What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise

by George Cary Eggleston

  XXX

  DUNBAR TALKS AND SLEEPS

  IT required nearly all the afternoon for Tom and Cal to bring the deerto camp and dress it. In the meantime Larry, Dick and Dunbar—whoinsisted upon helping and did his part very cleverly—worked upon theshelter and the bunks inside. As a result the hut was ready for usethat night, though not quite finished in certain details.

  By Larry’s orders no further work was to be done after supper, butsupper was to be late, as there was the turkey to be roasted, and hewanted to roast it right. While he was preparing the bird for the fire,Dick was rigging up a vine contrivance to serve in lieu of a spit, andTom and Cal employed the time in bringing a bushel or two of Tom’s wildsweet potatoes to camp.

  The turkey was suspended by a long vine from the limb of a tree, sohung as to bring the fowl immediately in front of a fire built atthat point especially for this roasting. Dick had bethought him togo to the dory and bring away a square of sheet copper, carried forboat-repairing purposes. This he scoured to brightness with sand, afterwhich he fashioned it into a rude dripping pan, and placed it underthe turkey to catch the juices for basting purposes. There was nothingremotely resembling a spoon in the camp or the boat, but Dick was handywith his jackknife, and it did not take him long to whittle out along-handled wooden ladle with which to do the basting.

  By another device of his the roasting fowl was kept turning as fastor as slowly as might seem desirable. This device consisted of twovery slender vines attached to the supporting vine at a point severalfeet above the fire. One of the “twirlers,” as Dick called the slendervines, was wrapped several times around the supporting vine in onedirection and the other in the opposite way.

  Sitting on opposite sides of the fire, and each grasping a “twirler,”Dick and Larry kept the turkey turning first one way and then the other.

  While they were engaged in this, an abundant supply of Tom’s sweetpotatoes were roasting in the ashes.

  “Now we are at Quasi,” said Cal, just before the turkey was declared“done to a turn”—“at Quasi, the object of all our hopes, the goal ofour endeavors, and the guiding star of all our aspirations during aperiod of buffetings, trials and sore afflictions. We are securely atQuasi, and our residence—which prosaic people might call a hut, hovelor shanty, but which is to us a mansion—is practically finished. Itis only meet and fit, and in accordance with Homeric custom, that weshould celebrate the occasion and the toilsome achievements that havemade it possible, by all possible lavishness of feasting. All of whichmeans that I am going to make a pot of robust and red-hot coffee todrink with the turkey and ‘taters.’”

  It was a hungry company that sat down on the ground to eat that supper,and if there was anything lacking in the bill of fare, such appetitesas theirs did not permit the boys to find out the fact.

  “It is an inflexible rule of good housewives,” drawled Cal, when thedinner was done, “that the ‘things’ as they call the dishes, pots,pans, and the like, shall be cleared away and cleansed. So here goes,”gathering up the palmete leaves that had served for plates and tossingthem, together with the bones and fragments of the feast, upon thefire, where they quickly crackled into nothingness. “There aren’t anycooking utensils, and as for these exquisitely shaped agate iron cups,it is the function of each fellow to rinse the coffee out of his own.Oh, yes, there’s the coffee pot I forgot it, and by way of impressingthe enormity of my fault upon a dull intelligence I’ll clean thatmyself. A hurried scouring with some sand and water, followed by athorough rinsing, ought to do the business finely.”

  “I say, Cal,” said Dick, “I wish you would remember that this is youroff night.”

  “I confess I don’t understand. Do you mean that I shall leave thecoffee pot for some other member of the company to scour?”

  “No. I mean this is your off night for word-slinging. The professor isgoing to tell us some things and we want to hear him. So, ‘dry up.’”

  “I bow my head in contriteness and deep humiliation. You have thefloor, Professor.”

  “May I ask you young gentlemen not to call me ‘professor’?” Dunbarasked very earnestly.

  “Why, of course, we will do as you like about that,” answered Larry;“we have been calling you ‘professor’ merely out of respect, and youtold us you were or had been a professor in a college.”

