Just before noon, Tom carefully removed all the bones and meat fragments from his soup kettle. Then he mixed up some corn meal dumplings and dropped them into the kettle, after the southern culinary fashion. These would answer as a sufficient substitute for bread, and as for meat, the company was to dine that day on the cold roast wild boar.
Just as Tom dropped the last of the dumplings into the kettle, he looked out through the half-open door and saw an ugly looking mountaineer creeping stealthily, and with his rifle in hand, up over the little cliff to the east of Camp Venture. His attention was evidently riveted upon the chopping boys, the scene of whose labors lay to the northwest of the house. Apparently, the man supposed the hut to be empty and intended to pass to the south of it, using it as a secure cover for his approach to the boys chopping.
Tom was a person distinctly quick of apprehension. In an instant, he saw what the man's plans were, and in another instant he had seized and cocked the Doctor's repeating rifle, which had fortunately been left in the hut.
As the mountaineer stealthily crept by the cabin, Tom "drew a bead" on him at not more than six paces distant, and called out:
"Lay down your gun instantly, or I'll shoot."
There was nothing to do but obey without a moment's loss of time. The mountaineer dropped his gun.
"Now, step inside," commanded Tom, still keeping the magazine rifle in position for instant and deadly use. "Step inside. I want to talk with you."
The man obeyed.
"Now, sit down on that stool," said Tom, "and tell me what you're up to. Come, now! No lying! Tell me what you were sneaking into this camp for!"
The man, who seemed much surlier and was certainly much brawnier than the former visitor to the camp, hesitated. Tom stimulated his utterance, by saying:
"Come, speak up! My patience is about exhausted, and I'm not going to wait for you to think of something false to say. Answer, or I'll shoot."
"Don't shoot, pard!" pleaded the man. "I didn't mean no harm. I only come to negotiate like."
"Then why were you sneaking and creeping upon my comrades with your rifle at full cock?"
"Well, you see, we fellers what lives up here in the mountings has to be keerful like. I wanted to make a bargain with you fellers, but if I'd 'a' walked into your camp regular like, why mebbe some on you'd 'a' shot me unbeknownst like. So I thought I'd just creep up like a catamount and git the drap on some on you, an' then tell you, simple like, as how I didn't want to do you no harm if you'd do us fellers no harm. I wanted to negotiate, that's all."
"Well, I don't like your way of negotiating," answered Little Tom, still keeping his rifle in poise against his hip ready for instant use. "I don't like to negotiate with a man that's 'got the drap on me' as you say. But now that I've 'got the drap' on you instead, I don't mind opening diplomatic relations—I don't suppose you know what that means, but never mind. Go on and tell me what it is you want."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, "first off we wanted you fellers to clear out'n here and git down out'n the mountings. We sent a man to you to negotiate that, an' you used him up so bad that he ain't no 'count no more in such business. Well, you won't go. We all seed that clear enough an' at first we was a plannin' to come over here with our guns and jes' exterminate you all. But then we knew what a hullabaloo that would raise. You see, it would 'a' give us away, like, an' next thing we know'd the revenue agents would 'a' come up here with a pack o' soldiers at their back, an' us fellers would 'a' been shot down like rabbits. So we held a little confab, like, an' we decided to let you fellers stay up here in the mountings ef you'd agree to behave decent, like."
"How exceedingly kind of you!" ejaculated Tom, derisively. "And how considerate! But go on; I didn't mean to interrupt. In what particular way do you exact that we shall behave ourselves in order to win your gracious permission to remain here on land that belongs to us?"
"Now, you're a gittin' at the pint," answered the man. "We're willin' to let you alone ef you'll let us alone. We're willin' to let you stay in the mountings an' cut all the timber you like, ef you won't bother us in any way."
"In what way have we bothered you?" asked Tom, who was growing steadily angrier with the man's extraordinary insolence.
"Well, you see, you fellers has planted your wood chute jist edzackly wrong."
"How so?"
"Well, ef you should send anything down that chute it would run right through a little shanty we've got down there under the cliff."
"An illicit still, you mean?" asked Tom.
"Well, as to that—"
"Never mind. You needn't lie about it. I understand. Now, as I catch your meaning, you want us to change the direction of our wood chute, so as to spare an illicit still that you have set up down there under the cliff, to hide it from the revenue officers. You've located that still on my mother's property, without leave or license, for she owns the whole of this side of the mountain down to its very foot; you are using her timber to fire up with under your still, without paying her a cent for it. In brief, you are thieves and robbers, and you have the insolence now to come here and demand that we shall change our chute in order to leave you undisturbed in your robbery of the government on the one hand and of my mother on the other. Very well, we will do nothing of the kind. At five minutes after three o'clock to-morrow afternoon we shall begin sending timber down through the chute. If you can remove your criminal apparatus by that time we'll not interfere with you. If you can't get it away by then, you'll simply have to take the consequences. But, at any rate, you can yourselves get out of the way, so that our timbers will not hurt you personally.
"Now go! Get away from here—no, don't pick up your rifle; I'll take care of that. You people have declared war on us, and in war it is not the custom to return arms to men captured and turned loose, I believe. I don't want your property, but I'm going to keep it for the present. If you'll come peaceably to my mother's house down in the town there, after we fellows go home, I'll give your rifle back to you. But not now, when you want it to shoot some of us with. Go now! and whether you get your still out by three o'clock to-morrow or not, be very careful that neither you nor any of your comrades remain there after that hour, for then the chute will begin to carry its load."
The evil-visaged man slunk away over the cliff by which he had ascended, and down the mountain. There was revenge written in every line of his countenance, and Tom quite well understood that he and his comrades must take care of themselves. Just as the fellow was marching away, with Tom's rifle leveled at him and with his own rifle lying upon the ground as a spoil of war, the rest of the company came up, but they did not interfere. They trusted Tom as a strategist, and they instantly saw that this was an "incident closed" as the diplomatists say. When the fellow was completely gone, Tom lowered the hammer of his rifle, restored it to its place, picked up the captured gun of the mountaineer, lowered its hammer to half cock, and carefully bestowed it in a convenient corner.
"What is it, Tom?" eagerly asked the others.
"Wait a minute!" said the boy, "till I dish up the soup. I hope it isn't spoiled, and as for the rest, I'll tell you all about it after dinner."
When the boys were well under way with the business of eating dinner, they again asked Tom to tell them the nature of his "negotiation" with the moonshiner.
"Well, I'll tell you what he said and what he demanded and what answer I made. But you must bear in mind that what he said may not have been true, and what he demanded may not have been what he really wanted. You see, I had 'got the drap' on him and naturally he made his explanations as plausible and his demands as small as he could. I had caught him creeping up with a cocked gun in his hand, evidently to take a shot at some one of you fellows, meaning, when the murder was done, to slip back over the rocks yonder without being seen or recognized by anybody. Thanks to the cat that scratched me, I was here to head him off in that. Then he pretended only to want us to remove our chute. I suppose that was a fetch, just to secure a way of escape from the awkward position in which I and your splendid rifle, Doctor, had placed him. They may have a still down there in the line of the chute, or they may not. But they have a still and perhaps several of them somewhere about here and so they are determined to drive us down the mountain. That, at least, is my reading of the riddle."
