by Oliver Optic
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MAN IN THE CHIMNEY
"Lemme alone!" repeated the voice in the chimney several times beforeSomers could make up his mind as to the precise nature of the adventureupon which he had stumbled.
There was another man in the chimney; and this was the full extent of hisknowledge in regard to the being who had stepped into his darkened path.A succession of exciting questions presented themselves to his mind, allof which were intimately connected with the individual with whom, for themoment, his lot seemed to be cast. Was he friend, or foe? Yankee, rebel,or neutral? What was he in the chimney for? What business had he there?
Somers had some knowledge of a useful and otherwise rightly respectableclass of persons, known as chimney-sweeps, who pursue their dark trade upand down such places as that in which he was now burrowing; but thesweeps were a civilized institution, and he could hardly expect to findthem in this benighted section of the Ancient Dominion. He did not,therefore, waste a moment in the consideration of the question, whetherthe man beneath him was a chimney-sweep or not; for the supposition wastoo improbable even for the pages of a sensational novel.
The individual was in the chimney; and there seemed to be the boundary ofknowledge on the subject. If he was not crazy, he was there forconcealment; and, thus far the two occupants of the chimney were insympathy with each other. Why should the man wish to conceal himself? Washe a hated Yankee like himself, pursued and hunted down by the myrmidonsof Jeff Davis? Certainly, if he was a rebel, he had no business in thechimney. It was no place for rebels; they had no occasion to be there.
Of course, then, the man must be a Yankee, a fellow-sufferer with Somershimself, and therein entitled to the utmost consideration from him. But,if a Yankee, what Yankee? The species did not abound on this side of theriver; and he could not imagine who it was, unless it were one of his ownparty. Just then, induced by this train of reflection, came a tremendoussuggestion, which seemed more probable than anything he had beforethought of. Was it possible that the other denizen of the sooty fluecould be Captain de Banyan?
His fellow-prisoner had been taken into the house by his custodian; and,while the guard was looking the other way, perhaps he had suddenly poppedup the chimney, leaving the rebel soldier in charge of him to believethat he was in league with the powers of darkness, and had been spiritedaway by some diabolical imp.
In the range of improbable theories which the fertile mind of Somerssuggested to account for the phenomenon of the chimney, this seemed morereasonable than any of the others. The personage below him veryconsiderately dropped down a step or two, to enable our theorist todiscuss the question to his own satisfaction; albeit it did not take hima tithe of the time to do his thinking which it has taken his biographerto record it.
"Captain?" said he in a gentle whisper, as insinuating as the breath of asummer evening to a love-sick girl.
"I ain't a captain; I'm nothing but a private!" growled the other, whoseemed to be in very ill-humor.
Nothing but a private! It was not the captain then, after all. He hadhoped, and almost believed, it was. He had told his friend all about hisexperience in a chimney; and it seemed to him quite probable that thevaliant hero of Magenta and Solferino had remembered the affair, andattempted to try his own luck in a similar manner. It was not the voiceof the captain, nor were there any of his peculiarities of tone ormanner. If the other character had only said Balaclava, Alma, orPalestro, it would have been entirely satisfactory in any tone or in anymanner.
"What are you doing here?" demanded Somers in the same low voice, withcommendable desire to obtain further knowledge of the dark subjectbeneath him.
"I don't want nothin' of you; so yer kin let me alone. If yer don't letme alone, I'll be dog derned if I don't ketch hold of yer legs, and pullyer down chimley."
"Hush!" said Somers in warning tones. "They will hear you, if you speakso loud."
The man was a rebel, or at least a Southerner; and it passed our hero'scomprehension to determine what he was doing in such a place.
"Hush yerself!" snarled the disconcerted rebel. "What yer want o' me? Iain't done nothin' to you."
"I don't want anything of you; but, if you don't keep still, I'll drop astone on your head," replied Somers, irritated by the fellow's stupidity.
"Will yer?"
