Part 8

The experiments were conducted cautiously during the summer, when there was nobody on the marsh, and no mention of the contrivance was made around the store, for a cruel gauntlet of jibes and merciless humor awaited the nonsuccess of the enterprise, if the wiseacres of the platform ever learned of it.

Rat Hyatt, although much interested in all that pertained to the marsh, and its surroundings, had never suspected what was going on on the point. He never had occasion to land there, and, by common consent, its possession by Posey and Wirrick for shooting purposes was respected by the few hunters who frequented the vicinity.

Malindy Taylor had sometimes heard some terrible noises from the direction of the point, but she was too far away to be much disturbed. Both Posey and Wirrick had often referred to Malindy as “an old fuss-bug,” although she was much younger than either of them, and they probably would not have cared if they had scared her out of the country, but she had little curiosity about things that did not affect her duck farm.

She and her mother had concluded that the uncanny sounds were produced by donkeys in the woods, and doubtless this was also the opinion of most of those who afterwards learned all of the facts.

When Rat emerged from his retirement at the duck farm, he spent two or three days puttering about through the water openings, setting his traps.

The furred inhabitants of the slough had builded their picturesque little domes of stringy roots, rushes, and dead grass, and plastered them together with lumps of mud in the quiet places, away from the river currents that crept in sinuous and broken channels through the broad wastes of sodden labyrinths.

Hyatt was an intelligent trapper, and was careful not to depopulate his grounds. He frequently moved the traps, so as not to exhaust the animals in a particular locality. The little competition he had on the marsh must have been discouraging to his rivals, for he always had more traps at the end of the season than at its beginning, and the traps set by others never seemed to be very productive, except to Hyatt. By degrees each new comer was eliminated.

Rat had finished a hard day’s work. He sat on some dry grass in the bottom of his canoe, lighted a redolent old pipe, and decided to indulge in a good smoke and a long rest before starting up the river.

Twilight had come. The vast expanse of overgrown water was silent, except for the low lullabies of the marsh birds among the thick grasses and bulrushes. He sat for a long time and watched the smoke curl up into the still air. The moon came over the distant rim of the forest that bordered the great marsh, and one by one, the stars began to tremble in the crystal sky, but it was not with the eye of the poet that Rat regarded these things. The moonlighted river would be easy to navigate on the trip home.

Suddenly a flash of greenish light shot into the heavens in the north west, and in a few minutes the entire horizon in every direction flamed and shimmered with long gleaming streamers of rose and green beams that touched fluttering segments of a corona of orange glow at the zenith.

Rat had often seen the Aurora Borealis; he was familiar with sheet lightning, and the electrical discharges of the thunder storms, but this awful light was something new.

It was a magnetic storm, one of those rare phenomena, that the average person sees but once in a life time, and never forgets, caused by the sudden incandescence of heavily charged solar dust in the earth’s atmosphere.

The play of the fitful quivering gleams through the firmament was a sublime spectacle. The motionless air had the peculiar odor that comes from an excess of ozone.

Rat Hyatt was in the throes of mortal fright. The dog uttered a long howl, and just at that moment—like a yell of demonic mockery out of sulphurous caverns—the unearthly tones of Tipton Posey’s goose call resonated from the woods on Swallow Tail Point, and reverberated beyond the weirdly lighted waters.

One or both of its builders had probably come to test the powers of the unholy device, and were unabashed by the drama that glorified the night skies.

With blind instinct of self preservation, Rat rose to his knees and made a faltering attempt to grasp his paddle, but his hands refused the dictates of his palsied brain. He cowered as one in the presence of the Ultimate.

To him, in this appalling display of supernatural power, and the evident impending end of all things, had come the agony of abject terror and despair, and before it his rude conception of life collapsed.

His past flashed before his distorted vision like a hideous nightmare. His world suddenly lost reality. The human creatures in it changed to throngs of fleeting phantoms, impelled by unseen forces. They glared, grinned and gibbered at each other, as they hurried through the mist, and vanished into the oblivion from which they came.

