Ned, the son of Webb: What he did.

Ned, the son of Webb: What he did.
William Stoddard

William O. Stoddard

Ned, the son of Webb: What he did

CHAPTER I.

THE WAR SPIRIT

"She's grand!" exclaimed Ned, enthusiastically. "Uncle Jack, the Kentucky could knock any other ironclad in all the world!"

"Perhaps she could," growled Uncle Jack, somewhat thoughtfully. "I'm glad she is out of range of them, just now, though. I like her looks as she is. It is best for them, too."

They were standing near the head of Pier Number One, North River, gazing at the great line-of-battle ship as she steamed along slowly up the stream.

"Those double turrets make her as tall as a house," said Ned. "There's nothing else like her! See the long noses of those big guns!"

"That's what I came for," replied Uncle Jack. "I wanted to see her, and now I have seen her I am more opposed to war than ever. I'm going to join the Peace Society."

"I'd rather join the navy," said Ned. "But if a shell from one of those guns should burst inside of another ship it would blow her sky-high."

"No!" responded his uncle, with firmness. "She would not go up to the sky, she would go down to the bottom of the deep sea."

"She could do it, anyhow," said Ned, not explaining which of the two ships he referred to.

It was evident that Uncle Jack was too deeply interested in the Kentucky to care for general conversation. For fear, however, that he might not have read the papers, his somewhat excited nephew told him that the steel-clad wonder of the sea had at least twelve thousand horses in her steam engines. He also said that she was of twelve thousand tons burden, but did not say whether that was the load she could carry or whether it might be supposed to be her fighting weight.

"I wish I were captain of her," he declared, at last. "I'd like to conquer England."

"I felt just so once," responded Uncle Jack. "There is more in England that is worth capturing than there is anywhere else. You would need more than one ship, though. I tried the experiment, but the English beat me."

"Oh!" exclaimed Ned. "I know how you tried it. You went alone, though, and without any Kentucky."

"No," said his uncle, "I didn't go alone. Your aunt went with me. So did thousands of other brave Americans. They try it every year, and they always come home beaten."

"Yes, sir!" said Ned. "They spend all their money, and are glad to get back. They say the English can whip anything in all the world except Americans. I'm going there, some day. I don't believe there is any British ship that can whip the Kentucky."

"She certainly is magnificent," replied his uncle. "She is a tremendous war machine. What we are ever to do with her, however, I don't care to think of. I want her never to fire one of those guns. After all, Ned, if one of her great steel bottom plates should get shaken loose and drop out, that vast leviathan would sink, with all on board."

"I guess not," said Ned. "They would get away in the boats. Besides, she isn't going to fall to pieces right away."

"All right," said his uncle. "We've seen her. Now let's go home."

They turned away and walked on across what the people of New York call the Battery. They do so because here was a fort once. Part of it, nearest the water, was made there two centuries ago. Another part, more like a modern fort, was made later, and it was distinguished for having been surrendered, back and forth, without firing one of its guns in defence, more times than any other military post in America. It was given up once by the Dutch, twice by the British, and once by the Americans. That was by General Washington, when the English troops drove him and his ragged rebels out of New York. None of the fighting that was done then was anywhere near the Battery.

Ned had something to say about that, as they went along, and about the other forts around the harbour, of which he seemed to be very proud.

"My boy," remarked his uncle, "almost all of our New York forts are back numbers. One steel canoe like the Kentucky, if she were English, for instance, and if we were conquering England, could knock all of those old-fashioned affairs about our ears."

"Well," said Ned, doubtfully, "so the Kentucky or the Oregon could do for any old fort in Europe. I say, Uncle Jack, right here is the lower end of all the elevated railways."

"Exactly," said his uncle; "and of the cable-cars that are hauled by a steel rope underground. Away up yonder is the suspension bridge from this city to Brooklyn. There will be a dozen of them, more or less, before long. All over the upper part of town the trolley-cars run by lightning on a string. I hate all these modern inventions and innovations – I do! I hate railways up in the air on stilts, and I hate express trains that go a mile a minute, and I hate these electric lights. Why, Ned, when I was a boy, we were able to get first-rate tallow-dip candles to read by. Nobody can have anything of that kind, nowadays. Now, just look at those forty-story-chimney buildings! Fellows who live at the top of those things have to be shot up. It's awful!"

