Chapter 13
"The schools are good, the brethren say, and our Church holds the wheel; The Presbyterians lost their house; the Baptists lost their zeal. The parsonage is clean and dry; the town has friendly folk,-- Not half so dull as Murderkill, nor proud like Pocomoke.
"Oh! Thy just will, our Lord, be done, though these eight seasons more, We see our ague-crippled boys pine on the Eastern Shore, While we, Thy stewards, journey out our dedicated years Midst foresters of Nanticoke, or heathen of Tangiers!
"Yea! some must serve on God's frontiers, and I shall fail, perforce, To sow upon some better ground my most select discourse; At Sassafras, or Smyrna, preach my argument on 'Drink,' My series on the Pentateuch, at Appoquinimink.
"Gray am I, brethren, in the work, though tough to bear my part; It is these drooping little ones that sometimes wring my heart, And cheat me with the vain conceit the cleverness is mine To fill the churches of the Elk, and pass the Brandywine.
"These hairs were brown, when, full of hope, ent'ring these holy lists, Proud of my Order as a knight--the shouting Methodists-- I made the pine woods ring with hymns, with prayer the night-winds shook, And preached from Assawaman Light far north as Bombay Hook.
"My nag was gray, my gig was new; fast went the sandy miles; The eldest Trustees gave me praise, the fairest sisters smiles; Still I recall how Elder Smith of Worten Heights averred. My Apostolic Parallels the best he ever heard.
"All winter long I rode the snows, rejoicing on my way; At midnight our revival hymns rolled o'er the sobbing bay; Three Sabbath sermons, every week, should tire a man of brass-- And still our fervent membership must have their extra class!
"Aggressive with the zeal of youth, in many a warm requite I terrified Immersionists, and scourged the Millerite; But larger, tenderer charities such vain debates supplant, When the dear wife, saved by my zeal, loved the Itinerant.
"No cooing dove of storms afeard, she shared my life's distress, A singing Miriam, alway, in God's poor wilderness; The wretched at her footstep smiled, the frivolous were still; A bright path marked her pilgrimage, from Blackbird to Snowhill.
"A new face in the parsonage, at church a double pride!-- Like the Madonna and her babe they filled the 'Amen-side'-- Crouched at my feet in the old gig, my boy, so fair and frank, Naswongo's darkest marshes cheered, and sluices of Choptank.
"My cloth drew close; too fruitful love my fruitless life outran; The townfolk marvelled, when we moved, at such a caravan! I wonder not my lads grew wild, when, bright, without the door Spread the ripe, luring, wanton world--and we, within, so poor!
"For, down the silent cypress aisles came shapes even me to scout, Mocking the lean flanks of my mare, my boy's patched roundabout, And saying: 'Have these starveling boors, thy congregation, souls, That on their dull heads Heaven and thou pour forth such living coals?
"Then prayer brought hopes, half secular, like seers by Endor's witch: Beyond our barren Maryland God's folks were wise and rich; Where climbing spires and easy pews showed how the preacher thrived, And all old brethren paid their rents, and many young ones wived!
"I saw the ships Henlopen pass with chaplains fat and sleek; From Bishopshead with fancy's sails I crossed the Chesapeake; In velvet pulpits of the North said my best sermons o'er-- And that on Paul to Patmos driven, drew tears in Baltimore.
"Well! well! my brethren, it is true we should not preach for pelf-- (I would my sermon on Saint Paul the Bishop heard himself!) But this crushed wife--these boys--these hairs! they cut me to the core; Is it not hard, year after year, to ride the Eastern Shore?
"Next year? Yes, yes, I thank you much! Then my reward may fall! (That is a downright fair discourse on Patmos and St. Paul!) So Brother Riggs, once more my voice shall ring in the old lists, Cheer up, sick heart, who would not die among these Methodists?"
THE BIG IDIOT.
"Sister, thy boy is a big idiot--a very big idiot!" said Gerrit Van Swearingen, the Schout of New Amstel. Then the Schout struck his long official staff on the ground, and went off in a grand manner to frighten debtors.