In the realm of fear there are ghastly solitudes. They pervade dim phosphorescent glows on ocean floors, and they brood in the desolation around the poles. They creep into awe stricken hearts when the filmy strands, that sustain the Ego on its frail human web are broken, and the denuded spirit stands in utter loneliness at the brink of Chaos.

In the course of an hour the wonderful radiance, that had transfigured the heavens, and chilled the marrow bones of Rat Hyatt, ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The frightful unknown sounds from the woods were not repeated.

Rat finally succeeded in getting on his feet. He pushed his canoe out into the channel and started up stream, but it was a changed man who swung the long paddle. His soul had been rarefied in chastening flames. He was as one who had met his Maker face to face, and his only hope now was that his life span might be mercifully extended until he could make amends for the past.

He reached the house boat in the early morning, much exhausted, and threw himself on the rude bed, where his shattered nerves found partial repose.

His sleep was much troubled. He awoke with a sudden start late in the afternoon, and, lashed by an avenging conscience, slid his canoe into the river and hurried up stream to find the Reverend Daniel Butters, a venerable preacher, who lived about six miles away. To him he would carry his heavy laden heart, and in the consolations of religion seek forgiveness and peace.

The Reverend Butters was known far and wide as “Dismal Dan,” and was referred to in Bill Stiles’s chronicles as “the Javelin of the Lord.” He was an eccentric, heavily bewhiskered old character, who believed in the Church Militant, and had exhorted, quoted reproving scripture, and made doleful prophecies in the river country for two normal generations.

In the little weather beaten country church, up the river, his small audiences consisted of aged ladies and pious old settlers, who were already saved, and did not need the rescuing hand. He preached Calvinistic damnation in the belief that fear of hell was a more potent factor in human redemption than hope of reward.

His principal authority on hell was Jonathan Edwards, a fiery divine, who glowed in Massachusetts about two hundred years ago. During his eruptive period, Edwards’s sermons on damnation blistered and enriched the sectarian literature of his time. Dismal Dan frequently resurrected and reheated these old printed sermons, and hurled the sputtering embers at his inoffensive listeners.

He had not made a convert for many years. Of late his powers of spiritual persuasion had languished, and, like his hearers, had become atrophied.

He was a revivalist who did not revive. He needed new and pliant material, and when Muskrat Hyatt had told his errand he was welcomed as one who had fled from among the Pharisees. Out of the wilderness of sin a lowly suppliant had come.

They talked of the mysterious and unknown light that had illumined the heavens the night before, and the terrifying sounds that had come over the waters. Dismal Dan pronounced it all to be a “manifestation.” He had long expected signs and angry portents in the skies as a warning to sinners. Probably his biased mind would eagerly have ascribed divine origin to any natural phenomenon that shooed fish into his ministerial net.

They spent many days and nights in prayer and assiduous scriptural readings. A far away look came into Hyatt’s eyes, and an elevation of brow that did not seem to be of this world. The spiritual calm of the neophite within cloistered walls was his. He had laid a contrite heart upon the altar of his fears, and on it rested celestial rays.

He interrupted the period of his reconstruction with a trip down the river to visit Malindy Taylor. Just what passed at the duck farm was never known, but, after three days, Malindy opened her heart of stone to the penitent. They came up the stream in the canoe, and, as the enraptured township correspondent of the county paper expressed it, “they were united on the front porch in the sacred bonds of holy matrimony, by the Reverend Daniel Butters, on the afternoon of Thursday, the bridegroom being attired in conventional black, and the bride with a bouquet of white flowers.”

Rat betook himself to the duck farm with his bride. He removed all his traps from the marsh, for he now considered the problem of his future earthly existence solved, without the necessity of very much hard work.

