Chapter VI: Introduction: BY (6)

Most of the people of Lavenham who knew him thought Specific Gravity mildly insane, but they all liked him. He was so simple and sincere and kind that they could not help it; but they never knew what he would be up to next in the line of dangerous experiment. He was as inventive as a fox, as spry as a cat, and as steady-headed as a monkey.

Old Deacon Podgers looked out at his window one morning when it was blowing half a gale, and on the top of the unfinished steeple of the new Baptist Church saw a strange black object. The deacon, who had been a sea-captain all his active days, turned to the wall for his spy glass, and recognized Gravity Gregg, who had climbed up there to study the vibration of materials, as he told the deacon when he asked him why he risked his life so recklessly.

John Paul acquired his name of Specific Gravity from an early answer in the philosophy class, but it did not become publicly his until one day after an anxious night in the big railroad freight-yards just outside the town.

The Gregg house was on the brow of the hill overlooking the river and the flats where the railroad runs, and Fic knew every landmark visible from his window.

It was a holiday. He had been fishing all day and went to bed early, but woke up about midnight with a start to see a flickering light reflected on the wall. He was at the window in a moment, and after taking an observation said to himself, “That’s in the freight-yards! It must be a car on fire!”

It was not a big blaze, like a burning house, but a flickering little blaze, like that of the lamps on the fruit-peddlers’ stands at night.

The desire to investigate was strong upon John Paul. His mother had never objected to his going to fires, but would she let him go so late at night? He would not wake her up to ask, and with a sigh went back to bed again and dropped off to sleep—only to be wakened up by the distant sound of a fire-engine rattling through the streets and to see the same flickering light at the same spot on the wall.

He went to the window again and took the field-glass, which was one of his most cherished possessions.

“It’s a car, sure enough, and they’ve got the engines out,” he said. “I wish I could go and see.”

He went back to bed, but tossed and tossed, while the light still flickered on the wall.

“It’s strange they don’t put it out,” he thought. “They must have been at work at it two or three hours.”

He rose again and went to the window, but the air was so cold that he dressed himself, his curiosity all the while growing stronger. Taking his shoes in his hand he went softly down to the door, took the spare latch-key from its hook, let himself quietly out, put on his shoes, and slipped down to the front gate.

It was a windy night, with the moon eating up the clouds, and the streets were very quiet. The first sign of excitement was at the gate of the yards, where another fire-engine was just going in.

Fic slipped in beside it and took a short cut across the tracks, between and under the cars, to the other side next the big freight-house, where a fire-engine was pumping water through long lines of black hose on a big tank-car that was all in a blaze on the under side.

The tracks were flooded. Fic balanced himself on a rail and watched the blazing car with a puzzled look. Every time the stream of water fairly struck the center of the flame it flew in every direction in sheets and threads of fire, but always settled back at the bottom of the car.

The division superintendent of the road drove up. Fic knew him by sight, for he lived in Lavenham and went to his church.

“What’s the matter?” the superintendent said, in a high-keyed voice. “Why don’t you put out the fire?”

Three men drew out of the group around the fire-engine and came to the side of the buggy. One was the yardmaster, another the conductor in charge of the train, and the third the fire-chief.

“It’s naphtha,” said the chief. “There’s a leak somewhere in the pipes that lets it down to the fire a little at a time. We can’t get at it for the heat, and the water only scatters it.”

“The stuff must be pretty well out by this time,” said the conductor; “and when it gets low and the fire works up into the tank there will be an explosion. It’s awful stuff for fire.”

Fic was standing by the front wheel of the buggy and saw the superintendent’s face grow pale by the flickering light.

“Can’t you move the car?”

“We can’t get near enough to couple, and the truck is about burned through. We moved the other cars, but we can’t move the buildings.”

“Why not bring up the gravel-train from the lower switch and fill up from below until the fire is buried.”

“There won’t be time. The tank’s nearly empty now. It’s been burning all night.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” answered the chief. “Those tanks hold a lot, and it doesn’t take much naphtha to make a big blaze. What I’m afraid of is that it will explode while it is half full, and scatter the burning stuff all over the yard. Or else it will burn a week, and stop all the work in the yards while we are waiting for it to burst! That will never do.”

Fic had been doing a lot of thinking while this hasty consultation went on. He had not studied his physics for nothing, and he was sure he had the key to the problem.

“Please, Mr. Sanderson, may I speak?”

The four men looked down and saw a boy in a short jacket, with eyes that were burning with excitement, and Mr. Sanderson said, in amazement: “Hello! Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

“If you please,” said Fic, drawing himself up to the dashboard in his excitement, “I know how to put out the fire!”

“You do, do you! Well, speak up quick! It’ll be worth a good many thousand dollars and perhaps a few lives, if you do.”

“Take off the lid of the tank on top and pour water into the tank. The wind blows the fire to one side, and if you can once get a hose in you will do it.”

“How will that put the fire out?” cried the superintendent.

“It’s the specific gravity. Water is denser than naphtha and will sink to the bottom. If it doesn’t explode when you open it, it won’t afterward. The water will sink to the bottom and get into the leaky pipes.”

