LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 378, 28 August 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN EVENING WITH CAPTAIN BOYTON. BY ARCHIBALD M'NEILL. [From the, Gentleman's Magazine.] A rare story-teller is Captain Boyton as he sits spinning the yarn of his life in racy unconventional Yankee idiom. His life is a true romance of exploits and adventures in treasure-hunting, pearl-diving, diamondseeking, Indian-trading, and experiences as a franc-tireur and a Mexican guerilla. Let me relate some of his reminiscences as nearly as possible in his own words, though I cannot reproduce the freshness and the genuineness of manner. First he tells of that adventurous Skibbereeu coast-landing which first brought him into conspicuous notice in this country. This I will pass over, as also his own graphic recital of his passage across the Channel the other day ; and I will pick such points out of a long evening's chat as will, in a roughly conneoted form, present something like a view of his history. 'ln my early childhood,' says Captain Boyton, ' I was as restless as a turned mudturtle if I could not be bathing all day. When I was about eight I used to spend a.

lot of time diving for pavers. Don't you know what pavers are ? Flat stones for street mending, worn so by the action of the water. We got thirty cents a hundred for these. I was captain of the gang, and some days we did heaps of diving, and dropped so often to the bottom of the river it seemed more natural to stay there than go home. 'My first rescue occurred when I was eleven, in 1859. I was at school, and we all went one fine hot afternoon for a bit of splashing. The river was low, and some of the boys waded out a good slice from the shore. Suddenly one of them slipped into deep water. I was standing on a raft moored to the bridge when the others sang out to me. I leaped in, for a big passion to save that boy came sudden on me. I dived down, but couldn't see him, and came up again after looking all round, when I noticed his arms moving in the water a little further down stream. I made a bull's eye this time. I came slick upon what looked his corpse. He had dropped to the bottom of the water and was huddled up against a big paver. I didn't like the look of him. I had never seen a body before. His knees were drawn close to his chin. I looked another way, and grabbed him by the back of the neck. He came up light through the water. Then, as I felt pumped out, I shouted for some of the rest to swim up and help me, but they were as afraid as I was of his face. However, I couldn't see that then, and slowly hauled along to one of the abutments of the bridge. There I held on till they came off in a boat and got us to shore. ' Yes, they resuscitated him, and the crowd collected a handful of silver for me. Guess we had a big feast that night among the whole school with the coin. ' About ten months after I saved another boy. He was a schoolfellow too. 1 When I left there and went to college at Westmorland, county Pennsylvania, it was just the same. I was always a bit wild, and liked to lie on my back and wonder about the stars a lot better than bothering with books. If I was away from class they'd come and look for me in the Swimming Hole. There I generally used to be bobbing about like a cork in a bucket. I knew the bottom of every creek in those parts as well I knew the face of my father. I was on visiting terms with the under-side of every big paver in the county. 'ln 18631 left college and went trading with father among the Indians. He had a sort of travelling business, and used to strike from New York up to the frontier, lodging goods at the stations as he went on, and sending them down rail by train when he'd got sufficient.

' I guess the Indian is the most tarnation mistake that ever walked on two legs since animated dirt trod foot-sole. I've seen those Chippewas in Minnesota steal anything they could lay their lifters on. We used always to walk amongst them with our revolvers ready. The Indian's no good any more now, except to Barnum and book-writers. In fact, he's played out. He neither works nor shoots nor digs ; he only devils all round and drinks, and then he's a beast. He's only a red leaf on the tree, and has had his summer. Somebody has said that he was spoilt by Columbus discovering him. I guess there's a whittle of fact in that.

' In my next move I left father, and came down East to join the navy. There was a kind of war-fever which had been taking everybody right off sharp to the front, and in the course of time it took me. You felt the Southerners become all at once darned rebs, and you hated them like poison. Prairie fire-sparks ! the feeling used to go tingling over me, though I was only a youth. I've seen men go drunk with that hot excitement against the enemy and sob with rage. I went down to Brooklyn navyyard to the receiving ship, and then I was transferred to the despatch boat Hydrauga — Captain Watson, which used to ply up and down the James River. We only carried three guns. Every now and again passing up and down stream we used to go through a pesky hailstorm, only the hail-stones were bullets. The Confederate sharpshooters would post themselves right slick on the edge of the shore, getting as near us as they could, and then came rifle practice till we were out of sight. 'On one occasion it got too warm for us to sit still, so Captain Watson mustered us and a few men from the fleet, and we bore into the rebs on our own account. We'd drawn up near the Gab, and as soon as it was night a company of the boys shadowed off for the shore. It was very dark and the ground was mud-swampy. By-and-by we struck the reb camp. Just as we came in sight I struck something too—a gully about ten feet deep. Down I went just as the rebs sent a volley among us. Scalp-knives ! when I got out wasn't there a full-grown skirmish going on ! It was pitch dark, and the flashes of light from the guns lit up the gloom between the trunks of the trees and the long reaches of stagnant slime like watch-lan-terns. We began to think, we'd call sometime else, for in the excitement we'd lost the track, and swamps are as difficult to manage as women.

' Afterwards at Fort Fisher I saw Butler blow up his fire-ship. Guess I uever hea,rd such a row in all my life. It was the i\llfirdest clap of thunder that ever knocked at my cars. Soon after that we cruised to New York, where we were discharged, and so once more I was adrift. ' Of course I made tracks home in a few months, and thought I'd settle down a morsel. I was hungry for a little quiet after knocking round so long. I determined then to go and settle at Cape May, down on the Jersey coast. Father had given me some money, so I started a light fancy business in Oriental goods. This little Japanese coin I wear was one he got when in Japan, for he knocked about more than I do, and would have traded as far as the moon if he could.

'lt was not long before the old passion for swimming called one day and found me in. I can't describe the feeling. It comes up and hauls you off as if its invisible hands hands were on every inch of you. I rushed down to the beach. It was just the height of the Cape May season, and lots of bathers were about. I looked over them and saw one throw up his arms. I went for him straight, but he'd got so far out it pulled me considerably before I handed him in. After that every day I was on the beach part of my time. During the next week I saved two little children who'd been paddling about and slipped into a gully. Guess I shan't forget how their thanked father me. I felt ashamed almost. Cape May summer only lasts two months, so it was soon over, and I was ready to make tracks again for the West during the winter. The first money I made came from there, and I spent the whole of it, 900 dollars in a submarine diving dress—pump and apparatus complete. To bo continued.