THE QUALITY OF COURAGE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2479, 3 May 1909, Page 7

THE QUALITY OF COURAGE.

(By Edward Marshall.)

There are as many different kinds of courage,” said the lieutenant, “as there are of cavalry horses. There are as many different kinds of cavalry horses as there are —cavalry horses of any kind whatever. Almost any man will be a hero, given the right circumstances. Almost any man will funk if Fate springs the psychic combination on him. What I mean to say is that potentially we’re all cowards. “Jimmy Jasper waa my schoolmate on Cape Cod when I first sat before a school-ma’am with a primer in ray hands. Why, he taught me how to whistle I There are not as many birds upon the Cape as may be found in some favored climes, but every one which came there in the summer he could imitate. And what things he could do with the old ‘Gospel Hymns’! I have very great respect for those old tunes, but they are not high art, and I knew it even then, for my mother had the one piano within miles and was a true musician. Jim could make them wonderful, however. Even she admitted that. She told me they were music when he whistled them. It was she who bought the violin for him, and asked Miss Peaslow, who was visiting us that summer, to teach him something of its mysteries. “He didn’t learn much, though. The Capo was primitive not many years ago, you know, and to the folk who lived in it the fiddle was the devil’s instrument. The news that Jimmy Jaspar had begun to learn to play the fiddle spread like scandal, and his mother (he was half-orphaned) had to take it from him when he’d only had it two months. I shall never lose my memory of his revolt, his black despair. Small boys as we were, ho almost lost his faith in God because this deprivation was put on him in His name, and my own belief was shaken till I talked the matter over with my mother, who explained things. She helped his mother make things clear to Jim, too —and it took both of them to do it. They showed him finally, however, that God was not responsible, but that public opinion is a power to which we must sometimes make concessions—all of ns. Mother would have had the teaching carried on in secret, if she had not feared it might teach Jim deceit. I thoroughly believe that if he had had this early chance he would have been a really great violinist. “Of all the musical instruments, however, only the fiddle was tabooed, and Jim was not disturbed when someone bought a harmonica from a packEedlar for him. Despite its crudities e worked wonders with the small tin thing. He used to rail against its lack of sharps and flats, though, until the boys would wonder and laugh at him. When ho tried some tune on it which had an ‘accidental’ in it, and, coming to the note found he could not sound it, he always flew into a dreadful rage. Once ho threw away his instrument —cast it to the sea from a high cliff where he had been loafing in the sunshine while he played—and had to go without one till another pedler came along, weeks afterward. He was a queer lad. r ‘One of the strangest things about him, to my youthful mind, was a curious lack of ‘nerve’ in certain circumstances. Ghost stories, for example, which would only give me pleasant thrills, would actually terrify him. All the boys knew well that they could jump out at him suddenly from some dark place and scare him so he’d run a quarter of a mile. He was as brave as any of ns if he understood what danger he was facing and had time 1 " think about it well before he met it, but sudden things would more than startle him—they would throw him into actual panic. If another boy unexpectedly demanded fight he could lick Jim every time, but on one or two occasions when a battle was arranged beforehand ho did well enough—although he cried continually while fighting. I was fond of him above all other of my schoolmates, but these strange characteristics often made me — I guess all boys are cads, sometimes —a little bit ashamed to show it. He was anything but popular. “But the poverty which kept us on tho Cape and made' me an attendant at a country school was a mere episode, and after a while I was taken away and given advantages which had been impossible there. Jim, of course, stayed. One of my boyhood’s most vivid recollections is of a band he organised so that he might give me a great send-off when I went. It was composed l of all the conventional boy instruments—jew’s-harps, combs, a homemade drum, and tinpot-cover cymbols. “When they marched up to the house, playing ‘Good-bye, My. Lover, Good-bye, a quarter an hour before we were to start in t old ‘ark’ to drive to the rail way station, I was completely overcome. I was a sober youngster, and I knew at once just who had done the work of training them, and had some realisation of how much work it must have been. I can remember just as well after ‘Good-hye, My Lover, Good-bye,’ they played ‘The Soldier’s Farewell’ and ‘Hold the Fort. Then Jim let the other players stop and sprung his great surprise, his great defiance, the thing that actually drove him and his mother from the Cape. “He brought out from the hollow of a ■gnarled old apple-tree in the front yard, where he must have hidden it that morning before daylight, the little fiddle, and at the risk, I have no doubt he thoroughly believed, of everlasting torment in the Lake of Fire, he tucked it underneath his quivering little chin, and leaning up against a stunted Cape Cod pine close by the window, played a solo on it which he had practised in secret. “Moody and Sankey were the two composers known upon the Cape in those days. He had never in his life heard a single bar of ‘dance-music.’ ‘Shall We Gather at the River’ played with ‘variations’ on the church melodeon by a summer boarder was the most elaborate composition to which he had ever listened. From his place there by that stunted gine he gave the old tune to me on that ttle fiddle with more ‘variations’ than the summer boarder ever dreamed of. He did so well with it that even my mother’s cultivated ear was pleased, and, although the whole thing happened in the midst of justrbefore-departure bustle, she was so impressed that she declared that if she could she would see to it that the lad was taken from that narrow, intolerant environment and given some _ sort of a musical education. Jim was quite the hero of tho moment and would have stayed as such in both our minds had not, just as the solo ended, a small red-headed bully named Porfiro—the Portuguese had even then' begun intruding on Cape Cod—jumped at him, screaming, aiming to break up the little celebration. “The onslaught quite surprised Jim. He started off on a dead run, white-faced and terrified, down the sand road. In three minutes he was back again, his nerve clutched, so to speak, in both his hands, and looking for young Porfiro, determined to chastise him; but it was too late. Mother was hustling the last bags into the wagon, the children were absorbed in the excitement of our going and the spell was broken. Even' mother, as she thanked' him (I tried to, but could only mumble sobby words), thinking, and. he knew that she was thinking, not of the serenade but of bis pitiful show of panic. I was indignant, for I understood. I longed to kiss my friend good-bye ana would have done so had there not been people by to see, but as it was I merely thanked him by remarking that the