“I believe the lad’s right,” said the fire-chief. “At all events, we’ll try it. Who’ll help?”

Two or three volunteers came forward and lifted a ladder on the windward side of the car. The chief mounted and pried up the lid. No explosion followed, and on thrusting in his hand he found that the naphtha was still very near the top. If the fire should reach and scatter it there would be no hope of saving the buildings, he knew, and even the vapor was dangerous. He called for a hose, thrust it in at the vent, and pulled down the lid to keep the vapor in. Then he climbed down to watch the result.

Already, as he reached the ground and turned to look, the flame had diminished. In five minutes the fire was out, and water was dripping from the cooled end of the leaky pipe, which was soon tied up and made safe. Not only was the danger over, but almost the whole contents of the tank were saved.

No sooner was the work of repair over by the gleam of hastily lighted lanterns than the superintendent, like a man relieved by miracle, suddenly pulled himself up from the side of the disabled car and looked about him.

Then he shouted, “Where’s that boy?”

Nobody knew. For the moment they had forgotten all about the boy in thinking of the escape from peril; and as for John Paul, so soon as he saw that the fire was out and his faith in the principle of specific gravity vindicated, his interest had ceased, and he had turned across the flooded tracks toward home.

He slipped quietly in, got to bed by half past four without disturbing anybody, and was up as usual when his mother called him to help her with the morning work. He never troubled her with his experiments, and it did not occur to him to speak of the night’s adventure.

Even the reporter of the _Daily Flashlight_ was too much interested in the success of the experiment to interview the boy, although he made the best of him in his story in the morning paper. He was a stranger in Lavenham, and had never heard of the uncanny doings of Gravity Gregg. It was not until the next day that the whole story got out, and Fic found it necessary to go to school by the back streets to avoid public notice.

When the division superintendent reached home in the early morning, he found his wife waiting for him with a cup of hot coffee, and as he drank it he told her the story.

“I suppose I shall have to advertise for the boy,” he said. “I can’t let him go. He saved the car and the buildings, and perhaps the lives of some of us.”

“You needn’t do that,” answered Mrs. Sanderson, who knew nothing about physics but had caught two words in the story. “He lives right around the corner in the little brown house. He’s the oldest son of the Widow Gregg, and nearly blew our Ralph’s head off one day last week with one of his experiments. All the boys call him Gravity Gregg.”

While Mrs. Gregg was at breakfast the door-bell rang, and Mr. Sanderson invited himself in. It took a long while to tell the story, for Mrs. Gregg couldn’t understand that John Paul had been anywhere but safe in bed all night, and John Paul couldn’t see that there was anything to make a fuss about in so simple an expedient in practical physics.

People said that the railroad ought to make the boy a handsome present, but it did not. What it did do was to see that he got the best kind of an education and then to put him where he could climb high in their employ.

He carries a watch which Mr. Sanderson and the fire-chief gave him as soon as he was considered by them old enough to take care of it, on the case of which is engraved a name and a date. His mother is proud of him, and, luckily for her pet ambition, she is quite as proud of another son who is just such a minister as she hoped to make of John Paul Gregg.

JONNASEN

By Dallas Lore Sharp

It was a half-holiday at the quarries; the schools, the stores and shops all closed at noon. The whole quarry town had turned out to see the great granite shaft hauled to the station.

To avoid the risk and cost of two loadings, the forty-ton stone had been derricked to the road at the edge of the quarry, and there, under a temporary shed, had been cut, polished and crated. It now lay blocked upon a low, powerful dray, ready to be moved to the freight siding in the village, over a mile distant.

The stone was the largest single block of granite ever quarried at the Laston ledges. It had been an expensive job from the start, and a very troublesome one. It had led to a strike, a riot, and almost to murder.

There had been no man among the two hundred in the quarries capable of properly dressing the stone. So the company had brought in Gunar Gustavesen to do the work. And the men were angry at the intrusion of the outsider.

The company was warned. So was Gustavesen. But the work on the shaft went on—until the strike. Jonnasen, the leader of the men, was as sure he was right and as stubborn as Hendricks, president of the firm. Then the men grew ugly, there was a riot, Gustavesen’s furniture was burned in the street, and he himself so brutally attacked that he still lay slowly mending in one of the company’s houses.

It was a bitter victory, and Jonnasen was too honest a man to like it. When it was reported to him that Havelok Gustavesen, the sixteen-year-old son of the non-union man, had found some menial work in the company’s stables, he made it clear to the men that the boy was to be let alone. That is how it happened that young Gustavesen appeared among the men who were busy with the twenty-four-horse team attached to the heavy dray.

The road from the quarry to the station was down grade except for two steep hills, where the ledges cropped out, and where every ounce of the pulling power of the great team would be required. At the top of the second rise the downward slope stretched away for about half a mile with a sharp curve round the edge of the old quarry. The curve was guarded by heavy stone posts and a wooden rail.

The possibilities of all this had been reckoned with, and in order to keep the forty tons of granite from pushing the horses before it, a pair of heavy steel shoes had been fitted to a brake that might have held a freight-train.

