CHAPTER IXTRUTH AND HONOR
FROM one o’clock till four in the afternoon that first day Number Fifty-six thirty-five gave heed to the mechanism of a sewing machine, and mended the rent clothes of the inmates. A large, rather kindly woman was matron over him. By four o’clock he was doing fairly well, and in a week’s time was accomplishing his simple machine sewing with speed and neatness. And this became his allotted task. From four to six o’clock the boys were allowed to play in the great yard, and here they were as uproarious and irrepressible as Old Madmallet’s flock at home. They marched to the washroom at six again, and thence once more to the dining room, where they ate tea, bread and apple-sauce. From seven to nine they studied the common branches of learning in the schoolroom, presided over by that ugliest of men, the Lincoln-like Beaver Clegg. At nine they went to bed, each in his clean little iron cot, with its crackling straw mattress. Almost immediately Mr. Clegg came in, listened to the monitors’ reports of the boys’ behavior during the day, and extinguished the lights.
For fifteen minutes now the wards of the Juvenile Department were allowed to talk and tell stories. Joshua, because he was new and might have something fresh to offer, was called upon for a yarn, story-telling being a favorite diversion of the inmates. So well did he acquit himself, drawing without reserve upon his vivid imagination because he was in total darkness and not obliged to face hislisteners, that his effort was hailed with a round of applause. Later he became official story-teller of the department, and when he had learned more of astronomy from Clegg’s teachings, he evolved wondrous and fantastic tales of adventures in the planets, which were the delight of his fellow-inmates. A gong sounded at fifteen minutes after nine, and Joshua, in the middle of a story that had for its main characters a boy and a girl who traveled West in a converted boxcar, with a flatcar back yard coupled on next to it, was ordered to “dry up” by the head monitor. And soon after the soft, regular breathing of the very human little prisoners of the House of Refuge came from all quarters of the room.
But Fifty-six thirty-five lay awake, staring up into the blackness, and thought of a girl with reddish-golden hair and Oriental-topaz eyes. And he was sore of heart, and the stiff white pillow under his head was moist. Then a hand softly touched him and he heard the guarded words:
“Quiet, Joshua! Don’t make a sound. Get up softly and join me at the door. We’re going up on the roof to view the moon.”
Walking noiselessly in his new bed slippers, Joshua Cole found the entrance to the sleeping quarters, where Clegg awaited him. The instructor led him to a remote part of the building, where they passed through a door, and Joshua struck his toes against the foot of a flight of stairs. Clegg closed the door behind them and lighted a candle, the flickering blaze of which revealed a closed staircase leading to what in nautical parlance would be called a booby hatch in the flat roof.
The night was bright with stars, and a big half-moon rode in the heavens to guard them. Already Clegg had preceded his pupil with the telescope, and had adjusted it on its tripod.
“Joshua,” said Clegg, in tones a trifle below normal, “I want you to understand in the beginning that I am breaking the rules in taking you from your bed. But I have considered the matter carefully and have reached the decision that, in this case, I am entitled to make my own rules. So long as we shall be engaged in an undertaking that is praiseworthy, we shall be our own judges concerning what is right and wrong. But I want you to fully understand the confidence that I am placing in you and the risk that I am taking. Do you think you do?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“And I think that I can safely trust you,” said the master. “I thought so from the first, or such an amazing idea never would have occurred to me. You have made an unprecedented impression on me, Joshua, and it seems unbelievable that I should bring you up here the night of your first day in the institution. But I have done so, and here you are. I perhaps should have waited until I know you better; but to-night, of all nights in the month, is the best for observing the moon. We have a nine-and-three-quarter-day moon to-night, Joshua, and I felt that the opportunity ought not to be put off for an entire month. But repetition of to-night’s—er—adventure, we’ll call it—will depend on how you conduct yourself in school and with the other boys. Do you understand that thoroughly?”
“Yes, sir,” said Joshua.
