WAR ON THE RIVER
“It can’t possibly be gone!” exclaimed Joe, desperately. “How could it
have got loose?”
Bob pointed to the dead timber, which showed the fresh marks of ax and
saw.
“It’s been cut in the night,” he said bitterly. “We were fools to
leave it here. And if we hadn’t slept so heavily we’d have heard the
noise of chopping. Of course it’s the river-men who did this.”
“Yes,” Joe admitted, “and I surely thought we’d thrown them off the
trail. But they must have been following us down all the time, likely
waiting back around the last river bend all last evening. Oh, it’s
Blue Bob’s work, all right. Who else’d have been out on the river in
the dark and fog? And nobody else in Alabama would have run off with
that raft of bees. He’s trying to get back at us for the rosin. But
we’ll get him yet.”
“The raft’s gone down stream, Joe,” said Bob, after a silence. “No
power in Alabama could have hauled it a foot the other way, and it’s
too big to hide. Those fellows can’t be very many miles down the river
with it.”
“We’ll overtake them; of course we will!” returned Joe, grimly. “Good
thing we carried our guns ashore last night. How many cartridges have
you?”
Their supply was short. Bob had nothing but the seven rounds in the
magazine of his repeater. Joe had twelve shots in his magazine and a
handful of loose cartridges in his pocket. Unfortunately Bob’s rifle
was of a different caliber and would not take them.
“It’s enough, anyway,” said Bob. “I hope we don’t fire even all these.
We’ll play those fellows at their own game—trail them, run them down,
catch them unawares. I only wish we’d brought some grub ashore with
us.”
“I kin soon shoot a rabbit or ketch a few catfish,” Sam suggested.
“No time for that now,” said Joe. “I think we ought to catch up with
the raft within two or three hours if we start right off.”
Charged with grim determination they started down the river. By the
time they had reached the first great curve the fog had lifted, and
they crept cautiously around the bend. Nothing was in sight on the new
reach ahead. Indeed they had expected nothing so soon, and they raced
down a mile of channel, edged warily around the bend, and still found
the river empty.
They began to feel faint from hunger, and while the white boys rowed
they set Sam to troll a line over the stern for catfish. But he had no
luck; he caught nothing. Another river reach still showed no trace of
the raft. Opening into the river at frequent intervals were
cross-channels, bayous, backwaters and creeks, screened with willow,
curtained with bamboo-vine, misty with gray Spanish moss, but the boys
kept to the main channel. Seven or eight miles went by. They rounded
bend after bend, but sighted no larger living thing than a flock of
wild ducks.
“I don’t see how she could have got very much farther than this,” said
Bob, as he mopped his perspiring face. “Do you think those thieves
could have burned her or cut her to pieces?”
“We’d surely have seen some floating wreckage. And burning would have
left an awful smell of scorched wax and bees. No, I’ve been thinking
that perhaps those fellows didn’t steal the raft at all—didn’t stay on
it, I mean. They’d have been afraid of the bees, for one thing. I’ll
bet they wouldn’t have stayed an hour on board for anything. I believe
they may have simply taken all the loose articles they could lift, and
then turned the raft loose to spite us, and probably she’s drifting
down somewhere all by herself.”
“Dey’d shorely want all dat honey in de hives,” put in Sam. “It’s worf
a heap of money.”
“We didn’t leave much honey. The wax is worth a good deal; that’s a
fact. But I don’t believe they’d want to handle it,” said Joe.
Around the next curve they went. Another mile of empty, sunny, water
lay before them; and so it was with the next and the next sweep of the
river. Then they espied a curl of smoke on the shore. It proved to be
the fire of a negro fisherman, who said that he had been on the river
all night in his boat, and that no raft had gone past. He was then
breakfasting on corn-bread and fried catfish, and he willingly fried
more fish for the party and gave them all the bread he could spare.
The food made them feel vastly more hopeful, and at last they had
something definite to direct them. Giving the negro half a dollar,
they turned upstream again.
