The Drummer Boy Part 3

"You'll be a goose if you do!" retorted Jack. "I shan't send home any of mine. I'm my own man now, ye see, and what I earn of Uncle Sam I'm going to have a gallus old time with, you may bet your life on that!"

Frank drew a long breath, for he felt that the time had now come to have the talk with his friend which Mr. Winch had requested.

"I saw your father, this morning, Jack."

"Did ye though? What did the old sinner have to say?"

"I don't like to hear you call your father such names," said Frank, seriously. "And if you had seen how bad he felt, when he spoke of your enlisting----"

"Pshaw, now, Frank! don't be green! don't get into a pious strain, I beg of ye! You'll be the laughing-stock of all the boys, if ye do."

Frank blushed to the eyes, not knowing what reply to make. He had felt no little pride in Mr. Winch's responsible charge to him, and had intended to preach to his more reckless companion a good, sound, moral discourse on this occasion. But to have his overtures received in this manner was discouraging.

"Come," continued Jack, taking something from the straw, "we are soldiers now, and must do as soldiers do. Have a drink, Frank?"--presenting a small bottle.

"What is it?" Frank asked, and when told, "Brandy," he quickly withdrew the hand he had extended. "No, I thank you, Jack, I am not going to drink any thing of that sort, unless I need it as a medicine. And I am sorry to see you getting into such habits so soon."

"Habits? what habits?" retorted Jack, blushing in his turn. "A little liquor don't hurt a fellow. _I_ take it only as a medicine. You mustn't go to being squeamish down here, I tell you." And Jack drank a swallow or two, smacking his lips afterwards, as he returned the cork to the bottle.

By this time Frank's courage was up--his moral courage, I mean, which is more rare, as it is far more n.o.ble, than any merely physical bravery in the face of danger.

"I don't mean to be squeamish," he said; "but right is right, and wrong is wrong, Jack. And what was wrong for us at home isn't going to be right for us here. I, for one, believe we can go through this war without doing any thing that will make our parents ashamed of us when we return."

"My eye!" jeered his companion; "and do you fancy a little swallow of brandy is going to make my folks ashamed of me?"

"It isn't the single swallow I object to, Jack; it's the habit of drinking. That's a foolish thing, to say the least, for young fellows, like you and me, to get into; and we all know what it leads to. Who wants to become a tobacco-spitting, rum-drinking, filthy old man?"

"Ha, ha, ha," laughed Jack; rather feebly, however, for he could not help feeling that Frank was as much in the right as he was in the wrong. "You look a long ways ahead, it seems to me. I haven't thought of being an old man yet."

"If we live, we shall be men, and old men, too, some day," said Frank, without minding his sneers. "And you know we are laying the foundations of our future characters now."

"That's what your mother, or your Sunday school teacher, has been saying to you."

"No matter who has said it. I know it's true, and I hope I never shall forget it. I mean to become a true, honest man if I live; and now, I believe, is the time to begin."

"O, no doubt you'll be great things," grinned Jack.

The tone in which he said this was highly offensive; and Frank was provoked to retort,--

"You don't seem even to have thought what you are going to be. You try first one thing, then another, and stick to nothing. That's what your father said this morning, with tears in his eyes."

Jack turned red as fire, either with anger or shame, or both, and seemed meditating a pa.s.sionate reply, when some of his companions, who had been eating their rations outside, entered the tent.

"Come in, boys," cried Jack, "and hear Frank preach. You didn't know we had a chaplain in our company--did ye? That's the parson, there, with the girl's hair. He can reel you off sermons like any thing. Fire away, Frank, and show the boys."

"Yes, steam up, parson," said Joe Harris, "and give us a specimen."

"Play away, seven," cried Ned Ellis, as if Frank had been a fire-engine of that number.

These, together with other facetious remarks, made Frank so ashamed and confused that he could not say a word. For experience had not yet taught him that even the most reckless and depraved, however they may laugh at honest seriousness in a companion, cannot help respecting him for it in their hearts.

"You needn't blush so, young chap," said tall Abram At.w.a.ter, a stalwart, square-shouldered, square-featured young man of twenty, who alone had not joined in the derisive merriment. "It won't hurt any of these fellows to preach to them, and they know it."

Frank cast a grateful look at the tall soldier, who, though almost a stranger to him, had thus generously taken his part against some who professed to be his friends. He tried to speak, but could not articulate a word, he was still feeling so hurt by Jack's ingrat.i.tude. Perhaps his pride was as much wounded as his friendship; for, as we have hinted, he had been a good deal puffed up with the idea of his influence over Jack.

This incident, as we shall see, had a bad effect upon Frank himself; for, instead of persevering in the good work he had undertaken, he was inclined to give up all hope of exerting an influence upon any body.

In the mean time Jack was washing down the sermon, as he said, with more brandy.

