Captain Sam Part 5

"What are you going to burn them out with?"

"With that little rod," answered Sam, tossing a bit of iron about six inches long towards his brother, "I brought it with me on purpose."

"Well, but it won't reach; you've got to reach all the joints you know, and the rod must be as long as the cane."

"Oh no, not by any means."

"Yes it must, of course it must," exclaimed all the boys in a breath.

"It's just like burning out a pipe stem with a wire."

"No it is not," replied Sam, smiling, "but suppose it is. I can burn out a pipe stem with a wire half as long as the stem."

"How?" asked two or three boys at once.

"By burning first from one end and then from the other."

"Yes, that's so," answered Sid Russell slowly, drawling his words out as if he had to drag them up through his long legs, "but that don't tell how you're goin' to bore out a big cane, fifteen feet long with a little iron rod not more 'n six or eight inches long."

"Well, if you will be patient a moment, I'll show you," answered Sam, picking up the bit of iron. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.g off the end of one of his small green canes, Sam measured it by the iron rod and trimmed again. He continued this process until he had the end of the cane a trifle larger than the iron was. Then taking an iron tube or band out of his pocket, he drove the iron rod firmly into it for the distance of about half an inch, leaving the other end of the tube open. Into this he forced the end of the small green cane and having made it firm he had a rod about ten feet long.

"There," he said, "I have a rod long enough to reach a good deal more than half way through either one of my big canes. It isn't iron except at the end, and it doesn't need to be," and with that he thrust the end of the bit of iron into the fire to heat.

"Now, Tom," he said, "you must burn the canes out while I do something else."

I wonder if there is any boy who needs a fuller explanation than the one which Sam has already given, of what was going forward. There may be boys enough, for aught I know, who never went fishing in their lives, and so do not know what canes, or reeds, or cane-poles, as they are variously called, are like. I must explain, therefore, that the canes which Sam proposed to burn out, were precisely such as those that are commonly used as fishing rods. These canes grow all over the South, in the swamps. They are, in fact, a kind of gigantic gra.s.s, although the people who are most familiar with them do not dream of the fact. The botanists call them a gra.s.s, at any rate, and the botanists know. Each cane is a long, straight rod, tapering very gently, with "joints," as they are called, about eight or ten inches apart. These joints are simply places where the cane, outside, is a little larger than it is between joints, while inside each joint consists of a hard woody part.i.tion, across the hollow tube, which is otherwise continuous. Sam's plan was simply to burn these part.i.tions away with a hot iron, which would convert the cane into a long, slender, wooden tube, very hard, very light, and straight as an arrow.

Tom went to work at once to burn out the joints, a work which occupied a good deal of time, as the iron had to be re-heated a great many times. He worked very steadily, however with the a.s.sistance of two or three of the boys, and managed during that first evening to get two of the blow guns burned out.

Meantime Sam made an arrow, very small and only about ten inches long, out of some dry cedar.

"Now," he said, "I want those of you who are not busy burning out the canes, to go to work making arrows just like that, while I do something else."

The boys went to work with a will, while Sam, going into the nearest thicket, cut a green stick about three quarters of an inch in diameter. Returning to the fire, he split one end of this stick for a little way, converting it into a sort of rude pincer. He then unrolled his blanket, and revealed to the astonished gaze of his companions several pounds of horse shoe nails.

"What on earth are you goin' to do with them horse shoe nails?" asked Hilly Bowlegs, looking up from the cedar arrow on which he was working.

"I'm going to make arrow heads out of them," answered Sam, thrusting several of them into the bed of coals.

With the side of an axe for an anvil, and the hatchet for a hammer, Sam was soon very busy forging his wrought nails into sharp arrow points, holding the hot iron in his wooden pincers. Among the things that Sam had thought it worth while to learn something about, was blacksmithing, and he was really expert in the simpler arts of the smith. He could shoe a horse, "point" a plow, or weld iron or steel, very well indeed.

