The Adventures of a Modest Man

CHAPTER XV

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

"Ellis," said Jones, earnestly, as they climbed to the camp and stood gazing at the whitening ashes of their fire, "the simple life is a state of mind. I'm in it, now. And – do you know, Ellis, that – I – I could learn to like it?"

Ellis prodded the back-log, and tossed on some dry sticks.

"Great Heaven!" breathed Jones, "did you ever see such eyes, Ellis?"

"The grey ones? They're very noticeable – "

"I meant – well, let it go at that. Here be two of us have lost a thousand shillings to-day."

"And the ladies were not in buckram," rejoined Ellis, starting a blaze. "Jones, can you prepare trout for the pan with the aid of a knife? Here, rub salt in 'em – and leave all but two in that big tin – dry, mind, then cover it and sink it in the spring, or something furry will come nosing and clawing at it. I'll have things ready by the time you're back."

"About our canoes," began Jones. "I've daubed mine with white lead, but I cut it up badly. Hadn't we better attend to them before the storm breaks?"

"Get yours into camp. I'll fetch mine; it's cached just below the forks. This storm may tear things."

A quarter of an hour later two vigorous young men swung into camp, lowered the canoes from their heads and shoulders, carried the strapped kits, poles and paddles into the lean-to, and turned the light crafts bottom up as flanking shelters to headquarters.

"No use fishing; that thunder is spoiling the Caranay," muttered Ellis, moving about and setting the camp in order. "This is a fine lean-to," he added; "it's big enough for a regiment."

"I told you I was an architect," said Jones, surveying the open-faced shanty with pride. "I had nothing else to do, so I spent the time in making this. I'm a corker on the classic. Shall I take an axe and cut some wood in the Ionic or Doric style?"

Ellis, squatting among the provisions, busily bringing order out of chaos, told him what sort of wood to cut; and an hour later, when the echoing thwacks of the axe ceased and Jones came in loaded with firewood, the camp was in order; hambones, stale bedding, tin cans, the heads and spinal processes of trout had been removed, dishes polished, towels washed and drying, and a pleasant aroma of balsam tips mingled with the spicy scent of the fire.

"Whew!" said Jones, sniffing; "it smells pleasant now."

"Your camp," observed Ellis, "had all the fragrance of a dog-fox in March. How heavy the air is. Listen to that thunder! There's the deuce to pay on the upper waters of the Caranay by this time."

"Do you think we'll get it?"

"Not the rain and wind; the electrical storms usually swing off, following the Big Oswaya. But we may have a flood." He arose and picked up his rod. "The thunder has probably blanked me, but if you'll tend camp I'll try to pick up some fish in a binnikill I know of where the trout are habituated to the roar of the fork falls. We may need every fish we can get if the flood proves a bad one."

Jones said it would suit him perfectly to sit still. He curled up close enough to the fire for comfort as well as æsthetic pleasure, removed his eyeglasses, fished out a flask of aromatic mosquito ointment, and solemnly began a facial toilet, in the manner of a comfortable house cat anointing her countenance with one paw.

"Ellis," he said, blinking up at that young man very amiably, "it would be agreeable to see a little more of – of Miss Sandys; wouldn't it? And the other – "

"We could easily do that."

"Eh? How?"

"By engaging an attorney to defend ourselves in court," said Ellis grimly.

"Pooh! You don't suppose that brown-eyed girl – "

"Yes, I do! She means mischief. If it had rested with the other – "

"You're mistaken," said Jones, warmly. "I am perfectly persuaded that if I had had half an hour's playful conversation with the brown-eyed one – "

"You tried playfulness and fell down," observed Ellis, coldly. "If I could have spoken to Miss Sandys – "

"What! A girl with steel-grey eyes like two poniards? A lot of mercy she would show us! My dear fellow, trust in the brown eye every time! The warm, humane, brown eye – the emotional, the melting, the tender brown – "

"Don't trust it! Didn't she kodak twice? You and I are now in her Rogues' Gallery. Besides, didn't she take notes on her pad? I never observed anything humane in brown eyes."

Jones polished his nose with the mosquito salve.

"How do you know what she wanted my picture for?" he asked, annoyed. "Perhaps she means to keep it for herself – if that grey-eyed one lets her alone – "

"Let the grey-eyed one alone yourself," retorted Ellis, warmly.

"You'd better, too. Any expert in human character can tell you which of those girls means mischief."

"If you think you're an expert – " began Ellis, irritated, then stopped short. Jones followed his eyes.

"Look at that stream," said Ellis, dropping his rod against the lean-to. "There's been a cloudburst in the mountains. There's no rain here, but look at that stream! Yellow and bank-full! Hark! Hear the falls. I have an idea the woods will be awash below us in an hour."

