CAL’S EXPERIENCE AS THE PRODIGAL SON

Breakfast next morning was not a very satisfactory meal. There was plenty of fish and game, of course, but there was little else. The coffee supply had been used up, but the boys regarded that as a matter of no consequence.

“Coffee is a mere luxury anyhow,” Dick said, “and we can go without it as well as not. It isn’t like being without bread or substitutes for bread. If we had some sweet potatoes now, or some rice—”

“The which we haven’t,” interrupted Cal. “No more can we get any here. As for corn meal, we have enough for one more ash cake, but it is full of weevil and, therefore, when we consume it we shall be eating the bread of bitterness in an entirely literal sense. For quinine biscuit would taste like cookies as compared with weevely corn bread. You were wise in your generation, Dick, when you surreptitiously placed that tin of ship biscuit on board, but your imagination lacked breadth and comprehensiveness. It was not commensurate with our appetites, and so the ship bread is all consumed and would have been if you’d brought a barrel of it on board instead of that little tin box full. You neglected that, however, and we must endure the consequences as best we may.”

“For the present, yes,” said Larry; “but not for long. We must make all the haste we can till we get to Beaufort and stock up again.”

“I know a trick worth two of that,” Cal said apart to Dick, but he did not explain himself. Dick had found out, however, that Cal’s knowledge of the region round about them and of the tortuous waterways that interlaced the coast in every direction was singularly minute and accurate. It was not until that morning, however, that Cal explained to him how he had come to be so well versed in the geography and hydrography of the region. It had been decided by Captain Larry that before leaving their present camp that day the company should cook enough food to last for a day or two, so that they might not have to waste any time hunting or fishing while making as quick a trip to Beaufort as they could. As there was very little game left after breakfast, Cal and Dick set out with their guns to secure a supply of squirrels and whatever else they could find, while Larry and Tom should load the boat and catch some fish.

During this little shooting expedition some small manifestation of Cal’s minute information prompted a question from Dick.

“How on earth, Cal, can you remember every little detail like that? And how did you learn so much about things around here, anyhow?”

“I got that part of my education,” Cal answered, “partly by being a very good boy and partly by being a very bad one. I’m inclined to think the bad-boy influence contributed even more than the good-boy experience to my store of information. As for remembering things, that is a habit of mind easily cultivated, though the great majority of people neglect it. It consists mainly in careful observation. When people tell you they don’t remember things they have seen, or remember them only vaguely, it usually means that they did not observe the things seen. For example, I remembered where that spring of ours was when we were all parched with thirst, and I knew how to go to it in the dark. That was simply because when I first saw that spring and quenched a very lively thirst there, I decided to remember it and its surroundings in case I should ever have occasion to find it again. So I looked carefully at everything round about from every point of view. I observed that the spring lay just beyond the first bend of the creek and that there was a cluster of big cypress trees very near it. I noticed that the mouth of the creek lay between a little stretch of beach on one side and a dense cane thicket on the other. In short, I carefully observed all the bearings, and having done that, of course I could never forget how to find the spring.”

“Do you always do that sort of thing when you think you may want to find a place again?”

“Yes, of course. Indeed, I do it anyhow, whether there is any occasion or not. For example, when I was visiting you in Boston last year I noticed that there was a little dent in the silver cap over the speaking tube in the dining-room, as if somebody had hit it a little blow. The dent was triangular, I remember.”

“That’s because the thing I hit it with had a triangular face, for I made that dent when I was a little fellow with a curious-looking tool that a repairer of old furniture had in use there. It’s curious that you should have noticed the dent, as it is very small and your back was toward it as you sat at table.”

“Yes, but not as I entered the room. It was then that I saw it.”

“Then that sort of close observation is a habit of mind with you?”

“Yes. I suppose it is partly natural and partly cultivated. I don’t know.”

The two had come by this time to that part of the woods that Tom had named the “squirrel pasture,” and they were soon busy with their guns. But as they walked back toward the camp, loaded with black and gray squirrels, Dick came back to the subject, which seemed deeply to interest him.

“I wonder, Cal,” he said, “if you would mind telling me about those two epochs in your young life—the good-boy and the bad-boy periods?”

Cal laughed, half under his breath.