"Not if you keep still. Don't you see we are in the same box? I don'twant to be caught, any more than you do."
"Who be yer?" asked the man, a little mollified by this conciliatoryremark.
"Never mind who I am now. The soldiers are in the house looking for us;and, if you make a noise, they will hear you."
"What regiment do yer belong ter?" said the lower occupant of the chimneyin a whisper.
"Forty-first," replied Somers at a venture, willing to obtain theadvantage of the fellow's silence.
"Did yer run away?"
"No. Did you?"
"What yer in here fur, if yer didn't run away, then?" asked the deserterfrom the rebel army, which it was now sufficiently evident was hischaracter.
"Keep still!" replied Somers, regretting that he had not given adifferent answer.
"I know yer!" exclaimed the rebel, making a movement farther down thechimney, thereby detaching sundry pieces of stone and mortar, whichthundered down upon the hearth below with a din louder, as it seemed toSomers in his nervousness, than all the batteries of the Army of thePotomac. "Yer come to ketch me in a trap. Scotch me if I don't blow yerup so high 'twill take yer six months ter come down ag'in!"
"Keep still!" pleaded Somers, in despair at the unreasonableness of therebel. "The soldiers are after me; and, if they catch me, they will catchyou. 1 don't want to hurt you. If you will only keep still, I will helpyou out of the scrape."
"You go to Babylon! Yer can't fool me! What yer doin' in the chimley?"
If Somers could quietly have put a bullet through the fellow's head, andthus have punished him for the crime of desertion, he might have promotedhis own cause; but the bullet would not do its work without powder, andpowder was noisy; and therefore the remedy was as bad as the disorder, tosay nothing of assuming to himself the duty of a rebel provost-marshal.
"Yer can't fool me!" repeated the fellow, after Somers had tried for amoment the effect of silence upon him.
It was unnecessary to fool such an idiot; for Nature had effectually donethe job without human intervention. It was useless to waste words uponhim; and Somers crept cautiously up out of his reach, and out of hishearing, unless he yelled out his insane speeches. Every moment hestopped to listen for sounds within the house; but he could hear none,either because the pursuers had abandoned the search, or because thedouble thickness of wood and stone shut out the noise.
The rebel deserter, for a wonder, kept quiet when Somers retreated fromhim, evidently believing that actions spoke louder than words. From hislower position in the flue, he could look up into the light, and observethe movements of him whom he regarded as an enemy. He seemed to havediscretion enough to keep still, so long as no direct attack was madeupon him; and to be content to wait for a direct assault before heattempted to repel it; which was certainly more than Somers expected ofhim, after what had transpired.
Carefully and noiselessly our fugitive made his way to the top of thechimney for the purpose of ascertaining the position of the pursuers, aswell as to remove all ground of controversy with the intractabledeserter. On reaching the top, he heard the voice of the sergeant at thewindow, who had probably just reached this point in his investigations.
"How came this board knocked off?" demanded the sergeant, who had perhapsobserved some other indications of the advance of the fugitive in thisdirection.
"The wind blowed it off t'other day," promptly replied the farmer. "Yerdon't s'pose the feller went out that winder, do yer?"
"No; but I think he has been up here somewhere."
"Well, I hope yer'll find him; but I've showed yer into every hole andcorner in the house; and I tell yer he's five mile from this y
ere 'forenow."
The sergeant looked out of the window, looked up to the top of thechimney, and looked up to the ridge-pole of the house. He was no sailorhimself; and, if the thought had occurred to him that the Yankee hadpassed from this window to the roof of the house, he would have beenwilling to take his Bible oath that not a man in the Southern Confederacycould have accomplished such an impossible feat. He could not do ithimself, and consequently he believed that no other man could. Afterexamining the situation to his entire satisfaction, he retired from thewindow, and with a great many impolite and wicked oaths, aimed at Yankeesin general, and deserters in particular, he descended from the loft, andabandoned the search.
