THE BEE RAFT
“A raft?” said Joe, astonished. “Nonsense, Sam. Why, it would take a
raft as big as the whole bee-yard.”
“Plenty of dry cypress logs down yander, all ’long de bayou. We’d
mighty soon make a big raft,” Sam persisted.
At this moment Bob also appeared out of the gloom, roused by the sound
of talking.
“It mightn’t take such a big raft,” he said. “We could pack the hives
close together. I believe Sam’s hit on something. Can’t we have a
light?”
Joe thrust a few fragments of pine, and scraps of an old gum, sticky
with wax and resin, into the fireplace, and struck a light. The leaky
old cabin looked more cheerful as the flame flared up, and while the
rain still roared on the roof they discussed the new scheme.
“Let’s figure how big a raft it would really take,” said Joe, taking a
bit of pencil and a piece of smooth board. “A hive is sixteen by
twenty inches square.”
A little calculation showed that the raft would need to be at least
fifty feet long and twelve feet wide, to hold the bees, placed in four
rows.
“But it’s only about thirty miles down to the place where we’d want to
land them,” said Bob. “Then we’ll be only four miles from the
railroad. Isn’t that right? I should think we could float that far in
one day. The river runs smoothly, and the bees would hardly know they
were being moved. I don’t think we’d even need to close the hives.
It’s a lot better way than the steamboat, and then think of all the
freight we’ll save.”
Sam chuckled jubilantly at this support.
“It’d be a big job to build that raft,” said Joe. “There’s plenty of
timber and nails, to be sure, but what about lumber for joining and
flooring it?”
“Tear this old cabin to pieces!” Bob exclaimed. “We won’t need it any
more.”
“Good idea! That’ll certainly give us all the boards we want,” said
Joe, and he laughed. “What a joke on Blue Bob, if he comes back here
and finds the rosin, bees, and cabin all gone!”
The plan seemed more and more possible as they discussed it. The heavy
rain ceased while they talked; the fire burned down, and they at last
retired to their damp couches and slept. But they were up early in the
morning, and, after a hasty breakfast, they went out to look over the
resources of timber.
The morning was clear, and the sun came up brilliantly. The bayou had
risen considerably with the rain and flowed with a muddy and
perceptible current. As Sam had said, there were plenty of fallen
cypress logs along the bayou, as well as dead standing trunks, and the
sloping bank would make it easy to get them into the water.
“I vote that we try it,” said Joe at last. “It seems to be our only
chance to get away with the bees. We’ll have to cut out the logs for
the body of the raft first, and then pull down the cabin, rush the
bees aboard, and start quick.”
Without any delay they set to work, with muscles that had scarcely
recovered from the stiffness of loading the rosin. Unfortunately they
had only one ax, but they kept that busy. For twenty minutes Sam
chopped furiously, then passed the ax to Joe, who in turn relinquished
it to Bob. Then, while one chopped, the others rolled logs into
convenient places, and began to pull out nails from the cabin walls
and make what other preparations they could.
By dinner-time they had cut up ten twelve-foot logs and rolled them
down to the water. All that afternoon they toiled hard, and all the
next day. They were haunted with the idea that Blue Bob and his men
might return at this last, critical moment. The sound of the echoing
ax was dangerous; it would surely draw the river-men if they were
within hearing, and the boys kept nervously on the alert, never
without a weapon at hand.
But they were not interrupted in any way, and in two days they had
forty stout logs of dry cypress cut out, which, as Bob said, looked
enough to float a church.
The next thing was to rip the boarding off the cabin. This was to be
the final step, for it would deprive them of shelter. It was too late
to make any progress with it that evening, however.
“This may be our last chance to sleep,” Bob remarked. “Let’s have
supper and then make the most of a roof while we’ve got it.”
“Nothin’ much for supper ’ceptin’ corn-meal, an’ mighty little of
that,” put in Sam, after inspecting the larder.
“Good thing we’re going to be away to-morrow,” said Joe. “Break into
that stuff under the floor and get a ham. There’s no time to hunt or
fish now, and we’ve got to have lots to eat, with all this heavy
work.”
Sam delightedly broke into the robbers’ hoard in the “cellar” and
unearthed a ham, from which he fried several large slices. It was a
little musty, but it was better food than they had had for a day or
two, and after devouring it they took Bob’s advice and slept soundly,
all of them being extremely tired.
With the next daylight they began the work of tearing down Old Dick’s
cabin. The boards were old, many of them were badly rotted, but most
of them would serve in some way. Rapidly they ripped them off with ax
and hammer, until the building that had been so useful to them was a
mere skeleton. It was then noon; they cooked more of the stolen ham,
and, growing reckless, Bob delved into the buried hoard and brought up
a tin of biscuits and a can of tomatoes.
“We can keep track of what we use, and settle for it later with—with
somebody,” he explained.
