A Jolly Fellowship

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

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"If she does," said Mrs. Chipperton, "she'll get herself into some sort
of a predicament before she comes back."

I found that in such a case as this Mrs. Chipperton was generally
right.

FOOTNOTES:

[B] "_Voyez-vous cet homme et ces deux femmes cela?_"--Do you see that
man and those two women there?

[C] "_Bien donc, la petite femme n'est pas la femme du homme. La autre
femme est sa femme._"--Well, then, the little woman is not the wife of
the man. The other woman is his wife. [Of course, the French in this,
and the preceding, foot-note is Corny's.--THE AUTHOR.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE THREE GRAY BEANS.

Corny went ashore, but she did not stay there three minutes. From the
edge of the wharf we could see that Silver Spring was better worth
looking at than anything we should be likely to see on shore. The little
lake seemed deeper than a three-story house, and yet, even from where we
stood, we could see down to the very bottom.

There were two boys with row-boats at the wharf. We hired one of the
boats right off, and Corny gave me such a look, that I told her to get
in. After she was in the boat, she asked her mother, who was standing on
the deck of the steam-boat, if she might go. Mrs. Chipperton said she
supposed so, and away we went. When we had rowed out to the middle of
the spring, I stopped rowing, and we looked down into the depths. It was
almost the same as looking into air. Far down at the bottom we could see
the glittering sand and the green rocks, and sometimes a fish, as long
as my arm, would slowly rise and fall, and paddle away beneath us. We
dropped nickels and copper cents down to the bottom, and we could
plainly see them lying there. In some parts of the bottom there were
"wells," or holes, about two feet in diameter, which seemed to go down
indefinitely. These, we were told, were the places where the water came
up from below into the spring. We could see the weeds and grasses that
grew on the edges of these wells, although we could not see very far
down into them.

"If I had only known," said Rectus, "what sort of a place we were coming
to, I should have brought something to lower down into these wells. I
tell you what would have been splendid!--a heavy bottle filled with
sweet oil and some phosphorus, and a long cord. If we shook up the
bottle it would shine, so that, when we lowered it into the wells, we
could see it go down to the very bottom, that is, if the cord should be
long enough."

At this instant, Corny went overboard! Rectus made a grab at her, but it
was too late. He sprang to his feet, and I thought he was going over
after her, but I seized him.

"Sit down!" said I. "Watch her! She'll come up again. Lean over and be
ready for her!"

We both leaned over the bow as far as was safe. With one hand I gently
paddled the boat, this way and that, so as to keep ourselves directly
over Corny. It would have been of no use to jump in. We could see her as
plainly as anything.

She was going down, all in a bunch, when I first saw her, and the next
instant she touched the bottom. Her feet were under now, and I saw her
make a little spring. She just pushed out her feet.

Then she began to come right up. We saw her slowly rising beneath us.
Her face was turned upward, and her eyes were wide open. It was a
wonderful sight. I trembled from head to foot. It seemed as if we were
floating in the air, and Corny was coming up to us from the earth.

Before she quite reached the surface, I caught her, and had her head out
of water in an instant. Rectus then took hold, and with a mighty jerk,
we pulled her into the boat.

Corny sat down hard and opened her mouth.

"There!" she said; "I didn't breathe an inch!"

And then she puffed for about two minutes, while the water ran off her
into the bottom of the boat. I seized the oars to row to shore.

"How did you fall over?" said Rectus, who still shook as if he had had a
chill.

"Don't know," answered Corny. "I was leaning far over, when my hand must
have slipped, and the first thing I knew I was into it. It's good I
didn't shut my eyes. If you get into water, with your eyes shut, you
can't open them again." She still puffed a little. "Coming up was the
best. It's the first time I ever saw the bottom of a boat."

"Weren't you frightened?" I asked.

"Hadn't time at first. And when I was coming up, I saw you reaching out
for me."

[Illustration: "WE SAW HER SLOWLY RISING BENEATH US."]

"Did you think we'd get you?" said Rectus, his face flushing.

"Yes," said Corny, "but if you'd missed me that time, I'd never have
trusted you again."

The gentleman-with-a-wife-and-a-young-lady was in another boat, not very
far off, but it was nearer the upper end of the little lake, and none of
the party knew of our accident until we were pulling Corny out of the
water. Then they rowed toward us as fast as they could, but they did
not reach us until we were at the wharf. No one on shore, or on the
steam-boat, seemed to have noticed Corny's dive. Indeed, the whole thing
was done so quietly, and was so soon over, that there was not as much of
a show as the occasion demanded.

