546 
FOREST AND- STREAM 
[Dec. 31, 1904. 
Seth Muzzy s Pluck. 
BY GEORGE STORY HUDSON. 
"Are the doughnuts aboard, dad?" asked Seth, doubt- 
fully, poising the uplifted oars. 
"That they are," replied Deacon Obed, "safe and 
snug in the earthen crock, with ma's blueberry cake 
and pies." 
And the deacon, sitting in the stern of the leaky 
skiff, hunched up his knees to draw his feet above the 
sloshing pool. 
Seth resumed rowing. They passed down the nar- 
row channel between level, oozy flats toward the harbor, 
where a schooner swung at anchor. 
"Bound to risk it, be ye?" piped a venerable ac- 
quaintance who leaned on his scythe at the edge of the 
thatchy bank. 
"We're off next tide, weather willing," was the 
deacon's curt reply. 
The schooner wallowed deep under a ponderous 
deckload of lumber. She was decrepit, weather-beaten 
and untidy. Ding}'- sails, patched and pinholed, lay un- 
furled. Ropes and other gear littered her cabin top 
in lubberly disorder. 
She was a typical down-easter of ancient vintage and 
uncertain mould. Emblazoned on her squat stern was 
"Success" in rusty white letters. Beneath the name 
appeared a mystic square and compass. 
Deacon Obed Muzzy was a typical farmer who knew 
little of the sea. He had taken the vessel for debt and 
claimed she was eating her head off lying idle. So 
he conceived a scheme to make her pay and had 
brought it into action, totally disregarding the warn- 
ings of his neighbors and the pleadings of his wife. 
The deacon was noted for his stubborn characteristics, 
and when he declared he would load the Success 
with lumber from his wood-lot and freight it to market 
with the aid of his sixteen-year-old son, Seth, the 
wiser ones said, simply, "Wait and we'll see." 
The Success was ready, so far as cargo was con- 
cerned. Her hold was jammed full of spruce boards, 
and a monster pile of 60-foot logs lay upon her deck, 
reaching from a point just forward of her cabin house 
to the windlass in her apple-shaped bows. 
On the cabin roof was stowed a crate or pen. Within 
the slats was a flock of garrulous hens, perhaps fifty 
of them, destined as a present for the deacon's married 
daughter just settled in a faraway home. 
Tall and spare was Deacon Obed. His grizzled head, 
set on a gaunt, bandanna-swathed neck, was topped 
with a battered straw hat of generous brim. Climbing 
up the seamy side of the old Success, he fell to work 
at the clanking, spluttering pump. 
Seth was supremely happy. Boy-fashion he skipped 
about the deckload, whirled the creaking wheel and 
strutted to and fro along the counter. He looked for- 
ward to the outing as a bright spot in his life. He 
had sailed a punt in the river, and why couldn't he 
steer the schooner and mind the sails? he thought. 
A tearful mother watched the boy from the vine- 
shaded porch on the hill. The tide soon began to 
make, and the bar across the harbor mouth disappeared; 
the low monotone of the surf against the flinty barrier 
was stilled. 
"Up with the anchor, Seth boy," cried the deacon, 
and they bended to the work with zeal. 
"We'll show 'em how to go coasting in the lumber 
trade," he continued, cheerily, as the mud-hood was at 
last made secure. 
Then he let her go, all sail set, bound down Boston 
way. The breeze was fair, and there was nothing to 
do save steer and jiggle the pumps. 
Presently the wind shifted and came in, puffy, from 
the eastward, dead ahead. They flattened in the sails 
and hammered away for Crooked Point, expecting to 
find smooth water beyond. 
A thin haze crept above the wavering sea-line. Be- 
tween the point and the schooner were strewn rocky 
ledges, where the surf foamed like milk. The coast 
line, to leeward, loomed solid granite without beach 
enough for a gull to find decent foothold. 
Home Harbor, entered by a dangerous channed, and 
a little more than a bottle-shaped cove was eight 
miles away behind the frowning cliff. It proved tire- 
some work bucking into the rising sea. The Success 
never was much of a sailer to windward. She sagged 
and sulked and would not fetch where Deacon Obed 
pointed her. 
The outer rock on Crooked Point gradually faded 
from view as fog enshrouded the horizon. In a short 
time the ashy pall, dense and dank, swept over the 
laboring vessel. Foaming along an unseen course, the 
Success was utterly lost. 
Deacon Obed heard the breakers boom against the 
cruel ledges close under his lee. He gripped the 
wheel anew and sought a rift in the great gray blanket. 
It had now freshened in hardening squalls to a whole, 
gale. The schooner rolled and pitched and groaned 
in every fibre. There was no time to shorten sail, and 
she needed every rag to fetch her clear. The old man, 
hatless and drenched, crouched over the wheel to 
ease her in the furious blasts that tortured masts and 
sails. Rain swished across the desolate waste. Seth — 
poor little chap — clung to the forward rigging, wherf 
the sting of driving spume was keenest. 