serenade was ‘bully,’ and that if we had time I’d stay and help him whip the Portuguese I did not realise then, but afterward I learned that this last statement deeply shamed him. Before the day was over, all alone in a secluded spot, he hammered a year’s growth out of that Portuguese. You see he then had had a chance to make his plans for it—to do it by a schedule. Jim’s cowardice came only through surprise. He really had pluck, but somehow his nerves were strung in such a way that he could easily be startled into acting like a coward. “Weil, after I had left the Gape, Jim and I wrote boyish-letters back and forth for quite a while; but you know how it is with schoolboy correspondents. They languish and die early. The last letter from him tald me briefly that ho had become the leader of a band at Provincetown. There are no fiddles in a band, so it is not a wicked thing! He was then not more than fifteen, or, at most, sixteen, so this was something of a real achievement. My life was very lull just then, for I was studying for entrance to ‘the Point.’ lam afraid I never wrote an answer.

“The next time I saw Jimmy Jasper was in Mindanao Province. On© night I was dancing at a regimental hop, and wo were having just the sort of high old time that might have been expected from a crowd of epauleted youngsters who had been away from clean, sweet, Yankee girls as long as w© had and then suddenly been offered a chance tq dance with them and talk with them to our hearts’ content. I did not recognise him, for he was tucked away among tho members of the band. But ho knew me, and in an intermission caught my notice quickly by tootling on a clarionet those old ‘variations’ of ‘Shall We Gather at tho River,’ as I walked by with a girl upon my arm. Instantly, as I listened, came a picture to my mind of that scene on bleak Cape Cod. I saw the little band which he had organised to serenade me, saw him leaning there against the stunted pine, and, turning quickly toward tho players, was not at all surprised to see him in the flesh there in his uniform, grinning at me genially. “It was not easy to fix things so that we could get together for a good talk, but finally I arranged it. “Ho told me all about himself and it appeared he had been really successful as a musician back home in tho States. Ho had not had tho early training which might have made an eminent artist of him, but he had become important as a bandman. He had had the chance to act as leader of a popular organisation which toured the country giving concerts, had composed some waltzes which had been ‘played everywhere,’ and had had a hand in making scores for a musical comedy or two. “ ‘What in the world, then, are you playing in a regimental band out here for?’ I inquired. “He looked at mo unhappily. “ ‘She insisted on something of the sort,’ said he. “‘Then there is a “she”?’ I asked, and smiled. “ ‘Of course there is a “she,” ’ said he. ‘There always is with men of our age, isn’t there?’ “ ‘I guess there is,’ said I. ‘There surely is in my case—half a dozen of them.’ “ ‘Well, there’s only one in mine,’ ho said, not very joyously, ‘and she couldn’t lx? quite sure she could be happy with me till I’d proved myself. That’s why I’m here.’ ‘“Proved yourself? How?’ 1 asked. “ ‘My nerve,’ said ho. ‘You see, she found out about my—panics. One time when I was with her a sudden shock took all my nerve away, just as Porfiro did, that day upon tho Cape. It astonished her and worried her. I guess it mighty near disgusted her. She's got a lot of ancestors, you see, vvho’ve all been bloody chaps, and she is sure it’s what men ought to be. She said she didn’t know whetner she ought to love or scorn me.’ “ Tliat’s why you’re with the army band?’ I said, with understanding. “He nodded. “‘Yes; 1 tried to enlist straight, but I’m not tall enough. 1 could only come in a baud uniform. I thought, coming even that way, service out here might give me my chance—my chance to prove myself to her. “T don’t know,’ he went on slowly, ‘that 1 shall prove myself if it docs give me the chance; but I’ve got to make the trial for both our sakes. If things come slowly I shall be all right, I guess; if the alarm is sudden I shall cut and run, perhaps 1 know myself just well enough to know that I’m not certain.’ “It was the queerest situation of which I had ever heard, and I didn’t say a word in answer. Finally he looked at me with an appealing glance. “ 'Can’t you get the chance for me, old man?’ he begged. Til never get it in the band—the modern, army does not march to battle with its bands in front. Can’t you, somehow, get mo into the real ranks ?’ ‘“You’re really not certain of yourself?’ I asked. “ ‘God,’ said he , T wish I were!’ “Well, I got tho chance for him. There were many reasons why he should not stay there in the band. It’was quite unworthy of his real ability as a musician, and it did not help him any Avith the girl. It was scarcely a patriot’s service for his country, either. It kept him far away from home at just the time when he might be accomplishing most there in his own line. Half a dozen offers to head more or less important orchestras had come to him; the publishers were clamoring for more waltz-songs from him; two managers had asked him to do numbers for new musicalcomedy scores. Whether her demand for proof of physical courage from him was an admirable tiling, indicating that she really was worthy of him, was not for mo to say. The point was that ho ought to get the matter settled, one Avay oi tho other, and thus save good years of his life. By the hardest kind of wire-pulling I gained admission for him to tho ranks of a selected bunch which was dead sure to see hard lighting. I simply had to do it, for old friendship’s sake. “Well, his chance came. There was a night attack when he was doing sentry duty. He had the opportunity, by just a little average cool-headed nerve, to save his comrades one of those confounded little episodes which happened now and then there in the islands, and were so humiliating. He did come through the test triumphantly and go back, a publicly acknowledged hero, to the girl ? He did not. He funked so miserably that he was courtmartialled for it. “I never Avas so sorry for a man in all my life. Generally speaking, I with all the world, despise a soldier who acts the coAvard; but, somehow, the affair seemed different when it involved Jim. I was present at the sessions of the court. In fact, at my request, I Avas assigned to his defence; but the case Avas hopeless from the start. The man had funked. With great difficulty I kept the thing out of the papers. “At hia request I Avrote a letter to the girl. If I had had my way I would have made tho real facts clear, with some remarks on temperament, nervous peculiarities and 1 so on, which the post surgeon, who felt about the matter as I did, would gladly have endorsed ; but Jim insisted on revising and re-revising the commumca- ( tion, until, Avhen it was finally sent to i her, it was merely a cold-blooded statei ment of bald facts, without explanations ■ or excuses. The sudden night attack had [ thrown him into a wild panic and that waa , all there was to it, he said. He had absolutely not been able to control himself [ at all until it was too late. He wanted I her to know the whole thing as it Avas. t If it had been a stern advance upon the r enemy in daylight he could have managed j it, he thought. Ho really believed, he