“It isn’t much to tell,” he replied; “but if you’re interested I’ll tell you about it. You see the old families down here are a good deal mixed up in their relationships, just as the old families in Massachusetts are, because of frequent intermarriages. The Rutledges and the Calhouns, and the Hugers, and the Huguenins, and Barnwells, and Haywards, and the rest, are all more or less related to each other. Indeed, there is such a tangle of relationships that I long ago gave up trying to work out the puzzle. It is enough for you to know that the particular Mr. Hayward who owns all this wild land around here and half a dozen plantations besides is my kinsman—my mother’s uncle, I believe. Anyhow, from my earliest childhood there was never anything that I liked so well as visiting at Uncle Hayward’s. Perfect candor compels me to say that I was not particularly fond of Uncle Hayward or of any member of the family, for that matter. Uncle Hayward used to take me for long rides on a marsh tackey by way of entertaining me in the way he thought I liked best, and I resented that whenever I wanted to do something else instead. He is one of the best and kindliest men alive and I am very fond of him now, but when I was a little fellow I thought he interfered with my own plans too much, and so I made up my mind that I didn’t like him. As for the ladies of the family, I detested them because they were always combing my hair and ‘dressing me up’ when I didn’t want to be dressed up.

“Nevertheless, nothing delighted me like a prolonged visit at Uncle Hayward’s. That was because I particularly appreciated an intimate association with Sam. Sam was a black boy—or young man, rather—who seemed to me to be the most delightfully accomplished person I had ever known. He could roll his eyes up until only the white below the iris was visible. He could stand on his head, walk on his hands, turn handsprings, and disjoint himself in the most astonishing fashion imaginable. He could move his scalp and wiggle his ears. His gifts and accomplishments in such ways as these seemed to me without limit.

“As Uncle Hayward could never keep Sam out of the woods, he made up his mind to assign him to duty in the woods as a sort of ranger. There was plenty for Sam to do there, for besides all these vast tracts of wild land, Uncle Hayward had a deer park consisting of many thousand acres of woodland under a single fence. To watch for fires, to keep poachers out, to catch and tame half a dozen marsh tackeys every now and then, and a score of similar duties were assigned to Sam.

“When I was a little fellow my customary reward for being a particularly ‘good boy’ for a season was permission to go into the woods with Sam and live like a wild creature for weeks at a time. In that way, and under Sam’s tuition, I learned much about these regions and about the waterways, for Sam seemed always to know where a boat of some kind lay hidden, and he and I became tireless navigators and explorers.

“That, in brief, is the history of the ‘good-boy’ epoch. The story of the other is a trifle more dramatic, perhaps. It occurred three or four years ago when Larry and I were planning to go to Virginia to prepare for college. I was fourteen or fifteen years old then and I had continued to spend a part of every year down here in the woods with Sam for guide, servant, and hunting factotum. At the time I speak of I had some rather ‘lame ducks’ in my studies. The fact is, I had idled a good deal, while Larry had mastered all the tasks set him. Accordingly, when my father and mother went North that year—they go every summer on account of mother’s health—Larry went up country to visit some of our relatives there, while I decided to stay at home and work with a tutor whom my father had hired for me.

“He and I lived alone in the house with only the servants, and I found him to be in many ways disagreeable. He was an Englishman, for one thing, and at that period of my life I had not yet got over the detestation of Englishmen which the school histories and revolutionary legends had instilled into my mind. He was brusque and even unmannerly at times, judged by the standards of courtesy that we Carolinians accept. More important than all else, he and I entertained irreconcilable views as to our relations with each other. He thought he was employed to be my master, while I held that he was hired only as my tutor. This led to some friction, but we managed to get on together for a time until I found that the difference of opinion between him and me extended to other things than our personal relations. He seemed to think himself not only my master but master of the house also in my father’s absence. He did not know how to treat the servants. He gave them orders in a harsh, peremptory way to which house servants in Carolina are not accustomed. His manner with them was rather that of an ox-driver toward his cattle than that of a gentleman dealing with well-mannered and well-meaning servants.

“This grated on me, and I suppose I have a pretty well-defined temper when occasion arouses it. The Rutledges generally have. At any rate I one day remonstrated with the tutor on the subject, intending the remonstrance to be all there was of the incident, but he answered me in that tone of a master which I more and more resented. High words followed, from which he learned my opinion of his character and manners much more definitely than I had cared to express it before.

