Part 1

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Transcriber's Note

- The position of the illustrations has been changed to better fit with the context. The Frontispiece illustration noted in the "List of Illustrations" is missing from the original book upon which this digital version is based and therefore its location has not been indicated.

- Illustration captions in {brackets} have been added by the transcriber for reader convenience.

- In general, geographical references, spelling, hyphenation, and capitalization have been retained as in the original publication. This includes a few inconsistencies across the text. For example, the word "tomorrow" is more or less equally written as both "tomorrow" and "to-morrow".

- Minor typographical errors--usually periods and commas--have been corrected without note.

- Significant typographical errors have been corrected. A full list of these corrections is available in the Transcriber's Corrections section at the end of the book.

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CAPTAIN TED

CAPTAIN TED

_A Boy's Adventures Among Hiding Slackers in the Great Georgia Swamp_

BY

LOUIS PENDLETON

AUTHOR OF "KING TOM AND THE RUNAWAYS," "LOST PRINCE ALMON," "IN THE CAMP OF THE CREEKS," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1918

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

TO THE FIGHTING YOUTH OF AMERICA

THIS STORY OF A BRAVE AND DEVOTED BOY IS CONFIDENTLY INSCRIBED

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE The beast obeyed an impulse stronger than fear and leaped _Frontispiece_

They closed in hand-to-hand combat 78

The contending creatures, fast in each other's grip, rapidly drew nearer 138

With a wild cry Jackson jumped--too late! 270

CAPTAIN TED

I

Ted and Hubert were proud of the commission and felt that much depended on them. Ted led the way, not merely because he was past fourteen and more than half a year older than his cousin, but because Hubert unconsciously yielded to the captaincy of a more venturesome and resolute spirit. Everything was ready for Christmas at home--mince pies, fruit cake, a fat turkey hanging out in the cold--and no doubt the as yet mysteriously reserved presents would be plentiful and satisfactory. Only a tree was still needed, and Ted and Hubert were to get it.

So now, in the early afternoon of December 24, 1917, they tramped up the long hill at the back of the Ridgway farm toward North Carolina woods of evergreens and leafless maples. The landscape as far as the eye went was white with snow, but its depth, except in drifts, was only about two inches. Ted dragged a sled with rope wherewith to strap the tree thereon. Hubert trudged beside him--always a little behind--carrying a heavy sharp hatchet.

"Aunt Mary said we must get a good one, small size, and I'm going to hunt till we do," said Ted.

"Papa says it isn't everybody who'll have all we'll have this Christmas," remarked Hubert. "He says it's great to have a farm as well as a town house and perduce your own food in war time."

"'Produce'--not 'perduce,'" corrected Ted.

About two-thirds of the way up the long white stretch of hillside the boys paused on the brink of a pit that had been dug years before by a thick-witted settler in a hopeless quest for the gold that was then profitably mined some ten miles away. The pit was about twenty-five feet deep at its middle and perhaps thirty-five in diameter--an excavation at once too large and too small to pay for the great labor of filling in. So it had been left as it was. The snows of the windy hillside had drifted into it until the bottom was deeply covered.

The boys paused only to take a look into the "big hole" and then went on their way up the remaining stretch of open hillside. They explored the woods for a quarter of a mile or more before they found just the sort of slenderly tapering and gracefully branching spruce that they wanted. In no great while this was cut down, the spreading branches were roped in, and the trunk tied on the sled, which was then dragged out into the open.

The long descent toward the distant farm-house was gradual enough to render sledding safe yet steep enough at points to make dragging burdensome. Ted declared that the easiest way to get down with their load was to slide down, and Hubert agreed.

"But we'd better look out for the pit," added Hubert.

"Oh, we'll aim so as to leave that away to one side," said Ted confidently.

And so they did. After a running start, Ted leaped on the sled, straddling the trunk of the Christmas tree, and Hubert flung himself with a shout into the trailing branches, upon which he secured a firm hold.

Away they went, shouting happily, now quite forgetting the pit in their excitement. They only laughed when they bumped into a snow-covered obstruction and were swerved to the left of their intended course. They laughed again when another bump carried them still further to the left. A third mishap of the same kind awoke Ted to the danger, but too late.

He had hardly begun to kick his heels into the snowy surface whirling past, in an effort to change their course, and to shout, "Look out!" in great alarm, when Hubert, whose view was obstructed by the branches of the spruce, became aware of a sudden silence and felt himself sinking through space. The younger boy scarcely realized that they had gone over the brink of the pit until he found himself floundering at the bottom in the snow, which happily was deep enough to break the force of their fall and save them from injury.

As soon as he found that neither Hubert nor himself had been harmed, Ted laughed over their struggles in snow up to their waists, but Hubert thought it was no laughing matter and accusingly inquired why they had done such a foolish thing.

