UNDER FIRE
There was a half minute of dismayed silence at this pronouncement.
“I’m afraid Bob’s right,” said Joe. “If we go away from here those
river pirates will surely destroy everything we’ve left and burn the
cabin too, to make sure that we won’t come back.”
“But I won’t give up these bees!” Alice rebelled. “We’ve worked too
hard for them. Melt up all these beautiful new combs? Never!”
But nobody found any comfort for her. What Joe had said was plainly
only too true.
“Well, let’s hide all this loot away,” said Carl glumly at last.
“We’ve probably got a month to work in, anyhow.”
They restored the pirates’ treasure to its former hiding-place, and
Bob nailed the boards down. Nobody spoke much; they were all
depressed. They might have a month’s grace indeed; they might take off
some honey and ship some packages of bees; but the notion of being
compelled to tear all this well-established and valuable apiary to
pieces, saving only the fragments, was bitterly distasteful to all of
them.
Alice had appeared lost in deep meditation for some time. At last she
broke out, with an air of new resolution.
“I’m simply not going to give all this up!” she announced. “Look here,
why can’t we ship this whole outfit North?”
“Well, we’re going to ship what we can,” said Bob.
“No, I mean to ship bees, hives, combs, and all. Ship the colonies as
they stand. Send a car-load of hives of bees by freight.”
They all looked at her in astonishment.
“A freight-car holds three or four hundred hives,” remarked Bob, who
had made a study of the different methods of shipping bees before he
came South. “And the car would cost us four hundred dollars. We
haven’t bees enough to make it pay—and we haven’t the money if we
had.”
“Well, I’ve thought all that out,” Alice argued. “As soon as the honey
flow is over we could ship our bees on the steamboat up to the nearest
railway point—Selma, isn’t it? There we could split up each of our
hives into three, and in about three weeks they’d be built up strong
enough again to ship. Then they’d have a few weeks more in Canada to
breed up before the clover came in bloom, and by that time they’d all
be roaring big colonies. Just think what three hundred of them would
do on the Ontario clover in a good season! Why, they’d make three
thousand dollars’ worth of honey at least. What if it does cost four
hundred dollars to ship them?”
The boys contemplated this dazzling prospect for a moment in silence.
“I always said you were a genius and that you’d either make us rich or
break us,” Carl remarked. “But this looks like a pretty wild gamble.”
“So it did when we bought the bees in the North,” his sister retorted.
“But wasn’t I right?”
“But think,” Bob interposed. “It sounds good, but we’d have to buy the
queens for making up nearly two hundred fresh colonies. No time to
rear ’em ourselves then. And then in Canada we’d have to have
equipment for all these bees—supers for three hundred colonies,
excluders, a world of stuff. A thousand dollars wouldn’t see us
through it. We simply haven’t got the capital to risk—for we’ve got to
live ourselves, you know, while we wait for the honey crop.”
“None of you have got any nerve!” Alice flashed, almost ready to cry
with disappointment; but Joe broke in with what he had been
meditating.
“Look here!” he said. “When I was up at the plantation Uncle Louis
told me that he’d seen Burnam, and Burnam said that I could get four
or five hundred dollars if I needed it bad. I left word for him that I
did need it—and now maybe that’ll help us to put Alice’s scheme
through!”
“Oh, Joe, that’s splendid of you!” cried the girl, with a grateful
glance at her cousin which he considered worth several hundred
dollars.
“Not a bit!” Joe responded, flushing and slightly embarrassed. “It’s a
business proposition. I want to invest. This apiary game just suits
me.”
“Then we can do it!” Alice exclaimed. “Yes, and we’re forgetting our
honey crop here. We’ll surely get fifty pounds to the colony. That’ll
come to nearly five hundred dollars by the time we want to leave.”
“Yes!” cried Carl, “and we’re forgetting all that wax we shipped away,
and what we’ll get from the cappings when we extract. About two
hundred pounds. That’ll supply nearly all the foundation we’ll need in
the North.”