I said, that he would glory in a tiling like > that. But the unexpected onslaught in '} tho dark had swept him off his feet en- ■ tirely, and he had just turned and run > and given no alarm. He couldn’t even , yell. I told her brutally, because he made : me, just these things. The letter which . came back from her Avas harsh and scorni ful, bitter. It literally crushed him. i “Through hard work, backed by my friend the surgeon, I saved him from the ; bitter punishment which might have been i meted put to him officially, and arranged for his discharge. He Avent home a miserable chap. » i • «

“From that, time until I Avas invalided home I heard no more from him. To tell the truth, his troubles slipped out of my mind as other people’s troubles Avill. X might never have given him more than casual thought again had I not met him, utterly by chance, in a little Maine coast town where 1 had gone the next summer to get the tropics Avell out of my blood. “He had a hang-dog look about him. He had plainly gone to pieces rapidly. He had taken none of the Avell-paid places offered him by orchestras and bands, had stopped writing songs, had done no new work for the theatre, he had literally hidden in that remote, half-settled region, Avhere, in one Avay or another, ho managed to make a meagre living, and Avas almost sure never to meet a soul whom he had known in tho old days. I asked him if ho had never gone to see tho girl and tried to straighten matters out. “ ‘After Avhat she Avrote!’ said he, and shuddered. ‘Uh, no!’ “My Avrath, perhaps unjustly, rose against her as I looked at him. She could have saved a chap worth saving by a few kind Avoids. “‘lt’s got into my blood, some way, the disgrace has,’ ho went on. ‘Since I’ve been back I’ve not communicated with a single soul I used to knoAv. When I started home 1 thought 1 Avould, but during tho long days on shipboard I decided not to.’ “‘Don’t you love the girl, still?” 1 inquired, like a confounded idiot. “I shall not forget the look that came upon his face. “ ‘Love her!’ ho exclaimed, and stretched his hands up toAvards tho branches of a big pine toAvering over us. ‘Love her! Why, 1 didn’t know Avhat love Avas till I’d proved myself unworthy!’ “‘Unworthy!’ I said scornfully. ‘\ou are not unworthy. There are just some things for Avhich Nature did not fit you, that’s all, and sudden shock is ono of them. 1 ’ “‘Don’t talk of it!’ he said, so pitifully that 1 stopped and asked him to go fishing Avith me. “Tavo weeks afterAvards ho came to mo with ashen face. He had just returned from a small town some miles inland, Avhere he had been bidden to play at a dance. That Avas the Avay he made his living—fiddling at the country dances and the hops at tho small summer resorts. A man of his ability ! Tho thing Avas pitiful. His appearance shocked me. “‘For heaven’s sake, Avhat happened, Jim?’ 1 asked him. “Half a dozen times Ids dry tongue ran along his lips before he could get Avords Avith which to answer. “ ‘Why Avhy ,’ said he, and then began to laugh unpleasantly. " Tve seen her. Maybe that’s it.’ “The look upon his face clearly showed that was it: that he was more in Jove Avitli her than ever. It transpired that she Avas teaching a school back in that little inland town. Such tricks life plays us!’ “‘What did she say?” 1 asked him finally, my heart aching for the misery he had endured and Avas enduring. “‘Why, dash me,’ said he, T—ran again! 1 came face to face Avith her, there at the entrance to the hall, and—ran away, of course! If I’d only known that she Avas there and had a chance to get my nerves together; but—well, it Avas another case of panic. 1 tore back to the station, jumped a freight and came hero flying. They had to do Avithout a fiddler.’ ‘“Hid she see you?’ I asked. “ ‘.She saw me,’ lie replied, ‘but did not recognise me —and 1 thank God for it!’ « « ft

