A GREAT CATASTROPHE

During the next fortnight or so the association between Dunbar and the boys was intimate and constant. When it rained, so that outdoor expeditions were not inviting, he toiled diligently at his writing and drawing, keeping up an interesting conversation in the meanwhile on all manner of subjects. In the evenings especially the talk around the fire was entertaining to the boys and Dunbar seemed to enjoy it as much as they. He was fond of “drawing them out” and listening to such revelations of personal character and capacity as their unrestrained discussions gave.

On fine days he made himself one of them, joining heartily in every task and enthusiastically sharing every sport afloat or afield. He was a good, strong oarsman and he could sail a boat as well as even Dick could. In hunting, his woodcraft was wonderfully ingenious, and among other things he taught the boys a dozen ways of securing game by trapping and snaring.

“You see,” he explained, “one is liable sometimes to be caught in the woods without his gun or without ammunition, and when that happens it is handy to know how to get game enough to eat in other ways than by shooting.”

During all this time he had no more of his strange moods. He never once fell into the peculiar slumber the boys had observed before, and he never absented himself from the company. Indeed, his enjoyment of human association seemed to be more than ordinarily keen.

Little by little his comrades let the memory of his former eccentricity fade out of their minds, or if they thought of it at all they dismissed it as a thing of no significance, due, doubtless, to habitual living in solitude.

One rainy afternoon he suddenly turned to the boys and asked:

“Does any one of you happen to know what day of the month this is? By my count it must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth of August.”

“My little calendar,” said Cal, drawing the card from a pocket and looking at it attentively for a moment, “takes the liberty of differing with you in opinion, Mr. Dunbar. It insists that this is the thirty-first day of August, of the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six.”

Dunbar almost leaped to his feet in surprise. After a brief period of thought he turned to Larry and asked:

“I wonder if you boys would mind sailing with me over to the nearest postoffice town early to-morrow morning.”

“Why, you know, Mr. Dunbar,” Larry answered, “to-morrow morning is mortgaged. We’re all going out after that deer you’ve located. Won’t the next day answer just as well for your trip?”

“Unfortunately, no. I gave my word that I would post certain writings and drawings to the publisher not later than noon on September 1, and the printers simply must not be kept waiting. Of course, if you can’t—”

“But we can and will,” answered Larry. “Your business is important—the deer hunt is of no consequence. But you’ll come back with us, will you not?”

“I shall be delighted to do so if I may,” he answered. “I’m enjoying it here with you, and my work never before got on so well with so little toil over it. I shall like to come back with you and stay at Quasi as long as you boys do.”

“That’s good news—altogether good. How long are you likely to be detained at the village?”

“Only long enough to post my letter and the manuscript—not more than half an hour at the most.”

“Very well, then. We shall want to buy all the bread and that sort of thing there is to be had over there, but we can easily do that within your half hour. We’ll start about sunrise, and if the wind favors us we’ll be back by noon or a little later, and even if we have no wind, the oars will bring us back before nightfall.”

Dunbar at once set to work to arrange and pack the drawings he wished to send by mail, and as there were titles to write and explanatory paragraphs to revise, the work occupied him until supper time. In the meanwhile the boys prepared the boat, filled the water kegs, bestowed a supply of fishing tackle, and overhauled the rigging to see that every rope was clear and every pulley in free running order.

After supper there was not a very long evening for talk around the fire, for, with an early morning start in view, they must go early to their bunks.

They all rolled themselves in their blankets about nine o’clock and soon were sleeping soundly—the boys under the shelter and Dunbar under the starry sky—for the rain had passed away—by that side of the fire which was opposite the camp hut.

Their slumber had not lasted for an hour when suddenly they were awakened by a combination of disturbances amply sufficient, as Dick afterwards said, “to waken the denizens of a cemetery.”

The very earth was swaying under them and rocking back and forth like a boat lying side on to a swell. Deep down—miles beneath the surface it seemed, there was a roar which sounded to Cal like “forty thousand loose-jointed wagons pulled by runaway horses across a rheumatic bridge.”

As the boys sprang to their feet they found difficulty in standing erect, and before they could run out of their shelter, it plunged forward and fell into the fire, where the now dried palmete leaves which constituted its roof and walls, and the resinous pine poles of its framework, instantly blazed up in a fierce, crackling flame.

“Quick!” cried Dunbar, as Larry, Dick and Cal extricated themselves from the mass, “quick—help here! Tom is entangled in the ruins.”

The response was instantaneous, and before the rapidly-spreading flames could reach him, the other four had literally dragged their comrade from the confused mass of poles and vines in which he had been imprisoned. If the work of rescue had been prolonged for even a minute more, it would have been too late, and Tom would have been burned to a crisp. As it was, he was choking with smoke, coughing with a violence that threatened the rupture of his breathing apparatus somewhere, and so nearly smothered for want of air as to be only half conscious.

