The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast Part 37

"What is the matter, Sam?" inquired Mary.

"Look, Missus," he replied, pointing with his finger. "Enty[#] dat some people drown dey in de ma'sh?"

[#] Is not that.

Mary and Frank looked, and saw what appeared to be in truth, the bodies of two persons fast locked in each other's arms, and lodged upon the top of a submerged mallow, which allowed them to sway back and forth with the undulations of the water. Sam was hesitating what to do--for negroes are almost universally superst.i.tious about dead people. Mary urged him on.

"You will not leave them there, will you?" she inquired; "you will surely draw them out, and see who they are. May be, too, they are not dead. O, get them out, Sam, get them at once."

Shamed out of his superst.i.tious fear, Sam reluctantly obeyed the injunction of his mistress. He waded carefully and timidly along, until he could lay hold of the bodies, and drag them to sh.o.r.e.

"W'ite man and n.i.g.g.e.r, Missus," he said, solemnly, as the movement through the water revealed the pale features of the one, and the woolly head of the other. "De w'ite man, I dun-know[#] who he is, he look like sailor; and de n.i.g.g.e.r--" He had now drawn them ash.o.r.e, and examined their features. It would have made any one's heart sad to hear the groan that came from the poor fellow, when he had looked steadily into the face of the dead man. He staggered, fell on his knees in the water, embraced the wet body, and kissed it.

[#] Dun-know, don't know.

"O my Missus," he cried, "it is Peter! my own brudder Peter! De only brudder I got in dis wide wull. O Peter--Peter!" and he wept like a child.

"Draw them out, Sam," said Mary, energetically; "draw them on high ground, and let us rub them as we rubbed you. There may be life in them yet."

"No, Missus," he replied, pulling the bodies higher ash.o.r.e. "No life here. He cold--he stiff--he dead. O Peter, my brudder, I glad to meet you once mo'. Huddee[#] Peter! Huddee boy!" The poor fellow actually shook hands with the corpse, and poured out afresh his unaffected sorrows.

[#] Howdye.

As soon as the bodies were drawn sufficiently from the water, Mary proceeded to examine them. The face of the white man was unknown to her, he appeared to have been a respectable sailor. He and Peter were evidently stiff dead. She was so certain they were beyond all hope of recovery, that she did not even require their clothes to be unloosed, or any means to be used for their restoration. She waited on the mourning brother until the first burst of his grief was over, then she and Frank aided him to make a sort of brush wood fence around the bodies, to protect them until something could be done for their interment.

It was while they were engaged in this last duty that Robert and Harold pa.s.sed the point. Their halloo might, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, have been heard; but with their own occupation of mind, the rustle of bushes dragged along, and the roar of the distant surf, the voices of the boatmen sounded in vain.

From the point the boys proceeded, it was said, to the other side of the river, to escape the waves that dashed heavily against the island. The whole marsh, from bluff to bluff, was one flood of water, with the exception of patches of the more luxuriant herbage that peered above the rolling surface. The mangroves, though generally immersed, broke so completely the violence of the waves, that the water above and around them, was comparatively smooth, while in the channel of the river it was too rough for safety.

Picking their way over the tops of the low bushes, and around the branching summits of the taller, the boys rowed steadily towards the unfortunate vessel. They had gone not quite half a mile from sh.o.r.e, when they heard a gun, and looking back, they saw Mary's company beckoning to them. It was too late to return, without great sacrifice of time; and Robert pointed with one hand to the distant vessel, and with the other to the place of the old encampment. These signs were understood; the company on sh.o.r.e, after looking steadily at the distant object on the water, disappeared in the woods, and afterwards re-appeared above the old spring.

The labour of rowing increased as the boat proceeded. The pa.s.sage through the marsh became more intricate, and the swell from sea began to be more sensibly felt through the irregular openings. But with the increase of difficulties came also an increase of energy, as they approached the vessel. They were now about a quarter of a mile distant.

Their hands were sore, and their limbs weary with rowing. They tried not to exert themselves any more vigorously than before, lest they should utterly exhaust their strength, but they nevertheless observed, that as they neared the vessel, their boat did somehow move more rapidly through the water, and crowd with greater skill through the narrow opening.

As the young boatmen came within hail they would have called, had they not been restrained by the same ominous feeling which they experienced on the beach. With beating hearts they rowed silently around the bow of the vessel. The waves dashed heavily against it, and came up the inclined deck, oftentimes higher than the companion-way. They moored the boat to the broken mast, and then clambering along the pile of sea-weed and mangroves, which the vessel had collected in drifting, came at last to the cabin door. Robert could not say one word; his heart had risen into his mouth, and he felt almost ready to faint.

"Hallo!" cried Harold, his own voice husky with emotion. "Is anybody within?"

"Thank G.o.d!" responded a voice near the cabin door. It was a female voice, and its familiar tones thrilled to Harold's very soul. "Yes, yes, there are three of us here. Who is that calling?"

"Harold," he answered, "Harold Mc----." The name was not finished. He reeled as he spoke, and leaned pale as a sheet against the companion-way. That voice was not to be mistaken, little as he expected to hear it on that dark river. It was the voice first known to him, and first loved of all earthly voices. He tried again to answer; it was in vain. He groaned in very anguish of joy, and the big tears rolled down his face. Robert answered for him.

"Harold McIntosh and Robert Gordon. Who is in here?"

The voice from within did not reply. It seemed as if the person to whom it belonged was also overcome by emotion; for soon after they heard her speak tremulously,

"Brother! Sister! Thank G.o.d--our boys--are here!"

Robert did not recognize the voice of his aunt, nor did he understand the speechless look which his cousin turned upon him, until after two or three violent sobs, Harold replied to his inquiring look, "My mother!

Robert, mother!"

Hearing the exclamation from within, Robert had now recovered from his own torture of suspense, and leaned down to the cabin-door in time to hear the manly voice of Dr. Gordon, asking in tones that showed he too was struggling to command himself,

"My children, are you all well?"

"Yes, father, all well," Robert replied. He wished to ask also, "Is mother here?" but his voice again failed; he fell upon the leaning door, and gave vent to a pa.s.sionate flood of tears. While leaning there he heard his aunt call out, "Come, help me, brother. She has fainted."

But that answer was enough; his mother was there.

The boys tried in vain to open the door; it was secured on the inside, and it was not until after some delay that Dr. Gordon removed not only the bolt, but various appliances that he had used to keep the water from dripping into his sister's berth, and gave each a hearty shake of the hand as they leaned sideways to enter the door, and clambered in the dark cabin. Dark, however, as that cabin was, and insecure as was the footing of the boys, it was not long before each was locked in his mother's arms.

Mrs. Gordon was very feeble, and her face much emaciated with suffering.

She said little more at first than to ask after Mary and Frank. This silence alarmed Robert; he knew that joy is usually loquacious, and he heard his aunt talking very earnestly with Harold; but he forgot that his mother was just recovering from a swoon, and that extreme joy expresses itself differently in different persons. His father, seeing him look anxiously into her pale, thin face, remarked, "She will recover fast enough, now. The only medicine she needed was to meet you all."

"O, yes," she too observed. "Give me now my dear Mary and Frank, and I think I shall soon get well."

"We can give them to you in an hour, if you are able to bear removal,"

said Robert. "Is she able, father?"

"Yes, yes, able enough," his father answered. "And, I presume, we had better go, before the tide recedes, or we may be caught in the marsh.

Come, let us load without delay."

They removed the trunks, and other things needful, to the boat; the boys relating all the while to their delighted parents what a beautiful prairie home they had, and how well it was stocked with every comfort.

"Everything," said Robert, "except father and mother; and now we are taking them there."

The boat was brought close to the vessel's side, and held there firmly by Dr. Gordon, while the ladies were a.s.sisted by the boys. And with what pride those mothers leaned upon those brave and manly sons--grown far more manly since their exile--may be imagined, but can not be described. Mrs. Gordon recovered her vivacity, and a great portion of her strength, before she left the cabin. Joy had inspired her heart, and energized her muscles. Mrs. McIntosh also seemed to grow happier every moment, as she discovered the mental and moral developments of her son.

Dr. Gordon, having carefully closed the companion-way, took the helm, and the boys the oars, while the mothers, with their faces towards the bow, looked with eyes of love and admiration upon the young labourers, who were requiting life for life, and love for love, what had been bestowed on them in their infancy.

As they were pa.s.sing through the marsh, Mrs. Gordon spied several human figures on a distant bluff. They were exceedingly small, but distinctly marked against the sky.

"Can they be my dear little Mary and Frank?" she asked.

The boys replied that they were, and she waved her white handkerchief to them, in the hope of attracting their attention.

The water was still so rough in the channel, that, anxious as the parents were to embrace their long-lost children, Dr. Gordon decided that instead of attempting the pa.s.sage directly across, in their heavily loaded skiff, they must continue up the river, through the irregular openings of the marsh.

They came at last near enough to be discovered by Mary and Frank, who, seeing the boat load of pa.s.sengers going up the river, needed no invitation to meet them at Duck Point. The two companies reached the beach about the same time. Frank rushed right through the water, and sprang into his mother's lap; Mary was lifted into the boat by Robert, who waded back and forth to bring her; and Sam, though he was saddened by the melancholy fate of his brother, came with open lips and shining teeth, to shake hands with Mossa and Missus, as soon as the children gave him an opportunity.

Here they stopped long enough to allow the hungry boys to refresh themselves from Mary's basket of provisions, and Sam's gourd of water.

They were almost ravenous. Dr. Gordon then went with Robert overland, to bring the other boat from the prairie to the portage, while Harold and Sam conducted the company by water to the orange landing. From this latter place Mrs. McIntosh preferred to walk alone with her son to the tent, leaving the others to descend the river.

During this part of the voyage, Dr. Gordon first learnt with certainty the fate of Peter and the sailor. As soon therefore as Mrs. Gordon had landed, he left Robert to support her to the tent, and re-entering the boat with Sam, went to rescue the bodies from their exposure, and to prepare them for a decent burial. It was late in the afternoon when they returned; and, as the best they could do with the dead bodies, they left them all night in the boat, covered with a sail, and pushed a little distance from the land.