“You must study and learn things that are distasteful to you during regular class hours. That will be the price of your lessons in astronomy. Can you make that sacrifice?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well, then—we’ll see. Now place your eye to the eye-piece, and we’ll have a look at the moon.”
Joshua, at once eager and filled with awe, placed hiseye to the eye-piece. He caught his breath in boyish ecstasy as the great tinfoil half-moon, chewed to lacelike filaments on its east and southeast sides, was revealed to him as he never before had seen it. Immovable, absolutely silent, he gazed in rapture, and all the mysticism of the universe wrapped itself about him. He saw the wondrous craters, the mountains, the sea bottoms, the plains, and his fancy peopled them with strange adventurers bent on stranger quests—dream people who lived dream lives and sought dream marvels in a land whose fabric was dreams.
“You perhaps are not aware, Joshua,” Clegg was saying softly in his stilted, academic way, “that you are seeing the moon upside down, in the natural way that we see all objects. Do you know that whatever you see in this world you see upside down? But your eyes have adjusted themselves, and they really appear to you as rightside up. This is known to the science of optics by reason of men born blind suddenly regaining their sight, when their unadjusted eyes see objects upside down. Don’t ask me to explain it, for it is out of my field. But remember that, as you now see the moon, north is south, and east is west.
“Now, the dark areas that you see, Joshua, are flat plains and sea bottoms. The bright areas are mountainous regions. There are nine mountain chains on that portion of the moon which is visible to us earth-dwellers. (And the most that we ever see of the moon’s surface is about forty-seven per cent.) These nine mountain chains contain some three thousand peaks, many of them between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand feet in height. Though you are not able to see it now, there is a mountain-peak on the southern edge of the moon which is thirty-six thousand feet high. Mount Everest, as you probably remember from your study of geography, is twenty-nine thousand feet in height, and is this planet’s closest approachto the gigantic moon-mountain of which I speak. Do you follow me, Joshua?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now observe that large crater in the south polar region, Joshua. Where will you look for it?”
“’Way up on top, to the right—I mean, to the east?”
“Yes, that’s right—you are quick to comprehend. But remember, now, that in reality that region is far to the south and west. Have you found the crater—by far the largest to be seen?”
“Yes, sir—I think so.”
“What does it resemble? Do you see the smaller craters within the walls of the larger one?”
“Yes, sir—I see ’em. And the one around ’em looks like where they vaccinated me on the arm, when the place where the doctor scratched got sore and was all eaten out.”
“Exactly, Joshua! Fine! A remarkable comparison. Well, Joshua, you are observing the largest of the craters that are known to be on the moon. This is the immense walled plain of Clavius. It is a hundred and forty-three miles at its greatest length, and its floor covers an area of sixteen thousand square miles. The State of Rhode Island would scarcely cover its interior area. The crater-studded walls about it have an elevation of seventeen thousand feet, which is more than a thousand feet higher than the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Europe.
“Now just a little above the center of the exposed area—er—of that portion of the moon which is revealed to-night—you will see Tycho quite plainly. This is another immense crater, fifty-four miles in diameter, and with a depth of seventeen thousand feet. Lifting its summit from this immense pit is a central mountain, which rises to an elevation of six thousand feet. Do you follow me, Joshua?”
“Yes, sir—I guess so.”
Mr. Clegg became forgetful of his surroundings, forgetful of his pupil. Carried away by his own lecture-like recital of the wonders viewed by Joshua, he went on rapidly:
“There you view high walls and peaks thousands of feet above the level of the surface. They catch the first gleams of the rising sun, while many deep abysses yet remain in somber lunar night. Many of the dish-shaped plains of this rugged region, once huge pots of boiling rock or lava, are distinguished by no black shadows, having been refilled to the rims; though a few of them still retain walls high enough to throw black shadows eastward on the plains. Conspicuous against the southeastern wall of Clavius is the vast black hole of the ring-mountain Blancanus, fifty miles in diameter, at the bottom of whose abysmal cavity no sunlight has ever shone—the deepest, most cavernous pit known to man. Were the highest mountain-peak on the earth—Mount Everest—standing on the forever darkened floor of this pit, its lofty summit would rise but five thousand feet above the ramparts of the encircling mountain-ring; for the black hole is approximately twenty-four thousand feet in depth—about four thousand feet deeper than Mount McKinley is high.”
