I am obliged to run quickly through my early unadventurous days,
skipping, as it were, from memory to memory of things which happened
before life became serious and terrible for us all at the plantation,
and storms and peril followed rapidly after the first pleasant calm.
For it seems to me now, as I sit and think, that nothing could have been
happier than the life on the river during the first days of the
settlement. Of course, everybody had to work hard, but it was in a land
of constant sunshine, of endless spring and summer days--cold weather
was hardly known--and when a storm came, though the thunder and
lightning were terrible and the rain tremendous, everything afterwards
seemed to bound into renewed life, and the scent of the virgin forest
was delightful. All worked hard, but there was the certain repayment,
and in what must have been a very short time, the settlers had raised a
delightful home in the wilderness, where all was so dreamy and peaceful
that their weapons and military stores seemed an encumbrance, and many
felt that they would have done more wisely if they had brought
agricultural implements instead.
Before we left England, as I have told you, the adventurers who met at
my father's rooms talked of the ruthless savage--the lurking Indian of
the forest and prairie, and also of our neighbours the Spaniards; but as
soon as we reached the place, it seemed to all that the Indians did not
exist; and as to the Spaniards, they were far south, separated by long
stretches of open land, forests, river, and swamp, and might, for aught
we knew, be at the other side of the world.
I was sitting indoors one bright sunny day, and I had just reached
finishing distance with a Latin translation my father had left me to do,
when I heard a quick "Hist!" Looking up, I saw Morgan at the window.
"'Most done?" he said.
"Yes."
"Then come along, I'll show you something."
I bounded out, to find him armed with a stick about six feet long,
provided with a little fork at the end made by driving in a couple of
nails and bending them out.
"What is it?" I cried, excitedly.
"Enemy. Get yourself a good stout stick."
"Rake-handle do?"
"Yes, capital."