“We do seem to have overlooked a lot of assets,” said Bob, “especially
Joe. I’d hate to urge you, Joe, but if you want to invest in the game,
why, we’ll all be delighted. But it’s a risk, you know, and a bad
season might run us all into bankruptcy right at the start.”
“I know,” said Joe. “I’ll take the chance. I’ll bet it’s no worse a
gamble than turpentining. When’ll I need to get the money?”
“Oh, not for some time,” said Alice. “We’ve to get our honey extracted
here, and I must set to work raising Italian queens—just as soon as
the breeding queens come that we’ve ordered.”
The council broke up in great enthusiasm for the big enterprise, and
they all went back to the bee work with renewed energy. Sam was set to
work at cutting every bee-tree that could be found in the
neighborhood, for, since the whole outfit was going North, every bee
was precious. Meanwhile the boys nailed up all the rest of the frames
and made up every remaining scrap of lumber into hives. Carl even
proposed taking the boards off the cabin for hive-making.
Luckily the queens arrived the next day, brought up by the clerk of
the steamer—a package of a dozen wood-block mailing-cages, each
containing an Italian thoroughbred queen with her escort of half a
dozen bees who fed her and attended her en route. Alice had several
colonies prepared to receive them, and she at once introduced the
new-comers to the hives they were in future to occupy. One of them was
promptly killed by the bees, who sometimes make difficulties about
accepting a strange queen; but the rest survived, and as soon as they
had begun to deposit eggs Alice began preparations for rearing more
queens from this stock.
Alice was no novice at queen-rearing, the most delicate and difficult
branch of apiculture, for she had reared nearly all the Italian queens
for their old apiary in the North. Within a week operations were in
full blast. Batch after batch of queen-cells, a dozen at a time, were
secured by depriving a strong colony of its queen, producing in them
an immediate desire to raise a fresh one. Each of these cells she
“grafted” with a tiny larva hatched from one of the new Italian eggs,
and the prepared cells were then given to another colony to feed and
finish. In this manner, with luck, it would not take long to raise
enough queens to Italianize the whole outfit.
During this time they neither saw nor heard anything of the river-men,
and they made an attempt to go on with their work without thinking of
danger. It was not so easy, for there was a perpetual strain of
nervousness. The boys kept the rifles and shotgun always loaded and
handy, and Alice took to carrying her pistol strapped to her waist
when she left the cabin. As a further precaution they placed half a
dozen of the most vicious-tempered colonies of bees directly in front
of the door, and with the cabin thus enveloped all day in a flying
cloud of irritable bees, they felt fairly safe from attack.
The river pirates were still on the island, however, for several times
the report of a gun reverberated over from the distant swamps.
Venturing to reconnoiter in the boat, Joe and Sam even sighted their
camping-place, on a dry bank nearly a mile up the bayou. No one was in
sight about the rough shelter of bark and palmetto, nor about the
almost dead fire, and the boys did not make a close investigation but
dropped silently down to their own territory.
Meanwhile the honey flow from the dewberry was over, and the
blackberry flow was waning fast. The Harmans were disappointed in the
result. Compared with their Northern experiences, the supers had
filled up slowly. The Italian strain had not yet had time to tell, and
the “swamp bees” were inferior workers.
“We’re not going to get half the crop we expected,” said Bob,
disgustedly. “Instead of ten barrels, we’ll be lucky to get three.”
“But there’s the tupelo and black-gum bloom to come yet,” Alice said.
“But we daren’t wait for them,” Bob reminded her. “It’s the last of
April. The bees have got to be in Canada in a month at most, and we’ve
got to split them up and ship them, besides extracting this
honey—and—and more things than I can think of.”
“Something’ll happen to bring it all right,” said Alice,
optimistically. “It always does.”
But, so far as the blackberry-honey was concerned, there was no use in
delaying the extracting any longer. They would have to take what they
could get, as Carl said; and fortunately the dewberry and
blackberry-honey was normally so light-colored that they counted on
getting a better price for it than for the later and darker honeys.