"It is pretty certainly correct," said Jack, after thinking for a moment. "At any rate that's the understanding upon which we must base our proceedings. We must not for one moment relax our vigilance; we must not be caught napping; we mustn't let any of those people 'git the drap' on us. They have declared war on us, and we must defend ourselves at every point."
The dinner was eaten in doors by all except Harry Ridsdale, who sat outside acting as a sentinel, and took his dinner on a log. After dinner, and again the next morning, Tom volunteered to act as sentinel, inasmuch as the Doctor would not yet let him chop, or hew ties, or lift logs, or do any other work that might reopen his now nearly healed wounds.
Promptly at five minutes after three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the first product of their industry was sent thundering down the chute. It was a huge timber thirty feet long and full two and a half feet thick at its smaller end. Jack had cut it at a point very near the mouth of the chute, and by united efforts, with handspikes and the slope of the hill to assist them, the company had rolled it into place.
Jack took out his watch and observed the time carefully.
"Three o'clock was the time agreed upon with the railroad people for having everything clear down there in the valley," he said, "but according to railroad usage we'll allow five minutes for variation of watches."
When the time was fully up the boys at the forward end of the great timber withdrew the handspikes with which they had been holding it securely in place. At the same time those at the rear end of it gave it a push with their handspikes. The log slid slowly into the chute, then with a grinding noise slipped rapidly through it, gave a great leap, and went careering down the precipitous hill, making a noise as of thunder.
Tom, with the Doctor's rifle over his shoulder—for he was acting as sentinel—had come to observe this splendid beginning of their winter's work. As the great timber bounded down the hill, and an echo of its final fall came back to announce its arrival at its destination, Tom quietly remarked:
"There may have been a distillery in the path of that log yesterday, but I wouldn't give much for the remains of it now."
"No," said Jack, "but there's money in that stick of wood. We must send down as many such as we can, and what remains of the tree from which I cut it will make many railroad ties and a lot of cordwood."
Then Jack examined the chute to see what effect the passage of the great timber had produced upon it. He found that pretty nearly all the bark had been stripped off the poles of which the chute was made. That was an advantage, inasmuch as it rendered the chute smoother for the passage of lighter timbers, which would presently render its surfaces glass-like in their polish. On the other hand the great timber in its passage had done no harm of any kind to the structure.
"That's a tribute, Jack," said Ed, "to your skill and the Doctor's, as engineers. For if that great stick didn't break any of your poles or twist any of the posts on which they rest, nothing else that we shall send down the hill will. I call it good construction, when a chute made of such stuff as you have used, carries such a weight as that without giving way anywhere."
"Yes," answered Jim Chenowith, "and, of course, the strain on the chute will never be so great again, now that the bark has been stripped off its poles. It must have been a tremendous trial when that big log slid down, resting so heavily on the poles as to strip off every particle of bark that it touched!"
"Thanks for your compliments, boys," said Jack, "but now we've got to set ourselves to work. Between now and six o'clock we've got to send down all the ties that we've got ready, and all the cordwood besides. So quit talking and come on."
It was hard work. The railroad ties were so heavy that it required two boys to each to handle them comfortably, and the supply of cordwood was large enough to tax all the industry of the camp to complete the work before six.
In the meantime Tom had gone to the cabin to prepare supper, keeping up his sharp lookout all the while.
After supper had been disposed of, Tom quietly took his own double-barreled shot gun, slipped a charge of buckshot into each of its chambers, belted a loaded cartridge holder round his waist, and went out "just to look around," he said. Tom was so given to this sort of prowling, both by day and by night, that none of the boys attached any importance to his present movements. Had they thought anything at all about it, they would have felt certain that little Tom had gone out only to stroll around the outskirts of the camp, as it was his habit to do.
Instead of that, however, he walked straight to the chute and presently clambered over the edge of the cliff, and by holding to bushes dropped to a ledge below. Thence, he had a very precipitous but practicable path before him for at least half way down the mountain.
Hard working and early rising as the boys were, they enjoyed their evenings in front of the great fireplace in their hut, and usually they did not go to bed till ten o'clock. This gave them three or four hours of enjoyable fireside conversation, and, as they arose sharply at six in the morning during these short days it left them eight hours for sleep, and that is quite enough for any well man, however hard he may have worked in the open air during the day.
But when bedtime came and little Tom did not reappear, they all began to feel uneasiness. Still, it was well understood in the camp that "Little Tom knows how to take care of himself," and so one by one the boys went to bed, all but the sentinel.
About midnight, Jim Chenowith, who had been on guard, came into the hut and aroused his comrades.
"I say, fellows," he said, in a deprecative voice, "I hate to disturb you, but I'm getting uneasy about Tom. It's twelve o'clock now, and he hasn't returned to the camp."
Instantly the entire party sprang out of bed and each began to slip into his clothes.
"We must build a bonfire," said the Doctor, as a first suggestion. "You see, Tom may have lost his way, and it isn't easy to find one's way about in these mountains of a dark night. If we build a bonfire, he will be able to locate the camp. If anything worse has happened to the boy, why we will—"
The Doctor did not complete his sentence, but the other boys understood, and with one voice they answered in boy vernacular: "You bet we will!"
The bonfire was quickly built and stout, willing hands piled upon it the brush left over from their chopping till the blaze of it rose thirty feet into the air, illuminating the entire mountain side.
So far as anybody could plan there was nothing else to be done while the night lasted, except scour the woodlands and thickets round about, hallooing now and then; but nothing that the boys could do produced any result. Hour after hour passed and still Tom did not appear.
"It would be useless," said Jack, "to go off into the darkness to look for him. We simply must wait for daylight, particularly as we don't know what direction he took. Possibly by daylight we may track him. But unfortunately there is no snow on the ground."
"Unfortunately there will be snow on the ground before daylight comes," said the Doctor, who had conceived a great affection for little Tom, "and it will obliterate whatever tracks the boy may have made. All the indications are for snow, and indeed it is beginning to snow now. I tell you, boys, we must make some torches and study the ground by their light. Perhaps we may find Tom's tracks before the snow covers them."
The suggestion was no sooner made than it was carried out, and by the light of great, flaring torches the whole party minutely scanned the ground, beginning at the cabin door, and prosecuting their researches in every direction.
After an hour of this work, the Doctor called out from a point near the chute:
"Come here, boys!" and when they came he said:
"Tom went over the bank at this point. See! Here are his tracks in the soft earth, and look! There are the bent and broken bushes by which he let himself down over that cliff. Thank heaven we know now in what direction to look for him as soon as morning comes. It would be useless suicide to attempt to follow his trail now."
