AFLOAT.
Once asleep on the cool, breeze-swept piazza, the three tired boys were
not inclined to wake easily. The sun went down, but still they slept.
Finally the teamster from Hardeeville arrived with the trunks on an
ox-cart, and his loud cries to his oxen aroused Charley, who sprang up
suddenly. Forgetting that his couch was a joggling board more than three
feet high he undertook to step upon the floor as if he had been sleeping
on an ordinary sofa. The result was that his feet, failing to reach the
floor at the expected distance, were thrown backward under the board by
the forward motion of the upper part of the body, and Master Charles
Black, of Aiken, fell sprawling on the floor, waking both the other boys
in alarm.
"What's up?" cried Ned.
"Nothing. I'm down," replied Charley. "I thought you said the thing
wouldn't turn over."
"Well, it hasn't," said Ned. "Look and see. It's you that turned over.
Are you hurt, old fellow?"
Charley was by this time on his feet again, and declared himself wholly
free from hurt of any kind. The trunks were brought in, the driver
turned over to Maum Sally's hospitality, and Ned declared it to be time
for bed.
"Whew! how cold it is!" exclaimed Jack. "Do you have such changes of
weather often, down here on the coast?"
"Only twice in twenty-four hours at this season," answered Ned, as they
went into the house.
"Twice in twenty-four hours! What do you mean?"
"I mean once in twelve hours," answered Ned.
"How is that? I don't understand."
"Well, you see our late summer dews have begun to fall. If you were to
go out now, you would find the water actually dripping from the trees.
From this time on it will be chilly at night, almost cold, in fact, but
hot as the tropic of Cancer in the daytime. So we have a sudden change
of temperature twice a day--once from cold to hot, and once from hot to
cold."
The boys were too sleepy to talk long, and the sun was shining in at the
east windows when Maum Sally waked them the next morning for a breakfast
as miscellaneous as the supper had been; sliced tomatoes and figs, still
wet with the dew, being prominent features of the meal.
After breakfast Ned looked up a great variety of fishing tackle and got
it in order.
"Where are your fish poles?" asked one of the boys.
"Fish poles! we don't use them in salt water. We fish with tight lines."
"What are they?"
"Why, long lines with a sinker at the end and no poles."
"Do you just hold the line in your hand?"
"Certainly. And another thing that we don't use is a float. We just fish
right down in the deep water--or the shallow water rather, for the best
fishing is on bars where the water isn't more than twenty feet deep; but
deep or shallow, the fish are at the bottom, except skip-jacks; they
swim on top, and sometimes we troll for them. They call them blue fish
up North, I believe, but we call them skip-jacks or jack mackerel."
"What's that?" asked Jack, as Ned spread out a round net for inspection.
"A cast net."
"What's it for?"
"Shrimps."
"But I thought we were going fishing."
"So we are. But we must go shrimping first. We must have some bait."
"Oh, we are to use shrimps for bait, are we?"
"Very much so indeed," answered Ned. "They are capital bait--the best we
have, unless we want to catch sheephead; then we use fiddlers."
"What are fiddlers?"
"Little black crabs that run about by millions over the sand. They have
hard shells that whiting and croakers can't crack, while the sheephead,
having good teeth, crush them easily. So when we want to catch
sheephead, and don't want to be bothered with other fish, we bait with
fiddlers."
"Then I understand that fish are so plentiful here and so easily caught
that they bother you when you want to catch particular kinds?" said
Jack, incredulously.
"If you mean that for a question," answered Ned, "I'll let you answer it
for yourself after you've had a little experience."
"Well, if we don't get any shrimps," said Charley, "we'll fish for
sheephead with musicians."
"Musicians? oh, you mean fiddlers," said Ned. "But we'll get shrimps
enough."
"Do they bother you, too, with their abundance?" asked Jack, still
inclined to joke his friend.
"Come on and see," said Ned, who had now prepared himself for wading.