"We certainly were fools to try it," admitted Ted, sobering.

He floundered up to a higher level of the pit's bottom where the snow was only about two feet deep, extended a hand to Hubert, and then pulled the tree-laden sled after them.

"Now, how are we going to get out?" he asked excitedly.

"We can't get out," said Hubert, looking around at the pit's steep sides.

"But we _must_, Hu. Anyhow, somebody's sure to come along."

But nobody did. They shouted again and again, as time passed, and listened in vain for an answer. Meanwhile Ted tried every means of escape he could think of. He first proposed to cut steps into the side of the pit, but the hatchet could not be found. Hubert had either lost his grip on it as they were sledding down the hill or it was now somewhere under the deep snow in the bottom of the pit.

Ted next proposed to throw the rope around a sapling that hung over the very brink some fifteen feet above their heads. He therefore unstrapped the Christmas tree from the sled, coiled half the rope, and attempted to throw it over the sapling. Several times he succeeded in throwing the coil as high as the top of the pit, but always failed to throw it around the little tree.

"Oh, it's no use," groaned Hubert at last. "We'll never get out."

"Now, Hu, you mustn't give up," urged Ted. "Boy Scouts don't give up. We'll get out somehow. Think of the good times coming when we visit Camp Hancock and go hunting with Uncle Walter in the Okefinokee."

"But we'll have to stay here till tomorrow and we'll freeze to death. I'm nearly frozen now."

"Now, Hu, you quit that," rebuked Ted, although profoundly discouraged himself. "Jump up and down and swing your arms if you're cold, but don't do the baby act. Think of the soldiers in the trenches and what they have to stand. Our own American boys are in the trenches now, and do you think one of them would whimper because it was cold or wet, or even if a bomb dropped in on them?"

"But they can get out and we can't," tearfully argued Hubert.

"Yes!--they can go 'over the top' and charge the enemy and meet cannon balls and liquid fire and poison gas and---- Oh, Hu, this is _nothing_! Can't we be soldiers enough to stand just a hole in the ground with snow in it?"

Hubert had his doubts, but he was silenced. He exercised his numb limbs, as advised, and watched Ted as he prepared to make experiment of still another plan. With his pocket-knife Ted picked stones out of the side of the pit until he found one he thought might serve his purpose--an oblong, jagged bit of rock around which the rope could be securely tied. Again and again Ted threw this stone--the rope trailing after it--without succeeding in sending it around the sapling.

The sun had set and Hubert's teeth chattered as he wept, when, almost ready to give up, it occurred to Ted to toss the stone up with both hands and all his strength, aiming half a foot to the right of the leaning sapling. This carried the stone higher than it had gone before and, at the second trial, it struck the incline above the tree, rolled and came down on the other side, carrying the rope around the trunk and bringing it within reach of Ted's hand, who drew it down and quickly tied the two ends together.

Within five minutes the boy had clambered out of the pit. Then Hubert began his struggle to follow, but Ted stopped him, insisting that both the sled and the Christmas tree be drawn out first. This having been accomplished with considerable difficulty, Hubert, with the rope tied round his waist, was assisted to the upper level after much effort and some strain on the part of both boys.

"I'll never slide down that hill again," vowed Hubert, as they neared the cheeringly lighted farm-house, dragging sled and tree.

But Ted only said:

"I'm glad we got out without help. I'm glad we fell in, too, because it was a little bit like being soldiers in the trenches."

Hubert Ridgway was the petted son of the house they were entering, while Theodore Carroll was but a semi-adopted orphan cousin who, though well cared for, had known no pampering. This accounted in part for the latter's greater energy and self-reliance, but perhaps there was something in this lean, dark, keen-eyed handsome boy from inheritance that the fair-haired, plump, ease-loving Hubert lacked. Ted knew little about his parents, and rarely asked questions because he observed a slight note of disapproval when his aunt and his uncles answered, but he had heard more than once that his father was "a poet who nearly died in the poor-house" and that his mother was "high-strung and artistic"--whatever that might mean. His parents had missed life's material prizes and come to early death, but they had lived intensely; and the son of their blood, alert, eager, fully alive in both body and brain, was likewise inclined to look beyond the mere pleasures of the senses toward the higher and more truly substantial values.

The difference between the two boys was indicated not only in their mishap of the afternoon but as they sat and talked in the warm, comfortable sitting-room after supper. Hubert could not spare a thought for anything but the coming Christmas presents which he hoped were many and varied, including heaps of good things to eat. Ted was happily expectant also, but he thought and spoke much more about the promised visit to Camp Hancock and the hunting trip to follow in the Okefinokee Swamp.