He made frequent visits to Dismal Dan, but kept entirely away from the store. That place was a sink of iniquity that he desired to avoid. He and the old man spent many hours together that were sweetened with blissful discourse. Dismal Dan felt that a life time devoted to expounding the gospels had found glorious fruition in the salvation of Muskrat Hyatt, and he was greatly elated by the sustained piety of the proselyte.

He proposed to Brother Hyatt that they go together to the store, and, if possible, “convert the bunch on the platform.” In his opinion a successful attack on that citadel of sin would practically put the devil out of business in the river country.

Brother Hyatt willingly consented. He was without fear of ridicule. He floated in an atmosphere of moral purity that the mockery of sinners could not defile.

They took a Bible, two old hymn books, and some lunch to the canoe, and, accompanied by the trustful and devoted Spot, they proceeded down the river. They stopped at the house boat and secured the gun and cartridges that the trapper had left in exchange for the dog, and went on down to the bridge.

On the river they practiced some of the old hymns, in the rendition of which Brother Hyatt displayed a woeful technique. They finally gave up trying to sing them, and Brother Butters droned out the rhythmic lines in a most doleful way, that Brother Hyatt soon imitated successfully.

Brother Butters then outlined the form of exhortation that he would use at the store, and instructed his assistant how he was to cooperate with deep and loud amens, whenever big climaxes were reached. Minor climaxes were to be left to Brother Hyatt’s judgment. He was to watch Brother Butters, and when the forefinger was raised above the head, an amen of more than usual sonorousness was to be forthcoming.

Brother Hyatt had studied the hymn books industriously, and had selected scattered verses that pleased him and seemed appropriate. They were laboriously copied on loose sheets of paper. It was his intention to introduce these snatches of hymns into Brother Butters’s sermon with the amens, whenever possible, and they both considered that holy power would thereby be added to the exhortation. The order in which the extracts were to be introduced was considered on the way down, but the sheets got somewhat mixed in Brother Hyatt’s pocket before it was time to use them.

The enemies of Satan, with their carefully prepared batteries of pious invective and Calvinistic hymns, landed safely under the bridge, late in the afternoon. The canoe was pulled out. Brother Hyatt peeked over the top of the embankment, and saw that the chairs on the store platform were all filled, and that its edge was festooned with the usual attendants.

Tipton Posey, Pop Wilkins, Bill Stiles, Doc Dust, Bill Wirrick, “the Jaundiced Viking,” “the Serpent’s Hiss,” and the other “regulars,” were all there. The vineyard looked ripe and inviting.

Bill Stiles hailed the proselyters cordially as they approached the stronghold.

“Say, Rat, whar you been buried all this time?”

“Bill, they’s sump’n wonderful happened to me. I’ve got religion. A great light ’as come to me, an’ I’ve repented of all my sins. I’ve brought that gun an’ them catritches that I traded yer dog fer, an’ I want you to find that feller an’ give ’em back to ’im. I done wrong, an’ I want to square things up. Three or four times I sold Spot, knowin’ he’d come home, but I’ve spent the money. I’m goin’ to git some of my friends to pay back ev’ry cent, if I c’n find the fellers that bought ’im.”

“That’ll make yer friends awful happy, Rat. Say, you cert’nly are a pippin! What done all this?”

“Never mind, Bill, you’ll see the light some day. No man knows w’en the spirit cometh. Brother Butters an’ I are goin’ to hold some services out in front o’ the store this afternoon. We want all the chairs fixed nice an’ even. Brother Butters will preach, an’ I’m goin’ to line out hymn passages ’long with the sermon. We aint got no music, but me linin’ ’em out’ll be jest the same as if they was played in tunes, fer it’ll show what they are. I hope that some o’ you fellers’ll bite at what’s offered.”

Rat was regarded with much concealed levity and mock respect, as he arranged the chairs in a curved row, and further developments were awaited with suppressed interest.

Bill Stiles joyfully accepted the center of the row. Tipton Posey and the Serpent’s Hiss were at the ends. After the chairs were filled the rest of the audience sat along the edge of the platform and dangled its feet.

