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Title: The young reporter
A story of Printing House Square
Author: William Drysdale
Illustrator: Charles Copeland
Release date: April 20, 2026 [eBook #78500]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: W. A. Wilde & Company, 1895
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78500
Credits: davidkpark, Rod Crawford, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YOUNG REPORTER ***
[Illustration: “ALMOST A CROWD, FOR RUSSELLVILLE, STOOD IN FRONT OF THE
DRUG STORE.”]
THE YOUNG REPORTER
A Story of Printing House Square.
BY
WILLIAM DRYSDALE,
_Author of “Abel Forefinger,” “In Sunny Lands,”
“Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit,” etc._
ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES COPELAND.
[Illustration: Colophon]
BOSTON:
W. A. WILDE & COMPANY,
25 BROMFIELD STREET.
COPYRIGHT, 1895,
By W. A. WILDE & COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
THE YOUNG REPORTER.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NIGHT IN THE TRANSPORT OFFICE 7
II. THE PRINTER BOY BECOMES A REPORTER 24
III. THE STOLEN LOCOMOTIVE 40
IV. A WILD NIGHT ON NEW YORK BAY 64
V. “SHADOWING” THE CHIEF OF POLICE 83
VI. HOW DICK SPURNED A BRIBE 102
VII. DICK LANDS IN MEXICO WITH A FAMILY 119
VIII. A VOYAGE TO PORTO RICO 139
IX. A STRANDED SHIP AND A BOARD OF SURVEY 158
X. DICK MEETS A FIGHTING PREACHER 181
XI. THE “HOODOOED” STEAMBOAT 201
XII. A NARROW ESCAPE IN ARKANSAS 221
XIII. DICK BEGINS TO WRITE A NOVEL 240
XIV. A NIGHT RIDE ON A FIRE ENGINE 260
XV. “THE THROUGH SLEEPER” 280
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
“Almost a crowd, for Russellville, stood in
front of the drugstore” _Frontispiece_ 12
“You’re just in time, Randall” 59
“What’s the matter, old fellow?” 128
“He snatched an iron belaying-pin from its
socket and sprang forward” 179
“On they flew, faster and faster, every moment” 266
THE YOUNG REPORTER.
CHAPTER I.
A NIGHT IN THE TRANSPORT OFFICE.
The big clock in The Russellville Record office said half-past three,
and Dick Sumner stood in front of his case distributing type.
“It’s a dark day,” he said to himself, glancing at the window, “and
I’m afraid I feel rather dark myself. But that won’t do;” and he
straightened himself up and began to drop the types faster than ever.
Dick was the “last boy” in the Record office and had all of a last
boy’s privileges: the privilege of sweeping the office, making the
fires, washing the rollers, doing all the dirty work.
“It’s a long day, too,” he said as he took up the next handful of type.
“I wish that clock would move a little faster.”
Not that he was in a hurry to get away from his work. That would not
have been like Dick at all, for his heart was in the business, and
there was nothing too hard or too inky for him to undertake. It was
because he thought his fate was to be decided that evening that he was
anxious for evening to come. And so it was, but very differently from
the way he expected. He considered it an eventful day in his life, but
he had no idea how very eventful it was to be.
The trouble was that the three dollars a week he was earning in the
Record office was not enough for him to make. It did very well when
he went into the office, about a year before, when his father was
alive and his money was not needed at home; but since then his father
had died and left hardly anything for the support of the family. Dick
felt that it was his place to take care of his mother and his sister
Florrie, but he could not do it on three dollars a week. By giving
up his place and going to work in the saw-mill he could earn about
a dollar and a half a day, for he was large and strong for a boy of
eighteen; but if he did that he could hardly hope for advancement, and
it would put an end to his learning the trade he liked better than any
other.
That was the problem in the Sumner family, and as he dropped the
letters into their boxes, Dick could not help thinking about it.
Inclination said: “Stick to your trade;” and Duty said--well, there
was a difficulty, for he was not sure what Duty said. On the one hand
he was learning the trade of his choice, and after a while his wages
would increase; but on the other hand the dollar and a half a day was
greatly needed at home.
If his mother had advised him one way or the other, Dick would have
followed her advice on the instant; but she was as undecided about it
as Dick was. They had had many serious talks about it, Mrs. Sumner and
Dick and Florrie, without making up their minds; but the time had come
when Mrs. Sumner must begin to make a little money by sewing, or else
Dick must leave the Record office and go to the saw-mill.
“Think it over this afternoon, Dick,” she said when he went away after
dinner, “and to-night we will decide it one way or the other.”
There was not the least doubt in Dick’s mind, as he kept the types
click, click, clicking into their boxes, that he was to be either a
printer or a saw-mill hand. There were just two fates before him, he
thought, and that night was to decide between them. But he was mistaken.
No wonder the clock moved slowly. He was about to take up another
handful of type, when there came a summons that he was accustomed to
hearing so often that it always made him smile:--
“Here, Dick!”
The call came from the editor’s room in the front. The Record office is
a small place, with only two rooms. In the front room the editor sits
with his pen and shears and his pile of exchanges; and in the back
room the three printers work. The door between them always stands open.
“Yes, sir!” Dick answered; and he put down his type and hurriedly dried
his hands on a discarded proof.
“I think I’ll let you do that governor business to-night, Dick,” the
editor said. “It’s not every day we have a governor in town, and people
will want to read something about him. You might have a little talk
with him; get him to say something nice about Russellville. You’ll have
all the week to write your story, and I think you can do it justice.”
“Very well, sir; I’ll do the best I can with it,” Dick answered, and
went back to his type.
“That governor business!” It was a vague order, but Dick understood
it, and it brought a flush to his temples. It meant that that night
he was to be a reporter for the paper, instead of only a drudge in
the office. He was proud of the commission, and yet a little afraid
of it. He had often done little reporting jobs for the paper before,
attending unimportant meetings and writing a few lines about them which
had actually appeared in print. Occasionally he had ventured into a bit
of descriptive writing, with some success. But that governor business!
That was more than he would have believed the editor would trust him
with.
The editor knew what he was doing, though. Dick had a reasonably good
education, having gone through the village school, and he knew how to
get a fact and write it in good plain English without any nonsense.
He was a manly looking fellow, too, five feet nine; and his cheery,
handsome face and bright gray eyes opened many a door for him where an
older man might have been repulsed.
“What is the governor business you’re going to do?” the foreman asked
presently, after hearing the editor go out and shut the front door.
“Oh, haven’t you heard of it? I thought everybody in Russellville knew
about it,” Dick replied. “Of course you know that Mrs. Thornton is a
sister of Governor Wright, the governor of the State, and that she is
very sick. She is much worse to-day, and they have telegraphed for the
governor to come on, and he is expected here about nine o’clock this
evening.”
Dick had more things to think of now, as he went on distributing his
type without throwing italic words into the quad box as some printers
do when excited. Seeing the governor would interfere with his business
at home, and that must be postponed. And going up to a real governor
and interviewing him, he regarded as a very serious matter. But he
knew the Thorntons well, and they would make a way for him to reach
the governor, when he was at leisure. There was one dark spot, though,
in this bright prospect. He could not help thinking that in another
week he might be rolling logs in a saw-mill instead of interviewing
governors for a very respectable weekly newspaper.
At nine o’clock that evening Dick started out for the Thorntons’ house,
revolving in his mind a dozen questions that he intended to ask the
governor if he got the chance. The governor was to drive over; for
although Russellville is less than an hour’s ride from New York it is
several miles from the nearest railway. It is a slow, old-fashioned
town and its Record is a slow, old-fashioned newspaper; but that was in
Dick’s favor, for none but a very old-fashioned paper could have sent
its office boy to interview the governor of the State.
As he went down the quiet street, Dick saw that something unusual was
going on. People were gathered in little groups talking; and almost a
crowd, for Russellville, stood in front of the drugstore.
“What is it?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
“The governor,” was the answer, “has been killed!”
“No, not killed,” said another, “but very badly injured. The horses
ran away and he was thrown out. They have taken him to his sister’s,
and three doctors are trying to bring him back to life. He has been
unconscious ever since the accident.”
For a moment Dick was dazed; and then there came upon him that feeling
of responsibility that comes even to an old reporter when an important
piece of news lies before him.
To verify the report--he was sure that that was what he ought to do
first, for such things are often exaggerated. He hurried on to the
Thornton house and found a crowd in front. While he waited one of the
doctors came out; and Dick, knowing him, stepped into the carriage with
him. Yes, the rumor was only too true. The horses had taken fright,
Governor Wright had been thrown out; he had been carried unconscious to
his sister’s house, and the physicians had found a bad fracture of the
left thigh. There were injuries to the head, too, but it was impossible
to say yet how serious. The doctor was hurrying after splints and
bandages and would return to the house. Dick could go back with him, he
said, and see the governor’s secretary, who was in the party.
It was while he rode in the carriage with the doctor that an idea came
to Dick which changed his whole subsequent life. Here was news, he was
sure of it; a serious accident to the governor of a great State was
news that even the big city papers would print, and if they would print
it they would pay for it. He might make three dollars, a whole week’s
wages, if he could get the news to one of the morning newspapers. No
telegraph office in Russellville was open at that hour, but there was
a train for the city at eleven o’clock, if he could get a friend to
drive him over to the station.
With this idea in his head Dick worked like a Trojan. To see the
governor was out of the question, but he saw the secretary and talked
with him. Then he saw the doctors and got a brief written statement
from one of them. The driver had a story to tell, and Dick made full
notes of it all. In an hour he felt sure that he had everything at his
fingers’ ends.
“But will this be fair?” he asked himself as he went down the street to
meet the friend who was to drive him to the railway. “I was sent out to
report the governor’s visit for The Russellville Record, and will it be
fair for me to write an account of the accident for some other paper?”
It was a very proper question for him to ask, and fortunately his
editor was on hand to answer it. He was walking up the street that Dick
was walking down.
“It’s a very bad accident, sir,” Dick hurriedly said; “the governor’s
thigh is broken and his head is injured. Would it make any difference
to you, Mr. Davis, if I should take an account of it to one of the New
York papers?”
“Not the least in the world!” the editor replied, smiling; “it’s a good
idea. Go ahead, my boy, and they’ll pay you for it.”
At twelve o’clock, midnight, Dick was in New York city, having stopped
a moment at home to explain the situation; and ten minutes later he
was in front of The Daily Transport office. He had passed the building
often before, but never at midnight; and when he saw the row of bright
lights all across the third and fourth stories, and the men at work in
the brilliant counting-room below (enough men, it seemed to him, to
write and print the paper themselves), he began to feel a little timid
about going in.
“Pshaw!” he said to himself after hesitating a moment outside; “I have
something to sell that I’m sure the paper wants to buy. Anyhow, I don’t
believe they’ll eat me in there.”
When he inquired for the editor at one of the counting-room windows,
the nearest clerk raised his head from his work long enough to nod
toward the stairway, and to say:--
“Third story!”
This was surprise number one for Dick. Here was a great New York office
without an elevator, and with long dark stairs to climb! It was his
favorite paper, too; the best of them all, as he thought, and he was
rather disappointed. But he climbed the stairs, one long flight and two
shorter ones, and went through an open doorway into a blaze of light.
It was an immense room that he found himself in, with long rows of
desks and chairs and electric lights innumerable, and larger desks at
the farther end by the front windows. A small space about the entrance
door was enclosed with a railing. Thirty or forty men sat at the desks;
a few writing, some reading newspapers, others grouped together and
talking in low tones. Everything was as calm as a May morning.
This was surprise number two. The paper must go to press certainly in
an hour or so, yet all these men were as unconcerned as though they
were writing for a monthly magazine. And where were the messenger boys,
rushing excitedly in and out, bearing important dispatches from all
parts of the world? Not a messenger did he see. Why, there was more
excitement in The Russellville Record office on publication day.
An office boy stood in front of him inquiringly, and Dick said that he
had some news for the editor.
“Night city editor,” said the boy; “step this way.”
He led Dick through a long alley between two rows of desks to the front
of the room, and pointed to a chair at the side of the editor’s desk.
Dick sat down and felt reassured when he found that the night city
editor was a very young man, not more than four or five years older
than himself.
“We had an accident in our place--in Russellville--to-night,” he said
when the editor looked up; “Governor Wright was thrown out of his
carriage and was very seriously hurt. His thigh was broken and they do
not know yet how dangerous the injuries to his head may be.”
“And your name is?”--the editor asked.
“My name is Richard Sumner, sir,” Dick answered. “I am from The
Russellville Record.”
“Just tell me the circumstances, Mr. Sumner, as briefly as you can,”
said the editor.
Dick felt that he was blushing, for it was the first time he had ever
been called Mr. Sumner. But he had the story well in mind, and told it
as briefly and clearly as he could, with all the important points well
brought out.
Before the young editor had time to say anything, after Dick finished,
an elderly gentleman, who had been sitting at a neighboring desk,
apparently paying no attention to the talk, pushed back his chair and
stood up and began to open a most formidable battery upon the young
printer. He first wiped one pair of spectacles and put them on, then
wiped another pair and put them on over the others. Through both
pairs of glasses he looked searchingly into Dick’s face. But his own
gray-whiskered face was such an embodiment of good-nature that Dick was
not alarmed.
“Young man,” said the older editor, his glass guns still aimed straight
at Dick’s face, “can you write that story as well as you have just told
it?”
“I think so, sir,” Dick answered. “I wrote part of it while I was in
the cars.”
“Then give me what you have ready,” said the editor, “and sit right
down at that desk and finish it. Give all the particulars fully; we
have plenty of room for important news. But no slush, mind you; not a
line. Have you taken this to any other paper?”
“No, sir,” Dick replied.
“But there is a telegraph office in Russellville?”
“Yes, sir, there is,” Dick answered; “but it was closed at eight
o’clock, before the accident happened.”
“Then don’t go anywhere else,” said the editor. “Stay here with me till
I can show you a proof, and I will pay you extra for it. Now fire away;
you have an hour and twenty minutes to write. We go to press at 1.50.”
Dick sat down at a desk with a handful of manilla paper before him,
and spent a minute or two in thinking before he began to write. There
he was with important news, and only two of the forty men paid any
attention to him, or even looked at him. And he could not understand
why they would take news from a stranger so willingly; he had expected
to be questioned very closely, for how could they know that his news
was true? But there was no time to waste, and he fell to work.
It was not instinct that taught him to begin the article with a brief
statement of all the principal facts. He had learned that way by
reading the Transport carefully. Then he went on with an account of
Mrs. Thornton’s relationship to the governor, her illness and relapse,
the governor’s arrival in Russellville, the fright of the horses, the
accident, and the extent of the governor’s injuries. After these things
came an interview with the doctors and the private secretary and a copy
of the statement that one of the doctors had written for him. Last of
all was a talk with the driver, in which that well-frightened person
told in his own way how and why the horses ran away.
“Don’t hurry yourself,” the night city editor called over to Dick,
seeing how rapidly he was moving the pencil. “Plenty of time. You’ve
nearly forty minutes yet.”
When Dick looked up to answer, a cold chill ran down his spine. The
editor with the spectacles was at work on his early copy with a blue
pencil, marking out whole paragraphs, killing lines and parts of lines,
transposing sentences, inserting new words, making changes here, there,
and everywhere. He had never seen copy with so many blue lines.
“A nice job I’ve made of it,” he said to himself. “I guess they’ll not
want any more of my copy in the Transport office.” But the next minute
he saw that the young editor was doing precisely the same thing with
the copy he was reading, and that consoled him.
Long before 1.50 came, Dick’s copy had all been edited and sent up to
the printers. Both the editors seemed to have forgotten him, and he
was left to amuse himself with the loose newspapers and directories
and traveler’s guides that were scattered about. The older editor was
constantly going out of the room and coming back, and the younger was
busy with copy that was laid upon his desk every few minutes:
“There is later news for you,” said the editor with the glasses, as he
came in with a handful of proofs and handed Dick an open telegram.
The dispatch was dated “Russellville, 12.45, via Branchport, 1.20
A.M.”; and the date line made Dick open his eyes. “Governor
Wright still unconscious,” it said. “Slight fracture of skull.
Physicians give little hope of his recovery. Good night. Simmons.”
“Why!” Dick exclaimed; “how did you get that, sir?”
“Newspapers have long arms, Mr. Sumner,” the editor replied with a
smile; and the next minute he was busy with his proofs.
Dick understood now why the Transport’s editors had been so willing
to accept news from a stranger. They had treated his news exactly as
though they were sure of its truth, even to putting it in type, to be
ready if it proved genuine. But without confirmation they would not
have published it, except perhaps as a rumor. Then in some unknown way
they had managed to get one of their own men to Russellville, and his
telegram had removed all doubts and added later news. The skilful way
it was managed filled him with admiration.
“And they don’t care a cent whether I see a proof of my article or
not,” he said to himself. “In fact I don’t believe they will show me a
proof at all, for it’s not necessary. They’re just keeping me here so
that I won’t take the news to any of the other papers. They’re after a
‘beat,’ and I think they’ve got one.”
Rap-tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-atap-atap-atap, atap. It was a heavy
pounding somewhere overhead; and Dick knew what that meant, too. The
printers were “planing down a form”--leveling the type with a mallet
and smooth block of wood. That is one of the last operations before the
presses begin to move, and a sure sign that the paper will soon be out.
But the gray-bearded editor worked away at his proofs, and still Dick
was left to himself.
Presently there came up through the floor a noise that sounded like
suppressed shrieks, followed in a few seconds by a rumble and jar that
shook the building. The belts had taken hold, and the presses were at
work, three stories below, far under the sidewalk.
At 2.10 A.M., a boy rushed in with an armful of fresh
papers, and handed one to each of the fifteen or twenty men who still
remained in the room. Dick had no need even to open the paper to see
his article, for there it was in the place of honor, the first column
of the first page, with a big head over it, and the first third of a
column double-leaded to make it look larger. He was almost frightened
when he turned the paper over and found that he had written a column
and a quarter.
“That is a good thing of yours, Mr. Sumner,” the spectacled editor
said; and Dick felt himself growing red when fifteen or twenty pairs of
eyes were turned toward him. “You evidently know a piece of news when
you see it, and you have handled the subject well. Let me have your
name and address, please; there may be more news in Russellville.”
While Dick was writing his address on a piece of paper the other
morning papers were brought in by a boy and laid upon the spectacled
editor’s desk. He picked out the three or four leading ones and hastily
looked them over.
“We’ve done them!” he exclaimed; and he turned about and beamed smiles
over everybody present. “No one else has a word about Governor Wright’s
accident. Your first article in the Transport is a straight out-and-out
beat, Mr. Sumner.”
He turned to his desk again and hastily wrote a few words with his blue
pencil.
“Hand this to the cashier on your way out,” he said, giving Dick a
small slip of paper; “and come to us when you have more news. Good
night, Mr. Sumner.”
Pride, excitement, fatigue were all helping to make Dick feel that the
night’s work was not quite real. He had stepped upon the magic carpet
and it had carried him to enchanted regions far away from Russellville
and the Record office. On the first landing he stopped under the light
and read what the spectacled editor had written upon the slip of
paper:--
CASHIER DAILY TRANSPORT,--
Please pay the bearer twenty-five dollars for important
exclusive information. JOHN B. GOODE, _Night Editor_.
CHAPTER II.
THE PRINTER BOY BECOMES A REPORTER.
“Here, Dick! Wash the small rollers and be quick about it.”
“Well, this is a funny old world,” Dick said to himself. “Last night
some of the big editors were calling me Mr. Sumner and telling me I’d
written a good article, and this morning I’m only ‘Here, Dick!’ again.”
But he picked up the black sponge and began the inky work as cheerfully
as a boy could who had been up all night and lived for two or three
hours in a dream.
He had taken an early train from the city, and by walking from the
railway had reached home in time for a bite of breakfast before he
opened the office as usual. Not a word did he say to any of his
fellow-printers about what he had done; but a copy of The Daily
Transport was carefully folded up in his coat pocket. He thought more
of that one than any of the other copies that he had bought at the news
stands, because it was the one that had been given him in the office.
It was a sort of sacred relic to him, important enough to be framed.
Somehow the saw-mill project seemed miles away now. There was little
chance of such a piece of news happening in his way again, but it
did not seem possible that he could be taken away from the types and
presses, after such an experience.
“Here, Dick!”
It amused him more now than ever, the constant calling of “Here, Dick!”
But this call came from the editor’s room, and he hurriedly washed the
worst of the black from his hands.
“I have just been reading your article in The Daily Transport, Dick,”
the editor said. “You gave them the facts very correctly, and they must
have turned them over to a good man to write the story, for he has done
it capitally. Do you know who it was?”
“I wrote the article myself, sir,” Dick answered modestly.
“What!” the editor exclaimed; “you wrote the article! Well, that’s
strange. You know I used to have something to do with the Transport
myself, and of course I know that when a stranger goes in with
important news they have him tell it to one of the reporters, and the
reporter writes the article. Tell me how it happened that they let you
write it.”
Dick gave a brief account of all his experiences in the Transport
office, not forgetting his first statement to the night city editor
that was overheard by the night editor, the cutting and changing of his
copy, and the compliment that the night editor paid him.
“Well, I am glad to hear that,” Mr. Davis said when he had heard the
whole story. “I am really glad to hear that, Dick. You did them a
first-rate piece of work, and you have evidently established yourself
in the good opinion of the night editor. You don’t know how much that
means, but I do. I know Dr. Goode, the night editor, very well. Almost
every newspaper man around New York knows him and loves him, for he is
one of the dearest old men in the world. He is always on the lookout
for bright young men who can be turned into good reporters; and if I
am not much mistaken he has you in his eye and you will hear from him
again.”
“But I had only given the young editor a very brief account of the
accident when Dr. Goode took me in charge, sir,” Dick interrupted.
“That’s it exactly,” Mr. Davis continued; “and Dr. Goode overheard you,
and he saw in a minute that you had the story properly laid out in your
mind and knew how to handle it. That was why he took you out of the
young editor’s hands and looked after you himself. You see the young
man, the night city editor, has charge of the city news at night, but
Dr. Goode, the night editor, has charge of the whole paper at night,
under the managing editor. Your plain, straightforward way of writing
evidently pleased him, and I am afraid that before the year is up I
shall lose one of the best office boys I ever had.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Dick, blushing furiously. “You are very kind to
say so; but I don’t think there is any danger of that.”
There was great danger of it, however, and steps to bring it about were
in progress at that very moment.
“Don’t take too much credit to yourself, though, Dick,” Mr. Davis
went on with a smile. “I don’t want to see you spoiled at the start.
Remember that circumstances had more to do with it than you had. If
Russellville were not such a little out-of-the-way place, there would
be some newspaper correspondent here, and then you would have had no
chance at all. If Dr. Goode had not accidentally overheard you telling
the story, he could not have taken a fancy to your way of telling it.
But that is the way things always go; we are creatures of accident.
The bright man takes advantage of the accidents and turns them to good
account, and that is exactly what you did.”
Dick might not have set type as complacently that morning if he had
known all that the night editor did before he went home. The young
printer was hardly out of the Transport office before Dr. Goode took up
a small slip of paper and wrote a brief note to the city editor with
his ever-present blue pencil.
“Dear John,” he said in the note, “the young man who did the Governor
Wright beat for us this morning is Richard Sumner, of Russellville.
“He has a nose for news and he writes good English.
“You might make a reporter of him, if you have a vacancy.
“Yours, J. B. G.”
When the city editor reached his desk at ten o’clock in the morning he
found this note among a dozen others, and, after reading it, he laid it
under a paper weight till the rush of morning work was over. Then he
took it up again and wrote a very short letter to “Mr. Richard Sumner,
Russellville,” and sent it to the mail box. The fewer letters a man
gets the longer he takes to answer them; and the city editor of the
Transport gets so many that he answers each one on the instant.
Dick was in blissful ignorance of all this; and when he was sent after
the evening mail, about five o’clock, it gave him a start to find a
letter addressed to himself, with The Daily Transport printed across
the envelope in big type.
“Dear Sir,” the letter read, “I should be glad to have you call and
see me at The Daily Transport office any day before six o’clock
P.M.
“Truly yours, J. H. Brown, _City Editor_.”
When Dick showed this note to the editor of the Record, that gentleman
merely gave an “I-told-you-so” smile and said: “Those fellows don’t
waste much time, do they?” But when he read it at home before supper to
his mother and Florrie, it threw the household into confusion.
“O Dick!” his mother exclaimed; and Dick noticed that she turned her
head away, “they want you to write more for them, I know they do; and
to think that I almost wanted you to leave the business and work in a
saw-mill! Of course they would send for you, you write so well; and
your being a printer is a great help, for you could help to print the
paper.”
“I don’t believe that’s what it is about,” said Florrie. Happy as she
was over Dick’s success, she could not help teasing him a little. “I
think Dick has made some bad mistake in his article, and they want him
to come and explain it.”
But while she spoke Florrie stood behind his chair stroking his head;
and more than one Russellville boy would have been glad to sit in
Dick’s chair at that moment.
“You must not have such an idea, mother,” Dick answered. “I have great
hopes that they will give me something to do, from what Mr. Davis told
me to-day. But it would be something very small, at the best. It was
not my writing they cared for, but the news I took them. I can write
a plain statement well enough, but what is that compared with the way
that most of those Transport men can write? Even if they give me a
chance, I may not be able to please them.”
It was fortunate for Dick that he was as honest with the city editor
a few days later as he was with his mother. Men go to see the city
editor every day who try to pass themselves for something they are
not, and the editor sees through their little deception in a minute
and shakes them off. But Dick told everything about himself frankly.
Instead of trying to magnify himself he said that he was working in a
printing-office for three dollars a week; that he was a little past
eighteen years old, and had been through the Russellville public school.
“I’m afraid I am not as good a speller as I ought to be, sir,” he added
doubtfully.
The editor smiled.
“That doesn’t make the least difference,” he said. “One of the best
reporters I ever had spelled door d-o-a-r. If a reporter can get the
news, the printers will see to his spelling.”
They talked for ten or fifteen minutes, and the editor liked Dick’s
honest, manly way.
“Well,” said he in conclusion, “we will take you on trial as a
reporter. You can begin to-morrow morning, if you like, and report to
me at ten o’clock. The salary will be fifteen dollars a week.”
The salary will be fifteen dollars a week. The salary will be fifteen
dollars a week. Dick kept saying it over and over to himself as he went
down the stairs. Perhaps there was some mistake about it. No, that was
what the editor said, fifteen dollars a week. He was rather alarmed
at it. For such a salary they would expect more of him than he was
capable of. Fif-teen dollars a w-e-e-k! Fifteen times fifty-two is
780; seven hundred and eighty dollars a year!
When Dick reported for duty the next morning he felt that he was
beginning a new life. Mr. Davis had released him immediately from the
Record office, and he was no longer a printer’s boy. He had a vague
idea that he would be sent out to a good street corner to pick up some
of the things that are constantly occurring in New York. Maybe he would
happen upon a fire, or it might be the catching of a pickpocket, or
somebody run over.
But his first morning’s experience was very different from this. After
reporting to the city editor he was told to sit down and wait; and he
sat in one of the chairs from ten o’clock till half-past two without
anybody paying the slightest attention to him. Other men came in and
got their orders and went out again, but Dick seemed to be entirely
forgotten.
“I wonder whether Mr. Brown thinks I’m too young, now he’s had a second
look at me,” he said to himself. “It’s very strange. Here they’re
paying me two dollars and a half a day, and they don’t give me anything
to do.”
It was a great relief to him when one of the reporters, a man whom he
remembered seeing in the office on the night of his first visit, came
up and spoke to him. Dick remembered him particularly because he was
the handsomest man in the office and seemed to have a pleasant word
for everybody. He was very dark, with a silky black mustache, and was
extremely well dressed.
“Well, my boy,” said this handsome reporter, “you’re going to be a
newspaper man, are you?”
“I hope so, sir,” Dick answered. “But I’ve not done much so far. They
haven’t given me anything to do yet to-day.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that!” the man laughed. “I suppose you are
on salary, so you’ll soon have enough to do. You’ll only get little
jobs at first, till they see what you can do. Thought of going out to
try and pick up some news? Oh, you couldn’t do that. We very seldom
pick up news. You see that book on the city editor’s desk? That is what
we call the assignment book. The city editor knows everything that
should happen in the city to-day, all the routine things, and he makes
a list of them in his book. Then he assigns one man to attend to each
thing. There’s a conference in the mayor’s office at three o’clock, and
he wants Jack Randall to attend to it (I’m Jack Randall); so he writes
my name opposite the entry, and that’s my business for the afternoon. I
must be off. If you get stuck on anything, come to me and I’ll help you
out. Ta-ta.” Handsome Jack Randall tapped Dick lightly on the shoulder
and was off, little thinking how much pleasanter he had made the day
for the new reporter.
By three o’clock Dick began to feel the gnawings of hunger; but his
new friend Randall was gone, and he had no one to ask what was the
reporters’ lunch hour. After some hesitation he stepped up to the city
editor and asked:--
“Could I go out for a few minutes to get something to eat, sir?”
Mr. Brown leaned far back in his armchair and looked Dick pleasantly in
the face, in a very reassuring manner.
“Go out just whenever you like, Mr. Sumner,” he answered, “and eat all
you want. You don’t need to ask permission. And when you come back make
yourself as comfortable as you can. We don’t have any slave rules in
the Transport office.”
It was new to Dick to feel at liberty to go in and out as he liked. One
of the cheap restaurants in the neighborhood of Printing House Square
supplied the food he needed, and he was soon back in his chair. He saw
that the city editor had a pile of fresh newspapers on his desk, and
was busy reading them. They were the early editions of the afternoon
papers.
“Mr. Sumner!” said the editor, looking toward Dick; and Dick hastened
to him. Here was work evidently for him to do, and he was anxious to
make a beginning. The editor had a small clipping in his hand, just cut
from one of the newspapers.
“Here is something for you to do this evening, Mr. Sumner,” the editor
said. “There is to be a meeting of the Stonecutters’ Protective Union,
in Germania Hall, that you can attend. They seldom do anything but make
speeches, and the whole thing probably will not be worth more than
four or five lines. But you must always be on the lookout for anything
unusual, of course, that might make it of more importance. Hand your
copy to the night city editor; and have it in as early as you can,
please.”
“Yes, sir,” Dick answered as he took the printed slip the editor handed
him. He was a little disappointed, but of course he did not show it.
Mr. Randall had told him that he would get only small jobs at first;
but to write four or five lines for a day’s work seemed to him rather
discouraging.
“Well, my boy,” one of the older reporters said to him as he resumed
his seat, “you’ve got your first assignment, have you? Let me see; oh,
the stonecutters’ union;” and the man laughed; “you’ll get plenty of
those little jobs till they find out what you can do. It’s by doing
these little things well that you’ll gradually work into better ones.”
“I suppose a man must begin at the beginning, sir,” Dick replied; and
then wondered at what he had said, for he had never called himself a
man before. But he sat down and began to study his slip carefully. At
eight o’clock, so the slip said, the meeting was to be held; and there
would be several addresses by prominent speakers. He laid it out in
his mind just how his few lines should be worded. He was glad to think
that it would take some little skill, at any rate, to condense a report
of a meeting into four or five lines.
It was not six o’clock yet when Dick left the office, and he had
plenty of time for a leisurely walk up the Bowery. He had often seen
the Bowery before, but never had it seemed so bright and busy to him.
Instead of being merely a visitor now he had business there, business
for a great newspaper, and he was actually a reporter going after
information.
The meeting proved to be very different from what Dick expected. The
big hall was crowded, and the two factions in the union could not
agree. One of the speakers was mobbed and injured, several shots were
fired, the police rushed in with their clubs, and chairs were freely
used as missiles. It was anything but a routine meeting.
“Why!” Dick said to himself as he hurried back to the office after
eleven o’clock, “in Russellville we’d half-fill the paper with such a
thing. Even in New York it must be worth more than four or five lines.
I think the city editor would want me to write a little more than
that--say fifteen or twenty lines, as several people were hurt.”
The whole appearance of the office was changed when he reached it.
The day staff of editors had gone home and the night staff had taken
their places, and the big room was brilliant and hot. Nobody paid any
attention to him, for every one was busy. The night city editor’s only
information about Dick’s work was in the single line in the assignment
book:
“Meeting of Stonecutters, Germania Hall--Sumner.”
Dick sat down at his desk and wrote on the manilla office paper:--
“At the meeting of the Stonecutter’s Protective Union, held in Germania
Hall last evening, the two factions in the society came to blows, and
several persons were seriously injured, besides one man being shot. The
Hon. George R. Heard, member of Assembly, made an address; and some of
the members, taking exception to his remarks, attacked him with chairs
and table legs, and he was so badly hurt that an ambulance had to be
called to take him to Bellevue Hospital. The police rushed in with
drawn clubs, and several shots were fired. One man was hit by a bullet,
but his name could not be ascertained. The hall, which was crowded, was
cleared by the police.”
“There!” Dick said to himself after he had read the page a dozen times
and made some changes each time; “I think that tells the story. If only
I have not made it too long. Jack Randall would tell me if he were
here, but he is out. I don’t think this will be too much about it.”
He walked over to the night city editor’s desk and handed in his page
of copy, as he saw the other reporters do.
“A meeting of stonecutters, sir,” he said.
“Very well,” the night city editor replied, scarcely looking up. But he
took his blue pencil and checked Dick’s name in the assignment list and
laid the page of copy on top of a heap of such pages. It must take its
turn, and it might not come under his eye for an hour yet. Dick went to
his seat and took up a newspaper, but he waited anxiously to learn the
fate of his first day’s work as a reporter.
It was nearly midnight when Dick’s copy was picked up by the editor,
and he was looking at the moment in another direction.
“Hello here!” he heard the editor exclaim. “What’s this? what’s this?
Assemblyman Heard injured and taken to Bellevue Hospital; another man
shot! Why, this was a riot; we must have a column of this! Who was such
a-- Oh, this is Sumner, a new man. Here, Mr. Sumner, please.”
Dick was dazed as he stepped up to the editor’s desk. It was plain that
he had made a terrible blunder.
“I am afraid you do not appreciate the value of news, Mr. Sumner,”
the editor said. “A stonecutters’ meeting is worth only a few lines,
but a riot at such a meeting is a very different thing. We must have
a much better account of this. You sit down and tell all the facts
you have to Mr. Herrick here. Mr. Herrick, you take Sumner’s facts and
write the story. Mr. Black, call up Bellevue Hospital on the telephone,
and inquire how badly Assemblyman Heard has been hurt. Get Police
Headquarters, too, and ask for all particulars. We must know something
about the man who was shot. Mr. Banks, you will find a biography of
Assemblyman Heard in the library; write me a brief account of his life,
please,--about two sticks. We must have this ready in half an hour,
gentlemen, if possible.”
Three men set to work to do over again the report that Dick had made a
failure with! He was ready to sink through the floor, but he sat down
and gave Mr. Herrick as complete an account of the meeting as he could.
It was easy to see now that the news was of importance, and he wondered
at himself for not seeing it before. The order for four or five lines
had misled him.
Before one o’clock the new report was ready, nearly a column of it,
the different parts of it neatly joined together by Mr. Herrick. Oh,
how skilfully that man handled the matter, Dick thought, and how well
he knew just where to bring in Mr. Black’s part of the story and Mr.
Banks’ biography.
“A nice thing to have to tell mother and Florrie,” Dick said to himself
as he went sadly down the stairs; “to make such a break as that, and
have my work done over again. I’m afraid I haven’t got the brains to
work for a big city paper, that’s about the amount of it. Anyhow I
don’t suppose they’ll want me any longer now that they see what I am.
It will seem hard to go back to washing rollers and sweeping out the
office after thinking myself a reporter; but it’s all my own stupidity.”
Turning one of the sharp corners at a landing, Dick almost ran into
Dr. Goode, who had been out eating his midnight lunch. The doctor wore
only one pair of glasses now, and he had to look closely to see who was
before him.
“Oh, it’s you, Sumner, is it?” he asked as he recognized the new
reporter. “I see you had a little misfortune with your assignment
to-night. But never mind, my boy;” and he laid his hand kindly on
Dick’s shoulder. “Such things happen to new men sometimes; we rather
expect them. It’s not the first mistake we mind, but having the same
mistake made over and over. Keep your spirits up, and you’ll soon be
doing some good work for us.”
CHAPTER III.
THE STOLEN LOCOMOTIVE.
“Well, Mr. Sumner, your assignment last night turned out larger than we
expected,” the city editor said when Dick reported in the office next
morning.
Dick had spent a miserable night, and he anticipated at least a severe
lecture. But the editor’s manner was kind and reassuring.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, “the stonecutters had a very lively meeting,
and I ought to have known that it was an important piece of news. I’ll
try to use better judgment next time, sir.”
“Oh, I think you’ll soon learn,” the editor said. “We don’t expect you
to have much experience on your first day. You see when I tell you to
write four or five lines, that is with the expectation that the matter
will be of no importance. Something unexpected may happen and make it
worth two or three columns. You will find it a good plan always to tell
your facts briefly to the night city editor when you come in, and he
will tell you about how much to write.”
Several of the older reporters were ready to talk to Dick when he took
his seat. It was easy for them to see that he was worried over his
mistake, and they felt sorry for him.
“If you had told some of us what you had when you came in,” said Mr.
Herrick, the reporter who had rewritten Dick’s article so skilfully,
“we’d have put you on the right track. But don’t worry over it; you
look as if you’d cried yourself to sleep.”
“Not quite as bad as that,” Dick answered with something of a smile.
“But I did have a very bad night of it. You see I was kept so late that
I missed my train for home, so I went to the Astor House and took a
room. It’s a terrible noisy place over there.”
“It’s worse than noisy,” Mr. Herrick laughed, “it’s too expensive for a
young reporter. You’re not living out of town, are you?”
Dick explained that he lived in Russellville with his mother and sister.
“Oh, that will never do!” Mr. Herrick exclaimed. “No reporter can hope
to live out of town. Our hours are so irregular that you’ll miss your
train about five nights a week. The best way is to rent a furnished
room and live in the city. That’s the way most of us do. It leaves a
man free to work at all hours.”
“Yes, that’s a reporter’s life,” said young Tom Brownell, who was only
two or three years older than Dick. “A furnished room, meals in a Park
Row beanery, and empty pockets on Saturday night. That’s all we can
look forward to.”
“Don’t stuff the boy, Brownell,” said Mr. Banks, whose seat was near.
“Brownell is a space man, Mr. Sumner, who makes about sixty dollars a
week and boards in a hotel. But it is a fact that you’ll not be able
to live out of town. You cannot do better than rent a little room for
the present and take your meals in whatever restaurant you happen to be
near.”
This was a new idea to Dick, and he had plenty of time to think it over
while waiting for an assignment. Russellville was so near, it had not
occurred to him that he would not be able to go home every night; but
if he should be kept late often, and miss his train four or five nights
a week, the hotel bills would soon use up his salary. Still, there was
an objection to his living in a furnished room and restaurants.
“If I am to pay my way separately in the city,” he considered, “what am
I going to have left for mother and Florrie? Fifteen dollars a week is
a great deal of money, but money seems to disappear very fast here in
the city.”
He had plenty to do on that second day, but it seemed to him that it
was all work that an errand boy might have done. First he was sent
to a steamship office to inquire about an overdue vessel, then down
to Wall Street to carry a message to the financial reporter; and in
the evening he had two little meetings to attend, but they were of no
importance, and he had not a single line to write.
“It’s tough, isn’t it?” he said to Randall, when his last job was done
and he was free to go home. “I’ve not had a line to write to-day.”
“Tough!” Randall exclaimed; “why, my boy, I’ve often worked for two
weeks on a job and then had nothing to write. You can’t expect to write
much at the start, and some men never do. You will soon see that all
the reporting of any importance is done by about half a dozen men. They
get all the long articles to write, because they know how to do it. The
rest have to take what is left.
“Besides that,” Randall went on, “a new man has to wait for his
opportunity. They’ll keep giving you this little work to do till some
day a little thing turns out big, and then you’ll have a chance to show
what stuff there is in you. That’s the way a new reporter gets a start.”
“Oh!” Dick gasped; “and I had just such a chance as that last night,
and lost it!”
“Yes, you did,” Randall admitted; “but you can’t expect to do
everything in a day. Another chance will come some day; watch for it.”
Watch for it! Dick did nothing but watch for it. No matter how small
his assignment was, and for days and weeks they were all small, he went
about it full of the hope that it might turn out to be of importance.