Jonnasen settled himself upon the seat of the dray, gathered up the reins of the pole-team, and, with his foot upon the brake, gave the word to start. The drivers of the forward spans echoed the command, and the dray rolled out upon the road.

There is something inspiring in the work of willing horses. It is a noble enthusiasm, little less than inspiration, that takes possession of the horses themselves. The crowd along the road felt it and cheered, as the twelve pairs, pulling like one, took the great polished shaft to the top of the first hill.

It was a short and gentle descent to the second and steepest ridge. Jonnasen put on the brake, and caught the weight so easily that the horses of the pole moved free in their traces, yet kept them fairly taut.

Near the bottom of the slope he started them forward on the trot, loosed the brake, and sent the long line at a good pace to take the second ridge.

It was a pretty piece of work. So beautifully did the immense stone mount the rise that even the members of the firm in attendance cheered with the rest.

Then a silence fell. No one spoke of danger, but as the great, shining shaft pointed down the slope, its forty tons of dead weight seemed suddenly to have changed into active power. It seemed to poise at the top of the hill. It was a thing alive.

The ridge was a narrow ledge of granite, hardly wide enough to stop the dray upon. Jonnasen had intended to breathe his team here, but by the time the dray was up, the lead horses were already going down, and the load, without a pause, began to descend.

Jonnasen bore down on the brake, drew in his horses, and looked off down the long grade to the turn about the precipitous edge of the old quarry.

He drew a short, hard breath. No cooler man than this tall Swede ever held a rein. He could handle horses as he could handle men.

But he had made a mistake, and he knew it instantly. He should have stopped on the ridge, as he intended. He should have unhooked all the horses ahead of the pole-team here. They were in the way. The horses at the pole could guide the load down. The others were a menace, if anything should happen.

“But nothing should happen!” he muttered to himself, and a half-smile broke over his rugged face as he heard the grind of the brake and saw the slack in the traces taken up. The load was under his foot.

Just then the lead horses broke into a trot. Immediately the whole line started. Jonnasen bore down on the brake, and drew his own team hard back to check the pull, when there was a sharp crack, like the report of a pistol, and one of the steel shoes fell broken to the road.

Instantly a dozen warning voices told him what he too well knew had happened. The big horses knew, too, and settled back to stop the push from behind. Jonnasen put all his weight into the single steel shoe that bit at the back wheel. A stream of sparks flew from the tire, and a wild, shrill scream told that the brake still worked. But the horses were sliding.

Then the pole ran into the team ahead, the horses plunged, and there was confusion.

“Unhook them from the pole!” Jonnasen called to the nearest driver. The man dropped his lines, caught the jangling traces and tried to run in between the teams, but was struck by a hoof and rolled out of the road.

Panic seized the whole line of frightened horses. Some of the drivers still held their teams back, but they were being dragged helplessly.

“Unhook them!” Jonnasen shouted to the crowd shrinking back against the fence. Were he free to let his own team go, they might keep ahead of the load, and take the turn with a possible chance of rounding the edge of the deep quarry.

“Unhook them!” he shouted again, powerless to quit his place and do the thing himself. But no one was able to move.

Then a lithe young figure came bounding down from the ridge. It was young Gustavesen. He sprang upon the dray, ran forward, seized the whip in Jonnasen’s hand, and in a cool, deliberate voice, said:

“When I get hold, let ’em jump quick.” He dropped between the horses to the pole, and clutching the harness, got quickly out to the end. He was bending to catch the evener when a forward wheel struck a rut, and the long tongue snapped him viciously into the air.

He caught the hames of the nigh horse, and saved himself. Hanging to the hames, he swung back, lay out along the tongue, and reached again for the evener.

Jonnasen was watching, and as the boy laid his hand upon the big hook, he loosed the reins, the horses lunged, and the long, heavy bar was unhooked almost of itself.

Like a flash the boy straightened and swung the lash about the horses ahead, throwing himself an instant later upon the back of the horse he was holding.

The loosened teams were barely dragged to the side as the pole-team went by on the gallop, with its forty-ton stone.

Jonnasen had the horses under perfect control. He could guide them straight ahead. But the mighty stone was gathering momentum with every leap of the team, and powerful as they were Jonnasen began to realize that they would never be able to check or turn the downward plunge at the curve on the edge of the quarry.

Then he saw that young Gustavesen was making no attempt to fling himself from the galloping horse.

“Jump!” he shouted. “Jump, quick!”

Havelok turned. “I can’t jump!” he called back. “My leg! Tend your team! I’m safe here!”

The absolute confidence of the boy sent a strange thrill through the big Swede. It steadied him.

They were near to the turn, with the horses running close to the inner side, and still well in hand.

Jonnasen thought quickly. It was a chance—the only chance. One of them—both of them—might escape if he could hit with the long iron hub of the rear wheel the tough young white oak that stood out on the very round of the sharp curve.

Jonnasen drew the horses in a little, spoke to them quietly, then sent the front wheel past the tree with a bite at the bark, pulled the team hard in, and leaped.

There was a dull crash, a ripping of harness, and a grinding crunch as the forty-ton stone slued over the crushed wheel across the broken top of the tree.

Jonnasen was picked up in the road, unconscious, but not seriously hurt. The escape of Gustavesen was more than luck. It was a miracle, but a miracle worked by his own presence of mind, and the coolness, quickness and good judgment of Jonnasen.

As the wheel struck, the traces parted, the pole-chains snapped, and the horses shot ahead free, with the boy clinging to the harness.

When he was helped down, his right leg was found to be broken; but that had happened back along the road, when he was snapped from the pole while trying to unhook the forward teams. And it was this that prevented his trying to fling himself off to the road as his perilous ride began.

No harm had come to the shaft. The dray was a wreck, but the great stone lay unbroken, and almost unscratched, among the débris.

It was a week later, as both Gustavesens, father and son, were convalescing, that they received a letter, concluding as follows:

Henceforth a man shall be a man here. Some things have been
done that the men in this quarry are ashamed of. They believe
now that every man has a right to work and live under the law
according to the dictates of his own conscience.

For the men,

(Signed) Jonnasen.

IN THE OVEN

By Richard Washburn Child

“I am inclined to think that a girl’s wit is quicker than a man’s in a tight place, if the place is tight enough.”

Mr. Colchester had spoken after we had been silently sitting for several minutes watching the mist that was creeping over the moonlit water and listening to the chirp of the crickets in the grass.

He always began a story by stating the moral. His way was to present some conclusion and then prove it by a personal experience.

“I was thinking of my sister,” he explained. “She once saved us both from a fearful death. If it had not been for her ready wit I should have been a biscuit!”

At this every one straightened up perceptibly. Mr. Colchester’s stories were always interesting.

“Perhaps all of you do not know that my father was a cracker manufacturer,” he continued, “and that he had a shop with machinery and three ovens in it. Of course that would be considered nothing to-day, when there are bakeries that supply thousands of people in every part of the country, but when I was a boy I remember I used to wonder that there were enough mouths to consume all that my father’s workmen made.

“I often went down to the shop, for it was really fascinating to watch the mixers turning the great rolls of dough over and over, and see the cutting-machines chopping a long strap of it into little sticky lumps. Then old Carberry, the baker, would toss the pieces which had been patted and molded by hand on the tiled floor of the oven. Sometimes my sister Margaret used to go with me, for we were great chums, and it was on one of those occasions that we got into trouble.

“The day, I remember, had been rainy, and after a discouraging attempt to amuse ourselves in the house, Margaret said, ‘Let’s take umbrellas and go down to the bakery.’

“I was so glad of the suggestion that I forgot it was the noon hour, when the men would be gone and the machinery shut down. It wasn’t until we saw the deserted room that we remembered it.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘we are bright, aren’t we? But let’s look round—I’ll tell you, let’s look at the cool oven.’

“‘Cool oven!’ exclaimed Margaret, in surprise.

“I explained to her that in the ordinary course of business only two ovens were used, and that unless there were extra orders there was always one oven which was out of commission, being shut off from the furnaces below by the big sheet-iron dampers.

“I raised the latch of the heavy door and bent down to look across the flat, tiled surface inside.

“‘It’s just like a cave, isn’t it, Bob?’ cried my sister; and I laughed at the idea and asked her whether she expected to see a bear or a robber walk out.

“‘Of course I don’t!’ she said, for she always was on her guard against my making fun of her. ‘Let’s crawl in.’

“‘All right,’ said I, touching the brick walls to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake; and then I followed her inside through the gloomy opening.

“‘Will it get my dress dirty?’ Margaret asked, out of the darkness.

“‘No, indeed,’ said I. ‘They have to keep these ovens clean as can be. They’re fussy about every speck of dust.’

“I had hardly finished when the iron door behind us shut with a resounding clang. One of the workmen who had come back to work had closed it!

“‘O Bob,’ cried my sister, with a little scream of fright, ‘we’re shut in!’

“‘Like two biscuits,’ I laughed. ‘Don’t you mind. All we have to do is to shout and some one will come.’

“But Margaret was really scared, and groped her way near me to put her hand on my shoulder. I confess the darkness and the close, stuffy air were far from cheerful.

“I began to call as loud as I could, and not getting any answer, I crept over to the solid iron door and began kicking it with my heels. After a moment I stopped, breathing hard from my exercise, and then I heard Margaret’s voice behind me, saying:

“‘Wait a minute, Bob! Listen!’

“I strained my ears, and from the outside I could hear a rumbling that seemed to come from far, far away.

“‘It’s the machinery!’ I cried. ‘It’s after one o’clock, and they have begun work again. No wonder they couldn’t hear us!’

“By that time I had become really frightened, and I suppose I must have temporarily lost my head. I shouted wildly until my throat was sore, but it seemed only to fill our oven trap with noise. There was no hope whatever that it would penetrate the thick brick walls. Suddenly I was startled into silence by a sound of scraping iron underneath us—a familiar noise to my ears. Some one had pulled open the great damper that shut us off from the fires in the cellar below! They were going to heat our oven!

