BEES AND ROSIN
“I do believe we have!” Joe exclaimed. “Yes, I hear the bees now. I
didn’t know what that humming could be.”
“Yes-suh, dis shorely is dat Old Dick’s cabin,” Sam assured them. “I
remembers now dey said he lived way down in dis yere River Island.”
“Why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner? I asked you about it long
ago!” cried Joe.
“Didn’t remember ’bout it dat time. But, Mr. Joe, we don’t wanter fool
with no bees now, not whilst we’re huntin’ dat rosin.”
“The bees might be worth as much as the rosin,” said Bob. “What do you
think they’d be worth if we had them up North, Sam?”
“Dunno what they’d be worth up Norf,” said the negro, “but down yere
where dey is, dey’re worth jes’ mighty near nothin’.”
“I guess that’s so,” Bob admitted, “but if they were in Canada I’d
expect to make a thousand dollars out of them next summer.”
Sam laughed loudly, taking this to be a joke.
“The question is, how many gums are there?” said Joe.
It was impossible to tell. The blackberry-canes screened the ancient
apiary, and only dimly could be seen the shapes of the gums, swamped
by the undergrowth. Some of the gums were doubtless dead, but from the
numbers of homing bees in the air Bob declared that there must be
dozens of live ones, at any rate.
“We’ll have to clear away all this jungle before we can tell anything
about it really,” he continued. “We’ll have to have something to cut
the blackberries away, and we’d need veils and smoke, too. These wild
bees are going to be cross, sure.”
He looked about as if he thought of starting operations immediately,
but at that very moment sounded, faint and far off through the trees,
the report of a gunshot.
Sam stiffened up to attention like some alarmed wild animal, rolling
his eyes in the direction of the sound. Both the white boys stood for
a full half-minute, intently listening, but no other shot came.
“That was our fellows!” Joe muttered.
“But it was far away,” said his cousin. “All of a mile, I should
think.”
“Yes, and away over past the old channel,” said Joe. “Down in the very
district we were exploring. If we’d kept on, we might have run right
into them. Well, we can’t do anything to-night; and they’re likely
tied up for the night too. I expect that was Blue Bob shooting a wild
duck for supper.”
The shot had put the bees out of their heads, recalling the more
immediate purpose. It was getting too late to investigate the bees,
too; they were ceasing to fly, and a dull, steady roar resounded from
the recesses of the blackberries, telling Bob’s experienced ear that
there were strong colonies in there that had had a good day.
The sun was shining red behind the trees now, and in an hour it would
be dark. The question of a camp-ground was an urgent one, and they
went in to look at the possibilities of the old cabin. Bob stopped
just inside, sniffing.
“Smells like a beehive in here,” he remarked.
There was indeed an unmistakable odor of honey and beeswax in the air,
and with a cry of astonishment Sam pointed at a recess between the
wall and the roof. There hung a great mass of brown honeycomb, covered
with crawling bees.
They had an exit to the open air through a wide crack in the wall, and
two or three of them took wing and buzzed threateningly about the
intruders. Sam hastily retreated.
“A swarm must have hived itself here and built its combs right on the
boards,” said Bob, examining the mass cautiously. “By the dark color
of the wax, they’ve been here more than one season. When Old Dick
moved out the bees moved in, it seems. I suppose they’d stand the
winter all right in this country, but they wouldn’t last long in such
a place up North.”
“Well, we can’t sleep in this shanty, anyway,” said Joe with decision.
“I draw the line at camping in a beehive.”
“They might bother us some, and very likely there are more nests like
this in the place,” Bob admitted. “We’ll find a place outside.”
“We’ll go up by the spring,” said Joe. “Sam, hunt up some dry wood and
get a fire going. We’ll unpack the grub.”