Sometimes he was almost discouraged, particularly when he looked
about him and saw how many older men in the office, men who had been
reporters for years, got no better work to do than he. Some of these
men, too, were much better men than he; he could not help seeing that.
They had traveled everywhere, and were thoroughly educated, and spoke
many languages, but still their opportunity had not come. Perhaps his
chance might never come again either.
There were other things to make Dick feel uncomfortable. His mother had
given him the best advice when he found that he must live in the city,
and of course Dick had followed it, but he found himself very unsettled.
“If you must miss the train so often,” she said to him, “you will have
to live in the city; but do nothing rash till you are sure of keeping
your place in the office. Rent a little room somewhere for the present,
and after a while Florrie and I will move in, if everything goes well,
and we can take a tiny little flat, and all live together again.”
So Dick was cut off from his family, a young lone bachelor in New York;
and the little hall bedroom was doleful, and the restaurant meals
were growing monotonous, for he could not afford to go to the good
restaurants; even the cheap ones swallowed up a large share of his
salary.
“Here is a meeting of the Harbor Commissioners that you can attend
this morning, Mr. Sumner,” the city editor said to him one day. “They
never do anything worth printing. Last time we merely said of them ‘The
Harbor Commissioners met yesterday and did nothing.’ There probably
will not be more than a line or two to write about them.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dick, and he could not help adding mentally, “that’s
the reason I get the job, I’m afraid, because it is of no account. But
never mind; my chance will come some day, and then I’ll get better
work.”
It was as small and unimportant an assignment as was given out that day
in the office; but small as it looked it was destined to help Dick to a
better standing on the Transport. The subject of tugboats running about
the harbor without proper lights came up at the meeting, and one of the
Commissioners told of a thrilling experience he had had a few nights
before, while taking the Vice-President of the United States down the
harbor in a Revenue Cutter. A tug carrying no lights lay directly in
the cutter’s way in the Swash Channel, and the cutter almost ran her
down in the darkness. The Vice-President’s life, the speaker said, and
the lives of all on board the cutter were put in great danger.
This caught Dick’s attention at once.
“The Vice-President in danger because a New York tug carried no
lights!” he said to himself. “It seems to me that ought to make a story
that people would like to read. I wonder whether my chance has come at
last. I’ll not miss it this time at any rate.”
He took full notes of the story, and as soon as the meeting was over
he returned to the office and reported to the city editor, telling him
briefly what he had heard.
“That’s good, Mr. Sumner, that’s good,” the editor replied. “We want
that by all means. Write it up as fully as you think the facts will
stand.”
Dick felt his hand shaking when he began to write. It was his first
real chance since the night when he wrote an account of the governor’s
accident--except, of course, the chance that he let slip. Besides, he
had not written enough yet to forget that he was writing for more than
a hundred thousand readers. But the excitement wore off as he grew more
interested in the subject, and when he finished he had written a plain
but exciting account of the Vice-President’s adventure, enough to fill
about two thirds of a column in the paper.
It was almost exasperating to him to see the matter-of-fact way in
which his copy was received; how it was laid under a paper-weight with
a dozen other articles, to remain there unnoticed until the night city
editor came and in its turn passed judgment upon it. He was sent out
immediately on another mission, and it was not till late that night
that he heard anything about it. Then it was the ever kindly Dr.
Goode, the night editor, who mentioned it.
“O Sumner, see here a moment,” the doctor called, adjusting his two
pairs of glasses.
As Dick approached his desk he saw that the proof the doctor held in
his hand was headed in big letters, “The Vice-President’s Peril,” and
that it was his own article.
“This is a good thing you have done here, Sumner,” the doctor said. “We
like stories of this sort, and I’m going to put you on the first page.”
A few weeks earlier Dick would have stayed in the office till the paper
went to press, for the sake of seeing his article in print, but being
more experienced now, he wisely went home and to bed.
In the morning Dick found the city editor making remarks to the
reporters, as usual, about their articles. “Well done, well done, Mr.
Banks;” or perhaps, “You made too much of that burglary story, Mr.
Black.” His turn came almost as soon as he entered the room.
“You did a good thing yesterday, Mr. Sumner,” was the greeting. “I see
none of the other papers have your story about the Vice-President’s
peril. I suppose there were other reporters at the meeting?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Dick answered; “five or six others. We all heard the
story at the same time, but perhaps none of the others used it.”
“Then you showed a better news sense than any of them,” Mr. Brown
retorted, “for such a story as that is news.”
Dick was pleased with himself and all the world that morning, but it
surprised him a little to find that he still got the same unimportant
assignments--trivial meetings, things that an errand boy could have
done equally well. This went on for so many days that he began almost
to think there was not much use in taking advantage of an opportunity
after all. But when he found such thoughts in his mind he held a little
conversation with himself, for he did not like it.
“Now hold on to the ropes and keep pulling, Dick Sumner!” he said to
himself. “Don’t be a baby. Better work is coming by-and-by. If one or
two good pieces of work don’t bring it, then three or four will, or
five or six. Do the best you can; and if you begin to grumble, I’ll be
ashamed of you.”
He was always among the first to arrive at the office, perhaps because
he had no great fancy for staying alone in his dismal little furnished
room; and one morning when he entered he was the very first reporter,
and only the city editor was at his desk.
“I thought you would be the first man here,” Mr. Brown said. “You
are generally early, Mr. Sumner, and I am glad that this time your
promptness is to be rewarded. I am going to give you an assignment
of great importance this morning, because I know you will do it
faithfully, and I think you will do it well. It is a job that would
naturally go to Mr. Randall, because he does all our Sing Sing work;
but he is out of town to-day, and I am going to entrust it to you.”
Dick merely answered “Yes, sir;” but the announcement filled him with
wonder. An assignment of great importance! A job that would naturally
go to Mr. Randall--to Jack Randall, the best reporter and best writer
in the office! He could hardly believe that he was to have a chance at
such work.
“Here is a dispatch just received from Sing Sing prison,” the city
editor went on, “saying that four prisoners escaped this morning
by stealing a locomotive. You understand that the New York Central
Railroad runs through the prison grounds through a deep open cut in the
rock. There are bridges across the cut, and every morning some of the
prisoners are taken over the bridges to work in the quarry.”
“Yes, sir,” Dick repeated. He had read of this, though he had never
visited Sing Sing.
“This morning, according to this dispatch,” Mr. Brown continued, “four
of the prisoners broke away from their guards while a slow freight
train was passing under the bridges, dropped from one of the bridges
to the tender, drove the engineer and fireman off with revolvers,
uncoupled the engine, and escaped. It is an exceedingly dramatic story
and must be told fully. You must take the first train for Sing Sing and
get all the facts. See the warden, go over to the quarries, look at
the bridge and the position of the train, get the names and histories
of the escaped convicts, and of course be on the lookout for their
capture. Tell the story vividly, but do not exaggerate the facts. Now
the sooner you reach Sing Sing the better.”
To go into the great Sing Sing prison, to talk with the warden, to go
over the prison grounds, and to come back and describe one of the most
remarkable prison escapes ever made! Dick could hardly believe that
such a job had been put into his hands.
He knew that that day’s work would give him a standing in the office if
he did it well, and he hurried down the stairs determined to put his
whole heart and brain into it.
As he reached the head of the long flight leading into the publication
office he saw that a man below was about to come up. The man had
stopped for a moment to talk with one of the clerks, and his hand
rested on the top of the newel post.
It was Jack Randall, the man who should have had this great Sing Sing
story to write! He had returned unexpectedly, and in a minute more the
city editor would see him.
Dick’s thoughts flew fast for a moment. If he went on down the stairs,
he would immediately be swallowed up in the crowded streets and it
would be too late to recall him. But would that be fair? The work must
certainly have been given to Randall, if he had been in the office; it
had gone to Dick only through a misunderstanding. His mind was made up
in an instant, and he turned and ran quickly up the stairs.
“Mr. Randall is downstairs, sir,” he said to the city editor; “he will
be up here in a moment.” It was like giving away half his chances in
life, but he was sure it was the right thing to do.
Mr. Brown looked up squarely into Dick’s eyes as he answered.
“It was very thoughtful in you to come and tell me, Mr. Sumner,” he
said, “but I shall not change the assignment. You go ahead and do the
work.”
Dick was off like a flash for the Grand Central Station, exchanging
salutations with Randall when he encountered him on the stairs. “How
much better I can do the work now,” he thought, “than if I had gone
ahead with a guilty conscience!”
In the train he met four other reporters, one of whom he knew. They
were from the other morning newspapers, and before they reached Sing
Sing he found that one of the party was the great Bailey of the Herald,
one of the best-known reporters in New York, and another Henderson of
the Tribune, whom he had heard spoken of as one of the finest writers
on the press. It was a fresh feather in his cap to be sent to do the
work that such men were doing. But could he compete with them, he
wondered?
In Sing Sing the five reporters walked down to the prison together and
were shown into the warden’s office, and Dick’s idea of the power of
the press was vastly expanded when he saw how they were treated. The
warden, the man in charge of all that great prison with its thousands
of prisoners, whose word was law to scores of keepers, could not do
enough for them. Did they smoke? A box of Havana cigars was passed
about. Would they eat a bite of lunch? Just a taste of chicken salad
and a little cold fruit? No? Then let him ring for a glass of wine,
for they would have a hard day’s work. But that was precisely why they
would not take the wine, for such reporters as the four Dick met,
capable of doing the best work, do not drink wine because they have
work before them.
The warden took them into the cell corridors, which made Dick shudder,
and showed them the cells of the men who had escaped. Everything was
open to them; the prison books, showing the records of these men;
even the dark cell where one of them had been kept in manacles for
misconduct a few weeks before. Then he told them the story of the
escape, and an intensely interesting story it was.
“Three of the men are burglars under long sentences,” he said; “and the
fourth is a five-year man for murder in the third degree. They are all
old offenders and desperate characters. This morning they were taken as
usual to their work in the quarries, guarded by two keepers armed with
rifles. When the freight train came along, moving slowly through the
cut under the bridges, these four men threw down their tools and ran
for one of the bridges. The guards fired, but missed them; and the men
dropped from the bridge to the tender behind the engine. In an instant
they were in the cab, and with cocked revolvers in their hands they
ordered the engineer and fireman to jump off. We do not know how they
got the revolvers. The railroad men were compelled to obey, and as soon
as the convicts were alone on the engine they uncoupled it from the
train and pulled open the throttle.
“Now comes the strangest part of the story,” the warden continued. “Not
one of those men knew anything about running an engine, and they pulled
the throttle wide open. To do that suddenly is very dangerous, and
almost on the instant the engine blew off one of her cylinder heads.
That was all that saved the men’s lives, for guards in the sentry boxes
were firing at them with rifles. But so much steam escaped from the
disabled cylinder that they were completely enveloped, and the guards
could not aim. The rascals literally rolled out of range in a cloud of
steam, and were away before we could reach them.
“However,” the warden went on, “they had not gone more than four or
five miles before the other cylinder head blew out, and the engine of
course came to a stop. Then the men jumped off and took to the woods.
They are still in convict clothes, and I have twenty men hunting them.
We shall soon have them back.”
“What a story to write!” Dick exclaimed when the warden concluded.
“It’s better than fiction.”
“Fiction!” sneered Henderson of the Tribune; “our facts beat fiction
every day. There would be no fiction if there were no facts, Mr.
Sumner.”
Dick did not stop to ponder over this remarkable proposition; he was
too anxious to go out over the bridge to the quarry and see the scene
of the escape, so that he could describe it accurately. The warden took
the reporters all over the ground, and after that they separated, each
one to pick up whatever additional information he could.
It occurred to Dick that the railroad people would have something to
say about this summary mode of taking one of their engines, and he
knew that the more people he saw who were in any way connected with
the escape, the better story he could make. He went first to see the
telegraph operator at Sing Sing, for something must have been done by
wire. He soon made friends with the operator and had a long talk with
him.
[Illustration: “YOU’RE JUST IN TIME, RANDALL!”]
“There’s a telegraph office at the prison, you know,” said the
operator, “and while the thing was happening they wired me, ‘Four
convicts stolen engine of 89, and running down the track with it.’
Eighty-nine is the number of the freight train, and they knew it. Well,
sir, you can just believe that gave me a start. An engine running wild
down the track! There was no telling what they might run into, nor what
lives or property they might destroy. My business was to send the news
to the superintendent in the Grand Central Station and I did that just
as quick as these jars of lightning would let me.”
That was as much as the operator knew about it, but a word that he
dropped gave Dick a hint of something better to come. To work out this
new clew, however, it was necessary for him to go to Tarrytown, and he
took the next train for that place, which is the next station below
Sing Sing. In a few minutes he was talking with the Tarrytown station
agent.
“I am a reporter for The Daily Transport, sir,” he said to the agent.
“Will you please tell me what orders you received about 89 this
morning?”
“My boy,” said the agent with great emotion, “I will tell you, but
it makes my breath stop to think of it. You must understand that we
have a siding here which ends on the wharf, and a fast train run on to
that siding would inevitably be thrown into the river. The switch that
controls it we call the north switch. Eighty-nine was due here in less
than a minute when the telegraph operator handed me an order from the
train dispatcher in New York. The order read:--
“‘Open the north switch and throw 89 into the river.’”
“Well, sir,” the agent went on, “my heart stopped beating and my knees
trembled. How many lives would I destroy if I obeyed that order? But it
was only for a second. Only one man runs these trains, and that is the
train dispatcher.”
“And you opened the switch?” Dick asked, almost breathless with
interest.
“I opened the north switch,” the agent replied. “It was my duty to do
it; there was the order. I hope I may never have to endure such agony
again, my boy, for I expected the next minute to see the train plunged
into the river and everybody in it killed. Thank God, the engine blew
out both her cylinder heads before she got here, and of course stopped.
The train dispatcher, you see, knew that the convicts were running wild
down the road, and he ordered the switch opened to prevent the much
greater damage they might do further on.”
When Dick mentally laid out his story in the train returning to the
city, this incident seemed to him the most dramatic thing in it.
“It’s worth a year’s salary to talk to such a man,” he said to himself.
“I thought I knew something about obeying orders, but I understand it
better now. And I don’t believe that any of the other fellows have got
hold of this part of the story. Oh, if only they haven’t!”
Jack Randall was in the office when Dick returned and sat down to write.
“Do you mind my looking over your copy?” he asked, after a few pages
were written. “I know everybody up there, so I’m interested.”
“I should be delighted,” Dick answered; “and I hope you’ll tell me if
you see anything wrong.”
It was a long evening’s work writing the article, for the pages made a
thick pile--enough to fill two and a half columns of the paper. Dick
had done a tremendous day’s work, but the excitement prevented his
feeling yet the exhaustion that was sure to follow.
“Do you find any bad breaks?” he asked, after Randall had read the last
page.
“Bad breaks!” Randall repeated; “why, Sumner, it’s a classic. I thought
you had some stuff in you, but I didn’t believe you could write like
this. That ‘open the north switch and throw 89 into the river’ is
worthy of Dickens; there’s a touch of the Sidney Carton in it. You’ll
not be doing any more half-stick meetings and five-line fires after
this, Sumner.”
“I’m in hopes that I have that exclusive,” Dick said. “I didn’t meet
any of the other fellows while I was getting it.”
“It’s the best part of the story,” Randall replied, “though the whole
thing is remarkable. You don’t want to go home yet, do you? I mean to
that hall-room cell of yours. A fellow always feels a little excited
over a good subject like that, and wants somebody to talk to when it’s
done. I know how it is. Come around to the Scribble Club with me for an
hour or two and meet some good fellows.”
“The Scribble Club?” Dick repeated. “I haven’t heard of that.”
“No,” said Randall, “it’s not a big affair, like the Press Club; just a
quiet little club, very sociable and homelike. All newspaper boys, of
course.”
Randall had described Dick’s condition exactly. He was excited, wrought
up to the highest pitch by his work, and the idea of going alone to
his little room and trying to sleep was very repugnant. He was glad to
accept the invitation and make the acquaintance of the Scribble Club.
The club room was an apartment of good size, up one flight, over a
restaurant in Duane Street. Its founders had doubtless had in mind the
convenience of the situation, for it was connected by an electric bell
with the restaurant below, and a push of the button summoned a waiter
to take orders for anything desired. The room was comfortably furnished
with armchairs and one large and several small tables; the floor was
carpeted, and files of the daily newspapers hung upon the walls.
There were four young men in the room when Dick and Randall entered,
all reporters engaged on various newspapers, and the entrance of
Randall was the signal for a shout.
“You’re just in time, Randall; we want to start a game of poker, and
you’re the fifth man. The fellows don’t care to play four-handed.”
“I don’t mind, if it’s a small limit,” Randall answered. “You can draw
up a chair and watch us, Sumner. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Sumner, of the
Transport.”
“Oh, just the usual,” was the reply as all the men spoke to Dick.
Several of them he had met before in reporting. “Five cents ante;
quarter limit.”
The five seated themselves around one of the small tables and began the
game. Dick had never seen cards played for money before, and it shocked
him; but he reflected that he had nothing to do with it, and could not
prevent it if he would. He drew up his chair behind Randall and watched
the play, and it was not long before he understood the principles of
the game.
After watching for some time he took from his pocket a letter from his
mother that he had found in the office and opened it. It contained the
first request for money that she had made. “I do not like to ask for
your little savings, my dear boy,” she wrote, “and I know how expensive
you find everything in the city. But I am down almost to the last cent
of my quarterly income and have several bills to pay. I do not know how
we will manage unless you can send me twenty dollars.”
“How lucky that I have been very careful!” Dick said to himself. “I
have twenty-five dollars, and five dollars will easily take me through
till next payday. I will go out early in the morning and take mother
the money. I can show her my Sing Sing story, too, and I know she’ll be
proud of that.”
“The game’s getting rather dry,” Dick heard one of the players say as
he returned the letter to his pocket. “Let’s moisten it a little;” and
the speaker arose and pushed the button.
“A Santa Cruz sour will about fit me,” Randall said when the waiter
came and the others had ordered various drinks. “What will you take,
Sumner?”
“I never drink anything, thank you,” Dick answered. He might have added
that he had been invited many times to drink since his arrival in New
York.
“But you need a drop of something to-night, Sumner; you really do.
You’re as pale as a ghost. You’re all used up, man, and a sour will be
just the thing for you. It’s only a dash of rum in a glass of lemonade,
you know.”
“I certainly feel pretty tired,” Dick admitted. “If I thought it would
give me a little strength, I would take it--as a medicine.”
“Of course it will,” Randall laughed; “it would give grace and vivacity
to a bronze statue. Make it two sours, waiter.”
Dick took his first drink of liquor, not without some misgivings, and
in a few minutes he felt much refreshed. He was thinking of starting
for his room when one of the players announced that he had a midnight
assignment and must go.
“Then you take his place, Mr. Sumner,” one of the others said. “It’s
only a five-cent game, you know; you can’t lose anything at it, and we
can’t well play without five.”
Dick was on the point of saying that he did not understand the game,
when Randall began to urge him.
“Take a hand for a few minutes, to oblige us, Sumner,” he said. “We’ll
not play more than half an hour longer.”
If it had not been for the liquor, Dick certainly would have refused to
gamble. But that one glass of rum not only made him feel stronger, but
somehow made him careless of what he did; and he took the vacant place.
Gambling games rarely stop at the time appointed, and at the end of an
hour Dick was still playing. He had lost several dollars by that time,
which was inconvenient, and had taken another Santa Cruz sour, which
was worse. He felt strong enough now, and determined to recover his
money. Two of the other players had lost far more than he; and they
had, as they expressed it, “a mission to get even.”
“Well, suppose we raise the limit to a dollar to give the losers a
chance,” some one suggested.
“I’m willing,” Randall said; “they re entitled to a chance.”
All the others were willing, even Dick, who was reckless enough now for
most anything, and anxious to win back what he had lost.
At the end of another hour Dick was in the position that many a young
reporter has found himself in to his sorrow. He had lost all his
money except a little small change that jingled in his vest pocket,
and he felt confused and wretched. There was no money left to take to
his mother, not even money to pay his expenses through the week; and
over all was the terrible consciousness that he had been drinking and
gambling and had disgraced himself.
“Never mind, old fellow,” Randall said, slapping him on the shoulder
when the game was over. He saw the anguish in Dick’s face and felt
sorry for him. “Never mind; you’ve done a beautiful piece of work
to-day.”
“Yes, I have!” Dick answered with deep sarcasm in his voice; “a
beautiful piece of work!”
CHAPTER IV.
A WILD NIGHT ON NEW YORK BAY.
“Simply immense, Sumner!” was the city editor’s greeting when Dick went
into the office on the morning after his Sing Sing experience. “‘Open
the north switch!’ ha, ha! Nobody else has a line of that. How did you
get hold of it?”
Dick might have answered that he got it by honest hard work and
following up a very slight clew, but he merely said that he stumbled
upon it. The pleasure of doing the piece of work in that day’s paper
was all gone. His head still ached, and he was thoroughly ashamed of
himself. Never before had so many of the good men of the office taken
pains to speak to him; never in his life had he received half as
many compliments. But he could think of nothing but his shame at the
Scribble Club, of his gambling and drinking and losing his money.
The money loss was the smallest part of his disgrace, still it troubled
him greatly. It was absolutely necessary for him to send money to his
mother and to have enough to support him through the week, and he knew
of no way to get it.
“There must be some way to raise a little money when a fellow is
making a fair salary,” he reflected. “Randall will know. He knows how I
happen to be without money, and he can tell me what to do.”
Randall’s advice to an older man would have been to take his watch to
a pawn shop; but when Dick asked it was different. Dick had had little
experience of life; he was a boy among men of the world and he had
great ability; and all these things helped to make Randall take an
interest in him. For there are many worse men in the world than Jack
Randall. Generous to a fault, with no one but himself to support, he
made money easily and spent it with equal facility, and spent it as
readily on a friend as upon himself.
“Why, my boy, of course I can tell you what to do,” he said when Dick
told him just how he was situated. “It was my fault for letting you
play at all, and I ought have known better; but upon my word it was
only thoughtlessness on my part. It was not that I wanted to teach you
the lively ways of the Scribblers.”
“As far as the money goes,” he went on, “that’s easily remedied. I
am hard up myself, as usual; but as soon as Dr. Goode comes in this
evening I will borrow twenty-five dollars from him and turn it over to
you, and you can pay it back whenever it’s convenient; no hurry about
it at all.”
Dick’s assignments that day were much better ones than he had had
before, and he tried to work hard enough to forget his troubles.
It was almost a certainty that Dr. Goode would have something to
say in the evening about the Sing Sing story, for the doctor seldom
read an unusually good article in the Transport without saying a few
encouraging words to the writer.
“And to think that if he speaks to me about it I shall have some of his
own money in my pocket, borrowed to replace what I lost at gambling!”
Dick reflected. “I half-wish I were back in the Record office, washing
rollers for three dollars a week.”
Dr. Goode took his time about commending Dick’s work that evening. He
waited for an opportunity to have him as nearly alone as possible, and
then spoke, Dick thought, more kindly than he had ever heard him speak
before.
“I like the construction of your Sing Sing story, Sumner,” the doctor
said, taking off both pairs of glasses and wiping them with his
handkerchief and then replacing them. “A good article must be built up,
you know, like a ship; one part here, another there, and every part
in the right place. I see that you understand that. You write good
English, too, and that shows that your reading has been good, for no
man can write good English who does not read good English.
“Of course you understand,” the doctor went on, “that doing such a
piece of work as you did yesterday gives a man a certain standing in
the office. He is considered one of the good men and steps up above
the humdrum fellows who have no stuff in them. Naturally you will have
a better class of work in the future, and in a short time your salary
will be raised, for we do not ask good men to work for fifteen dollars
a week. In time I expect you to be one of the best reporters in the
city, if you take care of yourself.
“But only if you take care of yourself,” the doctor continued, laying
his hand gently on Dick’s knee. “Many a man has started here with
prospects as bright as yours, and has gone to pieces. Scribble clubs
and rum and cards will soon darken the brightest prospects.”
Dick started and blushed furiously and his lips trembled.
“Yes, I know all about it, my boy. Randall did not want to tell me,
but I wound it out of him because I like you. I like all young men who
have brains. I understand what the temptations are; I have been through
it myself. I don’t want to lecture you, but merely to put you in the
way of seeing for yourself. Look about the office among all the men
you know, and you will see that the really successful ones keep away
from the little clubs and the cards and the drink. A dissipated man may
flourish for a time if he is exceptionally brilliant, but he is sure to
be left behind at last. See that for yourself, and with your brains
you will need no other argument.”
Dick went home to Russellville that night for the first time in over
a week, and his mother and sister gave him such a welcome as they
considered due to a distinguished young writer and journalist, as they
called him--half in jest and half in earnest.
“Say, sis,” he expostulated from the depths of the biggest
rocking-chair, “do me a favor, will you? Never call me a journalist
again. You don’t know how the real reporters and writers laugh at that
word. They say that a journalist is a decayed penny-a-liner who comes
’round on payday and tries to borrow a quarter. The fellows who do the
work and make the money are content to be called reporters.”
“Very well,” Florrie laughed; “then I’ll always call you a reporter.”
She could not help noticing the change in Dick--a change for the
better. He was so much more manly, so self-possessed, and he was
dressed so much better.
“But I want you to tell me about Sing Sing,” she went on. “Did you
really go into that big prison and see the warden? And did you see that
splendid man who obeyed orders about the switch, though he thought it
was going to kill ever so many people? How do you ever have courage to
ask questions of everybody, Dick?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, that was a pretty hard pull at first,”
Dick replied. “The first time I was sent to interview a man I walked up
and down outside for half an hour before I raised courage to go in. But
that feeling soon wears off; I don’t think of being diffident about it
now. Indeed, I think I rather like it. I want to take you and mother
into the city with me in two or three weeks to help me interview a man.”
“O Dick!” they both exclaimed, “how could we do that?”
“Easily,” Dick answered, smiling over his little mystery. “You see the
man is a real estate agent; he has flats to let.”
“Do you mean it, Dick?” his mother asked. “Do you feel secure enough in
the office to take such an important step?”
The subject of taking a small flat in the city and all living together
was thoroughly discussed. Mrs. Sumner had a little income of her own,
and by uniting this with Dick’s salary a cheap flat could be rented,
not more than twenty dollars a month. “And it would be a positive
saving to me,” Dick argued; “the restaurants are so expensive.
“We can even do a little better than that,” he went on. “I don’t know
whether you have heard me speak of Darling, one of our copy readers.
I didn’t discover his room till I’d been some time in the office, for
it’s separate from our city room; but Darling is a fine fellow, three
or four years older than I am, handsome, too, and very quiet. He has
no relations in the city, and when I mentioned the other day that we
thought of taking a flat, he said he’d like to rent a room from us, for
he doesn’t like to be among strangers. He would pay about four dollars
a week just for the room, and with that we could afford a thirty-dollar
flat; and we can get a very fair one for that.”
“Thirty dollars a month!” Florrie exclaimed. “I should think we ought
to get a fine house for that.”
Dick laughed merrily at his sister’s rural notions. He had learned
something about city ways and prices.
“Perhaps I’ll not be out again till it’s time for you to come in and
select the flat,” he said. “I’ll have longer articles to write now
since the Sing Sing business, and long articles always keep a man late.”
The brightest reporters, however, cannot be assigned to important
things when no important things are happening; and weeks passed before
Dick had another chance to show his mettle. He was relieved of the
tiresome work of attending petty meetings, and that was a gain; and he
was sure that when a chance came for doing good work, he would have his
share of it.
Darling, whose work was from six in the evening till the paper went
to press at two in the morning, not only liked Dick’s writing, but
liked Dick himself, and he did all he could to hasten the day when Mrs.
Sumner and Florrie should come in to help select a flat.
“At two to-morrow afternoon, Darling,” Dick announced when the time
came. “My mother and sister are to meet me at the south end of the
postoffice at two o’clock, and you must be there and go with us, for
you are interested in this thing, too. I hope we can find a flat where
you can room with us. There ought to be no trouble when flats are so
plenty.”
“There will be, though,” Darling answered; “there always is. When the
flat suits, the price is too high; and when the price suits, the flat
doesn’t. But I’ll meet you at any rate, and we’ll see what we can do.”
It was not till Dick saw the next day that Darling preferred to walk
with his sister, that he noticed how very pretty Florrie looked.
She was a little girl in his eyes, though nearly seventeen, and her
abundance of wavy brown hair, her expressive eyes, her pink cheeks, and
her graceful bearing had never attracted his notice before.
“We will take a Fourth Avenue car,” Dick said, after Darling had been
introduced to his mother and sister. “There are a great many flats in
Fourth Avenue and some parts of it don’t look expensive.”
It amused Dick to see how attentive Darling was to Florrie; helping her
into the car and pointing out the sights of the lower city. Dick had
never paid much attention to young ladies.
The car carried them up past Union Square, and a few blocks beyond that
Dick saw a sign at the door of a large apartment house--“Apartment
to Let. Inquire of the Janitor.” He knew it to be a very elegant and
expensive place, for business had taken him there a few days before.
But it occurred to him that it would be a good chance to let his mother
and Florrie see one of the finest apartment houses in the city, and at
the same time he would surprise them a little with the price, which was
sure to be high. He signaled the conductor to stop and gave Darling a
sly look, which was understood.
“We would like to look at the apartment you have to let,” Dick said to
the attendant at the door; and in a moment they were all in an elevator
resplendent with gilt and mirrors, rapidly traveling skyward.
“It is a small apartment,” the attendant said when they reached the
place; “only a drawing-room, two bed chambers, and bath. But there is a
beautiful view; this is the eleventh floor.”
Mrs. Sumner shrank back from the window with an exclamation of alarm.
“Oh, I never could live up here, Dick!” she said. “It makes me giddy
just to look out. They’re such stuffy little rooms, too, though very
handsome. I suppose they’d want a pretty good rent, small as it is.
What is the rent, young man?”
“Thirty-five hundred a year, ma’am,” the attendant answered. “We will
have a larger apartment vacant in about two months; that will be five
thousand.”
Darling was afraid that the ladies would express the surprise he saw in
their faces, so he hastily said:--
“We could hardly wait two months, and these rooms are too small; so we
may as well look elsewhere. Shall we go down?”
“It was a shame not to tell you before we went in, mother,” Dick said
when they were in the street again; “but I wanted to give you a little
surprise. Those three small rooms are three thousand five hundred
dollars a year, and we’ve got to have at least six rooms for thirty
dollars a month. So you see what a task we have before us.”
It was a task indeed, but it was successfully accomplished. After
visiting places little better than tenement houses, and other places
far beyond their means, they found an apartment in Forty-ninth Street,
near Lexington Avenue, that was satisfactory in both size and price.
“No, you’re not going to fool me again, Dick,” Mrs. Sumner said when
she first saw the marble columns in front, the carved doors, and the
mosaic pavement. “I’m not going into any more of your three thousand
five hundred dollar places.”
“No danger of that here, Mrs. Sumner,” Darling said with a smile. “The
show is all on the outside here to catch the eye. We shall find it
plain enough within.”
It was plain, but clean and comfortable. “Just made for us,” Dick
whispered to his mother. Up two flights of carpeted stairs, the
apartment consisted of three cheerful bedrooms, parlor, dining-room,
kitchen, and bathroom, all opening into a private hall; and the rent
was thirty dollars a month.
“If that hall bedroom will suit Mr. Darling,” Mrs. Sumner said, “I
think we can get along very nicely here--though I must say I like to
have a backyard.”
“It is exactly the room I want,” Darling declared; and the flat was
rented and arrangements made for moving in immediately.
“I think we’re going to be just as snug as can be here,” Dick said to
Darling several days later, when the moving was completed, but the
rooms not entirely put in order yet. “What do you say to a little
housewarming to-night, to give us a good start in the new home? Just
among ourselves, you know. I think an oyster supper would be the thing,
and I’m sure the folks would gladly sit up and help us eat it after
we’re through work.”
“That’s a good idea,” Darling answered. “You go ahead and make the
arrangements and I will pay half the bills.”
“It will be just fun to do the cooking,” said Florrie. “I’ll manage
to cook whatever you get, and sit up to help eat it. It’s the cutest
little kitchen, with everything so handy that cooking is no trouble at
all.”
“Oysters always go well,” Dick went on; “though anything ought to taste
good in such a cozy little dining-room. We’ll need about two quarts;
and I’ll get some celery and crackers and a little Roquefort cheese to
wind up with. Some other night we’ll have a rarebit; sis is famous for
making rarebits.”
Preparations for the night’s banquet were begun, but fate had decreed
that Dick was not to help eat it. In his enthusiasm he had forgotten
for the moment that a reporter is never master of his own time, but may
be sent to the most unexpected places at the most unexpected times.
Dick’s day work kept him busy till eight o’clock in the evening, and
as he had a small article to write after reaching the office, he had
reason to believe that he would have nothing more to do that night. But
he had hardly taken his seat when the night city editor called to him:--
“Sumner, can a man get over from Staten Island to the New Jersey shore
in a sailboat to-night?”
It was not unusual for Dick to be asked such questions, because he
made a specialty of studying up all the routes of travel in and about
the city. He was a perfect walking guide-book, and almost every day he
found the knowledge useful.
“He might, sir,” Dick replied, “but a sailboat is always very
uncertain.”
“I have sent Lawrence to the lower end of Staten Island,” the editor
went on, “with orders to get a sailboat and go over to Port Monmouth as
fast as possible. Do you think he can get there before midnight?”
“It’s very doubtful, sir,” Dick answered. “Of course it depends upon
the wind, and I should not like to take any chances on it.”
“Can you get to Port Monmouth?” the editor asked. “Remember the last
train went at six o’clock.”
“Oh, yes, I can get there if you don’t mind the expense,” Dick
asserted. “It is merely a question of money.”
“You mean a tug?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dick; “I mean a tug.”
“Very well, then,” said the editor; “you can drop that insurance matter
and take this case. You must get to Port Monmouth at all hazards.
Of course you know all about the stealing of the body of Sterling,
the great millionaire, from St. Mark’s Churchyard; and you know what
desperate efforts the police are making to catch the thieves. The
chief of police started for Port Monmouth on the six o’clock train, and
he is supposed to have a clew to the thieves there. You must find the
chief and learn whatever he learns. It is a matter of absolute must.
You _must_ get there. Here is an order on the cashier for fifty
dollars for expenses.”
“The World has proposed to us,” the editor continued, “to share the
expense of a tug. Stop at the World office and say that we accept the
proposition. They will send Mr. Hills with you to represent them. Now
be off and don’t lose a minute.”
Dick lost about twenty seconds in telling Darling that he was off for
New Jersey and could not help eat the supper, and in almost no time he
was at the World office, where he was joined by Mr. Hills, a short,
stout reporter with a head full of brains.
“The East River’s the place,” Mr. Hills panted. “Right down Fulton
Street to South.”
Hiring a tug seems an easy matter with plenty of money at command and
so many tugs in the harbor looking for work. But at nine o’clock at
night one might almost as well try to hire a white elephant. Towing is
day work; and at six o’clock the tugs steam to their berths along the
East River, fires are banked for the night, and captains and crews go
home, leaving only watchmen in charge.
The two reporters boarded a dozen tugs, but everywhere the answer was
the same: “Impossible! Fires banked, crew gone home.”
“Can’t you send for the captain?” Dick asked in several places. The
answer led him to believe that every tugboat captain in New York lived
in Harlem, or Morrisania, or some other distant section.
“Get an ocean steamer to whistle for one,” one of the watchmen
suggested. “That may bring one out.”
“Capital idea!” Dick exclaimed. “Here’s the Ward Liner Santiago just
below, at foot of Wall Street. We’ll get her to whistle up a tug.”
But that proved another disappointment. “Couldn’t think of it,” said
the second officer, who was in charge. “If the captain himself was
aboard, he wouldn’t do it, because if he did he’d make the ship liable
for the tug’s charges.”
Matters were growing desperate. It was half-past nine by this time,
and the editor’s words kept ringing painfully in Dick’s ears: “It is a
matter of absolute must. You _must_ get there.”
It was an inspiration that caused Dick to stop a nautical-looking man
in South Street and ask him what saloon the tugboat men most frequented.
“Duffy’s,” replied the man without hesitation; “corner of Fulton
Street. It’s full of ’em at this minute.”
In Duffy’s saloon the reporters found a crowd of tugboat men, and among
them Captain Brett, of the tug Dart. Several of the captain’s men were
there, too; and he was willing to negotiate.
“Do you hear the wind howl?” Captain Brett asked. “It’s an ugly night
down the bay. But I’ll risk the boat if you’ll risk your lives. Ten
dollars an hour it will cost you, gentlemen, from the time we leave the
pier till we get back.”
The terms were satisfactory and the bargain was made, and in less than
twenty minutes the Dart was steaming down the East River, Dick and Mr.
Hills in the pilot house with Captain Brett.
“You must understand,” said the captain, his voice half-drowned by the
furious wind that pounded against the windows, “that I only take you to
Port Monmouth. I don’t agree to land you there. There used to be an old
wharf there, but it may have blown down; and anyway I couldn’t find it
this dark night. You must take your chances of getting ashore.”
“Very well,” Dick answered. “Stop at the Battery boat-stand as you go
out, and we will attend to the landing.”
“What good will that do?” Hills asked.
“Why, we’ll hire a Whitehall boatman to go with us, boat and all,” Dick
answered. “With his boat on board we can land wherever we like.”
“Good!” said Mr. Hills; “that’s as good an idea as if I’d thought of it
myself.”
Five dollars proved sufficient to induce one of the boatmen of
Whitehall to put his boat aboard the tug and go along himself, and a
few minutes later the little tug was dancing madly on the rough surface
of the upper bay.
“This is nothing to what you’ll catch down below,” was Captain Brett’s
comforting assurance. Down past the lights of Quarantine the tug
steamed, through the Narrows, and into the lower bay. The roughness was
nothing compared to the inky blackness. The world surely never saw a
darker night.
It was almost 11.30 when Captain Brett rang a bell and the engines
stopped.
“Now, then, gentlemen,” said he, “as near as I can judge we’re off Port
Monmouth. I can’t say to a certainty, but that’s my opinion. A man
can’t see through such thick black as this, and you mustn’t expect it.
If you like to take your chances, I think you’ll find Port Monmouth
somewhere off to the south’ard here.”
Dick opened the pilot house door and stepped partially out, and Hills
followed. The wind almost swept them from their feet; the total
darkness, the fury of the gale, the tossing of the little boat were
enough to appall them.
“I don’t half-like this,” Mr. Hills said as they hastily drew back and
closed the door. “The captain may be mistaken after all, and not be
anywhere near Port Monmouth. What do you think?”
“There is only one thing to think,” Dick answered decidedly. “We must
get ashore. Let them lower the boat, captain.”
In five minutes more, after some risk in the heavy sea, they were both
in the Whitehall boat, and its owner was rowing them in the direction
in which the shore was supposed to lie. Another minute or two and the
boatman called out:--
“There’s something ahead here, and we’re near the beach, for I smell
it. Yes, we’ve made it; here’s the end of the old wharf. That was a
good guess on such a night.”
Dick and his companion, with their landsmen’s eyes, could see nothing;
but they could feel the worm-eaten timbers of the decaying old wharf.
How long it might be and how far the end from shore they could not even
guess. But they could tell by feeling that the structure towered far
above their heads. There was no help for it but to climb the timbers,
feeling their way slowly from one to another, to the platform far
above. To make matters worse, Mr. Hills was much too fat for a climber,
and Dick had almost to drag him up.
After climbing thus nearly twenty feet, with hands cut by barnacles
and rusty spikes, both men stood safely upon the platform of the pier.
Neither of them had ever been in Port Monmouth before, and perhaps that
was not Port Monmouth after all. How many planks were missing from the
shaky old pier? How far was it to shore? In what direction lay the
town? They must find it all out by feeling.
“That is all we want,” Dick called down to the boatman. “The tug can
take you back to the city. We are all right now.”
“Are we?” Hills panted. “I wish I thought so!”
CHAPTER V.
“SHADOWING” THE CHIEF OF POLICE.
The gale threatened every moment to blow Dick and his companion from
the old pier; and while the lights of the tug became smaller and
smaller they felt their way carefully toward the shore.