  “Yes, I know, and I thank you for your impulse of courtesy. I used theword descriptively when I told you I had been a ‘professor’ of NaturalHistory. Used in that way it is inoffensive enough, but when employedas a title—well, you know every tight-rope walker and every trapezeperformer calls himself ‘professor.’”

  “Well, you must at least have a doctorate of some kind,” said Dick,“and so you are entitled to be addressed as ‘Dr. Dunbar.’”

  “No, not at all. Of course a number of colleges have offered me baublesof that cheap sort—asking to make me ‘LL.D.,’ or ‘Ph. D.,’ or ‘L. H.D.,’ or some other sham sort of a doctor, but I have always refusedupon principle. I hate shams, and as to these things, they seem tome to work a grievous injustice. No man ought to be called ‘Doctor’unless he has earned the degree by a prescribed course of study andexaminations. Honorary degrees are an affront to the men who havewon real degrees by years of hard study. With two or three hundredcolleges in this country, each scattering honorary degrees around andmultiplying them every year, all degrees have lost something of theirvalue and significance.”

  “How shall we address you then?” asked Larry.

  “Simply as ‘Mr. Dunbar.’ The President of the United States is entitledto no other address than ‘Mr. President.’ In a republic certainly‘Mr.’ ought to be title enough for any man. Call me ‘Mr. Dunbar,’please.”

  “Well, now, Mr. Dunbar, won’t you go on and tell us what you promised?”

  “What was it? I have quite forgotten.”

  “Why, you said you had been led to suspect that your fish—the kindthat takes wing and flies away into the bushes—had a sense of taste.Did you mean to imply that fishes generally have no such sense?”

  “Yes, certainly. There are very few fishes that have capacity of taste.They have no need of it, as they bolt their food whole, and usuallyalive. There are curious exceptions, and—”

  “But, Mr. Dunbar,” interrupted Tom, “is it only because they swallowtheir food whole that you think they have no sense of taste? Is thereany more certain way of finding out?”

  “Yes, of course. The sense of taste is located in certain nerves,called for that reason ‘gustatory nerves,’ or ‘taste goblets.’ Now,as the fishes generally have no gustatory nerves or taste goblets, weknow positively that they do not and cannot taste their food. That isdefinite; but the other reason I gave is sufficient in itself to settlethe matter. The gustatory nerves cannot taste any substance until itis partially dissolved and brought into contact with them in itsdissolved state. You can test that for yourself by placing a dry lumpof sugar in your mouth. Until the saliva begins to dissolve it you canno more recognize any taste in it than in a similar lump of marble.”

  “But why do they eat so voraciously then? What pleasure do they find init?” asked Dick.

  “Chiefly the pleasure of distending the stomach, but there is alsothe natural craving of every living organism for sustenance, withoutwhich it must suffer and die. That craving for sustenance is ordinarilysatisfied only by eating, but it may be satisfied in other ways.Sometimes a man cannot swallow because of an obstruction in the canalby which food reaches the stomach. In such cases the surgeons insert atube through the walls of the body and introduce food directly into thestomach. That satisfies the desire for sustenance, though the patienthas not tasted anything. When a fish takes a run and jump at a minnowand swallows it whole at a gulp, he is doing for himself much the samething that the surgeon does for his patient.”

  “But, Mr. Dunbar,” Tom asked, “why is it then that the same speciesof fish will take a particular kind of bait at one time of year andwon’t touch it at other times?
In the very early spring I’ve caughtlots of perch on worms, while a little later they would take nothingbut live bait, and still later, when they were feeding on insects onthe surface, I’ve known them to nose even live bait out of their way,refusing to take anything but the insects. If they don’t taste theirfood, why do they behave in that way?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know,” Dunbar answered. “I have formed manyconjectures on the subject, but all of them are unsatisfactory. Perhapssomebody will solve the riddle some day, but at present I confess Ican’t answer it.”

  Dunbar stopped as if he meant to say no more, and Tom became apologetic.

  “Won’t you please go on, Mr. Dunbar? I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “Oh, but you must interrupt. If you don’t interpose with questions,how am I to know whether I’ve made my meaning clear or not? And how amI to know what else you wish to hear? No, no, no. Don’t withhold anyquestion that comes into your mind, or I shall feel that I’m making abore of myself by talking too much.”

