Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches Part 2

The clouds, however, soon drifted away, the sun appeared as bright and beautiful as summer--almost persuading us to take off our coats.

Disheartened at the coquettish nature of the weather, we gave it up.

Not a bird to be seen--we took our bottles, and throwing our heads back on our shoulders, tried to look through the bottoms of them--they in turn gave out a gurgling sound of complaining emptiness.

We fell into a refres.h.i.+ng sleep; the hours pa.s.sed away unheeded, until we were awakened by the rustling of the reeds bending in the breeze, whispering of the coveted blow. Heavy black clouds were gathering, and soon old Boreas came cracking out from the right point of the compa.s.s.

This aroused the ducks in the open water to flight, and they came in, seeking the shelter of the sh.o.r.e--a fatal protection. Charles, the original explorer of the Sound as a sporting place, and founder of the "Raymond Hall" Club, did some good work--taking them, right and left, with each barrel, and dropping single blue-winged teal with unerring aim.

Theodoric is the most amiable, patient friend imaginable; can conduct a bank equal to any man in New York; and we all esteem him very much.

He labors under the mild hallucination, however, that he must be constantly doing something, and nearly all this is expended in cleaning his gun. Morning and evening it undergoes this polis.h.i.+ng process, and on Sunday he rests himself by giving it another wipe.

"It's a little leaded, you know, George," he remarks, and at it he goes. Human nature may stand this, but guns won't.

On one occasion when he tried to jam a cleaning rod through it, larger than the bore, it refused to go.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I KNEW IT WOULD COME OUT."]

"You won't, won't you," said he, as he raised it aloft and brought it down with all his might on the floor. It went in; but the gun bulged just as any good gun will do, and the eruption yet stands on the barrel, a monument of his determination.

Steve was called in, and a pulling match ensued. Steve had hold of the gun and Thee firmly clenched the rod. The gun could stand the combined strength of two powerful men no better than it could resist the jamming of the rod, and they parted. Steve went backwards over Mary Rogers, a dog, and took a moist seat in a tub of warm water, which had been prepared for cleaning guns. Steve said the water was hot, while our fastidious friend looked bland, gathered himself up from out a pile of empty sh.e.l.ls, mixed with sc.r.a.ps of red flannel and oil-rags, and said "I knew it would come out."

Josephus, the great Canarsie fisherman, is not an enthusiast about gunning, and left his sporting traps at home. He only went down for a few days' fis.h.i.+ng, and was prepared to take large numbers of bluefish.

Armed with a stout line and squid, he invited us over to see him do it. The ocean was rough, and came rolling up in long heavy swells; the fish were far out at sea. After getting his line arranged to his satisfaction, he took firm hold of it a few feet above the squid; we all looked admiringly on. By a series of dexterous gyrations about his head he sent it flying a hundred feet out into the water--it was beautifully done. Skillfully he hauled it in, hand over hand. The squid followed, as bright and s.h.i.+ning as when he had cast it out, but no fish. He made ready again, and with that nonchalant air of a man who feels perfectly sure that he can do just what he wants to, he gave it that preparatory whirling motion again, and away it went.

The best efforts will fail sometimes, and the most skillful are often doomed to disappointment--it was so in this case. The hook did not go for a blue fish, but fastened itself in the leg of a too confiding dog that stood looking curiously on, just as those canine friends of man so often do. The misguided animal went howling away, and had to be captured and the hook extracted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A QUEER FISH.]

He felt sure he could do it, however, and he tried it again, with as much preparation as before, and twice the determination; he missed the sea altogether, and the barbed instrument buried itself into that portion of male wearing apparel that comes in contact with the chair, when one indulges in that agreeable and refres.h.i.+ng posture of sitting down: they will need repairing.

Paullo is a good shot--with a knife and fork--and can look on at others who are doing hard work, with more nerve and complacency than any man who visits the Sound. He had been persuaded to go to a certain pond where ducks were abundant and easy to shoot. This was good; he put his decoys out and waited. A bird was coming down--it went among the stool. It was a beautiful specimen of the feathered tribe, with a bill like a crow. In some places it is known as a crow duck, but the proper local name here is "blue-peter." Blue-peter seemed to have no fear, but sported around and among the dummies, and tossed the bright drops of water from its s.h.i.+ning plumage. With the true feelings of a sportsman, Paullo wanted the bird to have a fair chance, and so tossed bunches of marsh gra.s.s at it--it would not fly. Picking up his gun he fired, wounding several decoys.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTLE WITH BLUE-PETER.]

The battle raged all that day and the next, blue-peter diving at the flash of the gun, and defiantly coming up and wailing for it to be reloaded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STRUCK IT WITH A CLUB.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONQUEROR.]