There was a certain risk in lighting a fire, but Sam built it in a
little hollow on the side of the slope, and screened it further with
branches, so that the glow could not be seen far. Bob had brought a
quantity of raw pork—the comestible that came nearest to his hand at
his hurried departure—and Sam sliced it and set the slices up on
little sticks to broil. He also made a short circuit of the camp and
gathered a quantity of pepper-grass for salad; they had still some
cornbread and sweet-potatoes, and there was plenty of good spring
water. It was not a bad meal, they all agreed; and being extremely
tired, they all stretched themselves on the soft ground after eating.
Lying at a little distance, Sam crooned some wordless African melody
half under his breath. Bob talked with his cousin for a few minutes,
and then began to breathe heavily, but Joe lay sleepless for a long
time. It was a hot, close night, and even on the high ground the
mosquitoes hummed in multitudes. He shuddered to think what their
numbers must be down in the bayous. He wondered if the river pirates
became eventually immune to their stings.
He got up and went quietly to the top of the ridge to see if there was
any distant camp-fire visible. Not a spark was in sight, and a white
mist lay low and thick over the swamps. Somewhere far away he heard
the sudden, sharp shriek of a wildcat. Owls hooted hollowly; bats
flitted silently about; the air was full of winged insects, whizzing,
humming, buzzing. He felt less uneasiness about the proximity of the
houseboat, for the darkness and the river fog would conceal one party
as well as the other. He returned to the dying fire and lay down
again, hugging his rifle. He wondered for some time if one of them
should not stand guard, but while he was considering it he fell
asleep.
He wakened again several times during that night; but at last he
opened his eyes to find the east reddening, and the earth silvery with
the dew. Mist lay over the swamps, and a belt of mist marked the
course of the river. Bob and Sam were still asleep, but they awoke at
his movements, and the negro rebuilt the fire. It was desirable to
have the fire out before the mist cleared to make smoke visible, and
they hastened to broil the rest of the pork, and also roasted the eggs
for an emergency luncheon.
“How about the bees?” said Bob when they had finished breakfast and
put out the fire.
“Dis no time to fool with no bees!” Sam expostulated; but the boys
walked down to look at the cabin again. It was too early for the bees
to be flying much; only an occasional insect shot out from the
thicket, heading toward the swamps where the titi was still blooming.
Passing around the cabin, they pushed through the thickets of
gallberry and scrub-oak, and presently found themselves close to a
broad, deep bayou, flowing with a tolerably strong current between
firm banks.
“I declare!” Joe exclaimed. “This must lead out to the river, and it
can’t be more than a few hundred yards, either. I wish we had time to
find out.”
“If we only had the canoe here!” Bob regretted. “Well, we’ll know how
to find the place again.”
“If we ever come back.”
“Oh, I’m coming back,” declared Bob with determination. “I’m going to
have those bees, in spite of all the river pirates.”
The swamps were too dense to think of exploring the bayou to its
mouth, and it would not have been worth while, for there was no doubt
that it must flow into the main channel of the Alabama. After fixing
the landmarks in their memory, they went back, picked up their
supplies, and started for the canoe again, to continue the hunt, with
a much more definite idea now in what direction to steer.
Going down from the ridges they found the night fog still lying
thickly, and their back trail was not so easy to pick out through the
dense, wet undergrowth. They lost it; they found it again in soft
ground, but they had to retrace their steps many times, and it must
have been a full hour before they found their last nights’ footprints
sunk deep in the sloughs of the lower ground, and came to the spot
where they had left the canoe. Sam, who was leading as tracker,
stopped with a cry of dismay.
“De canoe’s gone!”
“What?” Joe exclaimed. “Impossible! This can’t be the right place.”
“Yes-suh, dis de right place, shore ’nough. Here our tracks. See,
yander’s de big log where de moccasin slided out. Dere’s de place
where you sunk in.”
“Yes, here’s where we left it,” said Bob. “But look here, Joe! What
are these tracks? None of us made these!”
“Dat’s shorely so. Somebody’s done come an’ stole our boat!” Sam
exclaimed.
