“What is it!” he asked, pausing in his paddling.
“If you saas a rid gintleman do yez jist rist till I takes aim and shoots him.”
“Why so blood-thirsty?”
“Not blood-thirsty, but tobaccy thirsty. The haythen deal in the article, and if we saas one he must yield.”
Elwood promised obedience, but they saw nothing of the coveted people whom they had been so anxious to avoid hitherto, but a half-hour later Howard said:
“Heigh-ho! Yonder is just the man you want to see!”
A single person dressed in the garb of a miner was standing on the shore leisurely surveying them as they came along. There could be no doubt that he was supplied with the noxious weed, for he was smoking a pipe with all the cool, deliberate enjoyment of a veteran at the business.
“Shall I head toward shore!” asked Elwood.
“Sartin, sartin. Oh that we had Mr. Shasta here that he might hurry to land wid the ould canoe!”
A few minutes sufficed to place the prow of the boat against the shore, and Tim O’Rooney sprung out. The miner, if such he was, stood with his hands in his pockets, looking sleepily at the stranger.
“How do yez do, William?” reaching out and shaking the hand which was rather reluctantly given him.
“Who you calling William?” demanded the miner gruffly.
“I beg yez pardon, but it was a slip of the tongue, Thomas.”
“Who you calling Thomas?”
“Is your family well, my dear sir?”
“Whose family you talking about?”
“Did yez lave the wife and childer well?”
“Whose wife and childer you talking about?”
“Yez got over the cowld yez had the other day?”
“’Pears to me you know a blamed sight more about me than I do, stranger.”
“My dear sir, I have the greatest affection for yez. The moment I seen yez a qua’ar faaling come over me, and I filt I must come ashore and shake you by the hand. I faals much better.”
“You don’t say?”
“That I does. Would yez have the kindness to give me a wee bit of tobaccy?”
The sleepy-looking stranger gazed drowsily at him a moment and then made answer:
“I’m just smoking the last bit I’ve got. I was going to ax you for some, being you had such a great affection for me.”
CHAPTER L
Rescued
The miner having made his reply, turned on his heel, still smoking his pipe, and coolly walked away, while Tim O’Rooney gazed after him in amazement. The boys were amused spectators of the scene, and Elwood now called out.
“Come, Tim, don’t wait! We shall meet somebody else before long; and as you have just had a good smoking spell, you can certainly wait a while.”
“Yes,” added Howard, “no good can come of waiting; so jump in and let’s be off.”
The Irishman obeyed like a child which hardly understood what was required of it, and taking his seat said never a word.
“Let me alternate with you for a while,” said Howard to his cousin, “you have worked quite a while with the paddle.”
“I am not tired, but if you are eager to try your skill I won’t object.”
The boys changed places, and while Howard gave his exclusive attention to the management of the canoe, Elwood devoid himself to consoling Tim O’Rooney in the most serio-comic manner.
“Bear up a little longer, my good fellow. There’s plenty of tobacco in the country, and there must be some that is waiting expressly for you.”
“Where bees the same?”
“Of course we are to find that out; and I haven’t the least doubt but the way will appear.”
“Elwood,” sighed Tim, “’spose by towken of the severe suffering that meself is undergoing I should lose me intellect—”
“I don’t think there’s any danger.”
“And why not?” demanded the Irishman, in assumed fierceness.
“For the good reason that you haven’t any to lose.”
Tim bowed his head in graceful acknowledgment.
“But suppose I does run mad for all that?”
“I can easily dispose of you?”
“Afther what shtyle?”
“A madman is always a dangerous person in the community, and the moment I see any signs of your malady all I have to do is to shoot you through the head.”
“Do yez obsarve any signs at presint?”
“You needn’t ask the question, for the moment it breaks out the report of the gun and the crash of the bullet will give you a hint of the trouble.”
Tim laughed.
“Yez are a bright child, as me mother used to obsarve whin I’d wash me face in her buttermilk and smiled through the windy at her. If ye continues to grow in your intellect yez may come to be a man that I won’t be ashamed to addriss and take by the hand when I maats yez in the straats.”
“I hope I shall,” laughed Elwood, “the prize that you hold out is enough to make any boy work as he never did before. I hope you will not wish to withdraw your offer.”
“Niver a faar—niver a faar, as Bridget Mughalligan said, when I asked her if she’d be kind enough to remimber me for a few days.”
“Tim,” added Elwood, after a moment’s silence, “we are out of the woods.”
“What do yez maan by that?”
“We can see signs of the presence of white men all around us, and we have nothing further to fear from Indians.”
At this point Howard called the attention of his companion to a large canoe which was coming around a curve in the river. It contained nearly a dozen men, and was the largest boat of the kind which they had ever seen, and savored also of a civilized rather than a savage architect.
“They are white men,” said Howard.
“Do yez obsarve any pipes sticking out of their mouths?”
“One or two are smoking.”
“Then boord them if they won’t surrender.”
“They have headed toward us,” remarked Elwood, “and must wish to say something.”