“‘What was that?’ exclaimed my sister, touching my hand with her cold fingers. ‘What did that noise mean, Bob?’ She seemed to know our danger by instinct. I did not answer, for with a sinking heart I felt on my face the first breath of warm air!

“‘Tell me, Bob!’ demanded Margaret. ‘They are heating this oven, aren’t they?’ She had caught my wrist and pressed it as hard as a girl could squeeze.

“‘Yes!’ I gasped, trying to speak bravely. I remember I felt that if I were alone I should not care nearly so much, but the idea that my little sister would have to die, too, put me into another panic.

“A second breath of air a good deal hotter than the first fanned my cheek. I jumped up with a scream, and beat and kicked upon the rough brick walls and on the iron door in blind terror. Then, exhausted, I crawled along the floor to the place where Margaret sat. She was crying quietly—I could tell because when I put my arm about her I could feel that she was shaking.

“‘They will never, never hear us!’ she sobbed.

“‘Don’t cry, Margy,’ said I, patting her wet cheek while I tried to arouse my own courage. ‘Perhaps there is another way.’

“I tried to think, but the heat had then become almost unbearable; it stung my nose and seemed to suffocate me. Once when I touched a place on one of the tiles I drew my hand back in real pain. There was no hope of breaking the latch of the iron door, and no one could hear us, though we put our mouths to a little crack at the top of the door and screamed. I was sure we would be baked. My arm was still round my sister, and her hand was still in mine, as if she were seeking the comfort of the touch.

“It was becoming hotter and hotter, but neither of us spoke for several seconds. Then suddenly Margaret started up and cried out, eagerly, ‘Tell me, Bob, quick! Have you got a piece of paper?’

“I felt in my pockets. ‘Yes, I have an old postal card!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

“‘They can’t hear us, but we can make them see!’ she cried. ‘Hurry! Give it to me—and your jack-knife!’

“I handed them to her, and she began to pick at the hem of her skirt with the point of the knife.

“‘We need thread,’ she explained, excitedly, ‘and if this is a chain-stitch on this hem we can get it!’ I lighted a match. ‘And it is, Bob, it is!’ she cried. I realized that she had caught an end of thread and was carefully ripping it out.

“‘Now, Bob,’ she commanded, handing me the card, ‘punch a hole in the card and tie it through.’ Her voice was weak. From my own struggle to keep my senses in the awful heat, I knew that she was nearly at the collapsing point.

“‘What are you going to do with it?’ I gasped.

“‘The door!’ she answered, faintly. ‘Dangle the card through the crack in the door!’ Then I understood her plan at last, and crawling painfully over on my knees, I thrust the postal card down the little crack between the door and the iron jamb.

“‘Pull it up and let it down!’ cried Margaret, with a final effort, and I jiggled the string so that the paper would dance upon the wall outside. My head swam with the effect of the terrible heat, and it seemed ages before any one came.

“Then suddenly the latch was lifted, the door swung open, and in spite of the blinding daylight which poured in I could see the astonished face of old Carberry, the baker, peering in at us!

“I caught my sister’s dress, pulling her toward the opening with all the strength that was left in me, and fell out after her into the old man’s arms.

“That is why I say,” concluded Mr. Colchester, as he looked round upon us with a smile, “that it was a girl’s wit that kept me from being baked like a biscuit. And that is the reason why I say that a girl’s wit is the best in a tight place—providing the place is tight enough.”

ON A SLIDE-BOARD

By Robert Barnes

At three o’clock on an August morning the press in the little printing-office on the summit ceased its clatter, and Corey Green brought out a bundle of _Stars_, wrapped in enameled cloth, to Bart Collamore.

“Here’s your five hundred,” said Corey, “hot from the types.”

“All right,” replied Bart “They’ll be on the hotel counters twenty miles away by six.”

They walked down the platform before the Summit House. A dim light illumined the office, but the rest of the long building was dark. Only two other persons were awake—Frank Simmons, busy over the printing-press, and Luke Martin, the hotel watchman.

Overhead an occasional star glimmered through the driving wrack, and the low east disclosed the first faint tokens of a cloudy dawn; but in the west frowned a vaporous battlement, black and threatening, from which a strong wind was tearing detached masses and rolling them against the mountainside. Now and then a few flakes of snow flew by on the raw gale.

Lifting his slide-board from the platform, Bart set it on the cog-rail midway of the track.

This rail was bolted to a wooden centerpiece on the ties, and consisted of two parallel strips of wrought angle-iron, connected by steel pins three inches apart, on which the cogs of the engine worked. He turned the nut on the brake-rod until the iron plates by means of which the speed of the board was retarded were in position under the flanges of the rail. Then he pulled on his gloves, jammed his cap down hard, and buttoned his reefer up to his neck.

Corey glanced at the black western sky. “You’re liable to hit the storm going down,” said he.

“Guess I can beat it out,” returned Bart. Seating himself on the slide-board, with the bundle of papers between his knees, he gripped the brake-handles. Almost of itself the board began moving.

“I’ll be at the Base House in ten minutes!” he called back, as he sped away down the slope toward the north, while behind him the drone of the wind almost drowned Corey’s shout.

