A RAINY DAY WITH DUNBAR

Dunbar was in excellent spirits that evening. He seemed indeed like one who has had some specially good fortune happen to him, or one suddenly relieved of some distress or sore annoyance.

Throughout the evening he talked with the boys in a way that greatly interested them. He made no display of learning, but they easily discovered that his information was both vast and varied, and better still, that his thinking was sound, and that he was a master of the art of so presenting his thought that others easily grasped and appreciated it.

When at last the evening was completely gone, he bade his companions a cheery good night, saying that he would go over to the bluff and sleep near the catalpa tree.

“You see there are no sand flies to-night,” he explained, “and I like to smell the salt water as I sleep.”

“What do you make of him, Larry?” Dick asked as soon as their guest was beyond hearing.

“I don’t know. I’m puzzled. What’s your opinion?”

“Put it in the plural, for I’ve a different opinion every time I think about it at all.”

“Anyhow,” said Tom, “he must be crazy. Just think—”

“Yes,” interrupted Cal, “but just think also how soundly he thinks. Let’s just call him eccentric and let it go at that. And who wouldn’t be eccentric, after living alone in the woods for so long?”

“After all,” Dick responded, “we’re not a commission in lunacy, and we’re not under the smallest necessity of defining his mental condition.”

“No,” Cal assented; “it’s a good deal better to enjoy his company and his talk than to bother our heads about the condition of his. He’s one of the most agreeable men I ever met—bright, cheerful, good natured, scrupulously courteous, and about the most interesting talker I ever listened to. So I for one give up trying to answer conundrums, and I’m going to bed. I wouldn’t if he were here to go on talking, but after an evening with him to lead the conversation, I find you fellows dull and uninteresting. Good night. Oh, by the way, I’ll slip away from here about daylight and get some pan fish for breakfast.”

Early as Cal was in setting out, he found Dunbar on the shore ready to go with him.

“I hope to get a shark,” the naturalist said, “one big enough to show a well-developed jaw, and they’re apt to bite at this early hour. I’ve a line in the boat there with a copper wire snell.”

“Are you specially interested in sharks?”

“Oh, no, not ordinarily. It is only that I must make a careful drawing or two, illustrative of the mechanical structure and action of a shark’s jaw and teeth, to go with an article I’m writing on the general subject of teeth in fishes, and I wish to draw the illustrations from life rather than from memory. It will rain to-day, and I’m going to avail myself of your hospitality and make the drawings under your shelter.”

“Then perhaps you’ll let us see them?”

“Yes, of course, and all the other drawings I have in my portfolio, if they interest you.”

“They will, if you will explain and expound a little.”

Dunbar gave a pleased little chuckle as he answered:

“I’ll do that to your heart’s content. You know, I really think I like to hear myself talk sometimes.”

“Why shouldn’t you? Your talk would delight anybody else.”

“Here’s my shark,” excitedly cried Dunbar, as he played the fish. “He’s nearly three feet long, too—a bigger one than I hoped for. Now if I can only land him.”

“I’ll help you,” said Cal, leaning over the rail with a barbed gaff hook in his hand. “Play him over this way—there, now once more around—here he is safe and sound.”

As he spoke he lifted the savage-looking creature into the boat and Dunbar managed, with some little difficulty, to free the hook from his jaws without himself having a thumb or finger bitten off.

“Not a tooth broken!” he exclaimed with delight. “I’ll dissect out the entire bony structure of the head to-day and make a drawing of it. Then I’m going to pack it carefully in a little box that I’ll whittle out, and present it—if you don’t mind—to young Wentworth. He may perhaps value it as a souvenir of his visit to Quasi.”

Cal assented more than gladly, and the two busied themselves during the next half hour completing their catch of whiting and croakers for breakfast. When they reached the camp the rain Dunbar had predicted had set in.

As soon as breakfast was over Dunbar redeemed his promise to show the boys his lockers.

“I’m going over there now,” he said, “to get some paper, pencils and drawing board. Suppose you go with me, if you want to see some of my woodland devices.”

They assented gladly. They were very curious to see where and how their guest cared for his perishable properties, the more because their own search for the lockers had completely failed.

The matter proved simple enough. Dunbar led them a little way into the woods and then, falling upon his knees, crawled into the end of a huge hollow log. After he had reached the farther end of the hollow part he lighted a little bunch of fat pine splinters to serve as a torch, and invited his companions to look in. They saw that he had scraped away all the decaying wood inside the log, leaving its hard shell as a bare wall. In this he had fitted a number of little wooden hooks, to each of which some of his belongings were suspended.

It was a curious collection. There were cards covered with butterflies, moths and beetles, each impaled upon a large pin. There were the beaks and talons of various birds of prey, each carefully labeled. There were bunches of feathers of various hues, some dried botanical specimens and much else of similar sorts.