Ted usually spent part of the year with his uncle in North Carolina and the other part with his uncle in southern Georgia, attending school in both States. He knew that his Georgia uncle, who was his favorite, wanted him all the time, and he preferred the easy-going life on the big farm near the borders of the Okefinokee; but he traveled back and forth because his North Carolina uncle, though really indifferent, made a virtue of insisting on the arrangement entered into when the widow Carroll promptly followed her poet-husband to another world and her brothers recognized their duty to look after her son. This winter the Georgia uncle had invited both boys, proposing to take them on a hunting trip in the great swamp, and--to the delight of Ted--it was arranged for them to stop at Augusta and visit Camp Hancock on their way down.

"I can't wait till I see my Christmas presents," said Hubert as they were going to bed.

"_I_ can hardly wait till I see Camp Hancock and thousands of soldiers," said Ted. "Camp Hancock and the Okefinokee are _my_ two great Christmas presents."

II

But it was late in February before they saw Camp Hancock. Meanwhile the boys continued at school and Ted, in his leisure, read everything he could find about the cantonments in Georgia and elsewhere in addition to keeping up with the war news as usual. For more than a year now he had read the papers eagerly every day and in consequence, as Hubert expressed it, could "talk a blue streak" about the war. Hubert, who was no reader and was content to get his news at second hand, thought Ted knew all about the situation in England, France, Italy, Russia and even Germany. Obviously this was a slight exaggeration, but Ted did grip much current information, and he was never unwilling to give Hubert and other boys the benefit of his knowledge.

During the time of waiting Ted received a letter from his Uncle Walter in Georgia which greatly interested him.

Bring your Boy Scout uniform when you come down [it read.] I was glad to hear you had earned the right to wear it by first-rate examinations, and I want to see you in it.

This pleased Ted the more because he did not often wear his khaki in North Carolina. The reason for this was that his sensitive and quick perceptions unerringly informed him that the sight of it was not quite agreeable to his perfectly polite Aunt Mary and Uncle Fred. Having failed to pass the examinations, Hubert had no Boy Scout uniform and Ted's was a reminder that the son and heir had not measured up to the standard of the orphan cousin.

And perhaps [Uncle Walter's letter continued] your soldierly uniform may make an impression on the slackers hiding in the Okefinokee if we should run across any of them when we take that hunting trip. It is reported that some of the backwoods boys of this county evaded registration and are now camping on an island far in the Okefinokee in order to escape being drafted into the war. The sight of your uniform and a tongue-lashing from me, with well-grounded threats of prosecution and punishment, may make them ashamed of themselves and perhaps even scare them into their duty.

The suggested effect of Ted's uniform on fugitives from the draft was little more than jest, but Ted accepted it quite seriously and was at once thrilled with ambition and aspiration. His prospective hunting trip into the Okefinokee took on the character of a mission in his country's service. Was he not actually in the country's service now that the President had made the 370,000 Boy Scouts of America "dispatch bearers" in the matter of the circulation among the people of "bulletins of public information"? Would not the government also be willing and even pleased for him to undertake to show the hiding draft-evaders the error of their way? What if he could really find them and persuade them to renounce their cowardly course, thus contributing more fighters to the armies of Uncle Sam! But when he spoke of his glorious plan, the unimaginative and unaspiring Hubert merely said:

"If you can get at them, you'll talk a blue streak about the war, all right; but what good will that do such fellows? _They_ don't care. Papa says slackers can think only of their own skins."

"There's nothing like trying," insisted Ted, accustomed to discouraging comment and not in the least inclined to abandon his scheme.

At last the impatiently awaited hour for their departure arrived and the two boys boarded the train for Augusta. They were almost too excited for speech when, early in the morning of a fine day, their train rolled into the Georgia city widely famed for the great war cantonment in its neighborhood, and they looked forth to see groups of young men in khaki tramping its streets. They were met at the station by Lieut. John Markham, a cousin of both boys who was with the Pennsylvanians at Camp Hancock because his mother, another sister of the Ridgway brothers, had married a Philadelphian and lived many years in the city by the Delaware.

Never will Ted forget that day. As he and Hubert took the train that night for southern Georgia he declared that his eyes were "dead tired from so much looking." First they drove out to the camp and over its extensive area, wherein Ted's wish to see thousands of soldiers was abundantly gratified. Later they walked about, saw the quarters of the officers, looked into the tents of the privates, and at many points watched the soldiers drill, drill, drill--infantry drill, physical drill, bayonet exercise and target practice. They even found opportunity in the course of another long drive to witness actual firing of field artillery on a ten-mile range, and, as the sound of the great guns lifted the awed boys to their highest pitch of excitement, they felt that they saw war in the making indeed.

But the most inspiring sight of all, to Ted, was the infantry drill. The measured, simultaneous movement of so many men, to the beat of drums and the martial airs of the bands, thrilled the boy from head to foot, and it seemed to him that all things centered in this brave and beautiful array which it was his wonderful privilege to see. As he looked and listened, he would not have changed places with a king, and for the moment to have been anywhere else in the world but at Camp Hancock would have been like exile from all that he held dear.