"'Twas such an awful dry discourse, boys;" and he pa.s.sed the bottle around to the others, who all drank, except Abram At.w.a.ter. That stalwart young soldier stood in the midst of the tent, straight and tall, with his arms calmly folded under his blue cape (a favorite att.i.tude of his), and merely shook his head, with a mild and tolerant smile, when the liquor was pa.s.sed to him.

Such was the beginning of Frank's camp life. It was not long before he had recovered from his confusion, and was apparently on good terms with his messmates. He spent the afternoon in walking about the camp; watching some raw recruits at their drill; watching others playing cards, or checkers, or backgammon; getting acquainted, and learning the ways of the camp generally.

So the day pa.s.sed; and that night Frank lay for the first time soldier-fashion, under canvas. He went to bed with his clothes on, and drew his blanket over him. It was not like going to bed in his nice little room at home, with Willie snuggled warmly beside him; yet there was a novelty in this rude and simple mode of life that was charming. His companions, who lay upon the ground around him, kept him awake with their stories long after the lights were out; but at length, weary with the day's excitement, he fell asleep.

There,--a dweller now in the picturesque white city of tents gleaming in the moonlight, ruggedly pillowed on his soldier's couch, those soft brown curls tossed over the arm beneath his head,--the drummer boy dreamed of home. The last night's consultation and the morning's farewells were lived over again in the visions of his brain; and once more his mother visited his bedside; and again his father accompanied him to the recruiting office. But now the recruiting office was changed into a barber's shop, which seemed to be a tent supported by a striped pole; where, at John Winch's suggestion, he was to have his hair trimmed to the fighting-cut. The barber was a stiff-looking officer in epaulets, who heated a sword red-hot in an oven, while Frank preached to him a neat little sermon over his ration. Then the epaulets changed to a pair of roosters with flaming red combs, that flapped their wings and crowed. And the barber, approaching Frank with his red-hot sword, made him lie on his back to be shaved. Then followed an excruciating sense of having his hair pulled and his face sc.r.a.ped and burnt, which made him move and murmur in his sleep; until, a ruthless attempt being made to thrust the sword up his nostrils, he awoke.

Shouts of laughter greeted him. His companions had got up at midnight, lighted a candle, and burnt a cork, with which they had been giving him an artificial mustache and whiskers. He must have been a ludicrous sight, with his countenance thus ornamented, sitting up on his bed, rubbing his eyes open, and staring about him, while Winch and Harris shrieked with mirth, and Ned Ellis flapped his arms and crowed.

Frank put up his hand to his head. O grief! his curls had been mangled by dull shears in the unskilful hands of John Winch. The depredator was still brandishing the miserable instrument, which he had borrowed for the occasion of the fellow who cut the company's hair in the "Owl House."

Frank's sudden awaking, astonishment, and chagrin were almost too much for him. He could have cried to think of a friend playing him such a trick; and to think of his lost curls! But he had made up his mind to endure every thing that might befall him with unflinching fort.i.tude. He must not seem weak on an occasion like this. His future standing with his comrades might depend upon what he should say and do next. So he summoned all his stoutness of heart, and accepted the joke as good-naturedly as was possible under the circ.u.mstances.

"I wish you'd tell me what the fun is," he said, "so that I can laugh too."

"Give him the looking-gla.s.s," cried Jack Winch, holding the candle, while Ellis stopped crowing, to bring a little three-cornered fragment of a broken mirror, by which Frank was shown the artistic burnt-cork work on his face. He could hardly help laughing himself at his own hideousness, now that the first disagreeable sense of being the sport of his friends had pa.s.sed.

"I hope you have had fun enough to pay for waking me up out of the queerest dream any body ever had," he said. And he told all about the barber, and the epaulets that became roosters, and the red-hot sword for a razor, etc. Then, looking at himself again in the piece of gla.s.s, he called out, "Give me those shears;" and taking them, he manfully cut off his mutilated curls. "There, that isn't exactly the fighting-cut, Jack, but 'twill do. Now, boys, tell some more of those dull stories, and I guess I can go to sleep again."

And he lay down once more, declining to accept an urgent invitation to preach.

"There, boys," said stout Abram At.w.a.ter, who had sat all the time cross-legged, a silent, gravely-smiling spectator of the scene, "you shan't fool him any more. He has got pluck; he has shown it. And now let him alone."

IV.

THE OLD DRUMMER AND THE NEW DRUM.

As yet, Frank had no drum. Neither had he any scientific knowledge of the instrument. He was ambitious of entering upon his novel occupation, and was elated to learn, the next morning, that he was to begin his acquaintance with the n.o.ble art of drumming that very day.

"The sergeant is inquiring for you," said Abram At.w.a.ter, with his mild, pleasant smile, calling him out of the tent.

Frank, who was writing a letter to his mother, on his knapsack, jumped up with alacrity, hid his paper, and ran out to see what was wanted.

"This way, Manly," said the sergeant. "Here's the man that's to give you lessons. Go with him."

The teacher was a veteran drummer, with a twinkling gray eye, a long, thick, gray mustache, and a rather cynical way of showing his teeth under it. He had some drumsticks thrust into his pocket, but no drum.