“You must be wrong, Joe,” said Bob. “The pirates have got it after all
and have hidden it somewhere. Otherwise we’d have sighted it.”
“Looks that way,” Joe admitted. “Still, I can’t believe they’re riding
with the bees. They’d be scared to death. They must have poled it into
one of these backwaters.”
“We know it’s somewhere between here and last night’s camp, anyhow.
I’ll search every inch of the shore till I find it.” Bob declared.
Up the river they rowed till the first of the bayou-mouths appeared,
like a swampy bay. The boys put their rifles handy, and, dipping the
oars without a sound, they pushed into it. But half a dozen strokes
showed that the raft could never have come that way, for the channel
was silted up and almost choked with dead and rotting timber.
They retreated and started up the river again, crossing to the other
side, where something looked like a backwater but proved to be only a
willowy cove. A little farther they came unexpectedly upon a
creek-mouth, so screened with swamp shrubs that it was invisible at a
few yards’ distance. But it led merely into a flooded shallow flat,
swarming with mosquitoes and venomous yellow-flies.
“Reminds me of the time we searched the River Island for the
houseboat,” said Joe.
Slowly they made their way up stream, leaving not a yard of either
shore unobserved. The sun was high now, and both the boys were growing
weary, but it was absolutely certain that every stroke was bringing
them nearer to the stolen bees.
“I’d never dare to face Alice again and say the bees were lost,” said
Joe suddenly.
“If Blue Bob has destroyed them,” returned his cousin, “we’ll get a
sheriff’s posse and spend the rest of the summer hunting those thieves
through the swamps till we get them.”
Another shallow, rotting backwater proved blank. They zigzagged across
the river again and were skirting up close to the shore when Joe
suddenly stopped rowing, with a startled exclamation. Leaning over, he
picked up something from the water, and held it up for Bob to see. It
was a piece of broken honeycomb, about as large as his hand.
The eyes of the two boys met with the same look of comprehension. They
had struck the trail, and Sam voiced the thought in both their minds:
“Golly! Blue Bob is shore gittin’ after dat honey. Jes’ what I done
said.”
Plainly, indeed, something was breaking up the beehives. Trying to
combine speed and silence, they rowed up the shore, on the lookout for
some opening. Again they saw a fragment of comb, lodged against a
projecting root; but it was fully a quarter of a mile before they came
to a break in the shore, heavily screened by vines and shrubs and
drooping live-oak branches. They had passed right by it on the way
down. Masses of rattan and wild honeysuckle trailed almost to the
water, but Joe at once saw signs that something had lately crushed
through that green curtain.
They shoved the boat noiselessly up to the entrance, and Joe thrust
his head through the green tangle. Almost instantly he drew it back,
and his eyes gleamed with excitement.
“The raft—” he whispered; but he was interrupted by a sound of subdued
voices and a burst of laughter, apparently not a hundred feet through
the trees.
“It’s there, all right!” he muttered excitedly. “Just inside. I could
almost touch it. The gang’s further on. We can’t go in here. We’ve got
to land and go around.”
“I smells beeswax. I smells smoke, Mr. Joe!” whispered Sam, sniffing
the air. “What you reckon dem fellows doin’?”
“Don’t know. I couldn’t see them,” returned Joe. “Back out of here.
Let her float down a little.”
They dropped down the current for fifty feet, then ran the boat ashore
in the mud, and crept inland through the palmetto and fern, heading
for the voices that came through the thickets. As they went on the
ground grew drier, densely grown up with small gum- and bay-trees; and
they crawled the last twenty feet through a jungle of sharp-edged
palmetto, and came in sight of the stolen raft.
There it lay, the raft they had worked upon so hard. It was apparently
intact, and the close rows of beehives still stood upon it, with the
honey-extractor, the box of tools, and the camp-kit. There was a great
roaring of bees in the air, and immediately the white boys as well as
Sam smelt both smoke and beeswax.
