42 
[July 21/ 1900. 
Down the Raisin.— IV, 
Earlier in the evening, just as the dusk had become dis- 
tinctly visible, we passed a large and somewhat pretentious 
house upon the shore, and from its broad windows the 
evening lamps were already sending out their cheerful 
rays to brighten the pathway of the wayfarer, while an 
unseen maiden was singing in a fresh young voice to the 
accompaniment of the little parlor organ. 
'•■ 'Neath the sycamores the candlelights are gleaming" 
was the burden of the refrain, the much-regretted syca- 
mores "On the banks of the Wabash far away." 
Without all was gloom and darkness, within all 
warmth and light. Why not stop and claim the 
hospitality which was no doubt awaitmg the 
travelers? But the impulse was only a temporary 
one, and the Little Pilgrim had kept steadily on, 
the inherited stubbornness of the skipper having 
refused to relinquish the idea of a landing at Deer- 
iield, which seemed, to recede further and still 
further into the night. He thought again with sin- 
cere regret of the comfortable farmhouse with its 
hospitable lights and its (presumably) fair vocalist 
after it had been left miles in the rear and the night 
had deepened, but regrets were unavailing. (It is 
noticeable that regrets are almost invariably un- 
availing, else they were not regrets.) 
In the meantime the clouds that had come up with 
the sunset grew darker and heavier, and the slender 
path of light that had run on before the Little Pil- 
grim became still more narrow. We were now 
going forward in a dull, mechanical way, hopeless 
but determined, seeking something, we knew not 
what, that lay, we knew not where. The keen de- 
light, the exultation of the morning, were gone, and 
there was no longer any thought of pleasure in 
the journeying, that now hoped only for shelter and 
rest. The pace had slackened, and there were no 
more eager bursts of speed to devour the inter- 
minable distance. And so through the sober night 
and along the strenuous path the Little Pilgrim 
held the even tenor of her way. 
After a time another of the infrequent lights 
broke through the night, and the skipper hailed it 
with the usual query. The answer evidently came 
from a colored man, whose house, but dimly out- 
lined by its own light, seemed rough and for- 
bidding. What he said about the distance to Deer- 
lield is immaterial, save that he told us we could save a 
few miles by making a short portage just back of the 
house. But although he was invisible from the canoe, 
there was so much of the invitation of the spider to the 
fly in his tone and manner that even the prospect of a 
shortened voyage seemed in no way desirable, and when 
he volunteered to walk down the bank for a mile or so 
abreast of the canoe, alleging that he wanted to 
look for his own boat, which had that day gone 
adrift, we determined that we most assuredly would 
not oblige him by either coming ashore or upset- 
ting. Doubtless we did a grievous wrong to a 
plain but honest citizen, but appearances were cer- 
tainly against him, and if the cruise of the Little 
Pilgram had ended suddenly and mysteriously, the 
water would have kept no trail over which she 
might have been traced. 
Some one had warned us in advance of an ugly 
bend in the river, where the current ran more 
rapidly than usual, and where the bed of the stream 
■was strewn with half-submerged logs that had 
failed to make the turn in time to clear their un- 
wieldy lengths. The passage, it was said, was 
disagreeable enough in the day time, but the man 
■who would undertake to run it at night could be 
set down as one who had unbounded faith in that 
Providence which exercises a special care over 
people of a certain class. But though the locality 
was strange and the night was dark, we had no 
difficulty in recognizing it — when the canoe 
grounded on one of these very logs, and swung 
around broadside against it in the sweeping rush of 
waters. Just why the little craft did not upset 
and send her crew and cargo to swell the wreck- 
age that blockaded the river here is more easily 
asked than answered, but she was soon afloat 
again, and found a clearer channel further over in ! 
midstream. 
By this the slender streak of light in which the j 
river had seemed to catch and hold the last faint 
reflection of the djdng day had faded out from 
■under the prow of the canoe, and we were left to 
grope our way without its friendly aid. And when 
the paddle blade on either side struck the bottom, 
we knew that we were drawing too close to the 
land, and so veered away again into the channel. 
Now and then some clump of trees upon the shore 
flung up their blurred and broken shapes in con- 
fused outline against the darkened skv, but their 
presence only served to make the gloom "more dense. 
And now the wind that heralded the rain had be- 
gun to rise, and save for the whisper of its fitful 
gusts the night had grown still and sullen, and 
the rapids having been passed, the deeper currents 
underneath us_ flowed noiselessly but relentlessly on. 
Suddenly, like a fierce discord in a melody, a long- 
'drawH. rasping sound broke the hush of the night, and 
the little boat checked, then stopped and swung round 
as though an unseen hand had reached upward from the 
water and caught her by the prow. It needed no fla'^h- 
light to tell us what had happened. The canoe had 
struck a snag that projected backward just at the surface 
of the water, and it had torn a long gash in her and held 
her still impaled upon its jagged point. Such a gash 
seemed wide enough to admit the entire river, and as the 
skipped braced himself for the rush of water that would 
certainly and instantaneously follow, he imagined that he 
could already feel the boat sinking under him as she 
foundered in the gruesome flood. And as he waited half- 
instinctivelv he thrust the 8-foQt paddle straight down over 
tlig sirfp qt the canoe as far as he could reach, It met 
with no other resistance than the water, and the current 
thrust it slowly back again to the surface. 
What an infinite multitude of thoughts throng through 
the tense mind at such a moment ! 1 he prospect of find- 
ing the crew and all the ship's stores at the bottom of 
the river was not a very pleasing one to a man who could 
not swim, and the skipper remembers wondering, in that 
overweighted ten seconds of suspense, how long it would 
be before the slow search that would drag its tedious way 
down the winding river would come at last upon the 
wreck of the Little Pilgrim, and what would be said when 
the end of the cruise was known. And then the crew 
wondered how far it was to Deerfield, and whether, per- 
chance, some of the residents of that mythical town might 
not, after a time, be the ones to claim the reward which 
would be ofltcred by friends at home for the missing. 
But the water did not come in, and the canoe still 
TERN ALIGHTING ON NEST. 
From "Bird Studies With a Camera." 
Copyright, 1900, by D. Appleton & Co. 
floated. As she listed with the attempt to take sound- 
ings, the canoe was in some manner released from the 
snag and drifted clear of its malignant clutch, and then 
it was that the captain and the crew unanimously decided 
to go ashore. It was all well enough to be determined and 
persevering, and Deerfield might turn out to be in the 
very next block, but if it were there was no likelihood 
light glimmered for a space and then disappeared. Per- 
haps it was only a will-o'-the-wisp beckoning the travelers 
across some treacherous marsh which was waiting to 
complete the work the river had failed to accomplish. But 
the ground was high and solid where we were, and as the 
rain began to fall, the canoe became a hotel again, and 
the crew, having supped sumptuously on the remains of 
the late turtle dinner, were shown to their rooms and soon 
went comfortably to sleep. 
When the captain awoke next morning and came down- 
stairs for a little stroll before breakfast, as was his wont 
on the cruise, he glanced across the fields, and there, 
almost close enough to be reached with the canoe paddle, 
was the missing town of Deerfield. It apparently had 
come around in the morning for the express purpose of 
resenting the insinuations which had been made regarding 
its existence, and " it looked as placid and innocent as 
though it had not been wandering and dodging 
about all nig:ht long to escape capture by the crew of 
the Little Pilgrim. But although the distance over 
the luxuriant June meadows seemed so short, it 
was a long half-hour before we had navigated the 
great bend of the stream that finally brought us to 
the town itself. 
It was in the night off Deerfield that the cruise of 
the Little Pilgrim reached, not its close, but its 
culmination. Every human life has its crisis, but 
seldorn more than one, and this was the case with 
the Little Pilgrim. From Deerfield (which was 
scarcely discovered till it was abandoned) we floated 
peacefully down to Petersburg, the river growing 
broader and fuller as we journeyed on. It had 
hardly seemed worth while to waste time in re- 
pairing the rent in the canoe, since by shifting the 
cargo slightly to the opposite side the liability of 
taking water was happily obviated. The day was 
bright, and the morning wind, washed cool by the 
night's rain, blew fresh from the eastward. 