"I never before was in deep water that seemed so little like real
water," said Corny, just before we reached the wharf. "This was cold,
and that was the only thing natural about it."

"Then this is not the first time you've been in deep water?" I asked.

"No," said Corny, "not the very first time;" and she scrambled up on the
wharf, where her mother was standing, talking to some ladies.

"Why, Cornelia!" exclaimed Mrs. Chipperton, as soon as she saw the
dripping girl, "have you been in the water again?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Corny, drawing her shoulders up to her ears, "and I
must be rubbed down and have dry clothes as quick as lightning."

And with this, she and her mother hurried on board the steam-boat.

Rectus and I went back on the lake, for we had not gone half over it
when Corny went into it. We had rowed about for half an hour or so, and
were just coming in, when Corny appeared on the deck of the steam-boat,
with a handkerchief tied around her head.

"Are you going to take a walk on shore?" she called out.

"Yes!" we shouted.

"All right," said she; "if you'll let me, I'll go with you, for mother
says I must take a good run in the sun. I look funny, don't I? but I
haven't any more hats."

We gave her a good run, although it was not altogether in the sun. The
country hereabout was pretty well wooded, but there were roads cut
through the woods, and there were some open places, and everywhere,
underfoot, the sand was about six inches deep. Rectus took Corny by one
hand, and I took her by the other, and we made her trot through that
sand, in sunshine and shade, until she declared she was warm enough to
last for a week. The yellow-legged party and some of the other
passengers were wandering about, gathering the long gray moss,--from
limbs where they could reach it,--and cutting great palmetto leaves
which grew on low bushes all through the woods, and carrying them about
as fans or parasols; but although Corny wanted to join in this fun, we
would not stop. We just trotted her until she was tired, and then we ran
her on board the boat, where her mother was waiting for her.

"Now, then," said Mrs. Chipperton, "immediately to bed."

The two disappeared, and we saw no more of Corny until supper-time. Her
mother was certainly good at cure, if she didn't have much of a knack at
prevention.

Just as the boat was about to start off on her return trip, and after
she had blown her whistle two or three times, Mr. Chipperton appeared,
carrying an immense arm-load of gray moss. He puffed and blew as he
threw it down on deck. When his wife came out and told him of Corny's
disaster, he stopped dusting his clothes, and looked up for an instant.

"I declare," said he, "Corny must keep out of the water. It seems to me
that I can never leave her but she gets into some scrape. But I'm sure
our friends here have proved themselves good fellows, indeed," and he
shook hands with both of us.

"Now then, my dear," said he to his wife, "I've enough moss here for the
parlor and sitting-room, and the little back-room, upstairs. I didn't
get any for the dining-room, because it might blow about and get into
the food."

"Do you mean to take that moss all the way home?" asked Mrs. Chipperton,
in surprise. "Why, how will you ever carry it?"

"Of course I mean to take it home," said he. "I gathered this with my
own hands from the top of one of the tallest trees on the banks of this
famous Silver Spring."

"Mr. Chipperton!" exclaimed his wife.

"To be sure, the tree was cut down, but that makes no difference in the
fact. It is both an ornament and a trophy of travel. If necessary, I'll
buy a trunk for it. What did you do with Corny after they got her out?"

Our journey home was very much like our trip up the river, but there
were a few exceptions. There was not so much firing, for I think the
ammunition got pretty low; we saw more alligators, and the yellow-legged
party, which had joined us at Pilatka, went all the way to St.
Augustine with us. There was still another difference, and that was in
Rectus. He was a good deal livelier,--more in the spirit that had
hatched out in him in the cemetery at Savannah. He seemed to be all
right with Corny now, and we had a good time together. I was going to
say to him, once, that he had changed his mind about girls, but I
thought I wouldn't. It would be better to let well enough alone, and he
was a ticklish customer.

The day after we returned to St. Augustine, we were walking on the
sea-wall, when we met Corny. She said she had been looking for us. Her
father had gone out fishing with some gentlemen, and her mother would
not walk in the sun, and, besides, she had something to say to us.

So we all walked to the fort and sat down on the wide wall of the
water-battery. Rectus bestrode one of the cannon that stood pointing out
to sea, but Corny told him she wanted him to get down and sit by her, so
that she wouldn't have to shout.

"Now then," said she, after pausing a little, as if she wanted to be
sure and get it right, "you two saved my life, and I want to give you
something to remember me by."

We both exclaimed against this.

"You needn't do that," said I, "for I'm sure that no one who saw you
coming up from the bottom, like the fairy-women float up on wires at the
theatre, could ever forget you. We'll remember you, Corny, without your
giving us anything."

"But that wont do," said she. "The only other time that I was ever
really saved was by a ferryman, and father gave him some money, which
was all right for him, but wouldn't do for you two, you know; and
another time there wasn't really any danger, and I'm sorry the man got
anything; but he did.

"We brought scarcely anything with us, because we didn't expect to need
things in this way; but this is my own, and I want to give it to you
both. One of you can't use it by himself, and so it will be more like a
present for both of you together, than most things would be." And she
handed me a box of dominoes.

"I give it to you because you're the oldest, but, remember, it's for
both of you."

Of course we took it, and Corny was much pleased. She was a good little
girl and, somehow or other, she seemed to be older and more sensible
when she was with us than when she was bouncing around in the bosom of
her family.

We had a good deal of talk together, and, after a while, she asked how
long we were going to stay in St. Augustine.

"Until next Tuesday," I said, "and then we shall start for Nassau in the
'Tigris.'"

"Nassau!" she exclaimed, "where's that?"

"Right down there," I said, pointing out to sea with a crook of my
finger, to the south. "It's on one of the Bahamas, and they lie off the
lower end of Florida, you know."

"No," said she; "I don't remember where they are. I always get the
Bahamas mixed up with the Bermudas, anyway. So does father. We talked
of going to one of those places, when we first thought of travelling
for his lung, but then they thought Florida would be better. What is
there good about Nassau? Is it any better than this place?"

"Well," said I, "it's in the West Indies, and it's semi-tropical, and
they have cocoa-nuts and pineapples and bananas there; and there are
lots of darkeys, and the weather is always just what you want----"

"I guess that's a little stretched," said Corny, and Rectus agreed with
her.

"And it's a new kind of a place," I continued; "an English colony, such
as our ancestors lived in before the Revolution, and we ought to see
what sort of a thing an English colony is, so as to know whether
Washington and the rest of them should have kicked against it."

"Oh, they were all right!" said Corny, in a tone which settled that
little matter.

"And so, you see," I went on, "Rectus and I thought we should like to go
out of the country for a while, and see how it would feel to live under
a queen and a cocoa-nut tree."

"Good!" cried Corny. "We'll go."

"Who?" I asked.

"Father and mother and I," said Corny, rising. "I'll tell them all about
it; and I'd better be going back to the hotel, for if the steamer leaves
on Tuesday, we'll have lots to do."

As we were walking homeward on the sea-wall, Rectus looked back and
suddenly exclaimed:

"There! Do you see that Crowded Owl following us? He's been hanging
round us all the afternoon. He's up to something. Don't you remember the
captain told us he was a bad-tempered fellow?"

"What did he do?" asked Corny, looking back at the Indian, who now stood
in the road, a short distance from the wall, regarding us very
earnestly.

"Well, he never did anything, much," I said. "He seemed to be angry,
once, because we would not buy some of his things, and the captain said
he'd have him told not to worry us. That may have made him madder yet."

"He don't look mad," said Corny.

"Don't you trust him," said Rectus.

"I believe all these Indians are perfectly gentle, now," said Corny,
"and father thinks so, too. He's been over here a good deal, and talked
to some of them. Let's go ask him what he wants. Perhaps he's only
sorry."

"If he is, we'll never find it out," I remarked, "for he can only speak
one word of English."

I beckoned to Crowded Owl, and he immediately ran up to the wall, and
said "How?" in an uncertain tone, as if he was not sure how we should
take it. However, Corny offered him her hand, and Rectus and I followed
suit. After this, he put his hand into his pocket, and pulled out three
sea-beans.

"There!" said Rectus. "At it again. Disobeying military orders."

"But they're pretty ones," said Corny, taking one of the beans in her
hand.

They were pretty. They were not very large, but were beautifully
polished, and of a delicate gray color, the first we had seen of the
kind.

"These must be a rare kind," said Rectus. "They are almost always brown.
Let's forgive him this once, and buy them."

"Perhaps he wants to make up with you," said Corny, "and has brought
these as a present."

"I can soon settle that question," said I, and I took the three beans,
and pulled from my pocket three quarter-dollars, which I offered to the
Indian.

Crowded Owl took the money, grinned, gave a bob of his head, and went
home happy.

If he had had any wish to "make up" with us, he had shown it by giving
us a chance at a choice lot of goods.

