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Among his college classmates he is regarded as a bit of a hero; for, in spite of his comparative youth, he is an enterprising traveller and a veteran camper, whose camp-fire has blazed in some of the wildest solitudes of his native land.
He lay by the camp-fire one afternoon listening to Kalitan's tales of his island home, when his father came in from a long tramp, and, looking at him a little anxiously, asked: "What's the matter, son?" "Nothing, I'm only tired," said Ted, but Kalitan said: "Porcupine quills poison hand. Well in a few days." "So your live cactus is getting in his work, is he?
But in a book it will sound all cold and thin. It is for the north, for the camp-fire, for the big talk before a man rolls into his blanket, and is at peace. No, no writing, monsieur. Speak it everywhere with your tongue." "And so I would, were my tongue as yours. Pierre, tell me more about the letters at Fort O'Glory. You know his name what was it?"
He even gave up longing for promotion, and strained his mind to the cracking-point for humorous verses and catching tunes. He went singing up the Peninsula, and thumped the gay banjo by the camp-fire, and was greatly beloved by the foot-sore and sick. He had given up worrying about what he would do in battle, for there were much more important things to think about.
He stopped also once or twice, not to listen, but to look at the splendid country, and to think what a great land it would surely be. He walked steadily on for miles, but the region about him remained unfamiliar. No smoke from the little camp-fire rose among the trees, and no welcome sight of Henry or the horses came to his eyes.
His desire to make his new excursion amid the African wilds is no stronger than that of "Groot Willem" Van Wyk, who ever since his return from the last expedition, six months before, has been anxious to undertake another in quest of game such as he has not yet encountered. Our readers will search in vain around the camp-fire for little Jan and Klaas.
Round a camp-fire in the woods a group of men were playing cards, wire-bearded men in rough coats and greasy flannel shirts; but the most violent thing they said was "Doggone it," and sometimes they stopped to listen to the strains of "Dandy Dick and the Candlestick," which a white-haired cheerful old gentleman rendered on the mouth-organ. Father was perched on a powder-can.
We ate till we could eat no more, and then we sat in the wide-open tent, with the camp-fire blazing in front of us, and talked of everything under the stars. I like the Quaker speech: the gentle intimacy of their "little language," with its quaint "thees" and "thous," and the curious turn they give to their verbs, disregarding the formalities of grammar.
Now those wonderful dreams have come true!" There was a long council around the camp-fire that night, and it was settled that Ned and Dick were to take the light canoe with their own stores and start off by themselves on the hunting and exploring tour of which they had dreamed for years. Johnny was to go on an alligator hunt with Charley Tommy.
The generals did not sleep. In the Chancellor house, north of the pike, Fighting Joe Hooker held council with his commanders of corps, with Meade and Sickles and Slocum and Howard and Couch. Out in the Wilderness, near the Plank Road, with the light from a camp-fire turning to bronze and wine-red the young oak leaves about them, there held council Robert Edward Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
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