Castle Nowhere | Page 3

came to the fact he did not go. And why? Because he--'
'Had no wings,' said Waring, closing the discussion with a mighty yawn. 'I say, Spirit, take yourself off. Something is coming ashore, and were it old Nick in person I should be glad to see him and shake his clawed hand.'
As he spoke out of the fog and into the glare of the fire shot a phantom skiff, beaching itself straight and swift at his feet, and so suddenly that he had to withdraw them like a flash to avoid the crunch of the sharp bows across the sand. 'Always let the other man speak first,' he thought; 'this boomerang of a boat has a shape in it, I see.'
The shape rose, and, leaning on its oar, gazed at the camp and its owner in silence. It seemed to be an old man, thin and bent, with bare arms, and a yellow handkerchief bound around its head, drawn down almost to the eyebrows, which, singularly bushy and prominent, shaded the deep-set eyes, and hid their expression.
'But supposing he won't, don't stifle yourself,' continued Waring; then aloud, 'Well, old gentleman, where do you come from?'
'Nowhere.'
'And where are you going?'
'Back there.'
'Couldn't you take me with you? I have been trying all my life to go nowhere, but never could learn the way: do what I would, I always found myself going in the opposite direction, namely, somewhere.'
To this the shape replied nothing, but gazed on.
'Do the nobodies reside in Nowhere, I wonder,' pursued the smoker; 'because if they do, I am afraid I shall meet all my friends and relatives. What a pity the somebodies could not reside there! But perhaps they do; cynics would say so.'
But at this stage the shape waved its oar impatiently and demanded, 'Who are you?'
'Well I do not exactly know. Once I supposed I was Jarvis Waring, but the wilderness has routed that prejudice. We can be anybody we please; it is only a question of force or will; and my latest character has been William Shakespeare. I have been trying to find out whether I wrote my own plays. Stay to supper and take the other side; it is long since I have had an argument with flesh and blood. And you are that,--aren't you?'
But the shape frowned until it seemed all eyebrow. 'Young man,' it said, 'how came you here? By water?'
'No; by land.'
'Alongshore?'
'No; through the woods.'
'Nobody ever comes through the woods.'
'Agreed; but I am somebody.'
'Do you mean that you have come across from Lake Superior on foot?'
'I landed on the shore of Lake Superior a month or two ago, and struck inland the same day; where I am now I neither know nor want to know.'
'Very well,' said the shape,--'very well.' But it scowled more gently. 'You have no boat?'
'No.'
'Do you start on to-morrow?'
'Probably; by that time the waves and "the sessions of sweet silent thought" will have driven me distracted between them.'
'I will stay to supper, I think,' said the shape, unbending still farther, and stepping out of the skiff.
'Deeds before words then,' replied Waring, starting back towards a tree where his game-bag and knapsack were standing. When he returned the skiff had disappeared; but the shape was warming its moccassined feet in a very human sort of way. They cooked and eat with the appetites of the wilderness, and grew sociable after a fashion. The shape's name was Fog, Amos Fog, or old Fog, a fisherman and a hunter among the islands farther to the south; he had come inshore to see what that fire meant, no person having camped there in fifteen long years.
'You have been here all that time, then?'
'Off and on, off and on; I live a wandering life,' replied old Fog; and then, with the large curiosity that solitude begets, he turned the conversation back towards the other and his story.
The other, not unwilling to tell his adventures, began readily; and the old man listened, smoking meanwhile a second pipe produced from the compact stores in the knapsack. In the web of encounters and escapes, he placed his little questions now and then; no, Waring had no plan for exploring the region, no intention of settling there, was merely idling away a summer in the wilderness and would then go back to civilization never to return, at least, not that way; might go west across the plains, but that would be farther south. They talked on, one much, the other little; after a time, Waring, whose heart had been warmed by his flask, began to extol his ways and means.
'Live? I live like a prince,' he said. 'See these tin cases; they contain concentrated stores of various kinds. I carry a little tea, you see, and even a few lumps of white sugar as a special