They descended to the ledge which an hour ago had overhung the stream. Now the water was level with it, lapping over it, rising perceptibly in the few seconds they stood there. Alders and willows along the banks, almost covered, staggered in the discolored water; drift of all sorts came tumbling past, rotten branches, piles of brush afloat, ferns and shrubs uprooted; the torrent was thick with flakes of bark and forest mould and green-leaved twigs torn from the stream-side.

From the lower reaches a deer came galloping toward the ridges; a fox stole furtively into the open, hesitated, and slunk off up the valley.

And now the shallow gorge began to roar under the rising flood; tumbling castles of piled-up foam whirled into view; the amber waves washed through the fringing beech growth, slopping into hollows, setting the dead leaves afloat. A sucking sound filled the woods; millions of tiny bubbles purred in the shallow overflow; here and there dead branches stirred, swung and floated.

"Our camp is going to be an island pretty soon," observed Ellis; "just look at – "

But Jones caught him by the arm. "What is that?" he demanded shakily. "Are there things like that in these woods?"

At the same instant Ellis caught sight of something in midstream bearing down on them in a smother of foam – an enormous lizard-like creature floundering throat-deep in the flood.

"What is it, Ellis? Look! It's got a tail ten feet long! Great Heaven, look at it!"

"I see it," said Ellis, hoarsely. "I never saw such a thing – "

"It's opening its jaws!" gasped Jones.

Ellis, a trifle white around the cheekbones, stared in frozen silence at the fearsome creature as it swept down on them. A crested wave rolled it over; four fearsome claws waved in the air; then the creature righted itself and swung in toward the bank.

"Upon my word!" stammered Ellis; "it's part of their theatrical property. Lord! how real it looked out yonder. I knew it couldn't be alive, but – Jones, see how my hands are shaking. Would you believe a man could be rattled like that?"

"Believe it? I should say I could! Look at the thing wabbling there in the shallows as though it were trying to move its flippers! Look at it, Ellis; see how it seems to wriggle and paddle – "

The words froze on his lips; the immense creature was moving; the scaled claws churned the shallows; a spasm shook the head; the jaws gaped.

"Help!" said a very sweet and frightened voice.

Ellis got hold of one claw, Jones the other, almost before they comprehended – certainly before, deep in the scaly creature's maw, they discovered the frightened but lovely features of the grey-eyed girl who had snap-shot them.

"Please pull," she said; "I can't swim in this!"

Almost hysterically they soothed her as they tugged and steered the thing into the flooded forest.

"Mr. Ellis – please —please don't pull quite so hard," she called out.

"Oh, did I hurt you?" he cried so tenderly that, even in the shock of emotions, Jones was ashamed of him.

"No, you don't hurt me, Mr. Ellis; I'm all right inside here, but I – I – you must not pull this papier-mâché dragon to pieces – "

"What do I care for the dragon if you are in danger?" cried Ellis, excitedly.

But it was a frightened and vexed voice that answered almost tearfully: "If you pull too hard on the pasteboard legs something dreadful may happen. I – this dragon is – is about the only clothing I have on!"

Ellis dropped the flipper, seized it again, and gazed into the scared eyes of Jones.

"For Heaven's sake, go easy," he hissed, "or the thing will come apart!"

Jones, in a cold perspiration, stood knee-deep in the flood, not daring to touch the flipper again.

"You help here," he whispered, hoarsely. "If she stands up, now, you can support her to camp, can't you?"

Ellis bent over and looked into the gaping jaws of Fafnir the Dragon.

"Miss Sandys," he said seriously, "do you think you could get on your hind – on your feet?"

The legs of the monster splashed, groping for the bottom; Ellis passed his arm around the scaly body; Fafnir arose, rather wabbly, and took one dripping step forward.

"I fancy we can manage it now, Jones," said Ellis, cheerfully, turning around; but Jones did not answer; he was running away, dashing and splashing down the flooded forest. Beyond, rocking wildly in a gilded boat, sat two people and a placid swan.

"Good Lord!" faltered Ellis, as the dragon turned with a little shriek. "Is the whole Summer School being washed away?"

"No," she said excitedly, "but the dam broke. Helen and Professor Rawson tried to save the swan-boat – we were giving tableaux from "Lohengrin" and "The Rheingold" – and – oh! oh! oh! such a torrent came! Helen – there she is in armour – Helen tried to paddle the boat, but the swans pulled the other way, and they flapped so wildly that Helen called for help. Then one of the Rhine-maidens – Professor Rawson – waded in and got aboard, but the paddle broke and they were adrift. Then one of those horrid swans got loose, and everybody screamed, and the water rose higher and higher, and nobody helped anybody, so, so – as I swim well, I jumped in without waiting to undress – you see I had been acting the dragon, Fafnir, and I went in just as I was; but the papier-mâché dragon kept turning turtle with me, and first I knew I was being spun around like a top."

