Cupid of Campion

“You don’t need no oars,” shouted Abe as with a tremendous effort he sent the boat spinning out into the current. “Now, smartie, I’ve fixed you! You stay right in there where you are, or you’ll be drownded sure.”

The boat with its solitary occupant was now fully thirty feet from the shore. Clarence, possessed of one single-piece swimming suit and nothing else in the world, turned pale with alarm.

“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried.

“There ain’t no meaning,” returned Abe, thoughtfully going through the pockets of Clarence’s sailor suit. “You just sit tight and maybe you’ll land in St. Louis by the end of the month.”

“Look here, I’ve got to be back at McGregor by twelve o’clock,” remonstrated Clarence, “You’re carrying this joke too far.”

“You’ll not see McGregor today, nor yet tomorrow,” answered Abe, grimly, as he wrapped up in Clarence’s handkerchief the paper money and the silver which he had found.

Clarence noticed with dismay that his boat, now at least twenty-five yards from the shore, was going down the stream at what seemed to him a very rapid rate.

In the meantime, Abe, having securely hid the money, stood on the shore and grinned triumphantly at the boy in the boat.

“You will use big words, will you? You will try to be funny, will you? You will shove me down the hill; you will come round here showing off in your dandy clothes! Next time you get a chanst, you won’t be so smart – Now, what have you got to say for yourself?”

The youth in the current saw that, so far as the butcher’s boy was concerned, his case was hopeless. In reply, then, to this question, he opened his pretty mouth, lifted his head proudly, and carolled forth:

“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”

As Clarence was singing, Master Abe, throwing out both hands in a gesture of defiance, suddenly bolted into the bushes. He was gone, leaving on the shore his own and Clarence’s clothes.

The deserted youth in the boat came to an end of his singing. He had sung bravely to the last note. He never sang “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” again. Abe was gone: he was alone. Clarence at last gave in. He burst into tears and wept for some time in sore bitterness of heart.

CHAPTER IV

In which Clarence Esmond, alone and deserted, tries to pray; and his parents defer their trip to the Coast

After all, Clarence was but fourteen years of age. He was brave beyond his years. He had a craving for adventure. But, picture to yourself a lad in a thin blue bathing suit, in an oarless boat, alone on a great river. Clarence was really a good swimmer. He was at home in any lake; he had disported many a time in the salt water; but a river with its unknown dangers was new to him. The fear of the unknown, therefore, coupled with the warning of the butcher’s boy, kept him in the boat, when in fact he could easily have made the shore. Adventure is all very well in its way, but one likes to meet that fair goddess with reassuring companions. No wonder, then, that the boy broke down.

For some minutes he continued to sob. His grief was poignant. Chancing to glance over the side of the boat, he saw his features, tear-stained and swollen, reflected in the clear water. It was the first time that he had ever seen his reflection when he was in heavy grief. He looked again, and then suddenly broke into a laugh.

“Never say die,” he muttered to himself, and forthwith, putting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he began to meditate.

What would his parents think about it? They would search, they would find his clothes upon the river bank and conclude naturally that he was drowned. Perhaps, however, Master Abe would reassure them on that point. Clarence did not know that Abe, having taken to the bushes and making his way into the interior of Iowa, had already dickered with a farmer’s boy for an old pair of overalls and was now doing his best to put as wide a distance between himself and McGregor as possible.

Once more Clarence raised his head and looked about him. The sun was now in mid-heaven and, shining down upon the boy’s unprotected calves and shoulders, promised to leave the memory of that adventurous day in scarlet characters upon his tender skin. On one side flowed the Wisconsin into the Mississippi; on the other the Iowa hills frowned down on him. The river itself was clear of craft. Water, water, everywhere; and standing sentinel over the mighty stream the hills of two sovereign states. Hotter and hotter fell the rays of the sun.

“Lord, have mercy on me,” exclaimed Clarence. He really prayed as he uttered these words.

Clarence, it must be confessed, knew very little of prayer. They did not specialize on that form of devotion – nor, in fact, on any form of devotion – at the academy of which for two years he had been a shining ornament. Vainly did he try to cudgel his brain for some other prayer. Even the Our Father, recited in tender years at his mother’s knee, he had forgotten.

