Part 12 (1/2)
said Tom, ”and as those that I ate for supper are sitting rather heavily upon my soul, I want to be encouraged by hearing some more about how good they are for me.”
”Wait a minute,” said the Doctor. Then he went to his medicine case and put a small quant.i.ty of something white into a tin cup. After that he opened the camp box of baking soda and added half a teaspoonful of that article; then he dissolved the whole mixture in a cupful of water and handed it to Tom.
”There! Drink that!” he said, ”and I think you will be in better condition to listen to what I may have to say about beans.”
Tom swallowed the mixture and then insisted upon hearing about beans.
”Well,” said the Doctor, ”the most interesting thing I know about beans is that without them the great whaling industry which brought a vast prosperity to this country a generation or two ago, would have been impossible.”
”How so?” asked Jack.
”Why you see in order to make whaling voyages profitable the sailing s.h.i.+ps that carried on the business, had to be gone for four years at a time, and of course they had to carry food enough to last that long. For meats they carried corned beef and pickled pork. For vegetables they had to carry beans because they are the only vegetable product that will keep so long. There were no canned goods in those days, so it was beans or no whaling.”
”Didn't they get fearfully tired of four years' living on nothing but beans and salt meats?”
”Of course. And of course they managed sometimes to pick up some fresh food, like sea birds' eggs or the sea birds themselves--though they are very bad eating because of their fishy flavor; and sometimes, too, the whaling s.h.i.+ps would stop at ports on their way to the North Pacific whaling waters and buy whatever they could of fresher food. But in the main the men on whaling voyages had to live on salt meat and beans, and one of their most serious troubles was that they suffered a great deal from scurvy. By the way, that's something that we must look out for.”
”That was caused by eating too much pickled meat, wasn't it?” asked Tom.
”They thought so then,” said the Doctor, ”but we have another theory now. That's a very curious point. For a long time it was confidently supposed that there was something in the salt meats that gave men scurvy. After a while it was discovered that it was something _left out_ of the pickled meats that produced that effect. It seems that the brine in which meat is pickled extracts from the meat certain nutritious principles which are necessary to health, and that it is the lack of these nutritious principles that gives men scurvy. So an old whaling captain, with a sound head on his shoulders, concluded that the thing needed to prevent scurvy was for the men to consume the brine in which the meat was pickled. He ordered that the brine should be used instead of water in mixing up bread, cooking vegetables and the like.”
”Did the thing work?”
”Yes, excellently, and the plan was adopted in all the Canada lumber camps where scurvy was as great an enemy to success as it was on the whaling vessels themselves. Another thing they do in the lumber camps is to quit cooking their potatoes the moment that symptoms of scurvy appear. Raw potatoes seem to have a specific effect in preventing and even in curing scurvy.”
”Scurvy is a sore mouth, isn't it?” asked Tom.
”Not by any means,” answered the Doctor. ”Sore mouth is one of the earliest and mildest symptoms of the disease, and n.o.body knows what sore mouth means till he has had a touch of scurvy. It means that the mouth in all its membranes is afire, and that everything put into the mouth,--even though it be a piece of ice--burns like so much molten iron. But the mouth symptoms are only a beginning. Presently the knees and other joints turn purple and become excruciatingly painful. Then they suppurate, and in the end amputation becomes necessary. There are few worse diseases than scurvy, and we boys must protect ourselves against it by every means in our power. It threatens us with a much more serious danger than any that the moons.h.i.+ners can bring upon us.”
”By the way,” said Jack, ”the moons.h.i.+ners seem to be letting us alone now. Perhaps they have given us up as a bad job.”
”That's just what they want us to think,” responded Tom. ”They are lying low, in the hope that we'll accept precisely that idea and relax our vigilance. That is the one thing that we mustn't do on any account. That reminds me that it's time for me to go and relieve Jim Chenowith on guard duty.”
”Well, before you go, Tom,” said the Doctor, ”I want to suggest that you take a day off to-morrow and get some fresh meat for us. We have lived on salt meat for five or six days now, and a big snow may come at any time to cut us off from fresh meat supplies. Besides our provisions are very sharply limited in quant.i.ty and we mustn't use them up too rapidly.
We don't want scurvy in the camp and we don't want a starving time. So boys I propose that Tom, as the best huntsman in the party, be detailed and ordered to devote to-morrow to the duty of getting some game for our larder.”
The suggestion was instantly and unanimously accepted. Then spoke up Harry Ridsdale:
”It'll be a hard day's work for Tom, as there's a slippery, soaplike snow on the ground, and he needs to be fresh for it. So I volunteer to take his turn on guard to-night and let him get in a good, straightaway sleep.”
”Good for you, Harry,” said Jack. But Tom protested that he was perfectly ready to stand his turn of guard duty and insisted upon doing so. The others unanimously overruled him, however, and so Harry shouldered his gun and went to relieve Jim Chenowith as picket. Before going he said:
”Now, fellows, there is to be no more talking to-night, for when the Doctor talks I want to listen. I've a whole catechism of questions to bother him with, but it's bed time now and you fellows must crawl into your bunks at once, without any further chatter. To bed, every one of you!”
As it was full ten o'clock the boys accepted the suggestion, and in a few minutes afterward, Camp Venture sank into silence, while Harry stood guard out there under the cliff, and the stars glittered above him in a wintry sky. Meantime the logs blazed and sputtered lazily in the great fireplace, and the night wore on, with no disturbance in the hut except when a sentinel came in, woke up his successor, replenished the fire and crept into his broomstraw bed.
About four o'clock the boys were startled out of sleep by the crack of a rifle, and the instant response of both barrels of a shotgun.
They were up and out in a moment, for it was their habit just then to sleep in their clothes and even in their boots, and for each to keep his gun by his side ready for instant use.
Running as fast as possible, they quickly joined Ed Parmly, who was on picket at the time, and hurriedly questioned him.