Captain Carey

“ So it was when an orderly told him that one of "Captain Carey's scouts had arrived," he was at once ready to have him enter, though it was just before dawn of day.
"Me Flying Fox, white captain's good Indian. Come with talking paper to big white chief," said the redskin courier.
"Where did you leave your captain, Flying Fox?" asked the general.
[Pg 162]
"Over in Bad Lands."
"Ah! has he gone there?"
"White captain no know afraid; he brave chief; go as medicine man into camp; come back, and give Flying Fox talking paper for big chief." ”

“ The Commander then reappeared and told us to go down to the Captain’s cabin. We ran down the gangway he had just come up, and our cadet captain knocked at the door of the after cabin. A voice said “Come in”—and Carey entered, leaving us standing outside. In a few seconds he returned and beckoned to us to follow him. We did so, and came to “attention” facing the Captain, who was seated at a knee-hole writing desk.
He was a small man of middle-age, inclining to stoutness, clean shaven, slightly bald, with [36] deep-set eyes, which appeared dark in the shadow of heavy overhanging eyebrows. ”

“ Carey, it is you in the guise of a Sioux chief?" cried Captain Wallace of K troop, riding forward and grasping his hand. "It is dangerous work for you, Lieutenant Carey, to ride upon the Seventh Cavalry rigged out as a Sioux chief in full war-paint."
"I joined the Sioux, Captain Wallace, to learn what Big Foot and his band were up to, and I have news for Colonel Forsythe," was Kit Carey's response. ”

“ Carey laughed and cried over this characteristic message when it reached them! "Oh! they are darlings," Mother Carey cried. "Of course they are," the Captain murmured feebly. "Why shouldn't they be, considering you?"
"It is really just as easy to do right as wrong, Kathleen," said Nancy when the girls were going to bed one night. ”

“ As there was no particular hurry in getting to Marblehead, which was their destination for that day, the Captain decided not to use the launch to tow the ship unless it should become necessary toward the afternoon. So the Bright Wing lay with her sails flapping quite lazily, and with the jaws of the main gaff creaking and snarling, as it swayed from side to side, until eleven o’clock; when the bugle sounded “retreat from drill”, and there was nothing more but play and good fun until dinner time. ”

“ Of the camp of the Cheyennes under their soldier captain, Kit Carey, he did not know, and not until he suddenly heard wild cries and beheld a party of horsemen dash out of a ravine in pursuit, did he realize that he had a deadly foe near.
"It is the White War Eagle! He is like a wolf on a trail," the Chief Red Hatchet said to his fair captive and braves, as he beheld at the head of the Cheyenne soldiers their gallant captain, Kit Carey, coming on in hot pursuit. ”

“ Carey remarked.
“I always need you, Doctor Carey,” Thaine said earnestly. “Never more than now. When I saw Captain Clarke wounded and carried away on the other side of the Tulijan, and could only say ’Captain, my captain,’ I needed you. When Captain Elliot was killed, I needed you; and when Captain William Watson was shot and wouldn’t stay dead because we need him so, and when Metcalf, Bishop, Agnew, Glasgow, Ramsey, and Martin, and 327 all the other big-brained fellows do big things, I need you again. Life is a great game ”

“ When they returned to the ship, it was recreation hour, and the music of the “ship’s band” greeted the newcomers across the water. Half a dozen hands were stretched over the side to catch the painter of the launch as she approached the side ladder. The Chairman and the Captain were standing on deck ready to welcome Mr. Jackson.
Bob immediately took the mail below [153] and sorted it out according to regulations, while Mr. Wentworth went to the clothes locker to find a suit of “whites”, and a blue working suit to fit the new apprentice seaman, William Brown. ”

“ He got up, however, and rubbed his sleek head against Michael's knee as he sat down in the black elbow-chair; but Mr. O'Brien still stood on the rug, shaking his head sadly.
'You have come, Captain. I made up my mind you would come to-day, to get at the rights of it; I told Mat so. "Depend upon it, the Captain will look us up," I said to him; "he is a man of action, and it is not likely he will let the grass{325} grow under his feet. ”

“ Wentworth.
“Well,” continued the Commandant, “lowering a boat properly is no joke,—your boys have the right idea, Captain; but I should say they needed a little practice. It’s a nice little bit of team work, and I suppose you have a competition between your three boats’ crews occasionally. Now, Mr. Chairman,” he went on, “may I have the pleasure of saying a word to the boys before I leave?”
The crew was then ordered into its accustomed position at “mast”, facing aft, while the Commandant stood on the quarter-deck with the other officers beside him. ”

“ I supposed Red Hatchet had made no mistake. Yes, he is alive, and——"
"Yes, I am dying, Captain Carey, for your words tell me who you are, and in your disguise as Moon Eyes you heard enough to hang me. It is better that I die by the redskin's bullet than upon the gallows."
"You deserve the gallows, Bernard, most certainly, for I now know you as renegade, road agent, and a Black Hill's bandit, by your own confession in the Sioux council lodge. But I am not one to strike a man when he is down, and if you will allow me I will aid you to your horse." ”

“ I am glad to think she is so fond of you.' But I would not let him change the subject just yet.
'Max,' I said, detaining him, for he rose to go, 'all this is dreadfully hard for you. Shall you go away—if—if—this happens?'
'No,' he returned quietly; 'it is they who will go away. Captain Hamilton cannot leave his regiment: he is far too fond of an active life. It will be dreary enough, God knows, but it will not be harder than the life I have led these twelve months, trying to win her back to her work and to put myself in the background. It has worn me out, Ursula. ”

“ Gray, “and ‘Be Prepared’ is the motto to act upon every day of our lives, if we want to be strong enough to say: ‘After you, Pilot’, when we get our chance.”
“I see that, sir,” answered Bill, “but if you want to have grit in the water, you have to be friendly with it; and what I wanted to know was, whether Captain Craven was friendly with the water, and if that was the reason he did not mind drowning?” ”

“ They knocks a few of the black fellows or coffee-coloured ones down, and makes ’em afraid, and then they do as they like, sir.”
“But is it true about their eating people?” said Carey, in a low voice, and he glanced at the door as if half-expecting to be overheard.
“Oh, yes, sir, that’s true enough. Our captain once said, when we had a report of a ship going ashore and the crew being massacred, that these chaps in some of the islands get such a little chance to have anything but fruit and fish that they’re as rav’nous as wild beasts for flesh.”
“Yes, yes, true enough,” said the doctor. ”

“ The men in the boat were rowing against the wind; and, as they evidently had only one pair of oars on board, they were making very slow headway. As the Bright Wing approached, they slackened their efforts and, putting both oars on the leeward side, merely kept the boat’s head up into the wind. The Captain meantime had been making up his mind how best to approach them, and decided to give the Bright Wing a good “full” to starboard and then to luff up and shoot into the wind so that the lifeboat would be to leeward of the Bright Wing on the starboard side. ”

“ To his surprise, Mat commenced the conversation quite easily:
'You are looking at Susan, Captain Burnett? That was taken twelve or thirteen years ago. Isn't it a kind, true face?—that is better than a handsome one in the long-run. She does not look as though she would desert a man when his head is under water—eh, Captain?'
'No, indeed!' returned Michael, falling at once into the other man's humour. 'Mrs. O'Brien must have been a thoroughly good woman, for her husband never seems to have got over her loss; he is always talking about her.'
'That is so like Tom! ”

“ In the Low Countries we do not get suppers presided over by ladies such as you have described to me.”
“In the French army they have both the ladies and the suppers,” Onslow replied, laughing. “And, my dear Captain, to the victors of the spring will fall the spoils. To-night shall be a foretaste, and if my enchantress does not make you forget ‘No. 101,’ I despair of the gallantry of British officers.” ”

“ And among the camps of the men the stories also went around about Kit Carey's raid after Sitting Bull, his conduct in the fight at Wounded Knee Creek, and his then holding the perilous position of scouting close to the Bad Lands, and with Cheyenne soldiers, too, whom many [Pg 139] feared would be won over to join the hostiles, in which case their white captain would have, indeed, to face the deadliest of perils, which even his courage and skill could hardly rescue him from. ”

“ Then there was wrestling between Bertie Young and Ellsworth, and some “cock fighting” between the younger boys. After that the boatswain got out his fiddle, and half a dozen of the crew danced the hornpipe, both single and double—including the Captain, who, in addition to [260] the hornpipe, performed the “skipping rope dance” for which he was especially famous, and which was the envy of all beholders.
“There isn’t a boy on the ship who is as lightfooted as the Captain,” remarked Mr. Wentworth.
“And there isn’t a man who has a better head on him,” said Jack Perkins. ”

“ A dashing soldier, fearless to recklessness, handsome as an Adonis, and a hero, it was no wonder that Kit Carey was popular with his brother officers and the soldiers as well, and it was predicted that if there was another Indian war he would win still higher promotion, in spite of his youth.
Such was Lieutenant Kit Carey, a gallant soldier of the Seventh Cavalry, who was again to face death in its worse forms in fighting the treacherous Sioux, who knew him well and feared him, yet respected him as well, for never had he broken faith with them in war or peace. ”

“ In his assumed character of Moon Eyes, the medicine man, Captain Kit Carey had managed to have several interviews with Jennie Woodbridge, and it had been arranged that she was to have a disguise as an Indian boy, and hold herself in readiness to go with the officer whenever he deemed it safe to lead her from the retreat of the hostiles. ”

“ I believe that there is more of the man in every one of you than there was when you first started on this cruise.”
“Would you like us to read the Charter, sir, before we begin?” asked Tom. “Because it’s about that especially that we want you to tell us. Say, Bill, you ask him what you want to know. But we’ll hear the Charter first.”
So Dick read the Charter through and ended with the words: “and so Captain Craven gave up his life to do his duty as a good scout, and to keep his oath and law ”

“ He had no idea of allowing the captive to enter the retreat of the hostiles, unless he was with her to claim his prize.
"I will bring the Snow Flower the scalp of the pale-face captain that caught the Red Hatchet with his death rope," he said, referring to his capture with the lariat by Kit Carey, and speaking in the boastful tone so often used by the Indians.
"The white captain did not kill the Red Hatchet, but let him go. Would the chief kill one who was his friend?" asked Jennie, earnestly. ”

“ All orders come from or through him; but, just as on board a man-of-war, the Secretary of the Navy would be higher in rank than the Captain;—so, on board a Boy Scout ship, the Chairman of the Sea Scouting Committee outranks the Captain. Under the Captain are the Mate and Sea Scout Master of equal rank, the First Mate being the Captain’s assistant in sailing the vessel, and the Sea Scout Master being in command of the crew of boys. ”

“ Dick was saying, in his authoritative way; and then of course Nan yielded.
“‘Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast,’” sang Phillis, mockingly, who was following them under Captain Middleton’s escort. “Don’t you think engaged people are sometimes very masterful?” She spoke, of course, to her companion; but he had turned to warn his father and Dulce of an awkward step, and Archie intercepted the sentence:
“Most men are masterful, Miss Challoner. You will find that out some day for yourself.” ”

“ I infinitely prefer that fine, princess-like name of Edith,' remarked Michael, with a lazy twinkle in his eyes; but Mrs. Harcourt would not condescend even to notice the interruption.
'Mrs. Bryce,' with a pointed emphasis on the name, 'was much concerned when she heard that my father had engaged Mr. Blake for his classical master.'
'And why so?' demanded Captain Burnett a little sharply. 'He has taken a good degree; Dr. Ross seems perfectly satisfied with him.'
'Oh, there is nothing against the young man; he is clever and pleasant, and very good-looking. ”

“ Colonel Forsythe was soon found, and Captain Wallace said in his pleasant way:
"I do not bring you a Sioux prisoner, colonel, but Lieutenant Kit Carey."
"Lieutenant Carey! who would have ever suspected you of being other than a Sioux chief?" cried Colonel Forsythe, as Captain Wallace rode up to the commander of the troops.
[3] It is a well known fact that interference from Washington, writes an officer in the field, has proven more dangerous to a commander than the enemy in his front. ”