The sun grew hotter; it was getting almost unbearable. Clarence was driven to action. After some effort, in which he skinned his knuckles, he succeeded in dislodging one of the two boards serving as seats. Placing this next to the others he threw himself below, doubled up so as to get himself as much as possible under the welcome shade, and – happy memory – murmured:

“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep:
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.”

In saying these homely but beautiful lines, our adventurer had no intention of courting slumber. Nevertheless, he was sound asleep in ten minutes. The incidents of the morning, the climb up the hill, the rowing, the brush with the tramp – all these things, combined with the fact that he had stayed up late the night before and had risen that morning at five o’clock, sent him into a slumber the sounder for the quiet and the freshness of the great river.

About the same hour in which Clarence had snuggled low down in the boat and presently fallen into deep slumber, a gentleman came hurrying down to the McGregor boat-landing. He was a rather handsome man in the prime of life, dressed in a manner that showed he belonged to the many-tailored East. He was pulling at his mustache, gazing anxiously all about him, and betraying in many ways nervousness and anxiety.

“Beg pardon,” he began, addressing a group of men and women who were waiting for the ferry-boat that plied between McGregor and Prairie du Chien, “but have any of you chanced to see a boy of fourteen in a white sailor suit about here? He’s my son.”

“Did you say a white sailor suit?” asked a man of middle age.

“Yes.”

“Why, I think I saw a boy dressed that way this morning. As I was coming down the street, towards nine o’clock, I saw a boat going down stream with two people in it. First, I thought the one rowing was a girl; I took another look, and I could almost swear it was a boy dressed in white. They were gone down some distance, and so I couldn’t say for sure.”

Just then a young man of about twenty-one dressed in flannels joined the group.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and am rowing down the river from LaCrosse to Dubuque. This morning I locked my boat here, leaving the oars in it, and went for breakfast and a little stroll into the country back of McGregor. My boat has disappeared.”

“Was it painted green?” inquired the first informant, “and did it ride rather high?”

“Yes, that’s the boat.”

“Well, the boat I saw, with, I thought, two boys in it, one in a white sailor suit, must have been your boat.”

“Strange!” exclaimed Clarence’s father. “My boy, I am sure, would not do such a thing.”

“What about the other boy?” said an old inhabitant. “There’s a no-account fellow here-abouts named Abe Thompson. He was the butcher’s boy and got fired early today. He’s disappeared this morning, too, and I’ll bet my boots that he’s the one who went off in that boat.”

“That reminds me,” put in another member of the group. “When the St. Paul came in here this morning, the passengers were all talking about a small boy rowing a boat up near Pictured Rocks, who tried to cross their bow. The Captain had to stop the steamboat and he said that the two boys in that boat seemed anxious to commit suicide. When the Captain roared at the oarsman and called him a jackass, the kid smiled and asked which one of the two he was speaking to.”

“That was my son Clarence beyond a doubt,” said Mr. Esmond with the suspicion of a smile. “It would be just like him to cut across the bow of a steamboat, and that question of his makes it a dead certainty. The boy sat up until one o’clock last night reading Treasure Island. He’s very impressionable, and he left the house this morning with his heart set upon meeting with an adventure of some sort or other. It’s near twelve o’clock now, and we were to start for the coast at one-forty. Can’t I get a motorboat around here somewhere?”

The man who had been the first to give information then spoke up.

“Sir,” he said, “I have a fairly good motorboat at the McGregor landing. It will be a pleasure for me to do anything I can to help you.”

“Thank you a thousand times. Let’s get off at once. My name is Charles Esmond.”

“And mine,” returned the other, “is John Dolan.” The two, as they made their way to the motorboat, shook hands.

“This is awfully kind of you,” continued Mr. Esmond, as he seated himself in the prow.

“It’s a pleasure, I assure you. I’ve really nothing to do at this season, and so I pass most of my time on the river.”

As he spoke these words, the boat shot out into the water.

“Now,” continued Mr. Dolan, “as a working hypothesis, we may take it for granted that those boys went to Pictured Rocks; everybody goes there. So we’ll make for that place and reach it, I dare say, in six or seven minutes.”