A few moments later the two boats came side by side, and before any one else could speak Tim made his request known for tobacco. This was furnished him, and as he relit his pipe he announced that he had no objection to their proceeding with their business.
There were nine men in the larger boat, and all were armed with pistols, rifles and knives. In truth they resembled a war party more than anything else bound upon some desperate expedition.
The boys noticed as they came along, and while Tim O’Rooney was speaking, that several of the men looked very keenly at them, as though they entertained some strong suspicion. Finally one of the men asked:
“Are you youngsters named Lawrence and Brandon?”
“Yes, sir.”
Here the questioner produced a paper from his pocket, and seemed to read his questions from that.
“And is that man Timothy O’Rooney?”
“Timothy O’Rooney, Esquire, from Tipperary, at your sarvice,” called out the Irishman from the stern of the canoe, where he was elegantly reclining, and without removing the pipe from his mouth.
“Were you on the steamer —— —— that was burned off the coast of California?” pursued the interlocutor.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you are just the party we are looking for.”
“Where do you come from?”
“We are from San Francisco, sent out by Messrs. Lawrence and Brandon in search of their children, whom they learned a few days ago from Mr. Yard, one of the survivors, were left on the coast, having wandered inland at the time the others were taken off by the Relief.”
This was to the point.
“It is fortunate for all parties that we met you,” added the man with a smile, “for we receive a very liberal reward to bring you back, no matter whether we met you within a dozen miles of San Francisco, or were obliged to spend the summer hunting for you among the mountains, only to succeed after giving
the largest kind of a ransom.”
“Prosaad,” said Tim O’Rooney, with a magnificent wave of his hand, without rising from his reclining position. “We’re glad to maat yez, as me uncle obsarved, whin Micky O’Shaunhanaley’s pig walked into his shanty and stood still till he was salted down and stowed away in the barrel, by raisin of which Micky niver found his pig agin.”
The next day the party reached the outlet of the Salinas River, Monterey Bay, where they succeeded in securing transit to San Francisco, and the two boys were once more clasped in the loving arms of their anxious parents.
Howard and Elwood remained in San Francisco until autumn, when they came East again and entered college, and having passed through with honor they returned to the Golden City, and are now partners in a flourishing business. Tim O’Rooney is in their service, and they both hold him in great regard. He is as good-natured as when “Adrift in the Wilds” with the boys, and his greatest grief is that he has never been able to meet Mr. Shasta, the most “illigent savage gintleman that iver paddled his own canoe.”
ADRIFT ON THE PACIFIC
A Boys Story of the Sea and its Perils
CHAPTER I
Captain Strathmore’s Passenger
A few hours before the sailing of the steamer Polynesia, from San Francisco to Japan, and while Captain Strathmore stood on deck watching the bustle and hurry, he was approached by a nervous, well-dressed gentleman, who was leading a little girl by the hand.
“I wish you to take a passenger to Tokio for me, Captain Strathmore,” said the stranger.
The honest, bluff old captain, although tender of the feelings of others, never forgot the dignity and respect due to his position, and, looking sternly at the stranger, said:
“You should know, sir, that it is the purser and not the captain whom you should see.”
“I have seen him, and cannot make a satisfactory arrangement.”
“And that is no reason, sir, why you should approach me.”
The captain was about moving away, when the stranger placed his hand on his arm, and said, in a hurried, anxious voice:
“It is not I who wish to go—it is this little girl. It is a case of life and death; she must go! You, as captain, can take her in your own cabin, and no one will be inconvenienced.”
For the first time Captain Strathmore looked down at the little girl, who was staring around her with the wondering curiosity of childhood.
She was apparently about six years of age, and the picture of infantile innocence and loveliness. She was dressed with good taste, her little feet being incased in Cinderella-like slippers, while the pretty stockings and dress set off the figure to perfection. She wore a fashionable straw hat, with a gay ribbon, and indeed looked like a child of wealthy parents, who had let her out for a little jaunt along some shady avenue.
When Captain Strathmore looked down upon this sweet child, a great pang went through his heart, for she was the picture of the little girl that once called him father.
Her mother died while little Inez was an infant, and, as soon as the cherished one could dispense with the care of a nurse, she joined her father, the captain, and henceforth was not separated from him. She was always on ship or steamer, sharing his room and becoming the pet of every one who met her, no less from her loveliness than from her childish, winning ways.
But there came one awful dark day, away out in the Pacific, when the sweet voice was hushed forever, and the rugged old captain was bowed by a grief such as that which smites the mountain-oak to the earth.
The little girl who now looked up in the face of Captain Strathmore was the image of Inez, who years before had sunk to the bottom of the sea, carrying with her all the sunshine, music and loveliness that cheered her father’s heart. With an impulse he could not resist, the captain reached out his arms and the little stranger instantly ran into them. Then she was lifted up, and the captain kissed her, saying:
“You look so much like the little girl I buried at sea that I could not help kissing you.”
The child was not afraid of him, for her fairy-like fingers began playing with the grizzled whiskers, while the honest blue eyes of the old sailor grew dim and misty for the moment.
The gentleman who had brought the child to the steamer saw that this was a favorable time for him to urge his plea.
