The young Seminole spread his dripping uniform on the grass to dry and
dropped to his full length on the sward near Sam and Bill.
“We’ve got to build a boat of some kind,” he declared. “Otherwise
there’ll be no leaving this island. Let’s see what we can scare up
between us in the way of tools.”
“I got a big clasp knife what belonged to one of dem pilots,”
volunteered Sam.
“And I’ve got the same chap’s automatic, and a knife I picked up in the
kitchen,” added Osceola. “How about you, Bill?”
“Another automatic and a dry box of matches are the limit of my
contributions,” returned that young man. “Not much of an assortment, eh?
If we could get out to the plane we might be able to find an axe or
something.”
Osceola shook his head. “I doubt it. The smoke has almost disappeared,
which means that the amphibian or what’s left of her is sinking in the
swamp. Anyway, without something to float on we can’t leave this island.
The rock floor of the Everglades basin lies from six to twelve feet down
in the muck and water. Even with a boat, traveling is no joke. That
grass grows ten feet high in some places. You’ve seen what its saw-tooth
edges have done to Sam. That’s nasty stuff to fool with—take it from
me!”
Bill stared gloomily over the prairie-like monotony of the Glades. Smoke
from the wreck had now entirely disappeared. He shuddered as his mind
dwelt for an instant on the horrible fate of its gangster-passengers.
Then his eye caught the deeper green of trees in the far distance.
“There seem to be a lot of islands in this big swamp,” he said. “Many of
them inhabited, Osceola?”
“Not in this part of the Glades, Bill. My people are practically the
sole inhabitants of this part of the world. And they live on islands, of
course. But a long, long way from here.”
“Have you any plan?”
“Yes—I think so.”
“Well, spring it then, old top. You’re in command from now on. I know as
little about this kind of thing as—”
“As I do about flying,” supplemented Osceola with a grin.
“Rather less, if you ask me. Let’s hear what you propose, Chief.”
The young Seminole did not reply at once. His bronzed forehead was
corrugated in a frown. For several minutes he seemed lost in thought.
“There are just three things we’ve got to have,” he said suddenly. “And
we’ve got to have them right away.”
“Water, food and a boat,” Bill suggested.
“Right. If we’re forced to, we can drink Glades water, but it’s
dangerous, and would probably make us ill. There ought to be a spring or
two on this island; I reckon you’re elected to the job of locating fresh
drinking water, Bill, and bringing it into camp.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Food, next,” mused Osceola. “Sam—do you think you can hobble round well
enough to attend to the commissariat?”
“I sure can,” grinned the old darkey. “If I ain’t mistook, I done catch
a glimpse of half a dozen blue heron back yonder. Dey ain’t chicken,
a-course, but dey sure is a mighty fine eatin’. Loan me dat shooter of
yourn, Marse Bill, and dis heah nigger will provide dinner.”
Bill passed over his revolver. “I’ll trade you for your knife, Sam,
while you get into your clothes. I’ve got to have something to make a
water container—that is, when I find the water.”
He pulled his parachute toward him and commenced to untie the pack.
“Reckon I’ll mosey along,” announced Osceola. “I’ve got to manufacture a
boat of some sort.”
“You ain’t a-gwine to get far with dat knife o’ yourn in makin’ a
dugout, Marse,” broke in Sam.
“But that’s not my idea,” the Seminole said quietly, but without giving
any further information about his plans. “Bill, when you get through
totin’ water, look me up, will you? I’m going along there to the east.
You’ll find me near the shore—and I’ll probably need your help.”
“Okay,” sang out Bill, pulling his parachute from the pack. “I’ll join
you as soon as I can.”
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
passing 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
substitute 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, Marse 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 nigger 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 buttressed 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 butt showed Bill
that the big branch was hollow.
“Hello!” 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 butt of the
log. “Of course she’ll burn a bit inside,” he went on, “but I’ve plugged
the butt 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 butt of the log. By the
time Sam’s shrill whistle announced dinner, the hollow shell 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 brimming 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.