The Widow Cloos made no reply, but dropped a couple of tears as she saw her son, Nanking, shrink away before his uncle's frown and roll his head in deprecation of such language.
"My mother," he whispered, "won't the big wild turkeys fly away with my uncle Gerrit if he calls me such dreadful names?"
"Nanking," said the widow, kissing the big idiot, "your uncle is a very great man. I don't know what is greater, unless it is an admiral, or a stadtholder, or maybe a king!"
"Yes," conceded Nanking, "he is a dreadfully great man. He puts drunken Indians in the stocks and ties mighty smugglers up to the whipping-pump. But Saint Nicholas will punish him if he calls me an idiot."
"Ah! Nanking," replied the widow, "nothing can curb your uncle--neither the valiant Captain Hinoyossa, nor the puissant director of every thing, great Beeckman, nor hardly Pietrus Stuyvesant himself."
"I know who can frighten him," exclaimed the big idiot. "Santa Claus! He's bigger than a schout. Mother, his whip-lash can reach clear over New Amstel--isn't it so? How many deers and ponies does he drive? Will he bring me any thing this year?"
"My poor son!" said the poor mother, "we are so far from Holland and so very humble here, that Saint Nicholas may forget us this year; but God will watch over us!"
Nanking could hardly comprehend this astonishing statement: that Saint Nicholas could ever forget little boys anywhere. So he went out by the river to think about it. There were three or four Swedish boys out there rolling marbles and playing at jack-stones. They did not like to play with Dutch boys, but Nanking was only a big idiot, and they did not harbor malice against him.
"_He! Zoo!_" they cried; "wilt thou play?"
"Yes, directly. But tell me, Peter Stalcop, and you, Paul Mink, do the very poorest little boys in Sweden get nothing on Christmas?"
"_Ah, Zon der tuijfel!_ without doubt," cried the boys. "Old Knecht Clobes, your Santa Claus, is a bad man. That is why he gave the Dutch our country here. And in Sweden, too, he turns people to wolves, and brothers and sisters tear each other to pieces."
"But not in Holland," exclaimed Nanking. "There he gives the strong boys skates and the weak boys Canary wine. He brought, one time, long ago, three murdered boys to life, so that they could eat goose for Christmas dinner. And three poor maidens, whose lovers would not take them because they had no marriage portions, found gold on the window-sill to get them husbands."
"_Foei! Fus!_ You're lied to, Nanking! There is no good Christmas in this land."
Nanking said they were very wicked to doubt true and good things. He believed every thing, and particularly every thing pleasant. His mother, whose house was on the river bank, looked out with a fond sadness as she heard him playing, his heart amongst the little boys, although he was so big.
"_Ach! helas!_" she said to herself, "what will become of my dear man-lamb? He is simple and fatherless, poor and confiding. Thank God, at least he is not a woman!"
The Widow Cloos had come but recently from Holland, sent out by charity at the instance of her brother, Van Swearingen, the schout or bailiff of New Amstel colony. Her son, who was almost a man in years, had been kept in the Orphan House at Amsterdam until his growth made him a misplaced object there, and his feeble intellect forbade that he should become a soldier, and die, like his father, in the Dutch battles. So the Widow Cloos brought Nanking out in the ship Mill, to the city of Amsterdam's own colony on the banks of the South River, which the English called the Delaware. They came in a starving time, when the crops were drenched out by rains and all the people and the soldiery of the fort were down with bilious and scarlet fever. The widow was just getting over a long attack of this illness, and her brother, the schout, regarded the innocent Nanking as the cause of her poverty.
"Thou hadst better drown him," said the hard official; "he'll eat all thy substance or give the remainder away, for he believes every thing and everybody."
"O brother!" pleaded the widow, "if he did not believe something, how sad would he be! All the children love him, and he is company for them."