The boys made a stand for the extractor from a couple of bee-hives,
bolted and nailed it solidly, brought in two of the empty barrels, and
knocked the head out of one of them for an uncapping-tank. They went
over the cabin carefully, and closed all possible cracks where robber
bees might get in, and late in the afternoon Carl brought in the combs
from two supers so that they could begin work at once in the morning.
They began immediately after an early breakfast. Joe had never seen
honey extracted before, and he volunteered to stay in the building and
turn the extractor, while Bob and Carl, veiled and gloved, went
between the cabin and the bee-yard, bringing in full combs and
carrying out emptied ones. Sam stood ready for odd jobs, heavily
armored against stings, and divided between excitement at actually
seeing honey by the barrelful and alarm at facing a hundred colonies
of robbed bees.
Alice, as usual, had volunteered to do the uncapping. She took up one
of the great, full combs of honey, sealed white and smooth as a board,
and rested it on the edge of the uncapping-barrel. With the heavy,
razor-edged honey-knife she sliced off the sealed surface, first on
one side and then on the other, and handed the opened comb to Joe to
put into the extractor. When four combs were uncapped he began to turn
the machine, and the whirling reel slung the honey out in streams
against the side of the tin. Carl had come in with more combs, and he
lingered to see the result, finally drawing off a cupful from the gate
at the base of the extractor.
“I thought blackberry-honey was water-clear!” he complained. “Just
look at this!”
It was far from clear, being yellowish-brown, rather thin and not
possessing any great aroma or flavor.
“Not much like clover-honey,” Alice admitted, after sampling it. “Just
a dead sweet. There must be titi and willow and all sorts of things in
it besides blackberry. I suppose there are too many sorts of blooms at
once in these swamps to get any honey pure. Oh, well, it’ll bring ten
cents in these days of high prices, so don’t make fun of it, Carl, but
go out and bring some more of it in.”
“Dunno what you-all grumblin’ ’bout,” said Sam, who had now secured
the cup. “Dis yere’s de bestest honey I ever tasted.”
He swallowed the remainder of the cupful, and meanwhile Alice was
uncapping a fresh set of combs. Little by little the honey accumulated
in the bottom of the extractor. Sam at last drew it off by pailfuls
and poured it through a cloth strainer into another empty barrel,
which would serve as a storage-tank. Slowly the heavy, dark, sweet
stuff crept up in this barrel, and it was full, with nearly a hundred
pounds left in the extractor, when they heard the whistle of the river
steamer down the stream.
Bob took off his veil and went out hurriedly in the row-boat to
instruct the boat to call on the way back to pick up the shipment of
honey. He had to wait nearly an hour off the bayou mouth before the
steamer came up, and meanwhile the others stopped work. Now that they
were fairly started, another full day seemed likely to see the
extracting finished.
Alice had to camp out of doors that night, for the cabin was sticky
with honey, strewn with scraps of wax and crawling with bees that had
been brought in accidentally with the honey. But they started work
very early the next morning, skimmed the tank of honey, and set Sam at
transferring its contents into one of the shipping-barrels. When this
was filled they drove the bung home and rolled the ponderous object
with some difficulty outside the cabin.
Extracting went on faster that day, but by night they had only two
more barrels filled and prepared for shipment, and there was still a
good deal of honey on the hives. In fact, it took another whole day to
finish it, and at the end they had five barrels standing in a row
outside the cabin. These held considerably more than three thousand
pounds, though they had no means of ascertaining the exact weight.
“Worth maybe three hundred dollars,” Bob commented, doubtfully, “with
freight to be deducted from that. Not what we counted on, by a long
way.”
“Never mind!” said Joe. “I’ll try to screw more out of Burnam.”
The steamer would not return for two or three more days. She would
carry the honey down to Mobile, and when she came up next she would
leave a barge at the bayou mouth on which the bees would be loaded, to
be later transported to a point from which they could be hauled to the
railway. The days of the River Island apiary were growing few, but the
really big enterprise was just about to begin. And it was an
enterprise for which they were quite inadequately supplied with funds,
as they realized more than ever since the disappointing result of the
honey crop.
