The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast Part 12

After breakfast the first work to be done was packing the boat, during which time Harold, at the suggestion of Robert, took Frank, and made a short tour through the surrounding forest, for the purpose of obtaining a breakfast for the dogs. The bark of the dogs and crack of a rifle soon announced that the hunters were successful, and in less than half an hour they returned each with a rabbit, as we Americans call the hare.

"See here, brother Robert! See here, sister Mary!" was the merry chatter of Frank, the moment he came near. "I caught this myself.

Fidelle ran it into a hollow tree--he is a fine rabbit dog. Mum is good for nothing; he will not run rabbits at all, but just stood and looked at us while Fidelle was after it. Cousin Harold would not let me smoke out the rabbit, but showed me how to get it with a switch. Isn't it a nice fellow?"

"It is indeed," replied Robert, "and I think that before we can return home, you will make an excellent _supercargo_."

Scarcely a smile followed this allusion; it was too sadly a.s.sociated with the painful events of their forced departure from home. The packing completed, they called in the dogs and goats, pushed from sh.o.r.e, raised their sails to a favourable breeze, and moved gaily up the river.

For a mile and a half the water over which they sailed, lay in a straight reach, due east and west, then turned rapidly round to the north, where its course could be traced for many a mile by the breaks among the mangroves. Just where the river made its turn to the north, a small creek opened into it from the south. The course of this creek was very serpentine; for a considerable distance hugging the sh.o.r.e in a close embrace, then running off for a quarter or half a mile, and after enclosing many hundred acres of marsh, returning to the land, within a stone's throw of the place which it had left.

As the object of the voyagers was to explore the land, they turned into this creek, which seemed to form the eastern boundary of the island.

They observed that the vegetation which was very scant and small near the sea, increased rapidly in variety and luxuriance as they proceeded inland. Tall palmettoes, pines, hickories, oaks, tulip trees, magnolias, gums, bays, and cypresses, reared aloft their gigantic forms, their bases being concealed by myrtles, scarlet berried cascenas, dwarf palmettoes, gallberries, and other bushes, intermingled with bowers of yellow jessamine, grape-vine, and chainy brier; while a rich gra.s.s, dotted with variously coloured flowers, spread like a gorgeous carpet beneath the magnificent canopy. Some of the flowers that glistened, even at this late season, above the floor of this great Gothic temple, were strikingly beautiful.

For five miles they followed the meanderings of the creek, now rowing, now sailing, until at last it turned suddenly to the east, and dividing into a mult.i.tude of small innavigable branches became lost in the marshes beyond. Fortunately, however, for the explorers, the channel terminated at an excellent landing-place, which was made firm by sand and sh.e.l.ls, and where, securing their boat to a projecting root, they went ash.o.r.e to examine the character of the country. To their surprise they had not proceeded twenty paces before discovering that this piece of land was only a narrow tongue, not a half furlong wide, and that beyond it was a river in all respects like the one they had left, coming also close to the opposite bank, and making a good landing on that side.

"O, for strength to lift our boat over this portage!" exclaimed Robert.

"The river, no doubt, sweeps far around, and comes back to this point, making this an island."

"We can settle that question tomorrow," said Harold. "It is too late to attempt it now."

"O, brother," cried Mary, "there is an orange tree--look! look!

look!--full of ripe yellow oranges."

It was a beautiful tree, and not one only, but a cl.u.s.ter of seven, scattered in a kind of grove, and loaded with fruit, in that state of half ripeness in which the dark green of the rind shows in striking contrast with the rich colour called orange. The young people threshed down several of the ripest, and began to eat, having first forced their fingers under the skin, and peeled it off by patches. But scarcely had they tasted the juicy pulp, before each made an exceeding wry face, and dashed the deceptive fruits away, as if they had been apples of Sodom, beautiful without, but ashes within. The orange was of the kind called the "bitter sweet," having the bitter rind and membranes of the sour, with the pleasant juice of the sweet.

"Open the plugs, all of you, and eat it as you do the shaddock, without touching the skin to your lips," said Robert. "There is nothing bitter in the _juice_, I recollect now that this kind of orange is said to grow plentifully in many parts of South Florida, and also that the lime is apt to be found in its company. This is another proof, Harold, that I am right as to our whereabouts."

"Really," said Harold, "this is a splendid country. I have another fact about it that you will be glad to learn, and that I intended as a pleasant surprise to you ere long. There are plenty of _deer_ here. I saw their signs all through the woods this morning, within a quarter of a mile of the tent."

They gathered about a bushel of the ripest looking of the fruit, and deposited them in the boat; then beginning to feel hungry, they seated themselves on a green mound of velvet-like moss at the foot of a spreading magnolia, and there dined. Nanny and her kids were already on sh.o.r.e, cropping the rich gra.s.s, and the dogs were made happy with the remaining rabbit.