"Well, I don't know," said Jack. "But I'm ready for that sort of suicide in behalf of little Tom. Give me your best torch, boys! I'm going to follow the trail down the mountain. You see Tom may have slipped off a cliff somewhere down there and broken his legs or rendered himself helpless in some other way. I'm going to follow him right now, and the rest of you can come after daylight—which isn't more than half an hour off now."
"No!" said the Doctor. "If you think best to follow the trail now, we're going with you, every one of us. But first let us get our guns and some necessaries. If Tom is hurt anywhere down there I must have some appliances with which to dress his wounds. If he has fallen into the hands of the moonshiners we must rescue him, and to that end we must have guns and ammunition. Let us go over his trail by all means, but let us go prepared to do him some good when we find him!"
To this thought there was unanimous assent, and instantly the Doctor and Jim Chenowith hurried back to the house to bring surgical appliances, guns and ammunition. Meantime Jack, who was greatly excited turned to the two boys who remained with him, and said, in a voice so cold and calm that they knew it meant intense emotion—
"Boys! If the moonshiners have caught little Tom and done any harm to him, I am going to drive every moonshiner out of these mountains and into a penitentiary or better still to a gibbet, if I have to give my whole life to it. Will you join me in that? And if I get killed will you promise to go on with the work?"
By that time the others had returned, and they had caught enough of what Jack had said to understand its purport. For answer the Doctor grasped Jack's hand and said with emotion: "To that purpose I pledge my whole life and all of my fortune! If those beasts have dealt foully with little Tom, I'll hire and bring here from Baltimore a hundred desperately courageous men, every one of them armed with the latest magazine rifle there is and commissioned by the revenue chief, and I pledge you my honor that when I am through with the job there will not be a moonshiner left in these mountains! I'll do that, Jack, if I have to hang for it."
The other boys responded with enthusiasm, "We'll be with you in that job, Doctor, without any hiring!"
"Thank you, comrades!" That was all that Jack could say before the strain upon him overcame even his iron nerves, and for a moment he lost consciousness. It was only for a moment, however. At the end of that time Jack led the way over the cliff, five torches lighting the journey. Presently daylight came, and the torches were thrown away.
The trail that Tom had made of broken bushes, cliff growing saplings, bent down in letting himself drop over bluffs and declivities, and boot marks where he had scrambled over a ledge, was not very difficult to follow for a space. But then came a long stretch of shelving rock entirely bare, with a dense forest growth beyond, where the leaves that had fallen in the autumn were still a foot deep, and beyond that point it was impossible to trace Tom's course. After earnest endeavors to recover the trail, the effort was abandoned, and sadly the little company made their way back to camp by a circuitous route, for they could not climb again the cliffs over which they had managed to clamber down.
On the way back they were encouraged by the hope that they might find Tom in the camp, when they got there, but in this they were disappointed.
They were all disposed to sit down and mourn dejectedly, but at that point the Doctor's scientific knowledge came to the rescue.
"See here, boys," he said; "we've got some strenuous work to do for Tom's rescue, and we must do some clear and earnest thinking before we begin it, in order that we may do it in the best way. We're exhausted. We have passed a night with only two hours or less of sleep, and we've eaten nothing for fifteen hours, for it's now after nine o'clock. In the meantime we have made a tiresome journey down the mountain and back again and worse still—for worry is always more wearing than work—we have undergone a great stress of anxiety. Now we're going to do all that human endeavor can do to rescue Tom. To that end we must have strength in our bodies and alertness in our minds. We must have breakfast at once and a hearty breakfast at that."
None of the boys had an appetite, but the Doctor insisted and presently there was a breakfast served, consisting of bacon, cut into paper-thin slices and broiled on the sharpened point of a stick, held in a blaze from the fire; corn pones baked to a crisp brown in a skillet, and a brimming pot of hot and strong coffee. For butter on their bread, the boys had a mixture of the drippings from their recent roasts—the venison, the wild boar, the rabbits and the rest—all of which drippings they had carefully saved for that purpose.
Appetizing as such a breakfast was to hardworking, sleep-losing and exhausted boys, not one of them felt the least relish for it. It required all of the Doctor's urging to make them even taste their food, till presently Harry, who stood outside as a sentinel, threw down his gun and started away at a break-neck pace, calling out at the top of his voice as he went:
"There's Tom! There's Tom! There's Tom, and he's all right!"
With that the whole company abandoned breakfast and rushed out to greet the returning boy. They plied and bombarded him with questions, of course, until at last he said pleadingly:
"Please, boys, I'm awfully hungry and tired. I'll answer all your questions after awhile. Just now the only things you really want to know are that I'm back safe and sound, and that nothing worse has happened to me than the loss of a night's sleep, a good deal of anxiety about you fellows, and the getting up of a positively famished appetite. I say," he added, as he entered the cabin, "who broiled that bacon?" and as he asked the question he picked up two or three slices of it and thrust them one after another into his mouth.
"I did," answered Ed, "and now that you're back, Tom, I'm going to eat a lot of it too."
"Well cut three or four times as much more of it," Tom said, slipping still another slice of the dainty between his teeth, and following it with a mouthful of corn pone, "and I'll help you toast it. But don't let's talk till we eat something to talk on."
Ed quickly cut a great plateful of the bacon slices, and every boy in the party except the one on guard duty, sharpened a stick and helped in the broiling.
Tom had brought their appetites back with him.
"Now first of all," said Tom, when breakfast was over and the boys again began questioning him as to his night's adventure,—"first of all if I ever disappear again you're not any of you to worry about me. You all say that 'little Tom knows how to take care of himself,' and I believe I do, particularly when I have a double-barrelled shotgun with me and forty cartridges loaded with buckshot in my belt.
"Now to explain. I was curious to find out how far the moonshiner who 'negotiated' with me at the muzzle of your magazine rifle, Doctor, was telling the truth, and how far he was lying. So I made up my mind to climb down the mountain, following the line of our chute, and find out whether or not that big timber had made a wreck of an illicit still down there. Of course it hadn't. That was only an 'explanation' invented by the fellow for immediate use, when he was caught sneaking up here to shoot some of us. His sole purpose was to drive us 'out'n the mountings' as these people put it. His plan was to sneak up here behind the house and shoot some one or other of us, and thus compel us to 'git down out'n the mountings.' He thought we'd all be out there chopping and that after dropping one of us he could slip away unseen and of course unrecognized. He thought that then we'd quit. He didn't know that that cat had scratched me so badly that the Doctor had condemned me to stay here at the house, and so he was taken completely by surprise when I levelled that repeating rifle at him, at less than six paces distance. So he resorted to humanity's last resource, lying. I remember reading in a book somewhere that Queen Elizabeth said that 'a lie is an intellectual way of meeting a difficulty.' Well that fellow was very intellectual. He lied 'to the queen's taste'—even Queen Elizabeth's taste. He told me that he had come up here to ask us fellows to change the direction of our chute, lest it demolish his still down there—though of course he didn't admit that it was a still. I wanted to find out about that and so I slipped away and climbed down the mountain. I found the still all right—indeed I found three of them—on my mother's land, but there isn't one of them in the line of our chute or within a quarter of a mile of it. All that was a fable made up to cover the moonshiner's murderous mission.