Alice was looking after her new queens the next day, with Joe acting
as her assistant, and the others were variously engaged about the rear
of the cabin, when with startling suddenness there was a heavy “thud!”
close at hand, followed by a distant explosion and an echo over the
swamp.
“Duck! That was a rifle shot!” exclaimed Joe, dragging Alice down
behind the bee-hives. He heard an exclamation from Bob; then there was
dead silence. He could not make out where the shot had been fired. He
expected more to follow, and for some fifteen minutes they all
remained close under cover. Then Carl dodged toward the cabin door,
evidently to secure a weapon, but he stopped short and uttered a
lamentable cry of dismay.
Joe took a chance, and went to see what had happened. One of the
barrels of honey had been shot through and through with a
large-caliber bullet, and it now stood in a great dark, sticky pool.
“Plug it, quick!” Carl exclaimed.
But it was too late. Down to the level of the bullet-hole the honey
had run out, more than three-fourths of the barrel. Alice had hurried
up, and Bob also approached, and they looked at the loss in anger and
dismay.
“Go around behind the shack, Allie,” Bob ordered. “That fellow may
shoot again. And we’ve got to protect these other barrels. Build a
breastwork around ’em, or we won’t have anything to ship.”
Expecting another shot at every moment, the boys dragged up logs and
heaped earth to make a bullet-proof fortification around the precious
barrels. But no more shots were fired at that time, and they retreated
at last behind the cabin, leaving the honey protected.
“I’ll be powerfully glad when this honey gets away on the boat!” said
Bob, wiping his brow. “There’s another fifty dollars gone out of our
assets.”
“I’ll be powerfully glad when we get this whole outfit away from
here,” responded Joe. “Those pirates are getting impatient to have us
go.”
They felt uneasy about exposing themselves during the rest of the
afternoon. Carl took Bob’s rifle and ensconced himself at a good
viewpoint, to give a return shot if another came. But all remained
quiet until just at dusk, when the distant marksman tried his hand
again. He fired six shots, and pieces of wood and spurts of earth flew
all around the honey-barrels, but the log rampart kept them from being
perforated. The shooter was so well ambushed that it was only at the
last shot that Carl detected the flash, coming from a dump of small
pines three hundred yards away across the bayou. He retaliated with
one shot at the place but got no reply, and Bob dissuaded him from
further shooting. A battle was the last thing they wanted just then.
They spent a nervous night, taking turns to stand guard, but the
sniper gave no more trouble. The next day the steamboat came down,
considerably earlier than they had expected her, and the boys rolled
the honey-barrels down the hill, into the flatboat, and poled out to
the river. They came back after shipping the honey, reporting that the
boat would be back in four days and had promised to leave an empty
barge for the loading of the bees.
“Now if those pirates just let us alone for another week we’ll be all
right,” said Bob. “The honey’s safely off, anyway. So much to the
good.”
The boat had also brought them a roll of wire screen, and they began
to cut this into strips to be nailed over the hive-entrances for
shipping. There was little that could be done with the bees now; Alice
ventured to proceed a little with re-queening operations, but for the
most part they could only wait for the return of the steamer. A heavy
rain fell, breaking off the honey flow, and it was followed by chilly
north winds. With no honey to gather, the bees were intensely cross,
stinging viciously and trying to rob one another’s hives.
A few days of peace had lulled their fears somewhat, but the next
night Joe was awakened out of a sound slumber by a shriek in his ears.
A red glare struck his eyes as he opened them.
“Fire!” Carl was yelling. “It’s the bee-yard!”
Everybody was rushing out, half-dazed and in an uproar of confusion. A
sheet of flame seemed to be driving right over the apiary, fanned by a
fresh breeze. A second glance showed them that the conflagration was
in the huge pile of dry blackberry-canes and rubbish from the clearing
up of the gum-yard, which they had piled back of the apiary. No hives
were yet afire, but the ones nearest the flames were scorching, and
the terrified bees were rushing out in thousands.