After eating, they laboriously carried the lumber down to the bayou,
rolled half a dozen logs into the water, and began to put the raft
together. It was a hot day, and the moist heat near the water was
intense. Worried by mosquitoes and yellow-flies, soaked to the skin by
constantly splashing into and out of the water, the boys labored and
sweltered. They flung the boards across the logs and nailed them down
as rapidly as possible, and the raft grew before their eyes. But it
was going to be a bigger job than they had anticipated, and they had
to stop at dark with only a third of the craft completed.
After seven hours of furious labor the next day they had laid all the
flooring of the raft. Nothing was left now but to load the bees and
the supplies; but they looked dubiously at the task of carrying more
than a hundred two-story hives fifty yards down-hill to the water. It
would take two of them to handle one hive, and they would have to walk
slowly.
[Illustration: With the next daylight they began the work of tearing
down Old Dick’s cabin]
“Better sit down and rest for an hour,” Bob advised.
They did rest for half an hour, but, tired as they were, they were
nervously impatient to finish. The end was in sight, but they might
still be caught at any moment, and the whole enterprise collapse in
disaster and possibly in bloodshed.
Since the honey was extracted, the hives were not extremely heavy, but
they were awkward to handle. According to Bob’s suggestion, they had
not closed the hive-entrances, and the bees had to be smoked to keep
them from boiling out in a rage when their hives were lifted. It was
with the greatest difficulty that they induced Sam to do his share of
this ticklish and dangerous work; he was willing to carry double loads
of anything else, but not bees; and, in fact, Joe and Bob did most of
it. To preserve the balance they loaded the raft from each end, and by
sunset a third of the apiary was on board. To their joy, the raft
seemed to bear the weight buoyantly.
They rested for a little after supper, but they were determined to get
the work finished that night, and they went at it again. Sam built a
big blaze of pine and broken-up gums at the bee-yard and another
beside the raft, where the bees murmured uneasily at the glare and
disturbance. At eleven o’clock a hundred hives were aboard. Greatly
encouraged now, they made coffee and rested for another half-hour; and
by one o’clock every hive stood on the raft.
Carrying down their tools, bedding, and personal possessions, the
honey extractor and the guns, they stowed them in the already crowded
space.
“Got everything? Ready to go?” Joe demanded, gazing about the wreck of
the cabin and apiary in the fire-glare.
“Got everything? Why, you-all ain’t a-goin’ leave all dis yere
val’able stuff?” cried Sam wildly, indicating the pirates’ treasure
that had been under the floor, now laid open to the sky.
“I don’t know. What do you say, Bob?” said Joe, undecidedly.
“Might as well take some of the most valuable stuff,” Bob advised, at
which Sam gave a yell of delight. “Of course we’ll hand it over to the
authorities when we get anywhere. It’s all marked with the name of the
owner or shipper.”
Sam’s countenance fell heavily. However, they hastily picked out what
appeared to be the most valuable portions of the stolen goods, put
them into a couple of empty beehives, and carried them aboard. They
fastened the rowboat by a scrap of rope to the stern of the raft. The
flatboat would have to be left in the bayou; they had no further use
for it. Sam brought buckets of water and put out the fires.
“All ready now. All aboard!” cried Joe.
He tried to push the raft off with a pole. It scarcely stirred. It
seemed fast to the place as if anchored. All the boys heaved their
weight on poles, and at last, inch by inch, they got the heavy affair
away from the shore and out into the channel. But even there the
current seemed hardly capable of moving it.
“This’ll never do!” Bob cried in alarm. “It’ll take us two days to get
out of the bayou at this rate.”
“Heave hard on the poles,” said Joe.
They poled vigorously against the muddy bottom. It was a long time
before their efforts had much perceptible result; but the big raft
slowly gathered some speed, and at last attained a rate of something
like a mile an hour.
It was a nervous period. It seemed impossible to work the speed any
higher. The usual river mist had risen, making the woods and the water
gray and indistinct. The boys sat on the bee-hives, hot, damp, alert,
watching the trees crawl slowly past through the dim fog. It seemed to
them that hours went by before a wider space showed dimly in front,
and the head of the raft veered under a new current.
“The river at last!” muttered Joe, with immense relief.
They were really emerging into the Alabama. The boys fended off from
the shore, fearful of sticking on the sand-bar as the raft slowly
poked its nose out into the big river. Through the fog they could see
little, but they could hear the rush and surge of the deep waters,
running high with the heavy rain. They were fairly under way at last,
and the anxiety began to fall from their minds.
But before the raft was entirely out of the bayou Bob suddenly gripped
his cousin hard by the arm. Joe had heard it too, and so had Sam—the
rattle and splash of oars up the stream. A boat was coming; it was
invisible in the fog, but a few seconds later they heard a loud,
reckless voice that they all recognized.
