A Jolly Fellowship Part 13

Corny made one shot, but did no execution. The other gunners on board had been firing away, for some time, at two little birds that kept ahead of us, skimming along over the water, just out of reach of the shot that was sent scattering after them.

"I think it's a shame," said Corny, "to shoot such little birds as that.

They can't eat 'em."

"No," said I; "and they can't hit 'em, either, which is a great deal better."

But very soon after this, the shorter yellow-legged man did hit a bird.

It was a water-turkey, that had been sitting on a tree, just as we turned a corner. The big bird spread out its wings, made a doleful flutter, and fell into the underbrush by the sh.o.r.e.

"Wont they stop to get him?" asked Corny, with her eyes open as wide as they would go.

One of the hands was standing by, and he laughed.

"Stop the boat when a man shoots a bird? I reckon not. And there isn't anybody that would go into all that underbrush and water only for a bird like that, anyway."

"Well, I think it's murder!" cried Corny. "I thought they ate 'em. Here!

Take your gun. I'm much obliged; but I don't want to kill things just to see them fall down and die."

I took the gun very willingly,--although I did not think that Corny would injure any birds with it,--but I asked her what she thought about alligators. She certainly had not supposed that they were killed for food.

"Alligators are wild beasts," she said. "Give me my pistol. I am going to take it back to father."

And away she went. Rectus and I did not keep up our rifle practice much longer. We couldn't hit anything, and the thought that, if we should wound or kill a bird, it would be of no earthly good to us or anybody else, made us follow Corny's example, and we put away our gun. But the other gunners did not stop. As long as daylight lasted a ceaseless banging was kept up.

We were sitting on the forward deck, looking out at the beautiful scenes through which we were pa.s.sing, and occasionally turning back to see that none of the gunners posted themselves where they might make our positions uncomfortable, when Corny came back to us.

"Can either of you speak French?" she asked.

Rectus couldn't; but I told her that I understood the language tolerably well, and asked her why she wished to know.

"It's just this," she said. "You see those two men with yellow boots, and the lady with them? She's one of their wives."

"How many wives have they got?" interrupted Rectus, speaking to Corny almost for the first time.

"I mean she is the wife of one of them, of course," she answered, a little sharply; and then she turned herself somewhat more toward me.

"And the whole set try to make out they're French, for they talk it nearly all the time. But they're not French, for I heard them talk a good deal better English than they can talk French; and every time a branch nearly hits her, that lady sings out in regular English. And, besides, I know that their French isn't French French, because I can understand a great deal of it, and if it was I couldn't do it. I can talk French a good deal better than I can understand it, anyway. The French people jumble everything up so that I can't make head or tail of it. Father says he don't wonder they have had so many revolutions, when they can't speak their own language more distinctly. He tried to learn it, but didn't keep it up long, and so I took lessons. For, when we go to France, one of us ought to know how to talk, or we shall be cheated dreadfully. Well, you see, over on the little deck, up there, is that gentleman with his wife and a young lady, and they're all travelling together, and these make-believe French people have been jabbering about them ever so long, thinking that n.o.body else on board understands French. But I listened to them. I couldn't make out all they said, but I could tell that they were saying all sorts of things about those other people, and trying to settle which lady the gentleman was married to, and they made a big mistake, too, for they said the small lady was the one."

"How do you know they were wrong?" I said.

"Why, I went to the gentleman and asked him. I guess he ought to know.

And now, if you'll come up there, I'd just like to show those people that they can't talk out loud about the other pa.s.sengers and have n.o.body know what they're saying."

"You want to go there and talk French, so as to show them that you understand it?" said I.

"Yes," answered Corny, "that's just it."

"All right; come along," said I. "They may be glad to find out that you know what they're talking about."

And so we all went to the upper deck, Rectus as willing as anybody to see the fun.

Corny seated herself on a little stool near the yellow-legged party, the men of which had put down their guns for a time. Rectus and I sat on the forward railing, near her. Directly she cleared her throat, and then, after looking about her on each side, said to me, in very distinct tones:

"_Voy-ezz vows cett hommy ett ses ducks femmys seelah?_"[B]

I came near roaring out laughing, but I managed to keep my face straight, and said: "_Oui._"

"Well, then,--I mean _Bean donk lah peet.i.t femmy nest pah lah femmy due hommy. Lah oter femmy este sah femmy._"[C]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "VOY-EZZ VOWS CETT HOMMY ETT SES DUCKS FEMMYS SEELAH?"]

At this, there was no holding in any longer. I burst out laughing, so that I came near falling off the railing; Rectus laughed because I did; the gentleman with the wife and the young lady laughed madly, and Mr.

Chipperton, who came out of the saloon on hearing the uproar, laughed quite cheerfully, and asked what it was all about. But Corny didn't laugh. She turned around short to see what effect her speech had had on the yellow-legged party. It had a good deal of effect. They reddened and looked at us. Then they drew their chairs closer together, and turned their backs to us. What they thought, we never knew; but Corny declared to me afterward that they talked no more French,--at least when she was about.