“Let me go first,” Dick said, “as I am so much lighter. We might find
a rotten plank anywhere, or no plank at all. If there should be a wide
gap, I hardly know what we’d do, for we never could walk one of the
timbers in this wind.”
Fortunately there were no wide gaps and no planks too rotten to bear
their weight; and after traversing more than a hundred feet of pier,
putting a foot down carefully with every step before trusting much
weight upon it, they felt themselves upon the sand of New Jersey.
“I suppose the telegraph office must be the first thing for us to find,
if this is really Port Monmouth,” Dick suggested. “I should like to let
the office know that I am here.”
“So should I,” Mr. Hills responded; “and here is a good omen for us.”
The good omen was the first ray of light they had seen since leaving
the tug. Through an opening in the black clouds the moon was making a
sickly effort to shine. The light was very dim, but far better than the
intense darkness.
“There is a big house!” Dick exclaimed; “up this road, or street, or
whatever it is. We can rouse them up and find out where we are.”
They followed the sandy road up to the house, which looked like a
country tenement house, for it was large and neglected, and one of the
folding front doors stood open. They stepped up to the big piazza and
knocked, and in an instant there was a scraping and barking in the hall
as if a dozen dogs were after them. Dick and Hills were both brave
enough, but the pace they made down the walk and through the front gate
would have done them credit in a footrace.
“I see something moving up the road,” Hills exclaimed a moment later.
“Just this side of that clump of bushes. But I’m afraid it’s only a
white cow.”
“No, it’s not,” Dick shouted, looking in the direction indicated. “It’s
a white horse, and there’s a buggy behind it, and of course there’s
somebody in the buggy. But it’s turning off into another road. Hurry
up, Hills; we’ll intercept it.”
By cutting across a large open field they came out in another road
ahead of the buggy, and in a moment they were within speaking distance
of its occupant.
“Is this Port Monmouth, mister?” Dick asked.
There was no reply for a moment, and Dick repeated the question.
“Hello, Sumner! what are you doing here?” came a voice from the buggy.
“Of course this is Port Monmouth; and a beautiful little place it is,
for a blind man. Don’t you know my voice? I’m Atwater of the Herald. I
just drove up from Long Branch. How did you get here?”
“Hills of the World and I have just landed from a tug and been chased
by dogs,” Dick laughed. “We’re looking for the telegraph office and the
operator.”
“Don’t worry about that, my child,” Atwater said. “I have the operator
here in the buggy with me; picked him up as I passed his house. Follow
us, and we’ll be at the telegraph office in a minute or two.”
Dick and Hills followed the buggy, and soon the telegraph office was
reached and opened. Each man reported himself to his office by wire in
the same brief style:--
PORT MONMOUTH, N. J.
The Daily Transport, New York:
Arrived 11.30. SUMNER.
“The operator tells me he knows nothing about the chief of police being
here,” Atwater said, after the dispatches had been sent.
“Nice situation, isn’t it?” Hills exclaimed--“to hunt the chief in a
charming Jersey town without a light, where everybody is asleep.”
“It won’t do to take any chances,” Dick said. “How many houses are
there in the town, Atwater?”
“About forty or fifty,” Atwater replied; “little bit of a place.”
“Then it seems to me the only way is to visit every house and make
inquiries,” Dick suggested. “We can divide the town into sections, and
that will give us each about fifteen houses to go to.”
This heroic measure was agreed upon and the routes were laid out and
the three reporters began the process of arousing every family in Port
Monmouth. An hour later each one had rare stories to tell of encounters
with dogs and threats of arrest and wordy combats with sleepy and irate
householders. But there was no sign of the chief of police. The search
had been so thorough that it was certain he was not in Port Monmouth.
“It’s a false alarm,” Hills said in a disgusted tone. “Fine work this,
hunting a chief of police in a New Jersey forest.”
“And there’s an oyster supper a-cooking for me at home,” Dick added;
“and here I am, hungry as a bear.”
“Well, we can only send in ‘good-night’ and go to bed,” Atwater said
sadly. “I thought we were going to have a fine story. There’s a little
hotel here, and we can all go home in the morning.”
Dick’s second dispatch was very brief. It merely said, like the
dispatches of Hills and Atwater: “Chief not been seen here. Good-night.
Sumner.” The “good-night” was not a message of politeness, but a signal
well understood in the office that Sumner had nothing more to send.
“I’d like to know, Atwater,” Dick said when they were settling
themselves in a big double-bedded room in the hotel, “how you heard of
this thing in Long Branch.”
“Would you, sonny?” Atwater answered. He was very young himself, not
more than two or three years older than Dick, and they had met several
times before and had become well acquainted. “Then I’ll tell you. You
must know that before I became a distinguished journalist I was an
ornament to the telegraphic profession; in other words, I was a country
operator. Last evening I had some business in Long Branch, and while
waiting in the station for the train to take me home, I heard the
sounder say something about the chief of police. That made me prick up
my ears and listen to the message going through. It wasn’t intended
for me, but it may have gone to a worse man. It said that the chief
had come to Port Monmouth looking for Sterling’s body; and the minute
I heard that, I chartered a horse and buggy and drove up here. That
unravels the mystery, doesn’t it?”
It did, and at the same time it gave Dick an idea. “To understand
telegraph operating,” he thought, “must be a great advantage to a
reporter. This case is an example of it. I must learn enough of it, at
any rate, to send and receive a message.”
“Say, you fellows, dry up, will you?” Hill grunted from his bed. “I
want to go to sleep.”
To return to the office with nothing, after his midnight voyage in the
tug, was what Dick confidently expected. But he was not done with the
great Sterling’s body case yet.
Shortly after eight o’clock in the morning the three were awakened
by a racket downstairs. They heard rapid footsteps on the stairs,
and a moment later their door burst open and Lawrence bounded into
the room--Lawrence, the Transport man, who had been sent to cross
from Staten Island in a sailboat. He had reached Port Monmouth after
daylight.
“We’re going to have something to do yet, fellows,” he announced,
after greeting the three in bed. “The chief is certainly somewhere in
the State, though he’s not in Port Monmouth. I’ve just come from the
telegraph office, and the operator tells me he is in New Jersey. He is
trying to locate him for us.”
About two hours later Lawrence entered again with further news. “I’ve
found him,” he said. “The chief went down to Shamong last night, and
he’s still there.”
“Shamong? Where is Shamong?”
“Away down among the scrub pines. It’s down below Manchester and
Whiting’s, about a hundred and fifty miles from here.”
Dick bounded out of bed; he saw that there was probably more work
before him.
“Say, Sumner,” Hills said, his eyes half-open, “get my instructions for
me, will you, like a good fellow?”
“Yes, and mine too,” Atwater echoed; “there’s no use of our all getting
up at this unearthly hour.”
It was a matter of pride to Dick that these older reporters should feel
sure that he knew just what to do. He and Lawrence went down to the
telegraph office, and Dick wrote three messages. One of them said:--
Daily Transport, New York:--
Chief of police is at Shamong. Send instructions.
SUMNER--LAWRENCE.
The others were the same, but addressed one to the Herald and one to
the World, with Atwater’s name signed to the first and the name of
Hills to the other.
Several hours passed before replies were received to these messages,
and when they came Hills, Atwater, and Lawrence were ordered home and
Dick was instructed to “go on to Shamong and find the chief.”
That meant that Dick was to travel alone into the wilds of South Jersey
in search of the chief and Mr. Sterling’s body. He was sorry to go
alone, it was so much more pleasant to travel in good company; but
as far as the work was concerned he felt equal to it. Possibly, just
possibly, the chief might have found the body or caught the thieves;
and that would be a tremendous piece of news.
There was one difficulty about reaching Shamong, as he found by the
time-table. The only train of the afternoon went as far as Whiting’s,
fifteen miles north of Shamong, and stopped there. The only chance was
to go to Whiting’s and hire a carriage there to take him on to Shamong.
Daylight was fast changing into dusk when Dick’s train drew up at
Whiting’s. His first step was to go into the telegraph office. “When
out of town, always keep your wires open,” Dr. Goode once had told him;
and he had often found the advice valuable.
“Please ask Shamong to keep open late for a Transport special,” he said
to the operator.
“All right,” the operator answered. “I think you’ll have company down
there too.”
“What do you mean?” Dick asked.
“Well, I can’t tell all I know,” the operator replied; “but I think
you’ll not be the only reporter in Shamong to-night.”
“Oh, it’s like enough,” Dick laughed. “We generally travel in flocks.
I wish you would tell me where I can find somebody to drive me down
there.”
“Do you see that big white house with the green blinds?” and the
operator pointed down the street. “That’s Dr. Townsend’s house. The
doctor’s son has a horse and buggy for hire, and I guess he’ll drive
you down.”
But the doctor’s son, when Dick found him, seemed anything but anxious
to drive to Shamong that night. The roads were bad, he said, and
the night would be dark and his horse was lame and the buggy needed
mending, and there were a dozen other excuses. The more Dick urged, the
more excuses were made.
“I’ll drive you down there for five dollars,” the young man said at
last; and it was evident from his tone that he considered that so high
a price that it would put an end to the matter.
“Hitch him right up!” Dick answered. “I’m in a hurry to get there.”
The young man went out and returned in a few minutes to say that the
horse was ready. He went to a little stand in the room, opened the
drawer and took out a very small revolver and made a great show of
loading it.
“I never travel at night without being armed,” he said, evidently to
convince Dick that it would be useless to try to murder and rob him on
the road.
“It’s a good plan,” Dick coolly replied; “neither do I.”
That drive from Whiting’s to Shamong was an experience that Dick long
remembered. The road was a mere track through the pine woods, with
trees growing so close to the ruts that there was barely room for the
passage of the buggy. The young man drove so fast that Dick expected
every moment that one of the hubs would strike a tree and he be sent
sprawling over the horse’s back. He reached Shamong safely, however,
and went directly into the station and telegraph office, the only
building in the little hamlet that showed any sign of life, except the
hotel across the way. The livery bill was paid and the doctor’s son
headed his horse for Whiting’s without waiting for further developments.
“You’re looking for the chief, are you?” was the operator’s greeting
to Dick as the latter stepped into the stuffy little office in which
a dozen young countrymen with pipes and cigars in their mouths were
gathered. “Well, you’ll have to go on five miles farther to find him,
for he’s out at Mr. Waite’s place.”
“Five miles farther!” Dick exclaimed. “And who is Mr. Waite, and what
is the chief doing at his place?”
“He’s an old friend of the chief,” the operator answered, “and the
chief comes out here to shoot birds with him every year. That’s what
he is doing here now, and you fellows are all on a wild-goose chase.
I’ve had telegrams from about a dozen reporters to keep open for late
specials, but you won’t have any specials to send. He’s not looking for
anybody’s body out here, he’s shooting birds. There’s one of his guides
sitting on the table; the man in the big hat. You can ask him.”
Dick immediately began to question the guide, and it did not take him
long to find that the operator was telling the truth. There was no news
to be had, for the chief was only taking a little holiday instead of
hunting grave-robbers. He crossed over to the hotel and talked with
the landlord, and there the bird-shooting story was confirmed. It
was a tame ending to a long hunt, but there was no help for it. Dick
returned to the Telegraph office and he was hardly inside when one of
the loungers exclaimed:--
“There’s a locomotive coming up the road!”
Sure enough, there was the headlight staring them in the face. The
occupants of the office ran out to the platform just in time to see the
engine stop.
The young man who sprang from the engine before it came to a full stop
was the Philadelphia correspondent of The New York Herald. He had
heard by telegraph of the chief’s visit to Shamong, and as there was
no train he had chartered the locomotive to carry him to the spot.
While he stood talking to the operator, learning just what Dick had
learned, three carriages drove up, and several reporters whom Dick knew
ascended the station steps. There were five of them, four from the
principal morning newspapers of New York, and one from The Philadelphia
Age. These men had all been sent out in trains that carried them to
Manchester, a little town on another railroad about ten miles away,
and there they had taken carriages and started posthaste for Shamong,
arriving all together.
It was amusing to Dick to see this congregation of reporters, numbering
seven now, and no news for them to gather. He was in position to stand
by and see the others work, for he had been over the ground thoroughly.
But the businesslike way in which some of them went to work made him a
little uneasy. They seemed to know just the people to inquire for; and
perhaps their information might be better than his, after all. It was a
place for him to keep his eyes and ears open, at any rate.
“Where can I find Mr. Peter Smith?” was one of the first questions
asked by the Herald correspondent.
“I want to see Dave Hardy,” one of the others said to the operator;
“where does he live?”
It was a relief to Dick when he found that Peter Smith was the hotel
keeper with whom he had already talked, and that Dave Hardy was the
guide. The men separated, each one working in his own way; but in a
few minutes they were all back in the telegraph office; and all had
found out just what Dick knew before, that the chief was only out on a
pleasure excursion.
While there was news in prospect, these seven newspaper men had held
aloof from one another; each was suspicious of the others, and each
preferred to make his own inquiries without any confidence. But now
that the work was over, with no chance of anybody “beating” the others,
they were all the best of friends, and as jolly companions as a lot of
schoolboys just let out for recess.
“It would be folly for us to drive five miles out to see the chief,”
the Herald man said, “when we know that he is not here on business.
Anyhow he couldn’t do anything without coming here to the station
and telegraph office. There’s nothing for us to do but telegraph the
facts in a few words and go to bed. I’ve sent my engine back; it’s too
expensive a luxury to keep.”
“That’s all we can do,” echoed the World man, “as far as business goes.
But I have an important duty to perform. My stomach has been on strike
for the last three or four hours, and I’m going over to the hotel to
order some supper. Any of you fellows want to eat?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” burst from six other throats. “We all want to eat.
We’re starving, every one of us. Order suppers for seven, Mr. World,
to be ready in half an hour. Don’t forget the raw oysters and broiled
lobsters and about fourteen Welsh rarebits.”
“You’ll be lucky if you get ham and eggs,” said the Tribune man, who
knew the ways of country hotels. “But they’ll have some bottled Bass.
Let’s see; seven of us, are there? Have them put fourteen bottles of
Bass on ice, World.”
“None for me,” Dick interrupted; “I don’t want any Bass.”
“Twelve bottles then;” and the World man disappeared to arrange for the
suppers, while the others sat down on tables and boxes to write their
brief dispatches.
The loungers about the telegraph office, all greatly interested in the
scene, did not quite know what to make of these seven newspaper men.
Half an hour before they had avoided one another, had little to say,
and seemed to be at swords’ points; and now here they were chatting in
the most friendly way, as if they were all old friends, and ordering
suppers together.
While they were writing, the Age man touched Dick lightly upon the knee
and inclined his head toward the door in a way that meant an invitation
to come out. He was hardly older than Dick, the Age man; but he had
much more to say, and was inclined to be boisterous in his manner. Dick
followed him out to the platform.
“You’re from the Transport, ain’t you?” the Age reporter asked when
they were alone outside.
“Yes,” Dick replied.
“Well, I’ll put you up to a good thing, if you’ll take my advice.
There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a sensation out of this
business. Let the other fellows telegraph home that the chief is only
shooting birds, but you and I can do better. We can get up a column
apiece about the chief’s mysterious movements down here, and tell how
he’s supposed to be shadowing the thieves and to be on the track of the
body. I don’t want to do it alone; but if it’s in both the Age and the
Transport, that will give it an appearance of truth, and we’ll have a
beat on all the other fellows. Your people won’t like your coming home
without sending any copy.”
It was the first time that Dick had ever had such a proposition made to
him, and he was indignant.
“My people would rather have me come home a hundred times without copy
than send them a story that was not true,” he answered. “I like a
sensation, but I want it to be a real one; not one that I make myself.
They trust me to tell the truth when they send me out, and I intend to
do it.”
“Humbug!” the Age man sneered. “Do you think the Transport always tells
the truth?”
“As far as I know it does,” Dick answered. “I know its reporters pretty
well, and I don’t believe there is a man in the office who would
knowingly send in a false report. I know that I wouldn’t for one.”
The Age man said something about Dick being “too good for a newspaper
man” as they returned to the office and finished up their dispatches,
but Dick did not care to reply. He was sure of his ground; and it was
almost with satisfaction that he noticed afterwards that the other
reporters avoided the Age man--not on account of the proposition he had
made, for Dick said nothing about that, but because they were able to
read him through and through almost instantly, and saw that he was a
man to be avoided.
This is a faculty that comes quickly to a bright reporter, and it had
come already to Dick to a degree that sometimes startled him. From
talking with scores of new men every day--men who often had something
to conceal or something to exaggerate or something to distort--he had
learned to read a man’s heart and brain almost the instant he set eyes
upon him.
“That Tribune man is a prophet,” somebody exclaimed at supper. “He said
ham and eggs, and ham and eggs it is. But they’re wonderfully better
than nothing.”
It was a surprise to Dick that nobody said a word to him about
drinking ale while they were eating. All the others drank it and after
supper smoked cigars, but Dick neither drank nor smoked. Instead of
being urged, he was left to follow his own inclinations. And the
best men in the party, he was glad to notice, treated him like a
professional equal. Some of the men there were favorably known in every
newspaper office in New York, and Dick had often heard of them. He was
too modest even to think that it was because he had attended to his
work faithfully and well, without bluster or boasting, that these men
liked him; but that was the reason. They read him as easily as they
read the Age man, but with different results.
Dick and the World man were quartered in the same room for the night,
for the little hotel had not seven sleeping rooms to spare.
“I’m afraid it looked unsociable not to take a glass of ale or a cigar
with the rest at supper,” Dick said before they went to sleep; “but I
have made up my mind neither to drink nor smoke, and I couldn’t break
my resolution.”
“Unsociable!” his companion repeated; “why, you were one of the
jolliest fellows in the party! There’s nothing unsociable about not
drinking ale when you don’t want it. The talk about drinking for
sociability’s sake is very much in your eye, Sumner. When a man drinks
it’s because he wants the stimulant, not because he wants to be
sociable. That was why I drank the ale, and I’ll warrant it was the
same with all the other fellows.”
“Well, it was very kind in you all not to urge me to drink or smoke
when I didn’t want to,” Dick said.
“No; you’re mistaken!” the World man retorted, resting his head upon
his hand, and his elbow on the pillow. “Excuse me; but I’m a much older
man than you, Sumner, and I know these things better. Reporters are
supposed to have some sense, and a sensible man never urges a fellow to
drink who doesn’t want to. When a man tries to urge you against your
will, it is safe to set that man down for a fool.
“Not only that,” he went on, “but it’s only a softshell who could be
induced to drink when he didn’t want to. Such a man would hardly have
brains enough to make a good reporter, and I hear you’re a pretty good
one, Sumner. No, sir! I take my share of drinks, I’ll admit, but if I
didn’t want one, I should like to see the man who could induce me to
take it; and I should have a very poor opinion of any man who tried,
too. However, it’s after midnight, and the early train goes at six;”
and the World man, totally disregarding the hygienic principles that he
often wrote paragraphs about, drew his head completely under the covers.
Dick thought that he had just fallen asleep for a moment, though in
reality he had slept for several hours, when at half-past five the
red-haired, freckle-faced boy of the hotel made a tremendous racket
with his knuckles against the doors of the reporters’ rooms.
“Wake up, gents,” he shouted. “The chief of police is over at the
station, waitin’ for the early train!”
In five minutes the reporters were all at the station with the chief,
and he was joking them about their wild-goose chase.
“I’m glad I got the better of you once, boys,” he laughed; “but it was
accidental. It would take a smarter man than I am to fool you fellows
on purpose. I’m too smart to try it, anyhow.”
In the ride back to New York Dick became well acquainted with the
chief of police, and the acquaintance often proved valuable to him
afterwards. When he reached the office he gave the city editor a full
account of his adventures.
“It often happens,” the editor said as he laughed with Dick over his
odd experiences, “that the reporter’s adventures in gathering news
would make a more interesting article than the news he goes after; but
we seldom print the reporter’s side of it. However, I think we will
make an exception in this case and let you write us a special about
your experiences in hunting Sterling’s body. Make it about a column and
a half. We pay extra, of course, for breezy specials.”
CHAPTER VI.
HOW DICK SPURNED A BRIBE.
The opportunity to write this “special” was a great relief to Dick;
for, notwithstanding his success in a professional way, he found it
hard to make both ends meet. The writing of one amounted to little, but
he knew that one would open the way for more.
There were scores of little expenses that he had not counted upon, and
the support of the family devolved mainly upon him. He was proud of
this, even though it did take his last cent every week. Then there was
the twenty-five dollars he owed Randall, which he felt must be paid off
soon; and he was in need of newer and better clothes. The Russellville
clothes did very well while he was doing small work in the office, for
the men he met on these little jobs were dressed no better than he; but
in the class of work he was doing now it was different.
He was constantly meeting the best reporters in New York, men who made
a great deal of money, and who wore the best clothes they could buy,
and carried fine watches, and often wore expensive diamonds. Dick cared
very little for the diamonds and jewelry, but he wanted to present as
good an appearance as his associates. Occasional specials would help
him wonderfully in this and a hundred other things, for they paid ten
dollars a column; and he knew that if he had any sort of success with
them they would almost double his pay.
He did not know, of course, that the chance to write specials was
an arrangement that had been made expressly to give him more money,
growing out of a conversation between Dr. Goode and the city editor.
“Sumner’s work is always good,” the night editor had said. “I never
feel any anxiety about an assignment when it is in his hands. You ought
to increase his salary, for he is doing some of his best work in the
office.”
“Yes, he is,” the city editor had replied. “He has made a remarkable
record so far. I don’t know of any young man who has taken hold as he
has. It seems to be intuitive with him to know a piece of news when he
sees it, and there is no limit to his energy. The best of him is that
although he must know he is doing unusually good work, it doesn’t spoil
him. He is just as ready to go out on a small affair as a big one. But
you know I make it a rule not to raise a new man’s salary in the first
six months. However, I can make it up to him by giving him specials to
write and in other ways, to give him more money. He must have more, of
course. He doesn’t seem to think of anything but his work; no poker
games on his mind, no billiards, no little club rooms, no rum, nothing
but solid hard work.”
“Such men must be encouraged,” the doctor laughed; “for they’re not
plenty.”
Ignorant of all this, Dick took his few spare hours to write his first
special, sitting up several times long after Darling reached home.
“It’s a jolly place to write, here in the dining-room,” he said one
night when Darling came in at half-past two; “after the folks are in
bed. The light is so good, too. Somehow I never could take any pleasure
in reading or writing at night when I lived in a furnished room,
because the gas was always so dim.”
“Didn’t any of the fellows tell you how to manage that?” Darling
laughed. “Of course you never could get a fair light in a furnished
room, because the landladies plug up the tips of the burners. That lets
only a little gas through, and saves bills, you know. You should have
bought a burner of your own and a pair of nippers, and unscrewed the
landlady’s burner when you wanted to read or write, and put your own
on. That’s the way all the boys do.”
“Maybe you do that in your room here,” Dick suggested with a twinkle in
his eye.
“I don’t have to, Dick,” Darling replied. “There are no mean tricks
about that mother of yours--nor your sister either,” he added, and then
blushed a little because Dick smiled.
There was no doubt of Dick’s ability to write a good special after
his first one appeared. It was not merely a correct account of his
experiences in looking for the chief of police and Sterling’s body; all
the details were truthfully given, but they were given in such a way as
to bring out every funny point to the best advantage. It was a comical
article from beginning to end, and Dick was set down for a humorist as
well as an accurate reporter of facts. There was some glory in this,
and some profit, too; for thereafter most of the subjects that might be
turned into humorous specials were handed over to Dick.
“I want you to run up to Saratoga,” the city editor said to him one day
after he had been long enough in the flat to pay a second month’s rent.
“You can go up to-night, do the work to-morrow, and come back to-morrow
night. I have had several reports about unfair dealings among the
bookmakers, and I want you to go out to the race track and investigate
for yourself. Make full inquiries; and after you have all your facts
go to Hyer, the leading bookmaker, tell him just what reports we have
heard, and ask him what he has to say about it.”
Dick had never ridden before in such a train as carried him to
Saratoga that night. It was one of the famous “Saratoga Specials,” made
up of a dozen parlor cars and drawn by two powerful engines. Leaving
New York at six in the evening it set him down in Saratoga before
midnight, and he slept in a gorgeous room in the Grand Union Hotel,
with music playing on the balcony and colored lights flashing across
the fountain in the courtyard.
It seemed to him next day as if half of New York had migrated to
Saratoga. He knew a great many people in the city, and almost every
other man he met he was sure he had seen before. Many of them he
knew, and some of these were of great assistance to him in making his
investigations. He did a hard day’s work, but after all it amounted to
nothing, for he could discover nothing irregular in the bookmakers’
methods.
He still had Mr. Hyer, the chief bookmaker, to see, and it was nearly
six o’clock in the evening before he found him in the lobby of the
hotel. None of your vulgar, horsey, gambler-looking men was Mr. Hyer,
with flashy clothes and showy jewelry; but a most respectable-appearing
man, so quiet in dress and manner that he might readily have been
mistaken for a clergyman. Dick stepped up and introduced himself and
asked for a few moments’ conversation.
“We had better go into this little writing room,” said Mr. Hyer, “where
we can talk without interruption;” and he led the way into a cozy
little room with a beautiful table in the centre and the softest of
chairs on each side.
There was no hesitation on Dick’s part now about talking to strangers.
It was an old story with him, and he felt as much at home with a man
he had never seen before as with an old friend. Certainly he had never
talked with a more polite or more agreeable man than Mr. Hyer.
Dick told the bookmaker what reports had reached the Transport office
about unfair methods on the race track, and Mr. Hyer listened with
great attention.
“It is very kind of you,” he said when Dick concluded his story,
“to come directly to me with these reports, instead of publishing
them first and investigating afterward. But that is quite like the
Transport’s way of doing; they have always treated me with the greatest
fairness. These reports have been circulated by enemies of mine who
seek to do me harm, and I can show you in a few words that they are
utterly unfounded.”
He went on in the smoothest manner to give Dick a detailed account
of his methods of doing business, and made everything appear as fair
and honorable as a transaction in real estate. He was very earnest
about it, too; for the publication of even a hint of unfairness in his
dealings would have done him immense damage and cost him thousands of
dollars.
“I think I have made everything clear to you,” he said in conclusion.
“You see for yourself that there can be no possible foundation for
these libelous attacks. And now,” he went on, his hand moving down
toward his trowsers pocket, “you have been at a good deal of trouble
and expense to come up here and make this investigation. Besides, you
have dealt fairly with me in coming directly to me, and I like to do
well by those who do well by me. Just slip this into your pocket.”
Mr. Hyer’s hand was on the table close by Dick’s when he finished
speaking, and “this” was a great roll of greenbacks that he tried to
thrust under Dick’s palm. It was a roll that a man could hardly close
his fingers around.
“Oh, no, sir!” Dick exclaimed, hastily drawing back his hand. The hot
blood mounted to his face, and he would have made some forcible remarks
if Mr. Hyer had not been so extremely polite and gentlemanly. “No, sir.
It is the Transport that pays the expense and pays me for my trouble.”
“Yes, of course; I understand that,” Mr. Hyer replied; “but this is
altogether outside of business matters. You have done me a kindness,
and I merely want to return a favor. You need have no hesitation in
accepting this trifling gift. Of course it will not influence you in
the least in what you write.”
The gentlemanly, smooth-tongued gambler still held the roll of notes
within easy reach.
Dick was on the point of flaring up and exclaiming, “Do you take me for
a thief, sir?” but how could he do it with such a gentle, suave man as
Mr. Hyer? Perhaps it was really meant only as a kindness, without any
intention to bribe him. Still he could not trust himself to say much.
“It is impossible!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, well, don’t let me annoy you with urging it upon you,” said Hyer,
drawing back his hand. “I thought a little money might be useful
to you; but no matter. At any rate, let us crack a bottle of wine
together. Do you prefer Mumm or Heidseick?”
“I do not drink wine, thank you,” Dick replied. “And I see it is nearly
seven o’clock, so I shall barely have time to eat dinner and catch the
evening train.”
He pushed back his chair and took a step toward the open door, and the
gambler followed.
“You see, Mr. Sumner,” he said--and he repeated some of his former
arguments--“I am sure that a fair-minded man like yourself will see
that my business is conducted on an entirely honorable basis.”
They were just within the door of the small room, and the great lobby
of the hotel, into which the door opened, was crowded with guests
recently returned from the races. Mr. Hyer had his left hand upon
Dick’s right sleeve, as though to emphasize his words, and his right
hand still held the fat roll of notes.
“So good-night, Mr. Sumner.”
While the gambler was uttering the words Dick felt a pressure upon his
vest pocket, and instinctively clapped his hand upon the spot. There
was the roll of notes stuck endwise into his pocket, and Mr. Hyer had
disappeared in the crowd.
It was plain enough what that meant. Hyer had forced the money upon
him, against his will, in the hope of influencing his report.
For a second or two Dick was dazed, and the righteous anger showed in
every feature of his face. He looked anxiously in every direction, but
the gambler had vanished utterly.
“Mr. Hyer!” he called. Of course there was no answer; but several
gentlemen idling near by looked at Dick in surprise to see any one in
such an excited state in that abode of luxury and pleasure.
Dick took the roll of notes from his pocket and held it in his hand. To
throw it upon the table and leave it there was his first impulse; but a
second’s consideration showed him that that would be foolish. Some one
would of course pick it up, and he would have no proof that he had not
kept it.
“If only there was some one with me!” he said to himself. But there was
no one, and he must make his own way out of the difficulty. He stepped
back into the little room and sat down in his old chair, still holding
the roll in his hand, for he would not have it in his pocket. Never had
a roll of money looked so utterly detestable to him before; it was an
unclean thing, and he loathed it.
For a moment he sat there bending over the table, torn with anger and
doubt; not doubt whether he should keep the money, but how he should
rid himself of it. It would not have been Dick Sumner, however, to
remain in such a condition long.
“Of course!” he exclaimed, straightening up in his chair, “it is plain
enough what I must do; but I declare I was so mad for a minute that I
didn’t know what I was about. I must go to some respectable person and
tell him the whole story, and put the money in his hands to be returned
to that smooth-tongued fellow. Mr. Clair is my man--Mr. Clair, the
proprietor of the hotel. It’s fortunate I met him this morning and had
a talk with him.”
Dick made his way across the crowded lobby to Mr. Clair’s office, still
carrying the roll in his hand and holding his hand far out from his
body; he would not have the money near him. The door was partly open
and he stepped inside.
“Mr. Clair, can I speak with you a moment?” he asked.
“Certainly. Come in and take a chair. Why, what is wrong? You look
ill, Mr. Sumner;” and he arose from his chair and helped Dick into a
comfortable seat.
“No, sir; I am quite well,” Dick answered. “But I am afraid that I am
rather excited. Will you do me the favor to take this roll of money
and count it, Mr. Clair?” And he held out his hand and the great hotel
proprietor took the money. Dick felt better the moment it was out of
his hands.
“Ten, twenty, thirty, forty”--Mr. Clair said, unrolling the money
and counting it; “two hundred and thirty, two hundred and forty, two
hundred and fifty. Just two hundred and fifty dollars here, Mr. Sumner.
You must have picked a winner at the races this afternoon, I think.”
“No, sir!” Dick exclaimed. “That money was stuffed into my pocket
against my will by Mr. Hyer, the bookmaker. It will be a great favor
to me if you will seal it up and see that it is returned to him, for I
cannot handle it again.”
Then in reply to Mr. Clair’s inquiring looks he went on and told the
whole story; what his business was with Mr. Hyer, and how he had
refused the money over and over, and how Mr. Hyer had at length forced
it into his pocket and disappeared in the crowd.
“I don’t think I ever had anything to hurt me quite as much, Mr.
Clair,” he said in concluding. “To think the man should take me for a
thief! That he could imagine I would go back to the office, and home
to my mother and sister, with a roll of stolen money in my pocket!
Worse than stolen! Why, I might better put my hand in your money drawer
than take it in such a way as--as”--
The recital of the story brought the hot blood to Dick’s head again.
Finding himself unable to finish the sentence, he turned away his head.
“Never mind, my boy.” Mr. Clair got up and shut the door, and laid
his hand kindly on Dick’s shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard. You must
make allowances for the man you were dealing with. Perhaps he has met
reporters who were willing to listen to such arguments. Indeed, I have
met some myself who would not have been a bit alarmed at finding two
hundred and fifty dollars in their pockets. But not from the great New
York papers,” he added, noticing Dick’s look of surprise. “No, I must
say that for them. It is only with the small fry.”
“You give me more confidence in human nature, at any rate,” Mr. Clair
went on. “I have to deal with thousands and tens of thousands of people
here, and my experience often leads me to doubt whether there is a
single honest man in the world. But there is one, I’ll swear to it,
and I am glad to know him. I know you better than you think, for a
hotel keeper, like a reporter, must learn to read a man’s heart by the
outward signs. Some time you may be in need of a friend, my boy; when
that day comes, call on Henry Clair. Come in and eat dinner with me.”
On the way home in the train that night Dick concluded that he would
say nothing in the office about the attempt to bribe him. There was
nothing in the episode that he could reproach himself with, and yet the
mere offer of a bribe to him seemed to him to involve some disgrace.
There must have been something in his manner, he was afraid, that led
the gambler to believe that he could be bought; and the thought worried
him. He had nothing to write; before he saw Mr. Hyer he had made up his
mind that no unfairness could be proved, however strong the suspicion
might be. The gambler’s effort at bribery convinced him that something
was wrong, and he would have been delighted to make an exposure; but he
had no facts to go upon.
Some unimportant matter was given him to investigate in the morning,
and when he returned to the office about the middle of the afternoon
Dick was startled by a word from the city editor:--
“Mr. Harding has been inquiring for you, Sumner. I think he is
disengaged now, and you had better go into his room.”
Mr. Harding, the editor-in-chief! In his months in the office Dick
had not set foot in the real editor’s room, and had seen him only two
or three times. A few months before he would have thought nothing of
such a summons, for he was accustomed to talking with Mr. Davis, the
editor of The Russellville Record. But he had learned what a great man
the editor of a big New York paper is, at least in his own office; how
autocratic, how unapproachable, how weirdly, wonderfully imposing, a
summons from the editor-in-chief sets even the managing editor in a
flutter!
“Come in, Sumner,” was Mr. Harding’s greeting. He spoke very pleasantly
Dick thought, for so great a man; but his manner was quick and decided,
as though he had many reputations to make or mar before sunset. “You
have been up at Saratoga, have you?”
“Yes, sir,” Dick answered, “I went up about”--
“No matter! Never mind what about; Mr. Brown will attend to that. And
you had a peculiar experience up there, did you?”
Dick started. How could Mr. Harding have heard of his peculiar
experience, when he had not mentioned it to a soul in the office?
“Yes, sir,” he answered, “I had a very unpleasant experience.”
“Sit down here and tell me all about it, but briefly, briefly.” And as
the editor pointed to a chair Dick wondered how he could find time to
listen to so small a matter, with such an awful collection of letters
and manuscript and proofs piled before him. “Never mind the news part.
Who was it offered you the money?”
“Mr. Hyer, sir,” Dick replied; and in as few words as possible he
described the circumstances.
“H’m, Hyer! I thought so. Then the charges against him are true.
Bribery is always a confession of weakness, Mr. Sumner. I have a letter
here from my friend Clair that will interest you; you may read it.”
Wonderingly, Dick took the letter the editor handed him, and read:--
GRAND UNION HOTEL, Saratoga Springs.
_My dear Mr. Harding_,--If it will not violate any of your
office rules, I shall be greatly obliged if you will hand the
enclosed check for $250 to your young reporter who was here
to-day, Mr. Richard Sumner, as a slight token of my admiration
and esteem.
Mr. Sumner came to me for assistance when an attempt was made
to bribe him to suppress news. The money had been forced into his
pocket, and he put it at once in my hands to be returned to the
owner.
He was so heartbroken over the affair, so grieved that even an
attempt of the sort should be made that it really did me good to
see him. I owe him something for the new sensation he gave me,
and this little check will not nearly pay the bill.
Sincerely yours, HENRY CLAIR.
“Bother those blushes of mine!” Dick said to himself as he read the
letter. “Why in the world is it that the blood always rushes to my head
and makes me blush like a girl when anything excites me?”
“It is very kind in Mr. Clair, sir,” he said as he handed the letter
back to the editor; “but”--
“Of course not,” Mr. Harding interrupted. “It is not to be thought
of. Here is the check; send it back to Mr. Clair yourself with my
compliments and regrets. That is all, Mr. Sumner.”
It seemed to Dick that his dismissal was rather curt, but he was not
used yet to the ways of great editors with young reporters. He was
barely out of the room when a bell tapped.
Any Transport man would have known that it was the editor-in-chief’s
bell without hearing it. The movements of the office boy on duty would
have made that plain. At a tap of the editor-in-chief’s bell the office
boy flies, because a nod from the great man will put a new boy in his
place. For the managing editor’s bell he moves with some celerity,
for the managing editor is his immediate boss. The city editor’s bell
summons him usually, when it is struck hard and the tap is repeated.
When a reporter calls he is deeply engrossed in affairs of his own.
This time it was the bell of the editor-in-chief, and the boy flew past
Dick to answer the summons.
“Mr. Brown,” the editor said to the boy; and in a twinkling Mr. Brown
stood before his chief.
“What are you paying Sumner, Mr. Brown?” the editor asked.
“Fifteen dollars a week, sir.”
“He’s the man who did the Sing Sing story, isn’t he? And that humorous
account of the search for Sterling’s body?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You may raise him to forty dollars, beginning with this week.”
“Very well, sir.”
That was all; the deed was done. If the Czar of Russia had ordered the
beheading of one of his subjects, the order could not have been obeyed
more promptly. A newspaper office is an absolute monarchy, and the
editor-in-chief is the monarch, particularly when, as is the case with
the Transport, the editor is also the principal owner. He distributes
his favors or his frowns according to his own sweet will. If he had
said, “I do not like Sumner’s work, let him go,” Dick’s career in that
office would have come to an untimely end. The city editor makes rules
for his reporters, but the editor-in-chief sweeps them away with a
breath when he chooses.
“Very well, sir,” said the city editor; and from that moment Dick’s
salary was forty dollars a week, besides the ten dollars or more extra
that he could make by writing specials.
CHAPTER VII.
DICK LANDS IN MEXICO WITH A FAMILY.
Dr. Goode took pains to have a talk with Dick a few nights after his
unexpected increase of salary.
“I’m not going to congratulate you on your good fortune, Sumner,” he
said, “till I see whether it is a good thing for you or the opposite.
It may prove to be the worst thing that ever happened you, though I
hope not. It all depends upon yourself. You have made a brilliant
beginning, and I think you are sure to hold out if you keep yourself in
check.
“Above all things, don’t let the size of your head increase; don’t ‘get
a swelled head,’ as the boys say. Your falling into favor with the old
man is more accident than anything else.”
Dick had often heard that expression used before. The editor-in-chief
is generally called “the old man,” even when he happens to be one of
the youngest men in the office.
“It’s not because you are such a tremendous fellow that you have been
advanced in this way,” the doctor went on. “You have done good work,
but other men do good work too. Your refusing to take a bribe in
Saratoga I take no account of at all; that was a matter of course. I
should be sorry to think you could have done anything else. In the
ordinary course of events, after the good work you have done, you would
have been raised in a few months to perhaps twenty-five dollars a week,
and then a little higher after a year or so. But the old man has taken
a fancy to you and your work, and pushed you ahead with a jump. That
thing happens sometimes, and I am glad that it has happened to you.
But don’t take too much of the credit to yourself. It is luck, chance,
fate, providence, whatever you choose to call it; your own merit has
precious little to do with it.
“Though it has something, I’ll admit,” he continued, laying his hand,
as he had done before, on Dick’s knee. “The old man must have been
pleased with some of your articles, as we all were. But be careful of
yourself; more careful now than ever. You know what the prince’s smile
means to the courtier. Your position in the office is better than it
has been, for the prince is known to have smiled upon you. But hold
your horses.”
It did not take long for Dick to find that to be in favor with “the old
man” was to be in favor with everybody in the office. The office boys
kept fresh mucilage constantly in the bottle on his desk, and there are
few stronger signs of good standing in a newspaper office than that. He
was often given special work that was not scheduled on the assignment
list at all, with orders to report to the managing editor or the
editor-in-chief; and as this work seldom kept him late at night, he had
more time to enjoy the delights of the new flat. His clothes were as
good now as any reporter could desire, he carried a watch, the last of
his debt to Randall was paid, and he had a small bank account. Dick was
happy, not only because of these things, but because he was thoroughly
in love with his work, as every successful reporter must be.