Brother Butters and Brother Hyatt brought out a box, which they placed on the ground about twenty feet from the audience. Brother Butters thought that a little distance would add dignity and solemnity.

During the preparations the similarity of the chair arrangement on the platform to that in the minstrel show at the county seat, which nearly everybody present had attended during the preceding winter, occurred to Tipton Posey.

“Mr. Brown!” he called to Bill Stiles in the center.

“Yes, Mr. Bones!” responded Bill, instantly catching the spirit of the occasion.

“Mr. Brown, why is this congregation like a ten penny nail?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Bones, why this congregation is like a ten penny nail. Why _is_ this congregation like a ten penny nail?”

“Because, Mr. Brown, it’s goin’ to be driven in,” sagely replied Mr. Bones, with a significant glance at the gathering rain clouds overhead.

“Gentlemen, please shed yer hats!” said Brother Hyatt, as he pounded for order on the box with a carrot that he had taken from a basket in the store. “Brother Butters will now lead in prayer.”

During the invocation, which was brief but heartfelt, Spot walked out and stretched himself on the ground in front of the box. Brother Butters and Brother Hyatt both ended the prayer with loud amens.

“Here are the lines o’ the first hymn,” announced Brother Hyatt.

“Blow ye the trumpet! blow The gladly solemn sound— Let all the nations know, To earth’s remotest bound, The day of Jubilee is come, Return, ye ransomed sinners, home!

And now the living waters flow, To cheer the humble soul; From sea to sea the rivers go, And spread from pole to pole.”

Brother Butters then began his discourse, most of which consisted of written extracts from old Calvinistic exhortations.

“Our sermon this afternoon is on the subject of the eternity of hell torments, and the text is from Matthew 25–46: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.””

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Now feel ye the sting of the lash of the prophet!”

“Lo, on a narrow neck of land, Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, Yet how insensible! A point of time, a moment’s space, Removes me to yon heav’nly place, Or shuts me up in hell!”

Brother Butters:—“You have a glorious opportunity today that may never come again. The door of mercy is opened wide, but the path that leads to it is long and narrow. A slight swerve leads to the fiery pit. Many come from the east, the west, the north, the south, and many fall. We may conceive of the fierceness of that awful fire of wrath if we think of a spider, or other noisome insect, thrown into the midst of glowing coals. How immediately it yields, and curls, and withers in the frightful heat! What pleasure we take in its agonizing destruction! Here is a little image of what ye may expect if ye persist in sin, and a picture of the place where pestilential sinners wail.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Oh, hear ye the happy message!”

“Since man by sin has lost his God, He seeks creation through, And vainly hopes for solid bliss, In trying something new.”

Brother Butters:—“The thought comes to me that the row of sinners in yonder chairs typifies sin in its vilest form—that of a snake. Tip at one end suggests the tail, and Dick Shakes, whom ye call ‘the Serpent’s Hiss,’ at the other, represents the loathsome head. It was a snake that carried sin into the Garden of Eden. It is a snake that confronts the Lord’s servants at this meeting, and, in my mind’s eye, I see that writhing serpent, breeze-shaken and hair-hung, over the yawning abyss of hell!”

Brother Hyatt:—“_Can you beat that?_”

“Oh, blissful thought! There seems a voice in ev’ry gale, A tongue in ev’ry op’ning flower!”

Bill Stiles:—“This is hot stuff!”

Brother Butters:—“How will the duration of torment without end cause the heart to melt like wax! Even those proud, sturdy, and hell-hardened spirits, the devils, tremble at the thoughts of that greater torture, which they are to suffer on the day of judgment. The poor damned souls of men will have their misery vastly augmented.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-AMEN!—They will get the limit!”

“Oh, Lord, behold me, And see how vile I am!”

Brother Butters:—“The fierceness of a great fire, as when a house is all in flames, gives one an idea of its rage, and we see that the greater the fire is, the fiercer is its heat in every part, and the reason is, because one part heats another part.”