"Now," said I, reaching out my hand to Corny, "here's one for each of
us. Take your choice."

"For me?" said Corny. "No, I oughtn't to. Yes, I will, too. I am ever so
much obliged. We have lots of sea-beans, but none like this. I'll have a
ring fastened to it, and wear it, somehow."

"That'll do to remember us by," said I.

"Yes," said Rectus, "and whenever you're in danger, just hold up that
bean, and we'll come to you."

"I'll do it," said Corny. "But how about you? What can I do?"

"Oh, I don't suppose we shall want you to help us much," I said.

"Well, hold up your beans, and we'll see," said Corny.

CHAPTER X.

THE QUEEN ON THE DOOR-STEP.

We found that Corny had not been mistaken about her influence over her
family, for the next morning, before we were done breakfast, Mr.
Chipperton came around to see us. He was full of Nassau, and had made up
his mind to go with us on Tuesday. He asked us lots of questions, but he
really knew as much about the place as we did, although he had been so
much in the habit of mixing his Bahamas and his Bermudas.

"My wife is very much pleased at the idea of having you two with us on
the trip over," said he; "although, to be sure, we may have a very
smooth and comfortable voyage."

I believe that, since the Silver Spring affair, he regarded Rectus and
me as something in the nature of patent girl-catchers, to be hung over
the side of the vessel in bad weather.

We were sorry to leave St. Augustine, but we had thoroughly done up the
old place, and had seen everything, I think, except the Spring of Ponce
de Leon, on the other side of the St. Sebastian River. We didn't care
about renewing our youth,--indeed, we should have objected very much to
anything of the kind,--and so we felt no interest in old Ponce's spring.

On Tuesday morning, the "Tigris" made her appearance on time, and Mr.
Cholott and our good landlady came down to see us off. The yellow-legged
party also came down, but not to see us off. They, too, were going to
Nassau.

Rectus had gone on board, and I was just about to follow him, when our
old Minorcan stepped up to me.

"Goin' away?" said he.

"Yes," said I, "we're off at last."

"Other feller goin'?"

"Oh, yes," I answered, "we keep together."

"Well now, look here," said he, drawing me a little on one side. "What
made him take sich stock in us Minorcans? Why, he thought we used to be
slaves; what put that in his head, I'd like to know? Did he reely think
we ever was niggers?"

"Oh, no!" I exclaimed. "He had merely heard the early history of the
Minorcans in this country, their troubles and all that, and he----"

"But what difference did it make to him?" interrupted the old man.

I couldn't just then explain the peculiarities of Rectus's disposition
to Mr. Menendez, and so I answered that I supposed it was a sort of
sympathy.

"I can't see, for the life of me," said the old man, reflectively, "what
difference it made to him."

And he shook hands with me, and bade me good-bye. I don't believe he has
ever found anybody who could give him the answer to this puzzle.

The trip over to Nassau was a very different thing from our voyage down
the coast from New York to Savannah. The sea was comparatively smooth,
and, although the vessel rolled a good deal in the great swells, we did
not mind it much. The air was delightful, and after we had gone down the
Florida coast, and had turned to cross the Gulf Stream to our islands,
the weather became positively warm, even out here on the sea, and we
were on deck nearly all the time.

Mr. Chipperton was in high spirits. He enjoyed the deep blue color of
the sea; he went into ecstasies over the beautiful little nautiluses
that sailed along by the ship; he watched with wild delight the
porpoises that followed close by our side, and fairly shouted when a big
fellow would spring into the air, or shoot along just under the surface,
as if he had a steam-engine in his tail. But when he saw a school of
flying-fish rise up out of the sea, just a little ahead of us, and go
skimming along like birds, and then drop again into the water, he was so
surprised and delighted that he scarcely knew how to express his
feelings.

Of course, we younger people enjoyed all these things, but I was
surprised to see that Corny was more quiet than usual, and spent a good
deal of her time in reading, although she would spring up and run to the
railing whenever her father announced some wonderful discovery. Mr.
Chipperton would have been a splendid man for Columbus to have taken
along with him on his first trip to these islands. He would have kept up
the spirits of the sailors.

I asked Corny what she was reading, and she showed me her book. It was a
big, fat pamphlet about the Bahamas, and she was studying up for her
stay there. She was a queer girl. She had not been to school very much,
her mother said, for they had been travelling about a good deal of late
years; but she liked to study up special things, in which she took an
interest. Sometimes she was her own teacher, and sometimes, if they
staid in any one place long enough, she took regular lessons.