There was a silence; they stood watching Jones scrambling after the swan-boat, which had come to grief in shallow water. Professor Rawson, the Rhine-maiden, gave one raucous and perfunctory shriek as Jones floundered alongside – for the garb of the normal Rhine-daughter is scanty, and Professor Rawson's costume, as well as her maidenly physique, was almost anything except redundant.

As for Helen, sometime known as brown-eyes, she rose to her slim height, all glittering in tin armour, and gave Jones a smile of heavenly gratitude that shot him through and through his Norfolk jacket.

"Don't look!" said Professor Rawson, in a voice which, between the emotions of recent terror and present bashfulness, had dwindled to a squeak. "Don't look; I'm going to jump." And jump she did, taking to the water with a trifle less grace than the ordinary Rhine-maiden.

There was a spattering splash, a smothered squawk which may have been emitted by the swan, and the next moment Professor Rawson was churning toward dry land, her wreath of artificial seaweed over one eye, her spectacles glittering amid her dank tresses.

Jones looked up at brown-eyes balancing in the bow of the painted boat.

"I can get you ashore quite dry – if you don't mind," he said.

She considered the water; she considered Jones; she looked carefully at the wallowing Rhine-daughter.

"Are you sure you can?" she asked.

"Perfectly certain," breathed Jones.

"I am rather heavy – "

The infatuated man laughed.

"Well, then, I'll carry the swan," she said calmly; and, seizing that dignified and astonished bird, she walked demurely off the prow of the gaudy boat into the arms of Jones.

To Ellis and the grey-eyed dragon, and to Professor Rawson, who had crawled to a dry spot on the ridge, there was a dreadful fascination in watching that swaying pyramid of Jones, Lohengrin, and swan tottering landward, knee-deep through the flood. The pyramid swayed dangerously at times; but the girl in the tin armour clasped Jones around the neck and clung to the off leg of the swan, and Jones staggered on, half-strangled by the arm and buffeted by the flapping bird, until his oozing shoes struck dry land.

"Hurrah!" cried Ellis, his enthusiasm breaking out after an agonizing moment of suspense; and Miss[Pg 191][Pg 192] Sandys, forgetting her plight, waved her lizard claws and hailed rescuer and rescued with a clear-voiced cheer as they came up excited and breathless, hustling before them the outraged swan, who waddled furiously forward, craning its neck and snapping.

"What is that?" muttered Jones aside to Ellis as the dragon and Lohengrin embraced hysterically. He glanced toward the Rhine-maiden, who was hiding behind a tree.

"Rhine wine with the cork pulled," replied Ellis, gravely. "Go up to camp and get her your poncho. I'll do what I can to make things comfortable in camp."

The girl in armour was saying, "You poor, brave dear! How perfectly splendid it was of you to plunge into the flood with all that pasteboard dragon-skin tied to you – like Horatius at the bridge. Molly, I'm simply overcome at your bravery!"

And all the while she was saying this, Molly Sandys was saying: "Helen, how did you ever dare to try to save the boat, with those horrid swans flapping and nipping at you every second! It was the most courageous thing I ever heard of, and I simply revere you, Helen Gay!"

Jones, returning from camp with his poncho, said: "There's a jolly fire in camp and plenty of provisions;" and sidled toward the tree behind which Professor Rawson was attempting to prevent several yards of cheese cloth from adhering too closely to her outline.

"Go away!" said that spinster, severely, peering out at him with a visage terminating in a length of swan-like neck which might have been attractive if feathered.

"I'm only bringing you a poncho," said Jones, blushing.

Ellis heard a smothered giggle behind him, but when he turned Molly Sandys had shrunk into her dragon-skin, and Helen Gay had lowered the vizor of her helmet.

"I think we had better go to the camp-fire," he said gravely. "It's only a step."

"We think so, too," they said. "Thank you for asking us, Mr. Ellis."

So Ellis led the way; after him slopped the dragon, its scaled tail dragging sticks and dead leaves in its wake; next waddled the swan, perforce, prodded forward by the brown-eyed maid in her tin armor. Professor Rawson, mercifully disguised in a rubber poncho, under which her thin shins twinkled, came in the rear, gallantly conducted by Jones in oozing shoes.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SIMPLEST SOLUTION OF AN ANCIENT PROBLEM

In the silence befitting such an extraordinary occasion the company formed a circle about the camp-fire.

Presently Professor Rawson looked sharply at the damp dragon. "Child!" she exclaimed, "you ought to take that off this instant!"

