Sven Anders Hedin - "From Pole to Pole"

Harris Dickson - "The Black Wolf's Breed"

Henry Beam Piper - "The Cosmic Computer"

Elliott O'Donnell - "Scottish Ghost Stories"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Jolly Fellowship

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




She took hold of the line and stood on the edge of the dry sand, ready
to pull in the biggest kind of a fish that might come along. I put on my
shoes and stockings, and Rectus his; he'd had enough glory for one day.
Old Menendez wound up his line, too, but that girl saw nothing of all
this. She just kept her eyes and her whole mind centred on her line. At
first, she talked right straight ahead, asking what she should do when
it bit; how big we thought it would be; why we didn't have a cork, and
fifty other things, but all without turning her head to the right or the
left. Then said her father:

"My dear, you mustn't talk; you will frighten the fish. When persons
fish, they always keep perfectly quiet. You never heard me talking while
I was fishing. I fish a good deal when I am at home," said he, turning
to us, "and I always remain perfectly quiet."

Menendez laughed a little at this, and said that he didn't believe the
fish out there in the surf would mind a little quiet chat; but the
gentleman said that he had always found it best to be just as still as
possible. The girl now shut her mouth tight, and held herself more
ready, if possible, than ever, and I believe that if she had got a bite
she would have jerked the fish's head off. We all stood around her, and
her father watched her as earnestly as if she was about to graduate at a
normal school.

We stood and waited and waited, and she didn't move, and neither did the
line. Menendez now said he thought she might as well give it up. The
tide was too low, and it was pretty near dinner-time, and, besides this,
there was a shower coming on.

"Oh, no!" said she; "not just yet. I feel sure I'll get a bite in a
minute or two now. Just wait a little longer."

And so it went on, every few minutes, until we had waited about half an
hour, and then Menendez said he must go, but if the gentleman wanted to
buy the line, and stay there until the tide came in again, he'd sell it
to him. At this, the girl's father told her that she must stop, and so
she very dolefully let Menendez untie the line.

"It's too bad!" she said, almost with tears in her eyes. "If they had
only waited a few minutes longer!" And then she ran up to Rectus and me,
and said:

"When are you coming out here again? Do you think you will come
to-morrow, or next day?"

"I don't know," said I. "We haven't settled our plans for to-morrow."

"Oh, father! father!" she cried, "perhaps they will come out here
to-morrow, and you must get me a fishing-line, and we will come and fish
all day."

We didn't stay to hear what her father said, but posted off to our boat,
for we were all beginning to feel pretty hungry. We took Rectus's fish
along, to give to our landlady. The gentleman and the girl came close
after us, as if they were afraid to be left alone on the island. Their
boat was hauled up near ours, and we set off at pretty much the same
time.

We went ahead a little, and Menendez turned around and called out to the
gentleman that he'd better follow us, for there were some bad shoals in
this part of the harbor, and the tide was pretty low.

"All right, my hearty!" called out the gentleman. "This isn't the first
time I've sailed in this harbor. I guess I know where the shoals are,"
and just at that minute he ran his boat hard and fast on one of them.

He jumped up, and took an oar and pushed and pushed: but it was of no
good--he was stuck fast. By this time we had left him pretty far behind;
but we all had been watching, and Rectus asked if we couldn't go back
and help him.

"Well, I s'pose so," said Menendez; "but it's a shame to keep three
decent people out of their dinner for the sake of a man like that, who
hasn't got sense enough to take good advice when it's give to him."

"We'd better go," said I, and Menendez, in no good humor, put his boat
about. We found the other boat aground, in the very worst way. The old
Minorcan said that he could see that sand-bar through the water, and
that they might as well have run up on dry land. Better, for that
matter, because then we could have pushed her off.

"There aint nuthin' to be done," he said, after we had worked at the
thing for a while, "but to jist wait here till the tide turns. It's
pretty near dead low now, an' you'll float off in an hour or two."

This was cold comfort for the gentleman, especially as it was beginning
to rain; but he didn't seem a bit cast down. He laughed, and said:

"Well, I suppose it can't be helped: but I am used to being out in all
weathers. I can wait, just as well as not. But I don't want my daughter
here to get wet, and she has no umbrella. Would you mind taking her on
your boat? When you get to the town, she can run up to our hotel by
herself. She knows the way."

Of course we had no objection to this, and the girl was helped aboard.
Then we sailed off, and the gentleman waved his hat to us. If I had been
in his place, I don't think I should have felt much like waving my hat.