“You don’t have to go out again to-night, do you, Dick?” his mother
asked as he lay comfortably stretched out on a sofa after the meal that
was the family’s supper, but Dick’s dinner.
“Yes, I must go back to the office,” he answered; “but I don’t know of
anything to keep me late to-night.”
“You’re working too hard, Dick,” his mother went on; “too hard and too
much at night. You’ve grown taller since you came to New York, but
you’re much thinner and paler. Where are those beautiful roses you used
to have in your cheeks?”
“Oh, bother the roses, mother,” Dick laughed; “they’ve washed off, I
suppose, like the printer’s ink I used to have on my hands. And I don’t
see why night work should hurt me. You know what Dr. Goode says: ‘It’s
not working at night that hurts a man, but playing at night.’ I don’t
do much playing by day or night. I get my pleasure out of my work, and
that pays better. I’ll run down to the office, and I’m pretty sure I
can be home by ten o’clock. Then I’ll have just the best night’s sleep
you ever saw, for I do feel a little tired.”
With this idea in his mind Dick went down to the office, and the city
editor’s greeting upset all his plans not only for that evening, but
for many evenings to come.
“Sumner,” Mr. Brown asked, “how soon can you be ready to sail for
Mexico?”
It was a blow to Dick in some respects and a pleasant surprise in
others; but he promptly answered:--
“I’m ready now, sir.”
“Well,” Mr. Brown said, smiling at Dick’s readiness to start for
anywhere at a moment’s notice, “there isn’t any steamer going just at
this minute; but there’s one at noon to-morrow that you can take. It is
one of Mr. Harding’s jobs, and he will give you instructions when he
comes in at nine o’clock. You are to interview President Diaz for him;
and we prefer to have you go by steamer rather than by rail, because
that will give you a chance to touch at Cuba and some other points and
write us some descriptive letters.”
“I will give you an order for money to cover your expenses,” Mr. Brown
continued, “and we can send your salary to your family while you are
away, if you like. You will be able to give us some good letters from
Cuba and Mexico.”
Dick was sure of that. Summer had changed to fall, and fall was rapidly
turning into winter; and to visit the tropics in winter, to go out of
the cold and slush of New York into a region of eternal summer, was
something that he had dreamed of, but hardly hoped ever to realize.
“President Diaz speaks English fluently,” Mr. Harding told him when
he arrived, “so you will have no trouble on that score. Of course the
language of the country is Spanish. Here is a letter of introduction to
the American minister in Mexico that will open the way for you.”
The good night’s sleep that Dick had arranged to have did not come.
A large part of the night was spent in packing and making ready, and
when at length he got to bed he had too many things to think of to fall
asleep.
“Remember that you are all we have, Dick,” his mother sobbed when she
bade him good-by in the morning; “don’t be rash, for I do not see what
we should do if anything should happen to you.”
“It’s hardly more than a picnic, mother,” he replied as gayly as he
could. “In four or five weeks I’ll be with you again; and won’t I have
great stories to tell you about what I’ve seen!”
Florrie and Darling went to the wharf with him, and their waving
handkerchiefs were the last impression that Dick had of New York as
the steamship Alameda drew out from her pier and crept down the Hudson
River.
The upper and lower bays, the Narrows, the Quarantine islands, the
forts, and big summer hotels along shore were all familiar sights to
him, but life aboard ship was like being in a new world. It was his
first ocean voyage, and he was prepared to enjoy every novelty and make
the most of it.
It was a surprise to him that the ship was more Spanish than English.
The officers all spoke English and so did four or five of the
passengers; but the waiters spoke Spanish, the bills of fare were
printed in both Spanish and English, the cooking was Spanish, and in
the cabins and staterooms were posted notices from which he learned his
first Spanish sentence:--
_Aquí no se permite fumar_--“Smoking is not permitted here.”
It was a necessary warning, for nine tenths of the passengers were
Cubans, dark-skinned little fellows with cigarettes forever between
their lips.
All these things Dick noticed before the ship passed Sandy Hook, for
after that there was an unpleasant period of two days when he lay in
his berth seasick and forlorn. When he appeared on deck again the
steamer was below Hatteras, and a school of porpoises were playing
antics in front of the bow.
“Going to Havana, señor?” he was asked as he stood leaning over the
forward rail watching the graceful movements of the fish; and looking
up he saw that the speaker was a tall young Spaniard, perhaps two or
three years older than himself, handsomely dressed, but with a look in
his face that Dick did not particularly like.
“Yes,” he replied; “to Havana first, then on to Vera Cruz and Mexico.”
“Good!” the Spaniard exclaimed. “I too am going to Mexico; we shall be
friends. It is my native city--Mexico--and I am going home.”
Dick brought his interviewing powers to bear, and in five minutes he
learned that the Mexican was Señor don Manuel de Comacho, a lieutenant
in the Mexican navy, who had been spending a year in Paris, and who was
now going home with his young wife and an infant two or three months
old.
“But we are not in favor there now,” Comacho laughed; “my father was
Secretary of the Treasury before Diaz became President, but now he is
out. Perhaps I may get into trouble by going back.”
“You are very free in telling your affairs to a stranger,” Dick
thought; but he answered pleasantly, glad to have some English-speaking
person to talk to. At the dinner table he was surprised to find the
lieutenant’s wife as fair as a lily; a pretty young woman enough but
proud, particularly of her complexion, for in Mexico a white skin is
thought the perfection of beauty. She spoke nothing but Spanish,
however, so Dick could only bow when he was introduced.
“To-morrow we shall be in Havana,” Comacho said. “We might go about the
city together. I shall be a useful guide,” he added, laughing, “for you
speak no Spanish, and you would lose yourself.”
Dick ridiculed the idea of his losing himself anywhere, but it
suited him very well to go ashore with some one who knew the place.
Forty-eight hours the Alameda was to lie there before continuing her
voyage across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz.
It was just as the sun was rising that the vessel steamed into Havana
harbor, saluting with her brass cannon as she passed the Morro Castle.
The scene filled Dick with rapture, as it does every one who is not
too familiar with it. The pink and blue and yellow houses of the
city, the fleet of vessels at anchor, the church bells ringing with a
tone so different from the bells at home; the fort on one side of the
entrance and the oldtime castle on the other; and better than all, to
Dick’s mind, a man on the opposite shore leading a flock of sheep down
to the water to bathe, with a long crook in his hand, just like the
biblical shepherds. It was fairyland under a hot sun; and by the time
that he and Comacho had visited neighboring sugar estates and tobacco
plantations, and had seen the great Tacon Theatre, and eaten cooling
ices in the Café da Louvre, and driven through the Prado, Dick declared
that he had enough to write about for six months.
“But I do not see you taking any notes,” said Comacho; for Dick had
told him that he was a newspaper man.
“No,” Dick answered, “I never take notes. They only bother me.
Sometimes a name or a date I put down, but nothing more. A thing that
makes an impression upon me I never forget; a thing that makes no
impression is not worth writing about.”
Comacho’s affairs were soon to make an impression upon Dick that he
little suspected. The Alameda dropped anchor several days later in the
roadstead of Vera Cruz, a mile or more from shore and just to the south
of the great Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, and the health officer of the
port came out with several assistants in a handsome boat. The officer
made his inspection and was rowed away, and five minutes later Dick
found Comacho seated upon the grating at the stern, his face buried in
his hands weeping bitterly.
It was new to Dick to see a man shed tears, though he remembered that
in Saratoga his throat had become rather lumpy while he was talking to
Mr. Clair. But he had traveled with the young Mexican and eaten with
him and met his wife, so he felt that he owed him some allegiance.
“Why, what’s the matter, old fellow?” he asked, laying his hand kindly
on Comacho’s shoulder. “What are you crying for?”
“Oh, I’m in great trouble, Sumner,” the lieutenant answered. “A friend
of mine who came out in the doctor’s boat tells me that I am suspected
of carrying dispatches from my father to enemies of the government who
have gone abroad, and that I am to be arrested as soon as I go ashore.”
“Is that all!” Dick exclaimed. “Why, that’s nothing to cry over, man.
If they can’t prove anything against you, they’ll have to let you go
again.”
“Ah, it is not here as it is in your country!” the lieutenant sobbed.
“If they get me in jail once, they may keep me there for years. Oh! oh!
oh!”
“Say, now you stop this!” Dick commanded; he was becoming disgusted
at the spectacle. “You are an officer in the navy, and you have a
family aboard the ship to take care of, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourself to sit down and cry. If you brace up and act like a man, I’ll
try to help you out of the scrape.”
“Oh, you can’t, you can’t!” Comacho replied; “you are only a stranger
here, and you can do nothing.” But he took out his handkerchief and
tried to dry his eyes.
“Can’t I?” Dick asked. “Well, here’s the first thing. If you have any
contraband papers with you, go down to your stateroom and read them and
burn them.”
[Illustration: “WHAT’S THE MATTER, OLD FELLOW?”]
“I have none--not one,” Comacho answered.
“Very well. Now where will they arrest you?”
“At the Custom House mole. We all have to take small boats from the
ship to the shore and land at the Custom House mole, and the minute I
land there they will arrest me.”
“Then don’t land at the Custom House mole!” Dick exclaimed. “Pay one of
the boatmen to land you up or down the coast; anywhere but at the mole.”
“They wouldn’t dare do it,” Comacho answered. “It would be as much as
their heads were worth.”
Dick took a turn across the deck with his hands in his pockets, deep in
thought.
“How long have you been out of the country?” he asked a moment later.
“More than a year and a half.”
“Then you must have changed in appearance!” Dick exclaimed; “you can’t
look just the same as you did. Why not disguise yourself as much as you
can, and you go ashore alone and try to pass the officers undetected;
and I will follow later with your wife and baggage.”
“I believe I could do that!” Comacho answered, his face brightening.
“I have raised a little beard since I went away and I am stouter. I
think I can slip past the officers into the city, and in the city my
father’s friends will help me.”
“You can take my big ulster and steamer cap; they will nearly cover you
up,” Dick said. “Besides, they will expect to see you with a wife and
child; your going alone will help to fool them.”
“And you will bring my wife and baby ashore? and the baggage, the six
trunks? O señor, señor, you know not how much you do for me! Take them
to the Hotel Veracruzana, and this evening bring them to the railway
station. The train starts for Mexico city at nine, and I will meet you
in the station--unless, indeed, I am in prison.”
Under the influence of Dick’s energy the Mexican was becoming quite
bold. The tears were gone now, and in the big ulster and peaked steamer
cap his own mother would hardly have recognized him.
“You must explain everything to your wife,” Dick cautioned him, “for
you know she cannot understand me. And impress it upon her that she is
not to say one word to anybody till I have her safely landed in the
hotel.”
In a minute more Comacho was in one of the small boats, under a curved
canvas awning like the cover of a prairie wagon, on his way to the
mole. Anxiously Dick watched and saw him land, saw him ascend the
stone steps, and saw him go under the big stone arch that leads from
the Custom House into the city. He had passed the officers without
recognition, and was safely landed in Vera Cruz.
Up to this time Dick had thought very little about himself in the
matter. Comacho had been his companion for ten or eleven days, and when
he was in trouble Dick was glad to help him. But the comical position
in which he had put himself began to make itself evident when the
Mexican’s trunks were hoisted out of the hold.
“It’s one of the funniest things I ever saw--this part of it,” he said
to himself, while the baggage was coming up. “Here’s a young reporter
leaves New York a single man, and remains single all the way to Vera
Cruz, with just the one trunk he started with. Then he lands at Vera
Cruz with rather a pretty wife to whom he can’t say a word because he
doesn’t understand her language, and a dear, sweet, little baby that
he doesn’t even know the name of, and six more strapping big trunks.
I wonder whether I’m going to have adventures like this all through
Mexico? I’m beginning well, at any rate.
“There’s a more serious side to it, too; but I am going into that with
my eyes open. I am going ashore with the wife and child of a man who
is wanted by the government, and I may easily be mistaken for him and
be arrested. But that would be too good to be true. Wouldn’t the New
York boys be jealous if I should walk right into a Mexican prison
the minute I landed? The story of the arrest would be worth at least
two columns, and the court proceedings ought to make at least two
fine articles. Then there might be some English-speaking prisoners in
the jail who could tell me a lot of capital stories, and after a few
days the American minister would have me out with great éclat, and my
liberation would make another article. But that’s too good luck even to
think about.”
It required the largest of the rowboats to carry Dick’s party and their
trunks ashore, and when they landed at the mole the boatmen shouldered
the trunks and took them to the open gallery in which they were to be
examined by the Custom House officers.
Dick opened his own trunk first to give Señora Comacho time to get
out her keys, and the inspector gave its contents hardly more than a
glance. But the Mexican lady did not understand, and Dick explained
to her, by holding up the key of his own trunk, that he must have her
keys. He began to unlock her trunks when she produced them, but the
inspector stopped him.
“Oh, it’s all right, is it?” Dick said. What the inspector said was all
Greek to him, but he understood the meaning of the motions the man made
toward the big gate. “Don’t care to look at them, don’t you? That’s
because they belong to a good-looking young lady. You Custom House
fellows are all alike, whether you speak English or Spanish.”
They were at liberty now to take their trunks to the hotel, but how to
get them there was more than Dick could see. He wanted a dray; but he
could see the street through the broad arch, and there was no wheeled
vehicle in sight. He did not know, of course, that all such carrying is
done on porters’ shoulders in Vera Cruz. When he stepped through the
arch to look up and down the street a dozen porters followed him back
to the trunks.
“These porters will carry your trunks to the hotel,” said the
inspector, not in so many words, but by pointing first to the porters,
then to the trunks.
Those little porters! Some of them looked like boys of twelve or
fourteen. All were bare-headed and bare-legged, and their tawny little
legs did not look strong enough to carry much of a load.
“Si! si!” said Dick. He had learned that much Spanish on the steamer.
“Hotel Veracruzana.”
The undersized porters shouldered the heavy trunks with ease and filed
out into the street, seven of them, one after another, Dick and Señora
Comacho, the latter with the baby in her arms, bringing up the rear.
“This _is_ rich!” Dick exclaimed as they marched solemnly up the
hot street. “What wouldn’t I give to have Dr. Goode and Jack Randall
see this procession; and mother and Florrie, too. But I think some of
them would be wanting to know where I got this wife and baby.
“This the hotel?” he wondered, when the porters turned into a sombre
stone building with a display of canned goods on the shelves inside.
“Why, this is a grocery store.”
But a moment later he took it to be a cigar store, then a barroom, then
a restaurant. It was the hotel office nevertheless, and the lady with
the baby remained standing by the door while Dick went up to the clerk
to negotiate.
Such a hotel office he had never seen before. It was a large room,
certainly fifty or sixty feet square, with a counter running partly
across near the front, and shelves back of the counter filled with cans
and bottles, and all the rear part of the room occupied with chairs and
marble-topped tables.
The clerk was full of smiles, as a matter of course. No words were
needed to tell him what was wanted. Here was a family just arrived
by the steamer, and they desired accommodations. He summoned a
copper-colored boy to show them to their room, and bowed profoundly.
“Yes, but hold on here!” Dick exclaimed as the truth flashed upon him.
“This is not a family, you know; this is parts of two families. We’ve
come in sections. The lady wants a room, and so do I; but we want them
separate.”
The clerk raised his eyebrows in astonishment at Dick’s rapid English.
“Two rooms,” said Dick; “two--two;” and he held up two fingers.
“Dos?” said the clerk. He understood the word two, and repeated it in
Spanish.
“Wait till I bring the lady,” Dick answered. “I can’t tell her what
I want to say,” he added under his breath; “but she ought to see for
herself, and explain it.”
And so she did. A few rapid sentences exchanged between the lady and
the clerk, with many gesticulations, set everything straight. Señora
Comacho and her child were led away in one direction, and Dick was
escorted in another to a room scarcely smaller than his flat in New
York.
“They’re determined to make a family man of me,” he said as he glanced
about the room; “and it would take a good-sized family to occupy this
room properly. Four big beds, four washstands, four rocking-chairs,
brick floor, and enough windows for a whole house.”
By the middle of the afternoon he had seen most of the sights of
Vera Cruz, including the great hospitals that once were monasteries,
and the Alameda, the Trianon, and the ugly black buzzards that clean
the streets, and was sure that he had material for one or two good
articles. He must, he knew, escort his fair charge down to dinner; and
he had returned to the hotel for that purpose and was trying to devise
a way of sending a message to her, when the lady herself appeared.
She seemed to be much excited about something, and the moment she saw
Dick she gave an exclamation of surprise and beckoned him to follow her
up the stairs.
Dick stood for a moment undecided.
“This is awkward,” he thought. “Next wife I have shall speak English,
sure; then I’ll know what I’m about.”
But the lady continued to beckon, and there was nothing Dick could do
but follow. He followed her to the door of her room; and there in the
room, placidly smoking cigarettes, sat the lieutenant, Señor don Manuel
de Comacho.
“O Comacho, this is very reckless!” Dick exclaimed, stepping in and
hastily closing the door.
“Oh, no,” Comacho replied with a look of the most intense cunning in
his face; “I fooled them nicely. I came in the back way.”
Dick hardly knew whether to laugh or be angry. After all his trouble
in the morning, all his well-laid plans, the Mexican had deliberately
walked into the hotel and flattered himself for his shrewdness because
he came in by the backdoor.
“You are too brave,” Dick said, certain that the lieutenant could not
appreciate the sarcasm; “you Mexicans do not seem to know what fear
is. If your whole navy is officered by men like you, Comacho, it is
invincible.”
“A Mexican knows no fear, Sumner,” the lieutenant answered proudly;
and as Dick made a mental picture of this particular Mexican sitting
on the grating shedding seas of tears because he was in fear of being
arrested, he found it necessary to step to the window to admire the
scenery.
Brave as he was, the lieutenant would not run the risk of going down
the public room to dinner; he meekly held the baby, while Dick and the
señora dined, and food was afterward sent up to him.
By a quarter before nine in the evening Dick and his companions were
in the railway station, Comacho still disguised in the big ulster
and the steamer cap. The railroad is operated on the English plan,
with compartment cars, each compartment large enough to hold eight
persons, with a door on each side. The train stood beside a platform,
with the station lights burning brightly on one side and nothing but
intense darkness on the other. The party seated themselves in their
compartment, and in three minutes more the train would have been under
way and Comacho out of present danger, when they heard the tramp,
tramp, tramp! of a squad of men marching down the platform.
“I’m gone!” Comacho exclaimed; and instantly buried his face in his
hands and began to weep.
Before Dick could reply, the squad of six men, with an officer at
their head, halted near the compartment door, and the officer stepped
up to the door, and seeing a lady inside, removed his hat.
He pressed a paper, an official-looking document, into Comacho’s hands,
said something in Spanish, and politely stepped aside to give his
prisoner an opportunity to speak to his wife.
“Oh, I’m arrested! I’m arrested!” Comacho wailed; and he frantically
wrung his hands, while great tears coursed down his cheeks.
“You ought to be!” Dick declared, thoroughly disgusted at the fellow’s
cowardice. “You blubbering baby, you ought to be hanged! But you’re not
gone yet, if you have the heart of a mouse. Do you see that door on the
opposite side of the car? I don’t know where it leads to, but you do.
Open that door, if you’re a man, and disappear in the darkness.”
CHAPTER VIII.
A VOYAGE TO PORTO RICO.
“No, no!” the lieutenant moaned; “I can’t do it; I can’t do it! It’s
all up with poor Comacho.”
He put his head down again and burst into another flood of tears. His
wife threw her arms around his neck and wept hysterically; and to
complete the picture the baby began to cry.
The first warning bell gave notice that in another minute the train
would start.
“If you are determined to do nothing for yourself, Comacho,” Dick said,
“I will stay behind with you if I can be of any assistance.”
“No,” Comacho moaned, “leave me to my fate; I am past help. If you will
go on with my wife and child to the capital, it will be the greatest
favor you can do me. Here, take the ulster and cap; they are no use to
me now.”
Pulling off the heavy coat and giving a last embrace to his wife and
baby, the bold lieutenant stepped out of the compartment and gave
himself up to the officer, and at that moment the last bell tapped and
the train moved off.
Dick was in anything but a comfortable situation, with an all-night’s
ride before him with the hysterical young woman and the crying baby;
but he looked upon it as a valuable experience, worth a column or two
sometime, perhaps, as a phase of Mexican life.
“It was rather stretching a point,” he reflected, “to try to help the
fellow escape. If he had been a criminal, of course I shouldn’t have
done it; or even if there had been any regular charge against him; but
a mere suspicion of a slight political offence is different. However,
there’s no use trying to help such a fellow as that. Why, an American
boy ten years old would have more grit.”
The train had not gone far before Dick found himself holding the baby,
in an awkward fashion enough; and in an hour or two both mother and
child were asleep. He did not know that the darkness was hiding from
him some of the grandest scenery on the continent; snow-capped mountain
peaks, and vast plains thousands of feet below, with their scores of
little cities, with burnished domes and spires on their cathedrals.
He did not even know, shut up in the close compartment, that when
the train reached the foot of the mountain the ordinary engine was
exchanged for a great double-headed locomotive, with two smokestacks
and two engineers.
He did know, however, that between midnight and daylight the air was
unpleasantly cold; and he was not at all sorry when at eight o’clock
in the morning the train drew into the great station in the city of
Mexico.
In the midst of her preparations for getting out, the Señora Comacho
pressed a little slip of paper into Dick’s hand with something written
upon it. It gave him a start, for he did not know what it could mean.
Was the lieutenant’s wife trying to begin a flirtation with him? That
was so absurd that it almost made Dick laugh; but he had heard that
Spanish women are given to that sort of thing.
When he looked at the paper he saw the words, written in a fine Italian
hand:--
“Calle Estampa de Jesus Maria, Numero Cinco.”
In his ignorance of the language he could only look at the lady and
smile and bow.
“Maybe she’s asking me to call and see her,” he reflected. “Calle may
mean ‘call ye’; perhaps it’s an invitation to meet her under the shadow
of the cathedral spire at midnight. It’s a pity I’m not more romantic.”
He kept the paper in his hand, not knowing what else to do with it; and
when they reached the street and the lady held up her finger to the
nearest cabman, and pointed smilingly to the paper, he saw that his
suspicions were unfounded. The words were nothing but the address to
which the lady desired to be driven--the address of the lieutenant’s
father.
“Si, si!” the driver exclaimed when Dick handed him the paper; “Haysoos
Mar-eea, Numero Cinco.”
“‘Jesus Maria’ is rather an odd name for a street,” Dick thought; “but
it doesn’t sound quite as irreverent when they pronounce it Haysoos
Mar-eea, as these Mexicans do.”
Dick kept his eyes wide open, as usual, and he had not gone far before
he discovered that almost every street in the city is named after some
saint. And, more than that, that every block of every street has a
separate name, a method bewildering to most strangers.
He saw his fair charge and her child safely within the doorway of a
fine old stone mansion, and ten minutes later he was in his room in
the Hotel Iturbide, the vast building that was erected by the Emperor
Iturbide for a palace.
To present his letter to the American minister was Dick’s first work;
and he went about it so promptly that before dark he was informed that
President Diaz would give him an audience in the palace the following
morning at eleven o’clock.
The exterior of the palace was a disappointment. With its long range of
low, plain walls, it reminded Dick of the old Madison Square Garden.
But when the six soldiers at the gate presented arms as he drove in,
his opinion of it rose; and he was soon following an orderly through an
endless series of handsome apartments, to the throne room in which he
was to meet the President.
“I am glad to meet a representative of one of the foremost American
newspapers,” the President of Mexico said as he gave Dick’s hand a warm
shake.
And Dick was delighted to be so agreeably surprised in the President.
The Comacho incident had given him a bad impression of the Mexicans;
but here was a Mexican of a very different sort.
“It would be hard to make this man shed tears,” he thought as he looked
admiringly at the handsome man by his side. “No nonsense here. Six feet
tall, if he’s an inch; straight as an arrow, darker than a copper cent,
muscles firm as iron.”
“They call me the Aztec,” the President laughed, when the conversation
turned upon his personality. “I thank them for doing me justice, for I
am of almost pure Indian blood. Study the people while you are here,
Mr. Sumner, and you will find that no man need blush to be called an
Aztec. You will hear of me that I have spent seven days in the saddle
with no food but a handful of meal. It is true. Yes” (and his rich
dark eyes flashed), “and I can do it again, if my country requires the
service.”
After a conversation of nearly an hour the President conducted Dick
into several of the state apartments, to show him the portraits of
famous Mexicans.
“All this is Maximilian!” he exclaimed, waving his hand toward the
handsome mirrors, the gilded chairs, the glistening chandeliers. “Poor
Maximilian! He did much to ornament our capital.”
That evening Dick received an unexpected call from the minister.
“You are acquainted in the Calle Estampa de Jesus Maria?” the minister
asked, smiling; “at numero cinco, number five? You have friends there?”
“I have been there twice,” Dick answered--“once to see Lieutenant
Comacho’s wife safely home, and once to make the call of courtesy,
inquiring after her welfare.”
“I see,” the minister said; “there is no harm done; but if I were you
I should not call there again. There are wheels within wheels in this
country. The Comachos are under the displeasure of the government, and
it is not safe to have much to do with them. I can only give you a
hint.”
“Yet this is a republic!” Dick exclaimed.
The minister smiled.
“Your friend Comacho has been brought up from Vera Cruz,” he said, “and
is now in the capital--in the Belen.”
“The Belen?” Dick repeated inquiringly.
“Yes; our famous prison. You remember the poem, ‘Storming the Belen
Gate’? It is the same old Belen, still a prison. Comacho is there; and
it is a very uncomfortable place, I assure you.”
“And how long will they keep him there?” Dick asked.
“Till the government sees fit to let him out,” the minister said. “The
_habeas corpus_ is merely an ornament here. When a man once goes
to prison--but I must remember that I am talking to a newspaper man. It
does not do for a minister to express himself too freely.”
Two days later Dick and the minister ate luncheon in private with
President Diaz; and Dick lost no opportunity to make short excursions
to neighboring towns and into the country. He explored the great
cathedral, the largest church building on the American continent; he
visited the floating gardens, the base of the volcano Popocatapetl,
the famous Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadeloupe; he consorted with the
pure Indians in the country and walked with the water-carriers as they
worked; he delved here and there and everywhere for facts; and no man
ever saw more of the Mexican capital in a week than Dick did.
But with all the sight-seeing he did not neglect the writing.
“A hod-carrier could write good letters with such facts as I have,” he
said to himself. “I must get them on paper while they are fresh in my
mind.”
Night after night he toiled away in his room; and as the letters went
home by rail, the early ones were appearing while he was still in the
Mexican capital.
“I feel as if I ought to call upon Comacho at the Belen,” he said to
the minister when the time had nearly come for his stay to end. “He is
a cowardly fellow, but it seems unkind to go off without bidding him
good-by.”
“I will take you there,” the minister replied; “you can go safely with
me.”
Dick’s work had taken him inside many prisons, but he had never seen
anything quite as gloomy and depressing as the interior of the Belen.
A guard was sent for Comacho, and he was brought to the stone-paved
reception room with manacles on his feet, and coatless, but with a
gaudy striped serape or Mexican blanket about his shoulders. There was
a beard of many days’ growth upon his face, and altogether he looked
wretched and forlorn.
He burst into tears, as usual, as soon as he caught sight of Dick.
“I have no hope of getting out,” he moaned; “none; I am ill-fed,
ill-treated, dirty. I should never have come back to this wretched
country.”
The scene was too painful to stand long, and Dick cut it as short as
possible. He wished the lieutenant a speedy deliverance and bade him
good-by; and that was the last he saw of Señor don Manuel de Comacho.
“I have been particularly impressed with one thing in Mexico,” he
said to the minister after they had left the prison. “It seems to me
that the best people in this country are the Aztecs; the Indians, as
we call them, for want of a better term. Where they have not been
contaminated by associating with the conquering whites, the Spanish,
Portuguese, and people of other nations, they are a remarkably fine
race--brave, honest, often handsome; altogether superior to the mixed
Spanish people, who form the aristocracy here.”
“It would hardly do for me to express an opinion on the subject,” the
minister replied, “but I think your powers of observation do you great
credit.”
While Dick was on his way home, toiling away with his pencil even in
the cars and on the steamship, he had no idea of the great success he
had made of his expedition. He did not see a copy of the Transport
while he was away; but many other people saw it and read and enjoyed
the letters of the bright young correspondent from Cuba and Mexico.
In the Transport office they were considered so good that his name,
Richard Sumner, in full was signed to each letter; and other newspapers
liked them, too, so well that they were copied all over the country. He
was making his name known, and favorably known, all over the land.
“It’s lucky,” he said to himself over and over, “that I made it a rule
to write each subject while it was fresh. It makes a perfect jumble in
a man’s head, traveling so fast in such strange countries. If I had
merely made notes, I’m afraid I should be all mixed up. I hardly feel
like Dick Sumner, anyhow, after this strange experience. I shouldn’t
be a bit surprised to find myself wearing white cotton trowsers rolled
above the knee and a white shirt flying outside my waistband, like some
of the natives on the coast. But I never shall forget Comacho, whatever
happens. Poor old Comacho! He’s an awful baby, but I’m sorry for him.”
It was shortly after noon when the steamer landed Dick in New York,
and he determined to run into the office first to shake hands, before
going home to enjoy a few hours of rest that he felt he had earned. He
imagined that the boys would be glad to see him again, and he was sure
that he would be glad to see the boys. He sprang up the stairs two or
three steps at a time.
“Hello, Sumner! what are you doing here?” the city editor exclaimed as
Dick walked through the big room. “Didn’t you get my cable in Havana?”
It was very different from the greeting he had expected.
“Cable!” Dick repeated; “I’ve had no cable. I haven’t heard a word from
the office since I went away.”
“I was afraid it had miscarried since I got no answer,” the editor
went on. “You were ordered to go on to Porto Rico. I suppose you
don’t know yet that your letters have made a great hit; but that’s
the fact. Everybody is copying them, and the old man says you must
keep on striking while your iron is hot. You’ve hit off those Spanish
countries in grand style, and you’re booked to make a tour of Porto
Rico, the only other Spanish island of the West Indies. But Mr. Harding
will tell you all about it when he comes down.”
“I’ll run up home and see the folks and be back in time to meet him.”
“Yes, that will do it. He’ll send you down in the first steamer, I’m
pretty sure. There’s a direct steamer from here to Porto Rico.”
Dick carried both joy and mourning with him to the flat--joy over his
return, mourning over the necessity of his going away again almost
immediately.
“Why, that will be another month’s journey!” his mother exclaimed; “and
just when you’ve made yourself so famous, too. I’m so glad you signed
your name to those beautiful letters, Dick.”
This was the first intimation Dick had that his name had been signed
to the letters. His mother had carefully saved the papers that had the
letters in, and there, sure enough, was his name at the end of every
one--Richard Sumner--in bold capitals. Dick was as much pleased about
it as anybody, for he knew the vast difference to the writer between an
anonymous article and one with a signature.
He took out a pocketful of letters that had been waiting for him in
the office, and almost the first one opened was from the Benedict
and Jackson Syndicate, asking him to write them a series of tropical
letters. Another was from one of the great illustrated weeklies, asking
for a page article on Mexico and the Mexicans. They almost upset Dick
for a moment, all these evidences of success, pouring in upon him at
once. The publishers’ letters he passed over to his mother and Florrie
without a word.
“God bless you, my dear, dear boy!” his mother exclaimed, after she
and Florrie had read the letters. She threw her arms around his neck;
and when Florrie did the same thing from the other side, they almost
smothered him. “It’s no more than you deserve; not a bit. Nobody knows
as well as I do how hard you work, nor what a good boy you are.
“Oh, now, listen to me!” she went on, laughing and crying by turns;
“calling him a boy! Calling Richard Sumner, the great newspaper
correspondent, a boy! But you’ll always be a boy to your old mother,
won’t you, Dick?”
“That I will!” Dick exclaimed, “whatever happens. But do you know
these tears remind me of a funny thing I saw in the railway car down
in Mexico. I’ll tell you about it after a while. I was almost drowned
in tears down there--not my own, though. I don’t see how people could
think those letters amounted to much, for I had to write them in the
most outrageous places; sometimes in my cabin when the ship was
rolling; sometimes in the cars; once on one end of a table in a Mexican
restaurant while a lot of Spaniards were playing monte on the other
end; and one I wrote while sitting on a rock on the side of the volcano
Popocatapetl.
“But we’ll make up for all that botheration to-night,” he rattled on.
“We’ll have a regular feast after Darling comes home from work; that
oyster supper we missed before. Oh, you ought to see the little Mexican
oysters!”
“What’s that about an oyster supper!” Darling exclaimed as he entered
the room. “I can hear the word oysters through a brick wall.”
“Hello, Darling, old man! Ain’t I glad to see you again, though!”
“And ain’t I glad to have you back!” Darling retorted, wringing Dick’s
hand. “And back in such shape, too. Oh, you’ve done yourself proud,
Dick. Everybody has read your letters, and everybody likes them. And
I’m so glad, Dick,”--he lowered his voice a little and looked toward
the door, for Mrs. Sumner and Florrie had stepped out to see after
Dick’s trunk,--“I’m so glad the first thing you think of is home. So
many of the fellows would think first of having a rousing time with the
boys.”
“Pshaw!” Dick interrupted; “if a man can’t have a good time at home,
where can he have it?”
“That’s my idea. But some fellows don’t think so. I knew almost from
the start that you were a fellow who would follow his ideals, Dick.
Just let you get it into your head that the proper thing, the manly
thing, was to be fast, to be a good fellow in the little clubs, to play
poker and drink cocktails, and you’d have gone into it strong, and it
would have run you to the dogs in no time. But your good sense and good
principles led you the other way, and you’re just as hearty in your
work as you might have been in deviltry. Whatever you set up for your
ideal, that you’d follow to the death. You don’t know how much I think
of you, old man. There’s no nonsense about you, either; not a bit.
Shake again.”
“Well,” Dick laughed, anxious to change the subject, “we were saying
something about an oyster supper, I think. We must have it to-night,
for Mr. Brown tells me they’re going to send me right off to Porto
Rico. That means another month’s journey, I suppose. We’ll have the
supper to-night after you come home from the office; just mother and
Florrie, you and myself; ‘us four and no more,’ as the rhyme goes.”
“Of course it’s understood that I pay half the expense,” Darling said.
“But I’m sorry you’re going right off again--and glad too; when do you
start?”
“Not settled yet,” Dick answered. “I’m to see the old man about it
this afternoon. But in the first steamer, I suppose.”
The neighbors in the flat had grown accustomed to the late hours kept
by the two newspaper men. At first they had been very suspicious. Dick
and Darling must be gamblers, they thought, to be out so late every
night; or perhaps they were actors; but they learned the truth after a
few weeks.
“That old yarn about living in New York for twenty years without
knowing your next-door neighbors,” Dick said one day, after some one
had been asking a great many questions of Florrie, “may be true to some
extent. But I notice our neighbors keep pretty well informed about our
affairs.”
At the supper that night, which began at half-past two and lasted for
several hours, because there was so much to talk about, Dick made an
important discovery. He had had very little to do with any women but
his mother and sister; but when he saw Darling watching with admiring
eyes every move that Florrie made, and helping her to the choice bits
of celery and the fattest oysters, and saw Florrie showing Darling
many little attentions, he was shrewd enough to draw a conclusion that
pleased him very much.
“You must appreciate me while you have me, mother,” Dick laughed while
they were eating; “and you must pet me up as much as you can, sis,
for Porto Rico is all settled. This is Tuesday night (or rather it’s
Wednesday morning now), and I’m to sail on Thursday morning at eleven
o’clock. I’m to go in a freight steamer, too, but she’s said to be a
good, safe one; a British steamer called the Smeaton Tower, that’s
chartered by the company. The next passenger ship doesn’t sail for ten
days, so I engaged passage in the freighter, which goes on Thursday.
I’m to share the captain’s cabin with him; and if he turns out to be a
good fellow, it ought to be a pleasant voyage.”
Dick insisted that his mother and Florrie and Darling must all go to
see him off, because the Smeaton Tower was lying in the upper bay
near the Statue of Liberty, and he would be taken off to her with the
captain and supercargo in a tug from the foot of Wall Street, and it
would give them a pleasant little sail.
“Having a supercargo I think is a good point,” he laughed. “It’s quite
a reminder of Robinson Crusoe, isn’t it, to be talking about the
supercargo. He’s the man, of course, who has charge of the cargo, and
sees that the right stuff is landed at each port. You know the steamer
goes all around the island, touching at every port. And there’ll be
no chance to send any letters up till I return, because our steamer
will be the first one back. But I’ve left eight Mexican letters in the
office, so you’ll have the extreme pleasure of seeing my name in the
paper two or three times a week while I’m away.”
“And you can’t imagine how kind the old man is, Darling,” he went on.
“I asked him for permission to write some letters for Benedict and
Jackson’s Syndicate and the Illustrated Weekly, and he told me I should
write wherever I chose; that he was glad I had the opportunity.”
“He’s a brick!” Darling exclaimed. “He never forgets that he was a
young fellow once himself.”
When Dick climbed aboard the Smeaton Tower he had barely time to wave
his handkerchief to his friends, for the tug turned about immediately
for the city, and the steamer was put under way.
The vessel was an agreeable surprise. Dick had never seen her before,
and as she was a freighter he rather expected to find her a dirty, old
tub with tar on her decks. But she was neat as a pin, a strong iron
ship of about two thousand five hundred tons, high forward and aft and
low amidships, with the coziest of cabins aft, fitted with substantial
mahogany furniture, and a little fireplace for use in cold climates.
“Make yourself at home in the stateroom,” said Captain Godfree, a jolly
little Englishman from Plymouth. “You’re to sleep in my bunk and I take
the broad sofa. I must be on the bridge till we’re out of the harbor,
but you’ll find your baggage all in there.”
“Well, if this is a freighter, give me a freighter to travel in every
time,” Dick said to himself as he entered the captain’s stateroom.
“Why, it’s as big as any four staterooms I ever saw, and here’s a
regular library in the bookcase. And here’s the chronometer; and
drawers under the bunk that I’m to sleep in, and everything fitted up
in grand style with mahogany and marble. I’d no idea they made these
freighters so comfortable. Now this will be a real voyage; more like
the voyages I’ve read about. The passenger steamers are too much like
hotels to suit me.”
Dick was soon on the bridge with the captain and pilot and supercargo,
watching once more the receding shores of New York harbor. He was not
familiar enough with the ship yet to notice that the two mates were
doing nearly all the work on deck, and that only one or two seamen were
in sight. When the vessel was well outside of Sandy Hook the pilot was
taken off in his boat, and Captain Godfree took command.
“Come and take the bridge, Mr. Turner!” he called to the second mate.
“Now, then, Mr. Gran,” he said to the big first mate, who was on deck
just below the bridge, “we’ll go and stir up those lubbers in the
foc’s’le.”
“They’re full of bad whiskey, nearly every man before the mast,”
Captain Godfree exclaimed, turning to Dick. “Carried on board dead,
some of them. It’s always so every time we start out; and it’s not as
much their fault, the poor duffers, as it’s the fault of the wretched
shipping system in New York. We’ll soon straighten them out, anyway.
Come along, Mr. Gran.”
The captain and first mate went up forward and threw open the iron
doors of the forecastle, which was flush with the deck. One or two limp
men half-crawled and half-fell out when the first door was opened.
“Stand up here, you drunken scoundrels!” the two officers shouted; and
each seized his man by the collar and raised him to his feet, shaking
him soundly.
They found a flask of liquor in the pocket of each man, which they
threw overboard without ceremony. Quickly the others were dragged out
and searched. Some of them showed fight, but they were quickly cuffed
into submission. In a few moments all were out and set to work but one
man. He braced himself full length across the little room in such a way
that the united strength of the two officers could not budge him.
“I’ll try the steam winch on him,” said the first mate.
He took a short rope and put a noose around the man’s legs, and made
the other end fast to the steam winch.
“Oh! you’ll pull his legs off!” Dick shouted from the bridge as the
mate started the winch.
“We’ll see which’ll give way first,” Mr. Gran answered; “the winch, the
foc’s’le, or the man.”
CHAPTER IX.
A STRANDED SHIP AND A BOARD OF SURVEY.
