What Happened at Quasi: The Story of a Carolina Cruise

by George Cary Eggleston

  XXXIII

  A GREAT CATASTROPHE

  DURING the next fortnight or so the association between Dunbar andthe boys was intimate and constant. When it rained, so that outdoorexpeditions were not inviting, he toiled diligently at his writingand drawing, keeping up an interesting conversation in the meanwhileon all manner of subjects. In the evenings especially the talk aroundthe fire was entertaining to the boys and Dunbar seemed to enjoy it asmuch as they. He was fond of “drawing them out” and listening to suchrevelations of personal character and capacity as their unrestraineddiscussions gave.

  On fine days he made himself one of them, joining heartily in everytask and enthusiastically sharing every sport afloat or afield. Hewas a good, strong oarsman and he could sail a boat as well as evenDick could. In hunting, his woodcraft was wonderfully ingenious, andamong other things he taught the boys a dozen ways of securing game bytrapping and snaring.

  “You see,” he explained, “one is liable sometimes to be caught in thewoods without his gun or without ammunition, and when that happens itis handy to know how to get game enough to eat in other ways than byshooting.”

  During all this time he had no more of his strange moods. He never oncefell into the peculiar slumber the boys had observed before, and henever absented himself from the company. Indeed, his enjoyment of humanassociation seemed to be more than ordinarily keen.

  Little by little his comrades let the memory of his former eccentricityfade out of their minds, or if they thought of it at all they dismissedit as a thing of no significance, due, doubtless, to habitual living insolitude.

  One rainy afternoon he suddenly turned to the boys and asked:

  “Does any one of you happen to know what day of the month this is? Bymy count it must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth of August.”

  “My little calendar,” said Cal, drawing the card from a pocketand looking at it attentively for a moment, “takes the liberty ofdiffering with you in opinion, Mr. Dunbar. It insists that this isthe thirty-first day of August, of the year eighteen hundred andeighty-six.”

  Dunbar almost leaped to his feet in surprise. After a brief period ofthought he turned to Larry and asked:

  “I wonder if you boys would mind sailing with me over to the nearestpostoffice town early to-morrow morning.”

  “Why, you know, Mr. Dunbar,” Larry answered, “to-morrow morning ismortgaged. We’re all going out after that deer you’ve located. Won’tthe next day answer just as well for your trip?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I gave my word that I would post certain writingsand drawings to the publisher not later than noon on September 1,and the printers simply must not be kept waiting. Of course, if youcan’t—”

  “But we can and will,” answered Larry. “Your business is important—thedeer hunt is of no consequence. But you’ll come back with us, will younot?”

  “I shall be delighted to do so if I may,” he answered. “I’m enjoying ithere with you, and my work never before got on so well with so littletoil over it. I shall like to come back with you and stay at Quasi aslong as you boys do.”

  “That’s good news—altogether good. How long are you likely to bedetained at the village?”

  “Only long enough to post my letter and the manuscript—not more thanhalf an hour at the most.”

  “Very well, then. We shall want to buy all the bread and that sort ofthing there is to be had over there, but we can easily do that withinyour half hour. We’ll start about sunrise, and if the wind favors uswe’ll be back by noon or a little later, and even if we have no wind,the oars will bring us back before nightfall.”

  Dunbar at once set to work to arrange and pack the drawings he wishedto send by mail, and as there were titles to write and explanatoryparagraphs to revise, the work occupied him until supper time. In themeanwhile the boys prepared the boat, filled the water kegs, bestowed asupply of fishing tackle, and overhauled the rigging to see that everyrope was clear and every pulley in free running order.

  After supper there was not a very long evening for talk around thefire, for, with an early morning start in view, they must go early totheir bunks.

  They all rolled themselves in their blankets about nine o’clock andsoon were sleeping soundly—the boys under the shelter and Dunbar underthe starry sky—for the rain had passed away—by that side of the firewhich was opposite the camp hut.

  Their slumber had not lasted for an hour when suddenly they wereawakened by a combination of disturbances amply sufficient, as Dickafterwards said, “to waken the denizens of a cemetery.”

  The very earth was swaying under them and rocking back and forth likea boat lying side on to a swell. Deep down—miles beneath the surfaceit seemed, there was a roar which sounded to Cal like “forty thousandloose-jointed wagons pulled by runaway horses across a rheumaticbridge.”

  As the boys sprang to their feet they found difficulty in standingerect, and before they could run out of their shelter, it plungedforward and fell into the fire, where the now dried palmete leaveswhich constituted its roof and walls, and the resinous pine poles ofits framework, instantly blazed up in a fierce, crackling flame.

  “Quick!” cried Dunbar, as Larry, Dick and Cal extricated themselvesfrom the mass, “quick—help here! Tom is entangled in the ruins.”

