A Jolly Fellowship Part 27

But the general-in-chief did not let us off yet. He said he'd show us the most wonderful thing in the whole place, and then he took us out-of-doors again, and led us to a little shed or enclosed door-way just outside of the main part of the fort, but inside of the fortifications, where he had his bench and tools. He moved away the bench, and then we saw that it stood on a wooden trap-door. He took hold of a ring, and lifted up this door, and there was a round hole about as big as the hind wheel of a carriage. It was like a well, and was as dark as pitch. When we held the lamp over it, however, we could see that there were winding steps leading down into it. These steps were cut out of the rock, as was the hole and the pillar around which the steps wound. It was all one piece. The general took his lamp and went down ahead, and we all followed, one by one. Those who were most afraid and went last had the worst of it, for the lamp wasn't a calcium light by any means, and their end of the line was a good deal in the dark. But we all got to the bottom of the well at last, and there we found a long, narrow pa.s.sage leading under the very foundation or bottom floor of the whole place, and then it led outside of the fort under the moat, which was dry now, but which used to be full of water, and so, on and on, in black darkness, to a place in the side of the hill, or somewhere, where there had been a lookout. Whether there were any pa.s.sages opening into this or not, I don't know, for it was dark in spite of the lamp, and we all had to walk in single file, so there wasn't much chance for exploring sidewise. When we got to the end, we were glad enough to turn around and come back. It was a good thing to see such a place, but there was a feeling that if the walls should cave in a little, or a big rock should fall from the top of the pa.s.sage, we should all be hermetically canned in very close quarters. When we came out, we gave the shoemaker commander some money, and came away.

"Isn't it nice," said Corny, "that he isn't a queen, to be taken care of, and we can just pay him and come away, and not have to think of him any more?"

We agreed to that, but I said I thought we ought to go and take one more look at our old queen before we left. Mrs. Chipperton, who was a really sensible woman when she had a chance, objected to this, because, she said, it would be better to let the old woman alone now. We couldn't do anything for her after we left, and it would be better to let her depend on her own exertions, now that she had got started again on that track.

I didn't think that the word exertion was a very good one in Poqua-dilla's case, but I didn't argue the matter. I thought that if some of us dropped around there before we left, and gave her a couple of shillings, it would not interfere much with her mercantile success in the future.

I thought this, but Corny spoke it right out--at least, what she said amounted to pretty much the same thing.

"Well," said her mother, "we might go around there once more, especially as your father has never seen the queen at all. Mr. Chipperton, would you like to see the African queen?"

Mr. Chipperton did not answer, and his wife turned around quickly. She had been walking ahead with the Chicago lady.

"Why, where is he?" she exclaimed. We all stopped and looked about, but couldn't see him. He wasn't there. We were part way down the hill, but not far from the fort, and we stopped and looked back, and then Corny called him. I said that I would run back for him, as he had probably stopped to talk with the shoemaker. Rectus and I both ran back, and Corny came with us. The shoemaker had put his bench in its place over the trap-door, and was again at work. But Mr. Chipperton was not talking to him.

"I'll tell you what I believe,"--said Corny, gasping.

But it was of no use to wait to hear what she believed. I believed it myself.

"h.e.l.lo!" I cried to the shoemaker before I reached him. "Did a gentleman stay behind here?"

"I didn't see none," said the man, looking up in surprise, as we charged on him.

"Then," I cried, "he's shut down in that well! Jump up and open the door!"

The shoemaker did jump up, and we helped him move the bench, and had the trap-door open in no time. By this, the rest of the party had come back, and when Mrs. Chipperton saw the well open and no Mr. Chipperton about, she turned as white as a sheet. We could hardly wait for the man to light his lamp, and as soon as he started down the winding stairs, Rectus and I followed him. I called back to Mrs. Chipperton and the others that they need not come; we would be back in a minute and let them know. But it was of no use; they all came. We hurried on after the man with the light, and pa.s.sed straight ahead through the narrow pa.s.sage to the very end of it.

There stood Mr. Chipperton, holding a lighted match, which he had just struck. He was looking at something on the wall. As we ran in, he turned and smiled, and was just going to say something, when Corny threw herself into his arms, and his wife, squeezing by, took him around his neck so suddenly that his hat flew off and b.u.mped on the floor, like an empty tin can. He always wore a high silk hat. He made a grab for his hat, and the match burned his fingers.

"Aouch!" he exclaimed, as he dropped the match. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed his wife. "How dreadful to leave you here! Shut up alone in this awful place! But to think we have found you!"

"No trouble about that, I should say," remarked Mr. Chipperton, going over to the other side of the den after his hat. "You haven't been gone ten minutes, and it's a pretty straight road back here."

"But how did it happen?" "Why did you stay?" "Weren't you frightened?"

"Did you stay on purpose?" we all asked him at pretty much one and the same time.

"I did stay on purpose," said he; "but I did not expect to stay but a minute, and had no idea you would go and leave me. I stopped to see what in the name of common sense this place was made for. I tried my best to make some sort of an observation out of this long, narrow loop-hole, but found I could see nothing of importance whatever, and so I made up my mind it was money thrown away to cut out such a place as this to so little purpose. When I had entirely made up my mind, I found, on turning around, that you had gone, and although I called I received no answer.

"Then I knew I was alone in this place. But I was perfectly composed. No agitation, no tremor of the nerves. Absolute self-control. The moment I found myself deserted, I knew exactly what to do. I did precisely the same thing that I would have done had I been left alone in the Mammoth Cave, or the Cave of Fingal, or any place of the kind.

"I stood perfectly still!

"If you will always remember to do that," and he looked as well as he could from one to another of us, "you need never be frightened, no matter how dark and lonely a cavern you may be left in. Strive to reflect that you will soon be missed, and that your friends will naturally come back to the place where they saw you last. Stay there!