Jim

‘‘My recovery was slow, and I stayed there the whole summer. It was in late August that Jim’s affairs came to a climax. Ho had been doing odd jobs where he could, playing at a cottage hop or sailboat party and sitting glum between times, generally degenerating. He had grown sodden, morose and unpleasant. He kept out of sight as much as possible, brooding by himself. Once or twice the breeze brought mo his music from the woods, where he had gone to be alone—wild music, evidently improvised, and some of it astonishingly able with its suggestions of despair and woe. “A picnic came down to the coast from inland, and some of the country youths who were among the merrymakers hired the Caroline, an aged schooner lying at the dock. She was a miserable old craft, but good enough to take the party to the iSwashbacks, a group of flat-topped rocks, covered only at high tide, but slimy, slippery things, where the inland picnic parties sometimes went to eat their dinnners. Coast folk never would choose such a spot for pleasuring. The captain of the antique tub knew Jim and liked him, and he asked the young men if they didn’t want some music on the trip, saying that there was a chap in town who played the fiddle and would go with them for a dollar. The boys hailed the suggestion with delight, and one of them went for the musician, found him and struck the bargain. “It was one of Jim’s blackest days, and if he had not been so miserably poor he would not have played for anyone; but as it was, without asking any questions, without even learning from where the picnickers had come, he dully consented and went aboard the Caroline. “It was not till they were half-way to the Swashbacks that he heard the name of the picnic party’s homo town. Then he looked up, terror-stricken, fearing she might bo aboard. She was. “She did not, however, recognise him at once. He kept out of sight as much as possible, and when ho was on deck saw to it that his hat was pulled down low above his eyes. He had changed greatly, too, and his furtive glances showed him that she looked at him only easually. This was a great relief. He played l as little as he could and spent the time between the numbers down in the old tub’s stuffy fo’c’s’le. “The wind was light and they were slow in getting to the rocks. Just before they reached them the girl, escorted by some youth who wished to show the teacher all there was aboard ship, entered the miserable little place and came upon poor Jim. His hat was off now, and he sat with his face between his hand's at the little grease-stained table, suffering, and gloomily glaring at the soiled boards. As soon as he saw who had entered he tried hard to hide his face, but it was quite too late. Light from the transom fell full on it, and the girl stopped still, gazing at him with something like horror—so the captain said, who saw it all and told me. “When ho realised that he was recognised Jim sprang up from the table and just stood there,- flushing deeply, with bowed head, his hands hanging at his sides, his eyes trying to look into her face, but only accomplishing momentary . Neither one said anything for a , full minute —they just stood there, that i way, while the captain and the youth who hadi accompanied her looked on in : blank amazement. ‘ ) “It was Jim who found his voice first. ‘Annie!’ said he, pitifully, imploringly. > “Well, that was where the tender heart i of a woman failed to guide a woman’s a tongue. I suppose, though, that the

thing was quite as great a shock to her as it was to him and that she also lost her head.

“ T don’t speak to cowards, sir!’ she said, and turned away. “It had a queer effect on him. It made him brazen reckless. He hid from her no longer. Without another word to her or look at her, he went up on deck. “From that time till they reached' the rocks that party had a very different fiddler from the one who had begun the trip with tjiera. He no longer hid morose and melancholy features with a lowered hat-brim. He cast head-covering entirely aside. He no longer sat in sullen tolerance and played because ho had been promised payment for the work. Now he boldly to6k his place beside the mainmast and played wildly. He called the merrymakers to the maddest reel they had ever tried to dance, and cried the changes with a ringing voice that put new life into their heels. The breeze had freshened, and as he stood there, swaying to v.ie rhythm of his music, stamping out the time, sawing at his fiddle, shoulders heaving, arm and fingers flying, ho made a picture of abandonment which the captain told me with a lowered voice that evening he never could forget. “Well, they landed on the rocks and had their luncheon there amid the slime, probably enjoying it, as inlanders will the most unpleasant things about the sea and shore. The tide was at full ebb when they were ready to start back, perhaps had turned. “The captain and his-crew had'been with the young folks on the rocks for a long time when he decided to get ready to return anu passed the word. He was as much surprised as anyone when he looked at the old schooner. Brought up and made fast to a long, smooth-sided rock, as if it were a dock, she was now listed far to nort. He rushed to her at onco and quickly saw that her long day was done. In some way she had opened up a seam —the wonder was that her seams had held together so long—and while they ate she had half-filled with water. In ten minutes more she sank there. You can imagine the excitement of the picnic party. “Some of the frightened girls cried—but she did not—and some of the young landlubbers crew pale. The captain, though, declared that there was nothing about which to worry. They would only need to row H matter of lour miles or so to the shore he said, on a smooth sea. He was pretty blue about his vessel’s loss, but not ‘ desperately, for sho was insured.