  The response was instantaneous, and before the rapidly-spreadingflames could reach him, the other four had literally dragged theircomrade from the confused mass of poles and vines in which he had beenimprisoned. If the work of rescue had been prolonged for even a minutemore, it would have been too late, and Tom would have been burned to acrisp. As it was, he was choking with smoke, coughing with a violencethat threatened the rupture of his breathing apparatus somewhere, andso nearly smothered for want of air as to be only half conscious.

  A MINUTE MORE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TOO LATE._Page 320._]

  A bucket of water which Dunbar had dashed over him “set him goingagain,” as he afterwards described the process of recovering breath andconsciousness, and as the paroxysms of coughing slowly ceased he stooderect by way of announcing a recovery which he was still unable toproclaim in words.

  At that moment a second shock of earthquake occurred, a shock lessviolent than the first, but sufficient to topple Tom and Larry offtheir feet again.

  It did no harm, chiefly because there was no further harm to do, andthe little company busied themselves saving what they could of theirbelongings from the burning ruins.

  After they had worked at this for ten minutes, a third shock came. Itwas feebler than either of the others, but just as the boys felt theearth swaying again there was an explosion under the burning mass,followed by a rapid succession of smaller explosions which scatteredshot about in a way so dangerous that at Cal’s command all the companythrew themselves prone upon the ground.

  This lasted for perhaps a minute, and fortunately nobody received acharge of shot in his person from the bursting cartridges that had madethe racket. Fortunately, too, the box of cartridges thus caught in theflames and destroyed was the only one involved in the catastrophe. Therest had been kept, not in the hut, but in the _Hunkydory’s_ lockers.

  But when they came to take account of their losses, which they didas soon as the first excitement had passed away, they found that thedamage done had been considerable.

  For one thing, their entire supply of meat was destroyed; so was theirbread and their coffee.

  “We shall not starve, anyhow,” Cal decided. “We can kill as much gameas we need and as the bottom doesn’t seem to have dropped out of thesea, we can still catch fish, oysters, shrimps and crabs. As for bread,we still have Tom’s sweet potato patch to draw upon. There wasn’t morethan a pound of coffee left, so that’s no great loss.”

  For the rest, the very few clothes the boys had brought with them inaddition to what they wore, were all lost, but they decided that theycould get on without them—“Mr. Dunbar’s fashion.” Tom was the worstsufferer in that respect, as the garments he wore had been badly tornin his re
scue from the fire, but he cheerfully announced:

  “I can manage very well. I’ll decline all dinner, dance and otherinvitations that require a change from every-day dress. I’ll have somecards engraved announcing that ‘Mr. Thomas Garnett is detained at theSouth and will not be at home to receive his friends until furthernotice.’ Then I’ll borrow some of your beetle-detaining pins, Mr.Dunbar, and pin up the worst of the rents in my trousers.”

  “We’ll do better than that, Tom,” the naturalist answered. “I’ve quitea little sewing kit tucked away in my log locker. You shall haveneedles, thread and a thimble whenever you wish to use them.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dunbar; but please spare me the thimble. I nevercould use a contrivance of that kind. Every time I have tried I havesucceeded only in driving the needle into my hand and breaking it offwell beneath the skin.”

  “Boy like,” answered Dunbar. “You’re the victim of a traditional defectin our system of education.”

  “Would you mind explaining?” asked Cal.

  “Certainly not. I hold that the education of every human being oughtto include a reasonable mastery of all the simple arts that one islikely to find useful in emergencies. We do not expect girls to becomeaccountants, as a rule, but we do not on that account leave themultiplication table out of a girl’s school studies. In the same waywe do not expect boys generally to do much sewing when they grow tomanhood, but as every man is liable to meet emergencies in which alittle skill in the use of needle, thread and scissors may make all thedifference between comfort and discomfort, every boy ought to be taughtplain sewing. However, we have other things to think of just now.”

  “Indeed we have,” answered Cal, “and the most pressing one of thoseother things is to-morrow morning’s breakfast. Does it occur to any ofyou that, except the salt in the dory’s locker, we haven’t an ounce offood of any kind in our possession?”

  “That is so,” “I hadn’t thought of that;” “and we’ll all be hungry,too, for of course we shall not sleep”—these were the responses thatcame quickly in answer to Cal’s suggestion.

  “We’ll manage the matter in this way,” said Cal, quite as if no oneelse had spoken. “When ’yon grey streaks that fret the clouds giveindication of the dawn,’ Mr. Dunbar will go fishing. As soon as itgrows light enough for you to walk through the woods without breakingmore than two or three necks apiece, the rest of you can take that bigpiece of tarpaulin, go out to Tom’s potato patch, and bring back alarge supply of sweet potatoes. After breakfast one or two of us cango for some game, while the rest repair damages here. It will take twoor three days to do that.”

  As he spoke he looked about him as if to estimate the extent of theharm done.

  “Hello!” he cried out a moment later. “That’s bad, very bad.”

  “What is it, Cal?”

