Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 October 1893 — Page 2

THE PERILS OF Certain English Prisoners

By Charles Dicken*, (185?) CHAPTER I——Continued. 4 The cry arose again, and there was a terrible and confusing rush of the women into the midst of the struggle. In another moment something came tumbling down upon me that I thought was the wall. It was a heap of Sambos that had come over the wall; and of four men who clung to my legs like serpents, one who clung to mv right leg was Christian George King. “Yup, So-Jeer," says he, “Chris tian George King sar berry glad SoJeer a prisoner. Christian George King been waiting for So-Jeer sech long time. Yup, yup!” What could I do with one-and-twenty of them on me but be tied hand and foot? So I was tied hand and foot. It wa.s all over nowboats not come back —all lost! When I was fast bound and was put up against the wall, the one-eyed English convict came up with the Portuguese captain to have a look at me. “See!” says he, “here’s the determined man! If you had slept sounder last night you’d have slept your soundest last night, my determined man.” The Portuguese Captain laughed in a cool way, and, with the flat of

his cutlass, hit me crosswise, as if I was the bough of a tree that he played with: first on the face and then across the chest and the •wounded arm. I looked him steady in the face without tumbling while tie looked at me, I am happy to say; tout, when they went away, I fell, and lay there. The sun was up when I was roused and told to come down to the beach and be embarked. I was full of aches and pains, and could not at first remember; but I remembered quite soon enough. The killed were lying about all over the place, and tiie pirates were burying their dead, and taking away their wounded on hastily-made fitters, to the back of the Island. As for us prisoners, some of their boats had come round to the usual harbor to carry us off. We looked a wretched feW, ! thought, when I got down there; still it was another sign that we had fought well and made the enemy suffer. The Portuguese captain had all the women already embarked in the boat he himself commmanded, which was just putting off when I got down. Miss Maryon sat on one side of him, and gave me a moment’s look, as full pf quiet courage and pity and confidence, as if it had been an hour tong. On the other side of him was poor little Mrs. Fisher, weeping for her child and her mother. I was shoved into the same boat with Drooce and Packer and the remainder of our party of marines; of whom we had lost two privates besides Charker, my poor, brave comrade. We all made a melancholy passage, under the hot sun over to the mainland. There we landedTh a solitary place, and were mustered on the sea sand. Mr. and Mrs. Macey and their children were among us. Mr. and Mrs. Pordage, Mr. Kitten, Mr. Fisher and Mrs. Belltott. We mustered only fourteen men, fifteen women and seven children. Those were ail that remained of the English who had laid down to sleep last night unsuspecting and happy, 01 the Island of Silver-Store. [The scconu chapter. which was not written hv Mr. Dickens, describes the Prisoners (twenty-two women and children) taken into the interior by the Pirate Captain, who makes them the material guarantee fur the precious metal and Jewels left on the Island; declaring that, H the latt<-r be'wrested by English ships from the pirate* In charge, he will murder the captives. From their '‘Prison in the Weods," however *thls being the title of ttueaecond chapter), they escape by means ofra.fa.ts down the river; and the seqiml Utold Ina third and concluding chapter by Mr. Dickens.] CHAPTER 111. THE RAFTS ON THE RIVER. We contrived to keep afloat all that night, and, the stream running strong wi|th us, to glide a long way down the river. But we found the night to be a dangerous time for •uch navigation, on account of the eddies ana rapids, and it was t -retore sottlad next dav .that in future

'we would bring-to at sunset and encamp on the shore. As we know of no boats that the Pirates possessed up at the Prison in the woods we settled always to encamp on the opposite side of the stream, so as to nave the breadth of the river, between our sleep and them. Our opinion was that if they were acquainted with any near way by land to the mouth of this river, they would come up it in force and retake us or kill us, according us they could; but, that if that was not the case, and if the river run by none of their secret stations, we might escape. When I say we settled this or that, I do not mean that we planned anything with any confidence as to what might happen an hour hence. So much had happened in one night, and such great changes had been violently and suddenly made in the fortunes of many among us, that we had got better used to uncertainty, in a little while than T dare say most people do in the course of their lives. The difficulties we soon got into, through the off-settings and pointcurrents of the stream, made the likelihood of our being drowned, alone, to say nothing of our being retaken, as broad and plain as the sun at noonday to all of us. But we all worked hard* at managing the rafts, under the direction of the seamen (of our own skill I think we never could have prevented them