“When it came to stowing everyone away in the small boats, there were found to be too many passengers for safety, let alone comfort, lie-arrangements, study, juggling, finally convinced the captain of this, and he said : “ ‘There’s one too many. One will have to wait till we come back for him.’ “Jim sauntered up just then. At the thought that? someone must remain behind” half a dozen of the boys began to protest that they would not be the ones to stay upon the rocks, despite the captain’s statement that there would be time in plenty to come back before the next limb-water and get whoever waited. “‘Why can’t the fiddler stay?’ someone inquired. . , “The girl had been observing Jims wild, reckless manner disapprovingly. Torn bet wen her real affection for him and her resolution to despise him for his faltering back there in the Islands, she now spoke with voice contemptuous, perhaps, beyond her actual feelings. “ ‘Oh, he won’t stay!’ she said, and turned scornfully away. ‘“Why, certainly I’ll stav.’ said Jim. ‘Go on.’ , , “‘You won’t,’ the captain answered, ‘for 1 need you in the boats. These fellers don’t know how to row._’ ‘Well, settle it among yourselves, said Tm satisfied any way you fix

“Then again he strolled off whistling. He had to keep up his false gaiety or break down entirely. The new exhibition of the girl’s contempt for him had hurt him cruelly. “It was when, anxious to be far away from all of them, he stood upon the outermost of the rocks, looking across the water to the north-east, trying to seem indifferent, that he saw certain signs. Ho was a Capo boy, please remember, and a Cape boy knows weather signs by instinct. Under the circumstances, those he taw were startling. He east bis eye around and gauged the tide, looked at his watch a minute, figuring exactly how things stood; then ho went back to the crowd. “‘Well, have you fixed it? he inquired, trying to seem careless, although Ins eyes occasionally travelled to the signs ho knew so well as ho listened to their chorus of protests and replies. “ ‘You ought to stay,’ a country youth said, frowning. ‘You’re hired; you ain t one of the party.’ ‘“He’ll not stay,’ the girl said with a little vicious smile. “Jim looked her full in the eyes and smiled. J£ow he was not abashed cr worried. He did not give even the horizon another glance. After that smiling look at her he stepped into the water by the nearest boat’s prow, standing there and steadying it. From that minute be was in command. , ‘“Get in, please. Take your places, he said to them all. ‘Don’t stand dallying. Get aboard.’ ■ , ‘“But, Jim,’ the captain said, I need you. I ’ 7 . , “‘Get aboard you! was Jims answer, spoken as if the captain were a foremast hand and he an admiral. “As soon as all the boats were under way Jim sprang up on the rocks, tucked his fiddle underneath his chin and played away like mad. “take this tune for nothing, you—you heroes!’ he cried after the departing boats, and then stopped fiddling long enopgh to reach into his pocket, get the silver dollar which the boys had given him, and, laughing scornfully, toss it lightly into the boat nearest him. “This done, he started sawing more wild music from his violin without another moment’s pause. “‘Bravo men’s money is too good for me!’ he shouted, loud above the music of his violin. , , A ~, “It was the captain who later told me of that trip to shore. The girl was in his boat. He noticed, from the time they started, that she seemed worried, not about herself, for those within the boat were in no possible danger, but about the man whom she had left behind. She seemed to feel, he said', remorseful. She sat in the stern-sheets, her back, therefore, towards the rocks, but more than once she turned her face, as if she could not help it, to watch the man left there alone. The others in that boat were gay: reaction from the momentary worry made them even boisterous as if the whole mishap had been arranged for their amusement; but she was white and wordless. The others, said the captain, noticing her depression, rallied her, asserting that she must bo worried by the motion of the boat. “ ‘lt was just after we got to shore,’ the captain said, after a short pause, ‘that she loked up again and back toward the rocks. Then she let out a loud holler, i had 1 not looked toward ’em for some time. The confounded boat was overloaded, understand, and it wasn’t much fun row- > f