"Well when I found the stills in full blast I made up my mind to watch their operations for a time. I was securely ensconced upon a ledge which I thought inaccessible from below, but it wasn't. For presently those fellows threw out their pickets, and one of them climbed up to my particular ledge, to keep 'watch and ward' there. There were only two things for me to do. Either I must shoot the fellow and take my chances of running away over a difficult track with which the moonshiners were familiar while I was not, or I must crouch away somewhere where the moonshining picket was not likely to see me.
"As the more prudent of the two courses open to me, I chose the latter. There was a sort of half cave there, a crevice in the rocks, and I crawled into that, and there I stayed all night, with my gun at full cock and with Little Tom every instant on the alert. My plan was to keep myself hidden as long as I could, and if discovered to get in the first shot, and then run as fast as I could. Fortunately I was not discovered, and about half past six o'clock the stills ceased operations and the pickets were called in. Then I made my way around the side of the mountain and got back to camp.
"There, that's the whole story of Little Tom's night adventure. Now let's get to work at our chopping, for I am well enough now to do my share and I hereby declare my independence of the Doctor."
"That's all right," said the Doctor, "but if you break open any of those wounds, I'll order you to bed again."
"But wait awhile," interposed Jack. "There's something serious in all this. Obviously these people don't intend to make open war upon us. Their plan is to sneak upon us and now and then to shoot one of us from some hiding place, in order to drive us out of the mountains. Now we've got to look out for that. We can do it in two ways. First we can send a slab down the chute with a message in it asking our friends down below to send up the revenue officers and a company of soldiers to arrest all these men, telling the revenue people that we'll show them the stills and the men. In other words we can 'carry the war into Africa' as the Romans did, and put these fellows on the defensive instead of ourselves standing in that position. Or, if we don't care to do that—and there are reasons against it—"
"What are the reasons against it?" asked Little Tom, whose disposition it was always to take the offensive in a righteous controversy.
"Well, not more than a dozen or twenty of these mountaineers are actively engaged in this illicit distilling business, but all the rest of the mountaineers are their friends and most of them are their relatives, for these mountaineers have intermarried until almost every one of them is the near kinsman of all the rest. Now if we call in the assistance of the revenue officers and the troops behind them, the best that we can hope for is to put a dozen or so of them into jail, while possibly two or three of them will be shot in the mélee. That will leave the rest of them to make war upon us, with the assistance of all the men of the mountains."
"Well what's the other plan," asked Tom, who very reluctantly gave up the idea of aggressive fighting.
"We must so place a sentinel every day that no man can come within rifle range of us without being discovered and stopped—with a bullet if necessary. Fortunately our camp is so placed that there are only two points at which it can be reached, and fortunately again there is one sheltered point—out there under the cliff—from which a sentinel can see anybody approaching by either of the only two roads that lead into our camp. My plan is to keep a sentinel always under the cliff out there."
Jack had so thoroughly thought the matter out that it needed no discussion. His plan was instantly adopted, one boy was sent to the sentry's post under the cliff, and the rest made a late beginning of the day's work of wood chopping.
The days passed rapidly now, as they always do when people are busily at work, and little by little the boys sent a great number of ties and timbers and many cords of wood down the chute.
One evening Tom and Ed were "playing on the piano." That is to say they were grinding axes by the firelight. For when the grind-stone was provided with a proper frame and set up in the house, Tom insisted upon calling it the piano, though some of the boys wanted to consider it as a sewing machine or a typewriter. One thing was certain, it must be kept in doors. Otherwise the water would freeze upon it, rendering it useless.
As Tom and Ed played upon the piano immediately after supper, Tom said to the Doctor:
"Tell us some more about beans?"
"I don't clearly catch your meaning," answered the Doctor.
"Why you once began telling us how valuable beans were as human food," said Tom, "and as those that I ate for supper are sitting rather heavily upon my soul, I want to be encouraged by hearing some more about how good they are for me."
"Wait a minute," said the Doctor. Then he went to his medicine case and put a small quantity of something white into a tin cup. After that he opened the camp box of baking soda and added half a teaspoonful of that article; then he dissolved the whole mixture in a cupful of water and handed it to Tom.
"There! Drink that!" he said, "and I think you will be in better condition to listen to what I may have to say about beans."
Tom swallowed the mixture and then insisted upon hearing about beans.
"Well," said the Doctor, "the most interesting thing I know about beans is that without them the great whaling industry which brought a vast prosperity to this country a generation or two ago, would have been impossible."
"How so?" asked Jack.
"Why you see in order to make whaling voyages profitable the sailing ships that carried on the business, had to be gone for four years at a time, and of course they had to carry food enough to last that long. For meats they carried corned beef and pickled pork. For vegetables they had to carry beans because they are the only vegetable product that will keep so long. There were no canned goods in those days, so it was beans or no whaling."
"Didn't they get fearfully tired of four years' living on nothing but beans and salt meats?"
"Of course. And of course they managed sometimes to pick up some fresh food, like sea birds' eggs or the sea birds themselves—though they are very bad eating because of their fishy flavor; and sometimes, too, the whaling ships would stop at ports on their way to the North Pacific whaling waters and buy whatever they could of fresher food. But in the main the men on whaling voyages had to live on salt meat and beans, and one of their most serious troubles was that they suffered a great deal from scurvy. By the way, that's something that we must look out for."
"That was caused by eating too much pickled meat, wasn't it?" asked Tom.
"They thought so then," said the Doctor, "but we have another theory now. That's a very curious point. For a long time it was confidently supposed that there was something in the salt meats that gave men scurvy. After a while it was discovered that it was somethingleft outof the pickled meats that produced that effect. It seems that the brine in which meat is pickled extracts from the meat certain nutritious principles which are necessary to health, and that it is the lack of these nutritious principles that gives men scurvy. So an old whaling captain, with a sound head on his shoulders, concluded that the thing needed to prevent scurvy was for the men to consume the brine in which the meat was pickled. He ordered that the brine should be used instead of water in mixing up bread, cooking vegetables and the like."
"Did the thing work?"
"Yes, excellently, and the plan was adopted in all the Canada lumber camps where scurvy was as great an enemy to success as it was on the whaling vessels themselves. Another thing they do in the lumber camps is to quit cooking their potatoes the moment that symptoms of scurvy appear. Raw potatoes seem to have a specific effect in preventing and even in curing scurvy."
