poorty hard taim. Vait a meenut; Aye'll make oop da faire."
In a few minutes Tom's wet clothes were steaming on the backs of two chairs before a roaring fire in the kitchen stove; and Tom himself, girt about with a quilt for the lack of more fitting apparel, was devouring a past-due supper, and telling his host as much as he had a right to know about the adventures of the day and evening.
"Den you bane vaerkin' feer da East-Vest Railroad?" queried the farmer, slowly. "Aye laik to know dat; Aye bane gone 'long vid da peoples, too."
"Are you?" said Tom, between mouthfuls. "Has Mr. Olestrom told you about the meeting for to-morrow night?"
The man wagged his head. "Aye tank Jan Olestrom bane gone da odder vay. Aye bane poorty sure 'bout dat."
"What makes you think so?" queried Tom.
"I saw him this afternoon, but he wouldn't talk."
The farmer nodded solemnly and looked as non-committal as only an uneducated Scandinavian can.
"Aye know; hees vife bane talkin' to may vife. Da odder maens bane gifin' heem free da—da biljet."
"A free ticket? a pass, you mean—" A sudden light broke in upon Tom, and what Olestrom had said to him was fully accounted for. "Mr. Manville has given him a pass so that he'll take his friends over the Transcontinental; is that what you mean? I shouldn't think you'd like that."
"Aye don't; en da odder maens dey don't laik it, too, ven dey faind out."
"Good," said Tom, twice thankful for the ill wind which had blown him to this timely discovery. "Will you help me to get your friends to go our way?"
The farmer promised, conditionally. If Aaron Simpson was for the Colorado East & West, he would go that way, and would tell his compatriots about the Olestrom bribe. That was enough for Tom; and when he had finished his supper, Olaf Petersen gave him the guest-room with its plethoric feather-bed and eider-down quilts, and bade him good night, with a promise to bring him his dried clothes in the morning.
They breakfasted early at the Petersens', and at table Tom learned—what he had not thought to ask the previous night—that he had been shipwrecked two miles beyond Aaron Simpson's.
After breakfast he hired Petersen's son to tow the bateau back to Carroll Bay, and set out afoot for Simpson's, whither Petersen promised to follow him a little later.
Simpson was properly surprised to see the young passenger-agent so early in the morning; but his surprise turned to honest indignation when Tom told his story.
"The ornery rascal!" he declared, "playin' a scampin' trick like that on a boy! That settles Manville now, I tell you. Why, you might have been drownded in the lake, for what he cared."
Tom laughingly explained that Manville was not responsible for anything more than the decoy letter; and then they began to plan as to the best way to take advantage of the Olestrom bribe. In the midst of the talk the front gate clanged. Tom looked out and saw a horse and buggy in the road, and a man with a newspaper in his hand coming up the walk.
"There's Mr. Manville now!" he exclaimed. "He mustn't find me here—where shall I go?"
Mr. Aaron Simpson smiled grimly as he pointed to the door of the adjoining room.
"Just you slip in there and leave the door jarred open a little grain," he said, with a shrewd twinkle in his eyes. "Perhaps you'd like to hear what I have to say to our friend Manville. If I'm not mistaken, I'm goin' to have some fun with that young feller."