The first faint rays of morning filtered through barred windows and
there came a rattling of locks on the prison-house door.
“Up and out, you lazy dogs!” shouted a harsh voice.
The overseer’s whip cracked, bringing forth a scream from a weary wretch
near him.
The slaves got to their feet and shuffled out of the evil-smelling
place. Two of them, however, remained slumped on the floor. The overseer
turned them over with his foot, then realized that these two would slave
no more. He muttered a curse and followed the others into the square.
Here under the supervision of extra guards the slaves were drawn up in
line. Bill, and the party who had arrived with him were unshackled and
the woebegone crew was ordered to march on again.
Along the side of the square they stumbled, halted again at an open shed
where a ship’s biscuit and a small crock of water were handed to each
man as he filed past. The line of slaves swung round toward their prison
house. Back there once more, they sank to the ground and partook of
their morning meal. Bill noticed that files of other slaves were being
herded out of buildings on the farther side of the square, toward the
food shed.
“Knock the maggots out of your biscuit and soak it in the water,”
advised Osceola, who was seated beside him. “You won’t find it fit to
eat otherwise.”
Bill made a grimace. “I can’t eat this filthy stuff, Osceola. Why, it’s
crawling with the beastly things.”
“You’ll get nothing more until one o’clock when we knock off for an
hour,” returned his friend. “And at that the ship’s biscuits are better
than the mess we get at noon. If you don’t eat, you’ll pass out in short
order. Make it snappy, too—they don’t give us much time.”
Bill nodded and after ridding the biscuit of as many worms as he could
find, gulped down half of the tepid water in his crock and dunked his
breakfast in the remainder. While the stonelike substance was softening,
he studied the young Seminole chief. By daylight, Osceola proved to be a
tall, rangy fellow, with the finely cut features and the high cheek
bones of his race. Like most of the slaves, he wore nothing but frayed
trousers and Bill saw that his red-bronze back was crisscrossed with
ugly welts from the lash.
When the biscuit was soft enough to eat, Bill crunched it between his
teeth and forced it down with the rest of the water. The evil mess
gagged him in spite of his hunger, but he could not afford to starve and
lose his strength. By the time he had finished, the slave gang were
ordered to their feet again.
Down to the shed they marched, and after depositing their empty water
crocks on a table, they were crowded over to the wall of the compound.
An overseer, armed with shortstocked whip and automatic revolver
unbarred the double doors of the stockade and swung them inward. The
guards, armed like their leader, took their places on either side of the
long line, and two by two the slaves moved forward on to the corduroy
road.
This time, instead of going down toward the lagoon and the dock where
the amphibian lay moored, they turned off on a side road. This wound
through the swamp between great cypresses whose dark green foliage was
intertwined with the lighter green of vines and air-plants, and other
parasites. Exposed roots of the trees, interlocked with the roots of
their neighbors, looked like giant snakes twisting in and out of the
muck and water. Though the sun was but half an hour high the steaming
swamp seemed to sap every ounce of Bill’s vitality, and with it, the
last shred of that hope to which he clung so desperately. In the
cavernous gloom of the forest, the vile stench of rotting mangrove was
nearly overpowering; and as they plodded on, the heat grew more and more
oppressive.
The log roadway was never more than ten feet wide, and sometimes, where
it was built to run between two mighty trees, it was even narrower. It
wound an uneven passage through the swamp, until about a mile from the
stockade, it came out on a lagoon, dotted with cypress-covered islands.
Here, sunlight brightened the long stretches of open water, and Bill saw
that lovely orchids bloomed on many of the trees, and that the matted
upper branches of the cypresses were brilliant with masses of flowers.
Then a black blob on a root near the road uncurled itself, one of the
guards tossed a stick and a huge snake slid into the water.
The roadway extended along the lagoon’s edge for half a mile. Though it
ended abruptly at this point, Bill saw that preparations were in view to
extend it further.
“Those are the gold dredges,” affirmed Osceola, indicating three hulks
which looked like crosses between coal barges and canal boats. “Those
big funnels at the ends, sticking into the water, are the suction
pipes.”
“How do the dredges work?” Bill inquired as they drew nearer.
“They are driven by stationary steam engines,” explained the young
Chief. “Muck and water are sucked up from the lagoon’s bottom, then
forced through screens and allowed to flow in shallow streams over wide
inclined surfaces called tables. These tables are corrugated in such a
way that all heavy substances in the silt, like fine particles of gold,
are caught in the channels and washed down on to the blankets, while the
lighter stuff passes over the side.”
“A bit too technical for me,” said Bill. “What are blankets?”
“I’m not much on mining, but here, blankets are just what they sound
like. They are covered with quicksilver to which the gold particles
become attached. Later the quicksilver is washed from the blankets, and
the gold taken from it by some process I don’t know about. I may have
missed a few details—probably have. I’ve only worked on the dredges
three days.”
“Then we aren’t _all_ gold-miners?”
“Oh, no. Slaves do all the work of the camp. At present, some of the
strongest of us are extending this road farther along the lagoon. But
we’ve arrived—stop talking now, for it means the whip, during working
hours.”
The line halted opposite the dredges moored to the bank, and a certain
number of the slave gang were ordered aboard. Axes were passed out to
others, who went on board flat-boats and poled out toward the young
growths of the cypress islands.
