as the school was now closed for “summer holidays,” the boys were free to do whatever they pleased.
one bright forenoon the heroic six, full of merry jokes, set out on a stroll to the woods. charles and will led the way, and why they made for the woods will be seen further on.
“now, boys,” said charley, “wouldn’t it be fun if we should have a real adventure to-day? something romantic; something worth while—eh, marmaduke?”
[67]
marmaduke’s eyes flashed like a persecuted hero’s whose case appears hopeless. however, he did nothing desperate, he simply said, “boys, some day or another we shall light on something romantic—something awful! i’ve always felt it. then we will pry into the mystery until we unravel it.”
will, charles, and stephen, furtively exchanged glances. if their designs should succeed, marmaduke would have a mystery to pry into sooner than he bargained for.
just as they entered the woods they heard voices; and on looking about they caught sight of three little boys sitting astride of a decayed log. one seemed to have a paper of raisins, from which he was helping himself and the other two.
“hush!” charley whispered. “they haven’t seen us yet; so hide behind the bushes, and i’ll play a pretty trick on them.”
without the least hesitation, without looking to see whether they were sitting on grass or thorns, they crouched down. charley “knew himself,” and the boys obeyed him promptly.
seeing that they were all concealed, he advanced boldly towards the three small boys.
“hollo, tim!” he exclaimed. “what have you got there?”
“raisins,” tim answered laconically.
“where did you get them?” was the next question.
“maw sent me fur ’em.”
“oh, i thought so. now i can go to work,” charley muttered, in a theatrical “aside.”
“what do you want of me, and what are you a-saying to yourself?” demanded tim, becoming questioner in his turn.
“i’ll give you a whistle for one of them, tim,” charley said, so eagerly that the boys in hiding wondered. why should such a boy as charley wish to purchase a single raisin? was this a mystery? it seemed so mysterious that they pricked up their ears, and impatiently waited for further developments.
tim’s thoughts are unknown. he replied indifferently,[68] “well, if your whistle’s a good one, i guess i don’t mind; but i’ve give these here boys so many raisins that maw’ll think that there new store-keeper cheats worse’n the old ones. let’s see yer whistle, anyway.”
charles turned his back to tim, and searched his pockets for the whistle, a scrap of paper, and a forlorn lead pencil that had once done duty as the bullet of a popgun. having found these articles, he scrawled a few words on the scrap of paper.
“can’t you find the whistle?” tim inquired unsuspectingly.
“i’m coming,” was the answer.
then the gaping ambushed five saw him slip the battered pencil into his pocket, take the paper in one hand and the whistle in the other, and step briskly up to tim.
tim reached out the bag, and charley ran his hand which secreted the paper far into it. then he drew out his hand—empty.
“no, tim,” he said, “i think you have given away enough already. but here’s the whistle, all the same. now, run home, like a good boy.”
young tim tried his whistle somewhat doubtfully, for he was at a loss to know why it should be given to him for nothing. big boys did not make a practice of throwing away good whistles on him, unless they looked for some return. generosity so lavish astounded him.
but the first toot assured him of the soundness of the gift; a smile of pleasure flitted over his grimy face; and he exclaimed joyously, “man! it’s bully, ain’t it?”
“oh, it’s a good one,” charley averred.
“i—i was afraid p’r’aps it was busted,” tim acknowledged.
then young tim rose to his feet and wended his way homeward, piping melodiously on his whistle, unconscious of the bomb-shell hidden in the bag; while hard behind him, licking their daubed lips as they went, trotted the two parasitical boys who had been junketing on his mother’s raisins.
charley, grinning and chuckling, hurried back to his comrades.
[69]
“i hope i’ve taught that thieving little sneak-thief a lesson he will remember,” he said, with a smile intended to be exceedingly moral.
“why, what did you do? what on earth’s the matter? tell us all about it,” cried a chorus of voices; “we could see something was up, but we didn’t know what.”
“well, boys,” charles began, “i have often caught that rascal feeding little boys, and big ones, too, from parcels of raisins, sugar, and other things; and i thought i would make him smart for it some day. so to-day, when i saw him at it again, i thought of writing something on a scrap of paper, and getting a chance to slip it into his bag. you saw me do that, perhaps. what i wrote was, ‘o, mother! please to forgive me! i stole your raisins and things, but i won’t do it no more.’ when his mother empties out the raisins, she will find that, and it will be enough for her. then she’ll put two and two together, and then, most likely, she’ll put tim and his skate-straps together. that is all, boys.”
“good for you, buffoon!” exclaimed stephen, to whom this knavish trick was highly amusing. “mr. tim will ‘pay dear for his whistle’ this time—unless your confession should slip out of the bag!”