"Scurvy is a sore mouth, isn't it?" asked Tom.
"Not by any means," answered the Doctor. "Sore mouth is one of the earliest and mildest symptoms of the disease, and nobody knows what sore mouth means till he has had a touch of scurvy. It means that the mouth in all its membranes is afire, and that everything put into the mouth,—even though it be a piece of ice—burns like so much molten iron. But the mouth symptoms are only a beginning. Presently the knees and other joints turn purple and become excruciatingly painful. Then they suppurate, and in the end amputation becomes necessary. There are few worse diseases than scurvy, and we boys must protect ourselves against it by every means in our power. It threatens us with a much more serious danger than any that the moonshiners can bring upon us."
"By the way," said Jack, "the moonshiners seem to be letting us alone now. Perhaps they have given us up as a bad job."
"That's just what they want us to think," responded Tom. "They are lying low, in the hope that we'll accept precisely that idea and relax our vigilance. That is the one thing that we mustn't do on any account. That reminds me that it's time for me to go and relieve Jim Chenowith on guard duty."
"Well, before you go, Tom," said the Doctor, "I want to suggest that you take a day off to-morrow and get some fresh meat for us. We have lived on salt meat for five or six days now, and a big snow may come at any time to cut us off from fresh meat supplies. Besides our provisions are very sharply limited in quantity and we mustn't use them up too rapidly. We don't want scurvy in the camp and we don't want a starving time. So boys I propose that Tom, as the best huntsman in the party, be detailed and ordered to devote to-morrow to the duty of getting some game for our larder."
The suggestion was instantly and unanimously accepted. Then spoke up Harry Ridsdale:
"It'll be a hard day's work for Tom, as there's a slippery, soaplike snow on the ground, and he needs to be fresh for it. So I volunteer to take his turn on guard to-night and let him get in a good, straightaway sleep."
"Good for you, Harry," said Jack. But Tom protested that he was perfectly ready to stand his turn of guard duty and insisted upon doing so. The others unanimously overruled him, however, and so Harry shouldered his gun and went to relieve Jim Chenowith as picket. Before going he said:
"Now, fellows, there is to be no more talking to-night, for when the Doctor talks I want to listen. I've a whole catechism of questions to bother him with, but it's bed time now and you fellows must crawl into your bunks at once, without any further chatter. To bed, every one of you!"
As it was full ten o'clock the boys accepted the suggestion, and in a few minutes afterward, Camp Venture sank into silence, while Harry stood guard out there under the cliff, and the stars glittered above him in a wintry sky. Meantime the logs blazed and sputtered lazily in the great fireplace, and the night wore on, with no disturbance in the hut except when a sentinel came in, woke up his successor, replenished the fire and crept into his broomstraw bed.
About four o'clock the boys were startled out of sleep by the crack of a rifle, and the instant response of both barrels of a shotgun.
They were up and out in a moment, for it was their habit just then to sleep in their clothes and even in their boots, and for each to keep his gun by his side ready for instant use.
Running as fast as possible, they quickly joined Ed Parmly, who was on picket at the time, and hurriedly questioned him.
He reported that the rifle shot had come from the edge of the cliff over which the road down the mountain led. He added:
"I sent two charges of buckshot in that direction, but without aim, of course, as it is too dark to see. I reloaded at once, and while I was doing so I heard a groan off there. Perhaps we'd better look the matter up."
Just then came another groan, and, at Tom's suggestion, torches were lighted and an exploration made.
Just over the edge of the little cliff they found a mountaineer. He was in a state of collapse, nine buckshot having passed through the fleshy part of his thigh, cutting arteries and big veins enough to cause profuse hæmorrhage.
"The man is badly hurt," said the Doctor. "We'll carry him to the hut at once and see what can be done for him."
Willing hands lifted and carried the fainting man, and once in the hut the Doctor called for all the torches that could be lighted. Hurriedly he inspected the man's wounds, taking up an artery and putting a compress on a severed vein as he went. Finally he said:
"Fortunately none of the buckshot struck the bone. It is only a flesh wound though it is a very bad one. By the way"—the Doctor was seized with a kindly thought—"Ed Parmly is probably more anxious about this thing than any other boy in the party, and he is still out there on picket. Suppose one of you fellows goes out there to relieve him and let him come in to find out the amount of damage done by his shot."
The thought appealed at once to the kindly feelings of the boys and they all instantly volunteered, but Jack, as the next in order on the sentry list, claimed the privilege of relieving Ed.
When Ed came in he first of all wanted to hear whether or not the man he had shot in the darkness was likely to die of his wounds.
The Doctor promptly reassured him on that point.
Then Ed said:
"Well, Doctor, if you are quite through with him, suppose you look at a little scratch that he gave me. I didn't want to say anything about it, but maybe it is better to have it attended to."
The Doctor turned instantly and began stripping off the boy's clothing. He found that a bullet, striking him in the left side, had passed between two ribs, almost penetrating the hollow of the lower chest, but without quite doing so. It was one of those wonderful vagaries of bullet wounds that would kill in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but which in the hundredth case do a minimum of damage.
The Doctor having satisfied himself that no vital organ had been touched, carefully disinfected the wound and swathed it in bandages. As he did so he said to the boy:
"Why didn't you tell us at the start, Ed, that you were wounded?"
"Well you see," said Ed, "I was more concerned about the other fellow. It isn't a pleasant thing to kill a man, even when you've got to do it in self defence. So as I knew by his groans that he was worse hurt than I was, I didn't say anything about what his bullet had done till you were through with the job of dressing his wounds."
"Will you permit me to remark," said the Doctor, "quite casually and in parentheses as it were, that you, Ed Parmly, are a hero? I haven't met a great many heroes in my time, but you are one of the few. Now you're going to bed, and I'm going to play tyrant over you till this wound gets well. But upon my word, I never knew two shots fired in darkness that did their work so effectively as yours and that mountaineer's did."
With the instinct of his science the Doctor had no thought of questioning the wounded moonshiner. But Tom had no scientific training and no particular scruples concerning the matter. So he turned to the mountaineer, who was occupying his bed, and asked in a peremptory voice:
"Why did you shoot Ed? What harm had he done you? What right had you to shoot at him."
"Well, you see," said the mountaineer, taking up the familiar parable, "we fellers what lives up here in the mountings can't afford to have no intruders around. You fellers is intruders, and we're agoin' to drive you out'n the mountings. You mout as well make up your minds to that fust as last. We's done give you notice to quit, fair and square. You won't quit. So all they is fer it is to kill you an' that's what we've set out to do."
"But, my friend," said the Doctor, whose training had taught him to regard reason as the ultimate court of appeals in human affairs, "we are here with a perfect right to be here. We have in no way interfered with you or your friends. You have absolutely no right to interfere with us."