In a struggle between steam and iron on the one side and human flesh
on the other, the flesh must generally give way; and it was so in
this case. The winch turned, the rope tautened, and in another second
something must have broken.
The man was more sober than his companions, as well as more stubborn;
and the moment the rope began to strain he simply bent his body, and
the winch drew him easily out upon the deck. A minute later he was
unfastened and set to work.
“That’s the usual picnic we have at the beginning of a voyage,” Captain
Godfree said when, everything being in working order, he returned to
the bridge. “We ship a new set of seamen for each voyage, and they
generally come aboard too drunk for duty. A bad condition that poor
Jack has come to in these days, isn’t it? You see the minute they
arrive in New York after a voyage they are seized upon by the sailors’
boarding-house keepers, who get all their money away from them and
supply them with food and drink till it’s time to get rid of them. Then
the boarding-master finds a new ship for Jack and gets an order for his
advance pay, and brings him aboard so full of Water Street whiskey
that half the time the man doesn’t know what ship he is on, nor where
he is going. If the boys who think of running away to sea knew what the
life of a modern sailor is, they’d go rather slow.”
“I should think it would be dangerous to take the ship to sea with a
crew that you know nothing about,” Dick suggested.
“Oh, no. You see there are enough of us who belong with the ship to
handle her. Besides myself there are the first and second mates, the
chief engineer and first and second assistants, the quartermaster,
and four stokers. With these and the supercargo and the cook and two
stewards, we can keep the crew in order.”
Dick expected to have a view of the whole length of the New Jersey
coast, as he had had in the Alameda; but in this he was disappointed.
The Smeaton Tower headed a little east of south as soon as she passed
Sandy Hook, her bow pointed direct for Porto Rico; and in about two
hours the American coast sank below the horizon.
There were three good meals a day in the comfortable cabin; and for the
evening there was a checkerboard, with the captain and supercargo to
play with; and there was the full run of the ship for Dick, with a much
better chance to see everything than one can have on a passenger ship.
The six days between New York and Porto Rico went by like a song, the
sun growing hotter every day. About two o’clock in the afternoon of the
sixth day, the high mountains of the island were sighted.
“There we are,” said Captain Godfree; “you see the little sextant and
the chronometer have guided us right, though we have hardly seen as
much as a schooner since we lost Sandy Hook. We’ll eat dinner in San
Juan to-night, if everything goes well.”
It was a beautiful sight, that mountain-peak in the clouds, and Dick
remained on the bridge to watch it. By three o’clock the mountains were
much plainer, and by four he could distinguish their outlines plainly.
When the supper-bell rang at five, he was just beginning to make out
some cocoanut trees on shore.
“I don’t like the looks of the weather very much,” Captain Godfree said
as they went down into the cabin. Dick and the captain and the first
mate and supercargo ate together always at the first cabin table, the
second mate eating from the same table later on.
“There’s a squall coming,” Captain Godfree continued, “but we may get
into harbor before it reaches us.”
The captain got the meal started, but Dick saw that he was not at ease.
He ate a few hurried mouthfuls; and then, taking his cup of tea in his
hand, he arose and said:--
“You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen; I must be on the bridge when
we’re approaching land in a squall.”
The others quickly finished their supper and went up to the bridge.
Dick was surprised to see how much darker it was. The clouds had grown
blacker and there were some lights on shore. The captain stepped to the
signal dial and pulled the handle that gave the engineer the order:--
“Half speed!”
It was the act of a prudent commander. If he had not done it, the bones
of the Smeaton Tower would be lying on the rocks of Porto Rico at this
moment.
All who had any right to be on the bridge were there to see the
steamer enter the harbor of San Juan, the capital of Porto Rico. They
were Captain Godfree and first mate Gran, each of whom had made eight
previous voyages to the island; Mr. Maloney, the supercargo, an old
navigator, who was perfectly familiar with the place; and Dick, an
interested spectator.
“There is the great castle of San Juan on the side and summit of that
hill,” said Mr. Maloney; “the harbor runs in behind the hill, and the
city lies on the other slope. You see where the two mountain ridges
seem to join? Well, just below that the city lies. That light on the
right is the lighthouse; on the left are the castle lights. We run in
between the two.”
“How far are we from the harbor mouth, captain?” Dick asked.
“About four miles,” Captain Godfree answered. “Now see how close a
guess I have made. We are running six miles an hour, and you can tell
by looking at your watch now and when we have the light abeam.”
Darker grew the sky and brighter gleamed the lights on shore. There
came a blinding flash of lightning, followed instantly by such a pour
of rain as falls only in a tropical shower.
A moment later there was a grating and grinding and crunching beneath
their feet, and the ship stopped with a jar that threw them all against
the bridge’s rail. The propeller continued to revolve, but the vessel
was stationary. Dick did not know what it meant, but he saw by the
countenances of his companions that something had happened.
Not a soul moved for a second or two, but the seconds seemed like
half-hours. Then the captain sprang to the signal dial.
“Blast my eyes!” he shouted. “I’ve put the ship aground!”
“Stop her! Back her!” he signaled; and the propeller first stopped,
then began to reverse. But the ship’s only answer was to begin pounding
against the rocks. She was hard and fast on a reef.
Everything was in confusion in a moment. The captain was shouting
orders, men were rushing about the decks, the rain continued to pour,
lightning flashed, and thunder seemed to roll across the water and
echo a dozen times among the mountains. To add to the weirdness of the
scene, a number of bright lights sprang up along the shore; some down
on the beach, others apparently up in the hills.
Dick was soaked with the rain, but he did not know it. The violent
pounding of the ship made standing uncertain, and he wound his arm
around one of the iron stanchions.
“I’m sorry for Captain Godfree,” he said to himself, “but I wouldn’t
have missed this for a thousand dollars! Just this scene alone is good
for two or three columns. Those must be tar barrels they’re burning on
shore for signals; and there are hundreds of people running about them,
looking in that light like naked savages on a cannibal island. Talk
about shipwreck scenes in the theatre! They’re nothing compared with
the reality.”
Dick was alone on the bridge now. All the officers were on deck. He
heard the captain rapidly issuing orders.
“Lower away the port quarterboat, Mr. Gran!”
“Sound the wells, Mr. Turner!”
“Quartermaster, heave the lead!”
“This is something for me to keep an eye on,” Dick thought. “I’ll have
a chance to see exactly what they do when a steamship is run on a reef.”
At that moment Mr. Maloney sprang up the iron ladder and seized Dick by
the arm.
“Don’t stay up here!” he shouted; nothing less than a shout could have
been heard in that furious din. “She’s liable to pound the masts out of
herself at any minute, and these iron masts will smash everything when
they fall. You’ll be safer in the cabin.”
Dick had no idea of hiding himself in the cabin, but he went down as
far as the deck, where he almost ran against Captain Godfree.
“Blast my eyes, Sumner!” the captain shouted; “I’ve made the wrong
port. This is not San Juan, at all; this is Arecibo, forty miles down
the coast!”
By this time the officers had executed their orders.
“Port quarterboat lowered, sir!” Mr. Gran shouted.
“Fore and aft wells dry, sir,” said Mr. Turner.
“Six fathom fore and aft, sir,” the quartermaster reported. “Less than
two fathom amidship. She’s run up on a reef till she’s nearly balanced
on it.”
But the worst report of all came from the engineer. He ran up to say:--
“Machinery disabled, sir. The jar has disconnected the main steampipe!”
“You must mend it, chief!” the captain answered. “We _must_ have
steam or we’re gone. She’ll break in two inside of an hour on this
reef.”
Leaving that work to the chief engineer, the captain went on issuing
orders.
“Get out a kedge anchor, Mr. Gran, and put the cable on the after
winch.”
This work took some minutes, and while it was in progress Dick was
delighted to hear the propeller revolving again, for that showed that
the steampipe had been repaired. Dick was dodging into the little chart
room every minute now, making memoranda of all the orders issued; for
in that flood of rain it was impossible to write.
When the kedge anchor was in place over the stern the after winch was
started and the line tautened, but after a hard pull it snapped like a
cord.
“Get out another anchor!” The captain and all on board were growing
more excited--all but Dick; he was busy taking notes.
The second kedge anchor did better. With the engines reversed at full
speed and the winch revolving, they could feel the ship move. They
sighted her bow with one of the fires on shore, and she certainly
backed. She had begun to move faster, when there was a terrible crash
aft and the stern flew up into the air.
“That settles us!” the captain shouted. “We’ve struck something and
knocked the whole stern out of her.”
But he kept the engines backing and the winch going, and in a minute
the stern settled to its proper position and the ship continued to
back. The anchor cable was cut and the quarterboat hoisted, and on went
the ship, backing slowly seaward. She was afloat!
“Sound the wells, Mr. Turner!”
“Heave the lead, quartermaster!”
The ship was taking a little water, so “start the number two pump, Mr.
Gran,” was ordered. But the stern was still sound as far as could be
seen in the rain and darkness, and she still floated and moved.
For nearly half an hour the captain kept the engines reversed and the
ship backing seaward; then he started her ahead, pointed up the coast
toward San Juan.
“That thing never happened to me before,” Captain Godfree said when he
and Dick were in the cabin together an hour later. “There must have
been something in the atmosphere to deceive me; perhaps it was the
refraction; I had no more doubt that we were off San Juan than I have
that we’re sitting here. We had a narrow escape, and there’s no telling
how badly we’re injured till we get into San Juan harbor. I think we
have lost most of our propeller, but we have enough left to move us.
It’s a bad beginning for your Porto Rico voyage.”
“Bad!” Dick repeated; “why, you couldn’t have done anything to suit me
better. I know as much about stranding a ship now as an old sailor. I’m
only sorry I could do nothing to help you.”
“Oh, but you can!” Captain Godfree retorted. “You can do a great deal
to help me. It’s lucky for me I have you aboard, for you can give me a
great deal of assistance with the cabling and the Board of Survey.”
“Board of Survey?” Dick asked; “what is that?”
“Oh, you see you don’t know all about stranding a ship yet!” the
captain laughed. “When you get her off, that’s only the beginning of
the job. The Board of Survey is worse than running on the rocks. We
have all that to come yet, and it will make a good newspaper article
for you, too.”
“Why, you’re a perfect jewel of a captain to travel with!” Dick
exclaimed. “The voyage down will make one article, stranding the ship
is good for another, and this Board of Survey, whatever it is, will be
the third, before I begin with Porto Rico at all. One thing I don’t
understand, captain. What were all those lights on shore? How did they
come to be there?”
“Those were signals for us,” the captain replied, “to warn us off. They
saw us standing in for the shore, and knew that we’d be on that deadly
Arecibo reef in a few minutes unless we put about. Arecibo is one of
the ports we touch at, and our agents there burned those tar barrels
to show us we were in danger. That is one of the most dangerous reefs
on the coast, covered with the bones of lost ships. When we brought up
sharp astern and probably broke our propeller, we ran into the ribs of
some sunken vessel.
“But I want you to help me, Sumner,” the captain went on; “and we have
a big job before us. I’ll explain to you what has to be done in such
a case, so that you’ll understand. As soon as we reach port I have to
cable my owners that the ship has been stranded and tell them how much
damage was done. That has to be done with the cable code, of course,
because telegraphing from Porto Rico to London costs three dollars a
word, and we must put it in as few words as possible. You’ve no idea
what hard work it is to put a dispatch into the code; at least it is
for me; perhaps it may be easier for you.
“Then,” the captain went on, “comes the Board of Survey. This is a
British ship, as you know; so as soon as the cable is sent I go to the
British consul in San Juan and report that my ship has been stranded
and ask him to appoint a board of survey. He does so, appointing
generally three masters of vessels that happen to be lying in the
harbor. They examine the ship and decide whether she is fit to proceed
on her voyage or not. Their decision is law, too, and we have to obey
it.”
“Why!” Dick exclaimed, “I had no idea there was so much red tape about
it. What is the use of all that fuss?”
“Because the ship might be so badly injured as to be unseaworthy,” the
captain replied; “and to take her to sea in that case would be to risk
the lives of the crew. I couldn’t compel the crew to go another mile in
her without a survey.”
“Now here is the cable code,” the captain continued, handing Dick a
small red-covered book. “You see there are single words to express most
every sentence a shipmaster could want to send. Of course the owners
in London have another copy of the book, so that they can decipher the
dispatch. The single word ‘Refuse,’ for instance, means ‘No cargo to be
had here,’ and saves five words in telegraphing. I will write out the
dispatch I want to send, and you can translate it into the code for me.”
The captain took a pencil and wrote his dispatch in plain English, in
this way:--
Smith & Jones, London:--
Stranded at Arecibo. On the rocks forty minutes. Damage unknown.
Proceeded to San Juan and requested Board of Survey. GODFREE.
“Now, there are twenty-four words,” the captain continued, “for the
cable company charges for the address and signature. You will find some
word in the book that means a whole sentence, and that will reduce the
number of words about one half.”
Dick examined the book and soon mastered its principles. It might be
hard work for a sea captain to prepare a cipher dispatch, but it was
easy enough for a newspaper man. The word adjoins, he found, meant
“stranded at”; forward meant “on the rocks forty minutes”; mystery
meant “proceeded to”; and simply the word board stood for “requested
Board of Survey.” For “damage unknown” he had to search some time, but
at length he found that the word motion expressed that. So his cipher
dispatch, when done in the code, read in this way:
Smith & Jones, London:--
Adjoins, Arecibo, forward, motion, mystery, San Juan, board.
GODFREE.
“There,” he said as he finished it, “try that over with the book,
captain, and see whether it doesn’t express what you want to say.”
“That’s it exactly,” the captain declared, after a long struggle with
the book. “You’ve got it into thirteen words--a saving to the company
of over thirty dollars; and you did it in ten minutes. It would have
taken me half the night to cipher that thing out, Sumner.”
“I know something about the expense of cabling from Porto Rico,”
Dick said. “A reporter finds out a little of everything, you know. I
interviewed a man once who had been a cable operator in San Juan. He
happened to be there when the Count de Paris arrived on his way from
Havana to Barcelona. The count’s daughter was very sick in England, and
he sat down in the office and wrote her a letter of one thousand four
hundred words, and cabled it. That cost him over four thousand dollars.”
“That might do for a millionaire like the Count de Paris,” the captain
laughed, “but I don’t think my owners would stand it. Now we must take
hold of the Board of Survey matter, and I want you to do a little
headwork for me there. You’re just the man to do it, too.”
“Well, we’ve got safely out of one bad scrape to-night,” Dick answered;
“I think we’ll pull through the next one.”
“The main thing I’m afraid of, Sumner,” the captain said, “is that the
Board of Survey may order us into dry dock for repairs. There is no dry
dock at Porto Rico, and we’d have to go over to St. Thomas. If they
should make us put in a new propeller, we’d have to cable to England
for it, and that would keep us in St. Thomas at least a month or six
weeks.”
“That would be very bad for me,” he continued, “to have the ship lose
so much time. The owners won’t say much about my stranding the ship,
if I don’t lose too much time over it. Now what we’ve got to do is to
influence the Board of Survey so that they’ll let us proceed on our
voyage, and I want to do that through you.”
“Through me!” Dick exclaimed.
“Yes, through you. You see shipmasters ain’t very good writers, as a
rule, and it will be an easy matter to arrange things so that they’ll
ask you to act as clerk and do the writing. Then whenever they get
stuck for a sentence to put in the report, you can suggest one. And of
course you’ll suggest the things that we make up our minds we want in
the report. Oh, that will work; I’ve seen that done before.”
“Well,” Dick laughed, “that seems fair enough. Of course you’ll not
want me to put in anything that isn’t fair and square. I want to help
you in every honest way I can.”
They sat up late discussing the report they wanted the board to make,
and the substance of it all was that the ship was seaworthy and should
be allowed to proceed on her voyage.
“That’s it!” the captain exclaimed; “of course she’s seaworthy. We’re
moving under our own steam, ain’t we, and taking hardly any water?
We’re fit to go around the world in. But I don’t honestly believe,” he
added “that there’s more than part of one blade left in our propeller.”
When the Smeaton Tower lay safely in San Juan harbor next morning Dick
went out with Captain Godfree in one of the small boats, and they saw
for themselves what had happened to the propeller. Two blades were gone
entirely, the third was broken off about six inches from the shaft;
and the fourth, the only serviceable blade, had lost but a few inches
from its tip.
“But the bonnet is what I’m afraid of,” the captain said; “the bonnet
you know is the part that fits around the shaft, that the blades are
fastened to. If that should be cracked, it might drop off at any minute
and then we’d be helpless. However, we’ll go on if the board will let
us.”
There was an interval of two days between the arrival of the Smeaton
Tower at San Juan and the convening of the Board of Survey. This time
Dick used to the best advantage on shore, driving out to the sugar and
coffee plantations, making himself acquainted with the people and their
mode of life, and riding over the railway.
“It’s the people I like best to write about,” he often said to
himself, “because they are what the reader takes most interest in.
Suppose I should try to write a glowing description of one of those
mountain-peaks? How many readers would care anything about it? But
everybody is interested in the way the people of other countries live.
I don’t want to be one of the glowing-sunset writers, all color and no
substance.”
On the third day the members of the Board of Survey visited the ship.
The British consul had selected three shipmasters who were altogether
satisfactory to Captain Godfree. One was Captain Fraser, of the
steamship Caribbee; another was the good-natured captain of a fine
Spanish steamer lying in the harbor; and the third was a real live
Yankee skipper from Maine, whose schooner was waiting for a cargo of
sugar.
Dick and the captain naturally made everything as pleasant for the
board as they could. A fine lunch was spread on the cabin table, to
which they immediately sat down. The three shipmasters spent half an
hour in looking over the vessel, rowed around to the propeller in a
small boat, asked to have the engines moved, went down into the hold,
and retired to the cabin with Dick and Captain Godfree, to make out
their report. Dick, as had been anticipated, was asked to act as their
clerk.
“I think we can say that the propeller is damaged but still
serviceable,” said Captain Fraser, who was the spokesman.
Dick put that down; the consul had sent out the proper blanks for the
report, and only the board’s findings had to be written in.
“And--and”--
“Engines moved and found in good order?” Dick suggested.
“Yes, put that in,” Captain Fraser said. “And you can say that we have
inspected the hull and find it fairly tight--with very little cement
started. And you might add that we find that--that”--
Captain Fraser looked inquiringly at his fellows.
“That the ship is seaworthy and able to proceed on her voyage?” Dick
suggested.
“Y-e-s,” Captain Fraser said, looking inquiringly at the others, who
both nodded. “Yes, you can put that in, with a recommendation that she
be docked on her arrival in New York.”
It was all down in a minute, and Dick filled out the duplicate copy to
be filed with the consul, and the members of the board signed them both.
The danger of being sent to St. Thomas was over. The board had
officially declared the ship seaworthy, and nothing would prevent her
now from going on to her other ports.
“You did that famously, Sumner!” Captain Godfree exclaimed, giving Dick
a stunning slap on the back after the board had gone. “I should have
been in a tight fix without your help. I wish I could always have a
newspaper man on board.”
That same night the ship steamed back to Arecibo, having a quantity of
cargo for that port, but this time she was careful to avoid the reef.
Then she proceeded to Mayaguez, a port on the west coast, to deliver
more cargo. In Mayaguez harbor she was soon surrounded by a little
fleet of bum-boats, every boat loaded with something to sell--parrots,
cigars, cigarettes, fruits, shell-work, sugarcane, bay rum, walking
sticks, and a dozen other things.
“Hold on there!” the captain exclaimed to the first boatman who came up
the ladder. “What have you got in those bottles? I’m not going to have
any rum brought aboard to the crew.”
“Him only bay rum, señor,” the man replied. “Not drinkee; only rub on
face after shavee. Very nice bay rum, señor.”
“We’ll see about that,” the captain replied; and he sent for a
corkscrew and opened several of the bottles. He and Dick both smelled
them and were convinced that they contained nothing but bay rum.
“All right,” said the captain. “You can sell all the bay rum you like,
but no other kind. Put the quartermaster at the head of the gangway,
Mr. Gran, and let him open every bottle that’s brought aboard. They may
sell bay rum, but nothing to drink.”
Either to let the crew go ashore or to allow any liquor on board meant
a repetition of the scene of the first day, and strict orders were
given that no one should land. Shoal water compelled the ship to anchor
nearly a mile from the wharf, and the cargo was taken in lighters. But
the order of course did not prevent Dick and the captain from landing,
and they learned in the afternoon that a ball was to be given in the
“Gran Hotel Marina” that night.
“I want you to see that,” the captain said to Dick. “A ball in one of
these old towns will give you something to write about. Our agents here
will get invitations for us.”
They returned to the ship for supper, and about nine o’clock in the
evening, dressed in their thinnest clothes (for the night was intensely
hot), they set out for shore and the ball, leaving Mr. Gran in charge
of the deck.
The open space in front of the hotel was full of carriages, and the
ball was in full progress when they arrived. The dancers were in the
dining-room, clad in the gayest of clothes. Music was playing, gay
señors and señoritas were whirling. On the broad portico that extended
across the whole front of the building most of the spectators were
gathered, for the air was cooler there.
Dick was enjoying the scene very much, going in and out among the
dancers, admiring their grace and wondering at their strangely cut
clothes, when Captain Godfree beckoned him to a retired part of the
portico.
“I think we’d better get out of this, Sumner,” the captain whispered.
“I have just found out that there’s a case of yellow fever in the
house.”
“There is!” Dick exclaimed.
“Yes; and only two rooms from where they’re dancing, too. All those
doors down the other end of the portico open into bedrooms, and the
sick man is in the second room. He was taken down yesterday, but
they’re keeping it quiet so as not to break up the ball. These natives
are not much afraid of the fever, you know, but it won’t do for us;
and the sooner we get out the better. The sick man is an American
shipmaster with a brig lying in the harbor.”
“An American!” Dick repeated; “and all this music and dancing about
his ears! Perhaps you had better go, captain; but I shall stay and
see whether my countryman is in need of help. Oh, yes; I couldn’t do
anything else,” he went on in answer to the captain’s surprised look.
“You would do the same thing for an Englishman; any decent man would. I
am not afraid of the fever; I have seen plenty of it in Havana and Vera
Cruz.”
“By George, I’m glad the English and Americans are cousins!” the
captain exclaimed. “That’s said like a man. But in this case it would
be worse than useless for you to stay, for the man is well supplied
with money, has good nurses and a good English doctor attending him; so
you would only be in the way. Come along.”
Dick would not go until he learned from the hotel people that his
countryman was supplied with every possible comfort; and then he and
the captain returned to the ship. It was after midnight when they
reached her side, and they were surprised to hear a great commotion on
deck.
“On deck, there, Mr. Gran!” the captain shouted when they were within a
few feet of the vessel.
“Aye, aye, sir!” Mr. Gran replied; “I’m glad you’re back, sir. These
lubbers have been drinking bay rum till they’re wild. They’re in a
state of mutiny, sir.”
[Illustration: HE SNATCHED A BELAYING PIN FROM ITS SOCKET AND SPRANG
FORWARD.]
“Are they?” the captain exclaimed. “I’ll sober ’em, the drunken
beasts!” He sprang up the ladder with Dick close behind, and the moment
he reached the deck he threw off his coat.
“Call Mr. Turner and the quartermaster,” he ordered; and Mr. Gran
turned to obey.
The men, eight of them, were in a cluster forward, near the starboard
rail, fighting furiously, struggling, swearing, striking, too drunk to
know or care that the captain had returned.
Without waiting for assistance, Captain Godfree sprang into the midst
of them, knocking two down with the first rush and staggering two more.
Three of the others shrank back before the captain’s powerful fists;
but one big fellow stood his ground and whipped out a long knife. In a
second, almost, one of the men who had been knocked down sprang to his
feet and seized the captain from behind, while the big fellow in front,
his face livid with rage and rum, raised his hand with the knife.
Dick stood perhaps ten feet away, with the captain’s coat over his arm.
He heard the two mates and the quartermaster coming, but before they
could reach the spot the captain would be a dead man. He saw the gleam
of the long knife.
Without an instant’s hesitation he snatched an iron belaying-pin from
its socket and sprang forward.
Crash! crash!
Two blows with that heavy club laid the knife-wielder helpless upon
the deck. Next moment the two mates and the quartermaster were there,
and the mutiny was ended. Dick was glad to see the man with the knife
struggle as the mates put handcuffs on him; he was afraid he had killed
him.
“Sumner, I’ll always read the newspapers with greater respect after
seeing what kind of fellows make them,” Captain Godfree said when they
had retired to their cabin. “Whether it’s to manage a board of survey,
to brave the yellow fever, or to knock out a drunken sailor, you’re on
hand every time. If you’ll stay on board this ship, I’ll make a mate of
you in short order.”
“Oh, that would be a holiday!” Dick laughed. “I’ve got three hours of
writing to do now, captain.”
CHAPTER X.
DICK MEETS A FIGHTING PREACHER.
A whole week at home! That was the order when Dick reached the office
after his Porto Rico trip. It was necessary to give him a chance to
write what he had in mind.
“The facts have got ’way ahead of me,” he said to the managing editor.
“I don’t think I wasted any time, but there was so much to see that I
couldn’t write fast enough.”
He did not say that he had sat up writing half the night, sometimes all
night, after a day of sight-seeing; but that was the truth. His Mexican
letters were still running, and he had a thick batch of letters ready
from Porto Rico; but there were many more to write, and he was told to
stay at home for a week to catch up.
“It’s the first real good chance I’ve had to see how you live here,”
Dick said to his mother. “I’ve been kept so on the jump that the flat
has been only a lodging-house for me, and not always even that. But
think of a whole week! I’ll be at work at night when Darling comes
home, and what talks we’ll have! And sometimes I can borrow time
enough to take you and Florrie out to some place of amusement.”
“I don’t care very much for amusements, Dick,” his mother answered;
“and Florrie has been out a good deal lately; not in the evenings, but
going to matinées.”
“Oh, she has, has she?” Dick laughed. “I can see through a millstone
when there’s a hole in it. Darling is busy in the evenings, but he is
free in the afternoon for matinées. Ho! ho!”
Florrie entered the room at this moment and heard the mention of
Darling’s name.
“What’s that you’re saying about Harry Darling, Dick?” she asked,
blushing.
“I haven’t told anything, Florrie,” Mrs. Sumner hastily said; “but I
don’t think you want to have any secrets from Dick, do you?”
“Of course I don’t,” Florrie answered, blushing very red. “There’s no
secret about it, anyhow. Harry Darling and I are engaged, Dick.”
“Oh, I’m so glad, Florrie!” Dick exclaimed; and he sprang up and threw
his arms around his sister and kissed her. “Darling is one of the best
fellows in the world; one of the few men I know I’d be willing to see
you marry. He’s as true as steel, Florrie.”
“Don’t you think I know it?” Florrie answered, still blushing. “But
I was almost in hopes you’d be opposed to it. It’s so commonplace to
have everybody think it just right. Mother thinks so, and of course
Harry and I think so, and now you think so too. There ought to be some
opposition, to add a little romance to the thing.”
“Romance in a flat!” Dick laughed; “the thing’s impossible. ‘Get your
facts straight,’ as Dr. Goode would say, and never mind the romance.”
“Maybe I know more about Dr. Goode than you think,” Florrie answered.
“Did they tell you in the office that Harry had been promoted? He is
not an ordinary copy reader now, but Dr. Goode’s assistant, and helps
to make up the paper, whatever that may be. I thought you all helped to
make up the paper.”
“Is that so?” Dick exclaimed. “That’s good news, sure. Then he makes
up all except the last page, which is the first page, Florrie. That’s
a riddle for you. The doctor’s assistant makes up all but the first
page of the paper, which is the last page made up, because it contains
the latest and most important news. The doctor wouldn’t trust anybody
else to make that up; and I just wish you could see him make it up some
night when there’s fifteen columns of news to go into seven columns of
space. The type is all spread out on galleys, you know, and the foreman
reads the titles to him on account of the doctor’s bad eyes.”
“There’s just about three minutes, we’ll say, before the last form
has to go down. ‘Train Robbery in Arizona, half a column,’ says the
foreman.
“‘Kill it,’ says the doctor.
“‘Holman on Hard Money, column and a half,’ says the foreman.
“‘Hold Holman for to-morrow,’ says the doctor. And he takes his blue
pencil and slashes away at the proofs, making a line out of a stickful
and a stickful out of a column, till he squeezes a little of everything
into his seven columns. It’s a beautiful sight, and away goes the form
on time. And so Darling is really the doctor’s assistant! You don’t
know how glad I am for both pieces of news, Florrie.”
Dick soon took possession of the little parlor and turned it into a
workshop and kept his pen going till, as he said, it grew hot and he
had to stop to let it cool. It was always a pen with him when he had
a proper place to write, not a pencil; pencil copy looked too sloppy,
he thought, and he did not like sloppy copy. He made it a rule to turn
in every article ready for the printers--heading on, subheads in their
proper places, every page edited, even the type marks put on. This
habit did him many a good turn in after years.
When Darling came home that night Dick was still writing, but he
stopped to help eat the late supper that always waited on the table.
“I hear great news of you, Darling!” he shouted as soon as Darling
came in; “shake, old man.”
“Thank you,” Darling said without any embarrassment as he grasped
Dick’s hand. “Then they’ve told you, have they? Well, Dick, I don’t
wonder you’re a good fellow, to have such a sister.”
“Oh, put it the other way about,” Dick laughed; “that you don’t wonder
she’s so good because she has such a brother.”
“I have some more news for you, too,” Darling went on as they attacked
the supper. “Dr. Goode just told me to-night. The old man is going to
send you on a trip down the Mississippi into the Southwest as soon as
you have finished your Porto Rico stuff; and do you know I’m more than
half-sorry, Dick.”
“Well, I don’t know.” He was hardly certain whether to feel sorry or
glad. “I’ve got to be doing something, and I suppose I might as well be
in the Southwest as anywhere.”
“Yes, as well there as anywhere, if you are away from home. But I’d
rather have you at home, Dick, for several reasons. This sort of thing
can’t go on always, you know, making these long trips; it never does,
at any rate. A man makes a half-dozen or a dozen of them, and then they
tire of his style or he tires of the traveling or for some other reason
it comes to an end. You are making hay while the sun shines I’ll admit,
but I’d like to see you begin to do something better, something more
permanent.”
“Where do I have the time?” Dick interrupted. “I have hardly a minute
to myself.”
“That’s just it,” Darling went on. “You have no time to yourself at
all. Your Transport articles are copied everywhere, your syndicate
articles have gone all over the country, and your Illustrated Weekly
story was tip top; everybody said so. Indeed, for such a young fellow
you have made yourself quite famous already--in a newspaper way. But
after all, Dick, I’m more than half-inclined to think you would be
better off if you were doing ordinary city work. Then you would have
time to lay the foundation for better things.”
“I may be doing that now,” Dick replied. “Don’t you see, Darling, this
sort of work is my only chance to sign my articles. I couldn’t sign a
report of a fire in Canal Street, you know, or the flight of a bank
cashier or any other city news.”
“That’s true,” Darling admitted. “Still, I think there are better
things in store for you than signing newspaper articles, if you
manage right and prepare yourself for them. Your style is very good
indeed--for a newspaper writer; bright, I mean, and interesting and
taking. But it lacks finish, Dick, and finish you can give it only by
reading, which you have no time for as things go now. You should read
Macaulay carefully, both the history and the essays, if only for the
sake of the beautiful diction. And Scott and Thackeray you must read
by all means. Of course you have read them, but I mean read them as a
study, not merely for the sake of the story. Read them and study their
methods of construction, their ways of carrying the reader gracefully
from one point to another without sacrificing the interest, and of
course their wonderful delineation of character.
“The construction of a novel was a natural gift to Scott and Thackeray,
you will say; but it was not to them any more than it is to others.
Their construction is art, not nature; but it is such high art that
the art is concealed and seems to be nature. Then you must read
Shakespeare, as a matter of course; it will stir you up when you feel
sluggish. And Burns, Byron, Tennyson, and our best American poets. And
above all things study the Bible. You read it for devotional reasons, I
suppose, but I mean study it carefully as a literary work. Some of the
books of the Bible contain the grandest examples of elegant, concise
diction in the language. The knowledge always on tap in works of
reference I suppose you have become familiar with in the office.”
“Oh, haven’t I!” Dick exclaimed. “I don’t see why they didn’t teach
me about those things in school, but I never knew much about the
standard works of reference till I went into the Transport office.
The cyclopædias tell me something about almost any subject; if I want
to know about any place in the world the Gazetteer tells me. I want
to know the date of any important thing that has happened and there
is Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, or I want to quote a line from some
good writer and I take down Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Dodd’s
Beauties of Shakespeare is almost equal to a knowledge of the plays and
poems, and if I want to find any particular passage in Scripture the
Concordance points it out to me in a moment. It’s a good education in
itself to know where to find these things. Then the biographies tell me
about all the prominent people of the past or present.”
“I see you’ve worked that mine pretty well!” Darling laughed. “But
don’t expect to get a knowledge of English literature out of the
works of reference. You don’t want to be a reporter or correspondent
all your life, naturally, and it is safe to assume that you will not
make a great poet, though you might try your hand at some verses,
provided you don’t publish them. Then the three things nearest you are
plays, novels, and short stories. There is a great deal of money in a
successful play; and with two or three successes a writer’s fortune is
made.”
“I hardly think I could make a play go,” Dick answered. “I have never
taken as much interest in the theatre as a man ought who undertakes a
play, though I am fond of dramatic situations in what I write. Between
ourselves, Darling, I have sometimes thought of trying a novel. I could
certainly do a better one than some I have read.”
“The young bird flies high!” Darling laughed. “You must not ask
yourself whether you can do better than a poor novel, but whether you
can do as well as a good one. Don’t expect to write a Rob Roy or a
Vanity Fair at the first trial. And don’t be everlastingly wondering
whether you have genius. ‘Genius is talent well worked,’ Henry Ward
Beecher told me one day, and I believe it. You have some talent, and
certainly you have the capacity for hard work, so you need not worry
about genius. If you are going to try novel-writing, there is no harm
in your traveling for a while, for you must become acquainted with
different people and places or your hands will always be tied. Then, if
all else fails, a situation in the office is always open to a man of
your sort--inside the office, I mean; reading copy or the night city
editorship, or something of that sort.”
“Oh, don’t mention it!” Dick exclaimed in horror. “A year ago I should
have thought that grand; but now I have had a taste of the free life,
of coming and going at will, of seeing new places and new people all
the time, and I could not stand being shut up in an office, and having
a desk that I must open at a fixed hour every day and close at another
fixed hour, with a certain amount of unvarying drudgery between. I
never could stand that now, Darling.”
“You can stand more than you think,” Darling retorted. “It is one of
the drawbacks to a reporter’s life, that it is too free. It unfits him
for any indoor occupation afterward. He becomes a sort of civilized
wild Indian, a gypsy in evening clothes, and longs for his imaginary
forest. But never mind. If you have determined to try a novel, keep
your eyes open for good characters and good situations, and read
whenever you have a spare moment. And don’t be too sure that you can
write a good novel because you can write a good newspaper article.
There is money and fame in novels if you can reach the top notch, but
not otherwise.”
In his week of leisure, as he called it, Dick finished up all his Porto
Rico matter by working every day and a large part of every night, and
then came his instructions for the trip into the Southwest.
“We know what travel on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meant in old
times, before the days of railroads,” Mr. Harding told him. “I want
you to tell the public what it is now. Go down to Pittsburgh and take
a boat down the river. Go to Wheeling, to Cincinnati, and so on down
the river at least to Memphis. There you can cross over to Arkansas and
make a visit to Hot Springs which is one of the most picturesque towns
in this country. Then you can take the Red River to New Orleans, and
from there go on to Key West. Telegraph me when you reach Key West, and
I will either bring you home or send you further instructions. I think
you will find much material of interest. Take your time to it and do
your best. The winter has been so mild that the rivers are still open.”
Dick climbed into a sleeping-car berth in Jersey City at nine o’clock
in the evening, and at seven o’clock next morning he was in Pittsburgh.
“There’s article number one,” he said to himself as he stepped from
the car. “‘A night in a sleeping-car.’ It’s so commonplace that people
don’t write about it, but I think it will make a good story. There are
always some curious characters in a sleeping-car, and they are always
different.”
He walked down a long smoky street to the river and made inquiries in
several shipping offices. Yes, there was a boat to sail for Wheeling
that afternoon at five o’clock; the Crescent. No boats going farther
than Wheeling, because the water was low. But he could go aboard when
he liked and make himself comfortable. He paid his fare for a stateroom
to Wheeling, for it was an all-night journey; and hunted up an express
wagon to carry his trunk to the boat. No meals on the boat till supper
time, he was told; but there were plenty of restaurants.
There were curious sights to see in Pittsburgh throughout the day, and
there were the bridges to cross to Allegheny City, and the inclined
railway to ride on, and many unaccustomed scenes by the riverside.
He took mental note of them all; not because they interested him
specially, but because it was his duty.
It was not at five o’clock that the Crescent started for Wheeling, but
at nine; Ohio River boats are not express trains. Dick had books in his
trunk, for he had thought over the conversation with Darling and made
up his mind to become familiar with the best works of the best authors.
“What a solid old fellow Darling is!” he thought as he took out a
volume of Tennyson and began to read. “And how much better he knows the
world than I, though I am seeing so much more of it. I can see how a
man’s ideas enlarge as he grows older. Now there was that telegraphing
scheme of mine. I was determined to learn to send and receive a
message. That was not many months ago, but my mind has changed about it
entirely. I shouldn’t think of wasting time over it. Reading will be of
much more use to me.”
At two o’clock in the morning, long after Dick had laid aside his book
and gone to writing, he heard a man’s voice on the forward deck of the
little stern-wheeler. He went out to see what it meant, and got his
first clear idea of navigating the upper Ohio.
One man was on the lower deck, forward, taking soundings with a pole.
Dick could not see him, but he heard his constant calling of the
depths: “One half;” “One quarter;” “M-a-r-k O-n-e!” meaning a fathom
and a half, a fathom and a quarter, one fathom. As fast as these calls
came, the man on the upper deck repeated them to the pilot, who was
in his house on the highest deck of all the “Texas”; and the pilot
repeated them too, to make sure that he received them correctly. In a
minute the figures became larger.
“Five nalf,” came from down below.
“Five.”
“Four nalf.”
“Four.”
“Is that fathoms?” Dick asked of the man on the upper deck.
“Not much!” the man answered. “That’s feet!”
Almost at the same instant the boat’s bottom grazed the sand, and there
was a slight jar that brought Dick’s Porto Rico experience to mind. But
it was over in a moment, and the boat went on.
“That was a tight squeeze!” the man exclaimed. “Sand bar; the river’s
full of ’em. That’s the way we get it, when the water’s low. We can’t
quite travel over a heavy dew with this boat, as some people say; but
we’re all right as long as they give us three feet of water.”
It was about ten o’clock in the morning when the Crescent reached
Wheeling, and she went no farther. Dick immediately began to make
inquiries for another boat to carry him on to Cincinnati, but the
prospects were discouraging.
“’Tain’t likely no boat can get through under two or three weeks,” he
was told. “If there should come a heavy rain, there might be a boat in
four or five days; but that’s doubtful.”
That would not do. Although he was to take his time, it would not be
fair to waste a week or more in Wheeling. He inquired about railway
trains, and finding that a train started for Cincinnati at two o’clock
he had his trunk transferred to the railway station and bought a ticket.
How slow the boats seemed, when the train was under way! In ten minutes
he was crossing the river by a bridge that the boat had gone under
hours before it reached Wheeling. He was in Ohio now, and by seven
o’clock he should be in Columbus; by one next morning, in Cincinnati.
There were few passengers in the train; in Dick’s car not more than
three or four, and he settled himself comfortably in a corner and
fell to reading. Suddenly he was roused, after an hour or two, by the
stopping of the train and the pouring into every car of a crowd of
people. It was a country town at which the train had stopped, and a
fair was in progress. The people were going home from the fair.
In a minute or two Dick’s car, like all the other cars in the train,
was packed with people. They not only occupied every seat, but crowded
the aisles. There were a few women and children, but most of the
newcomers were men; and Dick noticed that nearly all of the men were
somewhat under the influence of liquor.