‘““Oh, oh!” she cried. “ O-h, o-h! The rocks and Ji — Where are the rocks and that poor fiddler? What is it? Fog? What is it?” ’

“The captain cast a frightened, tardy •glance off toward the rocks, and under* stood at once what had occurred there while he had bent his old l back to the oar. Enormous fog-masses were rolling in like gliding mountains of gray smoke. There were no rocks, there was no sea, no sky,

no anything but the dull smother, threequarters of a mile away and coming toward them with a terrifying stealthy speed. Instantly what this might mean to Jim came to his mind. “ ‘Oh jiminy !’ said he. ‘Oh jiminy! if we don’t get back to him! There ain’t so much as one small piece of wood' there on them rocks except his fiddle for that boy to float on and the cuss can’t swim!’ “He knew that coast, you see. Knew it quite well enough to know that no man knows it in a fog. He realised that there might be delay and trouble when they tried to get back there to take Jim oh, now that the smother had come up. The tide might well get there and take him oft before them. And Jim couldn’t swim! “ ‘What is it ?’ said the girl. “There had been so much real terror in his voice and manner that the whole boatload was sobered. He pulled himself to gether with an effort. ‘“Oh, nothin’,’ he said, answering her; ‘only we have got to hurry if I manage to get back there for that fiddler before the water’s up. After that there won’t oe any use of goin’.’ “ ‘Oh,’ said the girl, ‘ why ‘“And this time,’ said the captain, ‘she turned as white as chalk.’ “ ‘No time for talking,’ ho replied. ‘You row, you fellers!’ “Well, they rowed, all right; but by the time they had the party within sight of shore the sea was blotted out close up behind them, and by the time they reached it, why, the fog had caught up with them, and rolled beyond them, till they couldn’t see one another more than half a dozen feet away. “I chanced to be upon the dock as they came in, and, learning the situation, quickly volunteered to help row back for Jim.

“I shall not forget the poor girl’s face as we hurried through the few preparations necessary for the trip—searching for oars shorter than the ones they had been using in the larger boats, getting a lifepreserver from a yacht, and so on. As I stooped above the gunwale of the dory she stood close beside me. We were braced to push the boat down to the sea, when, clasping her hands, she cried somewhat wildly: “ ‘Wait! Wait! I’m going with you. ’ “ ‘You must be crazy!’ said the country youth who stood nearest her, and laid a detaining hand upon her arm. “She turned on him as if the chap had struck her. “ ‘Take your bauds off!’ she “The next minute she was in the dory’s bow. As we started she was just behind me, for I pulled bow oar, and as we pushed our course into the murk she talked to me, because, 1 guess, she had to talk to someone. I didn’t often answer, for my breath was needed for my work, but knowing what i did about Jim’s case, 1 guessed at onco the queer coincidence which had occurred, and who she was, and understood what she was speaking of a good deal better than she thought I did. “It was a ghastly journey. We had been rowing half an hour, leaving the course entirely to the captain, and not only had the’shore behind us long since disappeared, but even the shouting voices of those left there had been muffled into silence, when the captain swore a vicious oath and rested on his oars. •* ‘We’ve missed the rocks,’ said he. ‘ And 1 ain’t got a compass.’ “For hours we nosed around there on the long, sliding, greasy swells, vaulted in a crypt of vapor. Night came to add its glooin to that of the pervading fog before wo even found the place where, at low tide, the captain said the rocks poked up their noses. No rocks were in sight now —just a wicked swirl of eddies, telling to the man experienced along the coast of jagged teeth below. "VVe lingered uselessly around the place for a short time and then began to wonder, drearily, just how to lay our course back to the shore. Six feet of water surged between the highest of the rocks and our boat’s bottom!

“We had no more than made up our minds to a slightly speculative course than the wind changed and the fog rolled off as quickly, as majestically, as it had come. The girl gave one long, shuddering look at those black eddies which the captain said the rocks made, and, covering her face with her hands, began to sob and

moan. “When we reached the shore she stepped out of the boats as if she might lie walking in her sleep, her nervous hands clasped tight, her face like parchment, her eyes dry, glazed. She had not a word to say to any of the waiting group—and now it was a very sober group, you may be sure, its merriment all gone, no longer making jokes about the tiddler—but tell in a deep swoon before she had walked fifty feet. -His body was not found—they seldom are along that coast—and a- week later there was held in the small church there a simple but pathetic funeral service. The little edifice had seen many such pathetic services in memory of the absent dead ! “This funeral was on a Friday—such funerals are always held on Fridays there on the Maine coast; it’s a relic of the ancient superstition, I suppose—and when she went back to her school on Monday she was dressed in widow’s weeds. She did another thing that made a lot of talk; ordered a tombstone with ‘ln Memory of James Jasper, Hero,’ cut on it, to be set in the small cemetery down upon the Cape, near Jims old home, where, years before, his father had been buried, and, since then, his mother. I went with her to Orleans to see about the preparation of the place to receive the little monument. “We had scarcely stepped upon the station platform when we saw that something of much public interest had happened. At least twenty people—mostly men, bur there were some women in the crowd—had gathered around a husky chap, evidently a Grand Banks’ fisherman. He was telling what their fascinated quiet showed to be all interesting story. A train from Proviucetowii was approaching, and the story-teller stopped the narrative and began to bid his friends good-by. After he had stepped aboard the train he called back to a man upon the platform: “‘You write an’ let me know just how he’s gettin’ on, will you? You like enough can ketch me at St. Johns.’

“The members of the now disintegrating group passed by us as they moved, along the platform. I stopped one of them, taking the precaution to get a good grip on the girl’s arm as I did so, for 1 divined what news we probably would hear, and did not know just what effect it would have on her. “ ‘Of -whom -were you chaps talking with that man who got on the train?’ I asked, “ ‘Jim Jasper,’ was the answer. ‘ Pluckiest feller ever went from these parts. Chap that just has gone is master of the craft that picked him up. He was standin’ on a heap of rocks with risin’ tide near to his waist, but playin’ dance tunes on his fiddle as if it was a merry tiling to drown. They heard the music on the smack as she crept by there in a fog, an' it plumb scared ’em, fer they knew just where they were; but they gave a hail, supposin’ it was someone in a small boat, maybe—-if it wa’n’t the spirits. He hail ed back, and when they picked him up all lie would say was that he had been left by a food party of picnickers who’d been stranded on th’ Swashbacks by the sinkin’ of the schooner they come out in, and bein’ short of smallboat space, had left him while they rowed ashore, intendin’ to come back and get him. Hadn’t come. Fog had made’ him hard to find, I s’pose, an’ risin’ tide had almost got him. But he was standin’ there, half drowned with water, playin’ on his fiddle! My, I ’ “The girl, who had been listening with bated breath, one hand gripped upon my arm as if her fingers were of steel and one pressed tight against her breast, could wait no longer. ‘“Where is he?’ she cried now.

‘Ob,

where is he ? Take me to him quickly! I ’

“She told the rest to Jim

“Yes, sir; there are .as many different kinds of bravery as there are ot cavalry horses, as I said at the beginning of my yarn, and there are as many kinds of cavalry horses, as there are cavalry horses of any kind whatever.”