[Illustration: "THE GENTLEMAN WAVED HIS HAT TO US."]

Menendez now said that he had an oil-skin coat stowed away forward, and
I got it and put it around the girl. She snuggled herself up in it as
comfortably as she could, and began to talk.

"The way of it was this," she said. "Father, he said we'd go out
sailing, and mother and I went with him, and when we got down to the
wharf, there were a lot of boats, but they all had men to them, and so
father, he said he wanted to sail the boat himself, and mother, she said
that if he did she wouldn't go; but he said pooh! he could do it as well
as anybody, and wasn't going to have any man. So he got a boat without a
man, and mother, she didn't want me to go; but I went, and he stuck fast
coming back, because he never will listen to anything anybody tells him,
as mother and I found out long ago. And here we are, almost at the
wharf! I didn't think we were anywhere near it."

"Well, you see, sis, sich a steady gale o' talkin', right behind the
sail, is bound to hurry the boat along. And now, s'pose you tell us your
name," said Menendez.

"My name's Cornelia; but father, he calls me Corny, which mother hates
to hear the very sound of," said she; "and the rest of it is Mary
Chipperton. Father, he came down here because he had a weak lung, and
I'm sure I don't see what good it's going to do him to sit out there in
the rain. We'll take a man next time. And father and I'll be sure to be
here early to-morrow to go out fishing with you. Good-bye!"

And with this, having mounted the steps to the pier, off ran Miss
Corny.

"I wouldn't like to be the ole man o' that family," said Mr. Menendez.

That night, after we had gone to bed, Rectus began to talk. We generally
went to sleep in pretty short order; but the moon did not shine in our
windows now until quite late, and so we noticed for the first time the
curious way in which the light-house--which stood almost opposite on
Anastasia Island--brightened up the room, every minute or two. It is a
revolving light, and when the light got on the landward side it gave us
a flash, which produced a very queer effect on the furniture, and on
Rectus's broad hat, which hung on the wall right opposite the window. It
seemed exactly as if this hat was a sort of portable sun of a very mild
power, which warmed up, every now and then, and lighted the room.

But Rectus did not talk long about this.

"I think," said he, "that we have had about enough of St. Augustine.
There are too many Indians and girls here."

"And sea-beans, too, perhaps," said I. "But I don't think there's any
reason for going so soon. I'm going to settle those Indians, and you've
only seen one girl, and perhaps we'll never see her again."

"Don't you believe that," said Rectus, very solemnly, and he turned
over, either to ponder on the matter, or to go to sleep. His remarks
made me imagine that perhaps he was one of those fellows who soon get
tired of a place and want to be moving on. But that wasn't my way, and I
didn't intend to let him hurry me. I think the Indians worried him a
good deal. He was afraid they would keep on troubling us. But, as I had
said, I had made up my mind to settle the Indians. As for Corny, I know
he hated her. I don't believe he spoke a word to her all the time we
were with her.

The next morning, we talked over the Indian question, and then went down
to the fort. We hadn't been there for three or four days, but now we had
decided not to stand nagging by a couple of red-skinned savages, but to
go and see the captain and tell him all about it. All except the
proclamation--Rectus wouldn't agree to have that brought in at all. Mr.
Cholott had introduced us to the captain, and he was a first-rate
fellow, and when we told him how we had stormed his old fort, he laughed
and said he wondered we didn't break our necks, and that the next time
we did it he'd put us in the guard-house, sure.

"That would be cheaper for you than buying so many beans," he said.

As to the two Indians, he told us he would see to it that they let us
alone. He didn't think that Maiden's Heart would ever harm us, for he
was more of a blower than anything else; but he said that Crowded Owl
was really one of the worst-tempered Indians in the fort, and he advised
us to have nothing more to do with him, in any way.

All of this was very good of the captain, and we were very glad we had
gone to see him.

"I tell you what it is," said Rectus, as we were coming away, "I don't
believe that any of these Indians are as innocent as they try to make
out. Did you ever see such a rascally set of faces?"

Somehow or other, I seldom felt sorry when Rectus changed his mind. I
thought, indeed, that he ought to change it as much as he could. And
yet, as I have said, he was a thoroughly good fellow. The trouble with
him was that he wasn't used to making up his mind about things, and
didn't make a very good beginning at it.