Shortly after dinner, while the boys were cutting a supply of gra.s.s for their goats during the voyage of the following day, they heard the bark of Fidelle and the growling of Mum, uttered in such decided and angry tones as to prove that they had something at bay, with which they were particularly displeased. "One of us ought to go and see what those dogs are about," remarked Robert; "and since you took your turn this morning, I presume it is my business now." He had not gone long, before Harold saw him returning with rapid steps.

"Do come here, cousin," said he, "there is the largest king-snake I ever saw, and desperately angry. The dogs have driven him into a thicket of briers, and he is fighting as if he had the venom of a thousand serpents in his fangs. His eyes actually flash. I cut a stick and tried to kill him, but it was too short, and he struck at me so venomously, that I concluded to cut me a longer one. The most curious part of the business is, that there is a large gra.s.shopper or locust (if I may judge from the sound), in the same thicket, making himself very merry with the fight.

There he is now--do you not hear him? singing away as if he would crack his sides."

"Locust!" exclaimed Harold, as soon as his quick ear distinguished the character of the music, "you do not call that a locust. Why, Robert, it is the rattle of a rattle-snake. Did you never hear one before?"

"Never in my life," he replied. "I have often seen their skins and rattles, but never a live rattle-snake. O, Harold," he said, shuddering, "what a narrow escape I have made. That fellow struck so near me twice, as barely to miss my clothes."

The boys obtained each a pole of ten feet in length. They stood on opposite sides of the narrow thicket in which the venomous reptile was making its defence, and as it moved, in striking, to the one side or the other, they aimed their blows, until it was stunned by a fortunate stroke from Robert, and fell writhing amid the leaves and herbage. The moment the blow took effect, Mum, whose eyes were lighted with fiery eagerness, sprang upon the body, seized it by the middle, shook it violently, then dropped and shook it again. It was now perfectly dead.

They drew it out, and stretched it on the ground. Its body was longer than either of theirs, and as large around as Robert's leg. The fangs, which he shuddered to behold, were half as long as his finger, and crooked, like the nails of a cat, and the rattles were sixteen in number.

"This is an old soldier," said Harold; "he is seventeen or eighteen years of age. Had we not better carry it to the boat that Mary and Frank may see it? It is well for all to be able to distinguish a rattle-snake when it is met."

The precaution was necessary. For though Mary had a salutary fear of all reptiles, Frank had not; he would as soon have played with a snake, as with a lizard or a worm; and these last he would oftentimes hold in his hand, admiring what he considered their beauty. They stretched it on the earth before the children; put it into its coil ready for striking; opened its mouth; showed the horrid fangs; and squeezing the poison bag, forced a drop of the green liquid to the end of the tooth.

"Frank," said Harold, "if you meet a snake like this, you had better let him alone. Rattle-snakes never run at people. They are very peaceable and only trouble those that trouble them. But they will not budge out of their way for a king; and if you wrong them, they will give you the point of their fangs, and a drop of their poison, and then you will swell up and die. Do you think that you will play with snakes any more!"

"No, indeed," he replied.

"Harold," said Robert, "do you know how to distinguish a poisonous snake from a harmless one?"

On his replying in the negative, Robert continued, "The poisonous serpents, I am told, may be usually known by their having broad angular heads, and short stumpy tails. That rattlesnake answers exactly to the description, and I wonder at myself for not having put my knowledge to better use when I met him. The only exception to this rule I know of is the spreading adder, which is of the same shape, but harmless.

Poisonous serpents must have fangs, and a poison bag. These must be somewhere in the head, without being part of the jaws themselves. This addition to the head gives to it a broad corner on each side, different from that of a snake which has no fangs. But _if ever you see a thick set snake with a broad head and a short stumpy tail, take care_."

The conversation now turned upon the subject of snake-bites and their cure. "My father," said Harold, "had two negroes bitten during one summer by highland moccasins, and each was cured by a very simple remedy. In the first case the accident happened near the house, and my father was in the field. He sent a runner home for a pint bottle of sweet oil, and made him drink by little and little the whole. Beside this there was nothing done, and the negro recovered. The other case was more singular. Father was absent, and there was no oil to be had, but the overseer cured the fellow _with chickens_."

"Chickens!" exclaimed Mary, laughing. "Did he make him take them the same way?"

"Not exactly," Harold answered; "he used them as a sort of poultice. He ordered a number of half grown fowls to be split open alive, by cutting them through the back, and applied them warm to the wound. Before the first chicken was cold, he applied another, and another, until he had used a dozen. He said that the warm entrails sucked out the poison.