“Blue Bob! Oh, lordy! Now we’s sure ’nuff cotched!” Sam groaned.
“Hush!” Joe whispered, with a savage glance.
The boys crouched on the raft, scarcely daring to breathe, for their
slowly-moving craft still blocked the mouth of the bayou. But
fortunately the pirates’ boat was not so near as they imagined. Sound
carries clear and far through fog, and the gray mist lay like a
blanket on the water. The boys could not see from one end of the raft
to the other; and they did not know for certain whether they were
actually out until the raft began to show a brisker activity and to
swing ponderously round in the Alabama current.
“What’s that?” said a voice that sounded scarce twenty feet distant.
“I see somethin’ movin’ yander.”
The oars stopped. A faint blur showed through the fog. Joe noiselessly
cocked his little rifle.
“Timber raft!” Blue Bob declared. “Blackburn’s gang has been raftin’
logs all the week down ter Mobile. I kin see it right plain.”
“Well, that’s what you reckon. I want to go an’ make shore,” returned
another voice.
“Aw, shucks!” retorted the chief. “Nothin’ but a gang of river niggers
aboard. We’ve got too heavy a load here to row back against this
current.”
The stroke of the oars began again. The boat seemed to pass within a
stone’s toss of the end of the raft, and the sound of rowing grew
fainter up the bayou.
“Safe!” Bob ventured to whisper, after silence had fallen.
“I reckon so,” Joe murmured. “My hair almost turned gray for a minute.
Luckily we put out those fires.”
“Yes-suh, Mr. Joe,” said Sam hoarsely. “But don’t you reckon dey’ll
see right quick that we’ve done took de rosin an’ busted de cabin an’
moved de bees—an’ dey’ll be right after us?”
“They can’t see anything to-night,” returned Joe. “Likely they’ll
sleep late to-morrow, and by noon we ought to be nearly at the end of
our journey.”
“Besides, they’ll think we’ve gone by the steamboat,” said Bob, “and
no use chasing us. They’ll never dream of a raft. I don’t believe
they’ll give us any more trouble at all.”
They all tried to adopt this optimistic view. The raft was well out in
the big river now, drifting at fair speed but proving quite
unsteerable. The water was too deep to reach the bottom with the
poles, and it was impossible to see anything ahead through the haze,
so the boys were compelled to sit still upon the bee-hives, letting
the raft drift, and trusting to blind luck to keep clear of sand-bars.
But the night was drawing to an end. Presently the fog paled and then
reddened over in the east, and began to disperse. As the sun came up
the drifting clouds split and melted; the boys saw themselves at last
in the wide, yellow river, nearly in mid-channel, with low banks of
intensely green swamp on both sides. The river was several hundred
yards wide at this point, running fast with great surging eddies.
They were delighted to see how well the raft that they had built
carried the weight of the hives. The flooring was dry; the hives stood
a good four inches above the water. The framework seemed to hold
together rigidly and strongly. Hardly a bee was in sight, though all
the entrances were wide open. They had all crept inside, discomforted
by the damp and by the steady swaying motion.
“How about breakfast?” Joe suggested.
“Just the thing,” said Bob. “I brought some of the stolen grub from
the cabin. But we’ll have to eat raw ham, I guess, for we can’t build
a fire here.”
“Why not?” Joe laughed, and he got into the small boat, rowed himself
ashore, and overtook the raft with a bushel of sand and gravel and
mud. With these materials they made a fireplace on the planking of the
raft and ventured to kindle enough of a blaze to boil coffee and fry
ham, putting it out immediately afterward, though Joe said that the
timber rafts carry fires burning continually on a mud bed.
The food did them a great deal of good, and they began to feel much
more cheerful. The sun shone brilliantly over the river, promising
another hot day. The bees, warmed up, began to stir uneasily, crawling
out, taking wing, and then returning, confused by the strangeness of
the locality.
“I do believe they’re going to try to gather honey while they travel,”
exclaimed Joe. “If they do, they’ll never get back to the raft again.”
But the intelligent insects were far too knowing to be thus caught.
They flew about within a few yards of the hives, evidently looking the
situation over. Then, deciding that conditions were far too mysterious
and uncertain for work, they settled about the hive entrances in
clusters and flew no more.
All through that forenoon the boys kept a watchful eye on the river
behind them, continually in dread of seeing Blue Bob’s pursuing boat
dart around a bend. But their apprehensions gradually diminished as
time passed. The raft was making quite creditable speed now, for the
current was unusually strong since the rain. The river wound and
doubled on itself through the trees, always curving, always bordered
by the dense swamps, gray with drooping Spanish moss. Twice they
passed a solitary and deserted riverside warehouse—stopping-places for
the boat. Once in a long time there was a patch of “bottom-land corn,”
growing rankly in the rich mud; but the only human being they saw was
a negro fisherman in a canoe. He was so stupefied by the sight of the
big raft of bee-hives that he was incapable of even answering the
boys’ hail.