"All that don't make no difference whatsomever," answered the mountaineer. "We fellers what lives up here in the mountings don't want no spies an' nobody else up here. You fellers has got to get out'n the mountings an' that's all about it."
"But what right have you?" asked the Doctor, "to drive us out?"
"Well, we ain't a discussin' of rights now," answered the mountaineer. "We're a talkin' business. You fellers has got to git out'n the mountings."
Here Tom broke in, with his hot temper:
"So that's your last word, is it? Well, now let me give you our last word. We are going to stay here. We are going to defend ourselves in our rights, and now that you've threatened to kill us, and tried to kill us, we've a perfect right to do a little shooting on our own account, and I give you warning that if any one of you is caught in this camp, or anywhere near it, we'll understand that he has come here to carry out your threats, and we'll shoot him without waiting to ask any questions. As for you, we ought to send you to jail for shooting one of our party. I for one vote to do that. We can lock you up in the penitentiary for that offense, and we're going to do it. Just as soon as the Doctor says you're able to travel, I'm going to take you down the mountains at the muzzle of a gun, and put you in jail. I'm tired of this thing."
This aspect of the case had not presented itself to the minds of the other boys, but they approved Tom's plan instantly. The right thing is always and obviously to appeal to the law for redress where a wrong has been done, and perhaps the jailing of the mountaineer, under a charge of "assault with intent to kill"—an offense punishable by a long term of imprisonment,—might deter the others from like offenses.
"Well, it's pretty hard," said the mountaineer. "I've just got out only three months ago, after a year in prison, for nothin' but helpin' some other fellers to make a little whiskey without a payin' of the tax; an' now I've got to go back to grindin' stove lids for nothin' but shootin' at people that stays in the mountings in spite of all our warnin's."
Obviously the man was utterly incapable of realizing the nature or the atrocity of his crime. Obviously, also, he was incapable, as his comrades were, of seeing that anybody but themselves had a right to stay in the mountains when they objected.
But Tom was bent upon carrying out his idea of taking the man down the mountain and bringing him to trial for shooting Ed, and the other boys fully sanctioned it.
"It may teach these people," said Jack, "that there are other people in the world who have rights. That will be a civilizing lesson."
"Yes," said Tom, "and besides that, it will lock up a man who seems to know how to shoot straight even in the dark. Anyhow, I've made up my mind. As a 'law-abiding and law-loving citizen' I'm going to put that fellow into jail, and send him afterwards to the penitentiary for a ten years' term, if I can, for shooting Ed Parmly with intent to kill him. It will be a wholesome reminder to the rest of these moonshiners that they had better not shoot at us fellows. So, just as soon as the Doctor says he's able to travel, I'm going to escort him down the mountain and deliver him to the sheriff of the county. In the meantime, daylight is breaking and it's time for you fellows who have the job in charge to begin the preparation of breakfast."
So, after all, Tom did not get much sleep as a preparation for his game hunting trip of the coming day.
Ed's wound did not incapacitate him for the task of standing guard over the wounded and captured mountaineer. Ed was able to get out of bed and sit about the house with a gun slung casually across his knees or his shoulder, as the case might be, and the mountaineer perfectly understood that Ed did not mean for him to escape, by any possible chance, even when his strength should return. So he was content to lie still and reflect as he did, that "this is better than the prison anyhow."
Tom went hunting, as the Doctor had suggested that he should. Three of the boys continued the chopping, while one stood guard—a duty that had been made more imperative than ever by the mountaineer's declaration of the fixed purpose of the moonshiners.
When Tom returned in the evening he was overladen with game, as it was his custom to be on his return from a hunting expedition. He had two big wild turkey gobblers, a great necklace of fat squirrels, nearly a dozen hares and a small deer which he had dragged down the mountain because of his inability to carry it with his other load upon him.
"Here's meat enough," he said, "to last till Christmas anyhow," for it was now well on into December, "and I've seen a big turkey gobbler that I mean to get for our Christmas dinner. He can't weigh less than twenty or twenty-five pounds, and he's a shy, wise, experienced old boy; but I've found out what his usual rambles are and if the Doctor will lend me that long range rifle of his, I'll promise to get that bird for Christmas. I don't believe it would be possible to get within shot gun range of him."
"Oh, you can take that gun, Tom, whenever you please," answered the Doctor. "In fact, I'm going to give it to you right now. Only I'll ask you when you go down the mountain with our prisoner, to mail a letter for me, in which I will order another gun of the same sort."
"But, Doctor," said Tom, in protest, "I didn't mean—"
"Of course you didn't," answered the Doctor. "If you'd meant anything of the kind, I wouldn't have thought of giving you the gun. As it is, I don't know anybody living that could make a better use of such a gun than you can. So it is yours, and I'm going to send for another just like it for myself. In the meantime, I'll borrow your shotgun for such casual uses as our camp life may require. Of course, you'll need the shot gun also, sometimes, but the rifle's yours, and I am sure it could not be in better hands."
The boy made his acknowledgments as best he could, and the best part of them was his fondling of the rifle itself in loving appreciation. But in his embarrassment over the Doctor's generosity, he wanted to turn the subject of conversation, and as supper was by this time over, he said:
"Now, Doctor, you were telling us the other night something about the old-time whaling ships. Won't you tell us to-night something about the modern ocean steamers?"
"Yes," broke in Jack. "You see, you are the only 'boy' among us who has ever seen a ship, and I believe you have crossed the ocean several times."
"Yes, many times," answered the Doctor, meditatively, "and there are many points of interest about a great modern ocean steamship, which it will please me to tell you about if it will interest you to hear."
The boys expressed an eager desire to hear, and so the Doctor proceeded.
"In the first place," he said, "there is nothing in the world so complete, so independent, so self-reliant, as a first-class steamship. She has everything on board that she can possibly need, or else she has the means of making it for herself. She makes her own electric lights, and every stateroom is supplied with them. She does not carry fresh water for drinking and cooking use, because she has a distilling apparatus capable of producing all needed fresh water from the salt water of the sea. This is a great advantage. If you have ever read sea tales, you know that in cases of long detention, one of the worst of troubles in the old days was that the water became foul and the use of it bred disease. The modern steamship always has a supply of perfectly pure distilled water."
"But, Doctor," asked Ed, "suppose one of the big steamers should break down at sea, with her machinery out of order, and wallow around out there on the waves for a month or two, wouldn't the crew and passengers all starve to death?"
"That could hardly happen," said the Doctor, "for reasons which I will explain presently. But even if it did happen, the crew and passengers would not starve, for the reason that every great ocean liner carries in her hold enough food to last her passengers and crew for fully six months, although I believe the law requires them to carry only one month's supply."
"How many are there on board usually?"
