RESULTS OF THE COOKERY--VOYAGE--APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY--ORANGE
TREES--THE BITTER SWEET--RATTLESNAKE--USUAL SIGNS FOR DISTINGUISHING A
FANGED AND POISONOUS SERPENT--VARIOUS METHODS OF TREATING A SNAKE
BITE--RETURN
The morning sun found the young people preparing to carry their
resolution into effect. When Harold opened the oven the turkey was
baked brown as a nut, and from the now tepid hole arose an odour, so
tempting, that their appetites began to clamour for an enjoyment that
was not long delayed.
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 associated
with the painful events of their forced departure from home. The
packing completed, they called in the dogs and goats, pushed from shore,
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 shore 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 grass,
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 multitude 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 shells, and where, securing their boat to a projecting root, they
went ashore 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 cluster 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
shore, cropping the rich grass, and the dogs were made happy with the
remaining rabbit.
Shortly after dinner, while the boys were cutting a supply of grass 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 grasshopper 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-glass. 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.