A Jolly Fellowship

F >> Frank R. Stockton >> A Jolly Fellowship

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We reached Savannah on Tuesday, and were to leave in the steamer for St.
Augustine Thursday afternoon. Thursday morning we went out to the
cemetery of Bonaventure, one of the loveliest places in the whole world,
where there are long avenues of live-oaks that stretch from one side of
the road to the other, like great covered arbors, and from every limb of
every tree hang great streamers of gray moss, four and five feet long.
It was just wonderful to look at. The whole place seemed dripping with
waving fringe. Rectus said it looked to him as if this was a graveyard
for old men, and that every old fellow had had to hang his beard on a
tree before he went down into his grave.

This was a curious idea for Rectus to have, and the colored man who was
driving us--we went out in style, in a barouche, but I wouldn't do that
kind of thing again without making a bargain beforehand--turned around
to look at him as if he thought he was a little crazy. Rectus was
certainly in high spirits. There was a sort of change coming over him.
His eyes had a sparkle in them that I never saw before. No one could
say that he didn't take interest in things now. I think the warm weather
had something to do with it.

"I tell you what it is, Gordon," said he,--he still called me Gordon,
and I didn't insist on "Mr.," because I thought that, on the whole,
perhaps it wouldn't do,--"I'm waking up. I feel as if I had been asleep
all my life, and was just beginning to open my eyes."

A graveyard seemed a queer place to start out fresh in this way, but it
wasn't long before I found that, if Rectus hadn't really wakened up, he
could kick pretty hard in his sleep.

Nothing much happened on the trip down to St. Augustine, for we
travelled nearly all the way by night. Early the next morning we were
lying off that old half Spanish town, wishing the tide would rise so
that we could go in. There is a bar between two islands that lie in
front of the town, and you have to go over that to get into the harbor.
We were on the "Tigris," the Bahama steamer that touched at St.
Augustine on her way to Nassau, and she couldn't get over that bar until
high tide. We were dreadfully impatient, for we could see the old town,
with its trees, all green and bright, and its low, wide houses, and a
great light-house, marked like a barber's pole or a stick of
old-fashioned mint-candy, and, what was best of all, a splendid old
castle, or fort, built by the Spaniards three hundred years ago! We
declared we would go there the moment we set foot on shore. In fact, we
soon had about a dozen plans for seeing the town.

If we had been the pilots, we would have bumped that old steamer over
the bar, somehow or other, long before the real pilot started her in;
but we had to wait. When we did go in, and steamed along in front of the
old fort, we could see that it was gray and crumbling, and moss-covered
in places, and it was just like an oil-painting. The whole town, in
fact, was like an oil-painting to us.

The moment the stairs were put down, we scuffled ashore, and left the
steamer to go on to the Bahamas whenever she felt like it. We gave our
valises and trunk-checks to a negro man with a wagon, and told him to
take the baggage to a hotel that we could see from the wharf, and then
we started off for the fort. But on my way along the wharf I made up my
mind that, as the fort had been there for three hundred years, it would
probably stand a while longer, and that we had better go along with our
baggage, and see about getting a place to live in, for we were not going
to be in any hurry to leave St. Augustine.

We didn't go to any hotel at all. I had a letter of introduction to a
Mr. Cholott, and on our way up from the wharf, I heard some one call out
that name to a gentleman. So I remembered my letter, and went up and
gave it to him. He was a first-rate man, and when we told him where we
were going, we had quite a talk, and he said he would advise us to go to
a boarding-house. It would be cheaper, and if we were like most boys
that he knew, we'd like it better. He said that board could be had with
several families that he knew, and that some of the Minorcans took
boarders in the winter.

Of course, Rectus wanted to know, right away, what a Minorcan was. I
didn't think it was exactly the place to ask questions which probably
had long answers, but Mr. Cholott didn't seem to be in a hurry, and he
just started off and told us about the Minorcans. A chap called
Turnbull, more than a hundred years ago, brought over to Florida a lot
of the natives of the island of Minorca, in the Mediterranean, and began
a colony. But he was a mean sort of chap; he didn't care for anything
but making money out of the Minorcans, and it wasn't long before they
found it out, for he was really making slaves of them. So they just rose
up and rebelled, and left old Turnbull to run his colony by himself.
Served him right, too. They started off on their own accounts, and most
of them came to this town, where they settled, and have had a good time
ever since. There are a great many of them here now, descendants of the
original Minorcans, and they keep pretty much together and keep their
old name, too. They look a good deal like Spaniards, Mr. Cholott said,
and many of them are very excellent people.