From the farther end of the hollow he brought forth several compact little portfolios, each so arranged that no rain could penetrate it when all were bound together and carried like a knapsack.

“I’ll take two of these portfolios with me to your shelter,” he said, taking them under his arm. “One of them contains the writing and drawing materials that I shall need to-day. The other is filled with my drawings of various interesting objects. Some of them may be interesting to you during this rainy day, and each has a description appended which will enable you to understand the meaning of it.”

But the boys had a rather brief time over the drawings that day. They ran through a part of the portfolio while Dunbar was writing, but after an hour he put his writing aside and began dissecting the shark’s head, stopping now and then to make a little sketch of some detail. After that the boys had no eyes but for the work he was doing and no ears but for the things he said.

“You see there are comparatively few species of fish that have any teeth at all. They have no need of teeth and therefore have never developed them.”

“But why is that,” asked Tom; “I should think some of the toothless varieties of fish would have developed teeth accidentally, as it were.”

“Development is never accidental in that sense, Tom. It is Nature’s uniform law that every species of living thing, animal or vegetable, shall tend to develop whatever is useful to it, and nothing else. That is Nature’s plan for the perpetuation of life and the improvement of species.”

After pausing in close attention to some detail of his work, Dunbar went on:

“You can see the same dominant principle at work in the varying forms of teeth developed by different species. The sheepshead needs teeth only for the purpose of crushing the shells of barnacles and the like, and in that way getting at its food. So in a sheepshead’s mouth you find none but crushing teeth. The shark, as you see, has pointed teeth so arranged in rows that one row closes down between two other rows in the opposite jaw, and by a muscular arrangement the shark can work one jaw to right and left with lightning-like rapidity, making the saw-like row of teeth cut through almost anything after the manner of a reaping machine. Then there is the pike. He has teeth altogether different from either of the others. The pike swallows very large fish in proportion to his own size, and his need is of teeth that will prevent his prey from wriggling out of his mouth and escaping while he is slowly trying to swallow it. Accordingly his teeth are as small and as sharp as cambric needles. Moreover, he has them everywhere in his mouth—on his lips, on his tongue, and even in his throat. However, this is no time for a lecture. If you are interested in the subject you can study it better by looking into fishes’ mouths than by listening to anybody talk or by reading books on the subject.”

Again Dunbar paused in order that his attention might be closely concentrated upon some delicate detail of his work.

When the strain upon his attention seemed at last to relax, Cal ventured to say something—and it was startling to his comrades.

“Of course you’re right about the books on such subjects,” he said. “For example, the most interesting of all facts about fish isn’t so much as mentioned in any book I can find, though I’ve searched through several libraries for it.”

“What is your fact?” asked Dunbar, suspending his work to listen.

“Why that fish do not die natural deaths. Not one of them in a million ever does that.”

“But why do you think that, Cal? What proof is there—”

“Why, the thing’s obvious on its face. A dead fish floats, doesn’t it? Well, in any good fishing water, such as the Adirondack lakes, where I fished with my father one summer, there are millions of fish—big and little—scores of millions, even hundreds of millions, if you count shiners and the other minnows, that of a clear day lie in banks from the bottom of the water to its surface. Now, if fish died natural deaths in anything like the proportion that all other living things do, the surface of such lakes would be constantly covered with dead fish. Right here at Quasi and in all these coast waters the same thing is true. Every creek mouth is full of fish and every shoal is alive with them, so that we know in advance when we go fishing that we can catch them as fast as we can take them off the hook. If any reasonable rate of natural mortality prevailed among them every flood tide would strew the shores with tons of dead fish. As nothing of the kind happens, it seems to me certain that as a rule fish do not die a natural death. In fact, most of them have no chance to do that, as they spend pretty nearly their entire time in swallowing each other alive.”

“You are a close observer, Cal. You ought to become a man of science,” said Dunbar with enthusiasm. “Science needs men of your kind.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Cal. “I imagine Science can get on very comfortably without any help of mine.”

“How did you come to notice all that, anyhow, Cal?” asked Dick.

“Oh, it didn’t take much to suggest that sort of thing, when the facts were staring me in the face. Besides, I may be all wrong. What do you think of my wild guess, Mr. Dunbar?”

“It isn’t a wild guess. Your conclusion may be right or wrong—I must think of the subject carefully before I can form any opinion as to that. But at any rate it is a conclusion reasoned out from a careful observation of facts, and that is nothing like a wild guess.”

Thus the conversation drifted on throughout the long rainy day, and when night came the boys were agreed that they had learned to know Dunbar and appreciate him more than they could have done in weeks of ordinary intercourse.