Captain Jinks, Hero

“Bless my soul! I nearly forgot,” exclaimed Colonel Jinks, as he came back into the store. “Tomorrow is Sam’s birthday and I promised Ma to bring him home something for a present. Have you got anything for a boy six years old?”

“Let me see,” answered the young woman behind the counter, turning round and looking at an upper shelf. “Why, yes; there’s just the thing. It’s a box of lead soldiers. I’ve never seen anything like them before”⁠—and she reached up and pulled down a large cardboard box. “Just see,” she added as she opened it. “The officers have swords that come off, and the guns come off the men’s shoulders; and look at the⁠—”

“Never mind,” interrupted the colonel. “I’m in a hurry. That’ll do very well. How much is it?”

And two minutes later he went out of the store with the box in his hand and got into his buggy, and was soon driving through the streets of Homeville on his way to his farm.

No one had ever asked Colonel Jinks where he had obtained his title. In fact, he had never put the question to himself. It was an integral part of his person, and as little open to challenge as his hand or his foot. There are favored regions of the world’s surface where colonels, like poets, are born, not made, and good fortune had placed the colonel’s birthplace in one of them. For the benefit of those of my readers who may be prejudiced against war, and in justice to the colonel, it should be stated that the only military thing about him was his title.

He was always up, living an ecstatic dream-life in the seventh heaven.

One night as Sam lay in his tent dreaming that he had just won the battle of Waterloo, he heard a voice close to his ears.

“Jinks!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here is an order for you to report at once up in the woods at old Fort Hut. The password is ‘Old Gory’; say that, and the sentinel will let you out of camp. Go along and report to the colonel at once.”

“What is it?” cried Sam. “Is it an attack?”

“Very likely,” said the voice. “Now wake up your snoring friend there, for he’s got to go too. What’s his name?”

“Cleary,” answered Sam, and he proceeded gently to awaken his tent-mate and break the news to him that the enemy was advancing. It was not easy to rouse the young man, but finally they both succeeded in dressing in the dark, and hastened away between the tents across the most remote sentry beat. They were duly challenged, whispered the countersign, and in a few moments were climbing the rough and thickly wooded hill to the fort.

“I wonder who the enemy is,” said Sam.

“Enemy? Nonsense,” replied Cleary. “They’re going to haze us.”

“Haze us? Good heavens!” said Sam. He had heard of hazing before, but he had been living in such a realm of imagination for the past weeks that the

When on the morrow Sam was ushered into the den of the war editor, he was surprised to see what a shabby room it was. The great man was sitting at a desk which was almost hidden under piles of papers, letters, telegrams, and memoranda. The chairs in the room were equally encumbered, and he had to empty the contents of two of them on the floor before Sam and Cleary could sit down.

“Ah, Captain Jinks, glad to see you!” he said.

Sam beamed with delight. It was the first time that he had heard his new title⁠—a title, in fact, to which he had as yet no right.

“I suppose Mr. Cleary has explained to you,” the editor continued, “what our designs are. Editing isn’t what it used to be. It has become a very complicated business. In old times we took the news as it came along, and that was all that was expected of us; but if we tried that way of doing things now, we’d have to shut up shop in a week. When we need news nowadays we simply make it. I don’t mean that we invent news⁠—that doesn’t pay in the long run; people learn your game and you lose in the end. No, I mean that we create the events that make the news. We were running short of news last year, that’s the whole truth of it; and so we got up this war. It’s been a complete success. We’ve quadrupled our circulation, and it’s doubling every month. We’re well ahead of the other papers because it’s known as our war, and of course we are expected to know more about it than anybody else.”

His Castalian was very bad, but so was that of his captives; yet they succeeded in making themselves understood without difficulty.

“Do you have houses as high as those?” he asked, pointing to the human nests in the trees.

“Yes, indeed,” said Cleary. “Near my home there is a house nearly a quarter of a mile long and twice as high as that tree, and nine hundred people live in it.”

There were murmurs of astonishment as this information was translated.

“What is that great house for?” asked the chief.

“It’s a lunatic asylum.”

“What is that?”

“A house for lunatics to live in.”

“But what is a lunatic?”

Cleary tried in vain to explain what a lunatic was. The Moritos had never seen one.

“We have plenty of such houses at home,” said Sam, “and we have had to double their size in ten years to hold the lunatics; they are splendid buildings. There was one not very far from the college where my friend and I were educated. But some of our prisons are even larger than our lunatic asylums.”

“What is a prison,” asked Carlos.

“Oh,” said Sam, “don’t you understand that either? It’s a house in which we lock up criminals⁠—I mean men who kill us or rob us.”

“Oh, I see,” replied Carlos. “You mean your enemies whom you take prisoner in battle.”

“No, I don’t. I mean our own fellow citizens who murder and steal.”

“Do you mean that you sometimes kill each other and steal from each other, your own tribe?”

As soon as Sam was well enough to be moved the doctors sent him down to the coast, and Cleary, who had been up and down the river several times in the course of his newspaper work, went with him. Sam still felt feeble, and although he could walk without a crutch, he now had a decided limp which was sure to be permanent. They arrived at the port a few days before the expected arrival of the Emperor, and the whole place was overflowing with excitement. The Emperor, who had never seen a skirmish, was notwithstanding considered the greatest general of his time, and he was coming now to prove it before the world and incidentally to wreak vengeance upon a people, one of whom had killed his ambassador. The town was profusely decorated, the Tutonian garrison was increased, and Count von Balderdash, the commander-in-chief, himself took command. Six fleets were drawn up in the wide bay to await the coming of the warlord. It was announced that he would make his entry at night, and that the hour of arrival had been timed for a dark moonless night. This was asserted to be for the better display of fireworks. Finally, one morning the Tutonian fleet of four or five large vessels was sighted in the distance. They steamed slowly up and down in the distance until night fell, and then, as their colored electric lights, outlining the masts and funnels, became distinct in the darkness, they began to approach.