He had learned this as he had learned a good many other things, merely because he thought that every young man should know how to do tolerably well whatever he might sometime need to do, and in a new country where shops are scarce and workmen are not always to be found, there is no mechanical art which it is not sometimes very convenient to know something about.

Sam wrought now so expertly that within less than an hour he had made six arrow points. These he fitted to six of the arrows, and then he suspended work for the evening, and marked progress on his map; that is to say, he p.r.i.c.ked on his map with a pin the course followed during the afternoon, estimating the distance travelled as accurately as he could.

CHAPTER VIII.

A MOTION WHICH WAS NOT IN ORDER.

The next day the march was resumed, and continued with some haltings for rest until about three o'clock, when Sam chose a camp for the night, saying that they had already made a better march than he had planned for that day, and that there was no occasion to break themselves down by going further.

The work was at once resumed upon guns and arrows, Sam beginning by finishing the arrows already made. He cut strips from a hare's skin which Tommy had brought with him at Sam's request, making each strip about four or five inches long, and just wide enough to meet around the end of an arrow. Binding these strips firmly, the arrows were complete. Each was a slender, light stick of cedar, shod at one end with a slender iron point, and bound around at the other, for a distance of several inches, with the fur of the hare. Pushing one of these into the mouth end of his blow gun, Sam showed his companions that the fur completely filled the tube, so that when he should blow in the end the arrow would be driven through and out with considerable force.

Pointing the gun toward a tree a little way off, Sam blew, and in a moment the arrow was seen sticking in the tree, its head being almost wholly buried in the solid wood.

The boys all wanted to try the new guns, of course, and Sam permitted them to do so, greatly to their delight, as long as the daylight lasted. Then the manufacture of new arrows began, the boys working earnestly now, because they were interested.

After awhile Sam took out his map and began p.r.i.c.king the course upon it.

"I say, Sam," said Bob Sharp, "how do you do that?"

"How do I do what? p.r.i.c.k the map?"

"No, I mean how do you know where we are and which way we go?"

"That's just what I want to know," said Sid Russell.

"And me, too," chimed in Billy Bunker and Jake Elliott.

"Well, come here, all of you," replied Sam, "and I'll show you. We started there, at camp Jackson,--you see, don't you, where the Coosa and the Tallapoosa rivers come together and we are going down there,"

pointing to a spot on the map, "to the sea, or rather to the Bay near Pensacola."

"Are we! Good! I never saw the sea," said Sid Russell, speaking faster than any of the boys had ever heard him speak before.

"Yes, that is the place we're going to, and presently I'll tell you what we're going for; but one thing at a time. You see the course is a little west of south, nearly but not quite southwest. The distance, in an air line is about a hundred and twenty-five miles: that is to say Pensacola is about a hundred and ten miles further south than camp Jackson, and about fifty miles further west."

"That would be a hundred and sixty miles then," said Billy Bowlegs.

"Yes," replied Sam, "it would if we went due south and then due west, taking the base and perpendicular of a right angled triangle, instead of its hypothenuse."

"Whew, what's all them words I wonder," exclaimed Billy.

"Well, I'll try to show you what I mean," said Sam, taking a stick and drawing in the sand a figure like this:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"There," said Sam, "that's a right angled triangle, but you may call it a thingimajig if you like; it doesn't matter about the name.

Suppose we start at the top to go to the left hand lower corner; don't you see that it would be further to go straight down to the right hand lower corner and then across to the left hand lower corner, than to go straight from the top to the left hand lower corner."

"Certainly," replied Billy, "it's just like going cat a cornered across a field."

"Well," said Sam, pointing with his finger, "if I were to draw a triangle here on the map beginning at camp Jackson and running due south to the line of Pensacola, and then due west to Pensacola itself, with a third line running 'cat a cornered' as you say, from camp Jackson straight to Pensacola, the line due south would be about a hundred and ten miles long and the one due west about fifty miles long, while the 'cat a cornered' line would be about a hundred and twenty five miles long."

"How do you find out that last,--the cat a cornered line's length?"

asked Tom.