The train had not gone more than two or three miles after leaving the
station before two of the men who stood in the aisle directly by the
side of Dick’s seat began to quarrel, and from quarreling they soon
went on to fighting. After a few blows with their fists they drew
knives and began to lunge at each other. In a minute the friends of
the two men joined in the fracas, some on one side and some on the
other, and the fight became general. Many of the other men drew knives,
several shots were fired, the women and children screamed, and the
whole car was in an uproar. The worst of the fight was almost directly
over Dick’s head.
“Gentlemen, you’ll have to stop this or get off the train!” the
conductor shouted as he entered the car.
But he might as well have talked to the waves of the sea. Half the men
were fighting, and the others seemed unconcerned. The conductor pulled
the bell-rope to stop the train, and went out to summon the train
hands to his assistance. Before he reached the door his foot slipped;
and Dick, looking down, saw that he had slipped in a pool of blood.
Somebody had been cut. One man had been pushed through a window and
held so far out that Dick was afraid his head would strike a telegraph
pole. Three or four seats just opposite Dick had been ripped out and
lay overturned on the floor.
Just as the train stopped, the conductor entered the car at the other
end, accompanied by several train hands. As he entered, a man who had
been in the car all the way from Wheeling, stood up and spoke to him.
Dick noticed that the man was very large; well over six feet high, and
broad in proportion; and that he wore good black clothes.
“Conductor,” said the big man in a loud voice, “you must stop this
riot. I call on you to stop the fighting in this car.”
“I can’t do it,” the conductor replied; “I haven’t men enough on the
train to stop it.”
“Then call on your passengers!” the big man shouted; “you are entitled
to call on the passengers to assist you.”
“Very well,” said the conductor, as though he would clinch the argument
on the spot; “I call on you!”
The big man had not another word to waste. Evidently he was a man of
action, and all he wanted was the summons from the conductor that
gave him a legal right to participate. He pulled off his black coat
and threw it upon the seat, laid his hat on top of it, pulled up his
sleeves, and “sailed into” the crowd of fighters with the energy of a
battering-ram.
It was a giant among pygmies. With every blow of the powerful fists one
or two of the fighters went down. The Ohioans were so surprised at the
single-handed onslaught that they hardly struck back. Down they went,
one after another and in bunches, and the thud, thud of the sturdy
blows came harder and faster. When the big man reached the door at
Dick’s end of the car there was hardly a fighter left on his feet.
The big man had quelled the riot and made a score of sore heads, but
he did not stop there. He gathered up the fellows who were nearest the
door, two and three at a time, and threw them bodily out of the car. At
this there was a wild rush for the opposite end by all who were able to
walk, and in no time all the fighters were out. The conductor pulled
the rope and the train started, leaving the rioters quarreling and
fighting by the side of the track. The big man walked quietly back to
his seat and put on his coat and hat.
“Well, that was the most beautiful piece of pugilism and pluck I ever
saw in my life,” Dick said to himself. “To think of one unarmed man
pitching into this whole crowd, where nearly every man had a knife in
his hand, and thrashing the whole lot of them in a minute, just with
his fists. Why, it was superb. He looks like an uncommon man, too; I
must find out who he is.”
Dick went back to the seat adjoining the big man’s and spoke to him.
“You did that beautifully, sir,” he said. “I am a newspaper man, and if
you have no objections I should be glad to know your name.”
The big man turned around with a pleasant smile on his face, and
without showing the least sign of the recent conflict.
“Certainly, young man,” he said; “you are welcome to know my name, if
you desire it. My name is Cook--Joseph Cook.”
“What!” Dick exclaimed before he could stop himself, “not the Rev.
Joseph Cook, the celebrated clergyman and lecturer?”
“If you leave that word ‘celebrated’ out,” Mr. Cook replied, “I will
own up to all the rest. Yes; I am the Rev. Joseph Cook, clergyman,
lecturer.
“You see,” he went on, turning further around so that he faced Dick,
“I am billed to lecture in Columbus at eight o’clock this evening.
That was why I didn’t want the train delayed by that crowd of drunken
ruffians. The conductor and his trainmen could have stopped the riot
very readily if they had had any courage. But the quickest way was just
to stop it myself, though I am afraid we are going to be late now, for
we are more than an hour behind time.”
“Whew!” Dick said to himself, “this is news. I shall have to stop off
at Columbus and telegraph this.” His old news instinct was aroused in
a moment. He had not done any telegraphing to the Transport for some
time, for such matters as letters from Mexico and Porto Rico go always
by mail, not by telegraph. But for a man of the prominence of the Rev.
Joseph Cook to put down such a riot single-handed, that was genuine
news and must reach the office at once.
He continued the conversation with Mr. Cook and listened to some very
interesting anecdotes, and talked with the conductor and several of the
trainmen, and by the time they reached Columbus, not much before nine
o’clock, he had well in mind the story that was soon to be written and
telegraphed.
The car was in such disorder, with its bloodstains, broken glass, and
torn-out seats, that at Columbus it was taken out of the train and
sent to the railroad hospital for repairs. The lecture committee had
learned by telegraph of the lateness of the train, and they had held
the audience in the Opera House till Mr. Cook arrived. A carriage was
waiting at the station for the lecturer, and he was driven at breakneck
speed to the Opera House with Dick sitting by his side.
Dick soon had a seat at the reporter’s table, where he found every
facility for writing, and where he immediately felt as much at home
among the reporters of Columbus as though he had been in the Academy
of Music in New York. But, like an experienced newspaper man, he told
the other reporters nothing about the riot in the train. That was his
own news, and too good to share with anybody.
It was not a report of the lecture that Dick wrote while Mr. Cook was
speaking; it was an account of Mr. Cook’s adventure. And before the
lecture was finished he slipped out and carried to the telegraph office
a column-long account of the one-sided battle. By the time that the
last of it reached the Transport office he was aboard the midnight
train for Cincinnati.
“That’s a jolly beginning for a new trip!” he said to himself as he
pulled the thick sleeping-car blankets over him. “If every day turns
out as well I’ll be in luck.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE “HOODOOED” STEAMBOAT.
Early on a Friday morning the train landed Dick in Cincinnati; and
after eating breakfast in the railway restaurant he went down to the
river front to look for a boat. The river was much larger than at
Pittsburgh or Wheeling, but he was disappointed in the boats. He had
read of the palatial Ohio and Mississippi steamboats running to New
Orleans, with their luxurious cabins, hundreds of passengers, bands
playing, cargo on all the decks. But, as far as he could see, in
Cincinnati there was no boat to equal even the third-rate boats of the
Hudson River. They were all stern wheelers, large enough but clumsy in
shape, with their passenger accommodations all on the upper deck, which
was supported by posts that looked entirely too small for the weight.
On every boat the whole lower deck was open, exposing to view the
engines and all the machinery.
The Belle of the River, one of the largest of the Ohio River boats, was
to start for New Orleans that afternoon, and Dick determined to take
passage in her, at any rate as far as Memphis. The fare to Memphis, he
learned, was only twelve dollars, including meals and stateroom, and
the voyage might be made in a week, or it might take three times as
long, according to circumstances. He could not buy a ticket, as he was
in the habit of doing at home. There was a clerk in the little office
on board; and the clerk kept a register in which each passenger wrote
his name, just as in a hotel, and opposite the name the clerk wrote the
passenger’s destination and the amount paid.
“Oh, I wouldn’t start with you for anything, captain!” he heard one of
the ladies of a large party say to the captain later in the day, when
he had his trunk on board and was settled in his stateroom. “What in
the world makes you start on a Friday? Such an unlucky day. We’re going
to take the train to Louisville in the morning, and go on board there.
None of us would think of starting on a journey on Friday.”
“There’s a point!” Dick said to himself. “I wonder whether people are
more superstitious down this way than they are at home. I must keep an
eye open for that.”
He had a chance to see more of it before he started. There were fifteen
or twenty passengers that he saw or heard of, and perhaps more that he
knew nothing about, who would not start on Friday, but waited to take
the morning train and catch the boat at Louisville. And of those who
did go many spoke of the unlucky day, and hoped that something would
delay the boat until Saturday.
Naturally Dick laughed at this folly; for a bright newspaper man has
no superstitions about Friday or anything else. It is not luck that he
relies upon, but pluck.
“They must be ignorant, or they’d know better,” he said to himself. “I
notice, too, that none of the passengers look as though they had much
money to spare; and from what they say I think they travel by boat only
because it is cheap. They don’t seem to think it possible that a man
should go in the boat if he has money enough to go by rail.”
There were thirty or forty passengers on board at the start, Friday or
no Friday; but Dick saw very little of them on the first night. He had
an article to write; and he shut himself up in his stateroom.
After breakfast next morning there was a commotion in the cabin. One of
the colored stewards was talking loudly in front of the clerk’s office,
and the clerk was trying to pacify him. Dick stepped up to see what it
was about.
“He’s been drinking, that’s all,” the clerk explained. “I suppose he
has found a bottle of liquor in one of the staterooms he cleans, and
has helped himself. You go on about your work now,” he added to the
colored man, “and keep quiet.”
But instead of keeping quiet he became more boisterous than ever and
began to swear at the clerk.
“Here, George! Henry! Thomas! Take this man away from here!” the clerk
called to a number of waiters about the table. “Take him down on the
lower deck till he cools off.” In a minute a half-dozen of them, all
colored, surrounded the man.
Suddenly the waiters all sprang back in alarm. The man had thrust his
hand under his shirt bosom, and Dick expected to see him draw out a
knife. But when the hand came out it had only a little round packet
about the size of a very small egg, covered with brownish cloth, much
handled, and dirty-looking.
The negro waiters could hardly have shown as much alarm if the man had
drawn a knife. They shrank back in fear; it seemed to Dick that they
actually turned pale; the teeth of some of them chattered.
“He got de rabbit foot!” one of them exclaimed.
“He a Hoodoo, boss!” another cried: “’tain’t safe to tech him. I
wouldn’t lay hands on him fer no money.”
Dick was becoming very much interested. He had heard of the negroes
carrying a rabbit’s foot for a charm, and of their Hoodoo nonsense, but
he had never expected to have the good luck to see it so soon.
“Stan’ back!” the half-drunken man shouted, waving the little package
in the air. He had sense enough left to see that the other waiters were
afraid of him and to take advantage of the fact. “Stan’ back! I’ll work
de rabbit’s foot on any man w’at comes near me.”
The clerk sent a boy in a hurry after the two mates, and in a minute
they appeared--big, brawny, white men. They had no fear of the rabbit’s
foot, and they seized the man and hustled him out of the cabin and down
the companionway, Dick and many of the other passengers following.
The man was still abusive, but he was released on the lower deck; and
he went immediately to the boiler and began to warm his little packet.
He held it first one side toward the hot boiler, then the other, and
turned it round and round.
“He warmin’ de rabbit foot!” Dick heard one of the black roustabouts
say in an alarmed tone. “He’ll do mischief, dat man will.”
In a few minutes, perhaps when the rabbit’s foot was warm enough to be
in good working order, the man walked back to the two mates, who were
still watching him.
“I pay you off for dis!” he shouted. “I sink dis boat wid de rabbit
foot, I will. I kill you yet.”
In a second the first mate had the man by the throat and half-doubled
him backward.
“That’s what I’ve been waiting for!” the mate exclaimed; “I just wanted
you to threaten somebody. Now I’ll put you and your rabbit’s foot out
of harm. Get me a rope, somebody.”
The man was quickly tied hand and foot and fastened to a stanchion, and
in the scuffle the little packet was knocked from his hand. Dick picked
it up.
“Oh, gimme back me rabbit’s foot!” the man whined. His pluck was all
gone, now that he had lost his charm. “Please, boss, gim it back ter
me.”
“Oh, no!” Dick laughed. “It’s too dangerous for you to carry. It’s
warm, too, and there’s no telling what damage it might do.”
Not one of the black deck hands would approach the packet. They held
aloof; even some of the passengers looked alarmed when Dick took out
his penknife and opened the blade.
“Don’t you do it!” one of them advised. “’Tain’t well to fool with them
things.”
“No, don’t cut it open,” another said. “Some harm’ll come to you, sure,
if you do.”
“Nonsense!” Dick exclaimed. “No wonder these poor colored men are
superstitious, if you white men encourage them in this way.”
Without more ado he ripped open the packet with his knife. There were
many wrappings under the brown cloth--first a layer of oiled silk, then
one of flannel; but the interior was soon reached. There in the centre
lay the wonderful charms:--
A rabbit’s foot with hair and claws all complete.
Half of a gold ring.
A lock of straight black hair, tied with a string. And--
Four small pieces of broken glass.
“It don’t look very dangerous, does it?” Dick asked; and he tossed the
packet over the boat’s side into the river.
Several times that morning he heard colored men on board prophesying
evil because the man had “hoodooed de boat”; and some of the white
passengers sagely shook their heads. Just as the boat was approaching
Louisville, half an hour before noon, when Dick was in his stateroom,
the light mulatto boy who waited upon him entered the room.
“If I was you, I’d leave dis boat at Louisville, boss,” the boy said.
“I’d git off here if I could, but I’se shipped for de voyage. De boat’s
boun’ to come to some harm, suah! Dat feller he hoodoo her; he wo’k de
rabbit foot on her, and somethin’ goin’ to happen.”
“All right, George,” Dick laughingly replied; “that’s just in my line
of business. If anything happens to the boat, I must be here to see it,
so I’ll stay on board.”
The stop kept the boat at Louisville for more than an hour. The “Hoodoo
man” was released and put ashore with a warning not to come back, and
the thirty or forty passengers whose fear of starting on Friday had led
them to take the train, joined the boat. By half-past one she was on
her way down the river again.
“That was a good incident, that Hoodoo man,” Dick said to himself; “I
was lucky to see it.” He did not know that the incident was only begun.
“Don’t you want to go up on the Texas deck?” one of the passengers
asked him--a pleasant-faced young fellow in a red flannel shirt. “We’ll
be going over the falls in a minute or two, and it’s worth seeing.”
Together they went up to the Texas, the highest deck of all, many feet
above water, where a number of men were already standing.
The falls of the Ohio at Louisville might more properly be called
rapids, for they stretch out over half a mile or more. When the water
is high they are almost obliterated; but in low water they become a
raging, roaring descent, studded with dangerous rocks. While the boat
was rushing through this rapid Dick felt several sharp bumps against
the bottom; but they were different from the bumps he had felt at Porto
Rico or anywhere else, and he attached no importance to them.
Five minutes afterward, with the boat still in the rapids, several
newcomers ran rapidly up to the Texas and began to watch a boat that
was putting out from the Kentucky shore. Dick looked too; and as soon
as the boat was near enough to be seen plainly, he watched with great
interest.
For it was no ordinary boat that was coming out toward them at great
speed. Painted white, her brass mountings glistened in the sun. Her
eight oarsmen pulled with the strength and precision of man-of-war’s
men. The man at the tiller was in uniform, and all the men wore blue
caps. It was a pretty sight, that handsome boat so excellently handled.
“What boat is that coming out?” Dick asked one of the newcomers.
“That is the life-saving crew from Louisville,” the man replied.
“The life-saving crew!” Dick repeated; “and what are they coming out
here for?”
“Don’t you know we’re sinking?” the man asked. “The hold is half-full
of water now. The life savers must have seen us strike the rocks five
minutes ago, and they’re coming out to our assistance. Oh, it’s a fine
thing, that life-saving service! If the boat goes down in deep water,
they’ll find some way to get us all ashore. Just see them come!”
Dick and his red-shirted companion hurried down to the deck below
them, and there everything was in confusion. Women and children were
screaming, and several women had fainted. Men were rushing about after
life preservers and gathering up their valuables. The boat’s whistle
had begun to blow continuously, and the horrible racket added to the
excitement.
“Now don’t get excited!” the clerk was shouting, in a way little
adapted to calm the passengers’ fears. “The life-saving crew is right
alongside of us, and they’ll get us all off. Keep cool, ladies; keep
cool.”
“How deep is the water here at the foot of the falls?” Dick asked the
clerk.
“Sixty feet!” was the whispered reply; “deepest place on the river.”
Dick started for the lower deck, but on the way he nearly ran into a
woman with two little girls and no man to help her. They had secured
a life preserver somewhere, and the woman was frantically trying to
fasten it to the smaller girl. He instantly brought his good sense to
bear for the relief of the frightened family.
“Let me show you how to fasten that, madam,” he said as coolly as
though he were talking about strapping a valise; and he drew up a chair
and sat down and took the little girl on his knee. “Not that you’re
going to need it now,” he went on, “but it’s as well to understand
these things. We are not in any danger; and anyhow I shall stay right
here by you and take care of you. You sit down on the other knee” (to
the larger child) “there; now you’re just as safe as if papa had you,
for I could swim this river a dozen times without losing my breath.”
A hundred shouts of “Keep cool” and “Don’t be excited” could not have
quieted the little family as Dick’s quiet, confident manner did.
“Two steamboats have got us!” somebody cried at the after end of the
cabin; “one on each side of us.”
This caused a rush to the forward and after decks, and the passengers
saw that a big steamboat was made fast on each side. The whistling had
called them to the sinking boat’s assistance, and they were helping her
to a shallow place of safety. The life-saving crew were on board, too;
and they helped give the people confidence. Now that any one who chose
could step to the deck of one of the other boats, nobody cared to go.
Slowly the three boats together moved toward the Kentucky shore; and
when they were close by the lower end of the canal by which boats avoid
the falls in going up the river, one of them let go and drew ahead, and
the other pushed the Belle of the River close against the rocky shore.
She had hardly lain there two minutes before down she went to the very
bottom with all on board. But fortunately the bottom of the river was
not more than two feet below the bottom of the boat, for it was a
shallow flat that had been selected to let her sink in; and when she
rested upon the mud the water did not reach her lower deck.
“I knew it! I knew it!” cried Dick’s woman with the two little girls.
“I just felt it in my bones that something was going to happen when we
started on a Friday. I don’t know what ever possessed me to do it. And
when that negro man hoodooed the boat, that just finished us.”
“You must not think so, madam,” Dick replied. “The current carried us
slightly out of the channel and we struck a rock. Our starting on a
Friday had nothing whatever to do with it; and certainly you cannot
believe that an ignorant negro could bewitch the boat with a rabbit’s
foot. That is too ridiculous to think of.”
Before the woman could say anything further two men walked through the
cabin talking. “I’m going to take my family ashore just as soon as they
get out a gangplank,” one of them was saying. “That coon hoodooed the
boat, and she’ll have nothing but bad luck.”
Dick went down to the lower deck and found the negroes in a great state
of excitement. There was not one of them but believed that the accident
had been caused by the man with the rabbit’s foot.
“I’m a-gwine to sneak first chance I gits,” he heard one of the
roustabouts say to another; “no hoodooed boat for me!”
“I’m almost sorry this thing happened,” Dick said to himself, “though
it’s all in the way of business for me. Nothing in the world will ever
convince half of these people that the boat was not bewitched by that
steward. I suppose it’s in some such way as this that most wonderful
stories originate. But I didn’t imagine that intelligent white people
could believe in such nonsense.”
There was too much going on, however, for him to spend much time
thinking about the coincidence. The Belle of the River was still
whistling, and one boat after another came to her assistance, till
there were six or eight alongside. As they all burned soft coal, their
smoke soon made the air almost unbearable.
“Well, that’s an idea!” Dick exclaimed as he watched the proceedings.
“A fellow can learn something every day, if he keeps his eyes open.”
A man had been down in the hold and had found a ragged hole six feet
long and about four feet wide in the boat’s bottom; but as she rested
in the mud the hole was temporarily stopped and no more water could
flow in. It was the suction pipes that caused Dick’s exclamation.
Each of the helping boats got out a big hose and ran one end into the
Belle’s hold, while the other end was attached to their steam pumps.
When they all began to pump they brought the water out in a hurry, and
soon had the hold dry.
“Now they’ll build a bulkhead around the hole,” the clerk said to Dick
as he stood and watched; “a big square box; and first they’ll lay in a
lot of mattresses and pillows off the beds, and then layers of mud and
stones, and put a good stout plank cover over it. That will keep us
afloat till we get to Paducah. There’s a marine railway at Paducah,
and we’ll make repairs there. Say,” he added in a lower voice, “do you
think the coon really had anything to do with it?”
Dick was too much disgusted to give a serious reply.
“Undoubtedly!” he said. “I don’t think the rabbit’s foot alone could
have done it; but when you combine the foot with a bit of gold ring,
certain atomic forces are liberated which are difficult to control.
Then by adding three or four bits of old glass, the isothermal pressure
becomes tremendous. A lock of hair of course increases the equilibrium
in the proportion of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle. But we
were very lucky, after all. That was only a forefoot of a rabbit. If it
had been a hindfoot, we’d all been drowned, sure.”
“That’s just my opinion of it,” the clerk replied, seriously shaking
his head; and Dick moved away.
The process of building a bulkhead was easily described, but the work
itself took more than twenty-four hours, and the boat lay close to the
Kentucky shore till early on Monday morning. A plank was laid from
the upper deck to the rocky bluff on shore, and all who chose were at
liberty to go ashore and spend the time in Louisville, only three or
four miles away.
But Dick was too busy for that. He was trying hard to “keep up with his
facts,” as he put it; and he spent much of the time in his stateroom
writing.
“I’d like to know why it is,” he said to himself, “that something
unusual happens wherever I go. Is it because I’m on the lookout
for such things, I wonder? Or do I have better luck than most
correspondents? First, a riot in the cars put down by a celebrated
preacher, then a bewitched steamboat, and now a little shipwreck. Why,
I couldn’t have done better so far if I’d managed the program myself.
But if this thing keeps on, Mr. Dick Sumner, you’re going to run into
an accident some day that will put a sudden end to your newspaper
writing.”
Slowly the boat made her way down the river, stopping at all the
principal towns to take in cargo. Furniture, wagons, sash and blinds,
bales of hay, bags of feed--a thousand different things were taken
aboard till all the deck room was filled, and even the Texas deck was
piled up high, making the boat look twice as large as she had looked
before. Sometimes the stop was only for two or three hours, at others
it lasted all day or all night. There was no pretence of hurry.
Dick would have caught up easily with his facts in this slow journey,
only new facts, new subjects for articles, were accumulating all the
time. The passengers he thought were worthy of a letter to themselves;
many of the river towns were worth describing. He could not turn in
any direction without adding new material. The young fellows who wore
flannel shirts and carried guns, and there were fifteen or more of
them, were “swampers,” he learned. Having finished their summer and
fall work on northern farms, they were on their way to the Red River
swamps in Louisiana to cut cypress timber, and late in the spring
they would return. Of course they were full of good stories and Dick
gathered them all in.
One night these swampers gave Dick a capital story. The wooded shore
on the north was in Illinois, on the other side lay Kentucky. It was a
bright moonlight night and every mark in the river was plain as day.
But for some reason the captain decided to stop for the night, and he
took the boat close up to the Illinois shore and tied her, bow and
stern, to two immense chestnut trees.
“What’s the matter, captain?” Dick asked. “Why don’t you go on?”
“Oh, we might as well give the old thing a rest!” was the only reason
the captain cared to give.
The swampers decided that it was exactly the proper sort of night for a
coon hunt, and southern Illinois exactly the proper place. They got out
a plank and went ashore and built a rousing bonfire, around which they
sat and played their fiddles and sang songs till midnight. When they
started on the hunt Dick borrowed a gun and went with them, for he was
acquainted with them all.
“That’s article number nine,” he said to himself when he returned.
“Coon Hunt in Illinois. Odd duty for a New York reporter, too, to go
coon hunting in Illinois.”
On the eleventh day after leaving Cincinnati, the Belle of the River
reached Paducah, Kentucky, and Dick had his first opportunity to see
the working of a marine railway. There was a hill rising from the
river, and at the top of the hill a long shed in which immense wooden
cylinders were revolved by an engine. Wooden tracks reached some
distance up the hill, and great iron chains ran down to the water, the
upper ends being made fast to the cylinders.
These chains were fastened around the boat, and when the cylinders
revolved they were wound up and drew the boat sideways out of the
water. Out she came, with crew, freight, and passengers all on board;
not only out of the water, but twenty or thirty feet up the hill, where
the workmen could reach her bottom to repair her.
This was not done at once, however. Another boat was in the way at
first, and two days passed before Dick’s boat was raised. Then two more
days dragged along without any sign of the repairs beginning. The delay
gave Dick a grand chance to write, but he soon began to feel that he
was wasting the Transport’s time.
“How long will it take to repair the boat, after they begin?” he asked
the captain.
“Not more than two or three days,” was the answer.
“And when will they begin?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t wonder if they’d begin to-morrow or next day.”
“That’s too slow for me!” Dick exclaimed. “I’ll have to leave you,
captain, and finish the journey to Memphis by rail. I believe there is
a railroad from here to Memphis.”
He went ashore and made inquiries in Paducah, and found that there was
a train for Memphis at seven in the evening. By bedtime he was bowling
across Kentucky in a railway car, through endless cotton fields, with
the withered cotton stalks standing like skeleton sentinels in the
moonlight. At two o’clock in the morning he was in Memphis.
“Any restaurants open at this time of night?” he asked of the solitary
“cabby” outside the station.
“Plenty of them, sir,” the man replied; “step right in and I’ll take
you to one.”
The train for Little Rock started at six, so he had four hours to
eat his supper and take a look at Memphis by moonlight. He had been
“roughing it” so long on the boat that the sight of paved streets and
substantial city houses seemed almost strange. At half-past five he
was in the Little Rock train with some vague, shadowy impressions of
Memphis in his mind. What was clearest to him was a high bluff, and at
the foot of the bluff a broad sheet of silver that narrowed down to a
ribbon in the distance. The silver ribbon was the Mississippi River by
moonlight.
Dick’s train was ferried across the river on a large steamboat, and
soon after daylight the journey across the eastern part of Arkansas
began. It was a hundred miles of dismal swamp, the railroad running
on an embankment through the swamp. Here and there were log cabins,
inhabited by people with skins turned deep yellow by their diet of
salt pork, quinine, and vile whiskey. This at least was the train
conductor’s explanation of their remarkable color.
“They have one advantage over the rest of us,” Dick exclaimed with a
shudder; “they must be awfully glad to die!”
At Forest City the train began to ascend to higher lands, and the young
correspondent soon had his first look at a prairie. It was miles and
miles across, without a fence or a tree. But there were some cultivated
fields and comfortable homes that were a relief after the depressing
swamp.
At Little Rock, Dick changed to the Iron Mountain train that was
to carry him to Malsem, where he must change again to a little
narrow-gauge road for the Hot Springs. There were only men in his car
in the Iron Mountain train; men mostly of the cowboy, “dead drop”
sort; and all the conversation he heard around him was about shooting
and fighting.
“I’d ’a’ licked that feller in less than two minutes, if they hadn’t
’a’ pulled me off,” he heard a one-eyed man in the seat in front of him
say.
“I had the dead drop on him, an’ he knowed it!” came from the seat
behind.
“Well,” Dick quietly laughed to himself; “here’s another phase of the
great American people. I’ve left the superstitious ones and now I’ve
fallen in with the fighters. But if they shoot and fight as much as
they talk about it, I wonder that any of them are still alive.”
CHAPTER XII.
A NARROW ESCAPE IN ARKANSAS.
“Are you going over to Hot Springs?”
It was decidedly the most civilized-looking man in the car who sat down
beside Dick and asked the question. He was a young man of twenty-eight
or thirty, who proved afterward to be a cotton planter from Georgia.
“Can you tell me of a good place to stay there?” the stranger went on,
after Dick had answered his question in the affirmative. “I have never
been there and know nothing about the place.”
“I have never been there either,” Dick answered. “I only know that the
Arlington is the largest hotel, and I shall go there for a few days at
any rate, till I can look about.”
He was glad for the company of the young cotton planter, for the only
drawback to the journey so far had been want of suitable companionship.
The captain and clerk of the boat and some of the swampers were good
fellows in their way, but they and Dick had few interests in common.
“If only I could have Darling or Jack Randall or some of the other
fellows with me!” he often said to himself. “There are so many odd
things to see; but it half-spoils the pleasure to have to see them
alone.”
Late in the afternoon Dick and the cotton planter were settled in good
rooms in the Arlington Hotel, and before supper they went out to the
broad front piazza together to see what they could of the town. While
they sat there a brass band marched down the street, playing lively
airs.
“I wish they’d keep Mose Harrison in jail all the time,” one of the
other guests said to Dick, “so the music would last.”
“Who is Mose Harrison?” Dick asked; “and what has his being in jail to
do with the music?”
“Oh, you’ve just come, have you?” the man answered. “Well, you see Mose
Harrison is the editor of The Daily Horseshoe, and he’s in jail for
thirty days for libel. The jail’s down at the other end of town, and
Mose’s friends have hired the band to go down there every evening and
give him a serenade. He’ll be out in two or three days now.”
“I think Mose Harrison is a man for me to meet!” Dick said to himself.
Then turning to the planter he asked:--
“What do you think of Hot Springs, so far? Rather a lively place, isn’t
it, where a prisoner in jail is serenaded every evening? There are more
cowboys and sombreros and spurs in the streets than I ever saw before.”
“It’s wonderful what a newspaper head Mr. Harding has!” he could not
help thinking. “It looked to me like a dry subject, coming down the
river into Arkansas to write letters. But the old man knew what he was
about. This place alone is worth making the journey for. It is full of
queer people from all over the Southwest, and it is sure to give me
some good stories. The situation of the town is a novelty itself, lying
here in a deep valley between two high mountains, the valley hardly
five hundred feet wide. Then the hot springs boiling out of one of
the mountains and the steaming water running off in a steaming creek
through the main street.”
The way good subjects were coming to him lifted a little weight from
Dick’s mind, for he had not felt altogether sure about his letters. He
had written two sets of very successful letters over his signature,
and so established a standard that he must maintain. If these articles
from the Southwest fell flat, the newspaper world would say: “Oh, it
was only a spurt. Sumner did some good things once, but he has written
himself out.” The subjects were too good, however; he had no fear now
of making a failure.
As he intended to make something of a stay in Hot Springs, to become
familiar with the place and its people, Dick soon began to look about
for a more retired place than the hotel. He found it in a large brick
and iron building called the Douglas and Johnson block, fronting upon
the main street. There were stores underneath, and up one flight of
broad iron stairs were large and comfortable rooms to let. Two of the
rooms were vacant, and Dick took one and the cotton planter the other.
Several good restaurants in the neighborhood were open at all hours.
On the second day after he was settled in his new quarters Dick took
a walk up the main street, past the stores and saloons and gambling
houses, to inspect a new quarter of the city. Immediately behind him
as he walked was a large, handsomely dressed man, so close that he
might easily have touched Dick’s back. The man was taking slightly
longer steps than Dick, and so was gaining upon him; and when they were
directly opposite the Arlington Hotel he stepped a little to one side,
intending to pass Dick.
Dick would have sprung forward in haste if he had been able to see even
five seconds into the future. But not having that faculty, and paying
no attention to the man who was almost by his side, he went quietly on.
Crash! There came the crack of a rifle, the whiz of a bullet within six
inches of Dick’s head, the crash of broken glass, and the man by his
side fell heavily against Dick and dropped to the pavement.
Instantly there was a rush of men from the neighboring stores, and the
prostrate man was picked up and carried into a drug store, Dick helping.
“It’s no use,” said the druggist after making a hasty examination. “The
bullet has gone through his brain, and he’s dead as a door-nail. What
he needs is a coroner, gentlemen; a doctor’s no use now.”
The murder caused very little excitement, but everybody in the city
knew what it meant, and everybody was willing to tell Dick all about
it. The murdered man was a gambler who a few days before had had an
altercation with another gambler named Tom Davis. Tom Davis had sworn
to have revenge, and to bring it about he had taken a room in the
Arlington Hotel--a front room--and stationed himself in it with a rifle
and waited patiently for the other man to pass. When the man passed on
the opposite side of the street he had fired and killed him, and then
disappeared, without stopping to inquire what damage might have been
done to Dick’s head, only six inches away.
“I suppose it’s lucky for me that Tom Davis is a dead shot!” Dick
reflected. “That bullet certainly was not a foot from my ear.”
That night he sat in his room writing, as he did every night, when he
heard a heavy thud, thud, thud on the iron stairs that made him pause
and listen.
“There must be a troop of cavalry coming upstairs!” he exclaimed.
Tramp, tramp! If they were men, there were many of them, and all in
heavy boots.
The sound came nearer and nearer; up the stairs, into the wide hall
floored with iron and glass, and stopped, as it seemed to Dick,
directly in front of his door. All was still for a moment, and he heard
a whispered consultation outside; then came a heavy knock upon the door.
Wondering what it could all mean, Dick stepped to the door and opened
it; and in a second he found himself looking into the barrel of a
cocked revolver.
It was the first time he had ever had a revolver pointed directly at
his head; and it was not six inches away. Before he had time to feel
alarmed he saw that the man who held it was in uniform, and that six
men who stood in line behind him with rifles in their hands were also
in uniform. They were policemen.
There was security in those blue uniforms; such security that Dick,
with the revolver still in his face, began to smile at the ludicrous
situation.
“You have the drop on me!” he exclaimed. “Here, take my watch and
pocketbook. It’s all I have.”
The man in front did not answer, but began to look past Dick into the
room, as though searching for some one.
“Walk in, gentlemen,” Dick said; “just keep your thumb on the hammer
of that pistol, will you? those things sometimes go off. Perhaps he’s
here, whoever you are looking for. If he is, I’ll be obliged to you if
you’ll take him out.”
He was so cool about it that the officer in advance, who proved to be
the chief of police, could not help smiling. He lowered his revolver
and stepped inside.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said; “but it is necessary to search
this building. I have reason to believe that Tom Davis, the gambler,
who murdered a man this afternoon, is in hiding in some of these rooms.”
The chief went on to ask Dick questions about the occupants of the
other rooms, all of which Dick answered as well as he could; and for
the next half-hour he heard the chief and his men tramping through the
halls and knocking at doors. It was a false alarm, however; the gambler
was not there.
Dick was destined to meet the chief of police a few nights later under
more pleasant circumstances. Stopping to take breath about midnight,
an hour when the editor of The Daily Horseshoe was reasonably sure
to be in his office, he stepped down into the next block to make the
acquaintance of Mr. Mose Harrison, the man who was serenaded every
evening in jail.
“I’m glad to meet you,” Mr. Harrison said with great cordiality when
Dick introduced himself. “I wish you had come in sooner. It will seem
natural to you to be in a newspaper office and see the emblems of
the profession about you;” and he waved his hand toward a rosette of
rifles, swords, bowie-knives, and revolvers fastened to the wall behind
his desk.
“We don’t have quite so much ornamentation in our New York offices,”
Dick laughed. “But perhaps you need them here more than we do.”
“Yes, we do!” was the reply. “But things ain’t what they used to be.
Why, I’ve seen the time-- Hold on though, I didn’t mean to be so
inhospitable. There’s a saloon right next door; come and have a smile.”
“Thank you; I never smile--not in that way,” Dick answered. And Mr.
Harrison proceeded to finish his sentence.
“I’ve seen the time when there was a man lookin’ for me in the next
block below, and another in the block above; and it was sure death if I
let ’em get the drop on me. And same to them--yes, hang it, Sumner, I
meant just as well by them. We all meant business. Good-evenin’, chief;
walk in and take a chair.”
The chief of police walked in while the editor spoke.
“Chief,” he went on, “this is Mr. Sumner of The New York Transport.
Sumner, Mr. Gardner, our chief of police.”
Dick and the chief both smiled as they looked at each other.
“I have had the pleasure of meeting the chief before,” Dick said. “He
brought six men and a revolver to my room to introduce him a night or
two ago.”
“Well, accidents will happen,” the chief laughed. “The joke was on me
that time, I’ll admit. There’s a saloon right next do’, gentlemen; will
you step out and take something?”
“Wait until the paper goes to press, chief,” Harrison said, “and I’ll
join you. Sumner don’t drink.”
The chief had an item to give about some police case, and he soon went
out.
“Hang it, Sumner!” Harrison exclaimed, “I’ve got to have six or eight
more paragraphs. I’ll put you in for one; you and your experience with
the police. But I want somebody to turn down. I wish you’d tell me who
else I can turn down to-night.”
“What do you mean by ‘turn down’?” Dick asked; “I don’t quite
understand you.”
“Oh, somebody to ‘go for,’” Mr. Harrison answered; “somebody to give a
black eye to. To say that the sheriff’s about to seize his property, or
that his son’s in jail in Chicago, or some pleasant little news like
that. If I don’t have a few such items, people will say the Horseshoe’s
growing dull.”
Dick protested that he was not well enough acquainted in Hot Springs
to give advice on so important a matter; and while he was speaking the
door opened and a short, chunky young man walked in.
“Well, what luck, Howell?” Harrison asked.
“Not a line,” the newcomer replied. “Everything’s too quiet.”
“That’s so,” said Harrison. “Everything’s too quiet to live. Come
here till I introduce you to another newspaper man, Howell. This is
Mr. Sumner, of The New York Transport. Our reporter, Mr. Sumner; Mr.
Howell, from Waco, Texas.”
Mr. Howell, of Waco, Texas, was delighted to meet a newspaper man from
New York, and said so. The honor so weighed upon him that in a minute
or two he suggested:--
“There’s a saloon right next do’, gentlemen. Will you take a little
walk?”
Once more Dick had to decline either to walk or smile. But Mr. Howell
was not to be put off so easily.
“You must find things pretty stupid down here,” he said, “after New
York. This town’s growin’ stupider every day. But if you’ll wait till
the paper goes to press, at three o’clock, I’ll take you to a neat
little dollar limit game up in the Burnt Rag. We have a game there
every night. It’ll make a night’s sport for you.”
“Much obliged,” Dick laughed, “but I have a night’s sport waiting for
me in my room. I have about two more columns of solid nonpareil to
write before breakfast time.”
As he walked back to his room Dick was in an unhappy frame of mind.
“I’ve read of such newspaper offices as that,” he said to himself, “but
I had no idea they really existed. The trouble is that when people
read about such a place, they imagine that all newspaper offices are
the same. If I only had Darling or Dr. Goode here to talk to Mose
Harrison and Mr. Howell, of Waco, Texas! And to see the revolvers and
bowie knives, and hear about the ‘turning down’ and ‘the saloon next
do’’! Darling would laugh at it; but, on the whole, I shouldn’t like
Dr. Goode to see it. He has such a high idea of the profession that it
would make him feel very sore.”
Dick’s days in Hot Springs were given to sight-seeing, and his nights
to writing, and when at the end of several weeks he started for Texas
and New Orleans, he had written a large number of letters. He had had
the satisfaction of seeing many of them in print, too; for the New York
papers came rapidly by rail, and he found that the letters were being
copied as widely as the others had been.
After a brief stay in the northeast part of Texas, that was not very
fertile in material, he went by rail to Shreveport and took passage on
the Red River boat Argosy for New Orleans. The boat was to start at
six o’clock in the evening; but she had a great quantity of cotton to
load, and the weather was so cold that it was hard to get negroes to do
the loading, so she was delayed till nearly nine. The worst part of the
waiting was that supper was not served till the boat started; but Dick
amused himself by watching his fellow-passengers. In one party there
were five or six young ladies and as many young gentlemen, very lively
young folks, and some of the ladies very pretty; but before the boat
started the party dwindled to three young ladies, the others having
come on board merely to see them off.
“Now if I had only had more experience with young ladies,” Dick said to
himself, “I’d manage somehow to make the acquaintance of those three.
They seem to be very nice ladies, and it would make the time pass
pleasantly.” Almost for the first time he regretted that his work had
made it impossible for him to enjoy ladies’ society as most young men
do. Indeed he had hardly thought of it before; but now he realized that
he was sadly lacking in experience as a gallant. “However,” he consoled
himself, “very likely I couldn’t manage to be introduced to them,
anyhow.”
What he desired was destined to be managed for him better than he could
have arranged it himself. Soon after the boat started, the clerk, who
knew his name because he had written it in the register, stepped up to
him and said:--
“There are three young ladies on board without any escort, Mr. Sumner;
very fine young ladies, daughters of a cotton planter down the river.
I should like to introduce you to them, so that you can escort them to
supper.”
Of course they were the very young ladies he had been desirous of
meeting; and he blessed the good old-fashioned custom of the southern
steamboats that makes it the duty of the clerk to see that all
unprotected ladies are provided with escorts to take them properly to
the table.
“It would be a long time, I’m afraid,” he said to himself, “before an
escort would be found for a lady on one of our Hudson River or Sound
boats.”