There were indeed fresh tracks in the wet ground, tracks fresher than
the ones they had made last night. They were deep marks of heavy
boots, stamped deep into the mud, so confused that it was hard to say
if more than one person had made them. But they had been made by none
of the boys’ party, and it was certain that some one had come through
the swamp, cut the canoe loose, and paddled away in it.
“We’re in a pickle now!” Bob ejaculated. “What are we going to do?”
“I dunno,” said Sam. “Course, with your guns an’ my fish-hooks we kin
live on dis island long’s we like—live good too, yes-suh. Or we might
mebbe swim de old channel an’ git ’cross to where somebody lives.”
“Can’t we trail that thief’s back track and see where he came from?”
Joe suggested.
“Good idea!” cried Bob. “He must have come from his camp, or from the
houseboat, that’s certain. Very likely he’s paddled back there. Maybe
we’ll find the rosin there, too.”
“Mebbe find more’n we kin swaller,” said Sam; but they started at once
to follow the trail back. The marks were plain enough, for the
men—there certainly appeared more than one—had tramped recklessly
through mud and water. The boys followed them through a swamp, across
a creek, over a dry ridge, and then down again into a partly
overflowed area, where the water stood among dead timber, tall grass,
and piles of rotting logs.
As they came up a moccasin squirmed away into the mud. It looked a
dangerous place in more ways than one. Joe almost flinched as he
remembered his former experience with the bog, but they equipped
themselves with stout sticks to feel the way or kill snakes, and waded
in. The water proved scarcely knee-deep after all, and they were
nearly across when Bob stepped unexpectedly into a deep hole of mud
and water.
He might have gone down almost out of sight, if Sam had not clutched
him by the collar and dragged him forward. Joe also seized his arm; it
was hard to free his feet from the tenacious mud, but Bob at last got
his arms around a cypress knee, and by pulling all at once they hauled
him free.
They got across the bog without further mishap, but Bob was scared and
shaken, and he had to sit down to recover himself. He was covered with
mud; his rifle was mired also, and he had to take it to pieces, wipe
the action dry, and fill the magazine afresh.
Then, when they were ready to go on, they found that they had lost the
trail. Nowhere on that side of the bog could they find any tracks.
In hopes of striking the trail again they decided to fetch a circle
all around the morass, but this device failed. Perhaps the tracks of
the thieves had disappeared in the half-liquid mud. Perhaps the men
had taken pains to pick their way on pieces of fallen timber. They
struck a still wider circle without any more success, and they had to
steer so crooked a course through the swamp that when they thought
themselves back at the starting-point they failed to find the flowed
tract they had crossed.
“Lost—there’s no doubt about it!” exclaimed Bob, halting.
All the swamp looked queer and strange about them. They had not been
at that place before. The trees were so dense that they could hardly
see the sky, but the sun looked somewhat out of place.
“I dunno where we is,” said Sam. “But I knows where de old channel is.
I kin go straight there, yes-suh.”
They debated for some minutes, and then started to find the old
channel to make a fresh start. Sam started with a great deal of
confidence, but within fifteen minutes they came to a slough of what
seemed bottomless mud. Stiff-leaved palmetto grew on hard spots, mixed
with small, dense titi shrubbery, and red-tipped cypress knees thrust
themselves out of the morass, like strange fungi. Half-sunken fallen
trees lay all over the surface, offering a possible way across; and
for a hundred yards they scrambled through this nauseous jungle,
clinging to the shrubs and jumping from log to log. But the farther
they went the worse the traveling seemed to get.
“We’ll have to give this up,” said Joe at last. “Let’s try to get back
to high ground and get our bearings again.”