Suddenly a fog horn bellowed close aboard. The 
dismal note came from a steamer fleeing the deadly 
coast.. It boomed again, louder, nearer. Deacon Obed 
determined to take no chances. Peril was imminent. 
He threw the schooner into the eye of the wind. The 
Success, obedient to the helm, climbed over the heaving 
ridges and settled into the yawning valleys, her head- 
way deadened. Then father and son waited, nerves 
keyed to bursting tension, to catch the position of the 
unseen stranger. 
Up! 'up! a black hull rose upon a mass of foam, 
towering high above them, and not 100 feet off their 
starboard beam, Straight for the laboring vessel the 
mass of metal rushed. The Success, unmanageable, lay 
athwart her course. 
Bells jangled from the lofty bridge! Steam roared 
out of deep-throated pipes. The steamer had re- 
versed. Men, somewhere in the foggy distance, shouted 
orders in frenzied haste. 
"Shift your helm," shrieked Decaon Obed. "You'll 
run us down, you heartless bully. We're here by right 
of- way," he yelled in terror-stricken rage. 
Crash! the ship catapulted into the Success with 
awful impact. Logs pitchpoled and leaped into the 
hissing sea as the sharp stem cleft its path through 
stubborn wood and metal. The ship passed on; the 
dismal minor melody of her siren seemed to say she'd 
stand by and lower boats to aid. 
Seth was hurled into the mainsail as it burst from 
its roping and blew in swelling folds against the mast. 
Grasping a halliard he clung there; then dropped to the 
deckload, dazed and bruised. Out of the shattered 
hen-coop flew a bunch of cackling fowl. Out into 
the bewildering fog they slowly winged. The boister- 
ous wind beat them down in scattering flight. A few 
just cleared the seething crests. 
Deacon Obed emerged from the cabin, where he had 
sought shelter from the shock. He was unhurt, yet 
severely shaken in nerve. A hen hurtled past his head. 
He forgot the peril of the situation and, with wildly 
swinging arms, tried to keep the remaining fowl with- 
in the slatted crate, though the schooner, almost sub- 
merged, maintained a frightful list. 
A breaching wave poured tons of water upon the help- 
less craft. The coop, wrenched free, overturned and 
fell upon the deacon. A shifting log wedged the con- 
trivance firmly and held him fast. Still unhurt, yet 
frenzied with rage at the peculiar predicament, the old 
man might have been mistaken for a wild man in 
captivity. 
The sea sluiced through a yawning wound in the 
schooner's side. Had the Success been loaded with 
almost any other cargo, she would have sunk like lead. 
But the lumber within her hull kept her afloat. 
"Roll the coop off me, Seth boy," implored the. 
deacon. "She's settling fast and I'll drown like a rat," 
he cried. 
Grasping an ax, Seth tried to jettison the deckload. 
The binding stakes, once severed, would permit the un- 
wieldly log to roll into the sea. With one hand cling- 
ing to a crevice, his feet touching the slippery rail, 
the boy fought to the last ounce of his strength for his 
father's life. At last the stakes were cut; they creaked 
and threatened to give way and hurl the great log down 
upon him. .' A timber yielded, spun around and plunged 
overboard, barely missing Seth's head. The lad re- 
gained the deck. With a crow-bar he pried and 
wrenched at the logs across the coop. 
"Hurry, hurry, Seth, I'm drowning!" cried the 
deacon despairingly. 
Seth, horrified, saw water sluicing almost level with 
his father's pallid face. 
"Why don't the steamer come back and help me," 
moaned the boy. "They can't have left my father to 
die out here like this." 
Foam spurted up through the crevices in the up- 
heaving deck. A foam-capped comber thundered over 
the vessel's stern and well-nigh buried her. It seemed 
she must founder. 
Seth's active brain now seized on a forlorn chance 
to cheat the riotous ocean of its prey. He knew an- 
other toppling sea might crush out his father's life. 
Could he steer her against such odds? Hope leaped 
into his heart as he laboriously trimmed the flaunting 
remnant of canvas to swing the vessel before the wind, 
and so lessen the battering power of the seas. 
Gradually the Success gained headway. Seth crawled 
back across the charging logs and grasped the wheel 
to hold her steady before the gale. A pursuing comber 
reared its hoary front and fell short. The schooner was 
now outrunning the sea, and the deck began to free 
itself of water. 
Deacon Obed drew himself to a sitting posture and 
wrenched feebly at the slats of the pen. His thin lips 
quivered with cold and fright. "Keep her going, 
sonny," was the old man's encouraging cry; "you may 
save the vessel and us. I'm too weak to bear a hand 
just now." 
The sky brightened, and Seth's manly heart quickened 
with joy. .A. ray of sunshine touched dashing sprays in 
rainbow beauty. The murky sea changed to dazzling 
blue and lost its destroying power. A foaming reef 
was cleared with nothing to spare as the Success fled 
on. She touched the shelving surface of a rock, 
careened, then grated over the jagged fangs and slid 
to freedom. A section of her keel washed up under 
the stern and sped astern in the frothy wake. 
A swaying buoy emerged from the dissolving mist. 
Seth saw it and shifted his course to fetch the welcome 
beacon. 
"It's the Home Harbor mark!" he cried exultingly. 
The pursuing billows flattened as he swung the 
schooner head to wind behind a sheltering head land 
and let her drift. Seth, exhausted, cold and sobbing, 
dropped to the slippery deck. He had swooned. 
Fishermen ran down to the beach from their huts, 
put off to the Success and let go her anchor. Deacon 
Obed was soon released. Father and plucky little son 
were lowered into the rescuer's boat and taken ashore, 
where they soon completely recovered from the dread- 
ful experience. > 
Yet the deacon's neighbors continue to wink and say: 
"I told you so." 
Trails of the Pathfinders.-— XXIV. 
The Rambler in North America. 
{Concluded from page 529.) 
Here, too, they found bears very plenty and very fat, 
feeding full upon the acorns. Latrobe complains, how- 
ever, that "they were a cowardly set, and never waited to 
be killed, but slunk away among the entangled brush- 
wood till out of sight, and then shambled off with their 
ungainly gallop, so that we had no chance of another 
feast of bear's venison." Extraordinary bears! 
Late in October they began to be among the buffalo, 
and it was now that Latrobe had his first chase. He 
was mounted on a good horse, and seems to have had 
little difficulty in overtaking his bull, but he very 
honestly explains that "there was something in the 
immense shaggy head, mane and beard of my game — the 
deep eye that gleamed like a coal of fire from beneath 
the curls, and his unwieldy bulk, that made me rein 
in, and rather follow than hunt him — nay, as often as, 
shambling on, he turned his head and glanced revenge- 
fully on me, I thought it might be more convenient to 
be off, lest he might take it into that capacious head 
of his to hunt me. However, my blood was excited 
and I followed him, to watch the effect on the horse, 
who, in fact, showed that he entered into the chase 
with all his heart; till the bison tumbled head over heels 
into a deep, red, muddy creek, and waddled through; 
when I thought I might leave him without compro- 
mising my valor." 
The second chase was equally successful; and after 
a headlong ride "up one swell and down another, over 
broken ground, and through hollows filled with water 
and deep red clay, into which my unwieldy quarry pre- 
cipitately plunged with such unhesitating goodwill, that 
I could not but imitate his example, however little I 
should have fancied it at another moment' — he led me 
into a deep marsh, where, spent and breathless, he was 
brought to bay, and turned upon me. Here we bothered 
one another a good deal by our several maneuvers for 
attack and defense, and though I did my best to kill 
him, Ifailed to do so. Two of my balls had struck him 
on the hind-quarters as he ran, but seemed only to 
act as a spur, for he merely gave his tail a flourish, 
glanced around at me, and scampered on. Unless you 
strike the animal at a given spot, below the hump and 
behind the shoulder, or on the spine, such is the tough- 
ness of the skin and the elasticity of the muscles, that 
the ball seems to be thrown away; and so all mine ap- 
peared to be. I was annoyed with my non-success thus 
far, and with the idea of the clumsy piece of butchery 
I was attempting; and in fine, extricating myself from 
the marsh, left him to his fate." 
A little later another buffalo chase was had, when 
Mr. Irving and Mr. Latrobe brought down each a bull, 
and halted, Mr. Pourtales continuing the chase with 
unabated perseverance. The author alighted, to take 
the tongue from his bull. "To the trample and rush 
a dead silence had succeeded, and I was occupied in 
my labors, when a slight yelp drew my attention, and, 
raising my eyes, I saw at a few hundred feet distance, 
the head of a gray wolf pushing cautiously upward 
through the grass. This apparition was followed in the 
course of a quarter of an hour by as many as half a 
dozen of similar character, appearing, as though by 
magic, on the verge of a circle which they formed 
around me; till, having secured my trophy, and being 
convinced that assistance from the camp was out of the 
question, and that I must leave my prey where it had 
fallen, I rode off. I then could see them stealing for- 
ward cautiously to their meal. The hunter is the wolf's 
and vulture's provider on these great plains; and they 
know it, and follow his trail on the buffalo range, with 
the certainty of having their share of the spoil." 
There was much hunting that day, and plenty of meat 
had been brought into the camp; but Mr. Pourtales did 
not come in. The next day they sent out scouts for 
him, and met him on his way back to camp. He had 
followed the buffalo so far that_ he was unable to find 
his way back again, and when night came, had hobbled 
his horse, and climbing into the forks of a tree had 
spent the night there; sleeping peacefully, he declined, 
notwithstanding the cold and the howling of the wolves. 
It was soon after that that they turned about and re- 
