Captain Jinks, Hero, Ernest Howard Crosby [free e books to read TXT] 📗

easily have peeped into it, but he would as soon have thought of cutting off his hand.

“What’s in that box in the hall, Colonel Jinks?” he asked in an embarrassed voice at supper, as he fingered the edge of the tablecloth and looked blushingly at his plate.

“Oh, that?” replied his father with a wink⁠—“that’s a bombshell.” And a bombshell indeed it proved to be for the Jinks family.

The box was put upon a table in the room in which little Sam slept with his parents, and he was told that he could have it in the morning. He was a long time going to sleep that night, trying to imagine the contents of the mysterious box. Not until he had quite made up his mind that it was a farmyard did he finally drop off. At the first break of day Sam was out of bed. With bare feet he walked on tiptoe across the cold bare floor and seized the precious box. He lifted the lid at one corner and put in his hand and felt what was there, and tried to guess what it could be. Perhaps it was a Noah’s Ark; but no, if those were people there were too many of them. He would have to give it up. He took off the cover and looked in. It was not a farmyard, at any rate, and the corners of his mouth became tremulous from disappointment. No, they were soldiers. But what did he want of soldiers? He had heard of such things, but they had never been anything in his life. He had never seen a real soldier nor heard of a toy-soldier before, and he did not quite know what they were for. He crept back to bed crestfallen, his present in his arms. Sitting up in bed he began to investigate the contents of the box. It was a complete infantry battalion, and beautiful soldiers they were. Their coats were red, their trousers blue, and they wore white helmets and carried muskets with bayonets fixed. Sam began to feel reconciled. He turned the box upside-down and emptied the soldiers upon the counterpane. Then he noticed that they were not all alike. There were some officers, who carried swords instead of rifles. He began to look for them and single them out, when his eye was caught by a magnificent white leaden plume issuing from the helmet of one of them. He picked up this soldier, and the sight of him filled him with delight. He was taller and broader than the rest, his air was more martial⁠—there was something inspiring in the way in which he held his sword. His golden epaulets were a miracle of splendor, but it was the plume, the great white plume, that held the boy enthralled. A ray of light from the morning sun, reflected by the window of the stable, found its way through a chink in the blind and fell just upon this plume. The effect was electric. Sam was fascinated, and he continued to hold the lead soldier so that the dazzling light should fall on it, gazing upon it in an ecstasy.

Sam spent that entire day in the company of his new soldiers⁠—nothing could drag him away from them. He made his father show him how they should march and form themselves and fight. He drew them up in hollow squares facing outward and in hollow squares facing inward, in column of fours and in line of battle, in double rank and single rank.

“What are the bayonets for, Colonel Jinks?”

“To stick into bad people, Sam.”

“And have the bad people bayonets, too?”

“Yes, Sam.”

“Do they stick their bayonets into good people?”

“Oh, I suppose so. Do stop bothering me. If I’d known you’d ask so many questions, I’d never have got you the soldiers.”

His parents thought that a few days would exhaust the boy’s devotion to his new toys, but it was not so. He deserted the barnyard for the lead soldiers. They were placed on a chair by his bed at night, and he could not sleep unless his right hand grasped the white-plumed colonel. The smell of the fresh paint as it peeled off on his little fingers clung to his memory through life as the most delicious of odors. He would tease his father to play with the soldiers with him. He would divide the force in two, and one side would defend a fort of blocks and books while the other assaulted. In these games Sam always insisted in having the plumed colonel on his side. Once when Sam’s colonel had succeeded in capturing a particularly impregnable fortress on top of an unabridged dictionary his father remarked casually:

“He’s quite a hero, isn’t he, Sam?”

“A what?” said Sam.

“A hero.”

“What is a hero, Colonel Jinks?” And his father explained to him what a hero was, giving several examples from history and fiction. The word took the boy’s fancy at once. From that day forward the officer was colonel no longer, he was a “hero,” or rather, “the hero.” Sam now began to save his pennies for other soldiers, and to beg for more and more as successive birthdays and Christmases came round. He played at soldiers himself, too, coaxing the less warlike children of the neighborhood to join him. But his enthusiasm always left them behind, and they tired much sooner than he did of the sport. He persuaded his mother to make him a uniform something like that of the lead soldiers, and the stores of Homeville were ransacked for drums, swords, and belts and toy-guns. He would stand on guard for hours at the barnyard gate, saluting in the most solemn manner whoever passed, even if it was only a sparrow. The only interest in animals which survived his change of heart was that which he now took in horses as chargers. He would ride the farm-horses bareback to the trough, holding the halter in one hand and a tin sword in the other