Dick was surprised at his success in making himself agreeable to his
new companions. If one of his articles had been reprinted by fifty
different papers, it would not have pleased him more than to find that
the young ladies enjoyed his company.
“But it’s only because I have a lot of amusing things to tell them,” he
modestly thought. “I’m glad they’re not the kind of young ladies who
would want to flirt. I can turn my hand to almost anything, but that’s
one of the things I certainly could not do.” He had not at that time
made a study of any young lady for use in his projected novel.
Somehow the first three days of the voyage, when the young ladies
were on board, passed very quickly and pleasantly; and the last three,
after they had landed at their father’s plantation, rather seemed to
drag. Perhaps it was because the scenery grew somewhat monotonous. Dick
helped the three ladies up the steep gangway at the plantation; and
when he returned to the boat and left them standing on the bluff, the
clerk said to him:--
“Now wave to them; wave your handkerchief. They’ll expect you to wave
good-by to them.”
Dick waved with a will, and they returned the compliment quite as
heartily. The boat swung around a bend, and the three pleasant young
ladies became only a memory.
When he arrived in New Orleans Dick had a self-conscious feeling that
troubled him at first. He felt that he had become somewhat countrified
in appearance; that people were looking at him; that he needed brushing
up. It was the natural result of spending so many weeks on the river
and among the mountains, and it soon wore off. Another trouble was that
he was running short of funds. So much travel had exhausted most of the
money that had been furnished him, and it was necessary to send for
more.
“It won’t do to run out of money here,” he thought, “where nobody knows
me. Of course I have only to send to the office for more, but there
might be some delay about its getting here.”
For economy’s sake he stayed only a day in the famous St. Charles
Hotel, and then moved into a furnished room in a comfortable
old-fashioned house facing Lafayette Square, two or three blocks up St.
Charles Street. This was a mistake that Dick would not have made a year
later on. As the correspondent of a great New York newspaper his credit
would have been good to any reasonable amount in a first-rate hotel
till his funds arrived; whereas the private landlady would need her
money, and would most likely exact it in advance; and in a restaurant
expected funds are not as good as cash in the pocket.
Though he knew that his money was sure to arrive, the depleted state
of his purse worried Dick, for he had only a few dollars left. On his
first day in New Orleans he wrote to the Transport office for a check
for three hundred dollars, and it would take, as he reckoned it, at
least five days to receive an answer--perhaps six.
“The letter might miscarry,” he said to himself a dozen times; “and if
it should, another week would be lost, and I have not enough for two
weeks. I should have sent for the check sooner.”
There were enough sights in New Orleans to occupy his time. The strange
cemeteries, with their brick graves built above ground; the French
quarter and French market; the old Spanish fort; the lake and its beach
and its Coney-Island-like attractions; the river front,--all these
things made material for letters. The steamer for Key West was to sail
on Thursday morning at eight o’clock, and Wednesday was the sixth day
from the date of his letter to the Transport; but no check had arrived.
There were two mail deliveries in St. Charles Street every day, one at
nine o’clock in the morning and the other at noon. The postman made
his nine o’clock visit, but there was no letter for Richard Sumner,
Esquire. He began to feel that he really had cause for anxiety; no
check, hardly any money, and his steamer to sail early the next morning.
When the time for the noon delivery came, Dick was sitting on a sunny
bench in Lafayette Square, directly opposite his house, where he could
watch the door, waiting impatiently for the arrival of the very last
mail that could bring him a check in time for the next day’s steamer.
He saw the postman walking rapidly up the street, ringing doorbells
and handing in letters. He saw him stop at the house next door to his
and hand in a letter there. He saw him go on a few steps and pause a
moment, then go on again, on past his house without ringing the bell!
Dick could hardly believe his eyes; hardly realize that there was no
possible chance of getting his check in time.
“Well,” he said to himself, “I’ve done my best to get money by mail,
and I’ve failed. Now we’ll see what the telegraph will do. I don’t
intend to lose that boat.”
As he got up from the bench to go to the telegraph office a hundred
factory bells and whistles were sounding for noon. He walked down St.
Charles Street to the main telegraph office, under the St. Charles
Hotel, and wrote his dispatch:--
Daily Transport, New York:--
No check received. Please telegraph me three hundred dollars
immediately. SUMNER.
He actually grudged the fifty cents for sending the dispatch, his money
was so low. But after sending it he walked back to his old seat in the
square. With all his tribulation he was thinking out the next article
he was to write; and he thought and thought, sometimes about the money
and sometimes about the article, till suddenly he clapped his hand down
upon his knee.
“There’s another complication!” he exclaimed. “They won’t pay a
telegraphic money order before nine in the morning, nor after five in
the afternoon. It’s almost certain that my money won’t get here before
five o’clock, and I’ll not be able to get it to-night. By the time that
I can get it in the morning my steamer will be gone!
“Now there’s a way out of every difficulty,” he continued, “and there’s
a way out of this. What I must do is go back to the telegraph office,
introduce myself to the manager, explain the case to him, and arrange
to get the money this evening whenever it arrives. I think that will do
it.”
For this purpose he walked back to the telegraph office and sent in his
card to the manager. He was shown into a handsome private office, where
he soon made known what he wanted.
“I suppose you have some papers that will identify you, Mr. Sumner,”
the manager said when Dick concluded; “letters in your pocket or
something of that sort?”
“Oh, yes, I have plenty of letters,” Dick answered as he drew out a
handful and showed them.
“That’s all right,” the manager said. “Your money is here, Mr. Sumner.
Just show these letters to the cashier, and he will pay it over to you.”
His money there! why, it was less than an hour since he had telegraphed
for it! But it was a fact nevertheless; and within three minutes he
had the three hundred dollars in his pocket, in good crisp notes, and
was walking back toward his old seat in the square. The ringing of the
bells and blowing of the whistles for one o’clock, just as he sat down,
reminded him that exactly an hour had passed since he first started for
the telegraph office; and now the money was in his pocket.
“That is almost worth making an article of,” he reflected; “sending
from New Orleans to New York for money and having it here within an
hour. An outsider would hardly believe it possible, but I can see
exactly how it was done. When my telegram reached New York it was sent
right up in the pneumatic tube that runs from the Western Union office
to the Transport office, so no time was lost in the delivery. The
office boy handed it at once to the city editor, and his reply to it
was something like this, written on one of the office noteheads:--
Western Union:--
Please send three hundred dollars immediately to Richard
Sumner, New Orleans, and charge to account of Daily Transport.
J. H. BROWN, _City Editor_.
“That went right down to the telegraph office in the pneumatic tube,
and the next minute they were telegraphing the manager here to pay me
three hundred dollars. And here’s the money in my pocket, and I take
to-morrow’s steamer for Key West.”
CHAPTER XIII.
DICK BEGINS TO WRITE A NOVEL.
“Come home,” was the order that Dick received in reply to his telegram
from Key West reporting himself there and asking for instructions.
He was very well satisfied with this, for various reasons. He was far
behind in his facts, although he had been writing, writing, as fast as
he could. While in Texas and on the Red River he had been writing still
about Hot Springs; and even in Key West he had not begun yet to do his
descriptions of New Orleans.
However, there was a weightier reason than this that made him desire to
go home. While on his travels the plot of a novel had somehow stolen
into his mind, and he had worked it out so far that he was anxious to
begin writing it.
“I certainly could not do anything toward putting it on paper while I
am traveling,” he said to himself. “My time is not my own now, anyhow,
but even if it were I should have no chance. I can’t help thinking
about it and working it out. The only way that I can ever write a novel
is to have the whole thing thoroughly in mind before I begin to write,
so that when I do write I shall know exactly what I am about.
“They say that novelists’ methods of work differ very much. Some men
begin to write with nothing but the main idea in their minds, and let
the thing develop as they go along. Those are the men who write and
rewrite, and cut and add and change, till at last there is hardly
anything left of the original. I know one celebrated writer who rewrote
a novel six times, and it was very bad when he finished it.
“That plan would not do for me. I must have everything perfectly mapped
out before I begin; so well in hand that I could write the last chapter
first, or the middle one, or do any scene or conversation without
reference to the rest. I don’t think it is because I am too lazy to
rewrite; more likely my newspaper training has taught me to gather all
my material up and sort it out before I pick up the pen.”
There was time to collect facts for several good articles in Key West
before he could start; for Key West is unique among cities. The most
southerly point in the United States, most of its inhabitants are
Cubans who work in the big cigar factories, and their ways of life are
distinctly Cuban. Then the isolated position of the place, on a tiny
island miles from the continent, makes it almost a land to itself, with
many strange customs not to be found elsewhere.
Dick found that he could return to New York either by the direct
steamer or by the Plant System boat to Tampa, and thence by rail up the
Atlantic Coast. He promptly chose the latter way, not only because it
was much faster, but also on account of the opportunity it gave him to
see more of the country.
“I cannot see too many places,” he reflected, “if I am going to write
novels; and I am certainly going to try. If I should have occasion to
write about Tampa or Jacksonville or Charleston or Richmond, it would
be necessary to know something about those places. This rail ride will
‘enlarge my field of action,’ as Darling would say.”
After a beautiful voyage up the smooth Gulf of Mexico the steamship
landed him in Tampa, and there he found a through train ready to carry
him to New York. For scores of miles through Florida the tracks ran
between orange groves; and as the trees were white with blossoms,
the air was perfumed with their delightful fragrance. Into Georgia
the train carried him, then across South Carolina, North Carolina,
Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, into Pennsylvania, and at last across New
Jersey to Jersey City. Washington was a sore temptation to him to stop,
for he felt that he ought to become familiar with the National Capital.
But none knew better than Dick that a newspaper’s order to “come home”
does not mean come next week, or the day after to-morrow, but come at
once. There might be work of the utmost importance waiting for him.
It was seven o’clock in the evening when the train arrived in Jersey
City, and Dick went directly to the Transport office to report his
return.
“Darling will be glad to see me back, anyhow,” he said to himself as he
sprang merrily up the stairs; “so will Dr. Goode. The doctor always has
a warm welcome for a fellow who’s been away on a journey. Three whole
months since I’ve seen any of the boys! There’ll be some new faces
among the reporters, I suppose. It’s funny to think that I’m one of the
‘old’ men now!”
He spoke to the office boys as he entered the big room, and hurried up
to the front to see Dr. Goode and the managing editor and the night
city editor and Darling. Jack Randall and Lawrence and two or three
others tried to stop him as he passed, but he waved his hand to them
and went on.
Something looked unfamiliar at the desks by the front windows. It took
him a second or two to grasp the situation and see that Darling was
sitting at the managing editor’s desk, and that Mr. Brown, the city
editor, was in Dr. Goode’s chair.
“Hello, Darling, old chap!” he exclaimed, putting out his hand; “what
are you doing here?”
“Be a little more respectful, if you please, in addressing your
managing editor!” Darling answered. “I can’t have reporters and
correspondents calling me ‘old chap’ in the office.” There was a sly
twinkle in Darling’s eye as he said it; and he gave Dick’s hand a
tremendous wrench.
“Managing editor!” Dick repeated. “You don’t say that you’re”--
“Oh, yes, I do,” Darling interrupted. “These little things happen
sometimes. The managing editor that was has gone to take charge of a
paper in Minneapolis, and I have been put in his place.”
“Shake again!” Dick exclaimed. “You the managing editor! Why that makes
you my boss, and you might send me out to do a fire to-night, if you
wanted to; but you’d better not. But where is the doctor? What is Mr.
Brown doing at his desk?”
Darling turned towards the papers in front of him and looked at them
hard.
“There is bad news as well as good, Dick,” he replied after a moment’s
pause. “Dear, old doctor! He”--
“What! he’s not sick, is he?” Dick interrupted. But the moisture in
Darling’s eyes was more eloquent than words. “O Darling! Oh, no, old
chap, you don’t mean it? He’s not”--
Darling sadly shook his head and fumbled among his papers. “A week ago
yesterday, Dick, we took him over to Greenwood. His poor old eyes will
never give him any more trouble in this world. All these things have
happened within a few days, and we wrote you about them; but I suppose
you left Key West before the letters arrived.”
Dick turned away without another word, for he would not trust his
voice in that cruel moment. Sadly he shook hands with Mr. Brown, then
looking toward Darling again, he said almost in a whisper:
“There is nothing for me to do to-night; I need not stay here. I--I
must go home. I will be up when you come home, Darling.”
As he walked quickly out of the big room Dick saw several new men, much
such young reporters as he once was, nudge each other and look at him.
He knew what that meant, for he had noticed it before. The youngsters
were saying to one another, “See that fellow! that’s Richard Sumner,
the man who’s been writing those letters from Mexico and the Southwest!”
Once he had been looking at the older men in the same admiring way; but
now that his own time had come it could not even make him smile. For
who was to tell him when he did good work, and point out weaknesses
in his style, or comfort him in trouble, or advise him, or do him a
thousand little kindnesses, with Dr. Goode lying over in Greenwood?
There was a warm welcome for him in the flat, and he did his best to
conceal his grief over Dr. Goode behind his satisfaction at Darling’s
promotion. That he could hardly realize any more than he could fully
realize that he should see his good friend no more.
“It’s too astonishing for a man to grasp so suddenly,” he said to his
mother and Florrie after the first volley of hugs and kisses. “Darling
is exactly the man for the place; exactly. But there were four or five
people between him and the managing editorship. However, they do those
things sometimes, as I have learned by experience.”
“You’ll have to mind your p’s and q’s now, Mr. Richard Sumner,” Florrie
laughed. “If you don’t do exactly as I want you to about everything,
I’ll have Harry reduce your salary or put you back at city work. I’ll
see that he keeps you busy.”
“I don’t think he can keep me any busier than I always am,” Dick,
retorted. “I’ve hardly had a minute to myself since I began work on
the Transport. But I want to begin some work for myself now, and I’m
remarkably glad that Darling is the man I’ll have to negotiate with.”
There was time to do at least part of an article between the supper and
the hour for Darling’s arrival, and Dick shut himself up and fell to
work as naturally as if he had not been away.
“Hello!” he exclaimed when he came to a short pause somewhere after
midnight. “I’d forgotten that I was in New York. I’ve been so engrossed
with writing about New Orleans and the levee and the Spanish fort and
St. Charles Street, that I seemed to be down there among the Creoles.”
He was always pleased when he found himself carried away with his
subject in this way; so completely saturated with it that he became
oblivious to his real surroundings. He liked to laugh with his funny
characters, and sometimes to drop a stray tear with the unfortunate
ones--when he was entirely alone.
When Darling came in, a little later now than before, because he had
to look over an early copy of the paper before leaving the office and
sometimes make a second edition, Dick was ready to join him in the
late supper. They had a long talk about Dr. Goode and everything that
happened in the office.
“I intended to have a confab with the managing editor as soon as I
got back, Darling,” Dick said after he had heard all the news; “but I
didn’t think my talk would be with you. You know what we were saying
some time ago about my writing--writing a novel. I have been reading as
much as I could while I was away, and I have the plot of a good story
in my mind. Pretty well worked up, too, so that when I begin to write
it I can go straight ahead.
“Now what I am most in need of is time to write. I have about a week’s
work to finish up the letters of my last trip, and of course I will
do that first. After that I want to get some time to myself, if I can
manage it. Mother was so economical while I was away that she has saved
more than half of my salary; and that with what I had saved before will
bring my fund up to nearly a thousand dollars in the bank. I can do
the actual writing of a novel in three months; and I feel as if I could
afford to ask for that much vacation from the office, without salary of
course. Now is the time for me to strike while my name is in the papers
so much.”
“You are quite right to strike while the iron is hot,” Darling replied.
“The kind of work you are doing now will not last always, as I told you
before; it never does with any man. But I think you can do better than
ask for a long vacation. I have never known a man to be given a long
vacation for such a purpose, and I should not like to begin with you in
making such a break. They all know how we stand toward each other, and
they would accuse me of favoritism at once if I did it. Why not go on
space, Dick?”
“On space?” Dick repeated. “I don’t see how that would help me any.”
“It would help me to help you,” Darling replied; “and of course I want
to help you as much as I can, though on the other hand I must do what
is best for the office. You wouldn’t ask me to show you favors that I
would not show to another man in your place.”
“Certainly not!” Dick exclaimed. “I wouldn’t accept them.”
“You can go on space as a special man, and I shall feel warranted in
paying you fifteen dollars a column. Of course in that case your salary
will stop, and you will be paid only for what you write, or the time
you are actually busy. That will leave you master of your own time to a
great extent. You might average perhaps three days a week for the paper
and three for yourself, and at that rate you could finish your novel in
six months. You know some of the space men make a great deal of money.
I think that will be better for you than to stop work entirely for
three months; and it will certainly be better for the office, because
we can call upon you whenever we need you.”
“I don’t know but you’re right about that, Darling,” Dick answered
after a little reflection. “It will seem strange at first not to have
the salary coming in regularly; but, then, three columns a week will
more than make up for it, and I think I ought to average that much.”
Dick had a great deal to think about when he went to bed an hour or two
before the sun rose. But the desire to write his novel was stronger
in his mind than anything else, except his grief over the loss of Dr.
Goode. He felt that his plot was a good one--original and bright. His
newspaper letters had met with great success; why should his novel not
do as well?
For the next week he toiled away, every afternoon and part of the
night, till his letters were finished. When the last one was done he
laid down his pen with some regret.
“Now for space work,” he said to himself, “and what I hope will be the
best work I have done yet. The novel is so thoroughly laid out that I
have nothing to do but write it. It may not go at all; it may fall flat
or be laughed at; but I am going to do my best with it. If I can write
one novel that will go, I can write more.”
He fell to work at it at once, stopping only when Darling gave him
special work to do for the office. At the end of a fortnight Darling
asked him how the novel was coming on.
“Oh, I’m learning!” he laughed. “I know more about novel-writing now
than I did two weeks ago, at any rate. Didn’t I tell you that I had
it all so well laid out in my mind that I had only to do the actual
writing? Well, I really believed that, which just shows how little I
knew about the trade. Why, Darling, I wrote the opening sentences a
dozen times before I got them to suit me! After the first two chapters
were done I saw how very much the whole opening scheme might be
improved, so I threw them away and began over again. I’m on my fifth
chapter now, but there’s hardly a line that has not been written two or
three times over.”
“I’m glad of that,” Darling said; “nothing but hard pulling will
produce good work. How much do you do every day?”
“Well, after I go down to the office to see whether I’m needed, I
do a thousand words in the afternoon. That is my regular afternoon’s
work. Then after dinner, with the whole night before me, I hope for two
thousand words more. You know I am a very rapid penman. But I don’t
push myself at night. If I’m not in the mood, I read for an hour or
two. That generally puts me in proper trim.”
“What do you read? Shakespeare?”
“No,” Dick replied; “never while I’m writing. He is a capital stimulant
at other times, but in the midst of writing I find he confuses me.
His heroic style is so totally different from the modern style
that there must be an interval between. No; at those times I want
a language nearer to the language I use myself, and I find it in
Thackeray--usually in Vanity Fair.”
“I have heard other writers say the same thing,” Darling acquiesced.
“A writer unconsciously imitates to some extent the style he has just
been reading. At least, so I understand; a managing editor, you know,
is a complicated machine for watching the news of the world and getting
it all into his own paper. He cannot be expected to be an expert in
literary style.”
“He is valuable as a signer of reporters’ checks,” Dick laughed;
“and when a man runs short of money in a distant city he is the most
important person in the world.”
The interruptions in the novel-writing were always provoking, but they
could not be avoided. Sometimes Dick was kept away for days at a time,
and on one occasion for a whole week. “Never mind, I’m fresh for a new
start,” he said to himself at such times, and took up the thread where
he had laid it down. Mrs. Sumner and Florrie took great pains to keep
the flat quiet while he was at work, for somehow, though he could write
newspaper articles with the whole office talking around him, the least
noise disturbed him when he was at work on his novel.
“Sh!” he heard one little girl say to another in the hall one day as
they passed the door of his flat; “don’t talk so loud, there’s a man
writing a book in there!” But he could not even smile just then, for he
was trying to work his way through a difficult situation.
Almost the only newspaper work that Dick really enjoyed while he was
engaged upon the novel came to him about the time that he had reached
the twelfth chapter; and perhaps the way that came to him had something
to do with his enjoyment of it. When he went into the office Darling
handed him a memorandum, and with the memorandum a brief note from the
editor-in-chief, not intended for Dick’s eyes.
“Send the best writer you have on this job,” the note said; “get Sumner
if possible.”
“This job” was to write a complete description of the working of the
New York Fire Department, and to do it properly Dick must go to an
engine-house and live there like a fireman till the engine was called
out to at least one fire; and then go out with it and help handle the
hose. To be allowed to do this he must go first to the department
headquarters in Mercer Street and get a permit.
“That is very nice in the old man to call me the best writer in the
office,” he said to Darling. “I only hope the publishers will think so
when I send them my novel.” He said nothing about the note to any one
else, except his mother and Florrie, but he thought about it a great
deal. “The best writer in the office! And the Transport is everywhere
admitted to be the best written newspaper in America!”
He could not help feeling elated over such a compliment as he rode up
to Mercer Street. “Here, Dick!” he kept saying to himself; “Dick, wash
the rollers!” “Dick, come here!” and then by contrast, “Send the best
writer in the office; get Sumner if possible.” But experience had given
a veneering to his exterior, and he would not for any money have let
his companions know that he gave the note a second thought.
“I think we had better send you down to Number Four in Liberty Street,”
the chief of the fire department said when Dick made known his mission.
“There are a great many fires in that district, and Number Four is the
headquarters of the chief of the First Battalion. He can give you the
information you require.”
The chief wrote out an order to the foreman of Number Four, directing
him to “allow Mr. Richard Sumner to remain in the engine-house for
forty-eight hours, or longer if he desires; give him all possible
information and allow him to accompany the apparatus to fires.” It was
such an order as only the representative of a first-rate newspaper
could have obtained.
When Dick arrived at the Number Four engine-house in Liberty Street,
opposite the site of the old postoffice, next morning, he was politely
received by the foreman of the company, and by the chief of the First
Battalion. He saw on the ground floor of the building a beautiful fire
engine, resplendent with polished brass, and by its side the tender,
with its reel of hose. At the rear were three stalls with fine large
horses in them; and near the centre was a smooth pole running up to the
upper stories of the building through hatchways cut in the floors.
“So you are going to be a fireman for a few days, are you?” the
battalion chief asked as he read Dick’s order. “Well, you will find it
exciting work if we happen to have a good fire. And you’ll have to step
around pretty fast, to go out with the apparatus. Come upstairs with
me and I will show you first where the men live.”
Dick and the chief were crossing the floor of the big room toward the
stairway when there came a terrible clatter.
“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a big gong almost over their heads.
“Tap-tap-tap!” rang a smaller gong in the rear by the horses.
Instantly there was a rush of men and horses across the floor toward
the engine and tender.
“Look out! Dodge the horses!” the chief shouted; and at the same moment
he seized Dick by the arm and dragged him to the foot of the stairs,
out of the way.
It was none too soon either; for the next second the three powerful
horses dashed past like the wind and took their places, one on either
side of the pole of the engine and the third between the shafts of the
tender. The harness lay ready on their backs, and Dick noticed that men
were already at their stations to snap the springs that attached the
horses to the apparatus. But what a rush it was! In another second the
driver was in his seat in the front of the engine, and the engineer and
his assistant were on a platform at the rear. A driver and six firemen
were on the tender, and each driver had the reins in his hands, ready
for a dash. One man stood by the big folding doors in front, his hand
on the latch, ready to throw them open. Every man was in uniform, and
every man knew just where to go. Dick took it all in, though the whole
thing took less than ten seconds.
“Tap-tap!” said both bells again; and the drivers jumped down from
their seats, the horses were unfastened and trotted back to their
stalls; it was all over.
“What does that mean?” Dick asked. “If there is a fire, why doesn’t the
engine go?”
“Because it was not one of our numbers,” the chief explained. “It was
a genuine alarm of fire, but not in our district. Of course every
engine in the city does not go to every fire; each engine goes only to
the fires in its own district, and we know where the fire is by the
number of taps. But every engine in the city is manned and made ready
to go out whenever an alarm comes. You see we cannot tell when the bell
begins to tap whether it is going to be one of our numbers or not. For
instance, the gong just struck three and two--thirty-two. That station
is away up in Harlem, and we could hardly reach it in an hour. But the
gong might have gone on and added four to the thirty-two, making 324.
That would have been one of our stations, and we would have gone out.
You see we were all ready on the first tap for whatever might happen.”
“Well!” Dick exclaimed, “that is a very complete system. But what I
don’t understand is how the horses got out here so fast. I didn’t see
anybody touch them.”
“No!” the chief laughed; “no one touched them. But I shall have to
begin back at the fire itself to make that clear to you. For an easy
example, we will suppose that a fire is discovered in the Astor House,
and that somebody runs out and pulls the handle in the nearest alarm
box, which is at Vesey Street and Broadway. The number of that box
is 23, and the pulling of the handle immediately telegraphs ‘23’ to
the fire headquarters in Mercer Street. A clerk sits there by the
instrument, with a cabinet in front of him full of tiny drawers, each
drawer containing a little brass disk notched in the side to correspond
with the numbers. He takes out disk number 23 and drops it into a slot
prepared for it in another instrument, and presses a button. Quick as a
wink ‘23’ is telegraphed to every engine-house in the city.
“Now we come to the horses,” he continued. “That little flash of
electricity does a great deal of work. It not only taps the number on
our big gong, but at the same time it releases a weight which drops and
pulls back the bolts that fasten the horses in their stalls, and rings
a smaller gong over their heads. They are so used to the business that
the instant they hear the gong they know they are free, and they start
on a run for their places in front of the engine and tender. They know
where to go and what to do as well as the men.”
“I like to see the horses best of all!” Dick exclaimed
enthusiastically. “What noble fellows they are! But the whole thing is
very complete.”
“Oh, that is only a beginning,” the chief said. “Come upstairs now till
I show you where we live. You see this pole running up? It goes all the
way to the roof, and is for the men to slide down when they are in a
hurry. If they happen to be up above when an alarm comes, they don’t
think of using the stairs but slide down the pole. It is smooth and
perfectly safe. That’s what you will have to do if you want to catch
the engine at night. You saw how quickly everything is done. We go out
of the door in ten or eleven seconds after the first tap of the bell,
day or night, and you’d never catch us if you waited for the stairs. If
you get there in time, jump right up on the ash-box with the engineer
and fireman at the rear of the engine. We can’t wait for you, you know.”
Dick looked critically at the slippery pole and the distance to the
ground floor.
“I’ll be there,” he said confidently. “I can go down that pole as fast
as anybody.”
“Now here is where the men sleep,” the chief went on; “here in the
third story. Each man has his little iron bed and”--
“Tap-tap!” said the great gong and a smaller one up in the
sleeping-room.
Dick did not wait for the third tap. He knew that the engine might be
out of the house in ten seconds, and it was his duty to catch it.
He sprang for the pole, threw his arms around it, and slid down to the
ground floor as if he had been shot out of a cannon. In a fraction of a
second more he was in his place on the ash-box of the engine.
But there was none of the commotion below that he had expected to see.
Instead, there came a clapping of hands and some laughter and shouts
of,--
“Bravo, reporter! you’re on time!”
“Good for the newspaper man!”
“The Transport never gets left, does it?”
“You’ll do for a fireman,” said the foreman, trying hard not to laugh;
“but that bell was only the twelve o’clock time signal. We don’t go out
for that.”
CHAPTER XIV.
A NIGHT RIDE ON A FIRE ENGINE.
The comfort of Dick’s stay in the engine-house depended very largely
upon how he took this laughter at his expense, and he was shrewd enough
to know it. He had mistaken the noontime signal, when the correct city
time is sent to every engine-house for a fire alarm, and the fun-loving
firemen could not lose such a good chance to laugh at him.
There was no danger, though, that Dick would lose his temper, and so
make himself the butt of countless other jokes. He enjoyed his mistake
as much as any of them and laughed with the rest, and so began a
pleasant acquaintance with the men that was an advantage to him in a
business way, for they all had good stories to tell.
“Every house ought to have a pole like that,” he laughed; “it’s ever so
much easier than coming downstairs.”
Returning to the third story, he went about with the chief to see the
men’s sleeping-room and the big sitting-room on the second floor, where
they amuse themselves with checkers, chess, dominoes, and newspapers
and magazines.
“A fireman is always on duty, you know,” the chief explained. “Only
one or two men go out to their meals at a time, so we are never left
short-handed. At any moment a bad fire may break out, and we must be
ready. For a big fire we have what we call second and third alarms. At
a first alarm only four engines go to a fire. If I see when I reach the
spot that it is likely to be a bad fire, I send in a second alarm, and
that brings four more engines. If it is very dangerous, I send also a
third alarm, and that calls four more; twelve in all. Besides these
there is what we call the general alarm, 666, which calls every engine
in the city--more than a hundred of them. But I hope we will never have
occasion to use that.”
“Well, I’m sure to see how you work at a fire,” Dick said, “as I am to
stay till I have a chance to go out with you.”
“You might possibly have to wait a day or two,” the chief answered;
“but often we go out three or four times in a day and night.”
When Dick went downstairs again he discovered on one side of the big
room a dial telegraph instrument with which the foreman communicated
with headquarters; and on the slate that hung by it he read this
message, which evidently had just been sent:--
“Richard Sumner has presented an order to remain here and accompany
apparatus to fires. Is it genuine?”
“Ah, ha!” he laughed; “they’re not going to be caught napping with any
forged order. I think it’s the most perfectly organized system I ever
saw.”
“How do you get up steam so fast in the boiler?” he asked the foreman.
“Of course you must be ready for work when you reach a fire.”
“I’ll show you,” the foreman replied. “To begin with, the boiler of the
engine has two hundred and sixty flues, and that gives great heating
surface. Then you see this pipe that comes up through the floor and
fits over a corresponding pipe at the back of the engine? When the
engine is backed in, the two pipes run together, and when it goes out
they separate and automatic valves close them up.
“Well, that pipe runs down into the cellar and connects with a furnace
there in which a fire is always kept burning. The hot water runs up
into the boiler, so, as you will easily see, the water in the boiler is
always hot. That is a great help in making steam quickly. The furnace
alone gives heat enough to keep five pounds of steam pressure always on
the boiler.
“Then we burn English cannel coal, at twenty dollars a ton, because
it is full of oil and burns rapidly. The engine’s furnace is piled
full of combustible wood soaked in oil, with a layer of cannel coal
on top--always ready to start a quick fire. The engineer has a little
torch made of tow fastened to a bit of wood, with a fusee stuck in the
end. The fusee will not blow out in the hardest wind, and the instant
the engine goes out the door the engineer strikes it against the wheel
and touches off his fire. Inside of two minutes he has a hundred pounds
of steam on.”
At that moment the battalion chief joined them.
“We do everything,” he said, “on the principle that a minute’s work at
the beginning of a fire is worth more than an hour’s work after it has
gained headway. We must be on hand quickly; and, as you see, we don’t
waste much time.”
Throughout the afternoon and early evening the engine was manned five
or six times, and every time Dick was promptly in his place; but it did
not go out. When bedtime came, between nine and ten o’clock, the chief
gave him some final instructions.
“And you must mind what I tell you,” he said, “or you’ll not get to the
fire, if there is one.”
“I am used to obeying orders,” Dick replied.
“Very well then,” said the chief, “here is order number one. You see
that brass handle around the back of the boiler? Hang on to that with
both hands, for your life depends on it. At night when the streets are
clean we go on a dead run, and turning the corners will throw you off
your feet.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” said Dick.
“Order number two. Keep your eye on the horses. If a horse falls, jump
for your life; for the tender will be right behind you, and it will be
on top of you and crush you in a second.”
“Order number three. Here is a fireman’s hat for you and an old coat.
See, I hang them on the end of the brass handle, near where you will
stand. You see every man has his hat and an old coat hung by his place
on the engine or tender. We don’t wear uniform at night, except the
hat. These are all hung up ready for work in case we go out. Now come
up stairs till I put you to bed properly.”
“Here is your bed,” he continued when they were in the third-story
room, “and here is a pair of rubber boots I can lend you. Take off your
shoes and put these on; you’d never get into those shoes in time.”
“Am I to sleep in rubber boots?” Dick asked with a laugh.
“No; but put them on. That’s right. Now stuff the ends of your
trowsers into the tops of the boots. So. Now, then, strip down your
trowsers till the top part is all inside out, and pull off both boots
and trowsers, leaving the ends of the trowsers still sticking in the
boot-tops.
“That’s it; you’re doing famously. Now we stand the boots here by the
side of the bed, with the trowsers skinned down partly over their legs,
leaving a free passageway for a foot into each boot-leg. There! now
you’ve gone to bed like a fireman.
“Do you see the reason for all this?” the chief asked. “When the tap of
the bell wakes you, you spring out of bed, and down go your feet right
into the boots. With the same movement you are inside your trowsers
also, and you pull the trowsers up as you run to the pole. The hat
and coat, being already on the engine, you put on whenever you get a
chance. That is our secret of quick dressing. It is these little things
that help us get the engine out of the house in ten seconds from the
tap of the bell.
“Now one more thing,” he continued. “When you slide down the pole and
land at the bottom, don’t stand there to look at the scenery but get
out of the way. The man behind you will be right on top of you if you
don’t move fast.”
Dick found it hard work to go to sleep with the prospect of that
dreadful gong ringing at any moment; but at length he dropped off; and
when he awoke he did not have to collect his thoughts, for the gong was
saying,--
“Tap-tap!”
He had never put on boots and trowsers in a second and a half before,
but he did it that time. He was not the last man at the pole, either;
there were two or three behind him. He remembered the danger at the
foot of the pole and sprang to his place on the engine. The engineer
and his assistant were already there; the horses were in place; the
driver was in his seat with the reins in his hands. The man stood by
the big doors, ready to throw them open.
“Tap-tap!” the gong had already struck, and somebody on the tender had
called out “Two!”
“Tap-tap-tap-tap!” said the gong.
“Four!” said the voice.
Two-four. Not one of Number Four’s alarms yet.
“Tap-tap!” said the gong.
“Two-four-two,” said the voice; but long before the words were finished
the big doors flew open and out went the company with a rush; engine
first, tender following. Out with a bound across the floor; with a
heavy holding in as the engine swung into the street; with a mad,
whirlwind dash down Liberty Street.
There was a whip in the socket, but the driver did not take it out. The
horses were wild with excitement.
“Hi! hi! hi! hi!” the driver shouted; for the street was clear and
he wanted their top speed. They seemed to Dick to be entirely beyond
control already. “Hi! hi!” On they flew, faster and faster every moment.
Thick black smoke was pouring out of the funnel, and the tender was
right behind. Dick kept his eye on the horses, remembering his orders.
He breathed nothing but smoke and cinders, but no matter.
[Illustration: ON THEY FLEW, FASTER AND FASTER EVERY MOMENT.]
Excitement? Take all the horse races that ever were run, all the
boat races that ever were rowed, all the Roman gladiatorial combats
tossed in a heap; mix in a thousand bull fights and a year’s railroad
accidents, a century of Presidential elections and a hundred wars in
the East,--and you get a faint idea of the flash and fury of a night
ride on a fire engine through the streets of New York. Dick felt the
blood pumping in his veins.
“Hold fast!” the engineer shouted. And as the engine swung into Pearl
Street at a terrific gait Dick’s feet flew out and nothing but his grip
upon the brass bar saved him.
“Where is it?” he shouted to the engineer; no ordinary tone could have
been heard in that din.
“Pearl above Fulton,” was the answer.
How cool the engineer was! and all the firemen, for that matter. This
man was calmly testing his watercocks, while his assistant oiled the
machinery. The steam-gauge stood at one hundred and five.
“Hi! hi! hi!” There was the fire bursting from the fourth-story windows
of an old-fashioned brick warehouse, almost beside them; but there was
no let-up in the speed till the last moment. Then the engine stopped
“all at once,” as Dick said to himself; and the tender stopped close by
a fire hydrant, and some of the men began to unwind part of the fifteen
lengths, seven hundred and fifty feet, of hose it carried.
Number Four was the first engine on the spot, being nearest the fire;
and even in his excitement Dick could not help but admire the beautiful
system with which everything was done. The foreman of the first
company to arrive was in charge of the fire till the battalion chief
arrived in his wagon; and the battalion chief was in command till the
chief of the whole department came.
But wonderfully few orders were given, because every man knew just
what to do and did it. A pipe was run from the hydrant to the engine,
and the hose was attached to the engine’s discharge pipe. Four men
meanwhile were throwing their weight against the steel doors of the
building; for the warehouse was provided with outer doors and shutters
of steel.
But the doors would not yield, and out came the axes from the tender.
Crash! crash! Ah, how those big axes cut through the steel! In a few
seconds the doors were cut away as if they had been made of pasteboard.
“Man the pipe!”
Dick had not been told what his duties were to be at an actual fire.
But his blood was up; he was bound to do something, and seeing four
men enter the doorway with the line of hose, he sprang forward and
joined them in a scramble up the steep wooden stairways of the burning
building.
As he passed through the doorway a long hook-and-ladder truck came
dashing down Pearl Street.
Up they went with a rush to the top story, dragging the hose with
them. There was hardly time to take a long breath before a stream of
water was playing upon the fire. Through the windows Dick saw the
ladders from the long truck, and in a minute more firemen of another
company were cutting a hole through the roof and throwing in their own
stream of water. The smoke was blinding, but the fire was soon under
control.
When the order was given to “shut off Number Four,” Dick returned to
the street, where he found the scene greatly changed. Hundreds of
people had gathered, and the police had formed the “fire lines” to keep
them back out of danger. Several more engines were in sight, and three
long extension ladders reached the top of the building. Besides, there
was a big wagon that he recognized as the property of the fire patrol;
a wagon filled with rubber blankets, which the men spread over the
goods in the lower stories to protect them from damage by water.
All these things were done so rapidly that Dick was bewildered. The
time was not measured by minutes but by seconds. From the time of the
first tap on the gong till Number Four reached the burning building,
less than two hundred seconds passed. Then in fifty seconds more the
first stream of water was playing upon the fire.
“I saw you going up with the hose,” the battalion chief said when they
returned to the engine-house. “So you have had some experience as a
fireman. Now the men go to work and clean the engine and make ready for
another alarm. We may have another call like that at any moment--or a
much worse one.”
Dick concluded that he had swallowed enough smoke and cinders to give
him a clear idea of fire department work; “but I shall stick it out
through the night,” he said. “I belong to the company at present; and
if the engine goes out again, I go with her.”
There were no more calls that took the engine out that night, and when
he went home in time for breakfast he knew that he had material for one
of his best articles. But writing it occupied the whole day, and the
novel had to stand.
“Now I hope they’ll let me have a week without any more interruptions,”
he said to himself next day when he took up a handful of his latest
pages and read them over to start in the right vein. “I am making as
much money as I did on salary, but I should rather lose a little money
than be interrupted so often. If I could just have a month to myself,
I’d soon finish the book.”
His wish was not quite gratified, but almost. He had days at a time to
go on with his work, and the interruptions were brief. Steadily the
heap of manuscript grew, and nearer and nearer the end approached.
“Now, Dick, you must stop and rest,” Mrs. Sumner said to him one day,
entering the parlor when he had accidentally left the door unlocked.
They all laughed at his habit of locking the door, Dick as well as the
rest. “But it makes me feel so much more secure. I don’t like to feel
that anybody can suddenly walk in and bother me,” he said.
“You must stop and rest,” Mrs. Sumner said. “You’ve been writing and
writing and writing till you’re as pale as a ghost, and I’m sure you
don’t eat anything. Do just look at that pile of pages you’ve written!
I believe it grows an inch or two thicker every day, Dick.”
“Give me a week more, mother,” he replied, “and I’ll take all the rest
you like. Just one week more, and the great book will be finished. I
don’t know how it’s going to turn out, whether it will go or not; but
it will be a relief to have it finished, at any rate.”
“Go!” his mother exclaimed; “what’s the use of talking that way, Dick?
Of course it will go. Everything you’ve ever written, almost, has gone,
and why shouldn’t this? The best publisher in the land will be only too
glad to get it, with your name at the top.”
“Oh, I suppose they’d make a grand scramble for it if they knew
anything about it!” Dick laughed. “They’d be rushing up here with
checks and greenbacks till I’d have to keep a clerk to count them. But
seriously, mother,”--and he got up and put his arm lovingly around his
mother’s waist,--“do you know why I am so anxious to write a successful
novel?”