HE HAILED ME WITH A CHEER.

| from overcutting), and we also I worked hard at making good the defects in their first hasty construction—which the water soon found out. While we humbly resigned ourselves to going down, if it was the will of Our Father that was in Heaven, we humbly made up our minds that we would all do the best that was in us. And so we held on, gliding with the stream. It drove us to this bank, and it drove us to that bank, and it turned us, and whirled us; ; but yet it carried us on. Sometimes much too slowly; sometimes much too fast, but yet, it carried us on. My little deaf and dumb boy slumbered a good deal now, and that was the case with all the children. They caused very little trouble to anyone. They seemed, in iny eyes, to get more like one anothor," in quiet manner but in the face, too. ! The motion of the raft was usually Jso much lhe same, the sound of the ' soft wash and ripple of the water i was usually so much the same that they were made drowsy, as they might have been by the constant playing of one tune. Even on the grown people, who worked hard and ! felt anxiety, the same things pro- ! duced something of the same effect. 1 Every day was so like the other that I soon lost count of the days myself and had to ask Miss Maryon, for instance whether this was the third or fourth? Miss Maryon had a book and pencil and sbekept the log; that is to say she entered upon a little journal a note of the time and of the distances our seamen thought we had made each night. So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on. All day long and every day the water, and the woods and sky; all day long and every day the constant watching of both sides of the river, and far ahead at every bold turn and sweep it made for any signs of pirates or pirate dwellings. So, as I say, we kept afloat and glided on, the days melting themselves together to that degree that I 'could hardly believe my ears when I 'asked, “How now, Miss?” and she (answered, “Seven.” I To be sure, poor Mr. Pordage had by about now got his diplomatic coat into such a state as never was seen. What with the mud of the river, what with the water of the river, what with the sun and the dews and tho tearing boughs and the thickets, it hung about him in discolored shreds like a mop. The sun hud touched him a bit. He had taken to always polishing one particular button, which just held on to his left wrist, and to always calling for stationery. I suppose that man called for pens, ink and paper, tape land sealing wax upwards of a thousand times in four-and-twenty hours. He had an idea that we should never get out of that river unless we were written out of it in formal memorandum, and the more we labored at navigating the rafts the more he ordered us not to touch them at our

peril and the more he sat and roared for stationery. Mrs.- Pordage, similarly, persisted in wearing her nightcap. I doubt if any one but ourselves, who had seen the progress of that article of dress, could by this time have told what it was meant for. It had got so limp and ragged that she couldn’t see out of her eyes for it. It was so dirty that whether it was vegetable matter out of a swamp or weeds out of the river, or an old porter’s knot from England, I don’t think any new spectator could have said. Yet this unfortunate old woman had a notion that it was not only vastly genteel, but that it was the correct thing as to propriety. And „ she really did carry herself over the other ladies who had no night caps and were forced to tie up their hair howr they could, in a superior manner that was perfectly amazing. I don’t know what she looked like, sitting in that blessed nightcap, on a log of wood, outside our hut or cabin upon our raft. She would have rather resembled a fortune-teller in one of the picture books that used to be in the shop windows in my boyhood, except for her stateliness. But, Lord bless my heart, the dignity with which she sat and moped, with her head in that bundle of tatters, was like nothing else in the world! She was not on speaking terms with more than three of the ladies. Some of them had, what she called, “taken precedence" of her —in getting Into, or out of, that miserable little shelter —and others had not called to pay their respects, or something of that kind. So, there she sat in her own state and ceremony, while her husband sat on the same log of wood, ordering us one and all to let the raft go to the bottom and bring him stationery. What with this noise on the part of Mr. Commissioner Pordage and what with the cries of Sergt. Drooce on the raft astern (which were sometimes more than Tom Packer could silence), we often made our slow way down the river anything but quietly. Yet that it was of great importance that no ears should be able to hear us from the woods on the banks, could not be doubted. We were looked for to a certainty, and we might be retaken at any moment. It was an anxious time; it was, indeed, indeed, an anxious time.

On the seventh night of our voyage on the raft we made fast as usual on the opposite side of the river to that from which we had started, in as dark a place as we could pick out. Our little encampmant was soon made, and supper, was—eaten and the children fell asleep. The watch was set and everything made orderly for the night. Such a starlight night, with such blue in the sky and such black in the place of heavy shade on the banks of the great stream! Those two ladies, Miss Maryon and Mrs. Fisher, had always kept near me since the night of the attack. Mr. Fisher, who was untiring in the work of the raft, had said to me: “My dear little childless wife has grown so attached to you, Davis, and you are such a gentle fellow, as well as such a determined one”: (our party had adopted that last expression from the one-eyed English pirate, and I repeat what Mr. Fisher said, only because he said it) “that it takes a load off my mind te leave her in your charge.” I said to him: “Your lady is in far better charge than mine, sir, having Miss Maryon to take care of her, but you may rely upon it that I will guard them both—faithful and true.” Says he: “I do rely upon it, Davis, and I heartily wish all the sliver on, our old island was yours.” That seventh starlight night, as I have said, we made our camp, and set our watch, and got our supper, and the children fell asleep. It was solemn and beautiful in those wild and solitary parts to see them, every night before, they lay down, kneeling under the bright sky, saying their little prayers at the women’s laps. At that time we men all uncovered and mostly kept at a 'distance. When the innocent creatures rose up, we murmured, “Amen!” all together. For, though we had not heard what they said, we knew it must be good for us. At that time, ton, as was only natural, those poor mothers in our company, whose children had been killed, shed many tears. I thought the sight seemed to console them while it made them cry; but whether L, waS right or wrong in that, they wept very much. On this seventh, night, Mrs. Fisher had cried for her lost darling until she cried herself asleep. She was lying on a little couch of leaves and such like (I made the best little couch I could for theiii every night), and Miss Maryon had covered her, and sat by her holding her hand. The stars looked down upon them. As for me, I guarded them. “Davis!” says Miss Maryon. (I am not going to say what a voice she had. I couldn’t if I tried.) “I am here Miss.” “Thb river sounds as if it were swollen to-night.” “We all think, miss, that we are coming near the sea." “Do you believe, now, we shall escape?” “I do now, miss, really believe it.” I bad always said I did, but I had in been doubtful. “How glad you will be, my good Davis, to see England again!” I have another confession to make that will appear singular. When she said these words something rose in my throat; and. the stars I looked away at seemed to break into sparkles that fell down my face and burnt it. “England is not much to me, miss, except as a name." .

“Oh, so true an Englishman should i not say that! Are you not well to- 1 night, Davis?” Very kindly, and with a quick change. “Quite well, miss.” “Are you sure? Your voice sounds altered to my hearing.” “No, miss, I am a stronger man than ever. But England is nothing to me.” Miss Maryon sat silent for so long a time that I believed she had done speaking to me for one time. However, she had not, for by and by she said in a distinct, clear tone: “No, good friend; you must not say that England is nothing to you. It is to be much to you yet —everything to you. You have to take back to England the good name you have earned here, and the gratitude and attachment anpl respect you have won here; and you have to make some good English girl very happy and proud by marrying her; and I shall one day see her, I hope, and make her happier and prouder still by telling her what noble services her husband’s were in South America, and what a noble friend he was to me there.” Though she spoke these kind words to me in a cheering manner, she spoke them compassionately. I said nothing. It will appear to be another strange confession that I paced to and fro within call all that night, a most unhappy man, reproaching myself all the night long. “You are as ignorant as any man alive; you are as obscure as any man alive; you are as poor as any man alive; you are no better than the mud under your feet.” That was the way in which I went on against myself until the morning. With the day came the day’s labor. What I should have done without the labor I don’t know. We were afloat again at the usual hour, and were again making our way down the river. It was broader and clearer of obstructions than it had been, and it seemed to flow faster. This was one of Dpooce’s quiet days; Mr. Pordage, besides being sulky, had almost lost his voice, and we made good way and with little noise. There was always a seaman forward on the raft keeping a bright lookout. Suddenly, in the full heat of the day, when the children were slumbering and the very trees and reeds appeared to be slumbering, this man —it was Short —held up his hand and cries with great caution: “Avast! Voices ahead!” We held on against the stream as soon as we could bring her up and the other raft followed suit. At first Mr. Macey, Mr. Fisher and myself could hear nothing, though both the seaman aboard of us agreed that they could hear voices and oars. After a little pause, however, we united in thinking that we could hear the sound of voices and the dip of oars. But you can hear a long way in those countries, and there was a bend of the river before us and there was nothing to be seen except such waters and such banks as we were now in the eighth day (and might, for the matter of our feelings, have been in the eightieth) scanning with anxious eyes. (to be continued.)

The Battery.

Harper's Weekly. When Hendrick Hudson came sailing into the mouth of the river that thenceforth was to be known by his name, on that September dav in the year 1609, almost the whole of what now is called “the Battery” was under water at high tide. And it is a sact —notwithstanding the thundering of guns which has gone on thereabouts and the blustering name that the locality has worn for more than two centuries —that not a single one of New York’s enemies ever would have been a whit worse had the tides continued until this very moment to cover the Battery twice a day. Actually, the entire record of this theoretically offensive institution, whereof the essential and menacing purpose, of course, was that somebody or something should be battered by it, has been an aggregation of gentle civilities which would have done credit to an exceptionally mild man.nered lamb.

Unpatriotic Uncle Mose.

Indianapolis Journal. “Man come around to see me,” said Uncle Mose, “to see es I’d go on strike. I axedheem his business, an’ he sayed he was a agitator, an’ when I tole him dat I was so busy trying to git enough money to git de odder kind ob tater dat I didn’t had no use fer de agitator, he got mad an’ tole me dat I didn’t know de fpst principles ob bein’ a wukkinraan.” Young Coningsby Disraeli has lately made his oratorical debut in Parliament, and it is observed that he has the same spare figure, with sloping shoulders; the same curl on the forehead, heavy, blinking eyelids, and the same air of dignified self-consciousness which marked Lord Beaconsfield. Old members thought there was a good deal of Beaconsfield’s earlier voice and habits of gesture, too. Frederick Douglass has organized a company for the purpose of establishing a large manufacturing enterprise near Newport News, Va., .building a town and giving employment to young negro men and women. That is a good, practical way of elevating the negro race and helping along the new South at the same time. a Mr. Gladstone astonished some of his auditors in the House of Commons the other night by using the word “gumption," yet who could employ it more appropriately, see ing how much of the quality of the G. O. M. possesses himself?

THE FAIR SEX.

Oulda continues to draw large roy alties from her twenty-seven novels Mrs. Oliphant receives about £IOOO for a story, and she writes several every year in addition to her literary work. “Edna Lyall” is quite well again, after a long period of ill-health. She is at Eastbourne, England, where her brother-in-law is a curate, engaged on a new novel of modern English life under the title of “To Right the Wrong.” Jenny Lind made many contributions to the Swedish Episcopal Church in Chicago. St. Ansgarius, which was founded in 1849. This is the oldest congregation of that nationality in tms country, and she took a great interest in it. The communion set of this church, one of her gifts, is very elaborate. IT HAS NO SLEEVES. If economy is not an object here is a stylish coat copied from a French model just suited to the prevailing huge sleeve. It is a threequarter jacket of black silk striped with black satin.

Below the waist line it flares in the same manner as the skirt. Around the shoulders is a collar of duchesse lace, which forms a yoke to the short cape of black velvet. This is fluted over the shoulders and trimmed with jet fringe. Two jet pendants swing from the center- of the yoke in the back. The front has wide revers of white moire silk screened with black guipure lace.——— The jacket has no sleeves, so the voluminously puffed affair belonging to the gown has things all its own way and so is not crushed. A HAT IN PA EE GREEN AND BLACK. Colored hats arfe mfeh in vogue this summer. One trimmed in a novel way with black feathers is pale green in color, trimmed with a large bow of black ribbon. One long black ostrich feather nestles between the under part of the flaring brim

and the hair. A black tip falls from the hair, up the back and another long, curly feather is fastened flat on the side of the hat where the brim turns down. This hat is worn with a French costume of pale-green light-weight broad-cloth. Miss Loisette Bonaparte is the great-grand-daughter of Daniel Web ster and the great-grand-niece of Napoleon Bonaparte. Her father was Colonel Jerome Napoleorr Bonaparte, grandson of Jerome Bonaparte, who married Elizabeth Patterson, and her mother was the grand-daughter of Daniel Webster; her maiden name, Caroline Appleton. Mrs. M. A. Haulenbeck. of New York, who has been a commercial traveler ten years, earns $5600 a year in commissions. Lady Florence Dixie, who is credited with the intention of starting a new woman’s paper in England, is a sister of tho Marquis of Queensberry, and one of the most versatile women of the day. While yet a girl she had excited the enthusiastic admiration of “the Shires," where riding is carried to a fine art, by her straight and intrepid going, and in the saddle she has journeyed over the the best part of Europe, has explored the wilds of Patagonia, and went through the Boer campaign, early in the eighties, as “special” for the Morning Post. She has written a novel, is by way of a poetess, and has appeared on the platform to plead for the “rights” of her sox. Furthermore, she has a devoted husband and a delightful home—The Fishery, at Windsor—and two bandsome bays.

A Kansas Financial Scheme.

St. Louis Globe Democrat. One of the enterprising farmers of western Kansas whose mortgage has not yet stripped him of his estate is to be credited with a novel financial invention. His farm rests on a bed of salt 250 feet in thickness, which he estimates to be worth $3,000,000; and he has issued bonds upon this deposit to the amount of $50,000, which he is offering for sale. The property in other words, a product six, times as valuable as the amount of the bonds, and he points with pride to the fact that the bonds of railroad companies, for instance, are by no means so well secured. Those who buy these bonds, he declares, need entertain no fears of repudiation or depreciation, whenever the bondholder desires redemption, all he has to do is to go and dig a sufficient quantity of the salt preserve and pay himself in full. Some sales have been made, it is reported, and the bonds are being used in the neighborhood as currency. There are many other farms in Kansas which have salt under them of various degrees of thickness, and thus an easy way is provided for the inflation of the circulating medium. The owners of tracts of land have only to calculate what the crude deposit is worth, and issue bonds or notes on it accordingly. It is all a matter of simple arithmetic and a little expense for printing. The parity between gold and silver, and other vexatious questions which are now being talked about, have nothing to do with the case; it is an issue of salt, and that is all. This seems very absurd, of course, to people who are in the habit of dismissing the National finances, but it is really not more ludicrous than some other plans that are seriously proposed for the reconstruction of our currency system.

A Matter of Health.

Housekeepers faintly realize the danger of an indiscriminate use of the numerous baking powders nowadays found upon every hand, and which are urged- upon consumers with such persistency by peddlers and grocers -on account of the big profits made in their sale. Most of the powders are made from share and caustic acids and alkalies which burn and inflame the alimentary organs and cause indigestion, heartburn, diarrheeal diseases, etc. Sulphuric acid, caustic potash, burnt alum, all are used as gas producing agents in such baking powders. Most housekeepers are aware of the painful effects produced when these chemicals are applied to the external flesh. How much more acute must be their action upon the delicate internal membranes! Yet unscrupulous manufacturers do not hesitate to use them, because they make a very low-cost powder, nor to urge the use of their powders so made, by all kinds of alluring advertisements and false representations. All the lew-priced or so-called cheap baking powders, and all powders sold with a gift or a prize, belong to this class.

Baking powders made from chemically pure cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda are among the most useful of modern culinary devices. They not only make the preparation of finer and more delicious cookery possible, but they have added to the digestibility an,d ? wholesomeness of our food. But baking powder must be composed of bUVAI-pUI *V HUI tTSVIIJ V.lUjyl or they must be tabooed entirely. Dr. Edson, Commissioner of Health of New York, in an article in the “Doctor of Hygiene,” indicates that the advantages of a good baking powder and the exemption from the dangers of the bad ones in which the harsh and caustic chemicals are uses, are to be secured by the use of Royal Baking Powder exclusively, and he recommends this to all consumers. “The Itoyal," he says “contains nothing but cream of tartar and soda refined to a chemical purity, which when combined under the influence of heat and moisture produce pure carbonic, or leavening, gas. The two materials used, cream of tartar and soda, are perfectly harmlesss even when eaten, {but in this preparation they are combined inexact compensating ! weights, so that when chemical action begins between them in a the dough they practically disappear, the substance of both having been taken to form carbonic acid gas ” Hence it is, he says, that the Royal Baking Powder is the most perfect of all conceivable agents for leavening purposes. It seems almost’ incredible that any manufacturer or dealer should urge the sale of baking powders containing injurious chemicals in place of those of a well-known, pure, and wholesale character simply for the sake of a few cents a pound greater profit; but since they do,a few words of warning seem to be necessary.

Talk is Cheap.

New York Weekly. Mrs. Brickyow abominable. Here we are in this broiling city yet. Mr. Brickrow —You said you wanted to summer at the sea-side. “Yes, and you insisted on the mountains.” “Just ro. Times are very hard, my dear. Let's go on arguing the question a few weeks longer, and then it will be cool enough to stay at home.”

Memory.

Good News. Teacher—Define memory. Dull Boy—lt’s what weal ways has till we come to speak a piece.