“Grab the buckets! Run to the spring, Sam!” Joe shouted, and he rushed
up almost under the flames, seized the imperiled hive bodily, and
carried it away. Carl rescued another, as Sam came back with water and
dashed it hissing on the fire, without much effect. There were only
two small buckets and the spring was too far away.
One hive caught fire before they could save it, and burned fiercely
with a flare of beeswax, until a great gush of honey smothered the
flame. Alice was throwing sand in an attempt to choke the fire; the
boys, dashing in, moved hive after hive; but within a few minutes the
light blaze of the berry-canes began to die down. It was like a fire
of straw, and it went out as fast as it had arisen. Flame ceased to
drift over the hives, and presently there was only a great glow of
rapidly fading embers.
“Safe, I guess,” said Bob with relief.
“That was those men again!” cried Alice, choking with anger. “I didn’t
think they’d do such a thing. They tried to burn up our bees. I wish
we’d shot them!”
“I expect they thought the hives would burn easier than they did.
We’re lucky to have lost only one,” said Joe. “I wonder what they’ll
start next.”
They watched and listened nervously, as the remains of the fire went
blackly out. But there was no sound except the hooting of owls from
the swamps, the plaintive cry of a raccoon, and the uneasy roaring and
rumbling of the disturbed bees. But none of the young apiarists felt
like sleeping any more.
“I’m hungry,” said Carl. “These midnight alarms are wearing on the
system.”
They were all hungry, and they ate cold cornbread and cold rabbit and
drank coffee before finally lying down to rest once more. Twice Joe
imagined he heard some suspicious sound during the night, and crept
out with his rifle; but both alarms proved false. It was a badly
broken night for the bee-keepers, and they were all tired and
heavy-eyed and inclined to be nervous and despondent the next morning.
There was a little honey flow that day, and the bees were getting
enough to keep them in good temper. But no work could be done with
them, and their owners were all lounging on the shady side of the
cabin, when, shortly before noon, a sudden outburst of firing rattled
from the woods across the bayou. Two or three bullets thudded into the
cabin; another perforated a beehive, and several more sang shrilly
through the air. Then the fusillade stopped as sharply as it had
begun.
It had taken only a few seconds, and the boys could not detect where
the shots had come from. Everything relapsed into hot quiet again, and
watching was of no use. Apparently the shots had been fired without
much deadly intent, but merely to terrify. Late in the afternoon there
was another sudden volley of four shots, coming from a different
angle, and aimed into the bee-yard, and ceasing before they had time
to make out even a puff of smoke.
“They’re not trying to hit us—only to scare us,” said Joe. “Nothing to
do but just stand it. We’ll be gone in a few days now. What I’m most
afraid of is that they’ll burn the cabin one of these nights.”
“No danger of that. Remember, all their plunder is stored here,” said
Alice, wisely.
This was a fact, and a comforting one. Nevertheless they had no idea
of sleeping unguarded that night, and Carl volunteered to stand sentry
till midnight, when he would call Bob, who would in turn be relieved
by Joe. They all remained awake later than usual, and it was almost
ten o’clock when Carl took up his solitary position, sitting on one of
the superfluous honey-barrels, his shotgun across his knees, where he
could command both the cabin and the bee-yard. There was faint light
from the crescent moon, but the air was full of silvery mist, lying
heavily in the hollows of the swamps and on the bayou.
Except for the intermittent, customary noises of wild life from the
woods, an hour passed in quiet. Carl walked around the cabin once or
twice, returned to his place, looked at his watch. It was somewhat
past eleven o’clock when he caught a faint, unmistakable dip and
splash from the stream. His heart jumped. He made it out again, and
thought he even heard a low sound of voices. A boat was coming down
the bayou.
Instantly he wakened the other boys. With intermittent, excited
whispering they listened, and then disposed themselves behind the
tree-clumps in front of the cabin, with guns cocked and each of them
strung up to hair-trigger pitch.
The boat came opposite. They could distinctly hear the low mutter of
gruff voices, but the mist concealed it entirely from view. The boys
expected to hear a landing made; but the rowers went past without
stopping. The splash of oars and the voices died down in the distance,
going out toward the river.