"I went up four of them," said Ned. "I wanted to know how it felt."

"Well," said Uncle Jack, "how did you feel?"

"I held my breath," replied Ned, "and I held on to the seat. I was glad to get out, though, top and bottom. I suppose a fellow can get used to it – "

"Ned," interrupted his uncle, "wait here a minute. I want to have a little talk with a friend of mine in Chicago. What they won't do next, with electricity and some things, I don't know."

They were in front of a long-distance telephone office, and Uncle Jack went in. His conversation with his neighbour, a thousand miles away, turned out a long one, and it was half an hour before he and his nephew reached the patch of cleared land which still remains around the City Hall.

"There!" suddenly exclaimed Ned. "Hurrah! We're having first-rate luck, Uncle Jack! That's the very thing I've been wanting to see!"

It was not another building, this time, and it was not altogether an innovation. It was something warlike and terrible; for a battery of the Fourth Regular Artillery, guns, ammunition wagons, all, was passing through the city, down Broadway, on its journey to some new post of duty.

"Those are three-inch calibre, long range guns," said Uncle Jack. "They send shells ten miles or so, to split things. The gun-barrels are longer than a fence-rail. For my part, I don't like 'em. They shoot too far."

"They're the right thing to have," said Ned. "If I were going to conquer England I'd want plenty of those guns."

"They'd be of no use at all to you, if you had them," said Uncle Jack. "The London police wouldn't let you keep 'em. They'd take them right away from you, as soon as you landed. You would be fined, too. It's against English law for any fellow to carry such things around with him."

Ned was silenced by that, for the time, and they both got into a street-car, and went on up-town. There were plenty of things worth seeing, all along, but the car was so crowded with passengers that they were packed, as Uncle Jack complained, "like sardines in a box." So they stood still, and hardly saw anything.

When at last they stepped out, and walked over toward one of the gateways of Central Park, he growled again.

"There they go!" he exclaimed. "One – two – three – four of 'em. They are those automobile carriages, that go without any horses. I like a horse, myself. That is, if he's a good one, and pulls well in harness. I was kicked half to death by one of my horses, once. I think he had some kind of automobile in him. If you should ever happen to conquer England, you'd get fine horses."

"That's what mother says," replied Ned. "She's a good American now, but she was born in England. She says they have the best horses in the world."

"Not by any means equal to ours," snapped Uncle Jack. "Ours are so fine that we are going to preserve some of them for specimens, after we get so that all our riding and pulling is done by steam and electricity. We shall keep pictures of them, too, and statues, so that people who live in such times as are to come may know what sort of animals horses used to be."

Uncle Jack appeared to be in a bad state of mind, that day, for he went on to denounce vigorously a long list of things. He even went so far as to condemn the entire Anglo-Saxon race, English and American together.

"Look at it, Ned!" he said, with energy. "Not only do both of these wretched nations come down to this new state of things, themselves, including the newspapers and the magazines and the floods of books, but they are clubbing together to force innovations upon all the rest of the world. They are a partnership concern now, and which of them is the meanest I don't know. The British are choking their inventions down the throats of China, India, Africa, and a lot of other unlucky continents and islands. We Americans are working in the same way with Cuba and Porto Rico and the Philippines and Magatapatanglew."

"Where on earth is that?" asked Ned.

"Where is it?" sadly responded his uncle, shaking his head. "I really don't know. Nobody else knows where half of these new places are, with long-tail names. I've a kind of notion it's near the junction."

"What junction?" inquired his nephew.

"Why!" exclaimed Uncle Jack. "The junction? You don't know? It is at the corner where the Congo River crosses the Ganges. It is very near the point where the Ural Mountains pour down into the Red Sea."

Ned was not entirely caught and mystified, this time, for he promptly replied: "Oh, I know where that is! I've been to Grammar School Sixty-eight. I know! It's down near the custom house."

"I declare!" said his uncle. "Boys know too much, anyhow, nowadays. You would learn a great deal more, though, if you'd take an army and a steamer, and go and conquer England. Your mother has dozens of cousins there, too. But you had better buy return excursion tickets before you start. That's what I did, and it helped me to get back home. Let's go to dinner."