Bill hoped that he would be one of this number, for, with an axe in his
hands, many things might be possible. Instead, when his part of the line
moved up to where the head overseer was issuing directions, the man
pointed to a stack of iron wheelbarrows. After taking an empty barrow
apiece, the two friends trundled them in a long line of barrow men down
a planked incline to the muck heap formed by the gold dredges. Men with
shovels were already stationed here and Bill found that with the impetus
of the guards’ whips behind them, each man had his barrow filled with
mud and rubble in less than no time.
As soon as his own was filled he trundled it up another series of planks
to the roadway. Along this the continuous stream of sweating
barrow-pushers led him to the end of the road. Here, under the direction
of overseers, the loads were dumped into the virgin swamp. It looked to
Bill as though the black water would swallow up all the mud they could
carry and more, but before many trips had been completed, he could
plainly make out the progress of the roadbed.
Soon the labor became a back-breaking, seemingly endless grind. Never
once was the weary, sweating crew given a chance to rest. At the
slightest lagging, the overseer’s wirebound lash descended upon the
defenseless back of the transgressor. Loads were heavy and the strain on
little-used muscles was terrific, especially on the stretch of planking
from the incline up to the road. Before an hour had passed, Bill ached
in every limb. Blisters quickly formed on his perspiring hands; he felt
dizzy and sick.
All at once a red hot iron seared him across the back and shoulders, and
with a yell of pain Bill sprang forward. From behind him came the
guard’s warning:
“Snap into it, y’ lazy hound—or I’ll cut your liver out!”
To retaliate would be suicidal. The man carried an automatic besides
this fearful, wirebound cowhide lash that laid open the bare flesh with
every stroke. Bill’s anger blazed at the cowardly blow, but at the same
time his hopes of escape sank to lowest pitch. What could unarmed men do
against these beasts? An uprising of all the slaves would be practically
an impossibility, quartered as they were in separate prisons. He also
began to understand that even the uprising of one prison-house gang was
not to be considered. By the end of the day, these worn out men were
sure to be apathetic to any such proposal. The fearful punishment meted
out for failure would stop all but the most courageous from joining a
concentrated revolt against their masters—the slim chances of success
would deter the others.
Bill discarded all thoughts of such a plan. If he and Osceola were to
escape, they must go it alone. Yet how could it be accomplished? He was
still cogitating the matter, when the head overseer raised a police
whistle to his lips and blew a sharp blast. Barrows and shovels were
immediately stacked and the men lined up for their noonday meal.
This time a greasy mess of vegetables and small pieces of rubber-like
meat were ladled on to wooden platters from a barrel on wheels. With
this went a slab of stale bread and a crock of water. The stew, if it
could be called that, was lukewarm and so rancid as to be almost
uneatable. But Bill wolfed it down, following the others’ example, only
sorry that no more could be had.
The gang ate their dinner squatting on the corduroy road, and as soon as
they had finished, most of the toilers fell fast asleep.
“They prepare this mess for us once a week,” Osceola informed Bill.
“Today is Thursday, and by Saturday the heat has soured it to such an
extent that hungry as we are, we leave it alone. No man’s stomach can
hold it then.”
Bill finished his bread and the last drop of his water.
“I should think it would pay Martinengo to feed us better,” he muttered
wearily. “No wonder the men die off quickly, forced to such labor and
undernourished this way.”
“It costs him little to kidnap new slaves,” grunted the Seminole. “All
supplies have to be flown here by plane from Shell Island. But I’m too
tired to talk, Bill. Better get what rest you can—the afternoon is
always worse than the morning grind.”
He stretched out on the logs of the roadway, and a couple of minutes
later, his regular breathing told that he was asleep.
Bill lay down, too, but his aching muscles, the smart of his back where
the guard’s lash had cut the flesh, and his blistered hands made slumber
an impossibility. Myriads of buzzing, stinging mosquitoes added to his
discomfort and he was not sorry when the overseer’s whistle brought the
men staggering to their feet again.
Instead of a wheelbarrow, now, Bill and Osceola were given shovels for
the afternoon’s work. At first, Bill welcomed the change but soon found
that it was quite as arduous as the morning’s toil. There was absolutely
no let up. As soon as one barrow was filled, another took its place. The
wet mud was slippery, the mosquitoes by the water even more tenacious.
He began to feel that death was preferable to endless days of this kind
of thing.
To make matters even worse, the overseer in charge of the shovelers used
his lash without mercy at the first sign of flagging. Bill felt its
burning pain several times during those hours, as did every other man on
the muck-heap.
The woodcutters returned late in the afternoon and began carting their
logs up the incline where they were dumped on the mud at the end of the
corduroy to solidify the foundation of the extended roadway. The tree
trunks were heavy and the men so weak that it took eight or ten of them
to carry a single log.
Slowly the sun sank toward the western end of the lagoon and Bill knew
that within five or ten minutes they would be forced to knock off for
want of light. Then Osceola slipped in the muck and fell flat.
Before the poor youth could get to his feet, the overseer’s lash felled
him again. But instead of desisting in his cruelty, the man continued to
rain blows on the prostrate and half-unconscious body of the Indian.
This was too much for Bill. As the wicked lash descended for the third
time, he dashed toward the guard and swinging his shovel like a club,
brought it down on the man’s skull. The overseer dropped in his tracks
and Bill helped Osceola to his feet.
“Follow me,” he shouted, “it’s now or never!”
Osceola, half dazed, ran with him through the crowd of amazed workmen to
the far edge of the muck heap. There came two splashes as the lads dove.
Revolvers barked, men shouted orders and the lagoon’s glassy surface was
churned with bullets.