“At last he threatened me with a flogging, and picked up a cane with which to administer it. I was mad all over and clear through by that time. I had never had a flogging and I certainly would not submit to one at his hands. But my anger had passed beyond expression in words by that time. I did not feel the flush of it—I felt deathly pale instead. I was no longer hot; on the contrary I was never cooler in my life. I did not threaten my antagonist or give him warning as he advanced toward me with the cane uplifted. I simply selected a certain plank in the floor which I made up my mind should be his Rubicon. I stood perfectly still, waiting for him to cross it.

“Presently he stepped across the line I had fixed upon. The instant he did so I sprang upon him, delivering my blows so fast and furiously that in two or three seconds he went down in a heap. He claimed to be an expert boxer, and I suppose he was, but my attack was so sudden and so unexpected that his science seemed to have no chance. At any rate, he was so nearly ‘knocked out’ that he had no disposition to renew the contest. He went to his room, washed himself, packed his trunk, leaving it to be called for later, and left the house.

“Before leaving he wrote me a curt note, saying that he would immediately get a warrant for my arrest on a charge of assault and battery.

“That rather staggered me. I wouldn’t have given one inch in fear of that man. No power on earth could have made me run away from him or apologize to him or in any other way flinch from anything he might do to me. But I had a terrifying misconception of the law and its processes. I was only a fifteen-year-old boy, you know, and I knew nothing whatever of legal proceedings; or rather, I knew just enough about them to mislead my mind. I knew that a warrant meant arrest, and as I lay abed worrying that night I convinced myself that if I should be arrested when my father was not in Charleston to furnish bail for me, I must lie in a loathsome jail until his return, forbidden to communicate with anybody and compelled to live on a diet of bread and water.

“I saw no way out except to keep out of reach of that warrant till my father’s return, and the only secure way of doing that, I thought, was to run away and live down here in the woods. So after lying awake all night I got up at daybreak, got one of the servants to give me breakfast and put up a luncheon for me. Then I took a little, flat-bottomed skiff that I owned and made my way down here. I had some money with me, but I did not dare go to any town, or village, or country store, to buy anything lest the man with the warrant should find out where I was. I learned where all the little negro settlements were, however, and there I bought sweet potatoes and the like as I needed them. I had my shotgun and fish lines with me, of course, and so I had no difficulty in feeding myself. For amusement I wandered about in every direction by land and water, and in that way greatly improved my education in coast country geography.

“After a while I found myself running short of ammunition, and I didn’t know how to procure a fresh supply. I was afraid to go to Beaufort, or up to Grahamville, or Coosawhatchie, or anywhere else where there were stores, and besides that I was in no fit condition to go anywhere. I had forgotten to bring any clothes with me and what I had on were worn literally to rags.

“Fortunately I had got acquainted with a negro boy who often brought me vegetables and fruit and sold them to me for low prices. I suppose now that he stole them, although that didn’t occur to me then.

“One day I hit upon the plan of sending him to Beaufort for ammunition. He expressed doubt that anybody there would sell it to him, and I shared the doubt. But it was my only chance, so I gave him some money and sent him. He was gone for two days, during which I fired my last cartridge at a deer and missed him. I had begun to think the negro boy had simply pocketed the money and disappeared, never to return again, but I consoled myself with the thought that there were plenty of fish and oysters to be had, and that I could buy sweet potatoes and vegetables.

“That night the negro boy returned, bringing me rather more ammunition than I had sent for, and when I questioned him about the matter his reply was that that was what the storekeeper had given him for the money. Later, however, he confessed to me that finding nobody willing to sell cartridges to him, he had simply stolen them and, being prepared to bring me the goods I had sent for, he thought the money he had saved in that way justly belonged to him. He had squandered it for candy and in satisfaction of such other desires as possessed him. Of course I paid the merchant afterwards, and equally of course it was impossible to collect the amount from the boy.

“All that is an episode. One day by some chance I encountered Sam in my wanderings, and he told me people were looking for me—that my father had heard of my disappearance and had hurried back to Charleston.

“I went to Beaufort, bought some sort of clothes, and like the other prodigal son, returned to my father. But he utterly failed to play his part according to the story. Instead of falling on my neck, he laughed at the clothes I wore. Instead of killing the fatted calf, he told me to take a bath and put on something fit to wear. All that evening I heard him chuckling under his breath as I related my experiences in answer to his questions. Finally he said to me:

“‘You’ll do, Cal. I’ll never feel uneasy about you again. You know how to take care of yourself.’

“There, Dick, you’ve heard the whole story, both of my righteousness and of my wickedness.”

“And a mighty interesting story it has been to me,” Dick replied. “Thank you for telling it.”