All the long June hours we voyaged, through a 
country that had now become more or less tame and 
commonplace, the experiences of the day being in 
the main a repetition of the uneventful happenings 
of the days gone by. And so it came to pass that 
late in the afternoon of the fourth day of the voyage 
we drifted quietly into Dundee, and saw once more 
the iron road over whose tracks the morning train 
had borne us so bravely to the starting point of our 
cruise. Here we landed, a trifle battered, not a 
little worn and wearied, but with a store of adven- 
ture and experience that would make and keep 
these days ever memorable; and happy in the 
thought that even our mishaps had been fortunate 
ones, Nothing now remained to be done but to 
gather up what was left of our supplies and other 
worldly possessions, to make the final portage from the 
river to the station and there to await as best we might 
the coming of the train that was to ,bear us homeward. 
The cruise of the Little Pilgrim was ended. 
„ ^ Jay Beebe. 
loi-i-DO, O., June, 190O. 
Note.— tt might "be mentioned as a matter of passing interest 
that the entire expenses of the crew of the Little Pilgrim 
during this cruise, exclusive of railway fares, but including 
hotel bills porterage, tips, bar bills, etc., aggregated the 
sum of ?1.20! 
Jack to Jim. 
GANNETS tJN NESTS. 
From "Bird Studies With a Camera." 
Copyright, 1900, by D. Appleton & Co. 
that it would run away, and the really desirable course 
just at that time seemed to be across rather than with 
the current. 
When the boat was landed and a light struck, it de- 
veloped that tlie snag had cut entirely through the can- 
vas skin for some 12 inches just above the waterline for- 
vi'ard. Evidently the cruise and the joke had been ear- 
ned far enough for that day at least, and all the duffle was 
unloaded and, with the canoe, carried to the top of the 
bank. Here there appeared to be "no thoroughfare," and 
a prospecting trip up and down the shores revealed no 
trace of human habitation. If there had ever been a 
road along the river leading to Deerfield or elsewhere, it 
had long since lost all patience with the river's crooked 
ways and left it in disgust. It was now hard on mid- 
jiight, and far oflf over the wide and misty fields a vagye 
BY SIDNEY EDWARDS. 
Dear Jim: 
Glad to get your letter and to know of your 
newest boy— hope he grows up like his daddy to 
keep clean body and soul, and to shoot and talk 
straight. 
Plad an early morning hunt the other day that I 
thought perhaps you would like to hear about. 
In this county, you know, the woodcock season 
opens on the glorious Fourth, and I want to go on 
record here as saying that the howl you hear about 
the iniquity of Fourth of July woodcock hunting 
here and in New Jersey (of which State we should 
geographically be a part) is empty— nothing in it. 
The law has obtained for three or four years 
in this county,* and I have hunted each season, 
never finding a bird that was not strong of wing 
and willing and able to take jolly good care of him- 
self. These "mother songs" you hear about poor 
little, fuzzy' little woodcocks, that the dogs point 
and then catch and mangle, or that the game 
butcher slaughters by the dozens as they flop their 
half-winged flight through the tree trunks, are way 
out of harmony with the facts. Some closet 
naturalists get periodical bugs on the subject, and 
then they fill up the columns of the good old 
Forest and Stream with their witlessness. How- 
over, I suppose we can't help it. It's like the 
"Last Moose" squabble or the Adirondack panther 
tale, or the "How Does the Partridge (sic) Do His 
Drumming" discussion. I wish somebody'd lay 
these ghosts— don't you, Jim? If I was the iron- 
rimmed spectacled editor of the old Forest and 
Stream I'd make it a condition precedent to the 
publication of any of these wails that Perdix «r 
Philohela, or whatever he signs himself, should 
pay $100, American money, for the possible loss of 
tired-out subscribers, and drink two quarts of 
double-quality skunk-cabbage tea — tepid. That 
would dry the ink on their light-running pens, I'll 
wager— eh, Jim ? "I may be wrong." as the Wizard 
of the Nile says, but it is all opinions that make 
this w^orld go round, I imagine, and if some Old 
Subscriber _ should see this he'd probably write me 
down a jay, and groan over the mental strabis- 
mus pf the sporting public generally. When we all get 
to thinking alike, there will be no woodcock, Jimmy, no 
Forest and Stream, and no_ Old Subscriber and no "me" 
and no "you," and no nothing — ^boo, hoo ! Say, Jimmy, 
after all, let us pray for long life to these other old 
fools. 
Moralizing, am I? Well. I will get along to my story. 
I could not get our old friend Howkins out for an early 
start, and so I finally nersuaded Smith in the office here 
to go along o' me. We agreed to meet at the old Stone 
♦Richmond County (Staten Island), New York, 