Thus he talked on and on until young Joshua’s mind was a confused blank, though his soul was leaping with happiness. And when at last the master came down to earth and remarked that the hour was late, Joshua followed him down the dark stairway without a word.
“Go back to your bed,” whispered Clegg as they reached the foot of the flight. “To-morrow I shall give you photographs of the various regions of the moon and lend you Flammarion’sAstronomy. Be patient, Joshua—you will learn all that I know, and much more when you become a man. That’s all for the present, Fifty-six thirty-five.”
That was the beginning of it. Now the boy Joshua, robbed of his heritage, had a goal to work for, and he worked. Learning the common school branches that he detested was the necessary means to a glorious end, and before long he had proved to Clegg’s unbounded satisfaction that with him the study of science was no mere boyish whim. No other reward could have been offered which would have caused him to apply himself so assiduously to arithmetic, grammar, and other distasteful branches. More, he withstood many temptations to enter into youthful pranks with the other boys, and when he stood aloof repeatedly they grew to consider him a “mamma’s boy,” and treated him accordingly. In that day the word “tony” stood in slang as an adjective to describe one who considered himself above the common herd, and it soon was applied to the young astronomer. They called him Tony among themselves, but functionally he remained Fifty-six thirty-five to his last day in the House of Refuge.
The fact that he was studious and diligently obeyed the rules and regulations of the school brought him a T-and-H medal at the first meeting of the board of directors after his commitment, and T and H meant Truth and Honor. But the medal brought him more trouble than satisfaction, for it placed him above his fellow-inmates in the Juvenile Department and filled their young hearts with scorn and rancor. From the presentation day onward Joshua’s lot was a hard one. He was “framed” repeatedly—dark plots were laid for his undoing. Time and again he was inveigled into compromising situations, skillfully designed to get him into trouble and to break his record. But the word of a T-and-H boy was accepted until he himself had proved that he was unworthy to wear the medal. Joshua was shoved, slapped, pinched, kicked stealthily, and twice a ruffianly youth much older than himself deliberately spatin his face in an effort to madden him to the point of resentment with his fists.
But for the sake of his promise to his benefactor Beaver Clegg, and for the sake of the scientific knowledge that he longed to have, he endured and suffered. Joshua was a fiery tempered lad—a fighter—to which many an old schoolmate in the bygone days of Silvanus Madmallet could attest. Never before had he allowed himself to be bullied and browbeaten, but so great was his love for the mystic nights on the roof with Clegg that he willingly made the sacrifice. He was being tempered in the fire of life and, though he did not realize it, was building up a character which was to become proof against the pettishness of human nature in after years. When the second meeting of the board of directors was called, Joshua was sent for. In the superintendent’s office he stood before a body of grave-faced wiseacres, and, to his surprise, he found that he knew several of them. They asked him many questions, inquired into his record, and in the end informed him that he would be paroled when his first year was over. They sent him back during the play hour; and then it was that Joshua Cole performed one of the most extraordinary feats of his boyhood.
A ball game was in progress in the playgrounds. Joshua looked eagerly about as he drew near the players, and presently his glance alighted on Number Twenty-three forty-four, a boy older and larger than himself, the one who had spat in his face, willing to suffer punishment himself if he could induce Joshua to fight. Straight toward him walked Number Fifty-six thirty-five, and when he reached him he stood before him and regarded him with his grave, gray-blue eyes, in which an intense fire now flashed.
“Kid,” he said, “I’m goin’ to whip you for spittin’ in my face three months ago. Get ready—I’m comin’!”