It was an odd sight to see Nanking down with the boys, as big as the father of any of them, playing as gently as the littlest. He rode them pig-a-back on his broad shoulders; they liked to see him light his pipe and smoke without getting sick. He worked for his mother, carrying water and catching fish, and was the only person in New Amstel (or Newcastle) who could go out into the woods fearlessly among the Minquas Indians; for the Indians all believed that feeble-minded people were the Great Spirit's especial friends, and saw beyond the boundaries of this world into that better heaven where shad ran all the year in the celestial rivers, and the oysters walked upon the land to be eaten. Nanking believed all this, too. It was his confiding nature which made him useless for worldly business. Hobgoblins and genii, charms and saints, and whatever he had heard in earnest, he held in earnest to be true.
"Dear me!" thought Nanking, when he was done playing marbles, "can't I be of use to somebody? Perhaps if I could do something useful my uncle would not think me a big idiot. Then, besides, little Elsje Alrichs might let me be her sweetheart and carry her doll!"
Elsje was the daughter of Peter Alrichs, the late great director's son, whose father slept in the graveyard of the little log church on Sand Hook, beside Dominie Welius, the holy psalm-tune leader. Nanking believed that when the weathercock on the church tingled in the wind, it was Dominie Welius in the grave striking his tuning-fork to catch the key-note. Peter Alrichs inherited the well-cleared farm of his papa, and had the best estate in all New Amstel except Gerrit Van Swearingen, who was accused of getting rich by smuggling, peculating, and slave-catching. Little Elsje liked Nanking, but her father too, said he was a big idiot. So Nanking had a hard time.
"Elsje," cried Nanking one day, "don't tell anybody if I give you a secret."
"No, big sweetheart!"
"I'm going to catch a stork!"
"We don't have storks in New Netherlands, Nanking."
"That's just where I'm going to be smart," exclaimed Nanking. "Because there are no storks here I'm going to catch one. Then uncle Gerrit cannot call me a big idiot."
Elsje gave Nanking her doll to hold. He sat there as big as a soldier, and handled the doll tenderly; for he believed it to be alive as much as she did, and she was a little girl.
"In Holland," said Nanking, "there is a stork on every happy chimney. The farmers put a wagon-wheel on the chimney-top, and along comes your stork and his family, and they build a nest on the wagon-wheel. There it is, Elsje, all twigs and grass, warm as pie, heated by the chimney-fire, and such a squawking you never heard. It keeps the devil away! The old stork sits up on one long straight leg, and with the other foot he hands the worms around to the family. I used to sit down and watch them by the hour in that other Amstel where ours gets its name."
"By the great city of Amsterdam?" asked Elsje.
"That's it. In Amstel, the suburb of Amsterdam, where you can see such beautiful ships from all parts of the world. If I get a stork for our chimney may I hold your doll another day?"
"Yes, Nanking, and I'll give you a kiss."
Nanking told his mother next day that he was going to the woods, and not to cry if he did not return at dark. The Widow Cloos kissed him, and saw him go happily up the street.
"_Om licht en donker!_" she moaned. "Between the hawk and the buzzard! Poor, simple son! The Indians may kill him, but here he will only get his uncle's curse!"
Nanking walked out through the little settlement of log and brick, and past the court-house, where the stocks and whipping-post were always standing. He saw his uncle Van Swearingen's smart dwelling, with its end to the street and notched gables, and many panes in its glazed windows, and two front doors, and large iron figures in front, telling the date his uncle built it. A little way off was the fine residence of Peter Alrichs, with a balcony on the roof where the family sat of evenings, smoking their pipes and seeing starlight come out on the river and the flag drop at sunset from Fort Casimir; or hearing the roll of drums as they changed the guard or fired a gun to overhaul a vessel.
"If I get a stork and bring it back," thought Nanking, "won't I astonish this town? It'll be proclaimed, I expect, in a public manner, that Nanking Cloos is no longer the big idiot."
The woods closed round New Amstel not very far from the houses, and only an Indian path led on through the strong timber or marshy copse. Nanking was unarmed and not afraid. He walked until long after sun-up, and waded the headwater swamps of Christine Kill, until he saw before him the hills of Chisopecke rise blue and wooded, and there he knew the Minquas kept their fort. But the Minquas had no storks. He turned the first and second of these hills and then crossed the range and descended to the rain-washed country on the other side, where, amid the low sparse pines on the lonely barrens, he could walk more readily, guided south-westward by the proceeding sun. The fierce Susquehannocks dwelt beyond the next high range, and Nanking had heard from other Indians that they only had some storks. Fierce Indians they were, but all Indians had been good to Nanking; so he advanced right merrily, and at the crossing of the second river snaked a fish out of the water with his line and made a fire with his flint and punk-wood to cook it. When he had finished his meal he looked up and was surrounded by Indians.
They were fierce, grave Indians, armed with spears and bows. Although they looked angry, Nanking wiped his mouth on his ragged sleeve and saluted them all kindly--shaking hands. He perceived that they formed around him closely, in front and rear, but he was not suspicious on this account. The Indians marched him over a long range of very high hills and stopped at a place where, through the timber, could be seen a noble bay.
"It is Chisopecke Bay," cried Nanking gladly, "and there, they say, are storks and plentiful geese. I suppose, when we come to a proper place, these Indians will ask me what I want."
The Indians turned down from the bay-view, backward, by another trail, and entered a very rocky glen, where rocks as big as the houses of New Amstel were strewn all over the country-side. Following downward, by a dangerous way like stair-steps, they entered at length a small shady amphitheatre, where a waterfall plunged down a gorge and foamed and thundered. Nanking fairly danced with delight.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, "I have seen paintings of cascades in Holland, but nothing like this. My mother and Elsje must come here."
The Indians, now present in great numbers, looked at Nanking dancing and laughing with the greatest wonder, but still they were far from affable. After a while they began to sit around in a large circle and sing a doleful sort of tune. Then two Indians produced a long piece of grapevine and tied one end of it to a tree and the other end around Nanking's wrists, which were fastened together behind his back. A fire had already been lighted at the foot of the tree, and the coals were now strewn over the ground.
"_Hond mold!_ Keep courage!" thought Nanking. "It is only some kind of play or game. How can I get a stork from them unless I play with them?"
But the Indians still sung their doleful tune and did not laugh a bit. The month was December, and the fire, at first grateful, grew unreasonably warm. At last Nanking trod on a hot coal, which burnt his old shoe through, and raised a blister on his heel.
"Such a game as this I never learned in Amsterdam or New Amstel," thought Nanking, laughing good-naturedly; "I guess I will cut it short by riding one of their boys pig-a-back."
So he picked out a young Indian with his roving eye, one perhaps sixteen years old, and, darting upon him, lifted the Indian boy up in powerful arms and carried him around the fiery circle. The young brave struggled in vain. Nanking clinched his big fingers around the Indian and dandled him like a baby. The effect upon the Indians in the circle was exciting; they seized their spears, stopped their singing, and rushed upon their guest with apparent or assumed fury.
"_Ha! herfe!_" cried Nanking, "I have changed the monotony of this game, anyhow!"
At this moment an old Indian woman, the mother of the boy whom Nanking had desired to amuse, threw herself between the upraised spears and the laughing widow's son. She shouted something very earnestly, and then stretched herself at Nanking's feet. All the other Indians also flung themselves down in fear or revulsion of feeling, and some crawled in another minute to where the burning coals were strewn over the sward, and with their fingers or with tree-boughs returned these coals to the fire, while others quenched the fire itself with water from the torrent. Nanking had never lost his temper. He put the young Indian down and kissed him, and shook hands with one after another, who only rose as he approached them with a kind countenance. They unbound his hands and overwhelmed him with attentions and professions, and placed their fingers on their foreheads significantly, still looking at him.
"Well," exclaimed Nanking, "I hope they also don't take me for a big idiot! No, they do not. It is only a part of the queer game."
It was now growing late in the day, and Nanking wanted some food. The Susquehannocks produced nuts, venison, fish, hominy, and succotash. Their formerly savage countenances beamed confidence and consideration. Nanking expressed his wishes by signs. He wanted a great, long-legged, long-winged bird, a stork, to carry back alive to New Amstel. The Indian chiefs conferred, and finally replied, by signs and assurances, that they had such a bird, but that it would take two whole days to procure one.
"Very well," thought Nanking, "I may as well stay here until I get it, and not return home like a fool. My mother will trust in God, if not in Saint Nicholas, and I trust in both. Elsje will not forget me at any time!"