  “You spoke,” said Dick, “of certain fishes that are exceptions to therule.”

  “Oh, yes; thank you. I meant to come back to that but forgot it. Thechief exception I know of is the bullhead, a small species of catfishthat abounds in northern waters, particularly in the Adirondack lakes.The bullhead has gustatory nerves all over him. He can taste with histail, or his side, or his head, as well as with his mouth. Of coursethere’s a good reason for the difference.”

  “I suppose so, but I can’t imagine what it is,” said Larry.

  “Neither can I,” echoed Tom and Dick. Cal continued the silence he hadnot broken by a word since Dunbar had begun. Observing the fact, Dickwas troubled lest his playful suppression of Cal at the beginning hadwounded him. So, rising, he went over to Cal’s side, passed his armaround him in warm friendly fashion, and said under his breath:

  “Did you take me seriously, Cal? Are you hurt or offended?”

  “No, you sympathetically sublimated idiot, of course not. It is onlythat I want to hear all I can of Mr. Dunbar’s talk. You know I’vealways been interested in fish—even when they refuse to take bait.Hush. He’s about to begin again.”

  “Oh, it is obvious enough when you think about it,” said Dunbar. “Itis a fundamental law of nature that every living thing, animal orvegetable, shall tend to develop whatever organs or functions it hasneed of, for defense against enemies or for securing the food it needs.You see that everywhere, in the coloring of animals and in a thousandother ways. The upper side of a flounder is exactly the color of thesand on which he lies. That is to prevent the shark and other enemiesfrom seeing him and eating him up. But his under side, which cannot beseen at all by his enemies, is white, because there is no need of colorin it. I could give you a hundred illustrations, but there is no need.Your own daily observation will supply them.”

  Again Dunbar paused, as if his mind had wandered far away and wasoccupying itself with other subjects. After waiting for a minute or twoCal ventured to jog his memory:

  “As we are not familiar with the bullhead—we who live down South—wedon’t quite see the application of what you’ve been saying, Mr. Dunbar.Would you mind explaining?”

  “Oh, certainly not,” quickly answered the man of science, rousinghimself as if from sleep. “I was saying—it’s very ridiculous, but I’vequite forgotten what I was saying. Tell me.”

  “You were telling us about the bullhead’s possession—”

  “Oh, yes, I remember now. You see fishes generally hunt their preyby sight, in the clear upper water and in broad daylight. They quitfeeding as soon as it becomes too dark to see the minnows or otherthings they want to eat. As they hunt only by sight, they have no needof the senses of smell and taste, and so those senses are not developedin them. With the bullhead the thing is exactly turned around. He neverswims or feeds in the upper waters. He lives always on or very nearthe bottom of comparatively deep water, in thick growths of grass,where sight would be of little use to him for want of light. He feedsalmost entirely at night, so that those who fish for him rarely begintheir sport before the dusk falls. In such conditions Mr. Bullheadfinds it exceedingly convenient to be able to taste anything he mayhappen to touch in his gropings. So with him the sense of taste isthe food-finding sense, and in the long ages since his species cameinto being that sense has been developed out of all proportion tothe others. He has very little feeling and his nervous system is sorudimentary that if you leave him in a pail without water and packed inwith a hundred others of his species, he seems to find very little todistress him in the experience. You may keep him in the waterless pailfor twenty-four hours or more, and yet if you put him back into thepond or lake he will swim away as unconcernedly as if nothing out ofthe ordinary had happened. But then all species of fish are among thevery lowest forms of vertebrate creatures, so that they feel neitherpain nor pleasure at all keenly.”

  Suddenly Dunbar ceased speaking for a minute. Then he seemed to speakwith some effort, saying:

  “There are many other things I could tell you about fish, and if you’reinterested, I’ll do so at another time. I’m very sleepy now. May I passthe night here?”

  “Certainly. I’ll bring you some moss—”

  “It isn’t at all necessary,” he answered, as he threw himself flat uponthe earth and fell instantly into a slumber so profound that it lasteduntil Cal called him to breakfast next morning.