CHAPTER VII.

ALMOST A TRAGEDY.

As soon as the Baltic was made fast, and the captain had sufficiently recovered from his astonishment, he stalked toward me, denouncing vengeance. I took to my heels as soon as he reached the wharf. Finding that he could not catch me, he stopped, shook his fist, and swore he would arrest me if he saw or heard anything more of me. I, of course, knew nothing of the law but its terrors, and, though I really had the better side in the case, gave the matter up.

It may have been that the joy to be in a strange city, out of the way of capture, helped me materially, but it seems a little remarkable now how soon this mighty disappointment and defeat vanished wholly from my thoughts. I cannot remember that the circumstance ever crossed my mind again till I was called upon, months subsequently, to recount my adventures to admiring school-fellows.

It could not, I am sure, have been twenty minutes after my Parthian contest with the irate captain--for, if the truth must be told, I shot him a scathing epithet or so in my flight--when I was amusing myself after the manner of the “light and heavy balancer,” rolling myself about upon the tops of some white-fish barrels, at a neighboring dock, as contented and happy as a thoughtless boy only can be.

Tied to this dock was a little sloop-rigged scow, used in bringing sand from Hog Island in the Detroit River. There was a small boat, with a solitary oar and scull-hole belonging to this sand-scow, tugging lazily at the rope by which it was attached, as it floated dreamily astern in the current. A youngish fellow, with a good-natured face, was engaged in unloading the larger craft when I espied the smaller one.

Now, if there was any one thing in which much practice and a boundless love had lent me any degree of skill, it was risking my life in amateur navigation. I need scarcely tell you, therefore, how I ceased my acrobatics with the white-fish barrels, and came and gazed wistfully at that little boat; how I varied this employment by staring inquiringly into the mild face of that enviable young man who had control of its destinies; how, when he paused in his work to regard me in turn, I thrust my hands unconcernedly into my pockets, and looked studiously away from him and the little boat, at the far windings of the broad river; how, when he had resumed his work, my eyes also resumed their longing pilgrimage from the little boat to his face; and how, having repeated this process several times, my mind tugging fitfully and dreamily at its purpose, as the little boat at its rope, I finally turned and asked, in an abrupt voice, for the loan of the one-oared craft.

The young man was startled into a smile, perhaps of sheer good-nature, and perhaps of pleased surprise at so brief a petition overtoppled by so lengthy an enacted preamble. Certainly, he said, I might take his little boat, and I embarked.

Pushing boldly into the stream, which runs there three or four miles an hour, I sculled vigorously for the Canadian shore. Even at this early period, I may remark, I had an overpowering desire to visit foreign lands; and I resolved to take that opportune occasion to go abroad. Those most familiar with the swift, deep river will best understand that the probability of my reaching the British shore was only less than the possibility of my ever getting back again; and that the project, under the circumstances, was utterly mad and perilous.

I sculled out well toward the middle of the stream, exulting, boy-like, in the wild freedom of the voyage; heading diagonally against the current, but, otherwise, taking very little heed whither the prow of my boat was pointing. Suddenly I noticed a commotion on the shore I had left, and looked curiously among the people there for the cause. Every one seemed now pointing and hallooing at me. It must be, I concluded, they were applauding my skill and daring; and, thus encouraged, I sculled more lustily than ever, with my back still toward the bow of my boat.

Not many moments afterward I heard, rising above the other noises of the busy life around and on the river, a queer, rumbling sound in the water ahead of me. I turned to find a large steamboat making directly toward me, under full speed, and not more than two or three rods away. I dropped my oar and stood paralyzed with the sudden danger and the utter hopelessness of escape.

The people on the steamer seemed nearly as terrified as myself, for they shouted and waved their hands and arms in the wildest manner. The bow of the large vessel just grazed that of my little one when the great paddle-wheels were stopped. The swell caused by the motion of the steamer struck the small craft and threw it clear of the wheel; and the Niagara, for that was her name, passed by on her voyage.

If the wheel had been stopped twenty seconds later, my boat and myself would most certainly have been drawn into it, and circumstances over which I could have had no control would, in all probability, have prevented me from writing out this faithful account of my adventures.

I now put my boat about and sculled for shore, abandoning my scheme of foreign travel and exploration. The long and difficult struggle with the current which ensued should have been enough, without the terrible fright I had experienced, to bring me, I think, to a realizing sense of the wildness and madness of my undertaking. Finally reaching the dock and making the yawl fast to the sand-scow, I exchanged a very sheepish sort of smile for the good-humored or sympathetic one of the young man, her captain, and strolled off leisurely over the wharf, out of the way of the curious people who had been the witnesses of my exploit.

* * * * *

In a remarkably short time thereafter I was engaged again in rolling myself about on the top of the white-fish barrels; thinking no more of my hairbreadth escape, or of what was to become of me in the immediate future. Twenty minutes, as nearly as I can recollect, were about as long as any direst misfortune, at that period, could cloud the brightness of my young hope. This utter recklessness I can scarcely understand now. It requires, I suppose, more years and experience than I had then to learn the knack of despairing.

At least, I know I was in the full delight of my first freedom, and, in all these boyish wanderings, the fact that I was in need of a meal or a night’s lodging would occur to me, almost always, as a sudden inspiration, and only at the usual hour for the meal or for going to bed. The joy of my solitary, Robinson-Crusoe life, on the wharves and among the white-fish barrels, was so strong upon me that I suffered much less than would at first be imagined from the hunger which sometimes filled the long intervals between one meal and the next.

I have just used the words “solitary life,” and I have used them advisedly; for I can remember only one juvenile friend whom I ever picked up as a companion in my vagrancy, and that was an urchin of Irish descent. We met on the wharf, at Detroit, if my memory does not fail me, some days after the events just chronicled. He was the first and last whom I took into my boyish confidence, for the companionship was not harmonious, and ended in the disaster of a bloody nose, which he inflicted on me at parting. This, with the black eye which I bestowed in turn upon him, was, I believe, the only ceremony observed on the occasion of our mutual leave-taking.

* * * * *

Toward evening of the day of my narrow escape in the yawl of the sand-scow, I drew from my pocket the crackers thrown to me that morning, at Toledo, from the pantry of the Baltic, and seated myself on the wharf overlooking the clear river to eat them, feeding the minnows with the crumbs. When it began to be dark, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no place to sleep. I am sure that up to that moment the subject of my prospective lodgings had not crossed my mind. I arose, and, brushing the last fragments of my crackers down to my fellow-vagabonds, the minnows, I walked toward the place where the sand-scow was moored.

I remembered now the good-natured face of the young fellow who had so willingly loaned me his small boat and never scolded me for the peril to which I had exposed it, as well as myself. Arrived in the little cabin of the scow, I found him already retired. I had conscientious scruples about begging, and imagined I was doing nothing of the kind when I made the simple affirmative statement of my case. Indeed, I would not have had time to append any request to my first sentence, for the young man, in his prompt kindness, told me, as soon as he had heard I had no lodging of my own, that I was welcome to share his, making for me, while he spoke, a place on the loose hay which formed his bed.

A solitary pillow-case of coarse sheeting, stuffed with hay, was the only thing like bedding discoverable. Here I threw myself without undressing and tried to sleep; but there were more lodgers with us, bred, I suppose, by the sand, than even the good-hearted fellow would have willingly accommodated,--that is, if he felt them as I did. Before morning, however, youth and fatigue got the better of them, and I slept soundly.