They also looked at the experimental military bridge building of the engineering corps and inspected the practice trenches, learning that the extensive system of the latter had been built under the personal supervision of French and English officers. Both Ted and Hubert asked many questions and much was explained to them--points about the first-line trenches and the great communicating ditches that led off zigzag instead of straight in the rear, "so that they could not be enfiladed" by the enemy's cannon.

At noon they dined with Lieut. Markham in the officers' quarters of his regiment. This in itself was a great event and Ted could hardly eat for watching and learning the rank of each, his interest heightening when two or three French and English officers were pointed out to him. With the eye of a hawk he noted the manners of the French, the British and the Americans, hoping to achieve a successful imitation. Several of the friends of Cousin John were very attentive to the delighted and flattered boys, being especially polite to Ted who proudly thought they recognized a coming comrade in a Boy Scout in khaki.

"Now let's go to the bayonet run and see the boys spit the Boches," said Lieut. Markham early in the afternoon.

This was one of the forms of bayonet exercise, and both boys watched it absorbed, fascinated, oblivious of everything else in the great camp. Strapping young fellows in khaki sprinted up an incline, leaped over obstructions in their path, and plunged down toward suspended dummies, at which or through which they thrust their bayonets. This was spitting or impaling the Boches in a bayonet charge.

"Why do they call them 'Boches,' Cousin John?" asked Hubert, quite superfluously in the opinion of Ted, who knew already.

"It's a French nickname for the Germans--not very complimentary," was the answer. "Means something like 'blockhead,' I'm told."

At the railway station in Augusta that night, as they took leave of their kindly kinsman, who had exerted himself both to entertain and instruct, Ted could hardly take his mind off the vivid and crowding recollections of the day, but he did not forget his manners.

"It's been a great day and you've been just lovely to us, Cousin John," he said. "I can never thank you enough."

"I wanted you to see all you could," said Lieut. Markham, smiling and patting Ted on the shoulder, "because you'll take your turn here or in some other camp after a while--if the war lasts long enough."

This prospect brought thrills and delighted smiles to Ted, but he checked the first words that rushed upon his tongue--reflecting that it might be wrong to hope that the war would last long enough--and only said, with the manner of one already devoted to a cause:

"Yes, I'll be here--if the war lasts."

III

The boys had to change cars and "lay over" several hours at an intervening point, and so it was night again when they left the train at their destination, a small town near the eastern borders of the Okefinokee Swamp. Their Uncle Walter met them and they drove with him out to his big farm. At the station they noted that passing acquaintances addressed him respectfully as Judge Ridgway, but there was no overpowering dignity about him that they could see. He seemed almost like an elderly boy who accepted them as comrades in his own class, so jolly and friendly was he.

As they drove the five miles through the dark pine woods, he talked enthusiastically of the coming trip into the Okefinokee and told them hunting stories.

"If you boys should get lost from me," he said once, "and get mixed up with wild animals after your ammunition has run out, fight 'em with fire if you can. I've done it. I did it when I was a boy, too. My father moved to a wild part of Texas when I was about twelve and stayed out there four years. And once a pack of wolves got after me when I happened to be alone in a camp without a gun. I thought my time had come, but I actually whipped that pack of wolves without a thing to shoot with. There was a good fire burning and I hugged it close. I noticed that they seemed afraid of it and that gave me an idea. I threw on more wood and then began to fling blazing chunks among my howling enemies. It did the business. I actually threw a big live coal into the open mouth of the nearest beast, and such a yelping and running you never saw! I flung burning chunks until there was mighty little fire left, but I put the whole pack to flight. Wild animals are all cowards when it comes to fire, so you must never fail to have plenty of matches. But you won't see any wolves in the Okefinokee these days. We may get a bear, though, and bear steak is not bad when you're hungry. I'd consider it mighty good on one of these 'meatless' days."

Uncle Walter continued to be merry and talkative, with a good story for every occasion, after they reached the big, rambling farm-house and while they ate the bountiful supper served by a young black waiter directed by a fat negress, but he had hardly lighted his pipe by the fireside in the sitting-room later when news came that at once made him serious and regretful. A special messenger brought a telegram and when he had read it his face fell.

"Boys, this is too bad," he said. "I've got to go to Washington by the first train and our hunting trip will have to be postponed."

"We'll get along all right--till you come back," said Ted, struggling with his disappointment and trying to look cheerful.

"But I don't know how soon I can get back. It's an important matter and may take time. While I'm gone you boys can hunt as much as you please, in the woods around the place and along the edge of the Okefinokee, but don't venture into the swamp itself. You might get lost."

Both boys promised to be careful, and then their uncle rang a bell. When the fat negress who had overseen the serving of the supper entered the room, he said to her: