Cascabel

“ As to their religion, it is paganism. By way of divinities, they worship wooden posts, with carved faces painted red, which represent various sorts of birds whose wings are stretched out to their full, like so many fans. Their morals are pure; their sense of home duties highly developed; they respect their parents, love their children, and revere the dead. The remains of the latter are exposed in the open air, dressed in holiday attire, with their weapons and cayak lying by their side.
The Cascabels took great pleasure in their daily walks round about Port Clarence. ”

“ Cascabel had not to display her skill on a hare, a crested partridge, a heath-cock, or a few of those mountain quails with pretty little egrets, the sweet-scented flesh of which is such delicate eating. If game proved so plentiful all the way to Behring's Strait, right through the plains of Alaska, our traveling family would have but little expense to incur for their daily food. Beyond that, perhaps, on the continent of Asia, they might not be so well supplied. But they would see about it, when the Fair Rambler had entered the endless steppes of the Tchuktchis. ”

“ And no one at Port Clarence could have imagined that so important a personage as Count Sergius Narkine was under the roof of the Fair Rambler.
Meanwhile, it had not been found possible, yet, to fix a day for the departure. They watched with the greatest impatience every change in the temperature,—a truly anomalous temperature,—and never in his life had Mr. Cascabel so ardently wished for such a frost “as the rocks themselves could not stand.” ”

“ Cascabel's ill temper knew no bounds since he had been denied the liberty of going and coming where he willed. He repeated to himself, and not without good grounds, that the Fair Rambler would be descried, pillaged, destroyed, perhaps, by these ruffians. In truth, it was not worth while having escaped out of the cataclysm in the Strait of Behring, to come headlong into the claws of this “polar vermin.”
“Come, Cæsar,” Cornelia would say to him, “compose yourself. What use is there in flying into a passion! After all, much worse than all this might have befallen us!” ”

“ Then, there was the second boy, the last but one of the children, the contortionist of the troupe. He was really the logical joint-product of the Cascabel couple. Twelve years old, as nimble as a cat, as handy as a monkey, as lively as an eel, a little three-foot-six clown who had tumbled into this world heels over head, so his father said, a real gamin as ready-witted as full of fun and frolic, and a good heart withal, sometimes deserving of a thump on his head, but taking it with a grin, for it was never a very hard one. ”

“ The Cascabel family—why not hit the nail on the head?—must be well-nigh overdone by this time in the United States. For the past twenty years there was hardly a town or a village that; the Cascabels had not “worked” all along the Great Trunk. They would not now take in as many cents as they formerly took dollars. No, the eastern route was beset with endless delays; years perhaps would roll by before they could take ship for Europe. At any cost, combinations should be found which would enable the Fair Rambler to reach Sitka. ”

“ KAYETTE. ON hearing the cries, Mr. Cascabel, John, Sander, and Clovy rushed out of the wagon.
“It is this way,” said John, pointing to the edge of the forest which bordered the frontier line.
“Let us listen again!” said Mr. Cascabel.
This was useless. No other cry was uttered, no other detonation followed the first two that had been heard.
“Might it be an accident?” suggested Sander.
“In any case,” answered John, “one thing certain is, that the cries we heard were cries of distress, and that, somewhere about here, there is somebody in danger.”
“You must go and bring help!” said Cornelia. ”

“ Cascabel.
And settled they had been, in truth,—settled and squared right even!
During the ensuing night, whilst all her people were asleep at the camp, Cornelia had gone for a stroll round the baronet's house, and perceiving him on his way to the woods to lie in wait for game, she had followed him a few hundred paces. Then, once under cover of the forest, “the champion of the Chicago female encounters” had administered him one of those “floorers” that leave a man sprawling on the ground. ”

“ By the impulse of his fall, John had pushed the block far away. Both were soon out of sight among the icebergs, and even their cries, lost through the space, ceased to be heard.
After two hours' anxious watching, night came: Mr. Sergius, Cascabel, Cornelia, all were compelled to return to the encampment.
What a night the poor people spent pacing to and fro around the Fair Rambler amid the piteous howlings of the dogs! John and Kayette carried away! Without shelter, without food,—lost! Cornelia wept; Sander and Napoleona mingled their tears with hers. ”

“ Cascabel came in.
“Mr. Morlan,” said the latter, “your humble servant. I'd like to buy a safe.”
William J. Morlan knew Cæser Cascabel: was there a man in Sacramento who did not? Had he not been, for three weeks past, the delight of the population? So, the worthy manufacturer made answer:
“A safe, Mr. Cascabel?—Pray accept all my congratulations—”
“What for?”
“Because buying a safe is a sure sign that a man has a few sackfuls of dollars to make safe in it.” ”

“ Cascabel would say.
“No doubt,” answered Mr. Sergius. “Crossing Behring Strait with a heavy wagon is an idea that would not have struck everybody!”
“I believe you, Mr. Sergius. Well, what can be done? When a man has got it into his head to go home, nothing can stop him! ”

“ Cascabel spent! His anger could not cool down! He, touched in his honor, touched in the person of his hero! Insulted by an Englishman! He would go to him, he would fight him, he would fight all his companions, and all the knaves of Knaves' Village! And his children were but too ready to go and back him. Clovy himself talked of nothing short of eating an Englishman's nose,—unless it were his ear!
In truth, Cornelia found it no easy task to calm down all her enraged folks. In her heart, she knew that all the wrong was on Sir Edward Turner's side ”

“ There you walk on firm ground! There is no chance of the soil gaping under your feet. While sixty miles on a frozen sea, with a wagon and horses, a good load and all the rest of it!—My word! I wish we were the other side! The hardest part, or at least the most dangerous part of our journey would be over!”
“Quite so, my dear Cascabel, especially if the Fair Rambler, on the other side of the strait, can get quickly to the south of Siberia. An attempt to follow the coast line, in the heart of winter, would be too imprudent. ”

“ At early morn, Vermont and Gladiator were put to the Fair Rambler. Mrs. Cascabel took her place in the wagon with Napoleona, leaving her husband and her two sons to go on foot, whilst Clovy held the reins. As to John Bull, he had perched himself on the railing, and the two dogs were already running ahead.
It was beautiful weather. The new sap of spring swelled the early buds on the shrubs. Nature was beginning to unbosom those charms that she eventually unfolds in such profusion under Californian skies. ”

“ His only care was going up the valley of the Fraser as swiftly as his horses could go, holding intercourse, meanwhile, with none but Indian natives.
Indeed on their journey northward through the valley, our travelers easily found the game necessary to their sustenance. There was an abundance of deer, hares and partridges, and “on this occasion at least,” Mr. Cascabel would say, “it was respectable people were fed by the game so surely and safely brought down by the gun of his eldest son. That game had no Anglo-Saxon blood in its veins; a Frenchman might partake of it without remorse!” ”

“ Cascabel determined to keep on the alert.
The men hired at the farm were skillful drivers; that could not be denied. The first day passed by without any accident: that was something to be thankful for, first of all. A wheel giving way, an axle tree in halves, and the occupants of the Fair Rambler, away from all human dwellings, without any means of repairing the damage, would have been in a sorry plight. ”

“ This vehicle, whose curved extremity, recalling the prow of a boat, is held in position by strips of leather from the hide of the moose, is drawn by dogs or reindeer, and travels quickly. As to foot-travelers, with their long snow-shoes, they move along more swiftly still. Always in luck, was our Cæser Cascabel! He could not have reached Fort Yukon at a better moment. The fur and hide fair was at its highest; several hundreds of Indians had already pitched their tents near the trading station. ”

“ Nobody was hungry, nobody was thirsty. There was more than enough to exasperate the meekest of managers. Cascabel could not stand it, and he would not if he could. He had eaten as much as four navvies and drank in proportion. Why should others act differently?
“Now then!” he exclaimed. “Is this going to last much longer? I see nothing but faces as long as my arm, all around the table; to begin with you, Cornelia, and end with you, Napoleona. Why, Clovy is the only one whose face is about half admissible! ”

“ In vain would the eye seek a single star, and the crescent of the new moon had just disappeared behind the lofty mountains at the horizon.
It may have been nine o'clock when Mr. Cascabel gave the order to go to bed. Next morning they should start before daybreak. The Fair Rambler would resume the track it had followed from Sacramento, and even without a guide, it would not be a difficult matter to get along. Once at the springs of the Fraser, the valley would bring them straight on to the frontier of Washington Territory. ”

“ That is to say:
“If this be not done on the day when these sacred people will desire it, let your tribe be vowed to celestial wrath!”
By this time, both the king and his subjects were panting with affright, and lay almost motionless on the soil, while Mr. Cascabel, raising his two arms toward the idols in token of gratitude, thanked them loudly for their divine intervention on his behalf. ”

“ Not one obstacle will there be!” replied Cascabel. “You will cross the frontier without the shadow of a difficulty! Our papers are in due form, you belong to my troupe, and who would ever dream that Count Narkine is one of my artists?” ”

“ And, during this journey, free from obstacles and exempt of fatigue, did the artists of the Cascabel troupe neglect rehearsing their exercises, keeping up the strength of their muscles, the suppleness of their limbs, the agility of their fingers? No, assuredly; and unless the heat would forbid it, each evening the camping ground was transformed into an arena whose only spectators were Mr. Sergius and Kayette. Both admired the achievements of the hard-working people—the Indian girl, not without some astonishment; Mr. Sergius with kindly interest. ”

“ Sergius did his utmost to calm his friend Cascabel, who proved the most impatient of the party. The chief point was to endanger, by no imprudent act, either the success of the journey or the safety of the travelers.
“Come,” he would say to him, “be calm and reasonable! your Fair Rambler is not a boat, and if it got caught between two ill-joined blocks of ice, it would not be long going to the bottom. The Cascabel family has no need of increasing its celebrity by seeking a watery grave in the strait of Behring!” ”

“ Cascabel, “what can we do?”
“Well, we shall lay this poor man on our bed,” replied Cornelia, “and I shall keep watch over him, to renew the dressing when needs be.”
“We shall all watch him,” said John. “Could we go asleep, do you think? Besides, we must keep on the lookout! There are murderers about!”
Mr. Cascabel, John, and Clovy took the man and laid him on the bed in the inner room.
And while Cornelia stood by the bedside, spying a word that was not spoken, the young Indian, whose dialect Mr. Cascabel did his best to interpret, related her history. ”

“ Cascabel. And all I'll ask you for this one is six and a half.”
“Six and a half dollars?” rejoined Cascabel. “I don't care for that ‘six and a half.’ Come, Mr. Morlan, we must knock the corners off that sum! Is it a bargain at five dollars straight?”
“I don't mind, because it is you, Mr. Cascabel.”
The purchase was made, the money was paid down, and W. J. Morlan offered to the showman to have his safe brought home for him, so as not to trouble him with such a burden.
“Come, come, Mr. Morlan! A man like your humble servant who juggles with forty-pounders!” ”

“ Cascabel, his son, and Clovy returned to the camp. There, while Kayette remained by the wounded man, John, his father, and his mother held a consultation among themselves.
“It is certain,” began Mr. Cascabel, “that if we turn our steps toward California, our man will never get there alive. We have hundreds upon hundreds of miles to get over. The best thing would be to make a shot for Sitka, if those hangable police-folk did not forbid us to set our foot on their territory!”
“And do what they like, to Sitka it is that we must go,” answered Cornelia resolutely, “and to Sitka we will go!” ”

“ On his right shoulder John had lightly stepped, holding out a hand to Clovy, who stood on Cascabel's left shoulder. In his turn, Sander had taken up his stand on his father's head, and, above him, Napoleona crowned the edifice, circling her two arms to send kisses to the audience.
The French pyramid had scarcely been up when another, the native one, rose beside it. Without even removing their masks, the Indians had stood on each other, not five, but seven deep; their structure overtopped the other by one man. Pyramid vied against pyramid. ”