“Good luck!”

The slide-board was the conveyance used by employés and trackmen in descending the mountain railroad. Although perilous for a novice, it was easy of management for an experienced hand. It was of seven-eighths-inch spruce, ten inches wide, and something over a yard long. Three cleats screwed across its top kept it from splitting. Underneath were two sets of “shoes,” the forward of wood, the rear of iron, parallel strips half an inch thick and four inches apart, just far enough for the top of the cog-rail to slide between them.

As Bart slipped downward, the black buildings on the summit were blotted out by driving clouds. Little by little he swerved westward, turning his back to the dawn, hearing only the hoarse murmur of the rising gale and the rattle of his board.

Guide-books say that the three and one-third miles from summit to base may be covered by slide-board in twenty minutes. Actually, the record is two minutes and forty-seven seconds. This can be appreciated when one remembers that there is a drop of four thousand feet, and that the average grade approximates one in four. Bart had made the trip some hundreds of times in his fourteen years on the road. Every morning that summer he had gone down before daybreak, in order that the little paper printed on the peak might have early distribution among the various hotels.

Faster and faster sped the board. The top of the rack was abundantly lubricated with oil from the cogs of the engine, and the grade was growing steeper. On the left a dim shaft flitted by, memorial of a life lost by exposure on the mountain years before.

Bart put a little more pressure on his brakes. The stout birch handles, somewhat smaller than baseball bats and about as long as the board itself, were connected forward with the brake-rod running across the front in a hollow wooden bar, and with an iron plate under each flange of the rail. To retard his course, the rider simply pulled up on the handles, which were directly under his arms, thus lifting the plates against the flanges and pressing the board down harder on the top of the rack.

The track curved northwest for the next fifteen hundred feet to the Gulf Tank, a water cistern on the left. The grade varied from one in four to one in eight. The wind, keen, strong, and shot with hurrying snowflakes, stung even Bart’s seasoned face.

He had worked on the mountain long enough to know what was coming out of that inky bank ahead.

Gulf Tank swept past, a square gray shadow, and the track gradually swung west. And now he caught it in good earnest. The moan of the blast had risen to a furious howling. Bullets of sleet pelted his cheeks. Right before him rose a black wall, the edge of the real storm. It looked almost as if it were solid. Catching his breath, he ducked his head, and bolted straight into the heart of the tempest.

In a second it enveloped him, rain, snow, sleet and hail. His board whizzed faster over the wet, slippery rail.

The grade increased, and he knew he had reached Long Trestle. Beyond lay Jacob’s Ladder, the steepest place on the line, pitched considerably over one in three. He must not go too fast there. It was more than a mile and a half still to the bottom. If the board once got away from him—

Bart stiffened himself against the fierce blast, gripped the brake-handles hard, and pulled up on them. A stream of sparks trailed out on each side, as the plates bit at the flanges.

He was leaning well forward now, boring head foremost into the yelling gale. His eyes were closed; he could not keep them open.

Now the Trestle was past, and the Ladder lay just ahead. He could tell where he was by the feel of the track. His head was clear, his nerves steady. All he needed to do was to keep a good hold on those handles, and the board would soon carry him safely to the base.

Suddenly his speed increased. He had struck the Ladder. The grade at its head was not far from one in two. Down he shot, lifting hard on the birch bars.

What was that? It could not be that left brake-handle was buckling! Yes! Something had given way. Up came his hand, higher, higher, higher, yet there was no response of iron grinding against iron.

For just a second Bart felt sick.

The flange was only three-fourths of an inch wide. If that left plate once got out from under it, he knew very well what would happen.

A single brake could never hold the board on the rail. On the next curve, if not before, it would bound from the track with tremendous velocity, and its rider would land somewhere on the rugged mountainside with a broken neck. Somehow, if he cared to live, that plate must never lose its grip on the flange.

The Ladder was four hundred feet long and thirty feet above the rocks at its highest point. Bart was travelling forty miles an hour, so crossing the trestle took less than ten seconds. Before he left it, he saw what he must do.

Instinctively easing up on his right bar, so as to bring an even pressure on both sides, he ran his left hand quickly forward down the birch stick, to locate the break. Not many inches from the socket his fingers found it, where a knurl, imperceptibly weakened by long use, had evidently yielded at last.

Sitting where he did, he could just reach beyond the break by extending his arm full length, and he could exert only a slight upward pull. If he hoped to keep the board on the rail, he must immediately shift his position, so that he might put out his full strength. Several short curves were just ahead.

To change one’s place on a narrow board flying down a mountainside at forty miles an hour through a pitch-black hurricane is no fool’s task. Very carefully Bart hitched straight forward, until his knees were upright, and he was able to lift strongly on the unbroken portion of the bar. His speed was now simply terrific.

Round a curve he whisked, leaning far inward in the fear that he might ride the rail. Then, as his board settled down on a straightaway, he pulled up with all his might.

To his horror, he found that with so short a leverage he could not press the plate against the flange hard enough to check his speed.

The board was running away with him!

Bart knew every yard of that track, every pitch and curve, from the engine-house at the summit to the Marshfield turntable; and he realized that this was the most critical minute in all his years of railroading. Two courses were open to him—he might stick to the board, or he might roll off.

Which was the less dangerous?

If he rolled off at that speed, the best he could hope for would be a fearful bruising, broken bones and insensibility. It would be hours before rescuers could find him; and hours in that storm meant death.

If he stayed on, he took the chance of being hurled from the rail at some curve; besides, what would happen when he reached the bottom, if he ever did reach it?

He decided to stay on.

The slide-board took the curves at express speed. Time and again Bart thought it was flying off. He wondered to find himself still sitting hunched on the spruce, when Waumbek Tank slipped by. He knew it had passed, although he did not see it.

But little more than a mile due west, and almost thirteen hundred feet lower, lay the terminus. Was this to be his last ride on the line? In a couple of minutes at the most the thing would be decided. Bart manned himself for the finish.

On he shot, straining at the bars, head down through the pitch darkness. He was dashing against a forty-mile gale at an equal speed; that was equivalent to standing still in a hurricane blowing eighty miles. It shrieked round him with indescribable fury, striving to hurl him backward from his seat. His cap was torn away, and the sleet pattered like a sand-blast on his bare skull.

Cold Spring Tank flitted past, and the last steep pitch was near, seventeen hundred to the mile. In a moment Bart was rushing madly down the descent. His head swam with the hideous speed. His board vibrated and trembled as it hurtled along the track. All seemed unreal, uncanny. But although dazed and buffeted, he never for an instant loosed his grip of the bars. A “green” man might have lost his head, and that could have had but one result.

Almost sooner than he could think, he was at the bottom of the pitch, darting over the Ammonoosuc bridge. Only a few hundred feet more. The track, he knew, was clear to its end, for cars and engines were housed for the night. Now for one last, long, hard pull!

Deaf, blind, numb, exhausted, bent almost double, he drained his strength to the dregs for a clutch on the handles; then he lifted, as if he would tear the flange from the centerpiece.

There was a terrific shrieking as the iron surfaces ground together. Fire followed each brake.

A building rushed by on the right—the carpenter-shop. Bart did not actually see it, but he knew it was gone.

Then came the car-barn, the turntable, the engine-house and repair-shop, and the long wood-shed. Less than thirty yards more! His speed was slackening on the level grade, but it was still tremendous.

And now the laundry was past—the last building. Twenty-five feet beyond it the cog-rail ended. Bart threw all that was left of himself into one final, mighty wrench.

A second later he found himself rolling blindly along the ties, head over heels and heels over head, cuffed, punched, battered, as if a dozen flails were beating him at once on every part of his body. At last he came to a stop, a bruised, dizzy heap.

After a little Bart sat up, tried his arms and legs, and found he could get on his feet. He felt himself all over. Luckily his bones were well padded with muscle, so none of them were broken.

The storm was still blowing forty miles an hour, but by contrast it seemed to him to be almost over. He hunted until he found his bundle of papers; it had been tied tightly, and had not burst open. Then he limped up to the Base House.

“Here are your ‘_Stars_,’” said he to the driver of the team, shivering outside. “I’ve done my part; now see if you can get ’em to Bethlehem before six o’clock.”

THE CALL OF THE SEA

By Frederick Palmer

The only memory of his father that Franklin Thompson had was the photograph of a young naval officer in uniform which his mother, with tears in her eyes, often showed him. She died when Franklin was six, leaving him, her only cause for living longer, to the care of his father’s brother. When he realized how unwelcome he was in his new home, the only solace he had in the world was the photograph. He would look at it for an hour at a time, and read again and again the inscription on the back.

Before he was quite alone in the world he had heard the sea a-calling. On his holidays he would walk to the shore, and watch the ships go and come. Each was a speaking individuality, which he would recognize should he see it again. The salt breath was ever in his nostrils, the tang of salt spray in his veins.

When he was eleven, his cousin Edward, five years his senior, received the appointment to Annapolis. If Franklin felt any envy he stifled it. The inscription on the photograph in his father’s own hand forbade that.

“Be honest; envy nobody; strive hard,” it ran.

Two years later Franklin knew that his school-days were at an end.

“I’ll look for a place for you to learn some business,” said his uncle, as if the boy’s preferences for an occupation did not count.

Early the next morning Franklin went to the great bay near his home, as he always did when he was heavy of heart. Three men-of-war, one a new battle-ship, their white sides gleaming, rested their enormous weights on the water as gently as swans. On the battle-ship it was visiting day. From her side the monster reached down her big gangway, with holystoned steps and immaculate rope, as a gallant officer offers his hand to a lady.

At the threshold of the deck Franklin paused, as one who suddenly sees his dreams materialize in broad daylight. No one of the knots of sightseers, going here and there with the spectators’ “Ahs!” and occasional questions, noticed the boy, who stood immovable, noting every detail of the leviathan. Each gun seemed to him a living thing.