Bill Stiles:—“If that rain don’t come pretty soon you fellers’ talk’ll set fire to that box!”

Brother Hyatt:—“The mockery of sinners availeth not! Now listen to another verse!”

“I love to tell the story, ’Tis pleasant to repeat What seems each time I tell it, More wonderfully sweet.”

Brother Butters:—“We have seen that the misery of the departed soul of a sinner, besides what it now feels, consists in amazing fears of what is yet to come. When the union of the soul and the body is actually broken, and the body has fetched its last gasp, the soul forsakes the old habitation, and then falls into the hands of devils, who fly upon it, and seize it more violently than ever hungry lions flew upon their prey.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!!!—Oh, what a finish! They are no ice hunks there!”

“Fresh as the grass our bodies stand, And flourish bright as day— A blasting wind sweeps o’er the land, And fades the grass away!”

Brother Butters:—“We now come to the joy of the saints in heaven who behold the sufferings of sinners and unbaptized infants in hell. They shall see their doleful state, and it will heighten their sense of blessedness. When they shall see the smoke of their torment, and the raging of the flames, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the meantime are in the most blissful state for all eternity, how they will rejoice!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Oh, listen ye to the comforts of the church! Oh, speed that happy day!”

“Hark! Hark! The notes of joy Roll o’er the heav’nly plains, And all the seraphs find employ For their sublimest strains!”

Brother Butters:—“The scriptures plainly teach that the saints in glory shall see the doleful state of the damned, and witness the execution of Almighty wrath.”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!”

“Oh, the transporting rapturous scene, That rises to my sight!”

Brother Butters:—“The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever, and give them a more lively relish of the joys of their heavenly home. The righteous and the wicked in the other world will see each other’s state. Thus the rich man in hell, and Lazarus and Abraham in heaven, are represented as seeing each other in the 16th chapter of Luke. The wicked in their misery will see the saints in the kingdom of heaven.—Luke 13–28–29. ‘There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.’”

Brother Hyatt:—

“The seraphs bright are hov’ring Around the throne above— Their harps are ever tuning To thrilling strains of love! They’ll tell the sweet old story I always loved so well! Oh, let me float in glory And hear sinners wail in hell!”

Brother Butters:—“Now come we to the procrastination practiced by the average sinner, and in Proverbs 27–1 we find the words, ‘Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.’”

Brother Hyatt:—

“The lilies of the field, That quickly fade away, May well to us a lesson yield, For we are frail as they!”

Brother Butters:—“Dear friends, tomorrow is not our own. There are many ways and means whereby the lives of men are ended. It is written in the book of Job, chapter 21, verse 23, that ‘One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet.’”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!—Now listen ye unto these words!”

“Melt, melt, these frozen hearts, These stubborn wills subdue; Each evil passion overcome, And form them all anew!”

Brother Butters:—“Oh, ye unregenerates, that wallow in sin and wickedness on that platform! God despises you, and the flames await you! Go down upon your accursed knees tonight and beseech salvation. This is Friday, Saturday may be too late, and everything in the way of grace may be gone!”

Brother Hyatt:—“Slim chance fer this bunch! It’s you to the red hot hooks!”

“Hark! What celestial notes, What melody do we hear? Soft on the morn it floats, And fills the ravished ear!”

Brother Butters:—“How can you be reasonably quiet for one day, or for one night, when you know not when the end will come? If you should be found unregenerate, how fearful would be the consequence! Consider and harken unto this counsel! Repent and be prepared for death! The bow of wrath is bent, the arrow is made ready on the string, and nothing but the restraint of Almighty anger keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood!”

Brother Hyatt:—“A-A-MEN!! A-A-MEN!!—Oh, ye tight wads of iniquity, loosen up, fer this is the last call!”

“Let floods of penitential grief Burst forth from ev’ry eye!”