"I teach her as much as I can," said her mother, "although I would much
rather have her go regularly to school. But her father is so fond of her
that he will not have her away from him, and as Mr. Chipperton's lung
requires him to be moving from place to place, we have to go, too. But I
am determined that she shall go to a school next fall."

"What is the matter with Mr. Chipperton's lung?" I asked.

"I wish we knew," said Mrs. Chipperton, earnestly. "The doctors don't
seem to be able to find out the exact trouble, and besides, it isn't
certain which lung it is. But the only thing that can be done for it is
to travel."

"He looks very well," said I.

"Oh, yes!" said she. "But"--and she looked around to see where he
was--"he doesn't like people to tell him so."

After a while, Rectus got interested in Corny's book, and the two read a
good deal together. I did not interrupt them, for I felt quite sure that
neither of them knew too much.

The captain and all the officers on the steamer were good, sociable men,
and made the passengers feel at home. I had got somewhat acquainted with
them on our trip from Savannah to St. Augustine, and now the captain let
me come into his room and showed me the ship's course, marked out on a
chart, and pointed out just where we were, besides telling me a good
many things about the islands and these waters.

I mentioned to Corny and Rectus, when I went aft again,--this was the
second day out,--that we should see one end of the Great Bahama early in
the afternoon.

"I'm glad of that," said Corny; "but I suppose we sha'n't go near enough
for us to see its calcareous formation."

"Its what?" I exclaimed.

"Its cal-car-e-ous formation," repeated Corny, and she went on with her
reading.

"Oh!" said I, laughing, "I guess the calcareous part is all covered up
with grass and plants,--at least it ought to be in a semi-tropical
country. But when we get to Nassau you can dig down and see what it's
like."

"Semi-tropical!" exclaimed Mr. Chipperton, who just came up; "there is
something about that word that puts me all in a glow," and he rubbed his
hands as if he smelt dinner.

Each of us wore a gray bean. Rectus and I had ours fastened to our
watch-guards, and Corny's hung to a string of beads she generally wore.
We formed ourselves into a society--Corny suggested it--which we called
the "Association of the Three Gray Beans," the object of which was to
save each other from drowning, and to perform similar serviceable acts,
if circumstances should call for them. We agreed to be very faithful,
and, if Corny had tumbled overboard, I am sure that Rectus and I would
have jumped in after her; but I am happy to say that she did nothing of
the kind on this trip.

Early the next morning, we reached Nassau, the largest town in the
Bahamas, on one of the smallest islands, and found it semi-tropical
enough to suit even Mr. Chipperton.

Before we landed, we could see the white, shining streets and
houses,--just as calcareous as they could be; the black negroes; the
pea-green water in the harbor; the tall cocoa-nut trees, and about five
million conch-shells, lying at the edges of the docks. The colored
people here live pretty much on the conch-fish, and when we heard that,
it accounted for the shells. The poorer people on these islands often go
by the name of "conchs."

As we went up through the town we found that the darkeys were nearly as
thick as the conch-shells, but they were much more lively. I never saw
such jolly, dont-care-y people as the colored folks that were scattered
about everywhere. Some of the young ones, as joyful skippers, could have
tired out a shrimp.

There is one big hotel in the town, and pretty nearly all our passengers
went there. The house is calcareous, and as solid as a rock. Rectus and
I liked it very much, because it reminded us of pictures we had seen of
Algiers, or Portugal, or some country where they have arches instead of
doors; but Mr. Chipperton wasn't at all satisfied when he found that
there was not a fireplace in the whole house.

"This is coming the semi-tropical a little too strong," he said to me;
but he soon found, I think, that gathering around the hearth-stone could
never become a popular amusement in this warm little town.

Every day, for a week, Mr. Chipperton hired a one-horse barouche, and he
and his wife and daughter rode over the island. Rectus and I walked, and
we saw a good deal more than they did. Corny told us this, the first
walk she took with us. We went down a long, smooth, white road that led
between the queer little cottages of the negroes, where the cocoa-nut
and orange trees and the bananas and sappadilloes, and lots of other
trees and bushes stood up around the houses just as proudly as if they
were growing on ten-thousand-dollar lots. Some of these trees had the
most calcareous foundations anybody ever saw. They grew almost out of
the solid rock. This is probably one of the most economical places in
the world for garden mould. You couldn't sweep up more than a bucketful
out of a whole garden, and yet the things grow splendidly. Rectus said
he supposed the air was earthy.

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