But it was as hard now to get back as to go forward, and they were so
shut in by the swamp that they had very little idea in which direction
the high ground lay. Almost at random, they made an angle to the
right. They no longer knew whether they were going toward the river or
away from it. The swamp had them trapped. Mosquitoes hung about them
in clouds. They were wet and mud-covered and scratched with thorns,
and the continual sudden dart and wriggle of a moccasin snake every
few minutes kept them in a state of nervous tension. A moccasin’s bite
is not usually fatal, but it is very sickening, and it would have been
no joke for one of them to have been bitten while they were snared in
the labyrinth. They had almost reached the point of exhaustion and
despair when they came to a really dry spot, like an island in the
swamp, grown over thickly with palmetto; and here they stopped to
rest.
The sun still appeared somewhat out of place in the heavens, but from
its height the day must be getting toward noon. Sam volunteered to
climb the highest tree within reach and reconnoiter. He came down
reporting that the ground seemed to rise not very far away to the
left, and they started forward again. The maze of marsh and jungle
continued. Twice they had to wade thigh-deep across bayous—or perhaps
the same bayou—and they were all losing faith in the new course, when
they came out upon the shore of a deep stream perhaps twenty feet
wide, heavily overshadowed with trees.
“Surely this isn’t the channel,” said Bob.
“Too narrow, I think,” said Joe doubtfully. There was a fairly strong
current running, however, which indicated that the stream at any rate
communicated with one of the great channels. There was comparatively
solid ground along the shore, and they walked up the stream a little
way, when Sam suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.
“Mr. Joe!” he whispered, “I smells rosin!”
They all stopped and sniffed also, but neither Bob nor Joe could
detect anything. Sam was positive, however, and they cautiously
proceeded a few yards farther. Here a heavy screen of rattan vine and
honeysuckle drooped so heavily over the bayou that they could see no
farther.
“Now you-all smell!” said Sam triumphantly.
This time Joe did detect the unmistakable odor of scorched rosin, the
pervading odor at the turpentine-camp. It seemed to come from right
ahead.
“If it’s rosin, it’s likely to be the rosin thieves too,” Bob
muttered.
But there was no sound, except the gurgle of the water flowing under
the drooping creepers that dipped in the current. Directly before them
the tangle of jungle on the shore was impassable. With extreme
caution, they made a little detour, crawling through the green
thicket. The smell of burnt rosin was sharp enough now; then Joe, who
was leading, suddenly held back a warning hand, and dropped flat.
For a good half-minute they all lay motionless; then Bob crawled up
beside Joe to look. He was at the edge of the thicket. Beyond them lay
the black houseboat, tied to a tree in the bayou, half-concealed by
the streamers of vines and moss that swung from all the branches
overhead. There was a little space of high and dry shore beside it,
and two heavy planks ran as a gangway from the boat to the land. On
the shore was a great iron kettle set up on stones, with dead ashes
under it. Several barrels stood about; the ground was covered with
lumps of rosin and rosin-soaked burlap cloths, and the smell was
strong enough now.
“We’ve landed ’em!” Bob whispered in the ear of his cousin, who nodded
with a grin.
Nothing was to be seen of the pirates. The boys lay hidden for a long
time, watching and listening, but nothing stirred about the place. The
houseboat swung and strained at her mooring-rope; the current gurgled
along her side. If her crew were aboard they must be all asleep.
“I’m going to find out, anyway!” Joe whispered. “If they’re there we
must jump on ’em quick, and hold ’em up before they know where they
are. But I believe they’re all away.”
He got up and stepped boldly out of the shrubbery, carrying his cocked
rifle ready. Bob came after him, and Sam, with a heavy club, followed
them both. Joe walked straight to the gangplank and stepped aboard.
The cabin of the boat was cut in two by a sort of hallway, or
“dog-trot,” running right across it amidships, and the plank led up to
this. Their first step on the gangplank showed something that had
before been invisible—a barrel standing in this corridor, whose smears
and stains of rosin indicated its contents.
From the “dog-trot” a half-opened door was on each side. Joe put his
head into the stern cabin. No one was there. The small room was fitted
with four bunks against the wall, filled with dry Spanish moss and
some ragged blankets. There were a rough wooden chair, a plank table.