“That is the little girl whom I wished to send to Tokio by you.”
“Have you no friend or acquaintance on board in whose care you can place her?”
“I do not know a soul.”
“Is she any relative of yours?”
“She is my niece. Her father and mother are missionaries in Japan, and have been notified of her coming on this steamer.”
“If that were so, why then were not preparations made for sending her in the care of some one, instead of waiting until the last minute, and then rushing down here and making application in such an irregular manner?”
“Her uncle, the brother of my wife, expected to make the voyage with her, and came to San Francisco for that purpose. He was taken dangerously ill at the hotel, and when I reached there, a few hours ago, he was dead, and my niece was in the care of the landlord’s family. My wife, who is out yonder in a carriage, had prepared to accompany me East tomorrow. Her brother had made no arrangements for taking the little one on the steamer, so I was forced into this unusual application.”
While the gentleman was making this explanation, the captain was holding the child in his arms, and admiring the beautiful countenance and loveliness of face and manner.
“She does look exactly like my poor little Inez,” was his thought, as he gently placed her on her feet again.
“If we take her to Japan, what then?”
“Her parents will be in Tokio, waiting for her. You, as captain, have the right, which no one would dare question, of taking her into your cabin with you, and I will compensate you in any manner you may wish.”
“What is her name?” asked Captain Strathmore.
“Inez.”
“She shall go,” said the sailor, in a husky voice.
CHAPTER II
The Captain and Inez
The steamer Polynesia was steaming swiftly across the Pacific, in the direction of Japan—bravely plunging out into the mightiest expanse of water which spans the globe, and heading for the port that loomed up from the ocean almost ten thousand miles away.
Although but a few days out, little Inez had become the pet of the whole ship. She was full of high spirits, bounding health—a laughing, merry sprite, who made every portion of the steamer her home, and who was welcome wherever she went.
To the bronzed and rugged Captain Strathmore she was such a reminder of his own lost Inez that she became a second daughter to him, and something like a pang stirred his heart when he reflected upon his arrival at his destination and his parting from the little one.
Inez, as nearly as the captain could gather, had been living for several years with her uncle and aunt in San Francisco, from which port her parents had sailed a considerable time before. The stranger gave a very common name as his own—George Smith—and said he would await the return of the Polynesia with great anxiety, in order to learn the particulars of the arrival of his niece in Japan.
However, the captain did not allow his mind to be annoyed by any speculations as to the past of the little girl; but he could not avoid a strong yearning which was growing in his heart that something would turn up—something possibly in the shape of a social revolution or earthquake—that would place the little girl in his possession again.
And yet he trembled as he muttered the wish.
“How long would I keep her? I had such a girl once—her very counterpart—the sweet Inez, my own; and yet she is gone, and who shall say how long this one shall be mine?”
The weather remained all that could be wished for a number of days after steaming out of the Golden Gate. It was in the month of September, when a mild, dreamy languor seemed to rest upon everything, and the pass
age across the Pacific was like one long-continued dream of the Orient—excepting, perhaps, when the cyclone or hurricane, roused from its sleep, swept over the deep with a fury such as strews the shores with wrecks and the bottom with multitudes of bodies.
What more beautiful than a moonlight night on the Pacific?
The Polynesia was plowing the vast waste of waters which separates the two worlds, bearing upon her decks and in her cabins passengers from the four quarters of the globe.
They came from, and were going to, every portion of the wide world. Some were speeding toward their homes in Asia or Africa or the islands of the sea; and others living in Europe or America, or the remote corners of the earth, would finally return, after wandering over strange places, seeing singular sights, and treading in the footsteps of the armies who had gone before them in the dim ages of the past.
Now and then the great ship rose from some mighty swell, and then, settling down, drove ahead, cleaving the calm water and leaving a wide wake of foam behind. The black smoke poured out of the broad funnels, and sifted upward through the scant rigging, and was dissipated in the clear air above. The throbbing of the engine made its pulsations felt through the ponderous craft from stem to stern, as a giant breathes more powerfully when gathering his energy for the final effort of the race. A few drifting clouds moved along the sky, while, now and then, a starlike point of light, far away against the horizon, showed where some other caravansary of the sea was moving toward its destination, thousands of leagues away.
Although Captain Strathmore was on duty, and it was against the rules for any passenger to approach or address him, yet there was one who was unrestrained by rules or regulations, no matter how sternly they were enforced in other cases.
The captain was standing on the bridge, when he felt some one tugging at his coat, and he looked down.
There was Inez demanding his attention.
“Take me up, pop,” said she.
“Bless your heart!” laughed the captain as he obeyed the little empress; “you would ruin the discipline of a man-of-war in a month.”
While speaking, he perched her on his shoulder, as was a favorite custom with him.
The day had been unusually warm, and the night was so mild that the steady breeze made by the motion of the steamer was scarcely sufficient to keep one cool. Little Inez had thrown aside her hat with the setting of the sun, and now her wealth of golden hair streamed and fluttered in fleecy masses about her shoulders.
The Edward S. Ellis Megapack Page 97
