Captain Sam: The Boy Scouts of 1814
Page 7
CHAPTER VII.
SAM'S TRAVELLING FACTORY.
The boys marched steadily until sunset, when Sam called a halt andselected a camping place for the night. He ordered a fire built andhimself superintended the preparation of supper, limiting the amountof food cooked for each member of the party, a regulation which heenforced strictly throughout the march, lest any of the boys shouldimprudently eat their rations too fast, which, as their route laythrough woods and swamps in a part of the country scarcely at allsettled, would bring disaster upon the expedition of course. Sam hadcalculated the march to last about ten days, but he hoped toaccomplish it within a briefer time. The supplies they had would lastten days, and Sam hoped to add to them by killing game from time totime, for although the party were unarmed, Sam knew ways of gettinggame without gunpowder, and meant to put some of them in practice.
Toward evening of the first day out, he had stopped in a canebrake andcut three well seasoned canes, selecting straight, tall ones, about aninch in diameter, and taking care that they tapered as little and asregularly as possible. Cutting them off at both ends and leaving themabout fifteen feet in length, he next cut three or four small canes,very long and green ones, without flaw.
That night, as soon as supper was over he brought his canes to thefire and laid them down, preparatory to beginning work upon them.
"What are you a goin' to do with them canes, Sam?" asked BillyBowlegs.
"What do you think, Billy?"
"Dog-gone ef I know," replied Billy.
"Suppose you quit saying 'dog-gone' Billy," said Sam. "It isn't a verygood thing to say, and you've said it thirty-two times thisafternoon."
"Have I? well, what's the odds if I have?"
"Well, it's a bad habit, and if you'll quit it, I'll give you one ofthose canes when I get them ready."
"What 'er you goin' to make 'em into?"
"Guns," said Sam, working away as hard as he could with hisjack-knife.
"Guns! what sort o' guns? Powder'd burst 'em in a minute, and besideswe aint got no powder."
"No, but I'm going to make guns out of these canes, and I'm going tokill something with them too."
"What sort o' guns?"
"Blow guns."
"What's a blow gun, Mas. Sam?" asked Joe, becoming interested, as allthe boy were now.
Sam was too busy to answer at the moment and so Tom, who had seenSam's blow guns at home, answered for him.
"He's going to burn out the joints and then make arrows with ironpoints and some rabbit fur around the light ends. The fur fills up thehole in the cane, and when he blows in the end it sends the arrow offlike a bullet. But Sam!" he cried, suddenly thinking of something.
"What is it?" asked the elder brother without looking up.
"What are you going to burn them out with?"
"With that little rod," answered Sam, tossing a bit of iron about sixinches long towards his brother, "I brought it with me on purpose."
"Well, but it won't reach; you've got to reach all the joints youknow, and the rod must be as long as the cane."
"Oh no, not by any means."
"Yes it must, of course it must," exclaimed all the boys in a breath."It's just like burning out a pipe stem with a wire."
"No it is not," replied Sam, smiling, "but suppose it is. I can burnout a pipe stem with a wire half as long as the stem."
"How?" asked two or three boys at once.
"By burning first from one end and then from the other."
"Yes, that's so," answered Sid Russell slowly, drawling his words outas if he had to drag them up through his long legs, "but that don'ttell how you're goin' to bore out a big cane, fifteen feet long with alittle iron rod not more 'n six or eight inches long."
"Well, if you will be patient a moment, I'll show you," answered Sam,picking up the bit of iron. Trimming off the end of one of his smallgreen canes, Sam measured it by the iron rod and trimmed again. Hecontinued this process until he had the end of the cane a triflelarger than the iron was. Then taking an iron tube or band out of hispocket, he drove the iron rod firmly into it for the distance of abouthalf an inch, leaving the other end of the tube open. Into this heforced the end of the small green cane and having made it firm he hada rod about ten feet long.
"There," he said, "I have a rod long enough to reach a good deal morethan half way through either one of my big canes. It isn't iron exceptat the end, and it doesn't need to be," and with that he thrust theend of the bit of iron into the fire to heat.
"Now, Tom," he said, "you must burn the canes out while I do somethingelse."
I wonder if there is any boy who needs a fuller explanation than theone which Sam has already given, of what was going forward. There maybe boys enough, for aught I know, who never went fishing in theirlives, and so do not know what canes, or reeds, or cane-poles, asthey are variously called, are like. I must explain, therefore, thatthe canes which Sam proposed to burn out, were precisely such as thosethat are commonly used as fishing rods. These canes grow all over theSouth, in the swamps. They are, in fact, a kind of gigantic grass,although the people who are most familiar with them do not dream ofthe fact. The botanists call them a grass, at any rate, and thebotanists know. Each cane is a long, straight rod, tapering verygently, with "joints," as they are called, about eight or ten inchesapart. These joints are simply places where the cane, outside, is alittle larger than it is between joints, while inside each jointconsists of a hard woody partition, across the hollow tube, which isotherwise continuous. Sam's plan was simply to burn these partitionsaway with a hot iron, which would convert the cane into a long,slender, wooden tube, very hard, very light, and straight as an arrow.
Tom went to work at once to burn out the joints, a work which occupieda good deal of time, as the iron had to be re-heated a great manytimes. He worked very steadily, however with the assistance of two orthree of the boys, and managed during that first evening to get two ofthe blow guns burned out.
Meantime Sam made an arrow, very small and only about ten inches long,out of some dry cedar.
"Now," he said, "I want those of you who are not busy burning out thecanes, to go to work making arrows just like that, while I dosomething else."
The boys went to work with a will, while Sam, going into the nearestthicket, cut a green stick about three quarters of an inch indiameter. Returning to the fire, he split one end of this stick for alittle way, converting it into a sort of rude pincer. He then unrolledhis blanket, and revealed to the astonished gaze of his companionsseveral pounds of horse shoe nails.
"What on earth are you goin' to do with them horse shoe nails?" askedHilly Bowlegs, looking up from the cedar arrow on which he wasworking.
"I'm going to make arrow heads out of them," answered Sam, thrustingseveral of them into the bed of coals.
With the side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer,Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrowpoints, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the thingsthat Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, wasblacksmithing, and he was really expert in the simpler arts of thesmith. He could shoe a horse, "point" a plow, or weld iron or steel,very well indeed.
He had learned this as he had learned a good many other things, merelybecause he thought that every young man should know how to dotolerably well whatever he might sometime need to do, and in a newcountry where shops are scarce and workmen are not always to be found,there is no mechanical art which it is not sometimes very convenientto know something about.
Sam wrought now so expertly that within less than an hour he had madesix arrow points. These he fitted to six of the arrows, and then hesuspended work for the evening, and marked progress on his map; thatis to say, he pricked on his map with a pin the course followed duringthe afternoon, estimating the distance travelled as accurately as hecould.