The next day, we set out to explore Anastasia Island, right opposite the
town. It is a big island, but we took our lunch and determined to do
what we could. We hired a boat and rowed over to the mouth of a creek in
the island. We went up this creek quite a long way, and landed at a
little pier, where we made the boat fast. The man who owned the boat
told us just how to go. We first made a flying call at the coquina
quarries, where they dig the curious stuff of which the town is built.
This is formed of small shells, all conglomerated into one solid mass
that becomes as hard as stone after it is exposed to the air. It must
have taken thousands of years for so many little shell-fish to pile
themselves up into a quarrying-ground. We now went over to the
light-house, and climbed to the top of it, where we had a view that made
Rectus feel even better than he felt in the cemetery at Savannah.

When we came down, we started for the beach and stopped a little while
at the old Spanish light-house, which looked more like a cracker-bakery
than anything else, but I suppose it was good enough for all the ships
the Spaniards had to light up. We would have cared more for the old
light-house if it had not had an inscription on it that said it had been
destroyed, and rebuilt by some American. After that, we considered it
merely in the light of a chromo.

We had a good time on the island, and stayed nearly all day. Toward the
end of the afternoon, we started back for the creek and our boat. We had
a long walk, for we had been exploring the island pretty well, and when,
at last, we reached the creek, we saw that our boat was gone!

This was astounding. We could not make out how the thing could have
happened. The boatman, from whom we had hired it, had said that it would
be perfectly safe for us to leave the boat at the landing if we tied her
up well and hid the oars. I had tied her up very well and we had hidden
the oars so carefully, under some bushes, that we found them there when
we went to look for them.

"Could the old thing have floated off of itself?" said Rectus.

"That couldn't have happened," I said. "I tied her hard and fast."

"But how could any one have taken her away without oars?" asked Rectus.

"Rectus," said I, "don't let us have any more riddles. Some one may have
cut a pole and poled her away, up or down the creek, or----"

"I'll tell you," interrupted Rectus. "Crowded Owl!"

I didn't feel much like laughing, but I did laugh a little.

"Yes," I said. "He probably swam over with a pair of oars on purpose to
steal our boat. But, whether he did it or not, it's very certain that
somebody has taken the boat, and there isn't any way, that I see, of
getting off this place to-night. There'll be nobody going over so late
in the afternoon--except, to be sure, those men we saw at the other end
of the island with a flat-boat."

"But that's away over at the upper end of the island," said Rectus.

"That's not so very far," said I. "I wonder if they have gone back yet?
If one of us could run over there and ask them to send a boatman from
the town after us, we might get back by supper-time."

"Why not both of us?" asked Rectus.

"One of us should stay here to see if our boat does come back. It must
have been some one from the island who took it, because any one from the
mainland would have brought his own boat."

"Very well," said Rectus. "Let's toss up to see who goes. The winner
stays."

I pitched up a cent.

"Heads," said Rectus.

"Tails," said I.

Tails it was, and Rectus started off like a good fellow.

I sat down and waited. I waited a long, long time, and then I got up and
walked up and down. In about an hour I began to get anxious. It was more
than time for Rectus to return. The walk to the end of the island and
back was not much over a mile--at least, I supposed it was not. Could
anything have happened to the boy? It was not yet sunset, and I couldn't
imagine what there was to happen.

After waiting about half an hour longer, I heard a distant sound of
oars. I ran to the landing and looked down the creek. A boat with a man
in it was approaching. When it came nearer, I saw plainly that it was
our boat. When it had almost reached the landing, the man turned around,
and I was very much surprised, indeed, to see that he was Mr.
Chipperton.




CHAPTER VII.

MR. CHIPPERTON.


I took hold of the boat, and pulled the bow up on the beach. Mr.
Chipperton looked around at me.

"Why, how do you do?" said he.

[Illustration: "WHY, HOW DO YOU DO?"]

For an instant I could not answer him, I was so angry, and then I said:

"What did you----? How did you come to take our boat away?"

"Your boat!" he exclaimed. "Is this your boat? I didn't know that. But
where is my boat? Did you see a sail-boat leave here? It is very
strange--remarkably strange! I don't know what to make of it."

"I know nothing about a sail-boat," said I. "If we had seen one leave
here, we should have gone home in her. Why did you take our boat?"

Mr. Chipperton had now landed.

"I came over here," he said, "with my wife and daughter. We were in a
sail-boat, with a man to manage it. My wife would not come otherwise. We
came to see the light-house, but I do not care for light-houses,--I have
seen a great many of them. I am passionately fond of the water. Seeing a
small boat here which no one was using, I let the man conduct my wife
and Corny--my daughter--up to the light-house, while I took a little
row. I know the man. He is very trustworthy. He would let no harm come
to them. There was a pair of oars in the sail-boat, and I took them, and
rowed down the creek, and then went along the river, below the town;
and, I assure you, sir, I went a great deal farther than I intended, for
the tide was with me. But it wasn't with me coming back, of course, and
I had a very hard time of it. I thought I never should get back. This
boat of yours, sir, seems to be an uncommonly hard boat to row."

"Against a strong tide, I suppose it is," said I; "but I wish you hadn't
taken it. Here I have been waiting ever so long, and my friend----"

"Oh! I'm sorry, too," interrupted Mr. Chipperton, who had been looking
about, as if he expected to see his sail-boat somewhere under the trees.
"I can't imagine what could have become of my boat, my wife, and my
child. If I had staid here, they could not have sailed away without my
knowing it. It would even have been better to go with them, although, as
I said before, I don't care for light-houses."

"Well," said I, not quite as civilly as I generally speak to people
older than myself, "your boat has gone, that is plain enough. I suppose,
when your family came from the light-house, they thought you had gone
home, and so went themselves."

"That's very likely," said he,--"very likely indeed. Or, it may be that
Corny wouldn't wait. She is not good at waiting. She persuaded her
mother to sail away, no doubt. But now I suppose you will take me home
in your boat, and the sooner we get off the better, for it is growing
late."

"You needn't be in a hurry," said I, "for I am not going off until my
friend comes back. You gave him a good long walk to the other end of the
island."

"Indeed!" said Mr. Chipperton. "How was that?"

Then I told him all about it.

"Do you think that the flat-boat is likely to be there yet?" he asked.

"It's gone, long ago," said I; "and I'm afraid Rectus has lost his way,
either going there or coming back."

I said this as much to myself as to my companion, for I had walked back
a little to look up the path. I could not see far, for it was growing
dark. I was terribly worried about Rectus, and would have gone to look
for him, but I was afraid that if I left Mr. Chipperton he would go off
with the boat.

Directly Mr. Chipperton set up a yell.

"Hi! hi! hi!" he cried.

I ran down to the pier, and saw a row-boat approaching.

"Hi!" cried Mr. Chipperton. "Come this way! Come here! Boat ahoy!"

"We're coming!" shouted a man from the boat. "Ye needn't holler for us."

And in a few more strokes the boat touched land. There were two men in
it.

"Did you come for me?" cried Mr. Chipperton.

"No," said the man who had spoken. "We came for this other party, but I
reckon you can come along."

"For me?" said I. "Who sent you?"

"Your pardner," said the man. "He came over in a flat-boat, and he said
you was stuck here, for somebody had stole your boat, and so he sent us
for you."

"And he's over there, is he?" said I.

"Yes, he's all right, eatin' his supper, I reckon. But isn't this here
your boat?"

"Yes, it is," I said, "and I'm going home in it. You can take the other
man."

And, without saying another word, I picked up my oars, which I had
brought from the bushes, jumped into my boat, and pushed off.

"I reckon you're a little riled, aint ye?" said the man; but I made him
no answer, and left him to explain to Mr. Chipperton his remark about
stealing the boat. They set off soon after me, and we had a race down
the creek. I _was_ "a little riled," and I pulled so hard that the other
boat did not catch up to me until we got out into the river. Then it
passed me, but it didn't get to town much before I did.

The first person I met on the pier was Rectus. He had had his supper,
and had come down to watch for me. I was so angry that I would not speak
to him. He kept by my side, though, as I walked up to the house,
excusing himself for going off and leaving me.

"You see, it wasn't any use for me to take that long walk back there to
the creek. I told the men of the fix we were in, and they said they'd
send somebody for us, but they thought I'd better come along with them,
as I was there."

I had a great mind to say something here, but I didn't.

"It wouldn't have done you any good for me to come back through the
woods in the dark. The boat wouldn't get over to you any faster. You
see, if there'd been any good at all in it, I would have come back--but
there wasn't."

All this might have been very true, but I remembered how I had sat and
walked and thought and worried about Rectus, and his explanation did me
no good.

When I reached the house, I found that our landlady, who was one of the
very best women in all Florida, had saved me a splendid supper--hot and
smoking. I was hungry enough, and I enjoyed this meal until there didn't
seem to be a thing left. I felt in a better humor then, and I hunted up
Rectus, and we talked along as if nothing had happened. It wasn't easy
to keep mad with Rectus, because he didn't get mad himself. And,
besides, he had a good deal of reason on his side.