"But – but I haven't very much on," protested Molly Sandys with a shiver. "I'm only dressed as a – a page."

"It can't be helped," retorted the professor with decision; "that dragon is nothing but soaking pulp except where the tail is on fire!"

Ellis hastily set his foot on the sparks, just as Molly Sandys jumped. There was a tearing, ripping sound, a stifled scream, and three-quarters of a page in blue satin and lisle thread, wearing the head and shoulders of a dragon, shrank down behind Professor Rawson's poncho-draped figure.

"Here's my poncho," cried Ellis, hastily; "I am awfully sorry I ripped your gown – I mean your pasteboard tail – but you switched it into the fire and it was burning."

"Have you something for me?" inquired Miss Gay, coloring, but calm; "I'm not very comfortable, either."

Jones's enraptured eyes lingered on the slim shape in mail; he hated to do it, but he brought a Navajo blanket and draped in it the most distractingly pretty figure his rather nearsighted eyes had ever encountered.

"There," explained Ellis, courteously, "is the shanty. I've hung a blanket over it. Jones and I will sleep here by the fire."

"Sleep!" faltered Molly Sandys. "I think we ought to be starting – "

"The forests are flooded; we can't get you back to the Summer School to-night," said Ellis.

Professor Rawson shuddered. "Do you mean that we are cut off from civilization entirely?" she asked.

"Look!" replied Ellis.

The ridge on which the camp lay had become an island; below it roared a spreading flood under a column of mist and spray; all about them the water soused and washed through the forest; below them from the forks came the pounding thunder of the falls.

"There's nothing to be alarmed at, of course," he said, looking at Molly Sandys.

The grey eyes looked back into his. "Isn't there, really?" she asked.

"Isn't there?" questioned Miss Gray's brown eyes of Jones's pleasant, nearsighted ones.

"No," signalled the orbs of Jones through his mud-spattered eyeglasses.

"I'm hungry," observed Professor Rawson in a patient but plaintive voice, like the note of a widowed guinea-hen.

So they all sat down on the soft pine-needles, while Ellis began his culinary sleight-of-hand; and in due time trout were frying merrily, bacon sputtered, ash-cakes and coffee exhaled agreeable odors, and mounds of diaphanous flapjacks tottered in hot and steaming fragrance on either flank.

There were but two plates; Jones constructed bark platters for Professor Rawson, Ellis and himself; Helen Gay shared knife and fork with Jones; Molly Sandys condescended to do the same for Ellis; Professor Rawson had a set of those articles to herself.

And there, in the pleasant glow of the fire, Molly Sandys, cross-legged beside Ellis, drank out of his tin cup and ate his flapjacks; and Helen Gay said shyly that never had she tasted such a banquet as this forest fare washed down with bumpers of icy, aromatic spring water. As for Professor Rawson, she lifted the hem of her poncho and discreetly dried that portion of the Rhine-maiden's clothing which needed it; and while she sizzled contentedly, she ate flapjack on flapjack, and trout after trout, until merriment grew within her and she laughed when the younger people laughed, and felt a delightful thrill of recklessness tingling the soles of her stockings. And why not?

"It's a very simple matter, after all," declared Jones; "it's nothing but a state of mind. I thought I was leading a simple life before I came here, but I wasn't. Why? Merely because I was not in a state of mind. But" – and here he looked full at Helen Gay – "but no sooner had I begun to appreciate the charm of the forest" – she blushed vividly "no sooner had I realised what these awful solitudes might contain, than, instantly, I found myself in a state of mind. Then, and then only, I understood what heavenly perfection might be included in that frayed and frazzled phrase, 'The Simple Life.'"

"I understood it long ago," said Ellis, dreamily.

"Did you?" asked Molly Sandys.

"Yes – long ago – about six hours ago" – he lowered his voice, for Molly Sandys had turned her head away from the firelight toward the cooler shadow of the forest.

"What happened," she asked, carelessly, "six hours ago?"

"I first saw you."

"No," she said calmly; "I first saw you and took your picture!" She spoke coolly enough, but her color was bright.

"Ah, but before that shutter clicked, convicting me of a misdemeanor, your picture had found a place – "

"Mr. Ellis!"

"Please let me – "

"No!"

"Please – "

A silence.

"Then you must speak lower," she said, "and pretend to be watching the stream."

Professor Rawson gleefully scraped her plate and snuggled up in her poncho. She was very happy. When she could eat no more she asked Jones what his theory might be concerning Wagner's influence on Richard Strauss, and Jones said he liked waltzes, but didn't know that the man who wrote The Simple Life had anything to do with that sort of thing. And Professor Rawson laughed and laughed, and quoted a Greek proverb; and presently arose and went into the shanty, dropping the blanket behind her.