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Great cumulus clouds lazily, ponderously, glided across the sky, prototypes of nomadic wandering. Somewhere back by the stables a mellow farm bell proclaimed across the smiling fields the hour of noon; then negroes straightened up from the rows of young tobacco, stretched their tired backs, and in groups wandered toward a cool spring where their dinner buckets had been left.
At the bottom of each are cullender holes, through which the water drains off as the buckets go on and pass over the platform and empty themselves on an inclined plane, down which the contents fall into a boat, which rows away when full, and deposits the contents wherever wanted. If you ever looked at a book at Edgeworthstown called Machines Approuves, you would have the image of this machine.
"What's... Ough!... What's wrong with them?" inquired Mr. Baker. All the watch stood around on the wet deck, grinning, and with brooms or buckets in their hands. He said mournfully: "Going or gone. Can't you see I'm a dying man? I know it!" Mr. Baker was disgusted. "Then why the devil did you ship aboard here?" "I must live till I die mustn't I?" he replied. The grins became audible.
Even his jokes were grave, and his countenance was lugubrious. "It is gaining on us, sir," added Mr Cupples. "Then get all the spare hands to work with buckets immediately," said the captain, "and send the carpenter here; we must have the leak discovered." "Yes, sir," sighed Mr Cupples, as if he had given way to despair; nevertheless, he went off actively to obey the order.
Along the canal squeaking sweeps moved up and down, with buckets of fertilizing water; fruit-gatherers appeared and disappeared among the trees, like colored butterflies. But in the desert, on the highway, swarmed the army and its servants. A division of mounted lancers shot past.
He even kept several buckets of moist sand handy, where it could be snatched up at a second's warning, knowing that most fires can be smothered, when quenching them with water is out of the question. "The buckets!" he gasped, as he arrived close to the building, one part of which was now fairly covered with the creeping tongues of ruddy fire. "I must use them on it!"
He must have thought this fine sport, just as captains of fire engines love to point the tube of their hose; for he kept me running after him with full buckets of water, and sometimes chased a little chip all over the deck, with a continued flood, till at last he sent it flying out of a scupper-hole into the sea; when if he had only given me permission, I could have picked it up in a trice, and dropped it overboard without saying one word, and without wasting so much water.
He sprang to his feet, showing himself still his good mother's own boy by kneeling down to his short prayer, then taking off the clothes in which he had slept, and giving himself a good bath in the pool under the bush of wax-berried guelder rose, and as good a wash as he could without soap. Then he milked the cows, for happily his own buckets had been at the stable and thus were safe.
Whoever ventured to oppose his will felt the weight of his chastising hand. New Amsterdam consisted of wooden houses clustered together. The danger from fire was very great. The governor imposed a tax of a beaver skin, or its equivalent upon each householder to pay for two hundred and fifty leather fire buckets and hooks and ladders, to be procured in Holland.
We took with us three bags of flour, a number of empty casks and kegs, and two pack-saddles, besides spades and buckets, and such other minor articles as were likely to be required. It was late in the day when we arrived at the plains under the sand hills; and though we had brought our six best and strongest horses, they were greatly fagged with their day's work.
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