A half-full box of shotgun shells, a broken bottle, and a cob pipe lay
on the floor. Adjoining this room was a tiny apartment evidently used
as a kitchen when weather did not permit of cooking at a fire ashore,
for there were a small stove, scattered lumps of wood, a few
cooking-utensils, a sack of meal, a suspended ham.
It was pretty certain now that no one was aboard the boat, and the
boys looked into the forward cabin with less uneasiness. But at the
first glance Bob uttered a loud exclamation. There were four barrels
in the room, which, though headed up, showed the hardened rosin oozing
from the cracks between the staves.
“Told you-all we’d shore find it!” exclaimed Sam, exultantly. “All dug
out an’ melted an’ strained an’ barreled up for us. We shore oughter
be ’bleeged to Mr. Blue Bob!”
“Yes, but this isn’t anything,” said Joe. “Where’s the rest of it—the
thousand barrels you said we’d get?”
“I declare, I dunno!” Sam confessed. “Mr. Joe, you don’t reckon dey’ve
done shipped it to Mobile an’ sold it?”
“I’m afraid that’s just what they’ve done, Sam,” replied Joe,
regretfully. “But let’s look ashore a little.”
They landed and examined the impromptu refinery. The impure rosin had
evidently been melted up in the big kettle, and there were a big,
rough trough, caked with the brown stuff, a wire-cloth strainer, and a
quantity of burlap. All these things showed indications of much use.
The barrels on the shore were empty, with the exception of one that
was about a third full of hard strained rosin. The kettle was quite
cold; everything looked as if it was some time since operations had
ceased.
“Afraid we’ve come in just at the end of the job,” said Joe sadly.
“Likely it’s as Sam said, they’ve been melting and barreling up all
this rosin, and sending it down to Mobile as soon as they had a load.
We’re too late.”
Sam groaned loudly at this decision.
“Let’s have another look aboard,” Bob suggested. “Isn’t there a hold
or something underneath the deck?”
They went over to the houseboat again very carefully without making
any fresh discoveries beyond two rosin-caked shovels, doubtless used
in clearing out the “mine.” If there was a space underneath the deck
they could not find any way of getting into it; and, in fact, Joe knew
that these houseboats seldom have any storage space in the hull.
Giving up hope at last, they paused on the stern deck, where they had
finished their search.
“Might as well give it up, I reckon,” said Joe. “But how we’ll get
home without our canoe is more than I know.”
“S’posin we turn dis boat loose,” Sam proposed. “We could float right
down to Dixie Landin’, an’ dese few barrels of rosin is shorely worth
somethin’.”
“No, we don’t want to steal their boat, even if they did steal our
canoe,” returned Joe. “And these four barrels of rosin aren’t worth
the trouble of—”
He stopped short as a distant sound struck his ear. They had all heard
it at once—a dip and splash of paddles from far up the bayou above
them.
“Hear dat? Dat’s Blue Bob a-comin’, Mr. Joe!” said Sam in a loud,
scared whisper. “Cut dis boat loose, quick!”
“Get ashore!” exclaimed Bob. “They’ll catch us here.”
“Back into the cabin, till we see who they are!” Joe ejaculated.
They stood still, amid these contradictory orders, undecided. The
paddles sounded closer, around a bend of the channel. Joe dragged his
cousin back inside the cabin door. He had a sudden impulse to rush
ashore after all. Then Sam, almost gray with fright, rushed at the
mooring-rope and began to saw at it with his knife.
“Hold on, Sam! Stop that!” Joe hissed at him, but the negro had
severed the strands. The last of them parted with a jerk, and the
released houseboat instantly swung out. The gangplanks splashed into
the water. Without any control, the boat reeled across the bayou, half
grounded, swung off again and smashed through the curtain of vines
that had shielded her anchorage. There was a ripping and crushing of
twigs and leaves, and then the branches closed in behind them. They
were through and out of sight of pursuit.