What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise

by George Cary Eggleston

  XV

  CAL GATHERS THE MANNA

  WHEN Cal appeared at the head of his dusky little caravan the othersadvanced to meet him and bombard him with a rapid fire of questionsas to where he had been, and what the negro boys were carrying, andwhere he had discovered the source of supply, and whatever else theircuriosity suggested.

  Instead of replying at once he asked.

  “Did you find the water, Tom?”

  “Yes, easily, and it isn’t brackish at all.”

  “That’s excellent, and now let us eat, drink and be merry. I couldn’tgive you that injunction till I learned that we had the water for thedrinking part.”

  Without waiting for him to finish his sentence the others busiedthemselves in examining what the negroes had brought. As they did so,Cal catalogued the supplies orally with comments:

  “That bag contains a half bushel of rice—enough to serve us asa breadstuff for a long time to come, as we require only threeteacupfuls—measured by guess—for a meal; the bag by the side of it isbadly out at elbows and knees, but it holds a fine supply of new sweetpotatoes which will help the endurance of the rice. What’s that? Oh,that’s a little okra, and the red-turbaned old darky woman who soldit to me carefully explained how to cook the mucilaginous vegetable.As she delivered her instructions in the language of the Upper Congo,I cannot say that my conception of the way in which okra should beprepared for the table is especially clear, but we’ll find some way outof that difficulty. Yes, the big bag on the right contains a few dozenears of green corn, and the one next to it is full of well-ripenedtomatoes, smooth of surface, shapely of contour and tempting tothe appetite. Finally, we have here half a dozen cantaloupes, or‘mush millions,’ as the colored youth who supplied them called hismerchandise. Now scamper, you little vagabonds. I’ve paid you once fortoting the things and it is a matter of principle with me never to paytwice for a single service.”

  “Where on earth, Cal, did you find all these things?” asked Larry, theothers looking the same question out of their eyes as it were.

  “I found them in the garden patches where they were grown,” he replied.“That’s what I went out to do. They are the ‘manna,’ the finding ofwhich somewhere in this neighborhood I foreshadowed in answer to yourquerulous predictions of an exclusively meat diet for some days tocome.”

  As he spoke, Cal was throwing sweet potatoes into the fire and coveringthem with red-hot ashes with glowing coals on top.

  “You’re a most unsatisfactory fellow, Cal,” said Dick. “Why don’t youtell us where you got the provender and how you happened to find sorich a source of supply. Anybody else would be eager to talk about suchan exploit.”

  “I’ll tell you,” Cal answered, “as soon as I get the potato roastproperly going. I’m hungry. Suppose you cut some cantaloupes for us toeat while the potatoes are cooking.”

  Not until he had half a melon in hand did Cal begin.

  “There’s one of the finest rice plantations on all this coast abouta mile above here. Or rather, the plantation house is there. As forthe plantation itself, we’re sitting on it now. It belongs to ColonelHuguenin, and of course the house is closed in summer.”

  “Why?” interrupted Dick, whose thirst for information concerningsouthern customs was insatiable.

  “Do you really want me to interrupt my story of ‘How Cal Went Foraging’in order to answer your interjected inquiry? If I must talk it’s allone to me what I talk about. So make your choice.”

  “Go on and tell us of the foraging. The other thing can wait.”

  “Well, then; I happened to know of this plantation. I’ve bivouackedon the shores of this bay before, and when I turned the _Hunkydory’s_nose in this direction I was impelled by an intelligent purpose. I hadalluring visions of the things I could buy from the negroes up there atthe quarters.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us then instead of getting off all that rigmaroleabout rowing against the tide and the rest of it?” asked Larry, notwith irritation, but with a laugh, for the cantaloupe he was eating andthe smell of the sweet potatoes roasting in the ashes had put him andthe others into an entirely peaceful and contented frame of mind.

  “I never like to raise hopes,” answered Cal, “that I cannot certainlyfulfill. Performance is better than promises—as much better as thesupper we are about to eat is better than a printed bill of fare.Wonder how the potatoes are coming on?”