Whether or not this was the true reason, the negro became immediately better; and it was surprising to see how green the inside of the first few chickens looked, after they had lain for a little while on the wound."

"_We_ also had a negro bitten by a ground rattle," said Robert, "and father cured him by using hartshorn and brandy, together with an empty bottle."

Harold looked rather surprised to hear of the empty bottle, and Robert said, "O, that was used only as a cupping-gla.s.s. Hot water was poured in, and then poured out, and as the air within cooled, it made the bottle suck very strongly on the wound, to which it was applied, and which father had opened more widely by his lancet. While this operation was going on, father made the fellow drink brandy enough to intoxicate him, saying that this was the only occasion in which he thought it was right to make a person drunk. The hartshorn, by-the-by, was used on another occasion, when there was neither a bottle nor spirit to be had.

It was applied freely to the wound itself, and also administered by a quarter of a teaspoonful at a time in water, until the person had taken six or eight doses. I recollect hearing father say that all animal poisons are regarded as _intense acids_, for which the best antidotes are alkalies, such as hartshorn, soda saleratus, and even strong lye."

"Last year," said Harold, "I was myself bitten by a water-moccasin. I was far from home, and had no one to help me; but I succeeded in curing myself, without help."

"Indeed! how was it?"

"I had gone to a mill-pond to bathe, and was in the act of leaping into the water, when I trod upon one that lay asleep at the water's edge.

Although it is more than a year since, I have the feeling under my foot at this moment as he twisted over and struck me. Fortunately his fangs did not sink very deep, but there was a gash at the joint of my great toe, of at least half an inch long. I knew in a moment that I was bitten, and as quickly recollected hearing old Torgah say, that the Indian cure for a bite is to lay upon the wound the liver of the snake that makes it. But I suppose that my snake had no notion of being made into a poultice for his own bite; for though I chased him, and tried hard to get his liver, he ran under a log and escaped. Very likely if I had succeeded in killing him, I might have relied upon the Indian cure and been disappointed. As it was, I jumped into the water, washed out the poison as thoroughly as possible, and having made my foot perfectly clean, I sucked the wound until the blood ceased to flow."

"And did not the poison make you at all sick?"

"Not in the least. My foot swelled a little, and at first stung a great deal. But that was the end of it. I was careful to swallow none of the blood, and to wash my mouth well after the sucking."

"Do, if you please, stop talking about snakes," said Mary, "I begin to see them wherever I look; suppose we return to our old encampment."

The boys gathered the remainder of the hay, called Nanny and the dogs, and reached the place which they had left, about five o'clock in the afternoon--having seen no signs of human habitation, and being exceedingly pleased with the appearance of their island; they made a slight alteration, however, in the place of their tent. Instead of continuing on the beach, they pitched it upon the bluff near the spring, and under the branches of a large mossy live oak. By the time the duties of the evening were concluded, they were ready for sleep. They committed themselves once more to the care of Him who has promised to be the Father of the fatherless, and laid down in peace, to rest during their third night upon the island.

CHAPTER XIII

DISAPPOINTMENT--THE LIVE OAK--UNLOADING--FISHING EXCURSION--HAROLD'S STILL HUNT--DISAGREEABLE MEANS TO AN AGREEABLE END

Before sunrise it was manifest that, without a change in the wind, the excursion proposed for that day was impossible; a strong breeze was blowing directly from the east, and brought a ceaseless succession of mimic billows down the river. Hoping, however, that the wind might change or moderate, they resolved to employ the interval in transferring all their articles of value from the boat, to their new home under the oak. And it was indeed fortunate, as they afterwards had occasion to know, that they attended to this duty so soon.

The live oak, under which their tent was pitched, was a magnificent tree. Its trunk was partially decayed from age, and the signs of similar decay in many of the larger limbs was no doubt the cause of its being spared in the universal search along this coast for ship timber; but it was so large, that the four youngsters by joining hands could barely reach around it. Ten feet above the root, it divided into three ma.s.sive branches, which in turn were subdivided into long pendant boughs extending about sixty feet in every direction, and showing, at their ends, a strong disposition to sweep the ground. The height of the tree did not correspond to its breadth. It is characteristic of the live oak that, after attaining the moderate height of forty or fifty feet, its growth is directed laterally; the older trees often covering an area of more than double their height. Every limb was hung so plentifully with long gray moss, as to give it a strikingly venerable and patriarchal aspect, and Harold declared he could scarcely look at it without a disposition to take off his hat.

At noon Harold proposed to Robert that, the wind having ceased, they should spend the afternoon either in hunting or fishing. "If," said he, "Mary and Frank will allow us to leave them, I propose the first; if not, I propose the last, in which all can join."

"O, let us go together, by all means," said Mary. "I do not like to be left alone in this far off place; something may happen."