Читать книгу The Story That the Keg Told Me, and The Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much - W. H. H. Murray - Страница 13

"There is society where none intrudes."—Byron.

It was near the close of a hot, sultry day in midsummer, which I had spent in exploring a part of the shore line of the lake where I was camping, and the tortuous inlet which led into the same; and wearied with the trip I had made I was returning toward the camp. There was no motive for haste, and I was taking it easily. Indeed, I was in that quiet, contented state of mind, into which one easily falls in the woods, where his labors are dictated by his amusements and his physical necessities, and not by the duties which carry with them obligation; and I had done little more than drift with the lazily-moving current. The quiet inaction, slow as it was, corresponded with my mood; and I felt almost a regret when my boat floated out from between the shrubby banks into the open waters of the little lake.

It was a very secluded sheet of water, hidden away between the mountains, not marked on the map, and whose existence was entirely unsuspected by me until in my aimless wanderings I had a few days before accidentally stumbled upon it. Indeed, I doubt if in all the woods there is another sheet of water so shut in from observation and so likely to escape the eye, I will not say of the tourist and sportsman, but even of the hunter and trapper. It was because of this fact that I had fallen in love with it. Here was silence undisturbed by any noise of man's making. Here I could escape the prying eyes of idle and provoking curiosity. Here I could watch the habits of animated nature and study the mystery of her charm without interruption. And here the wisdom which man learns independent of utterance—the wisdom of the unspoken and the unknown—might, so far as I was fit, be received by me.

The first day on the little lake I spent in paddling around its shores, in close scrutiny of them. In every bay into which I successively paddled I expected to find a hunter's cabin. On every point I doubled I looked for a sportsman's lodge. I circled every island in my sharp quest. But in vain. There was not a cabin or lodge, a charred coal or mark of a guide's axe or trapper's knife in the entire circuit. Astonished and incredulous, I devoted another day to the examination. I even landed at every spot where Nature had suggested a camp-ground, and searched, with trained eye, for the evidence of man's visitation, but found none, not even the least trace. Springs I found, cool as iced water and clear as crystal; but neither mark of axe, nor knife, nor fire.

Convinced at last, I paddled out to the middle of the lake, feeling, as I watched the sun go down, the shadows deepen, and the stars come out, that I beheld what no human eye had ever looked upon: a place unvisited by man from the foundation of the world. In such a place the sense of time passes from you, and the sense of eternity is experienced. The years you have lived, the years of the world, are as if they had not been, and you seem to be coexistent with the birth of material things. For are not the mountains around you as they were when God called them up out of the depths? And is not the sky above them the same? And the great, round sun, what has changed it? Yea, and the water, is it not as it was when its parent springs first poured it forth? In such a place one realizes that it is toil and worry and the grief of living, and not years, which make us grow old; for behold, the years rest lightly on whatever is free of these. For that which does not work or weep is forever young.

And so it came about that the feeling that I was the only man who had ever visited this lake was so forced upon me by what seemed indisputable evidence that I accepted it as a fixed fact. The idea took utter possession of me, and became a part of my consciousness. There was not a sign of man or of man's coming or going, on the shores, and therefore I knew man had never visited it. To me this was an absolute fact, as sure as life itself. Well, as I was saying, it was near sunset when my boat drifted on the current that flowed with easy motion from the little inlet, out upon the quiet bosom of the lake. The sun was already sinking in the west, and the peculiar silence which attends the close of a summer's day in solitary places possessed the atmosphere. The heat was fast leaving the air and the coolness of the coming night was growing perceptible to the senses. My camp was only a short mile down the lake, and toward it, with easy stroke of the paddle, I urged my homeward course. "To-morrow," I said to myself, as I paddled along, "I will leave the lake. It is too lonely, even for me, and its steady, unbroken silence day after day is getting oppressive. I am undoubtedly the only man that was ever on this sheet of water; even the deer here do not know what sort of an animal I am, and the rats will scarcely get out of the way of my boat. I will move out of this to-morrow, nor will I stop until I find some traces of my kind."