He saw some jackies going about their appointed duties, and others under the shade of the awnings aft, mending their clothes. The officer of the deck must be the happiest man in the world, Franklin thought. He imagined how his father must have looked, pacing back and forth in the same way. Oh, if his father were only alive, then perhaps he, too, might go to Annapolis! He looked up at the bridge and imagined himself in a great storm, with the spray stinging his face and blinding his eyes, and the mountain of steel as obedient to his commands as a bicycle to the turn of the handle-bar.

“Wouldn’t you like to look around a bit?” asked a voice at his elbow.

Its owner, Franklin saw, was a boy of about his own age, dressed like the jackies in summer white.

“Would I? Would I?” The way Franklin asked the question was answer enough from any one boy to another.

“I guess you’ll do,” said his new friend, laughing. “My name’s Harry Grimm. I’m a ’prentice.”

Harry showed how the ammunition was hoisted for the thirteen-inch gun by touching a button; he slipped a dummy shell into the breech of one of the three-inch rapid fires; but he was quite unable to answer all of his guest’s questions.

Franklin did not leave the man-of-war until the last boat was going ashore. That night he told his uncle of his desire to join the navy as an apprentice.

Uncle William was in unusually bad temper. He thought a moment and then said:

“I don’t believe you’ll ever be any use in business. Probably you’d run away to sea if I got you a place. I’ll take you to the navy-yard to-morrow.”

At any rate, Uncle William thought, he would be free from any further responsibility or care for the boy. Nevertheless, he knew what Franklin’s proud father or his proud mother, were either of them alive, would say. That thought stung him a little.

While his cousin was at the school where officers are made, Franklin was to be trained for a seaman. Edward would begin his career with rank and position just beyond the highest grade that Franklin could ever attain. Franklin must be ever on the forecastle side of the dividing line between officer and man. He might rise to be a chief gunner, while Edward might be an admiral.

But Franklin did not understand this. He was in the period of light-hearted youth when the responsibility for his future rested on his guardian’s shoulders. He was entirely under the spell of the call of the sea.

A year later found him bound for South America on a small cruiser, which continued around the Horn and on to Hongkong to join the Asiatic squadron, which was even then preparing for the conflict with Spain. In all that long voyage he had never once been seasick, and he had grown to love the sea from familiarity as much as he had loved it in anticipation.

On that great morning when the American men-of-war ran into Manila Bay, the executive officer set him to look for torpedo-boats. The story of how he reported, with his hand to his cap in salute, “Torpedo-boat on our starboard bow, sir; she’s sinking by the bow, sir; she’s sunk,” went the round of the messes. After the battle came that long period of waiting until the army took the city. When the sun was not as hot as an oven, the clouds poured torrents that rose from the hot awnings in steam.

By this time Franklin had come to comprehend the separation of officer and man as only actual service can reveal it. Sometimes, with cap in hand, he had to pass through the ward-room and the officers’ quarters. These, which had been his father’s portion, would be his cousin’s, but could never be his.

His fellow apprentices were quite content with the forecastle. They felt more at home aft than they would forward. There was Charley, for example. Charley studied as little as he might; he was always getting into mischief, but was withal a bright, good-hearted fellow, with the makings of a first-class seaman in him.

The boatswain, known as “Pete” in the forecastle and “Deering” forward—and there you have his two names—used to fend off intrusion when Franklin was busy with his books. All his studies had the requirements for admission to Annapolis in view. Not that he expected ever to have his learning put to the test. He knew no one, he had no hope of knowing any one, who could secure for him the coveted appointment. It pleased him to be ready.

One day, as he was bending over the little box which is at once a seaman’s work-basket and wardrobe, the captain, who had strolled aft, stopped by his side, and looking over his shoulder, saw a photograph.

“Why, that’s Thompson!” he exclaimed. “Is he any relation of yours?”

“My father, sir,” Franklin replied, as he sprang to his feet and saluted.

“I did not know that,” the captain repeated, thoughtfully.

He picked up the photograph, and scanned the face of his old messmate. Afterward he never passed Franklin without a smiling glance. But that glance, meant so kindly, had a sting. It seemed to say that he was in a position unworthy of his father’s name.

When a visiting congressman of the United States came aboard the cruiser as a guest, Pete instantly sought out Franklin, and taking him to one side where he would not be overheard, said:

“Now’s your chance, my bully boy. A congressman can do ’most anything, so they say. You go right up to this one and knock your cap smart as you can, and tell him who your father was and that you want to go to Annapolis.”

Franklin had not the courage or the presumption, whichever you call it; Pete called it “gall.”

“If you won’t, sonny, I will.”

And when he saw the congressman sitting on the deck after general quarters, he approached him with a eulogy as earnest as it was picturesque. The congressman smiled, and asked to see Franklin.

“Now, sonny,” said Pete, “I’ve cleared the channel; go forward and do your evolutions.”

As Franklin stood before the elderly, dignified man sitting beside the captain on the captain’s deck, he felt himself to be quite the most insignificant apprentice in the world. The congressman looked him over keenly from head to foot, as if he were examining the texture of the cloth on the back of his jacket.

“Do you want to go to Annapolis?”

Did he want to? Does the tender shoot of spring want the sunlight? Franklin’s voice trembled with hope:

“Yes, sir. More than anything else in the world.”