Rectus took the greatest interest in these Minorcans, but we didn't take
board with any of them. We went to the house of a lady who was a friend
of Mr. Cholott, and she gave us a splendid room, that looked right out
over the harbor. We could see the islands, and the light-house, and the
bar with the surf outside, and even get a glimpse of the ocean. We saw
the "Tigris" going out over the bar. The captain wanted to get out on
the same tide he came in on, and he did not lose any time. As soon as
she got fairly out to sea, we hurried down, to go to the fort. But
first, Rectus said, we ought to go and buy straw hats. There were lots
of men with straw hats in St. Augustine. This was true, for it was just
as warm here as we have it in June, and we started off to look for a
straw-hat store.

We found that we were in one of the queerest towns in the world. Rectus
said it was all back-streets, and it looked something that way. The
streets were very narrow, and none of them had any pavement but sand and
powdered shell, and very few had any sidewalks. But they didn't seem to
be needed. Many of the houses had balconies on the second story, which
reached toward each other from both sides of the street, and this gave
the town a sociable appearance. There were lots of shops, and most of
them sold sea-beans. There were other things, like alligators' teeth,
and shells, and curiosities, but the great trade of the town seemed to
be in sea-beans.[A] Rectus and I each bought one for our watch-chains.

I think we tried on every straw hat in town, and we bought a couple in a
little house, where two or three young women were making them. Rectus
asked me, in a low voice, if I didn't think one of the young women was a
Mohican. I hushed him up, for it was none of his business if she was. I
had a good deal of trouble in making Rectus say "Minorcan." Whenever we
had met a dark-haired person, he had said to me: "Do you think that is a
Mohican?" It was a part of his old school disposition to get things
wrong in this way. But he never got angry when I corrected him. His
temper was perfect.

I bought a common-sized hat, but Rectus bought one that spread out far
and wide. It made him look like a Japanese umbrella. We stuffed our felt
hats into our pockets, and started for the fort. But I looked at my
watch and found it was supper-time. I had suspected it when I came out
of the hat-shop. The sea-trip and fine air here had given us tremendous
appetites, which our walk had sharpened.

So we turned back at once and hurried home, agreeing to begin square on
the fort the next day.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Sea-beans are seeds of a West Indian tree. They are of different
colors, very hard, and capable of being handsomely polished. They are
called "sea-beans" because great numbers of them drift up on the Florida
and adjacent coasts.

CHAPTER IV.

TO THE RESCUE.

The next morning, I was awakened by Rectus coming into the room.

"Hello!" said I; "where have you been? I didn't hear you get up."

"I called you once or twice," said Rectus, "but you were sleeping so
soundly I thought I'd let you alone. I knew you'd lost some sleep by
being sick on the steamer."

"That was only the first night," I exclaimed. "I've made up that long
ago. But what got you up so early?"

"I went out to take a warm salt-water bath before breakfast," answered
Rectus. "There's an eight-cornered bath-house right out here, almost
under the window, where you can have your sea-water warm if you like
it."

"Do they pump it from the tropics?" I asked, as I got up and began to
dress.

"No; they heat it in the bath-house. I had a first-rate bath, and I saw
a Minorcan."

"You don't say so!" I cried. "What was he like? Had he horns? And how
did you know what he was?"

"I asked him," said Rectus.

"Asked him!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that you got up early
and went around asking people if they were Mohicans!"

"Minorcans, I said."

"Well, it's bad enough, even if you got the name right. Did you ask the
man plump to his face?"

"Yes. But he first asked me what I was. He was an oldish man, and I met
him just as I was coming out of the bath-house. He had a basket of clams
on his arm, and I asked him where he caught them. That made him laugh,
and he said he dug them out of the sand under the wharf. Then he asked
me if my name was Cisneros, and when I told him it was not, he said that
I looked like a Spaniard, and he thought that that might be my name. And
so, as he had asked me about myself, I asked him if he was a Minorcan,
and he said 'yes.'"

"And what then?" I asked.

"Nothing," said Rectus. "He went on with his clams, and I came home."

"You didn't seem to make much out of him, after all," said I. "I don't
wonder he thought you were a Spaniard, with that hat. I told you you'd
make a show of yourself. But what are you going to do with your
Minorcans, Rectus, when you catch them?"

He laughed, but didn't mention his plans.

"I didn't know how you got clams," he said. "I thought you caught them
some way. It would never have entered my head to dig for them."