  “Why, our well has completely disappeared—filled up to the levelby the surrounding earth, which seems to have lost its head and inthat way got itself ‘into a hole,’ just as people do when they forgetdiscretion. That means that we’ve got to dig out the well to-day, andin the meantime drink that stuff from the spring down under the bluff.Our day’s work is cut out for us, sure enough.”

  Tom had disappeared in the darkness while Cal was speaking, and as Calcontinued to speak for a considerable time afterwards, marking out whatDick called a “programme of convenience,” he had not finished when Tomreturned and in breathless excitement announced that the spring underthe bluff was no more.

  “The whole of that part of the bluff has slumped down to the beach,”he said, “and even the big catalpa tree is uprooted and overturned.Of course the spring is completely filled up, and we’ll all be halffamished for water before we get the well dug out again.”

  “Don’t indulge in too hopeless a grief over the loss of the spring,Tom,” said Cal in his most confidently optimistic tone. “We can makeanother just as good anywhere down there in half an hour or less. Thatpuddle held nothing but sea water that had leaked through the sand,partly filtering itself in doing so. We can dig a little hole anywheredown that way, and if we choose the right sort of place we’ll getbetter water than the spring ever yielded. I’ll look after that whenMr. Dunbar and I go fishing. We’ll have the sand out of this well bynoon, too—it’s very loose and easily handled.”

  “But, Cal,” interrupted Tom; “we haven’t a thing to dig with. The twoshovels we had were in the hut.”

  The others stood aghast; Cal faced the situation with hopefulconfidence.

  “That’s bad,” he commented. “Of course the handles are burned up, butthe iron part remains, and even with the meagre supply of cutting toolswe have—which is to say our jackknives and the little ax—we canfashion new ones. It will take valuable time, but we must reconcileourselves to that.”

  “Well, we must get to work at something—it’s hard to know where tobegin,” said Larry in a despondent tone. “What’s the first thing to bedone, Cal?”

  “The first thing to be done is to cheer up; the next thing is to staycheered up. You fellows are in the dumps worse than the well is, andyou’ve got to get out of them if you have to lift yourselves out bythe straps of your own boots. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Havewe lived a life of easy luxury here at Quasi for so long that you’veforgotten that this is an expedition in search of sport and adventure?Isn’t this earthquake overthrow an adventure of the liveliest sort?Isn’t the loss of our belongings by fire a particularly adventuroushappening?”

  “After all,” broke in Tom, who had a genuine relish for danger,difficulty and hardship, “after all, we’re not in half as bad asituation as we were when we faced the revenue officers from behind ourlog breastwork. Our lives were really in danger then, while now we havenothing worse than difficulty to face.”

  “Yes, and a few months hence we’ll all remember this thing with joy andtalk of it with glee.”

  “You’re right about that,” said Dunbar, “and it is always so. I havegone through many trying experiences, and as I recall them the mostseverely trying of them are the ones I remember with the greatestpleasure. Besides, in this case the way of escape, even from suchdifficulties as lie before you, is wide open. The dory is at anchordown there and if you are so minded you can sail away from it all.”

  “What! Turn tail and run!” exclaimed Tom, almost indignantly.

  “No, we’re not thinking of that,” said Cal. “We’ll see the thing out,and, by the way, it’s growing daylight. Come, Mr. Dunbar! We have apressing engagement with the fish and we must have an early breakfastthis morning on all accounts. We have a lot to do, and you mustn’t belater than noon in reaching the postoffice, you know.”

  “Oh, I’ve abandoned that,” responded Dunbar.

  “But why?” asked Larry. “Of course we can’t go with you as we planned,but you can take the dory and make the trip for yourself. And perhapsyou won’t mind taking some money along and buying out whatever foodsupplies the country store over there can furnish. We need breadespecially, and coffee and—”

  “And a few pounds of cheese won’t come amiss,” added Dick.

  “But I tell you I am not going,” said Dunbar. “I have accepted andenjoyed your hospitality when all was going well with you; do yousuppose I’m going to abandon you even for a day, now that you’re introuble and need all the help you can get?”

  “Your reasoning is excellent,” said Cal, purposely lapsing into hisold habit of elaborate speech, by way of relieving the tension thathad made his comrades feel hurried and harassed; “your reasoningis excellent, but your premises are utterly wrong. You can help usmightily by sailing up to that postoffice town and bringing back thesupplies we need, while you cannot help us at all by remaining here. Wefour are more than enough to keep the few tools we have left constantlybusy. With a fifth person included in the construction gang, therewould always be one of us who must idly hold his hands for want ofanything to work with. No, Mr. Dunbar, the best service you can renderto the common cause is to sail up to the village, r
edeem your promiseby mailing your papers, and bring back all you can of provisionsadapted to our use. So that’s settled, isn’t it, boys?”

  Their answer left no room for further argument, and as the daylightwas steadily growing stronger, the party separated, Cal and Dunbargoing in quest of fish for breakfast, and the others struggling throughtangled thickets toward the wild sweet potato field.