Somers was happy, and even forgave the deserter in the lower part of thechimney for his stupidity. He waited patiently for the troopers todepart--very patiently, now that the burden of the peril seemed to beover; for he had heard the conclusions of the sergeant at the window.From his present perch near the top of the chimney, he could hear some ofthe conversation in front of the house; and he even ventured to take alook at his enemies below. To his intense satisfaction, he saw them mounttheir horses: and he was not much disturbed by the unamiable reflectionswhich they cast upon him.
Captain de Banyan was with them; thus proving in the most conclusivemanner that the gentleman in the chimney was not this distinguishedindividual. Having lost one prisoner, they were particularly cautious inregard to the disposition of the other. The captain marched off in gloomydignity, with two cavalrymen before and two behind him. Somers caught aglance at his face as he turned the corner into the road. It was sadbeyond anything which he had ever observed in his countenance before, anda momentary twinge of conscience upbraided him for deserting a comrade insuch an hour; he might have waited till both of them could escapetogether. But the captain's record in the Third Tennessee assured himthat he had only done his duty; though he hoped his brilliant friendwould be able, if an opportunity was ever presented, to remove the stainwhich now rested on his name and fame.
With a feeling of intense relief, however much he commiserated themisfortunes of his comrade, Somers saw the little procession move up theroad which led to Richmond and a rebel dungeon. They disappeared; andwhile he was considering in what manner he should make his way down tothe creek, where he hoped to find a boat in which to leave thistreacherous soil, he heard a voice beneath him, and farther down than thelocality of the deserter.
"Yer kin come down now, Tom," said the farmer.
Though the name was his own, the invitation was evidently not intendedfor him; and he remained quietly on his perch, waiting for furtherdevelopments.
"Hev they all gone, dad?" asked the deserter.
"Yes; all gone. Yer kin come down now."
The renegade, then, was the son of the farmer; which accounted for theunwillingness of the latter to have the house searched by the soldiers;and, though Somers had a general contempt for deserters, he felt hisindebtedness to this interesting family for the service they hadunwittingly endeavored to render him.
Tom--Somers wanted to have his name changed then--Tom descended from hisposition in the chimney. It was an easy matter; for the kitchen was atthe other end of the house, and there had been no fire on this hearth formany a month.
"Dad," said this graceless son of a graceless sire.
"Go and wash yer face, Tom. Ye're blacker than Black Jack."
"Dad, there's another man up the chimley. We come near havin' a fight upthere. I told him what I would do; and he got skeered, and went up top."
"What d'yer mean, Tom?" demanded the patriarch.
Tom stated again, more explicitly than before, the subject matter of hisstartling communication.
"I reckon he's a Yank, dad; he talks like one, but says he b'longs to theForty-fust Virginny. I know he's a Yank. I kin smell one a mile off."
Somers was flattered; but he was not angry at the compliment, and calmlywaited for an invitation to join the family below.
"He's the feller that gin the soldiers the slip," added the father. "Thesergeant says he's a Yank; but t'other prisoner says he's a James Riverpilot."
"I know he's a Yank. He'd 'a' killed me if I hadn't skeered him off."
"I reckon he skeered you more'n you skeered him," added the head of thefamily, who appeared not to have a very high opinion of his son'scourage. "We'll smoke him out, Tom. Go'n git some pitch-wood and sichtruck."
Somers had a very strong objection to being smoked out, and he commenceda forward and downward movement in the direction of the assailing party.Fearing that some unworthy advantage might be taken of his lowerextremities before he could assume an attitude of defense, he drew hispistol, and placed himself a few feet above the fire-place. Tom returnedwith the fuel, and the old man ordered him to make a fire.
"One moment, if you please," said Somers. "I'll shoot the first man ofyou that attempts to make a fire there."
With an exclamation of terror, Tom retreated from the hearth; and Somers,improving the opportunity, leaped down from his perch. Stepping out fromthe great fire-place, he stood in the presence of the hopeful son andsire.