Keep that important duty in your mind. Stay just where you are! If you run about to try and find your way out, you will be lost. You will lose yourself, and no one can find you.

"Instances are not uncommon where persons have been left behind in the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and who were not found by searching parties for a day or two, and they were almost invariably discovered in an insane condition. They rushed wildly about in the dark; got away from the ordinary paths of tourists; couldn't be found, and went crazy,--a very natural consequence. Now, nothing of the kind happened to me. I remained where I was, and here, you see, in less than ten minutes, I am rescued!"

And he looked around with a smile as pleasant as if he had just invented a new sewing-machine.

"But were you not frightened,--awe-struck in this dark and horrible place, alone?" inquired Mrs. Chipperton, holding on to his arm.

"No," said he. "It was not very dark just here. That slit let in a little light. That is all it is good for, though why light should be needed here, I cannot tell. And then I lighted matches and examined the wall. I might find some trace of some sensible intention on the part of the people who quarried this pa.s.sage. But I could find nothing. What I might have found, had I moved about, I cannot say. I had a whole box of matches in my pocket. But I did not move."

"Well," said Mr. Burgan, "I think you'd better move now. I, for one, am convinced that this place is of no use to me, and I don't like it."

I think Mr. Burgan was a little out of temper.

We now started on our way out of the pa.s.sage, Mrs. Chipperton holding tight to her husband, for fear, I suppose, that he might be inclined to stop again.

"I didn't think," said she, as she clambered up the dark and twisting steps, "that I should have this thing to do, so soon again. But no one can ever tell what strange things may happen to them, at any time."

"When father's along," added Corny.

This was all nuts to the shoemaker, for we gave him more money for his second trip down the well. I hope this didn't put the idea into his head of shutting people down below, and making their friends come after them, and pay extra.

"There are some things about Mr. Chipperton that I like," said Rectus, as we walked home together.

"Yes," said I, "some things."

"I like the cool way in which he takes bad fixes," continued Rectus, who had a fancy for doing things that way himself. "Don't you remember that time he struck on the sand-bank. He just sat there in the rain, waiting for the tide to rise, and made no fuss at all. And here, he kept just as cool and comfortable, down in that dungeon. He must have educated his mind a good deal to be able to do that."

"It may be very well to educate the mind to take things coolly," said I, "but I'd a great deal rather educate my mind not to get me into such fixes."

"I suppose that would be better," said Rectus, after thinking a minute.

And now we had but little time to see anything more in Na.s.sau. In two days the "Tigris" would be due, and we were going away in her. So we found we should have to bounce around in a pretty lively way, if we wanted to be able to go home and say we had seen the place.

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT BOY HAS DONE, BOY MAY DO.

There was one place that I wished, particularly, to visit before I left, and that was what the people in Na.s.sau called the Coral-reef. There were lots of coral-reefs all about the islands, but this one was easily visited, and for this reason, I suppose, was chosen as a representative of its cla.s.s. I had been there before, and had seen all the wonders of the reef through a water-gla.s.s,--which is a wooden box, with a pane of gla.s.s at one end and open at the other. You hold the gla.s.s end of this box just under the water, and put your face to the open end, and then you can see down under the water, exactly as if you were looking through the air. And on this coral-reef, where the water was not more than twelve or fourteen feet deep, there were lots of beautiful things to see. It was like a submarine garden. There was coral in every form and shape, and of different colors; there were sea-feathers, which stood up like waving purple trees, most of them a foot or two high, but some a good deal higher; there were sea-fans, purple and yellow, that spread themselves up from the curious bits of coral-rock on the bottom, and there were ever so many other things that grew like bushes and vines, and of all sorts of colors. Among all these you could see the fishes swimming about, as if they were in a great aquarium. Some of these fishes were very large, with handsome black bands across their backs, but the prettiest were some little fellows, no bigger than sardines, that swam in among the branches of the sea-feathers and fans. They were colored bright blue, and yellow and red; some of them with two or three colors apiece. Rectus called them "humming-fishes." They did remind me of humming-birds, although they didn't hum.

When I came here before, I was with a party of ladies and gentlemen. We went in a large sail-boat, and took several divers with us, to go down and bring up to us the curious things that we would select, as we looked through the water-gla.s.s. There wasn't anything peculiar about these divers. They wore linen breeches for diving dresses, and were the same kind of fellows as those who dived for pennies at the town.

Now, what I wanted to do, was to go to the coral-reef and dive down and get something for myself. It would be worth while to take home a sea-fan or something of that kind, and say you brought it up from the bottom of the sea yourself. Any one could get things that the divers had brought up. To be sure, the sea wasn't very deep here, but it had a bottom, all the same. I was not so good a swimmer as these darkeys, who ducked and dived as if they had been born in the water, but I could swim better than most fellows, and was particularly good at diving. So I determined, if I could get a chance, to go down after some of those things on the coral-reef.

I couldn't try this, before, because there were too many people along, but Rectus, who thought the idea was splendid, although he didn't intend to dive himself, agreed to hire a sail-boat with me, and go off to the reef, with only the darkey captain.

We started as early as we could get off, on the morning after we had been at Fort Charlotte. The captain of the yacht--they give themselves and their sail-boats big t.i.tles here--was a tall colored man, named Chris, and he took two big darkey boys with him, although we told him we didn't want any divers. But I suppose he thought we might change our minds. I didn't tell him _I_ was going to dive. He might not have been willing to go in that case.

We had a nice sail up the harbor, between the large island upon which the town stands, and the smaller ones that separate the harbor from the ocean. After sailing about five miles, we turned out to sea between two islands, and pretty soon were anch.o.r.ed over the reef.