Harper's Round Table, September 17, 1895 Part 3

"But I mean to try it, Mrs. Maloney. Dry your tears and watch me do it."

Teddy Maloney on the snag in mid-stream was now suffering intensely.

Seated upon a tree trunk barely ten inches in diameter, and kept from flipping down its slope by a rugged knot, his position was almost unendurable. For five hours he had clung there hatless and coatless, with his back to a broiling sun. Dazed by suffering and dizzied by the leaping, gliding, and wrinkling water that gurgled and pulled at his half-submerged legs, he was still conscious of the efforts being made for his rescue. He saw Reddy shoot the rapids, and with a growing conviction that he could not hold on much longer, he wondered why his boy friend did not come to his aid. "He is the only one in the whole crowd that knows anything about a boat. Why don't they let him do something?" thought poor Teddy.

As if in answer to this silent appeal, Redmond Carter at the same moment approached Captain Bartlett and begged permission to go for his comrade.

"But, Carter, how can you expect to accomplish what these older and stronger men have failed to do?" asked the Captain.

"They do not know what to do, sir. I was born on the Kennebec, sir. I have run barefooted on booms, rafts, and jams, and have boated in birch canoes, dugouts, punts, and yawls, and I can run a rapid, as you have just seen."

"A Kennebec boy, Reddy!" said the officer, for the first time using the boy's pet name. "I know what Kennebec boys could do when I was one of them. Yon may try it; but be careful."

Reddy sprang into the boat and began rowing up stream in the sh.o.r.e eddy.

Reaching the desired distance he turned into the middle of the river, and changing his seat to the stern and using an oar for a paddle, he dropped down the current toward the snag. As he neared it, he saw Teddy's hands relax and his body sway slightly to the right.

"Hold on, Teddy!" he shouted. "Keep your grip! I'm right here!"

Gliding along the right side of the trunk he stayed the motion of the skiff by grasping it with his left hand.

"Tumble in, Teddy--quick!" he said.

Teddy obeyed, literally falling into the bottom of the boat, limp and sprawling between the thwarts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOWN, DOWN THE BOILING, FOAMING, ROARING DESCENT HE SPED.]

Reddy let go the trunk, went towards the rapids, raking the crest at the same place he had taken it before. Down, down the boiling, foaming, roaring descent he sped, plying his oar with all his might, lest in turning a frothing Scylla he might be hurled upon a threatening Charybdis. His former success attended him.

Again the soldiers ran to meet him at the foot of the watery slope, filling the air with shouts as they ran. But the sight of Teddy lying senseless in the bottom of the boat, checked further joyous demonstration. He was tenderly lifted in stalwart arms and borne to a gra.s.sy knoll near by, where he was received by his anxious mother and the surgeon. Restorative treatment brought him back to consciousness, and he was taken at once to the fort. The wherry was again carried to the landing before the hay-camp, and the crowd of soldiers dispersed through the ravines and groves in the direction of their barracks.

Captain Bartlett accompanied Redmond Carter to the place where the mule and pony were picketed, and, saying that he would ride Puss to the post, ordered one of the men to saddle her, and entered into conversation with the boy.

"I think you are out of place in the army, Carter," said he.

"What, sir! Have I not always done my duty well?" asked Reddy, in dismay.

"Much better than the average soldier. But that is not what I mean. You seem qualified for something better than the position you occupy. You are not of the material from which the army is usually recruited. This slip of paper, found beside the orderly bench at the office," observed the officer, handing the boy his sketch of the Trojan horse with the accompanying Latin sentence, "shows that you have been a student. I do not know what accident brought you here, but I think school is the proper place for you."

"Nothing would please me better, sir, than to be able to return to school; but it is not possible at present."

"Are you willing to tell me how you come to be in the service?"

"Yes, sir; it is not a long story," replied the young soldier. "My father and mother died when I was too young to remember them, and I was left to the care of a guardian, who sent me to school, and afterwards to an academy, where I prepared for college. I pa.s.sed my entrance examination to the Freshman cla.s.s in June, and expected to go on in September; but the failure of companies in which my property had been invested left me dest.i.tute, and I gave it up."

"But you have relatives?"

"Lots of them; but they showed little inclination to help me. There had been some family differences that I never understood, and I was too proud to go begging for a.s.sistance. I s.h.i.+pped on a granite-schooner for Philadelphia. I was miserably seasick the whole trip, and was discharged by the master of the vessel without pay. Having no money I could not find food while looking for work. I obtained an odd job now and then, but soon wore my clothes to rags, so that no respectable establishment would think of hiring me. I slept on the streets, and frequently pa.s.sed a day without proper food. One day I pa.s.sed a recruiting-office, and it suggested a means of escape from dest.i.tution. I enlisted as a fifer, and was a.s.signed to your company."

"And you have been with me ten months," said the Captain. "I suppose your relatives cannot trace you?"

"They might trace me to Philadelphia," replied Reddy; "but the trail becomes dark there. Even if they suspected I had enlisted--which is not likely--they could not find me, for the recruiting sergeant blundered in registering my name. He put me down as Redmond A. Carter, when he should have written it Raymond J. Corser."

"Not a rare mistake of the recruiting officer. So you are of the General Corser family?"

"He was my grandfather."

"Then you have only to communicate with your relatives in order to get out of the army. Yours is an influential family."

"I shall serve out my enlistment, sir. The army has served me a good turn, and when I am discharged I shall be in better condition to find employment than in Philadelphia."

"But what has become of your college aspirations?"

"It will still be possible to accomplish that. Sergeant Von Wald and I are studying together, and I think I shall be able to enter Soph.o.m.ore.

Poor boys have worked their way before."

"I have noticed Von Wald. Is he a scholar?"

"Please not to mention it, sir; he is a German university man. When I am discharged I shall have most of my five years' pay, and considerable savings on clothing not drawn. I expect it will amount to nearly eight hundred dollars."

For a few moments the officer said nothing, but gazed reflectively across the rus.h.i.+ng and roaring river. At last he turned again toward the boy and asked, "How would you like to be an officer in the army, Carter?"

"I should like it above all things, sir; but it is not possible. While I might make a struggle single-handed through college, I could scarcely hope to secure an appointment to West Point."

"Still there is a way. The late Congress pa.s.sed a law allowing men who have served two years in the army, and been favorably recommended by their officers, to be examined for appointment to the grade of second lieutenant. Yon have a little more than four years to serve. In that time you will have reached the required age, and Lieutenant Dayton and I can give you the necessary instruction. What do you say?"

"I'll make a hard struggle for it, sir, if you will afford me the chance."

Five years later Sergeant Redmond A. Carter pa.s.sed a successful examination for a second lieutenantcy in the army, and was commissioned in the artillery under his proper name, Raymond J. Corser.

Edward Maloney, who excelled in physical rather than intellectual attainments, continued in the service, becoming at the time of his second enlistment first sergeant of Captain Bartlett's company.

OAKLEIGH

BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.

CHAPTER XIII.

During these early months of the year a change had come over Miss Betsey Trinkett's life. Silas Green had died.

Mr. and Mrs. Franklin went to Wayborough for the funeral, and found Miss Betsey quite broken.

"To think that the day was fixed at last," she said, "and he died only the week before. Well, well, it does seem pa.s.sing queer, after all these years. It doesn't do to put a thing off too long. And yet, perhaps, it's all for the best, for if I'd given up and gone down there to live, I should have had nothing now to look at but the Soldiers' Monument, and I'd have felt real lonesome without the Merrimac."