Thus muttering to myself I paddled along, watching the reflections of sky and clouds in the clear, unruffled depths beneath, and thinking of the centuries in which they had received and reflected back the changes in the firmament suspended above them. I had already come to the point on the other side of which my camp lay, when my paddle, as it moved forward for another stroke, struck against something floating in the water. I might not have noticed it, perhaps, but for the fact that it sounded hollow as my paddle struck against it. Curious, because of the peculiarity of the sound, to know what it was, with a quick turn of my wrist I reversed my paddle, checked the boat in its course, and with a sharp stroke sent it backward along the line of its wake. As I repassed the object I reached down, and finding I could raise it, lifted it into the boat. I will confess I started as if an electric current had been shot unexpectedly into me. It was a KEG!

Now, finding a keg in some places would not be very surprising: in a ship yard, for instance, or in a cooper's shop, a farmer's cellar, or in a liquor saloon; for in such places kegs are plentiful and you expect to see them. Nor would it have astonished me if I had met it on a frequented river, or in any place where men come and go; but to find a keg on this lonely lake, where I felt man had never been—where no living soul had ever existed—was, as you will admit, reader, a startling experience. Nevertheless, there it was—a real keg, with oaken staves and iron bands, with a bottom intact, and perfect in all respects save that the head was missing. As I recall it now it is really laughable the way I sat and stared at it. I rubbed my eyes to make sure of my sight. I tapped it with the blade of my paddle and rolled it half over and then back again, to make sure that it was what it seemed.

Convinced at last, I sat and looked at it, questioning. Where did it come from? How did it get there? Who brought it, and when, and for what purpose? Where is he who brought it? Is he living or dead, and where is his camp? These and like interrogations I put to myself as I sat in my boat on that lonely lake, in the growing darkness, looking at that keg. "Well," I said at last, speaking aloud, as one quickly forms the habit of doing when alone, "well, sitting here and staring at it don't answer such questions, nor satisfy my hunger, either; and I had better shove into camp and get supper."

When supper was over and the necessary wood for my fire laid in for the night, I went out for a while upon the point, as was my wont, for a quiet smoke, and to observe the appearance of the night.

Of the beauty of such a place and hour those who never journeyed beyond the haunts of men know nothing. The sky was without a cloud. The air was breathless. Even the pines had forgotten in slumber their mournful plaint, and stood like so many shadows, dense, motionless, and dumb. The water was as motionless as the atmosphere. It received the heaven as a mirror receives a face. It stole and appropriated the lustre of the firmament, and borrowed from the bespangled sky an ornamentation for its blank spaces as glorious as the heaven's own. The sky was blue-black, and out of its cerulean gloom the pointed stars shot gleams of many-colored fire. The mountains, sombre and vast, rested on broad bases whose foundations were laid in everlasting silence. The odors of the forest filled the damp air like incense. A loon far down the lake, as if oppressed by the all-pervading silence, poured into the still atmosphere the prolonged sound of its mournful call. It entered into the air and lingered sadly for a moment, then passed away, making the silence that followed even more profound. Deeply affected by the spell of the lonely place and the hour, I rose from the stone on which I had been sitting, crossed the point, and returned to my little camp.

I busied myself for a moment or two in starting my fire, and when the flames of it rose clear and strong I seated myself with my back against a pine, and half reclining gazed off upon the lake. As I thus sat watching the reflection of the fire-light in the water, my eyes fell upon the keg. It seemed, in some sort, a kind of companion to me, alone as I was; a visible bond binding me to my kind; a reminder of the life that men were living in the great, roaring, busy world outside and beyond the lonely lake on whose silent shore I then was lying. It reminded one of life,—or what men call life,—the getting and the giving; the saving and the spending; the loving and the hating; of the thousands far away. I fell again to wondering where it came from, and by whom it was brought over the mountains, and for what purpose; wondering what its history was, and what had become of him who once handled it;—whether he were living or dead, and a hundred other things such as one might fancy in such a spot, in such an hour, looking at such an object so strangely found. It may be I was awake; it may be I was asleep; but as I was thus looking steadily and curiously at it, and wondering strange things about it, it seemed to change its appearance, and become different from a keg; even a MAN; a little man; a very little man,—a man not more than eighteen inches high, with the queerest little legs, and the funniest little body, and the tiniest face one ever saw,—but still a man. And, then, standing bolt upright and looking straight at me with its little gleaming eyes, that glowed like glistening beads, wonder of wonders! it opened its diminutive mouth, and began to talk!