Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-60.pdf/11

 4

'

A MOUNTAIN MOLOCH.

“ Will you pardon me if I keep you waiting for a short time?” he said. “ You see, in one of these general changes to which our political system is subject ever four years, several ﬁling-clerks have been dis missed, with the result that now and then some paper that’s wanted might as well be at the bottom of the Red Sea. I don’t believe the most perfectly devised system can entirely eliminate the personal ele ment. Don’t you want to come with me? I’m going myself into one

of the ﬁle-rooms, where it is just possible that what we’re looking for may have been misplaced.” Having nothing else to do, I followed him. Then I heartily regretted my foolish complaisance. Dust rose in clouds, as bundle

after bundle was drawn out, hastily examined, and thrust back again to accumulate a new coat. Coughing and half choked, I was about to excuse myself and retire, when, as a clerk dived into a new pigeon hole, a grimy, yellow document, unendorsed, ﬂuttered to my feet. I picked it up gingerly. “ What’s that?” said my friend, glancing hastily over my shoulder as I shook the paper open at arm’s length. Then he added, in a tone of interest, “Why, hang it, if that isn’t the report of the loss of the Falcon ! How the deuce did it ever get in here, and in that shape?” Taking it from me, he thrust it into his pocket, while I with drew to the private oﬂice. He joined me there in half an hour, the dirtiest man I have ever seen outside of a coal-bin; but his search had been successful, and soap and water and clothes-brushes and clean linen

were available. An hour later we sat down to dinner. “Do you know,” he remarked, suddenly, as we were sipping our coffee, “that paper you picked up was quite a ﬁnd? Every now and then some such document is seriously mislaid, and a record of the loss is handed down from Secretary to Secretary, until most of them that are not at once replaced turn up sooner or later. This,” he continued, taking it from his pocket, “has been missing since 1840, and we had entirely lost sight of the man who made it. Let me see.” And he opened the pages and spread them out. “Shall I read it to you? It’s short, and rather entertaining.”

“ Certainly,” I replied, not especially interested, except in the satis faction of my friend.

He read as follows: “Bnrrrsn FRIGATE HaunoN, AT SEA, February 8, 1839.

“ SIB,—On the 7th of January last, Easter Island bearing W.N.W., distant about ten leagues, the United States sloop of war Falcon, Captain Nathaniel French commanding, met with a hurricane which continued for two days with great violence, driving us south and west.

Upon the storm abating, we found ourselves approximately in lat. 51° 20’ S., long. 65° 9’ W., being unable to determine more accurately on account of a deplorable accident to First Lieutenant Hasbrook.

This ofﬁcer was washed overboard on the night of the 7th while attempting to take an observation with the only sextant we then had, and the instrument was thus lost. “ The sky clearing on the 9th, land was sighted upon the starboard