“Why, they’re not coming here!” Bob whispered, in amazement.
The boat had gone out of hearing. The boys were astonished and almost
disappointed, after being keyed up to the point of fighting the thing
out at last.
“Maybe they’ll come back,” Carl suggested.
But, though they waited in keen expectation for an hour, nothing more
was heard. Toward one o’clock they attempted to resume their rest,
with Bob on guard. When he called Joe at three o’clock all had been
quiet, and Joe finished the night without disturbance. The boat had
not returned up the bayou.
Alice had slept through it all, and had to be given the whole
sensational story when she appeared the next morning.
“Perhaps they’ve gone for good!” she exclaimed. “Or maybe they’ve
started on one of their plundering expeditions. All that shooting and
burning was just to terrorize us—to keep us intimidated till they get
back.”
“The boat’ll leave the barge here to-day, if she’s on time,” said Joe.
“What luck if they didn’t get back till we had the bees all moved, and
they’d come back to find the place empty!”
“Too good to be true!” Bob commented. “I’d give a good deal to have
them stay away for a week just now. But we don’t know that they’ve
really gone anywhere. They may have got back to their camp through
some other channel in the swamps—most likely they have.”
At any rate, that day passed without any attack, and late in the
afternoon the steamboat did come up the river, and left the great,
flat-bottomed barge moored to a tree at the mouth of the bayou. The
barge would easily carry the whole apiary. The bees would have to be
taken down to it by means of their own flatboat, a dozen at a time,
but there was no hurry about beginning this task. The steamer would
not be back for four days, and the bees must not be kept shut up in
the hives an hour longer than necessary. The loading could be done in
a single day, and it would be time enough to begin in two or three
days more.
It would be a simple matter, provided they were not molested in the
operation, and the problem of whether their enemies had really gone
away temporarily was a most important one. It grew to weigh upon them
so heavily that they decided at last to solve it; and Joe, Bob, and
Sam started in the boat upon a reconnoitering trip up the bayou.
Half a mile from the apiary they turned aside into the smaller channel
they had followed before, and within another half-mile they came in
sight of the camping-ground of the pirates that they had seen from a
distance. Nobody was in sight; and they ventured to land with great
precaution and with weapons ready.
But the camp was really deserted. There had been no fire for at least
twenty-four hours, and not a particle of any sort of outfit was left
about the palmetto shelter.
“Looks as if they’re really gone,” said Bob delightedly.
“Whar you reckon dey’ve left dat old houseboat?” queried Sam. “You
reckon dey ever got it back?”
“You can bet they did!” Joe returned. “I expect it’s hidden somewhere
in these swamps. Maybe that’s where the gang has gone, in fact.”
“You don’t suppose they’ve put it back in the place where we located
it before?” said Bob.
It seemed hardly likely. However, after a careful but fruitless search
all over the deserted camp, they paddled back through the swampy,
stagnant channel, back to the main bayou, and proceeded further
upwards. They were sharply on the lookout all the way, and when at
last they came to the screen of dense branches and vines that almost
curtained the water, they parted the greenery cautiously and peered
through.
But that well-hidden nook held no houseboat this time. Pushing ahead,
they landed on the shore where they had found the outfit for melting
down the rosin. Nothing was left of it now but a stray scrap of
rosin-soaked burlap, and a spot of ash where the kettle had stood.
“Looks as if nobody had been here since,” Joe commented, looking
about.
There was a heavily-worn place on a tree where the hawser of the
houseboat must have been tied up many times, but there were no fresh
foot-marks about the place, and no sign of anybody having visited it
recently. They beat about through the dense thickets, however, in all
directions back from the water. They found nothing except an old
shovel that might have been lying there for weeks; Joe and Bob were
already turning back to the boat, feeling more secure than they had
felt for many days, when Sam stopped them with a cry.
He had pushed further back among the titi-thicket, and was now
standing still, his head thrown back, sniffing the air like a hound.
“Mr. Joe!” he exclaimed, “I shore does smell rosin!”