Bill Bolton Flying Midshipman Part 17

Osceola departed, and presently old Sam, after watching Bill for a moment, hobbled off in the opposite direction.

Bill spread out the parachute on the ground and proceeded to cut off a large circular piece of the fabric. Next he cut a piece from the shroud, and painstakingly unravelled strands from the rope. That completed, he cut off three green branches from a nearby sapling-trimmed them, and cut two to a length of approximately eighteen inches and the third somewhat shorter. After notching their ends, he laid the two longer ones side by side and bound the ends together with strands from the parachute rope.

The next operation was to bend them outward and apart at the center and to slip the shorter notched stick crosswise between them. When its ends were bound to the other poles to keep it firm and in place, he found himself possessed of an oval wooden frame.

Bill now laid this aside and picked up the piece of fabric he had cut.

The outer edge of this he lapped over his oval frame. Then with his knife blade he punched eyelets through the double lap of cloth, and by pa.s.sing strands of the rope through them, shortly managed to bind the edges of the fabric to his frame. The result was an open-mouthed bag-like container or bucket, which, inasmuch as the fabric was waterproof, would carry any liquid he placed in it.

His task was now completed, so sticking the open knife in a log where Sam on his return would be sure to see it, he set off with his collapsible pail to find drinking water.

The island, which Bill found to be about two miles long by half a mile wide, was covered with a heavy growth of cypress. Some of these trees were very old. He came across many whose trunks and branches were smooth and white, crowned with feathery foliage of a dazzling golden green.

These beautiful trees usually grow amid clumps of dark evergreens such as bay, magnolia, and myrtle, and the effect was very striking. The small jungle was tropical in nature: stately palmettos raised their plumed heads toward the brilliant blue sky, and the forest glades were painted bright with flowers.

Bill followed one of the green aisles which wandered through the trees toward the middle of the island. Twice he heard the dull intonation of a distant revolver shot and wondered what luck Sam was having with his subst.i.tute for chicken. The wood was alive with birds. All seemed quite tame, and paid no attention to this unusual visitor to their sylvan haunts.

Presently he found the marshy ground that he was looking for; and in a little hollow nearby, a bubbling spring of cold, sweet water. Bill refreshed himself with a long drink of the life-giving liquid. Then he filled his fabric pail and went back to the spot where the conference had been held.

Here he found Sam, who already had a fire going and was plucking the feathers from a big, long-legged bird. On the turf beside him lay another. Bill recognized the great blue heron, familiarly known to the natives of Florida as "the Major."

"I didn't know that those things were good eating," he observed as he hung the waterbucket on a branch in the shade. "Dad shot a couple last year which he has had stuffed. They were pretty skinny-bags of bones, that's all."

"Dere warn't no moon, I reckin," Sam said, busy with his plucking.

"Moon-what do you mean?"

"De moon am full now." Sam's grin disclosed two perfect rows of snow white teeth. "Dat's de reason, Ma.r.s.e Bill."

"Oh, quit your kidding, Sam!"

"I ain't a-kiddin' you, suh. Feel dis heah Major."

Bill lifted the bird from the old darkey's knees. It was plump and heavy.

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he exclaimed. "That's sure a surprise to me, Sam. But I still can't see what the moon's got to do with its being fat."

Sam's laugh awoke the forest echoes. Evidently he was enjoying the joke.

He reached for the heron and went on denuding it of feathers.

"Reckin eddication ain't everything," he chuckled. "Dis n.i.g.g.e.r never had no schoolin', but he know dat de Major only eats when de moon am full.

Twelve times de year he am fat an' twelve times de year he am lean."

"Well, I've got to hand it to you, all right," laughed Bill. "Now I'm going to shove off and give Osceola a hand. So long!"

"So long, suh. When yo'all hears me whistle-come to dinner."

Bill found Osceola near the marsh half a mile away. Close by stood a giant cypress whose straight stemmed trunk must have measured at least twelve feet where the tall shaft sprang from the b.u.t.tressed base of the tree, and rose perhaps a hundred and fifty feet in the air, topped by a wide-spreading head of great limbs and branchlets. At the Indian's feet lay one of these limbs and a glance at its five foot b.u.t.t showed Bill that the big branch was hollow.

"h.e.l.lo!" greeted Osceola. "Find your spring?"

"You bet-cha," returned his friend. "There's a bucket of fresh water in camp now."

"That's fine. We're in luck all way round the circle." He pointed to the hollow limb. "There's our dugout. Nature is a great help when you lack tools. She's half built already."

"How did you happen to find it?"

"Well, you see, I knew exactly what I was looking for, and headed toward the biggest cypress in sight. An immense tree like that one is very, very old. It's been here for a thousand to two thousand years, I suppose."

"Whew!" Bill stared up at the towering giant with an interest that was almost reverence.

"Yes, it was an old tree when Ponce de Leon was looking for his fountain of youth in these Glades," continued the Seminole. "But for hundreds of years it has been dying, and these old cypresses die backward, or downward, during a period of one to four centuries. The heart decays and the last stage is generally a hollow cylinder. A hurricane from the Gulf brought down this limb, of course."

"But surely you don't expect to fashion a canoe out of that with a knife!"

"What we can't cut, we can burn. And after dinner, we'll have Sam's help and his knife."

"Gosh-it looks to me as if it will take a year!"

"Two days at the most," countered the Indian. "The wood, though very strong, is not heavy, except when it's green; and a dead branch like this is easy to work on. Break off some of the smaller branches and get a fire going in that hole I've just finished digging under the limb-see it?-halfway down its length, there."

Bill went to work, collecting dry wood and twigs for the fire.

"Aren't you afraid we'll burn up the whole thing?" he asked, after a moment or two.

"Oh, no, that's easily prevented," Osceola replied. He had whittled a flat spade wherewith to dig the fire hole and now he began to pack moist earth round the trunk on the side of the hold nearest to the b.u.t.t of the log. "Of course she'll burn a bit inside," he went on, "but I've plugged the b.u.t.t with moss and dirt. Mighty little air can get in through that end."

For the next hour or so the lads were kept busy; the one adding to the pile of burning brush heaped completely around the limb, the other preventing the spread of the fire toward the b.u.t.t of the log. By the time Sam's shrill whistle announced dinner, the hollow sh.e.l.l had been burned clear of its upper end and they were able to roll the twenty-foot log clear of the fire.

It was delicious fare Sam had waiting for the lads by the camp fire.

True, it consisted of but one dish, roast heron, washed down with spring water. But all three diners voted it a success, for a keen hunger is the best of all appetizers, and anyone who has eaten "the Major" when roasted, knows that this great bird is worthy of any feast.

The meal over, the three adventurers repaired to the hollow cypress log.

Bill and Osceola got to work cutting horizontal grooves along the trunk on lines that marked the top of the gunwales. Their progress was slow, but the dying wood was not over-hard and they made fair headway, despite the inadequacy of their tools.

Stones of any kind were a rarity on the island, and it took Sam all of two hours to find one that would be suitable for an ax-head. This he bound to a wooden shaft with strips of cloth cut from Bill's jumper.

When he finished the job to his liking, the ax or hammer resembled those Indian curios one sees in the museums of our large cities.

Toward sundown the mosquitoes which had been pestering them all day, seemed to take on a new lease of life. Clouds of the vicious, blood-thirsty insects swarmed about the toilers, at last making further work impossible. By a vote of mutual consent they left the half-completed dugout to the tender mercies of the stinging pests, and hastened back to the camp fire.

While Sam removed the second heron from the hanging bucket and commenced its preparation over the fire for the evening meal, Bill trudged over to the spring. Upon his return with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g bucket, he found that Osceola had built a line of smudge-fires in a circle around the fire, and that once within the ring, there were no mosquitoes.

When Bill suggested that a series of small fires would have been easier to build than a solid circle of flame, the Indian had smiled good-humoredly.

"Maybe so. But then, you know, snakes like warmth and seek it. We've got to sleep on the ground tonight, and there are several species in this neck of the woods, that I'm not keen to have for bedfellows. They won't cross fire or hot embers, though-'Quod erat demonstrandum,' as the geometry books have it."

"My error," laughed Bill. "After this, I shall refrain from criticizing my elders and betters."

When the moon rose, Sam left them, while the lads lay back on their beds of evergreens and conversed. Several times they heard the report of his gun, but when the hunter returned, carrying three heron and a brace of duck he found them deep in the slumber of exhaustion.