"Oh, that varies with every voyage. The big ships often carry three or four hundred first-class passengers and have crews numbering from seventy to one hundred men. But some of them carry, also, a large number of steerage passengers. I once crossed from Italy on the North German Lloyd's steamer Ems, when we had only twelve first class passengers, five second class and fifteen hundred in the steerage."
"And she carried food enough for all those people for six months?" asked Jack, in wonder.
"Yes, and more."
"What sort of food was it?"
"Beans by scores of tons; corned beef and mess pork by hundreds of barrels, and an almost unlimited supply of canned meats and vegetables," answered the Doctor.
"Now, as I said," the Doctor resumed, "no great steamer is ever likely to be delayed for a month or anything like a month, at sea. In the first place, each of them carries a skilled chief engineer and a corps of competent assistant engineers, a force of blacksmiths and machinists, and better still, duplicates of all those parts of her engines that are liable to break down. I remember one voyage on the American liner Berlin, when in midocean one of our cylinders cracked and threatened to burst under the steam pressure. The captain stopped the ship and the engineers and machinists cut that cylinder out. We lay there for twenty hours in a surging sea, and then proceeded, running with only two of our three cylinders in use."
"But what an awful bobbing about you must have got," said Ed, "lying out there on the sea, with no headway."
"Oh, no!" answered the Doctor. "Our bow was kept always toward the oncoming waves, so that we rode rather more easily than if we had been running under steam, for if we had been running we should have laid our course straight for New York, taking the waves from any direction. As it was, we got them dead ahead."
"But how did they hold the bow always toward the coming waves?" asked Ed.
"By the use of what they call 'sea anchors.' These are great hollow cones, made of iron. At the big end of each a cable is fastened, and the anchors are thrown overboard, usually three or four of them. Of course, it is impossible in deep seas to send an anchor down to the bottom, but these big cones catch the water, and by their dragging in it, they hold the ship pretty nearly stationary, and, more important still, they keep her head always pointed toward the wind and waves, so that she rides easily. Whenever a ship breaks down at sea she hoists three great black disks into her rigging. These mean to any ship that may approach, that the steamer is 'not under control'—that is to say, that as she is not running, she has no power to steer to one side or the other or in any other way to keep out of the path of the approaching vessel. Then, the approaching vessel steers clear of the disabled steamer, and usually she hoists a set of signal flags, asking if the steamer needs or wants any assistance, and the steamer replies with another set of flags giving her response to the offer. The flag signalling system has been so completely perfected by international agreement that two captains can carry on any conversation they please by means of it, even though neither can speak a word of the other's language.
"Now this is the other reason why no steamer is ever likely to lie crippled on the ocean for a month or any thing like it. There are regular pathways on the ocean over which all the regular line steamers pass. So, while the ocean is so immense that you may steam over it for days without seeing a vessel of any kind, nevertheless no steamer is likely to lie disabled for more than a few days without sighting some other that stands ready to render assistance. If the disabled steamer needs anything the other furnishes it. If she is too far broken down in her machinery to repair it at sea, the other will generally take her in tow. If she is likely to sink—the most unlikely of all things—the other will take off her crew and passengers and leave the ship to her fate."
"Why do you say, Doctor, that sinking is the most unlikely of all things?" asked Jack. "I should think it the most likely."
"Not at all," the Doctor replied. "The modern steamship is perhaps the most perfect product we have of scientific precision in construction. As well as you know that twice two makes four, the builders of a modern steamship know to the uttermost pound the amount of strain that any wave blow can put upon any part of the ship, and they provide for it four times over. Except in case of collision in a fog, the great ocean liner simply cannot sink at sea. If you took her out to mid ocean and there abandoned her, she would float securely until some current should drive her on rocks or some other sort of shore. At sea, she is absolutely unsinkable, except as I say by collision, and that is as true when she is carrying thousands of tons of freight as at any other time."
"It is very wonderful," said Jack.
"Of course it is. If I were called upon to name the modern seven wonders of the world, I should unhesitatingly put the ocean greyhound first in the list. But come boys! It is past our bed time, and we've heavy work to do to-morrow in getting those three great timbers ready to send down the chute."
"I'm awfully sorry," said Tom.
"Sorry—for what?" asked the Doctor.
"Why, now that you've told us so much about the great ships, I want to hear more. I've at least a hundred questions to ask you."
"Very well," said the Doctor. "The winter will be long and we'll have abundant opportunities of evenings to ask and answer all the questions we please. But just now our business is to get to bed and to sleep, or rather that's the business of you other fellows. My business is to go out and relieve Jim Chenowith as our picket guard. So good night boys, and good, refreshing slumbers to you!"
With that the Doctor shouldered a gun, first carefully examining its cartridges, and strode out into the bitterly cold night to do his turn at guard duty. He had indeed made himself a boy among boys, and he had won all hearts.
As breakfast was in course of preparation the next morning, Ed brought a large dripping pan and set it in front of the fire.
"Now you fellows," he said, "who are broiling bacon on the points of sharpened sticks, will please let the fat from it drip into this pan, and you'll kindly do the same from now till Christmas."
"What's up Ed?" asked Jack. "What do you want us to do that for?"
"Why the Doctor insists that I must stay indoors till after Christmas, so quite naturally it is going to fall to me to cook the Christmas dinner. I take it for granted that little Tom is going to get that big turkey gobbler he told us about, and I'm going to cook it properly—or as nearly so as the limited resources of Camp Venture will permit. To that end I shall want some drippings from broiling bacon. So save all the fat you can, boys, from now until Christmas."
The boys asked no questions, knowing that Ed Parmly was by all odds the best cook in the camp, but they saved all they could of the drippings from the slices of bacon that they were toasting in the fire.
Three days before Christmas, Tom took his rifle and went out on the mountain in search of his big turkey. He brought back some game—Tom never failed to do that—but he came back without the big turkey, though it was well after nightfall when he arrived at the camp. Some of the boys were disposed to joke him about his failure, though of course in a friendly way.
"That's all right fellows," answered Tom. "But I've promised you that big turkey, and I'm going to deliver the goods."
"How can you speak so confidently, Tom?" asked Harry. "You've missed getting him to-day and you may miss getting him to-morrow and next day."
"But I shan't do that," answered Tom with that confidence which is born of knowledge and skill. "I know where that turkey and his flock are roosting to-night, and I'll be there before daylight to-morrow morning. I'll be right under him when he wakes, and I'll have my shot gun with me, for the range to a roost is short. I'll have that turkey gobbler here before noon to-morrow, or I'll admit that I'm no hunter."
"But suppose he quits his roost during the night and wanders away somewhere," suggested the Doctor, who knew nothing of the habits of wild turkeys.
"Turkeys never do that," answered Tom. "When once they go to roost they stay there till the dawn broadens into full daylight. Nothing could persuade them to quit their perches much before sunrise, and before that time I'll have that stately gentleman flung over my shoulder."
