Two Brave Boys

Two Brave Boys by Mary E. Ropes

Two Brave Boys* by Mary E. Ropes is a juvenile adventure story set in rural Russia, following two English brothers whose courage and faith carry them through a dangerous conspiracy at their father's mineral oil factory. Alf and Bert Oliver are the sons of John Oliver, an English manager of a large oil factory in the Russian interior. One winter night, the older boy Alf overhears the factory foreman, Anton Griboff, conspiring with another man to stage a false strike — demanding impossible concessions as a pretext for mutiny. Alf reports the plot to his parents. Their father, unshaken, addresses the workforce and closes the factory for a week, discharging all men with the option to return. Their mother refuses to be sent to safety in England, insisting the family remain together and trust in God. The trouble escalates quickly. Three ringleaders — Griboff, a fitter named Stepan, and a brutal man known to the boys as Red-scar (whose name proves to be Gavril) — break into the office at night and seize Mr. Oliver, binding him and attempting to take the key to the safe. The boys, who have crept downstairs, topple Griboff from behind, causing him to drop the key. Bert hides the key around nurse Niania's neck while Alf prepares to ride to the nearest town for help. Displaying remarkable self-possession, Alf saddles his pony Sharik in secret and rides fifteen miles through the frozen night to the police station, enlisting the head constable and a contingent of Cossacks. Returning home, he finds the house looted and silent. Bert has been hiding in a cupboard, their parents and nurse having disappeared. Before help can arrive, Red-scar reappears and seizes both boys at gunpoint, dragging them by sledge to a remote woodman's hut deep in a pine forest. At the hut, the boys fall under the joint custody of the brutal Gavril and the more conflicted Stepan. Stepan had joined the mutiny out of private grievance — his younger brother Pamphil had been dismissed by Mr. Oliver for drinking on duty, after which his life collapsed entirely. Alf argues plainly that the dismissal was just, and Bert reminds Stepan of the Olivers' past kindness to him during illness. Stepan's conscience begins to shift. When Gavril is away, Stepan drugs his coffee with a decoction of poppy heads, and in the early hours enables the boys to escape — giving them Sharik, packing them food, and pointing them toward home before parting ways to seek his imprisoned brother. The flight homeward becomes harrowing. A wolf pack picks up the boys' trail across open frozen marshland. Sharik gallops at full speed but begins to tire. Alf improvises a distraction — filling a tin kettle with coins and metal scraps, trailing it on a length of string behind the pony so that its clattering and rattling unnerves the wolves and holds them back. The pack eventually turns away from the boys and falls on a man travelling behind them on snow-shoes. From the cries and shots that follow, Alf concludes — correctly — that Gavril has been overtaken and killed. Near dawn, the boys find refuge in a woodman's hut in the forest, where a kind young woman named Sonia takes them in. Her husband, sheltering there in hiding, turns out to be Pamphil himself — Stepan's brother — who has escaped prison with the help of a bribed warder. Pamphil was, in fact, innocent of the assault for which he was jailed. The boys sleep the day away, and Stepan himself arrives in the afternoon, having gone to the prison and been directed here by Sonia's cousin. The reunion is joyful. Stepan drives the boys home that same night. Mrs. Oliver, ill with anxiety, is reunited with her sons. Mr. Oliver returns later that night to find them already safe. The story closes with Stepan reinstated at the factory through the boys' advocacy, Pamphil eventually returning to steady employment, and Anton Griboff dying in a lunatic asylum from the head injury he sustained when the boys tripped him. The trials are said to have deepened Alf and Bert's characters and strengthened their faith — a faith expressed throughout the story in Alf's unselfconscious confidence that God was present with them at every dangerous turn.

By Mary E. Ropes · First published 1910 · Genre: Adventure, Juvenile/Children's Literature, Religious/Christian Fiction · 10 chapters · 16,347 words

First lines

IT was the month of January, and the keen Russian winter had wrapped / the woods and marshes in a snowy garment, and put the rivers in prison / behind thick panes of ice glass, and dressed up the tall pines and firs / till they looked like sheeted ghosts under the cold starlight.

But in Mr. John Oliver's roomy wooden house, standing on ground / somewhat raised, and overlooked by the huge chimneys of a big mineral / oil factory, was perfect warmth and comfort, for the great stoves built / into the walls of the room, and faced with white glazed tiles, kept the / whole place of an equal temperature.

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Two Brave Boys is listed on Textopian as a novella by Mary E. Ropes, dated 1910 CE.

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adventure · children's literature · young readers · coming of age · courage · friendship · family · journey · heroism · persistence · loyalty · character development

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