All the next day Nanking played ball and bandy with the Susquehannock boys, and taught them jack-stones and how to make a shuttlecock. They put eagle's feathers in his hair, and the old men adopted him into their tribe. On the third day the absent Indians returned with a stork. It was a white stork with a red bill and plenty of stork's neck, but short legs. Nanking doubted if it could stand on one leg on the top of a chimney and feed worms around to the young stork family, but he felt very proud and happy. The whole tribe seemed to have assembled to see Nanking go away. He had become the friend of all the boys and women and the _protégé_ of the tall warriors. They placed his stork in a canoe, and in a second canoe following it were a couple of large deers freshly killed, which he was to take to his mother as the gift of the fierce Susquehannocks. Amid the cheers and adieus of the nation the two canoes pushed off and, entering the broad bay, paddled up a river under the side of a bar of blue mountains, until the river dwindled to a mere creek, and finally its navigation ceased altogether. By signs upon the head of the dead stag, indicating a larger deer, Nanking knew they were at the "Head-of-Elk" River. His fierce friends left him here with many professions of apology and esteem, and soon after they departed Swedes and Minquas appeared, who had observed the hostile canoes from their lookout stations on the neighboring hills. These also welcomed Nanking, being already well acquainted with him, and taking up his venison proceeded through the woods toward New Amstel. He carried the live stork himself--a rough bird, which would not yield to blandishments or good treatment. After a very fatiguing journey and four days' absence from home, Nanking entered New Amstel in the dead of night.
"To-morrow," he thought, "I shall be repaid for all this. They will say, 'Nanking Cloos is the smartest man in the colony of New Amstel.' Perhaps I shall be a burgomaster, and eat terrapin stewed in Canary wine!"
Nanking was up betimes, looking at the chimneys on his mother's dwelling, of which there were two, and both were the largest chimneys in New Amstel. The Widow Cloos lived in a huge log building with brick ends, long and rather low, which had been built by the commissary of the colony at the expense of the city of Amsterdam as a magazine of food and supply for her colonists; but after several years of unprofitable experiment with the colony, it was resolved to give no more provisions away, and the director, great Captain Hinoyossa, when Van Swearingen became the schout, allowed the latter's sister to inhabit one end of the warehouse, and that the farthest end from the water. The rest was uninhabited, and Nanking, looking at the chimney which surmounted the river gable, said to himself:
"That will never do for my stork, as there is no fire lighted there. I never saw smoke from that chimney in my life. The stork requires a nest where there is heat, and plenty of it."
He therefore prepared to climb to the chimney on the land-side and establish a nest. There was a broken cart-wheel in the warehouse, which Nanking procured and drew to the roof, and when daylight broke upon the town the earliest loungers and fishermen saw the happy simpleton working like a chimney-sweep, as they thought, except that instead of brushing he was piling brush around the chimney on the cart-wheel. His mother came out and looked joy to see him back; the soldiers strolled down from the fort and the boys and women from the town. Uncle Van Swearingen was there, smiting the ground with his shodden staff, and ejaculating, "_Foei! weg! fychaam u!_ Fie! leave off! fie on you! What absurdity is this on the property of our _hoofstad_, our metropolis?"
"Never mind, uncle!" answered the beaming Nanking. "I have been a great man in the last few days. I have lived among the fierce Susquehannocks. Presently you shall see something that you shall see!"
Peter Alrichs also came down to the quay with his pretty daughter, who could no longer keep her secret. "Good Nanking," she whispered, "is building a nest for a real stork. He has found one, just like the dear creatures in Holland!"
The news was presently dispersed, and all felt an interest, until finally Nanking produced his stork.
"It is like a stork, indeed!" uttered Peter Alrichs; "'tis big as one, too, but its wings are all white!"
"'Tis a stork, _yah, op myne eer_! Upon my honor, it is!" muttered uncle Van Swearingen.
"Nanking is not an idiot, papa!" said Elsje, overjoyed.
The widow was delighted at the enterprise of her son.
When Nanking had carried the great bird to the nest he made a little speech: