2 The Start
Early the next day we met Starboard Sam and told him the result of my interview with our uncle. His comment was brief and simple:
“If the captain o’ the ship you are on now, lads, don’t want you, all you hev to do is to go with me and find a tidier and trimmer craft”
Then we three went down to the town and gathered more news about the great gold discoveries in California, and though I do not think I am very excitable, my mind was still further inflamed by what we heard. As for Henry, he was all afire. Starboard Sam took everything very coolly, which was due, I suppose, to his training on the old Constitution.
I well remember the excitement caused by these reports. According to the stories we heard the people in California were picking up gold by the handful. It lay around in chunk as abundant as the stones on some of our old fields. I was old enough and wise enough to make a liberal allowance for such tales, but even after I did that my nerves were all a-quiver. Now that we had determined to go, my eagerness to make the start almost overmastered me.
“When we come back with all our pockets crammed full of gold our uncle will think a lot more of us than he does now,” said Henry.
“Yes,” said I. “if we ever get there and find the gold.” But I knew that my face belied my discouraging words.
It was a matter of no great difficulty to arrange for the trip. All of us, even Starboard Sam, preferred the journey across the continent to the voyage around the isthmus or by the cape. The neighborhood was infected already with the California fever, and a wagon train was to start in a few days from the town. We were sure we could join it without trouble, for in those days of perils by prairie and mountain the stronger the party the better for all.
Fortunately, after the last accounts were balanced we found there was enough left from our father’s estate to buy a good rifle and horse and other necessaries for each of us. Starboard Sam provided himself similarly. I wondered where he got the money, but he laughed a dry laugh and said:
“Jest a little prize money, lad, which I put away years ago for some such v’y’ge as this.”
I found that the emigrant train had been organized somewhat like a military company. There were ten covered wagons—“prairie-schooners,” we call them. They have a deep wooden bed, surmounted by a high arching cover of white cloth, which closes them in tightly, both top and sides. I remember now some of the curious inscriptions that their owners had written on the white covers in big black letters such as these: “Clear the track, we’re coming,” “On to the Pacific,” “We’re bound for the setting sun,” “This is the Mayflower on wheels.” Every owner put up his own motto according to his fancy.
There were forty people in the party, half of whom were women and children. Ethan Simpson, a large, middle-aged, taciturn man, was the leader, and when I told him we wished to go with them he said:
“All right, but you must take your share of the work and danger. Remember, too, that I’m captain, and when I say for you to do a thing, you must do it.”
That ended the matter, for we readily agreed to his conditions. I thought that we ought to tell our uncle good-bye and Henry agreed with me.
“You’ve chosen your own road,” said our uncle, gruffly, when we came into his presence. “Follow it. It’s probable that you’ll be scalped by the Indians before you are half-way to California. Well, I won’t be to blame for it. Go!”
And he turned back to the study of the little book of accounts that he loved better than anything else on earth. When we went out Henry expanded his chest and then drew several deep breaths. In answer to my inquiring look he said:
“I think the air in that room was poisoned. I am trying to get it out of my lungs as soon as possible.”
Such was our farewell interview with our uncle.
But we were young and old Sam, too, was as young as we were in spirits, if not in years, and as soon as we started the depressing effects of that interview passed away. Capt. Simpson gave the word, the horsemen loosed their bridle reins, the wagon-drivers cracked their whips, and we shouted all together: “Ho for California!”
We followed the old national turnpike which leads across the Alleghany Mountains to the West. For a while we passed through a thickly-settled country and then we began to climb the mountains. The breath of spring was in the air. The fresh green grass was growing by the roadside, and the buds on the trees were bursting into bloom, spangling the forests with pink and white. Henry, Sam and I often galloped ahead on our horses and I saw the color coming back into Henry’s pale face, while even the old sailor’s eyes sparkled with delight at the fresh beauty of field and forest
“Ef it’s like this all the way to Californy,” he would say, “it’ll be nuthin’ but a summer v’y’ge, and we’ll jest grow fat and sassy, we’ll have sech an easy time.”
Frequently people came out of their houses to look at us and talk with us. Then they would wave us a cheery good-bye and we would promise to bring them back a lump of gold.
By and by we reached the summit of the Alleghanies and were in a wilderness. Henry used to read to me out of his old books that all men lived in the forests once and were on good terms with the wild beasts. He said it was the old Greeks who told us about it, and when I got up in that wilderness I found there was something in my blood that told me those old heathens were right The wilderness and its voices soothed me and I felt happier and, aye, better too, than ever I had felt before in my life. Sam said that was the way he felt at sea, and that the wilderness was the next best thing.
At night we would draw up our wagons in a kind of circle, tether the horses and build great fires of the fallen timber that was plentiful in the forest. Sometimes Henry would read to us out of three or four of his favorite books that he had brought along with him. Robinson Crusoe was liked best by most of us. I have never yet found a man who was not pleased by that book, and when I do I will never trust him with anything of mine. Starboard Sam was especially fond of the tale, and he told us he had been on Robinson Crusoe’s very island, which raised him still further in the esteem of the whole party.
Then Sam would take his turn at spinning a yarn; and a right good hand he was at it, too, for he had gone to sea, to use his own expression, when he wasn’t “knee high to a duck,” and had been through all the wars. He had been in the old Constitution more than fifteen years and he was never tired of telling about her. There was one story that always had great interest for me. It was about the war against those fierce pirates on the north coast of Africa, Tripolitans, I believe they called them.
“Our fine ship, the Phillydelphy, had run on some rocks under their batteries,” he would say, “and we had to surrender her. They’d fixed her up an’ were a-goin’ to use her against us. She was a-lyin’ in the harbor of the city of Tripoli, right under the muzzles of all their big cannon. There was a young fellow in our navy named Decatur, who wasn’t afeard of anythin’ that could walk or swim. He came to the commander one day and he said he’d take a boat and a lot of brave fellers, and go in the harbor some dark night and burn the Phillydelphy right under the noses of them bloody pirates. The commander thought it over, for a while, for the risk looked mighty big, but Decatur kept a-beggin’ him to let him go, and at last he let him have his way.
“So one night they fixed up a boat they’d captured from the Tripolitans, and Decatur called for volunteers to go with him. Then such a crowd of young fellers came forward that if they’d all a-piled into the boat they’d a-swamped ’er right off. I was a powder-monkey then (powder-monkeys serves out the ammunition to the gunners when the battle’s goin’ on), an’ I reckon I wasn’t a dozen years old. I stepped forward just as proud as er man, and volunteered, too, but they laughed at me an’ told me to wait till I growed bigger. But I slipped into the boat anyway and hid under a sail, and when they found me it was too late to send me back.
“Waal, lads, one dark night we sailed right into their harbor,” old Sam would continue, and I tried to hold my breath when he got to this point. “We looked like one of their own fishin’ boats come back to port, an’ our armed men were all a-lyin’ down on the decks where they couldn’t be seen. I bein’ such a little chap, they put me where I could be a conspicuous figger. The sight o’ me, they knew, would lull the suspicions o’ them Tripoli fellers.
“An’ we went a-sailin’ right through their fleet. Gunboats and other warships were a-lyin’ all round us, and on the hillsides we could see the mouths o’ the great guns in the forts.
“I knowed the Phillydelphy well, and I saw her a-lyin’ right under the guns of one of the biggest and strongest forts. I whispered to Decatur where she was. Then we turned our vessel an’ glided right up by the side of the big frigate. We claimed to be fishermen who’d been in a storm an’ wanted to tie up by the side of the Phillydelphy. The Turks and Tripolitans and other heathen critters aboard her believed us, and we tied alongside. But jest as soon as we’d a-done it we swarmed aboard the big frigate, Decatur at our head, and with a big rush we drove all o’ them brown devils into the sea, what we didn’t kill. Then we set fire to the Phillydelphy, jumped into our boat and made off.
“As soon as they saw the blaze from the Phillydelphy all Tripoli was aroused, and when they saw our boat a-stealin’ out, the forts and the ships opened on us with their great guns. I tell you, lads, I felt ticklish then. More’n a hundred cannon were a-blazin’ away at us, but they were in such a hurry and they made so much smoke that never a ball hit us. We went on, and just as we passed out of the harbor the Phillydelphy, with a mighty roar, blew up. We got safe back to our ship without losin’ a man.”
When I first heard this story I was inclined, to believe it was just a sailor’s yarn, but Henry said it was true and that it was all in the histories.
But we never stayed awake very late at night, for we were always up and moving early in the morning. As soon as the story-telling was over we would roll ourselves up in our blankets and go to sleep with the stars twinkling above us.
As the roads and the weather were good, we got along well. But you will never realize what a big country this is until you try to ride across it on horseback. After we passed the mountains we went on for days and days through settled country. It seemed to me that it would never end, and I don’t know how many weeks we were crawling across that long stretch of land. Neither Henry nor I thought it so pleasant as it had been back in the mountains. We missed the forest and the shade, for the sun began to be hot. Often we drooped in our saddles, but that interminable country still billowed away before us. Sometimes, too, we met ravens who croaked of evil. I think it was in Indiana that an old farmer, with his straw hat pushed back on his head, came down to the roadside and talked with us.
“After gold?” he said. “Yes, it may be thar, but I doubt whether you’ll ever git to Californy. Why, boy, thar’s thousands of miles of lone country whar you might starve to death, and besides, the Injuns everywhar are out on the warpath an’ ’ll get your scalp sure. I’ve heern that a half dozen trains hev been wiped out already. Better give it up, boy, an’ go back to Maryland.”
I don’t deny that the man’s words had some effect upon me, and caused a temporary depression of the spirits, but I soon shook off this gloominess. Henry and Starboard Sam laughed at me, and rallied me on my lack of courage. I was eighteen years old and could not stand that.
Summer was far along when we reached Fort Leavenworth, in Eastern Kansas, and came to the end of civilization. The farms and the houses had been growing scarcer, and now we had seen the last of them. Before us stretched the unknown.