"There's lots to learn in this town about fish, and ever so many other
things besides; and I tell you what it is, Rectus, as soon as we get
through with the fort,--and I don't know how long that will take us, for
I heard on the steamer that it had underground dungeons,--we'll go off
on a first-class exploring expedition."

That suited Rectus exactly.

After breakfast we started for the fort. It is just outside of the town,
and you can walk all the way on the sea-wall, which is about a yard wide
on top,--just a little too wide for one fellow, but not quite wide
enough for two.

The United States government holds the fort now, of course, and calls it
Fort Marion, but the old Spanish name was San Marco, and we disdained to
call it anything else. When we went over the drawbridge, and across the
moat, we saw the arms of Spain on a shield over the great gate of the
fort. We walked right in, into a wide hall, with dark door-ways on each
side, and then out into a great inclosed space, like a parade-ground, in
the centre of the fort, and here we saw a whole crowd of Indians. We
didn't expect to find Indians here, and we were very much surprised.
They did not wear Indian clothes, but were dressed in United States
military uniform. They didn't look like anything but Indians, though,
for all that. I asked one of them if he belonged here, and he smiled
and said "How?" and held out his hand. We both shook it, but could make
nothing out of him. A good many of them now came up and said "How?" to
us, and shook hands, and we soon found that this meant "How d' ye do?"
and was about all they knew of English.

[Illustration: "HOW?"]

We were lucky enough, before we got through shaking hands with our new
friends, to see Mr. Cholott coming toward us, and he immediately took us
in charge, and seemed to be glad to have a job of the kind. There was
nothing about the fort that he didn't know. He told us that the Indians
were prisoners, taken in the far West by United States troops, and that
some of them were the worst Indians in the whole country. They were safe
enough now, though, and were held here as hostages. Some were chiefs,
and they were all noted men,--some as murderers, and others in less
important ways. They had been here for some years, and a few of them
could speak a little English.

He then took us all over the fort,--up an inclined plane to the top of
the ramparts, and into the Indian barracks on one of the wide walls,
where we saw a lot of Cheyennes and Kiowas, and Indians from other
tribes, sitting around and making bows and arrows, and polishing
sea-beans to sell to visitors. At each corner of the fort was a "lookout
tower,"--a little box of a place, stuck out from the top of the wall,
with loopholes and a long, narrow passage leading to it, with a high
wall on each side to protect from bullets and arrows the man who went to
look out. One of the towers had been knocked off, probably by a
cannon-ball. These towers and slim little passages took our fancy
greatly. Then Mr. Cholott took us downstairs to see the dungeons. He got
the key and gave it to a big old Indian, named Red Horse, who went
ahead with a lighted kerosene-lamp.

We first saw the dungeon where the Indian chief, Osceola, was shut up
during the Seminole war. It was a dreary place. There was another chief,
Wild Cat, who was imprisoned with Osceola, and one night Osceola
"boosted" him to a high window, where he squeezed through the bars and
got away. If Osceola had had any one to give him a lift, I suppose he
would have been off, too. Rectus and I wondered how the two Indians
managed this little question of who should be hoisted. Perhaps they
tossed up, or perhaps Wild Cat was the lighter of the two. The worst
dungeon, though, was a place that was discovered by accident about
thirty years ago. There was nothing there when we went in; but, when it
was first found, a chained skeleton was lying on the floor. Through a
hole in the wall we crept into another dungeon, worse yet, in which two
iron cages were found hung to the wall, with skeletons in them. It
seemed like being in some other country to stand in this dark little
dungeon, and hear these dreadful stories, while a big Indian stood
grinning by, holding a kerosene-lamp.

Mr. Cholott told us that one of the cages and the bones could now be
seen in Washington.

After Mr. Cholott went home, we tramped all over the fort again by
ourselves, and that afternoon we sat on the outer wall that runs along
the harbor-front of the fort, and watched the sail-boats and the
fishermen in their "dug-outs." There were a couple of sharks swimming up
and down in front of the town, and every now and then they would come
up and show themselves. They were the first sharks we had ever seen.

Rectus was worked up about the Indians. We had been told that, while a
great many of the chiefs and braves imprisoned here were men known to
have committed crimes, still there were others who had done nothing
wrong, and had been captured and brought here as prisoners, simply
because, in this way, the government would have a good hold on their
tribes.

Rectus thought this was the worst kind of injustice, and I agreed with
him, although I didn't see what we were going to do about it.

On our way home we met Rectus's Minorcan; he was a queer old fellow.

"Hello!" said he, when he saw Rectus. "Have you been out catching
clams?"

We stopped and talked a little while about the sharks, and then the old
man asked Rectus why he wanted to know, that morning, whether he was a
Minorcan or not.

"I just wanted to see one," said Rectus, as if he had been talking of
kangaroos or giraffes. "I've been thinking a good deal about them, and
their bold escape from slavery, and their----"

"Slavery!" sung out the old man. "We were never slaves! What do you mean
by that? Do you take us for niggers?"

He was pretty mad, and I don't wonder, if that was the way he understood
Rectus, for he was just as much a white man as either of us.

"Oh no!" said Rectus. "But I've heard all about you, and that tyrant
Turnbull, and the way you cast off his yoke. I mean your fathers, of
course."

"I reckon you've heard a little too much, young man," said the Minorcan.
"Somebody's been stuffin' you. You'd better get a hook and line, and go
out to catch clams."

"Why, you don't understand me!" cried Rectus. "I honor you for it."

The old man looked at him and then at me, and then he laughed. "All
right, bub," said he. "If ever you want to hire a boat, I've got one. My
name is Menendez. Just ask for my boat at the club-house wharf." And
then he went on.

"That's all you get for your sympathy with oppressed people," said
Rectus. "They call you bub."

"Well, that old fellow isn't oppressed," I said; "and if any of his
ancestors were, I don't suppose he cares about remembering it. We ought
to hire his boat some time."

That evening we took a walk along the sea-wall. It was a beautiful
starlight night, and a great many people were walking about. When we got
down near the fort,--which looked bigger and grayer than ever by the
starlight,--Rectus said he would like to get inside of it by night, and
I agreed that it would be a good thing to do. So we went over the
drawbridge (this place has a drawbridge, and portcullises, and
barbicans, and demi-lunes, and a moat, just as if it were a castle or a
fort of some old country in Europe),--but the big gate was shut. We
didn't care to knock, for all was dark, and we came away. Rectus
proposed that we should reconnoitre the place, and I agreed, although,
in reality, there wasn't anything to reconnoitre. We went down into the
moat, which was perfectly dry, and very wide, and walked all around the
fort.

We examined the walls, which were pretty jagged and rough in some
places, and we both agreed that if we _had_ to do it, we believed we
could climb to the top.

As we walked home, Rectus proposed that we should try to climb in some
night.

"What's the good?" I asked.

"Why, it would be a splendid thing," said he, "to scale the walls of an
old Middle-Age fort, like that. Let's try it, anyway."

I couldn't help thinking that it would be rather a fine thing to do, but
it did seem rather foolish to risk our necks to get over the walls at
night, when we could walk in, whenever we pleased, all day.

But it was of no use to say anything like that to Rectus. He was full of
the idea of scaling the walls, and I found that, when the boy did get
worked up to anything, he could talk first-rate, and before we went to
sleep I got the notion of it, too, and we made up our minds that we
would try it.

The next day we walked around the walls two or three times, and found a
place where we thought we could get up, if we had a rope fastened to the
top of the wall. When General Oglethorpe bombarded the fort,--at the
time the Spaniards held it,--he made a good many dents in the wall, and
these would help us. I did climb up a few feet, but we saw that it would
never do to try to get all the way up without a rope.

How to fasten the rope on the top of the wall was the next question. We
went in the fort, and found that if we could get a stout grapnel over
the wall, it would probably catch on the inside of the coping, and give
us a good enough hold. There is a wide walk on top, with a low wall on
the outside, just high enough to shelter cannon, and to enable the
garrison to dodge musketry and arrows.

We had a good deal of trouble finding a rope, but we bought one, at
last, which was stout enough,--the man asked us if we were going to fish
for sharks, and didn't seem to believe us when we said no,--and we took
it to our room, and made knots in it about a foot apart. The fort walls
are about twenty feet high, and we made the rope plenty long enough,
with something to spare. We didn't have much trouble to find a grapnel.
We bought a small one, but it was strong enough. We talked the matter
over a great deal, and went to the fort several times, making
examinations, and measuring the height of the wall, from the top, with a
spool of cotton.

It was two or three days before we got everything ready, and in our
trips to the fort we saw a good deal of the Indians. We often met them
in the town, too, for they were frequently allowed to go out and walk
about by themselves. There was no danger, I suppose, of their trying to
run away, for they were several thousand miles from their homes, and
they probably would not care to run to any other place with no larger
stock of the English language than one word, "How?" Some of them,
however, could talk a little English. There was one big fellow--he was
probably the largest of them all--who was called "Maiden's Heart." I
couldn't see how his name fitted, for he looked like an out-and-out
savage, and generally wore a grin that seemed wicked enough to frighten
settlers out of his part of the country. But he may have had a tender
spot, somewhere, which entitled him to his name, and he was certainly
very willing to talk to us, to the extent of his ability, which was not
very great. We managed, however, to have some interesting, though rather
choppy, conversations.

There was another fellow, a young chief, called Crowded Owl, that we
liked better than any of the others, although we couldn't talk to him at
all. He was not much older than I was, and so seemed to take to us. He
would walk all around with us, and point out things. We had bought some
sea-beans of him, and it may be that he hoped to sell us some more. At
any rate, he was very friendly.

We met Mr. Cholott several times, and he told us of some good places to
go to, and said he'd take us out fishing before long. But we were in no
hurry for any expedition until we had carried out our little plan of
surprising the fort. I gave the greater part of our money, however, to
Mr. Cholott to lock up in his safe. I didn't like old Mr. Colbert's plan
of going about with your capital pinned to your pockets. It might do
while we were travelling, but I would rather have had it in drafts or
something else not easily lost.

We had a good many discussions about our grapnel. We did not know
whether there was a sentinel on duty in the fort at night or not, but
supposed there was, and, if so, he would be likely to hear the grapnel
when we threw it up and it hit the stones. We thought we could get over
this difficulty by wrapping the grapnel in cotton wool. This would
deaden the sound when it struck, but would not prevent the points of the
hooks from holding to the inner edge of the wall. Everything now seemed
all right, except that we had no object in view after we got over the
wall. I always like to have some reason for doing a thing, especially
when it's pretty hard to do. I said this to Rectus, and he agreed with
me.

"What I would like to do," said he, "would be to benefit the innocent
Indian prisoners."

"I don't know what we can do for them," said I. "We can't let them out,
and they'd all go back again if we did."

"No, we can't do that," said he; "but we ought to do something. I've
been around looking at them all carefully, and I feel sure that there
are at least forty men among those Indians who haven't done a thing to
warrant shutting them up."

"Why, how do you know?" I exclaimed.

"I judge from their faces," said Rectus.

Of course this made me laugh, but he didn't care.

"I'll tell you what we could do," said he; "we could enter a protest
that might be heard of, and do some good. We could take a pot of black
paint and a brush with us, and paint on one of the doors that open into
the inner square,--where everybody could see it,--something like this:
'Let the righteous Indian go free.' That would create talk, and
something might be done."

"Who'd do it?" said I. "The captain in command couldn't. He has no power
to let any of them go free."

"Well, we might address the notice to the President of the United
States--in big black letters. They could not conceal such a thing."

"Well, now, look here, Rectus," said I; "this thing is going to cost too
much money. That rope was expensive, and the grapnel cost a good deal
more than we thought it would; and now you want a big pot of black
paint. We mustn't spend our money too fast, and if we've got to
economize, let's begin on black paint. You can write your proclamation
on paper, and stick it on the door with tacks. They could send that
easier to the President than they could send a whole door."

"You may make as much fun as you please," said Rectus, "but I'm going to
write it out now."

And so he did, in big letters, on half a sheet of foolscap.

CHAPTER V.

STORMING SAN MARCO.

We started out on our storming expedition on a Tuesday night, about nine
o'clock; we had a latch-key, so we could come home when we pleased.
Rectus carried the rope, and I had the grapnel, wrapped in its cotton
wool. We put newspapers around these things, and made pretty respectable
packages of them. We did not go down the sea-wall, but walked around
through some of the inner streets. It seemed to us like a curious
expedition. We were not going to do anything wrong, but we had no idea
what the United States government would think about it. We came down to
the fort on its landward side, but our attack was to be made upon the
waterfront, and so we went around that way, on the side farthest from
the town. There were several people about yet, and we had to wait. We
dropped our packages into the moat, and walked about on the
water-battery, which is between the harbor and the moat, and is used as
a sort of pleasure-ground by the people of the town. It was a pretty
dark night, although the stars were out, and the last of the promenaders
soon went home; and then, after giving them about ten minutes to get
entirely out of sight and hearing, we jumped down into the moat, which
is only five or six feet below the water-battery, and, taking our
packages, went over to that part of the wall which we had fixed upon for
our assault.

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