A bucket of water which Dunbar had dashed over him “set him going again,” as he afterwards described the process of recovering breath and consciousness, and as the paroxysms of coughing slowly ceased he stood erect by way of announcing a recovery which he was still unable to proclaim in words.

At that moment a second shock of earthquake occurred, a shock less violent than the first, but sufficient to topple Tom and Larry off their feet again.

It did no harm, chiefly because there was no further harm to do, and the little company busied themselves saving what they could of their belongings from the burning ruins.

After they had worked at this for ten minutes, a third shock came. It was feebler than either of the others, but just as the boys felt the earth swaying again there was an explosion under the burning mass, followed by a rapid succession of smaller explosions which scattered shot about in a way so dangerous that at Cal’s command all the company threw themselves prone upon the ground.

This lasted for perhaps a minute, and fortunately nobody received a charge of shot in his person from the bursting cartridges that had made the racket. Fortunately, too, the box of cartridges thus caught in the flames and destroyed was the only one involved in the catastrophe. The rest had been kept, not in the hut, but in the Hunkydory’s lockers.

But when they came to take account of their losses, which they did as soon as the first excitement had passed away, they found that the damage done had been considerable.

For one thing, their entire supply of meat was destroyed; so was their bread and their coffee.

“We shall not starve, anyhow,” Cal decided. “We can kill as much game as we need and as the bottom doesn’t seem to have dropped out of the sea, we can still catch fish, oysters, shrimps and crabs. As for bread, we still have Tom’s sweet potato patch to draw upon. There wasn’t more than a pound of coffee left, so that’s no great loss.”

For the rest, the very few clothes the boys had brought with them in addition to what they wore, were all lost, but they decided that they could get on without them—“Mr. Dunbar’s fashion.” Tom was the worst sufferer in that respect, as the garments he wore had been badly torn in his rescue from the fire, but he cheerfully announced:

“I can manage very well. I’ll decline all dinner, dance and other invitations that require a change from every-day dress. I’ll have some cards engraved announcing that ‘Mr. Thomas Garnett is detained at the South and will not be at home to receive his friends until further notice.’ Then I’ll borrow some of your beetle-detaining pins, Mr. Dunbar, and pin up the worst of the rents in my trousers.”

“We’ll do better than that, Tom,” the naturalist answered. “I’ve quite a little sewing kit tucked away in my log locker. You shall have needles, thread and a thimble whenever you wish to use them.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dunbar; but please spare me the thimble. I never could use a contrivance of that kind. Every time I have tried I have succeeded only in driving the needle into my hand and breaking it off well beneath the skin.”

“Boy like,” answered Dunbar. “You’re the victim of a traditional defect in our system of education.”

“Would you mind explaining?” asked Cal.

“Certainly not. I hold that the education of every human being ought to include a reasonable mastery of all the simple arts that one is likely to find useful in emergencies. We do not expect girls to become accountants, as a rule, but we do not on that account leave the multiplication table out of a girl’s school studies. In the same way we do not expect boys generally to do much sewing when they grow to manhood, but as every man is liable to meet emergencies in which a little skill in the use of needle, thread and scissors may make all the difference between comfort and discomfort, every boy ought to be taught plain sewing. However, we have other things to think of just now.”

“Indeed we have,” answered Cal, “and the most pressing one of those other things is to-morrow morning’s breakfast. Does it occur to any of you that, except the salt in the dory’s locker, we haven’t an ounce of food of any kind in our possession?”

“That is so,” “I hadn’t thought of that;” “and we’ll all be hungry, too, for of course we shall not sleep”—these were the responses that came quickly in answer to Cal’s suggestion.

“We’ll manage the matter in this way,” said Cal, quite as if no one else had spoken. “When ’yon grey streaks that fret the clouds give indication of the dawn,’ Mr. Dunbar will go fishing. As soon as it grows light enough for you to walk through the woods without breaking more than two or three necks apiece, the rest of you can take that big piece of tarpaulin, go out to Tom’s potato patch, and bring back a large supply of sweet potatoes. After breakfast one or two of us can go for some game, while the rest repair damages here. It will take two or three days to do that.”

As he spoke he looked about him as if to estimate the extent of the harm done.

“Hello!” he cried out a moment later. “That’s bad, very bad.”

“What is it, Cal?”

“Why, our well has completely disappeared—filled up to the level by the surrounding earth, which seems to have lost its head and in that way got itself ‘into a hole,’ just as people do when they forget discretion. That means that we’ve got to dig out the well to-day, and in the meantime drink that stuff from the spring down under the bluff. Our day’s work is cut out for us, sure enough.”