It was a lovely evening, and pretty nearly all the people of the town
were out-of-doors. Rectus and I took a walk around the "Plaza,"--a
public square planted thick with live-oak and pride-of-India trees, and
with a monument in the centre with a Spanish inscription on it, stating
how the king of Spain once gave a very satisfactory charter to the town.
Rectus and I agreed, however, that we would rather have a pride-of-India
tree than a charter, as far as we were concerned. These trees have on
them long bunches of blossoms, which smell deliciously.

"Now, then," said I, "I think it's about time for us to be moving along.
I'm beginning to feel about that Corny family as you do."

"Oh, I only objected to the girl," said Rectus, in an off-hand way.

"Well, I object to the father," said I. "I think we've had enough,
anyway, of fathers and daughters. I hope the next couple we fall in with
will be a mother and a son."

"What's the next place on the bill?" asked Rectus.

"Well," said I, "we ought to take a trip up the Oclawaha River. That's
one of the things to do. It will take us two or three days, and we can
leave our baggage here and come back again. Then, if we want to stay, we
can, and if we don't, we needn't."

"All right," said Rectus. "Let's be off to-morrow."

The next morning, I went to buy the Oclawaha tickets, while Rectus staid
home to pack up our handbags, and, I believe, to sew some buttons on his
clothes. He could sew buttons on so strongly that they would never come
off again without bringing the piece out with them.

The ticket-office was in a small store, where you could get any kind of
alligator or sea-bean combination that the mind could dream of. We had
been in there before to look at the things. I found I was in luck, for
the storekeeper told me that it was not often that people could get
berths on the little Oclawaha steam-boats without engaging them some
days ahead; but he had a couple of state-rooms left, for the boat that
left Pilatka the next day. I took one room as quick as lightning, and I
had just paid for the tickets when Mr. Chipperton and Corny walked in.

"How d' ye do?" said he, as cheerfully as if he had never gone off with
another fellow's boat. "Buying tickets for the Oclawaha?"

I had to say yes, and then he wanted to know when we were going. I
wasn't very quick to answer; but the storekeeper said:

"He's just taken the last room but one in the boat that leaves Pilatka
to-morrow morning."

"And when do you leave here to catch that boat?" said Mr. Chipperton.

"This afternoon,--and stay all night at Pilatka."

"Oh, father! father!" cried Corny, who had been standing with her eyes
and ears wide open, all this time, "let's go! let's go!"

"I believe I will," said Mr. Chipperton,--"I believe I will. You say you
have one more room. All right. I'll take it. This will be very pleasant,
indeed," said he, turning to me. "It will be quite a party. It's ever so
much better to go to such places in a party. We've been thinking of
going for some time, and I'm so glad I happened in here now. Good-bye.
We'll see you this afternoon at the depot."

I didn't say anything about being particularly glad, but just as I left
the door Corny ran out after me.

"Do you think it would be any good to take a fishing-line?" she cried.

"Guess you'd better," I shouted back, and then I ran home, laughing.

"Here are the tickets!" I cried out to Rectus, "and we've got to be at
the station by four o'clock this afternoon. There's no backing out now."

"Who wants to back out?" said Rectus, looking up from his trunk, into
which he had been diving.

"Can't say," I answered. "But I know one person who wont back out."

"Who's that?"

"Corny," said I.

Rectus stood up.

"Cor----!" he exclaimed.

"Ny," said I, "and father and mother. They took the only room
left,--engaged it while I was there."

"Can't we sell our tickets?" asked Rectus.

"Don't know," said I. "But what's the good? Who's going to be afraid of
a girl,--or a whole family, for that matter? We're in for it now."

Rectus didn't say anything, but his expression saddened.

We had studied out this trip the night before, and knew just what we had
to do. We first went from St. Augustine, on the sea-coast, to Tocoi, on
the St. John's River, by a railroad fifteen miles long. Then we took a
steam-boat up the St. John's to Pilatka, and the next morning left for
the Oclawaha, which runs into the St. John's about twenty-five miles
above, on the other side of the river.

We found the Corny family at the station, all right, and Corny
immediately informed me that she had a fishing-line, but didn't bring a
pole, because her father said he could cut her one, if it was needed. He
didn't know whether it was "throw-out" fishing or not, on that river.

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