Accordingly Tom left camp about two hours before the daylight came, and about ten o'clock he returned, bearing the gigantic gobbler, in triumph, and with it two smaller turkeys which he had also killed.
"There you doubters!" he said as he flung down the birds, "I promised you a turkey dinner for Christmas and I've kept my word. It only remains for Ed to cook the big bird properly and I haven't the least doubt that he'll do that. The other two will keep in such weather as this as long as we care to keep them. What with the game we already have on hand, and these three turkeys, I think we're in no pressing danger of an outbreak of scurvy in camp, are we Doctor?"
"So long as you are around, Tom," answered the Doctor, "I shall feel no apprehension of scurvy, and still less of starvation."
Tom had shown his spoil at that part of the camp where the other boys were chopping. Having done so he carried the turkeys to the house and delivered them over to Ed, who, incapacitated for other work by his wound, had made himself at once sentinel in charge of the prisoner and company cook.
As soon as Tom left the choppers, Jack stopped his work, and said to the others:
"I say, boys, Tom was a Christmas baby, and this coming Christmas day will be his eighteenth birthday. Isn't there any way in which we can celebrate it?"
"Yes," answered the Doctor, "We'll give a big dinner in his honor on that occasion and surprise him with it. I have been jealously saving a few onions and potatoes that I brought up the mountain in my pack. I have carefully guarded them against frost as well as against use, meaning to keep them all winter in case scurvy should appear among us. But evidently Tom is taking care of that by keeping us abundantly supplied with fresh meat. So I'm going to suggest to Ed that on Christmas day he roast the onions in a pan or skillet and bake the potatoes in the ashes. That, with the big turkey, will give us a dinner fit for princes."
"Good!" cried the others, "and we'll pretend to forget all about it's being Tom's birthday," added Jim Chenowith, "till the dinner is dished up in his honor. Then we'll congratulate him."
Ed fell in with the plan with all heartiness when he was told of it. He was a notably good cook considering that he was a boy, and he was determined to produce the best result he could with the meagre means at his disposal.
On Christmas morning he took the giblets of his big turkey—the gizzard, liver, heart, the outer ends of the wings and the upper part of the neck, and put them on the fire to stew.
Then he puzzled his brain over the question of a stuffing for the gigantic turkey. He had no wheaten bread of any kind, and he doubted that corn bread could be made to answer. Just then he remembered that a box of crackers, two-thirds full, remained among Camp Venture's stores. He hunted them out and took as many of them as he needed. He toasted each to a rich crisp brown. When all were toasted he reduced them to crumbs. Next he mixed the crumbs together with the bacon fat drippings that he had made the boys save from their broiling. He added just enough water to make the mass half adhere together. Then he chopped up one small onion and mixed it with the stuffing. After adding a little chopped bacon and a liberal supply of black pepper, he pressed the whole mass into the hollow of the big bird and hung the turkey up before the fire to roast, placing a dripping pan under it, setting it whirling at the end of a string, and from time to time basting it with the drippings that fell into the pan.
A little later he placed the potatoes in the hot embers to bake. He put the onions into a skillet and placing live coals under and upon the lid of that utensil, left them to roast. Still later he made up some corn pones and set them to bake in another skillet. Finally, just before dinner time, he brewed a great pot of coffee.
But in the meantime he had taken the giblets off the fire, chopped them to a mince meat and poured them into the dripping pan that had reposed under the turkey as it roasted. Into this he poured the water in which the giblets had been stewed and added a little of the cracker crumbs for thickening, a little salt and a liberal supply of pepper. This done he stirred all together vigorously and produced a gravy of which even his mother—the best cook he had ever known—might have been proud.
At the very last he dug the potatoes out of the ashes, split open one side of each and inserted, in the mealy depths, a freshly broiled slice of bacon. This was to replace the butter which he had not.
Then he called the boys to dinner, but as the day was warm he served the meal on an improvised table out of doors, from which both points of possible invasion of the camp could be fairly well observed. He did this in order that the whole company, sentinel and all, might sit down together in celebration of Christmas and of little Tom's birthday.
When the little company assembled, each member of it grasped Tom's hand and warmly congratulated him, and when the boy learned how they had exerted themselves to make his natal day one to be remembered, he fairly broke down with affectionate emotion. It was assigned to him to carve the great turkey gobbler, which in the absence of scales on which to weigh him, the boys pretty accurately estimated at twenty-six pounds. Jack served the roast onions, which were done to a beautiful brown, and Ed himself dished out the potatoes, roasted to a hard crust without and enticing mealiness within.
The coffee was drunk with the meal after the manner of the country, and of course there was no milk to go with it, but these healthy, happy, out-of-door boys enjoyed that Christmas dinner as they had never enjoyed a dinner before.
Just as they were finishing the eating of it something struck and penetrated the clapboards that formed the extemporized table. Tom instantly glanced at the mark made, estimated direction and, turning, sent a bullet from his long range rifle toward the point from which he believed the shot to have come. A moment later there came another shot and another, and this time Tom saw the smoke of the rifles from which they came. He aimed carefully but quickly, and fired two shots in reply.
"There!" he said. "They are shooting from long range, or what they regard as such, up there on the mountain. They think we have nothing but shot guns and their plan is to shoot at us from too great a distance for us to shoot back. I reckon those three bullets of mine will give them a new idea of the situation, for this rifle carries at least twice as far as any they have."
Apparently Tom was right, for after his shots were delivered no more was heard from the assailing mountaineers.
"Now that teaches us a lesson," said Jack. "Our house door faces directly south and up the mountain. There are points up there from which those rascals can fire right into our house through the door, whenever they feel so disposed. We must stop that right now."
"But how?" asked the Doctor.
"By building a bullet proof barricade of poles right here, ten feet in front of our door," answered Jack. "We can easily do it this afternoon and still get some chopping done."
Jack's suggestion was adopted instantly and the boys set to work at once to carry it out. They set up some poles about fifteen feet high and six feet apart, burying their lower ends deep in the earth. Then they set up a second line in the same way about eight inches in front of the first line. Next they placed in the space between the two lines a tier of poles about five inches thick and so closely fitted together as to be bullet proof. Then for complete safety they cut small brush into pieces, and with them filled in what space remained between the two lines of poles.
"Now then," said Jack, "Camp Venture is in a state of defence. But it needs offensive as well as defensive advantages. We are pretty well protected against stray bullets by the wooden barrier we have erected, but we must also be able to shoot over it whenever that becomes necessary. Let's build a platform inside of it, so that one of us standing on it can see everything beyond and shoot as from a breast work, if those fellows insist upon shooting as a condition of the game."
So the boys built the platform of poles, with a little ladder leading up to it, and as it gave a full view of every part of the camp, it was decided that the sentry should thereafter be stationed there in a protected position, instead of being required to expose himself out under the cliff.