Tom had disappeared in the darkness while Cal was speaking, and as Cal continued to speak for a considerable time afterwards, marking out what Dick called a “programme of convenience,” he had not finished when Tom returned and in breathless excitement announced that the spring under the bluff was no more.

“The whole of that part of the bluff has slumped down to the beach,” he said, “and even the big catalpa tree is uprooted and overturned. Of course the spring is completely filled up, and we’ll all be half famished for water before we get the well dug out again.”

“Don’t indulge in too hopeless a grief over the loss of the spring, Tom,” said Cal in his most confidently optimistic tone. “We can make another just as good anywhere down there in half an hour or less. That puddle held nothing but sea water that had leaked through the sand, partly filtering itself in doing so. We can dig a little hole anywhere down that way, and if we choose the right sort of place we’ll get better water than the spring ever yielded. I’ll look after that when Mr. Dunbar and I go fishing. We’ll have the sand out of this well by noon, too—it’s very loose and easily handled.”

“But, Cal,” interrupted Tom; “we haven’t a thing to dig with. The two shovels we had were in the hut.”

The others stood aghast; Cal faced the situation with hopeful confidence.

“That’s bad,” he commented. “Of course the handles are burned up, but the iron part remains, and even with the meagre supply of cutting tools we have—which is to say our jackknives and the little ax—we can fashion new ones. It will take valuable time, but we must reconcile ourselves to that.”

“Well, we must get to work at something—it’s hard to know where to begin,” said Larry in a despondent tone. “What’s the first thing to be done, Cal?”

“The first thing to be done is to cheer up; the next thing is to stay cheered up. You fellows are in the dumps worse than the well is, and you’ve got to get out of them if you have to lift yourselves out by the straps of your own boots. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Have we lived a life of easy luxury here at Quasi for so long that you’ve forgotten that this is an expedition in search of sport and adventure? Isn’t this earthquake overthrow an adventure of the liveliest sort? Isn’t the loss of our belongings by fire a particularly adventurous happening?”

“After all,” broke in Tom, who had a genuine relish for danger, difficulty and hardship, “after all, we’re not in half as bad a situation as we were when we faced the revenue officers from behind our log breastwork. Our lives were really in danger then, while now we have nothing worse than difficulty to face.”

“Yes, and a few months hence we’ll all remember this thing with joy and talk of it with glee.”

“You’re right about that,” said Dunbar, “and it is always so. I have gone through many trying experiences, and as I recall them the most severely trying of them are the ones I remember with the greatest pleasure. Besides, in this case the way of escape, even from such difficulties as lie before you, is wide open. The dory is at anchor down there and if you are so minded you can sail away from it all.”

“What! Turn tail and run!” exclaimed Tom, almost indignantly.

“No, we’re not thinking of that,” said Cal. “We’ll see the thing out, and, by the way, it’s growing daylight. Come, Mr. Dunbar! We have a pressing engagement with the fish and we must have an early breakfast this morning on all accounts. We have a lot to do, and you mustn’t be later than noon in reaching the postoffice, you know.”

“Oh, I’ve abandoned that,” responded Dunbar.

“But why?” asked Larry. “Of course we can’t go with you as we planned, but you can take the dory and make the trip for yourself. And perhaps you won’t mind taking some money along and buying out whatever food supplies the country store over there can furnish. We need bread especially, and coffee and—”

“And a few pounds of cheese won’t come amiss,” added Dick.

“But I tell you I am not going,” said Dunbar. “I have accepted and enjoyed your hospitality when all was going well with you; do you suppose I’m going to abandon you even for a day, now that you’re in trouble and need all the help you can get?”

“Your reasoning is excellent,” said Cal, purposely lapsing into his old habit of elaborate speech, by way of relieving the tension that had made his comrades feel hurried and harassed; “your reasoning is excellent, but your premises are utterly wrong. You can help us mightily by sailing up to that postoffice town and bringing back the supplies we need, while you cannot help us at all by remaining here. We four are more than enough to keep the few tools we have left constantly busy. With a fifth person included in the construction gang, there would always be one of us who must idly hold his hands for want of anything to work with. No, Mr. Dunbar, the best service you can render to the common cause is to sail up to the village, redeem your promise by mailing your papers, and bring back all you can of provisions adapted to our use. So that’s settled, isn’t it, boys?”

Their answer left no room for further argument, and as the daylight was steadily growing stronger, the party separated, Cal and Dunbar going in quest of fish for breakfast, and the others struggling through tangled thickets toward the wild sweet potato field.