“Why, to make you rich and famous, I suppose,” Mrs. Sumner answered,
looking proudly up into his face.
“I want to make some money for my sweetheart, mother dear,” Dick said.
“And you are the only sweetheart I ever had or ever expect to have.
Some day Florrie will be leaving us, and she and Darling will have a
house of their own in the city. Then if I have the money and don’t
have to be at the office every day, my little sweetheart and I can
have a snug little cottage out of town somewhere (in Russellville, for
instance), with a lawn in front and a garden behind, and honeysuckle
climbing over the piazza. Then I can write, write, write, all day, as
you put it. I don’t really believe you like living in a flat any better
than I do, little sweetheart.”
“O Dick!” His mother’s head was on his shoulder now, and her voice was
choked with tears. “I’ve never liked it as well as the old house, but
I wouldn’t have said so for the world. But to think of going back to
Russellville and attending my own church again! It’s never seemed like
home in these big city churches, Dick; and I do so like to have a yard
to walk about in. And that’s what my boy has been working so hard for.
O Dick, Dick, what a good son you are! But you’re not growing tired of
newspaper work, are you, Dick?”
“Tired of it!” Dick exclaimed; “why it’s meat and drink to me, mother.
I think I should wilt and wither if I didn’t do some reporting. But if
I can do it occasionally, and at the same time be able to write and
sell novels, you see how nicely everything will go with us. I may be
making a mistake; nobody may like my book.”
“Don’t talk that way, Dick,” his mother said. “You know that everybody
will like it. And I’m afraid you are nearer right than you imagine
about Florrie. I’m afraid that she and Darling will soon be leaving us.”
“All the more haste then for the novel,” Dick laughed. “Let me have
another hour at it this afternoon, and then I’ll take a rest till after
supper.”
Day and night, almost, he continued to struggle with the book; for it
was nothing less than a struggle. To write the story was comparatively
easy; if it had been only a long story, he would have finished it
quickly enough. But a novel is more than a long story. He must develop
the characters of his heroes and heroines, and develop them in such a
way that every incident and every conversation advanced the plot.
When at length it was finished he began to have more doubts about it
than he had felt while he was actually at work. Somehow the bright
points that he had had in mind did not appear so bright when he saw
them on paper. Some of the best of them he had omitted entirely; they
were clear enough in his mind, but they did not get into the manuscript.
“I don’t quite know what to make of it, Darling, now it’s done,” he
said; and Darling noticed a shade of worry in his face. “I can’t tell
for the life of me whether it is good for anything or not.”
“Of course you can’t,” Darling answered. “No writer can form a just
opinion of his own work while it is fresh in his mind. He knows what he
intended to do and say, but whether he really has said and done those
things on paper is beyond his comprehension till the thing cools off. I
don’t pretend to be much of a writer myself, but I am acquainted with
some famous authors and that is what they tell me. The only way to
judge fairly of your own manuscript is to bury it in the bottom of a
deep trunk for a year or two, till you have forgotten all about it. By
that time the characters and the incidents are all new to you, and you
can see the weak points and strengthen them.”
“Ah, if I only could do that!” Dick exclaimed. “But that is possible
only for the millionaires who write for fun or fame. A man who writes
for money cannot afford to do it--at least, not at the start. You
see I have no hesitation in saying that I write for money. Other men
use their brains in great commercial enterprises for money; you use
yours in the service of the Transport for money; Mr. Harding uses his
in editing the paper for money; why should not I use mine in writing
novels for money? I think it is perfectly legitimate.”
“I agree with you,” Darling laughed. “It is perfectly legitimate to
write novels for money; the thing is to get the money. You must give
the public something they want before you can get their money. But I
think it is just as well for you that you can’t afford to let your
manuscript lie for a year before you try to sell it. My honest opinion
is, Dick, that if you were to let that book lie by for a year and then
read it, you would wonder how you could possibly have written anything
quite so bad. Mind you, I say this without knowing anything about your
novel. I say it on general principles. That is the experience of most
writers.”
“It is a very discouraging outlook!” Dick exclaimed.
“Not at all!” Darling asserted. “On the contrary, it is a sure sign of
progress. If you keep on writing for a year, you will know much more
about novels and about literature in general than you know now. You
will judge your early work by higher standards. When a writer looks at
his last year’s work and sees how bad it was, it is a strong indication
that he is doing better work this year, and that he will do still
better next year.”
“I have put my heart and soul into this book, Darling,” Dick burst
out. “That is Besant’s advice to young novelists, you know, and I have
followed it. ‘Drain yourself dry,’ he says, in substance; ‘more heart
and soul will come to you in time for the next one.’ I think I have
done the best I am capable of.”
“Well, if you are going to throw Besant at me,” Darling retorted, “I
will give you some more of him: ‘Always watch how it is looking from
before the footlights,’ he says. That is, see how it appears to the
audience--to the reader. You know what your meaning is, but do you make
it clear and entertaining to the reader? The probabilities are that you
don’t in a first novel.
“No; I am not trying to discourage you,” he went on, seeing the
disappointed look on Dick’s face. “But I know you have your hopes
set very high on this book, and I want to prepare you for what may
happen. You must remember that not every good newspaper writer can
write a good novel. Besides, how many writers have made a success of
a first novel? You don’t need half your fingers to count them on.
However, it is done, and the publishers will have it read by men who
are good judges, and they will form a cool-headed--perhaps I might
say a cool-blooded--opinion of it. That is where the publisher is the
young writer’s best friend, preventing him often from making a fool of
himself in print. It will probably go through the hands of several
readers, for I think it will hardly be bad enough to be condemned
positively by the first man. But now that you have your article
manufactured, what are you going to do with it? Where is your market?”
“I have written to Brounlow & Company, the publishers,” Dick replied,
“(they publish The Illustrated Weekly, you know, so they are familiar
with my work), telling them what I have, and asking them to examine it.
And they have answered that they will be happy to see it. That was the
proper way to go at it, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, that is the usual process.”
“And the manuscript is going to them to-morrow, and then we’ll see what
we’ll see.”
With the novel out of the house Dick gave all his time to newspaper
work again, and it seemed so easy and so pleasant after the long daily
tasks he had been doing! It was profitable too, for with his fifteen
dollars a column he made more money than he had made on salary.
He could not reasonably expect to hear from the novel within three or
four weeks, but at the expiration of a fortnight he began to watch his
daily letters for one of the familiar envelopes of Brounlow & Company.
And at length it came, and Dick punished his own impatience by looking
for some time at the outside before he tore it open. There was no
telling what grand offer for the manuscript the letter might contain.
“We have read your novel with much pleasure,” the letter said, “and
we regret that we do not find it suited to our present needs. The
manuscript is returned this day by registered mail.”
Dick did not gasp for breath when he read it, or fall helplessly back
into a chair, but he was terribly disappointed. To be sure, there were
hundreds of other publishers, some of whom might want it; but for
Brounlow & Company to refuse it he considered a bad sign.
Refuse it? Of course that was what it meant. Dick had heard of such
letters before. A merchant says bluntly that he doesn’t want the goods
that are offered him; but a publisher, more polite, reads everything
offered with a pleasure little short of delight, and is torn with
poignant regret over what he is compelled to send back.
For the next few months the postoffice department derived considerable
revenue from Dick’s novel. After the Brounlow incident he sent it
to Whitelow & Company, who read it with interest and returned it by
registered mail. Pinklow & Company, Greenlow & Company, Blacklow &
Company,--all the primary colors and many of the tints took it under
consideration; some read it with interest and some with pleasure, but
they were all of one mind about returning it by registered mail.
“It’s a dead, flat failure, old fellow!” the unsuccessful author said
to Darling when he concluded to waste no more postage stamps.
“It’s a pretty strong verdict against it, that’s a fact,” Darling
admitted. “Suppose you let me read it some day before you plant it in
the bottom of your trunk.”
“You’re a lucky fellow, Dick,” was Darling’s opinion after the reading.
“If anybody had published that, you’d never have stopped kicking
yourself. It’s as different from your newspaper work as day is from
night--worse I mean. Occasionally there is a gleam of intellect in it,
too. I should hardly fill up my trunk with it, unless you’re in need of
ballast.”
Florrie’s was the only dissenting voice. “There’s a conspiracy against
you, Dick,” she insisted. “You have done something or other to offend
those publishers, or their readers are jealous of your splendid work
and don’t intend to give you a chance. It’s perfectly shameful the way
they treat you!”
But Florrie had not read the novel.
CHAPTER XV.
“THE THROUGH SLEEPER.”
“Mr. Harding tells me you have asked for a month’s vacation, Dick, and
that he has given it to you,” Darling said one night when they were
eating their late supper together. “I am glad to hear it; a rest will
do you good.”
“I went to him direct instead of applying to you,” Dick answered,
“because I thought it might be awkward for you to grant it, though you
would not want to refuse me. But it is not for a rest; I am going to do
some more writing.”
Nearly six months had passed since Dick had arrived at the
melancholy conclusion that the novel was a failure. He had borne his
disappointment manfully, working harder than ever and making himself
not only by all means the best reporter on the Transport, but one of
the very best in New York. Besides his regular work, he had been doing
a number of humorous sketches for his own paper and for the syndicates,
and they had proved as popular as the best of his descriptive articles.
With these and his Transport pay he had added largely to his savings,
and nothing seemed lacking to make him happy but the one thing he had
striven for and failed to obtain.
“Oh, ho!” Darling exclaimed. “Going to do some more writing, are you? I
thought you’d hardly be satisfied with one trial, and that a failure.
Is it another novel, Dick?”
A weaker man might have been confused at the mere mention of
novel-writing after such a decided rebuff, but Dick saw nothing to be
ashamed of in the failure he had made. He had done his best, and though
the result was unfortunate, it was not disgraceful.
“I have not given up the idea of novel-writing,” he answered; “not by
any means. But I know a heap more than I did a year ago, Darling. I can
see now that I was one of the fools who ‘rush in where angels fear to
tread.’ I was entirely too young and inexperienced then to undertake
a novel, just as I am now. I tried to fly too high. I wonder that you
didn’t tell me so, for you must have known it.”
“I am delighted to hear you say so, Dick,” Darling answered. “Of course
I knew it. But I saw that you had your heart set upon writing a novel,
and I thought the best way was to let you find out for yourself. You
had had so much success with your newspaper articles that it was
natural for you to think yourself something of a writer. Nothing but
experience, I knew, would teach you that a man needs great knowledge of
the world and of human nature to write a really good novel.
“You learned that,” Darling went on; “and from the way you swallowed
the unpleasant medicine I knew that some good would come of it. There
was no sulking about you, no bitterness, no repining. You pitched into
newspaper work harder than ever and fell to reading whenever you had a
chance. I may tell you now, though I did not want to raise your hopes
at the time, that I found a great deal of the real stuff in your novel
when I read it. The construction was bad and the style rather stilted
(two faults that were pretty sure to kill it), but there was enough
meat in it to convince me that you will write a real novel some day if
you keep at it.”
“I’m awfully glad to hear you say so, old chap;” and Dick spoke as
though he meant it. “But that will be in the dim and distant future.
They gave my wings such a clipping I’ll not undertake to fly again in
a hurry; I must learn to walk first. It’s not a novel I am after this
time, but something much simpler and shorter. It is a humorous sketch
of American life on the rail that I want to write, to the title of ‘The
Through Sleeper.’ It will be about forty or fifty thousand words; and
if some publisher will take it up and illustrate it in the way I have
in mind, I think it will go. I can do it easily in a month.”
Through the whole of the month’s vacation Dick worked almost day and
night.
“No, I don’t want to go and exercise in the park,” he said when his
friends tried to get him out of the house; “I don’t want to hear the
birds sing or see the lambs gambol on the green. I have no business
with such things just now. I live in ‘The Through Sleeper’ at present,
and my head is full of air brakes and coal dust and lower berths, and I
don’t want anything to drive them out till I put a dash at the end of
the story.”
When the month expired he went down to the office, looking thinner and
paler, but as full of energy as ever.
“Now, then, Darling,” he said, “here I am, ready for the old work
again. ‘The Through Sleeper’ has started on time. I have gone through
the regulation correspondence with Brounlow & Company. They have asked
to see my work, and it has gone to them; and I have resolved to think
no more about it till I hear from them. Perhaps it will go and perhaps
it won’t. If that doesn’t go, I’ll write something that will; they may
depend on that; they may even drive me to writing verses yet, if they
continue to return my prose.”
“You are back just in time to do a little artistic work for us,”
Darling replied. “There is some trouble among the students down at
Princeton, and I want you to go down there and write us a good story.
If it turns out well, you might telegraph about a column of it, for
you cannot get through in time to bring or mail it. You will have to
see Dr. McCosh, of course, and get both sides of the story from the
students.”
It was after six o’clock in the evening when Dick reached Princeton,
and he walked directly over to the college grounds and called at
President McCosh’s house. His conversation with the president convinced
him that the story was a capital one, and that he would have at least a
column to send.
“Now I must look out for my wires,” he said to himself; “these country
telegraph offices have an awkward way of closing early in the evening
sometimes, and I can’t have my copy ready much before midnight.”
He went to the telegraph office and introduced himself to the operator.
“I want to send a two thousand word special to the Transport to-night,”
he said. “I will have the first copy in about half-past eleven.”
“You can’t do it from this office!” the operator replied very gruffly.
“We close at eight o’clock.”
“But you wouldn’t close at eight with a two thousand word special in
sight, would you?” Dick asked. He knew that a month’s regular business
in the office would hardly amount to two thousand words.
“We close at eight o’clock!” was the only reply; and the operator said
it very decidedly.
“Well, suppose I pay you a couple of dollars for your trouble in
keeping open?” Dick suggested.
“Can’t be done!” the operator snarled. “I tell you we close at eight
o’clock.”
“Then maybe five dollars would make it an object to you?”
“No, nor five hundred!” snapped the operator. “I have an engagement
to-night, and I wouldn’t keep the office open for fifty specials.”
The situation was growing serious. He must get the special off, and
there was no other telegraph office within reach. Dick had had some
experience with unaccommodating operators, but precisely such a refusal
as this he had not met before. He thought it over for a few moments and
then said quietly:--
“Let me have a blank, please.”
The operator pushed a pad of blanks through the window, and Dick wrote
this message:--
Superintendent Western Union, New York.
Please instruct Princeton operator to keep open till midnight
for two thousand word Transport special.
RICHARD SUMNER, _Transport Correspondent_.
Usually newspaper dispatches are sent “collect”; that is, they are paid
not for at the sending office, but are charged to the newspaper and
paid in the monthly bill. But Dick laid a silver half-dollar on top of
his dispatch, as he pushed it back to the operator, to make sure.
As the operator picked up the message and read it his face flushed.
“Oh, say!” he exclaimed; “you don’t need to send this message. I’ll
keep open for you all night. If you were to send that, they’d make
inquiries why you had to send it, and then they’d bounce me, sure.”
It was precisely what Dick had anticipated; he was sure the operator
would not let the message go through; for a two thousand word special
is not to be despised even by a great telegraph company, and the
company would not have much further use for an operator who refused one.
“Of course they would,” he answered; “but that is your affair, not
mine. My business is to get my dispatch through, even though it gives
you some extra work. As you agree to keep open for me you can tear the
dispatch up and give me back the money; but I give you fair warning
that if you close the office I shall have to report you.”
“That’s a wrinkle that I must tell the boys about,” Dick said to
himself as he went out to finish gathering his facts. “Every reporter
has trouble about getting his dispatches through sometimes, and a
message to the superintendent opens the way in a hurry.” A few months
before, when he was constantly in touch with the telegraph offices, he
would have thought nothing of such an incident; but now he was glad to
find that the old newspaper instinct was still strong within him; he
was half-afraid that novel-writing and story-writing might have spoiled
him for reporting.
His next work was a large political meeting in the Metropolitan Opera
House, at which some of the great statesmen of the country were the
speakers. Several of the speeches were to be reported in full, and Dick
expected to be put in charge of at least four or five reporters, as he
had often been before. His own part was to write about a column and a
half of introduction and description. But no other reporters were sent
with him, and he soon found that a new order of things had begun in
stenographic reporting.
“It was a narrow escape I had,” he thought, “for at one time I had
a strong notion to learn shorthand writing. Even when I began work
on the Transport it was quite the fashion for the reporters to learn
stenography. But I was a lucky fellow that I did not waste the time
over it, for it has become a separate business entirely, and has
nothing to do any more with real reporting. The new way is much better
for the paper, too, because much quicker.”
It was a pleasure to him to see how the system of verbatim reporting
had improved. Instead of sending a half-dozen reporters to take the
speeches desired, the Transport had simply sent for one of the new
order of employing stenographers, and told him what speeches were
desired in full. This man attended the meeting with a dozen messenger
boys in waiting. He took all the notes himself, and as fast as he
filled a page or two with notes a messenger boy rushed off with it
to the stenographer’s office near Printing House Square, where a
half-dozen young stenographers, all trained to read their employer’s
notes, were ready to write them out in full. As fast as the pages of
copy were ready they were sent over to the Transport office; and so
rapidly was it all done that by the time the last speaker finished,
the previous speeches were in type. More marvelous still, some of the
earlier speakers, while still on the platform, were actually shown
proofs of the speeches they had delivered an hour before.
“I must be growing old!” Dick said to himself, “to see these changes
going on in newspaper systems. Some day they may do away with reporters
altogether. I hope my novels or funny sketches will begin to sell
before that time comes.”
In less than a month after the completion of “The Through Sleeper” he
found a letter from Brounlow & Company waiting for him in the office.
It contained simply a request that he call and see them, and he found
time to go the same day.
“Our readers have given a very favorable opinion of ‘The Through
Sleeper,’ Mr. Sumner,” one of the members of the firm said to him.
“In fact they consider it unusually good; but of course we never can
tell how much such a thing may strike the public. We have decided
that we can offer you five hundred dollars for it, for publication
in The Illustrated Weekly, the story to be brought out in book form
immediately after the serial publication, well illustrated, in a
one-dollar volume. On sales of the book, of course, we will pay you the
usual ten per cent. royalty.”
Here was a victory at last! That was Dick’s first thought; but a moment
later he began to consider that the battle was not half-won yet. It was
only the publisher who was convinced so far of the excellence of his
story. The publisher was willing to risk his money in bringing out the
book, but it was the public who had to give the final verdict. If the
public liked the book well enough to buy it, the publisher would buy
more stories from him. But if otherwise--why, then otherwise.
Some imposingly long blank contracts were filled out and signed, and
“The Through Sleeper” became the property of Brounlow & Company, under
certain conditions. Dick read the contract through before signing it,
like a prudent business man; but in the end he had only a confused
notion of having agreed to all sorts of odd things about reading
proofs, charge for changes in type, sale of copies at trade price,
insurance of stereotype plates, and assignment of copyright.
It had long been a heroic notion of Dick’s that when he got his first
check for a piece of real literary work, if indeed he ever did get
one, he would carry it lovingly to his mother and lay it in her hands.
“There, mother,” he would say, “that is the first money I have made out
of literature. It is yours, every cent of it; buy yourself something
nice with it.” And then he would hold his mother in his arms and kiss
her, and she would congratulate him on his success. He thought of this
while he sat in the Brounlow office. But this little castle in the air
crumbled, as so many of them do.
“Our custom is to pay for serial stories as they appear,” the partner
said. “‘The Through Sleeper’ will run through five numbers, so we
will pay you one hundred dollars for each instalment as fast as it is
published. I suppose that will be satisfactory?”
“That will answer every purpose,” Dick replied; he would not say that
it was satisfactory, for he had set his heart on a good plump check to
carry home. But never mind; he had good news to carry--news that was
better than the check.
There was no telling how soon the story might appear, or how long it
might be kept waiting; even the publishers could not tell that, so much
depended upon circumstances. Dick had heard of manuscript being kept
for months, even years, in the publishers’ safes, after it was accepted
and paid for.
Weeks passed without any signs of “The Through Sleeper”; and the weeks
grew into months. Dick was sent on a mission to the far Northwest, and
for many days he saw no newspapers. He was in the midst of his work
there when a very short note came from Darling.
“No time to write you a letter to-night, Dick,” the note said.
“Just want to tell you your ‘Through Sleeper’ began in to-day’s
Illustrated Weekly.
“I read it at lunch time; it’s immense. The fellows say it’s the
funniest thing that’s appeared in this generation; I think so, too.
“They’re all talking about it. If it holds out as it begins, you’ve
made a hit, sure.
“All well at home. Yours, Darling.”
Dick’s face flushed as he read the note--the old flush around the
temples that he had not felt for many a day.
It was an army post that he was staying at, and in a few days more a
bundle of papers arrived, among them some copies of The Illustrated
Weekly.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were an author as well as a correspondent,
Sumner?” the officers asked after they had read the story. They had
been very hospitable before, but now they could hardly do enough for
him. Of course they told him how much they enjoyed the story; but what
was much better was to see them splitting their sides with laughter
over it, and to hear them talking about it.
“Score two points!” Dick said to himself. “They like my story in the
office, and they like it at the army post; but they’re all my friends.
That fickle old military man, General Public, is still to be heard
from.”
Four of the five numbers had appeared when Dick returned to New York,
and there was no longer any doubt about the fate of “The Through
Sleeper.” It was not only a success; it had carried everything by storm.
“Oh, you go take ‘De T’rew Sleeper’!” he heard one newsboy say to
another on his way to the office; and he reflected that newsboys do not
commonly read The Illustrated Weekly stories, so they must have heard
the expression from some one else. Yes, it was true enough. Everybody
was talking about it and repeating odd sayings from it.
In the office he had to go through an ordeal of congratulations. Not
only Darling, but Jack Randall, Lawrence, Herrick, Banks, Black, and
a dozen others, told him how glad they were that he had made such a
success. Even Mr. Harding sent for him.
“I’m much obliged to you, Sumner,” the editor-in-chief said. “You have
given me more good laughs than I had had in an age before. I’ll never
be able to ride in a sleeper again without thinking of you. It is good
clean humor, too; wholesome, easily digested.”
The welcome at home was equally flattering. “You’ve about killed mother
and me,” was Florrie’s salutation. “We’re just sore with laughing over
that ‘Through Sleeper.’ How in the world could you do it, Dick? You’re
never a bit funny at home.”
“I don’t have time to be,” was the only answer Dick could give.
He might have been hand-shaken to death if he had not been sent to
Washington to write a series of articles about the National Capital--a
mission that required time, and that was sure to keep him away for
several weeks. He was walking down Pennsylvania Avenue one day when his
eye was caught by an attractive poster on a bill-board. There was a big
picture of a railway train, with red fire puffing out of the engine’s
black smokestack, and some lettering above and below the picture.
“Just a railroad advertisement,” he said to himself, and went on. But
in an instant he stopped and turned back. He had not clearly read the
words, but something about them seemed familiar.
“The Through Sleeper,” he read on the poster in letters six inches long.
Then came the picture of a train made up of sleeping-cars, and
underneath the picture several more big lines:--
“By Richard Sumner.
“The Talk of the Town.--New York Herald.
“Nothing recent has approached it in wit and vigor.--New York Transport.
“All Booksellers.... One Dollar.”
This was Dick’s first intimation that his work had appeared in book
form. He soon found a book store and bought a copy and went to his room
in Willard’s Hotel to examine it. It was “alive with illustrations,”
as he said, and they added greatly to its handsome appearance. The
printer, the engraver, the binder, had all helped to make an attractive
volume.
For two or three weeks after the appearance of the book he was busy
among the public buildings, going through the Smithsonian Institution
and the National Museum, the Treasury building, and scores of others.
One of his articles was to be a characteristic description of the White
House; and with the aid of the Transport’s Washington correspondent
Dick secured an appointment with the President.
When the hour arrived he was shown to the second story of the White
House, where the offices are; and for a few minutes he was kept waiting
in the broad hall where Tad Lincoln used to play while his father
was closeted in an adjoining room with Seward and Sumner, Grant and
Sherman, and many another man of note. At length the private secretary
stepped out and ushered him into the apartment where so much of the
history of this nation has been made,--the Chief Executive’s private
office,--and he was introduced to the President of the United States.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Sumner,” was the President’s greeting. “I
suppose you came down in The Through Sleeper? You have kept us all
laughing here for the last two or three weeks.”
The President himself took Dick over the White House and through the
conservatories; and when he returned to the hotel he found one of
Darling’s short letters waiting for him.
“Brounlows announce ten thousand ‘Through Sleepers’ sold up to to-day,”
the letter said.
“The Transport fellows propose to give you a dinner at Delmonico’s. You
fix the date and wire answer.”
It did not take Dick long to prepare the answer. “Dinner declined with
thanks,” he telegraphed. So many congratulations had been a worriment
to him for some time, and he was sure he could not stand a whole
evening of it around a dinner table.
But he was not to get out of it so easily. “Cannot be declined,”
Darling wired later in the day; “arrangements all made. Fix the date.”
Very reluctantly he selected the next Thursday evening, and necessarily
he returned to New York on the Thursday afternoon. He expected to feel
uncomfortable, with everybody staring at him and talking about him in
one of Delmonico’s great private rooms, but it proved different. “The
old man” himself was there, and Darling, of course, and Mr. Brown, who
was in Dr. Goode’s place, and Jack Randall, and about fifteen more from
the Transport office, and men from several of the other papers--all
of whom Dick knew; and with great thoughtfulness they had invited Mr.
Davis, the editor of The Russellville Record, Dick’s former employer.
Several members of the Brounlow firm were present, too; it was a real
family party with no strangers to chill the atmosphere.
When the coffee cups came round after dinner, the diners were not
content to abide by the toast program they had made, but began to shout
for “Sumner! Sumner!”
Dick was compelled to make a speech, and he did it very modestly and
sensibly. He liked to write funny stories, he said, particularly when
they paid well; but for real thorough enjoyment nothing suited him
as well as regular newspaper reporting. He hoped that no matter what
happened he might always be able to devote at least part of his time to
reporting and newspaper correspondence; and he wished that his lines
might always fall among as able and kind and true a set of comrades as
his fellows of the Transport.
There was great cheering when Dick sat down, and then came calls for
“Mr. Harding! Mr. Harding! The chief!”
“Gentlemen,” Mr. Harding began when he arose amid the clapping of
hands, “this is an unusual sight for Delmonico’s--a banqueting table
upon which no wine glasses appear. I see in this a delicate compliment
to the guest we have assembled to honor, who has shown us that he
is capable of doing hard work and good work without the use of wine
or stronger liquids. You have honored yourselves by honoring his
principles in this way.”
He went on to pay a tribute to Dick’s character that brought the red
flush about the young author’s temples again. He was industrious, he
was manly, he was upright; true, solid, unwavering, always in what he
thought was right.
“Ask me to show you a man of brains,” he concluded; “a man who has done
many good things and who is destined to do many more; who would not
stoop to a mean act; whose watchword is ‘Upward,’ ever upward; who is
as gentle and pure in his life as he is brilliant in his profession;
ask me to show you such a man and I point, gentlemen, to our young
friend, Dick Sumner.”
In these later days, when Dick is needed in the Transport office, a
telegram quickly reaches him in the cottage in which he and his mother
live in Russellville. He is frequently to be seen in the offices of
Brounlow & Company, for his second and third and fourth books have
succeeded as well as the first, and he is a man of affairs. Sometimes
he is detained till the last train has left the city, but that makes
no difference now; for there is a room always ready for him in the big
old-fashioned brick house on Brooklyn Heights that has been Florrie’s
home ever since she became Mrs. Harry Darling.
W. A. WILDE & CO., PUBLISHERS.
_IN WILD AFRICA._ _Adventures of Two Boys in the Sahara Desert, etc._
By Col. THOS. W. KNOX, author of “The Boy Travelers,” “The Young
Nimrods,” “A Lost Army,” etc. 325 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.
The least known part of the Dark Continent is the one described
in the new book “In Wild Africa.” Central Africa has been
traversed by many explorers, until every part of it is known,
and the larger part of South Africa has entered the domain of
civilization and is equipped with railway and wagon roads.
Northern Africa, with the exception of a strip two or three
hundred miles wide along the coast of the Mediterranean, is
almost a terra incognita; its only roads are caravan trails,
and comparatively few explorers have ventured to brave its
inhospitalities. Lake Chad has been known to exist for more than
ten centuries, but it has been seen by fewer white men than Lake
Tanganyika and the Victoria Nyanza, both discovered within the
past forty years.
The narrative is replete with adventure and incident, combined
with the description of the countries traversed and the people
who inhabit them. A part of the route has been personally
traveled by the author, who has thus been enabled to inform
himself thoroughly concerning the countries he has described.
No author understands better how to write for young people than
Colonel Knox, and parents and guardians owe much to him for
conveying a vast deal of very useful information, geographical
and historical, respecting the manners and customs of foreign
nations.--_Boston Commercial Bulletin._
We can hardly imagine a better way of imparting information to
young people. The present volume is similar in plan to those
which preceded it, and is worthy of the same hearty commendation
which was accorded them.--_Christian Intelligencer, N. Y._
_FOREMAN JENNIE. A Young Woman of Business_. By AMOS R. WELLS, editor
of _The Golden Rule_. 268 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25.
Foreman Jennie was a young woman of business; she was also a
young woman who was an out and out Christian, and nobly strove to
live up to her ideals. She was the moving spirit in the formation
of the Printers’ Christian Endeavor Society, whose struggles form
one of the interesting features of the story. It was received
most heartily when it ran as a serial in _The Golden Rule_.
In its present form it is greatly enlarged, containing twice
as much matter as originally. It is a splendid story for young
people, whether they belong to the Christian Endeavor movement or
not.
_QUARTERDECK & FOK’SLE._ By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL, author of “Paul
Jones,” “Midshipman Paulding,” “Little Jarvis,” etc. 272 pp.
Illustrated. $1.25.
Two exceptionally interesting stories of our navy, written for
boys, but which will be of equal interest to girls, as well as
older readers. The first story tells of how a young fellow, who
hated study and had never been made to go to school, learned the
lesson of self-control, and by a series of disgraceful failures
to pass his examinations for Annapolis, found by experience that
the important things of this world are accomplished only by the
hardest kind of work. The success which came to him afterwards
shows how thoroughly and well this lesson was learned. The second
story deals with a famous incident of the English occupation
of Newport, R. I., during the Revolutionary War, where General
Prescott was captured in his own house by a handful of Americans.
An important part in this incident was taken by a boy. What he
did and how he did it is fully told in the story. His service in
the young American navy is the natural result of his love for the
sea and his ardent patriotism.
The author knows how to tell her stories to captivate the boys,
and the character of her heroes is such as to elevate and ennoble
the reader.--_Hartford Evening Post._
_THE YOUNG REPORTER. A Story of Printing House Square._ By WILLIAM
DRYSDALE, author of “Abel Forefinger,” “In Sunny Lands,” “Proverbs from
Plymouth Pulpit,” etc. 300 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.
Every American boy who reads the newspapers is interested in the
methods and adventures of the reporters who gather news for the
great dailies. They go everywhere, meet all the prominent people
of the time, and are constantly in the front of everything that
is interesting and exciting.
In “The Young Reporter” Mr. William Drysdale has described the
adventures of a young printer boy with a taste for newspaper
work, who became a reporter for one of the great New York dailies
when he was only eighteen. His introduction to the office by
taking in an important piece of news, his early experience
there, his trials and temptations, his adventures among the
convicts in Sing Sing, his exciting search for the stolen body
of a millionaire, his voyage to Mexico and the West Indies, his
experience with bookmakers, who consider a reporter a person to
be bribed, are all described to the life.
Every adventure through which Dick Sumner is taken is an actual
adventure,--something that has really happened. From his first
visit to the _Transport_ office till his successful
production of “The Through Sleeper,” his experiences are as true
to life as actual truth can make them. It is a book which no boy
can read without having his ambition stirred and his character
strengthened.
_THREE COLONIAL BOYS. A Story of the Times of ’76._ By EVERETT T.
TOMLINSON, author of “The Search for Andrew Field,” “The Boy Soldiers
of 1812,” etc. 368 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.
We have issued this book as an aid in the solution of that
difficult problem, “What shall our young people read?”
It deals with one of the most interesting periods of American
history, and embraces many incidents and regions which heretofore
have been kept in the background.
Young people like excitement, as children crave sugar, and, while
the book deals largely with actual experiences, it furnishes an
excitement which is not born of the unnatural or impossible.
It is a story of three boys who were drawn into the events of
the times; is patriotic, exciting, clean, and healthful, and
instructs without appearing to. The heroes are manly boys and no
objectionable language or character is introduced. The lessons of
courage and patriotism especially will be appreciated in this day.
It is handsomely illustrated, printed, and bound, and we are
confident will be eagerly welcomed by all who are seeking for
a book for young people which shall be wholesome, interesting,
healthfully exciting, and at the same time instructive.
It is the first of a series, but is complete in itself.
_CAP’N THISTLETOP._ By SOPHIE SWETT, author of “Captain Polly,” “Flying
Hill Farm,” “Mate of the Mary Ann,” etc. 266 pp. Illustrated. $1.25.
Sophie Swett has won a remarkable and deserved popularity for the
strong and wholesome stories for girls which she has written.
In her stories she believes in introducing boys, and it is this
feature of her work that gives her stories their naturalness and
much of their interest. In her latest book, “Cap’n Thistletop,”
the principal characters are a boy and a girl, brother and
sister; the girl’s firmness of character holds her brother up to
his work for making a place for himself in the world. She urges,
beguiles, and compels, as occasion serves, but still remains the
natural, lovable girl, herself, so many thousands of whom are
daily making the world brighter and better.
Margaret E. Sangster says, “Miss Swett has the knack of telling a
story so naturally and in so interesting a manner that you cannot
put her books down until you are at the very end of the last
chapter, and then you sigh and wish there was a sequel.”
_JACK BENSON’S LOG; or, Afloat with the Flag in ’61._ By CHAS. LEDYARD
NORTON. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25.
Of all the boys who enlisted in the navy at the outbreak of the
Civil War, perhaps Jack Benson was the luckiest. His guardian,
an old sailor, wanted him to enlist; his first ship was “Old
Ironsides,” and he helped to save her from an attempted capture
by the secessionists at Annapolis in 1861. Then he had the good
fortune to ship on board a fast little steamer that was hurried
into commission for blockading purposes and had a very pretty
little fight off Cape Hatteras, and captured a prize at the
very beginning of her career. In short, Jack was on hand as a
spectator, if not as a participant, at most of the notable naval
events that took place on the Atlantic coast during the four
years of the war.
_THE MYSTERIOUS VOYAGE OF THE DAPHNE_, By Lieut. H. P. WHITMARSH,
R. N., and others. 305 pp. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25.
A book of stories for boys and girls by some of the best American
authors. Such names as Wm. O. Stoddard, Hezekiah Butterworth,
James G. Austin, Lieut. H. P. Whitmarsh, Marjorie Richardson,
and Emma H. Nason will give a fair idea of the reputation and
the standing of the writers whose stories are included in this
book. The book is made exceptionally interesting by a large
number of illustrations, while the quality of the stories cannot
be questioned. The book is one that we can recommend as entirely
safe to put in any girl’s or boy’s hands.
_BIG CYPRESS._ By KIRK MUNROE, author of “Fur Seal’s Tooth,”
“Camp-mates,” “Raft-mates,” “Dory-mates,” “Canoe-mates,” etc. 164 pp.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00.
Kirk Munroe’s books always teach something worth knowing. In his
last story, “Big Cypress,” the author includes a large amount
of information about Florida, its coast, the Everglades region,
the climate, and the Seminole Indians as they are to-day. * * *
The story is so fascinating that it will hold the absorbed
attention of every boy and girl reader to the end.--_Boston
Transcript._
A bright, wide-awake book as interesting and helpful for girls as
for boys.--_Golden Rule._
A vivid picture of life among the Seminole Indians of Florida,
about whom so little is known.--_Advance, Chicago._
A story * * * inculcating manliness and full of
incident.--_Congregationalist._
_PHILIP LEICESTER._ By JESSIE E. WRIGHT, author of “Freshman and
Senior,” “Marjoribank,” “Curly Head,” etc. 264 pp. Illustrated. Cloth,
$1.25.
The real motive of the story is a lesson for mothers,--that
God will be with the children of love and prayer, even though
they may be passing through the fires of temptation and bad
influence.--_The Evangelist, New York._
The book ought to make any reader thankful for a good home and
thoughtful for the homeless and neglected.--_Golden Rule._
The idea of the story is happily conceived and skilfully
handled.--_S. S. Library Bulletin._
There is real merit in the story.--_Epworth Herald._
A charming story for young people.--_Young Men’s Era._
The interest of the reader is engaged and never flags until the
last page is read.--_Christian Observer._
_PELOUBET’S SELECT NOTES._ By F. N. PELOUBET, D. D., and M. A.
Peloubet. A Commentary on the International Sunday-School Lessons.
Illustrated. 340 pp. Cloth, $1.25.
This commentary is the _one_ book every teacher must have
in order to do the best work. It interprets the scripture,
illustrates the truths, and by striking comments convinces the
mind.
It is comprehensive, and yet not verbose, and furnishes winnowed
material in the most attractive and yet convincing form from both
spiritual and practical standpoints. Accurate colored maps and
profuse original illustrations illuminate the text, and create an
intelligent and instructive view of the subject matter.
Teachers are invited to send for sample pages of Select Notes.
It is safe to say that no better help on the International
Lessons has ever been printed than Select Notes.--_Christian at
Work._
We know of no other book that fills the place of Select
Notes.--_Golden Rule._
Teachers and scholars have come to regard Select Notes
as an essential part of their annual Sunday-school
outfit.--_Cumberland Presbyterian._
Select Notes has become as much of an institution as the
International Lessons.--_Advance._
Select Notes is current everywhere. Among the many books issued
as helps to the study of the Sunday-school lessons this is the
best.--_Messiah’s Herald._
_WAYS Of WORKING; or, Helpful Hints to Sunday-School Workers of all
Kinds._ By Rev. A. F. SCHAUFFLER, D. D. 212 pp. Cloth, $1.00.
All the methods of work suggested in the following pages have
been tried and approved by the author. There is nothing that
is merely theoretical. Many things other than those alluded to
have also been tried, and, having proved failures, have been
laid aside. Nothing but what came through the fire of experience
unscathed has been dwelt upon. Not all the methods recommended
have been originated by the author. In fact, the land was
ransacked during the time of his actual superintendency for
helpful methods, and wherever these were found they were adopted.
Sometimes they had to be adapted, as well as adopted, and this
will probably be the case in many schools who try to take up with
some of the forms suggested. But if the suggestions given here
serve to stimulate others in the line of advance, the aim of the
book will have been accomplished.--_Author’s Preface._
_THE GOSPELS COMBINED._ Compiled by Rev. CHARLES H. POPE. 208 pp.
Cloth, 75c.
Parallel passages blended, and separate accounts connected;
presenting in one continuous narrative the life of Jesus Christ
as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
This book will be the best help to a clear connected view
of the life and words of our Lord. Just the thing for every
Sunday-school Teacher and Bible Class Student.
_THE BEACON LIGHT SERIES._ By NATALIE L. RICE. Illustrated. Each vol.
96 pp.
A collection of bright, attractive stories from the best known
writers for young people in the Junior and Intermediate classes.
The set, 5 vols., in a box, $2.50.
_DOT’S LIBRARY._ Edited by LUCY WHEELOCK.
Without question the most delightful set of books for little
ones. Over 400 illustrations. The set, 10 vols., in a box, $2.50.
BOSTON, W. A. WILDE & CO., 25 BROMFIELD ST.
Transcriber’s Note:
Punctuation; has been standardised.
Changes have been made as follows:
Page 95
But I have a important _changed to_
But I have an important
Page 124
Aqui no se permite fumar _changed to_
Aquí no se permite fumar
Page 141
Calle Estampa de Jesus Maria, Numero Cinto _changed to_
Calle Estampa de Jesus Maria, Numero Cinco
Haysoos Mar-eea, Numero Cinto _changed to_
Haysoos Mar-eea, Numero Cinco
Page 144
cinto, number five _changed to_
cinco, number five
Page 199
Columbus and telegraph his _changed to_
Columbus and telegraph this
Page 267
and all the fireman _changed to_
and all the firemen
Page 268
Up they went wih a rush _changed to_
Up they went with a rush
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