The gentleman who had been the subject of Corny's French discourse called her over to him, and the four had a gay talk together. I heard Corny tell them that she never could p.r.o.nounce French in the French way.

She p.r.o.nounced it just as it was spelt, and her father said that ought to be the rule with every language. She had never had a regular teacher; but if people laughed so much at the way she talked, perhaps her father ought to get her one.

I liked Corny better the more I knew of her. It was easy to see that she had taught herself all that she knew. Her mother held her back a good deal, no doubt; but her father seemed more like a boy-companion than anything else, and if Corny hadn't been a very smart girl, she would have been a pretty bad kind of a girl by this time. But she wasn't anything of the sort, although she did do and say everything that came into her head to say or do. Rectus did not agree with me about Corny. He didn't like her.

When it grew dark, I thought we should stop somewhere for the night, for it was hard enough for the boat to twist and squeeze herself along the river in broad daylight. She b.u.mped against big trees that stood on the edge of the stream, and swashed through bushes that stuck out too far from the banks; but she was built for b.u.mping and scratching, and didn't mind it. Sometimes she would turn around a corner and make a short cut through a whole plantation of lily-pads and spatterdocks,--or things like them,--and she would sc.r.a.pe over a sunken log as easily as a wagon-wheel rolls over a stone. She drew only two feet of water, and was flat-bottomed. When she made a very short turn, the men had to push her stern around with poles. Indeed, there was a man with a pole at the bow a good deal of the time, and sometimes he had more pushing off to do than he could manage by himself.

When Mr. Chipperton saw what tight places we had to squeeze through, he admitted that it was quite proper not to try to bring the big steam-boats up here.

But the boat didn't stop. She kept right on. She had to go a hundred and forty miles up that narrow river, and if she made the whole trip from Pilatka and back in two days, she had no time to lose. So, when it was dark, a big iron box was set up on top of the pilot-house, and a fire was built in it of pine-knots and bits of fat pine. This blazed finely, and lighted up the river and the trees on each side, and sometimes threw out such a light that we could see quite a distance ahead. Everybody came out to see the wonderful sight. It was more like fairy-land than ever. When the fire died down a little, the distant scenery seemed to fade away and become indistinct and shadowy, and the great trees stood up like their own ghosts all around us; and then, when fresh knots were thrown in, the fire would blaze up, and the whole scene would be lighted up again, and every tree and bush, and almost every leaf, along the water's edge would be tipped with light, while everything was reflected in the smooth, glittering water.

Rectus and I could hardly go in to supper, and we got through the meal in short order. We staid out on deck until after eleven o'clock, and Corny staid with us a good part of the time. At last, her father came down after her, for they were all going to bed.

"This is a grand sight," said Mr. Chipperton. "I never saw anything to equal it in any transformation scene at a theatre. Some of our theatre people ought to come down here and study it up, so as to get up something of the kind for exhibition in the cities."

Just before we went into bed, our steam-whistle began to sound, and away off in the depths of the forest we could hear every now and then another whistle. The captain told us that there was a boat coming down the river, and that she would soon pa.s.s us. The river did not look wide enough for two boats; but when the other whistle sounded as if it were quite near, we ran our boat close into sh.o.r.e among the spatterdocks, in a little cove, and waited there, leaving the channel for the other boat.

Directly, it came around a curve just ahead of us, and truly it was a splendid sight. The lower part of the boat was all lighted up, and the fire was blazing away grandly in its iron box, high up in the air.

To see such a glowing, sparkling apparition as this come sailing out of the depths of the dark forest, was grand! Rectus said he felt like bursting into poetry; but he didn't. He wasn't much on rhymes. He had opportunity enough, though, to get up a pretty good-sized poem, for we were kept awake a long time after we went to bed by the boughs of the trees on sh.o.r.e scratching and tapping against the outside of our state-room.

When we went out on deck the next morning, the first person we saw was Corny, holding on to the flag-staff at the bow and looking over the edge of the deck into the water.

"What are you looking at?" said I, as we went up to her.

"See there!" she cried. "See that turtle! And those two fishes! Look!

look!"

We didn't need to be told twice to look. The water was just as clear as crystal, and you could see the bottom everywhere, even in the deepest places, with the great rocks covered with some glittering green substance that looked like emerald slabs, and the fish and turtles swimming about as if they thought there was no one looking at them.

I couldn't understand how the water had become so clear; but I was told that we had left the river proper and were now in a stream that flowed from Silver Spring, which was the end of our voyage into the cypress woods. The water in the spring and in this stream was almost transparent,--very different from the regular water of the river.

About ten o'clock, we reached Silver Spring, which is like a little lake, with some houses on the bank. We made fast at a wharf, and, as we were to stop here some hours, everybody got ready to go ash.o.r.e.

Corny was the first one ready. Her mother thought she ought not to go, but her father said there was no harm in it.