Taking the cast net in his hand, and giving a pail to Jack, he led the
way to the sea. Wading into the mouth of a little inlet he cast the net,
which was simply a circular piece of netting, with a string of leaden
balls around the edge. From this lead line cords extended on the under
side of the net to and through a ring in the centre where they were
fastened to a long cord which was held in Ned's hand. A peculiar motion
in casting caused the net to spread itself out flat and to fall in that
way on the water. The leaden balls caused it to sink at once to the
bottom, the edges reaching bottom first, of course, and imprisoning
whatever happened to be under the net in its passage. After a moment's
pause, to give time for the lead line to sink completely, Ned jerked the
cord and began to draw in. Of course this drew the lead line along the
bottom to the centre ring, and made a complete pocket of the net,
securely holding whatever was caught in it.
It came up after this first cast with about a hundred shrimps--of the
large kind called prawn in the North--in it. The boys opened their eyes
in surprise, and Ned cast again, bringing up this time about twice as
many as before.
"They have hardly begun to come in yet," said Ned. "The tide is too
young."
"Hardly begun to come in?" said Jack, "why, the water's alive with them.
Let me throw the net."
"Certainly," said Ned, "if you know how."
"Know how? Why, there's no knack in that; anybody can do it."
With this confident boast Jack took the net and gave a violent cast.
Neglecting to relax the rope at the right moment, however, the confident
young gentleman made trouble for himself. The lead line swung around
rapidly, the net wrapped itself around Jack, and the leaden balls struck
him with sufficient violence to hurt. He lost his balance at the same
instant, and, his legs being held close together by the wet net, he
could not step out to recover himself. The result was that he fell
sprawling into the water and was fished out in a very wet condition by
his companions.
Jack was a boy capable of seeing the fun even in an accident of which he
was the victim. He stood still while the net was unwound, and for a
moment afterward. Then, seeing that the other boys were too considerate
to laugh at him while in trouble, he quietly said:
"I told you I could do it."
"Well, you caught more in the net than I did," said Ned. "Now take hold
again and I'll show you how to manage it. Your wet clothes won't hurt
you. Sea-water doesn't give one cold."
A few lessons made Jack fairly expert in casting, but Charley had no
mind to court mishaps, and would not try his skill. The pail was soon
well filled with shrimps, and the boys returned to the boat house,
where Jack changed his wet clothes for dry ones.
Then all haste was made to get the boat out, in order that they might
fish while the tide was right. The boat was a large launch named _Red
Bird_; a boat twenty-four feet long, very broad in the beam, and very
stoutly built. It was provided with a mast and sail, but these were of
no use now as there was no wind, and the bars on which Ned meant to fish
were only a few hundred yards distant.
No sooner was the anchor cast than the lines were out, and the fish
began accepting the polite invitation extended to them.
"What sort of fish are these, Ned?" asked Charley, as he took one from
his hook.
"That," said Ned, looking round, "is a whiting--so called, I believe,
because it is brown, and yellow, and occasionally pink and purple, with
changeable silk stripes over it. That's the only reason I can think of
for calling it a whiting. It is never white. It isn't properly a whiting
for that matter. It isn't at all the same as the whiting of the North,
at any rate."
"Why, they're changing color," exclaimed Jack.
"Look! they actually change color under your very eyes."
"Yes, it's a way whiting have," said Ned. "And some other fish do the
same thing, I believe."
"Dolphins do," said Charley.
"Yes, but the whiting isn't even a second cousin to the dolphin. That's
a croaker you've got, Jack; spot on his tail--splendid fish to eat--and
he croaks. Listen!"
The fish did begin to utter a curious croaking sound, which surprised
the boys. Other croakers were soon in the boat, and the company of them
set up a croaking of which the inhabitants of a frog pond might not have
been ashamed.
"They call croakers 'spot' in Virginia," said Ned, "because of the spot
near the tail. Look at it. Isn't it pretty? and isn't the fish itself a
beauty?"
"But the whiting is prettier," said Charley; "at least in colors. I say,
Ned, do you know if whiting ever dine on kaleidoscopes?"
"Look out! hold that fellow away from you! hold the line at arm's length
and don't let the brute strike you with his tail for your life!"
exclaimed Ned, excitedly, as Charley drew a curious-looking creature
up.