“no, i put it down nearly to the bottom,” charley replied. “he won’t be likely to open his bag again, either, for he has eaten and given away about half of the raisins.”
“i say, boys,” said stephen, “isn’t that what they call philanthropy?”
“what?” charles asked eagerly.
“teaching a boy that it’s wicked to steal.”
“no; it’s the vice of perfidy!” george replied, so promptly that a keen observer would have said, “this boy is impelled by envy; he wishes he had been guilty of the same vice.”
but george was in the right; charley’s trick was inhumanly treacherous.
“did you intend to take one of his raisins?” jim faltered, a wolfish look in his eyes.
charles’ lips curled with disdain; his nostrils dilated; virtuous indignation strove for utterance. but he knew[70] that he could not look so injured that the boy would hang his head in shame; so he resolved to annihilate him by a single word. to gain time to hit on an expression sufficiently awful, he demanded threateningly:
“what do you mean, sir?”
jim’s nerves were always weak, and this jeering question so unstrung them that he spoke the first words that occurred to him. (by the way, the phrase was a favorite one of his, one that he used on all occasions; and according to the tone in which he said it, it implied either doubt, indifference, petulance, fear, or profanity!)
“i don’t know, i’m sure,” is what he said.
“you hadn’t better!” stephen thundered with lowering brow.
the reason why steve espoused charley’s cause so readily was because the boys still teased him about the donkey; and he rejoiced to find that another—that other his schoolfellow charles—could be guilty of the misdemeanor of playing tricks. truly, the abusive adage, “misery loves company,” is right.
“it is bad enough for the store-keeper to handle the poor woman’s raisins; and charley’s fingers don’t look so clean as a store-keeper’s, even;” george observed tauntingly.
“i guess charley’s fingers are cleaner than tim’s” retorted stephen, always eager to play the part of champion to some aggrieved wight, especially so now.
but charles perceived that his joke was not appreciated as it should have been; and he turned beseechingly to will, his firm upholder in all things. “will,” he said, “what do you think about it? did i do wrong?”
thus appealed to, will made answer: “capital joke, charley; but you have begun your career as a reformer rather early in life.”
this did not satisfy charley, and he took to his last expedient.
when a renowned general becomes entangled in a snare which he himself has spread; when he is caricatured and lampooned in all the newspapers, and without a friend in all the world, he makes an impassioned and well-punctuated[71] declamation in his defence, in which he sums up the difficulties that lay in his way so eloquently; sets forth the rightfulness of his cause so manfully; represents the disinterestedness of his actions so carefully; discourses on the purity of his designs so volubly; harrows up the feelings of the audience, and the disguised editors so subtly; exposes the fallacies under which his defamers labor so jocosely; and reiterates his asservations so persistingly, that all except the most malevolent and perverse are brought to coincide with his views.
charles was now “on his defence.”
“‘the end justifies the means,’ you know. now,—”
“that’s what the jesuits profess, and they are—” george interrupted. but, not knowing exactly what the jesuits are, he stopped short, and charley went on without further interruption.
“now, that tim was a rascal, but this will reclaim him. he has been cheating his mother on a small scale for more than a year. she has sent him to all the different stores for her groceries, but with the same results. he is the only one she has to send, and he has a chance to steal at his leisure. now, if i had informed her that her son does the cheating, what would have become of me? ten to one, she would have called me a sneaking talebearer, and told me to march off home and get my father to belabor me. as it is, tim will probably get the drubbing. there now, wasn’t my ‘confession’ plan just the thing? of course it was. you boys must be blind, or crazy, or silly.”
no oratory here, gentle reader. but the speaker was only a boy; if he had been older and more experienced, he would not have omitted to remark, incidentally, that he had acted “on the impulse of the moment.”
however, his reasoning, especially the latter part of it, was conclusive. “quite right;” said all the boys. then, as time is very precious to a schoolboy during the holidays, stephen added, “now let us go on; we’ve fooled away too much time doing nothing.”
will and charles taking the lead, the explorers advanced deeper into the woods; and taking an obscure pathway,[72] soon found themselves in a quarter scarcely known to some of the boys. heaps of brush-wood blocked up the way, making their progress very slow. but this only exhilarated their adventurous spirit; and they tore through the brush with smiling contempt for sundry bruises and scratches.
all except george, whose mind was still exercised about charley’s “vice,” and who took no interest in squeezing through underwood, and stumbling over heaps of loose and rough brush-wood.
“look here, boys,” he said, “why should we overstrain our limbs and muscles here, when a little way to the north there is a capital spot to rest? we can learn nothing here, and by floundering about like top-heavy goblins we shall improve neither our minds, nor our morals, nor our garments. at any rate, i am going back; i am not going to make an amazon of myself.”
sooner or later, the most inattentive of readers will be struck with admiration at the artifice which charles displays in working on the feelings of his comrades.
in this instance, though george had actually turned back, he paused irresolute on hearing charles exclaim sarcastically, “george, i’m afraid you will never become an explorer. why, if you only knew it, we are penetrating a jungle now! think of that! we in a jungle!”
though coaxing would not have influenced the sage, this happy expression did. he cast a sweeping glance in search of charley’s “jungle,” and then went on with the others.
charles was satisfied, for he knew that however much the boy might grumble, he would not turn back again.
a certain word george had spoken, excited steve’s curiosity. false pride never restrained stephen from asking for information, and he said eagerly, “george, what’s a namazon?”
george’s smiling face discovered that the right cord had been struck at last, and, always willing to enlighten the ignorant, he answered benignly, “steve, an amazon is a west african woman warrior, who fights instead of men. and she fights with a vengeance—harder than a sea-serpent[73] that i read about the other day. why, she wears a sword called a razor, and it’s so strong and heavy that she can chop off an elephant’s head at one blow with it!—at least” truth obliged him to add, “i guess she could, if she chose. and she will scale a rampart of briers and thorns,—no, brambles the book said,—of brambles, all in her bare feet, and come back all covered with blood and chunks of bramble, but with her arms full of skulls!”
steve’s look of horror only encouraged george to make greater exertions. but he was forced to pause for want of breath, and his hearer inquired in alarm, “where do they get the skulls? do they kill folks for them?”
now, it was very inconsiderate, very disrespectful, very wrong in stephen to put such a question. george was wholly unprepared for it; and it rather befogged his loquacity. after a doubtful pause, he began blunderingly: “why, as i told you, they scale a rampart of bri—brambles,—sixty feet high, sometimes—and come off with those skulls. i—i believe they are put there beforehand; and the feat is to pounce on them.—i mean, the feat is to scramble over the brambles barefooted. it is a valiant achievement!”
then a bright idea occurred to him, and he continued impetuously, “why, steve, you must be crazy, crazy as an organ-grinder! you don’t know what a skull is; you don’t know a skull from a dead-head. why, i’m astonished at you!”
“oh, of course. i see what you mean now; yes, of course they do;” stephen assented with alacrity.
“i might lend you my book about all these things,” george graciously observed.
“oh, thank you!” said stephen with sparkling eyes.
meanwhile, the heroes had been pressing deeper and deeper into the “jungle,” and would soon be at their journey’s end. but at this critical juncture the sage’s evil genius again preyed upon his spirits, and he muttered with filial concern: “a boy’s first duty ought to be to take care of his clothes, and—”
“but it never is!” steve broke in.
“—and here we are destroying ours!” the sage continued, disregarding steve’s impertinent interruption.
[74]
“never mind the ‘garments,’ george,” charles replied. “your old coat looks as if it might survive the frolics of a hurricane; so, ‘banish care and grim despair,’ as the second page of our new copy-book says.”
this was indiscreet in charles. the aggrieved george was but a boy, and, naturally, he was angered. “look here,” he exclaimed, “what is your object in dragging us through this dismal place? where are we going? if you should lead the way to a python’s lair, should i be bound to tag blindly after you?”
this reasoning was forcible, and for a schoolboy, poetical. will—knowing that their scheme would be disconcerted if george should turn back, and fearing that he would—bounded forward a little way, and then flung himself plump into a certain pile of brush.
“oh!” he screamed. “come here! boys, hurry! something rattles all around under me!”
the others quickly urged their way towards him, some in real, some in pretended alarm.
george now proved himself a hero. the vigour of his intellect overawed the others, and they made way for him respectfully. at length he was about to derive some advantage from the ponderous tomes whose pages his grimy thumbs had soiled so often.
“yes,” he said, “i know just what you heard. don’t be excited, will; keep very cool. it’s a rattlesnake! the great naturalist says they skulk around brush-heaps and tangled bushes, ready to pounce on their prey. i know, for i’ve read all about it; and luckily, i am prepared for the worst. now, where are you bitten, and i’ll cauterize it.”
and the speaker busied himself by stripping his pockets of their treasures, which he dropped on the ground at random.
jim, however, did not view the matter so philosophically. at the bare mention of the word rattlesnake, he turned and tore wildly through the “jungle,” crying piteously: “oh! i’ve got the chills! i’ve got the chills! the chills! the chills! awful chills!”