On the morning of the third day, our Nimrod was late. When he arrived, the duck was there patiently waiting to renew the fight, and was busily engaged picking the shot from the bottom of the pond, tossing it up and catching it in its bill as it came down. With such a gunner and such game, this might last a week. Strategy was resorted to, and when blue-peter went under at the flash, our hero waded out and struck it with a club as it came to the surface. The victory was not to the duck. Late that evening Steve and Jacob were seen carrying from the landing to the house the dead B. P., strung by the neck to the centre of a ten-foot pole, one pall-bearer at each end, and the conqueror leading the procession. On his arrival he was greeted by his fellow members with that distinguished consideration which our people so freely accord to actors of great deeds.

We remained on the beach four weeks, and had many pleasant days. We have now returned to our respective homes, wearied in body but refreshed in mind, well pleased with our trip, with each other, and with a decided inclination for a repet.i.tion of the jaunt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOE CREED.]

We cannot leave the subject without paying tribute to our friend and companion, Joe Creed. Joe is a large resolute dog of an amiable disposition, a dirty yellow coat, and a small bright eye of the same color. He has a keen sense of duty, but never leaves the blind until he sees the game falling, when he proceeds to bring it in. He was undoubtedly born for it. If two birds fall, with almost human intelligence he gets both. Taking the farthest first, stopping on his way in to pick up the other, he comes in with one swinging on each side of his great s.h.a.ggy head. They tell of him that he has been caught stealing sheep. We do not believe it--it is a mistake; he may have been in bad company, that is all. Joe was the property of a gentleman on Long Island, and we trusted his exploits in the North might vie with his achievements in the South.

"When some proud son of man returns to earth, Unknown to glory but upheld by birth, The sculptor's art exhausts the pomp of woe, And storied urns record who rests below; When all is done, upon the tomb is seen, Not what he was, but what he should have been; But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend; Whose heart is still his master's own, Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonored falls."

But Joe came to an untimely end; he was found shot to death. The following was placed over his grave:

"Near this spot Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed beauty without vanity, Strength without insolence, Courage without ferocity, And all the virtues of man without his vices."

_Born in North Carolina, March, 1875._ _Died at Jamaica, Long Island, March, 1876._

THE HAUNTED ISLAND.

"A jolly place," said he, "in times of old, But something ails it now; the place is curst."

Far up the Potomac, in the shadow of the mountains, among the hundreds of small islands which dot the river in that picturesque region, is one which has the reputation of being haunted. It is but a few miles above the ferry at the Point of Rocks, and is unknown to the thousands of persons who are whirled past there every year in the railroad trains.

This island is about fifty acres in extent, and is bordered with stately oaks to the very river's edge--whose waters lave their roots; its margin is paved with pearly pebbles, while the drooping branches of the trees, festooned with tangled vines of every hue, hang down in glorious cl.u.s.ters, toying with the blue stream which runs beneath. The scenery here is truly enchanting. Islands of every size seem floating in a charmed atmosphere; to pa.s.s one pleasing spot is but to disclose another more beautiful than the last. Some are covered with a forest growth; others cultivated, and waving in the summer breeze with yellow ripening grain; and yet others are overgrown with varied shrubs, filled with singing birds, and wild flowers breathing perfume.

I had been fis.h.i.+ng--had fished the river from the ferry up above and around the island. I was well satisfied with the day's sport, and was sitting in the stern of the boat in a sort of day dream. Jasper, my boatman, was gently guiding the little vessel to keep it from striking the many projecting rocks, as well as to prevent it from gliding too rapidly down the current. The river, changed to a dark green color, from the reflected foliage, ran now deep and sluggish against the huge boulders which stand defiantly up: now over shallow places, s.h.i.+ning with silver sand, fretting itself into white foam and flinging up jets of spray as if in anger. Waking from my reverie, I said:

"Jasper, that is a tranquil-looking island; to whom does it belong?"

Jasper shook his woolly head as if he were puzzled, and with the air of a person about to impart some awful secret, replied:

"Dat don't belong to n.o.body; dat's haunted."

"Haunted, Jasper! that is impossible. There are no such things as haunted places."

"Well, ma.s.sa," he replied, his faith still unshaken, "dat's what I was tole long, long years ago when I was a chile. Ye could hear noises comin' fum da like distress, and dem sounds war jined wid de talkin'

ob men."

"Very likely, but such sounds came from persons on the island, and they were living, just as you and I are."

"Dar war sounds," answered my boatman, "but da warn't no people on dat island. Dem sounds warn't ob dis world."

Such an opinion could not be weakened, for my dusky companion had been raised in this local superst.i.tion and it was as firmly rooted as was his faith in future forgiveness, and so I merely inquired:

"Is there a house there, Jasper?"

"Yes sar," said he, promptly, "da am a big squar one right in de middle ob it."

"We must go and see what it looks like, and try to learn where those sounds came from."

"S'cuse me, ma.s.sa, dis chile don't set he foot on dat lan', kase ef he do, he neber leabe it agin."

"Then if you are afraid," said I, tauntingly, "I will go alone; you wait until I return."

"Ma.s.sa," implored the frightened negro, "don't go; you neber k.u.m back; you is lost."