The boys lounged back on their blankets and let the raft drift. Sam
went soundly asleep on his back in the sun. It was pleasant to rest,
for they had been under a great physical strain for days and had been
cutting the nights short at both ends. But now they began to feel well
on the way to safety, and they let the warm sun take the ache out of
their sore muscles.
“The worst is over now,” said Bob. “We ought to be able to land the
bees to-night. No fear of pursuit now, I guess. In a month from now
we’ll have a car-load of bees up in Ontario, at Harman’s Corners, and
we’ll all be independent for the rest of our lives.”
“You bet we will!” Joe responded with enthusiasm. “I’m going to learn
the bee business for all I’m worth. With the money from the rosin and
everything we ought to be on velvet, and I don’t see how we can
possibly lose on the thing now.”
It was clear, however, that it would be late that evening before they
could reach the spot where Joe counted on unloading the bees, whence
they could be hauled across country to the railway. The river
continued to unroll its endless, solitary windings. Wild ducks whirred
up occasionally; once two small alligators flopped off the sand-bar
into the water. Bob tried a little fishing but caught nothing. Sam was
asleep again, and the two white boys finally lapsed into a doze.
They were sharply awakened by the raft touching on a hidden sand-bar,
half grounding, and them swinging off, end for end. Startled by the
jar, the bees were roaring and crawling out. The boys, scarcely less
startled, sprang to the poles to push off, but the danger was already
over, and the raft was under way again.
“That won’t do!” exclaimed Joe. “We must keep better watch than that.
The river’s falling now; it may be a foot lower by morning, and if
we’d got hung on that bar we might never have got off.”
For the rest of that afternoon they slept no more, but kept on the
lookout for dangerous shallows. The raft did not ground again, but
once it went over a submerged snag with a grinding jar that set all
the bees rushing out. The collision might have ripped the bottom out
of a boat, but the raft was unsinkable.
The sun went down over the swamps, and Sam lighted the fire again on
the bed of sand and prepared supper. Mosquitoes began to be bad; a
cool dampness, full of the smell of rotting vegetation, rose from the
water. But it did not look as if there was going to be any fog that
night, and they were determined to keep on as long as they could see.
It could not be many miles, Joe thought, to their destination.
So they kept on through the twilight. It was almost dark when the raft
went round a bend, and, carried by the shoot of the cross-current,
went straight for the other shore, where a long peninsula extended,
piled with a rick of dead drift-timber.
“Steer her! Fend off!” Joe shouted, but the momentum was too great.
Nor would the poles touch bottom, and the raft ran heavily into
something, recoiled, and swung sideways into the mass of fallen trees.
There was a tremendous rending and crashing, and for a moment the
heavy craft seemed likely to sweep the obstruction away. Then it
slackened, the snapping of twigs ceased. The raft stood motionless,
with the river current surging under its timbers. There was a great
roaring from the troubled bees.
“Hung up for sure!” said Bob, peering through the twilight at the
tangle of dead branches. “We’ll have to chop and saw all that stuff
clear. It’ll be an all-night job.”
They were close to the shore, and mosquitoes began to swarm out in
vicious hordes. Slapping at the pests, the boys in perplexity tried to
examine the trap they were in by the light of splinters of blazing
pine.
“I vote we go ashore somewhere and camp,” Joe suggested. “We can’t do
this job in the dark. The mosquitoes’ll eat us alive if we stay here
all night, and we might get a dose of chills and fever besides. Let’s
go back to high ground.”
“Think it’s safe?” Bob asked, doubtfully.
“Of course. The raft can’t get loose, and nobody is going to touch it.
We must be far out of Blue Bob’s range now. We’d have seen him before
if he’d been after us.”
The others were willing to be persuaded, and they put the blankets and
guns into the boat and went ashore. It was hard to find a spot dry
enough to land. They got involved in a swamp, groped through fifty
yards of mud and jungle, and came at last to rising “hammock-land.” A
hundred yards further the ground was still higher, and a bare, open
space seemed to promise comparative freedom from mosquitoes. It was so
warm that they needed no fire; they spread their blankets on the bare
ground and went promptly asleep.
Nothing disturbed them during the night, and they slept late, making
up for their lately broken rests. The sun was well up when they awoke,
and the night fog was thinning on the river. They were chilly and wet
with dew as they tramped stiffly down to the shore, found their boat,
and started to row down to the raft. There was still a drifting haze
on the water. It was impossible to see clearly to the opposite bank,
but the long point at the river bend, the rick of dead driftwood, was
plain enough. But—
They let the boat drift, staring incredulously.
“Oh, Joe!” cried Bob in a heart-broken voice.
The tangle of drift had been pried and cut apart. The raft was no
longer there.