  With that he dug one of the yams out of the ashes, examined it, and putit back, saying:

  “Five or six minutes more will do the business. I picked out thesmallest ones on purpose to hurry supper. Let’s set the table. Tom, ifyour kettle of water is boiling, suppose you shuck some corn and plungeit in it. It must boil from five to six minutes—just long enough toget it thoroughly hot through. If it boils longer the sweetness allgoes out of it. Dick, won’t you wash some of the tomatoes while Larryand I arrange the dishes?”

  Arranging the dishes consisted in cutting a number of broad palmeteleaves, some to hold the supplies of food and others to serve as plates.

  “I’m sorry I cannot offer you young gentlemen some fresh butter foryour corn and potatoes,” said Cal, as they sat down to supper, “but tobe perfectly candid with you, our cows seem to have deserted us and wehaven’t churned for several days past. After all, the corn and potatoeswill be very palatable with a little salt sprinkled upon them, and wehave plenty of salt. Don’t hesitate to help yourselves freely to it.”

  “To my mind,” said Dick, “this is as good a supper as I ever ate.”

  “That’s because of our sharp appetites,” answered Larry. “We’re hungryenough to relish anything.”

  “Appetite helps, of course,” said Dick, thoughtfully; “but so doescontrast. An hour ago we had all made up our minds to content ourselvesfor many meals to come with the exclusive diet of fish and game, whichhas been our lot for many meals past. To find ourselves eating a supperlike this instead is like waking from a bad dream and finding it only anightmare.”

  “It would be better still not to have the nightmare,” answered Cal,speaking more seriously than he usually did. “When you have a nightmareit is usually your own fault, and pessimism is always so. You fellowswere pessimistic over the prospect of a supper you could not enjoy. Asyou have a supper that you can enjoy, the suffering you inflicted uponyourselves was wholly needless.”

  “Yes, I know,” interposed Tom; “but we couldn’t know that you weregoing to get all these good things for us.”

  “No, of course not. But if you hadn’t allowed your pessimisticforebodings to make you unhappy, you needn’t have been unhappy atall. If things had turned out as you expected you’d have been unhappytwice—once in lamenting your lot and once in suffering it. As itis, you’ve been needlessly unhappy once and unexpectedly happy once,instead of being happy all the while. I tell you optimism is the onlytrue philosophy.”

  “I suppose it is,” Dick admitted, “but it leads to disappointment veryoften.”

  “Of course. But in that case you suffer the ill, whatever it is, onlyonce; while the pessimist suffers it both before it befalls and when itcomes. That involves a sheer waste of the power of endurance.”

  Larry had forgotten to eat while his brother delivered this littlediscourse, for he had never heard Cal talk in so serious a fashion.Indeed, he had come to think of his brother as a trifler who couldnever be persuaded to seriousness.

  “Where on earth did you get that thought, Cal?” he asked, when Calceased to speak.

  “It is perfectly sound, isn’t it?” was the boy’s reply.

  “I think it is. But where did you get it?”

  “If it is sound, it doesn’t matter where I got it, or how. But tosatisfy your curiosity, I’ll tell you that I thought it out down herein the woods when I was a runaway. I was so often in trouble as to whatwas going to happen, and it so often happened that it didn’t happenafter all, that I got to wondering one day what was the use of worryingabout things that might never happen. I was alone in
the woods, youknow, and I had plenty of time to think. So little by little I thoughtout the optimistic philosophy and adopted it as the rule of my life.Of course I could not formulate it then as I do now. I didn’t knowwhat the words ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’ meant, but my mind got agood grasp upon the ideas underlying them. There! My sermon is done.I have only to announce that there will be no more preaching at thiscamp-meeting. I’m going to take a look at your well, Tom, and if thewater is as good as you say, I’m going to empty the rain water out ofthe kegs and refill them. Rain water, you know, goes bad a good dealsooner than other water—especially sand-filtered water.”

  “I reckon Cal is right, Dick,” said Tom, when their companion was outof earshot.

  “Yes, of course he is, but did you ever stub your toe? It’s a littlebit hard to be optimistic on occasions like that.”

  “I reckon that’s hardly what Cal meant—”

  “Of course it isn’t. I was jesting.”