[Illustration: "LOOK OUT! HOLD THAT FELLOW AWAY FROM YOU!"]
"What is the thing?" asked both the up-country boys in a breath.
"A stingaree," replied Ned, "and as ugly as a rattlesnake. See how
viciously he strikes with his tail! Let him down slowly till his tail
touches the bottom of the boat. There! Now wait till he stops striking
for a moment and then clap your foot on his tail. Ah! now you've got
him. Now cut the tail off close to the body and the fellow's harmless."
"What is the creature anyhow?" asked Jack, who had suspended his fishing
operations to observe the monster. "What did you call it?"
"Well, the gentleman belongs to a large and distinguished family. To
speak broadly, he is a plagiostrome chondropterygian, of the sub-order
_raiiæ_, commonly called skates. To define him more particularly, he is
a member of the trygonidæ family, familiarly known as sting rays, and
called by negroes and fishermen, and nearly every body else on the
coast, stingarees."
"Where on earth did you get that jargon from?" asked Charley.
"It isn't jargon, and I got it from my uncle. He told me one day not to
call these things stingarees, but sting rays, and then for fun rattled
off a lot of scientific talk at me, which I made him repeat until I knew
it by heart. What I know about sting rays is this: there are a good many
kinds of them in different quarters of the world. In the North they have
the American sting ray, which is much larger than ours down here, though
we sometimes catch them two or three feet wide. Ours is the European
sting ray, I believe; at any rate, it isn't the American. They are all
of them closely alike. They are brown on top and white beneath. You see
the shape--not unlike that of a turtle, but with something like wings at
the sides, and with a skin instead of a shell, and no legs. The most
interesting things about them are their long, slender tails. See,"
picking up the amputated tail and turning it over; "see the gentleman's
weapons. Those bony spikes, with their barbed sides, make very ugly
wounds whenever the sting ray gets a good shot at a leg or an arm. The
negroes say the barbs are poisonous, like a rattlesnake's fangs; but the
scientific folk dispute that. However that may be, a man was laid up for
three months right here in Bluffton, during the war, with a foot so bad
that the surgeons thought they would have to cut it off, and all from a
very slight wound by a sting-ray."
"Ugh!" cried Jack. "It isn't necessary to suppose poison; to have one of
those horrible bones driven into your flesh and then drawn out with the
notches all turned the wrong way, is enough to make any amount of
trouble, without adding poison."
"Perhaps that accounts for the stories told of the Indians shooting
poisoned arrows," said Ned. "They used sting-ray stings for arrow-heads
at any rate."
"And very capital arrow-heads they would make," said Charley, examining
the spikes, which were about the size of a large lead-pencil, about
three or four inches long, and barbed all along the sides, so that they
looked not unlike rye beards under a microscope. These spikes are placed
not at the end of the tail, but near the middle.
"Are sting rays good to eat?" asked Jack, examining the slimy, flabby
creature.
"It all depends upon the taste of the eater," replied Ned. "The negroes
sometimes eat the flaps or wings, and most white people on the coast
have curiosity enough to taste them. They always say there's nothing
bad about the taste, but I never knew anybody to take to sting rays as a
delicacy. Some people say that alligator steaks are good, and a good
many people eat sharks now and then. For my part good fish are too
plentiful here for me to experiment with bad ones."
The fishing was resumed now, and it was not long before Jack confessed
that the fish were beginning to "bother" him by their abundance and
eagerness.
"Ned," he said, "I apologize. If you've any fiddlers about your clothes,
I believe I'll confine my attention to sheephead; I'm tired of pulling
fish in."
"Well, let's go ashore, then," said Ned, laughing, "and have dinner."
"Do fish bite in that way generally down here?" asked Charley.
"Yes, when the tide isn't too full. Fishing really gets to be a bore
here, it is so easy to fill a boat; anybody can do that as easily as
throw a cast net."
"Now hush that," said Charley. "Jack has owned up and apologized, and
agreed that he knows more than he did this morning."