The raft was moored by a rope to a great splintered pine-stump. There
was a strong current running in that bayou; the rope was stretched
taut, and the raft swung and swayed slightly on the water. The rowboat
of the robbers was drawn up on the shore, and, as Joe took in the
scene, he espied with astonishment the houseboat—the identical black
houseboat that he had boarded before, snugly stowed and moored in the
creek a few yards farther up. Evidently this nook was one of the
regular resorts of the river-men.
He nudged his cousin and pointed it out. But they had little attention
to spare for the boat. What was going on beside the water was of much
more interest at the moment.
The pirates were hardly ten yards away, laughing and talking, hard at
work. Their guns all lay together in their rowboat. Evidently they
anticipated no interruption, and they seemed in great spirits. Three
or four dismantled beehives lay about the shore, but for a few minutes
the boys could not grasp what the thieves were about.
Then Candler and the third man stepped aboard the raft and gingerly
picked up a hive. Blue Bob from the shore jeered at them for their
caution. They dropped it quickly into the water, held it under with a
pole for a minute or two, then drew it ashore. Pulling cover, super
and bottom apart, they knocked out the wet mass of half-drowned bees,
shook out the combs, and proceeded to cut out the wax.
Bob gave a convulsive gasp as he realized the destruction that was
going on.
“They’re killing them! They’re breaking them up!” he exclaimed
incautiously; but Joe’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
The pirates had heard nothing. At a little distance stood the big iron
kettle that had been used for rosin, and as they cut out the combs
they tossed them into it. A small fire burned around its edges,
melting the wax. Where there was any honey in the combs they cut it
out and laid it aside, but the Harmans had not left much honey from
the last extracting.
“We’ve done bust up four of these here gums,” they heard Candler say
grumblingly, “an’ we ain’t got as much honey as I’ve seen cut outer
one bee-tree. This ain’t goin’ ter pay us for the rosin them young
Yankees stole.”
“I dunno,” said Blue Bob. “You never seen so much wax in your born
days as we’ve got here. There’s mebbe three hundred dollars’ worth,
when we git it all melted up. An’ then ain’t we got back our own stuff
from Old Dick’s cabin that them Yankees stole too?”
This charge of stealing might have seemed more comical if the case had
not been so desperate. But it was maddening to lie there in the
palmetto and watch their precious apiary being destroyed. Four
colonies had already been drowned and cut up, and the outlaws were now
heaving a fifth into the water. A cloud of frightened and angry bees
seethed up as the hive went under. Bob was amazed that the fellows had
the courage to handle the bees so freely. They had not come off
unscathed; their chief had a large swelling on the blue streak across
his forehead, and Candler complained that his hand was getting stiff
with “pizen,” but they seemed to be taking the whole thing as sport
and went ahead in high spirits. But it was no sport for the owners of
the bees.
“I can’t stand watching this!” Joe whispered. “Let’s give ’em a
volley. We could wipe out the whole bunch.”
Bob looked over the scene of the wrecking doubtfully. Bees were flying
in clouds, from the hives on the raft as well as from the broken-up
hives. It is hard to drown a bee. The wet mass of stupefied insects on
the ground was crawling, buzzing, drying off.
“Hold on a bit,” he whispered back. “There’ll be trouble in a minute.
They won’t cut up many more hives.”
In fact, the bees were flying every moment more thickly. The cut-out
lumps of honey were covered with plundering yellow bodies. Bees were
darting from the hives on the raft, flying in circles, returning in
excitement, smelling the spilt honey. The whole raft was beginning to
stir and roar.
“These bees is comin’ round too thick,” Blue Bob remarked. He had been
about to step on the raft for another hive for destruction, but he
recoiled before the cloud of irritated insects. He made a jump aside
and swore, slapping his neck, then retreated with some haste. Candler
ventured forward, then drew back.
“We’ve done got ’em all roused up,” he said. “Let’s wait till they
quiet down some.”
Bob grinned as he heard this. Quiet down! The disturbance would get
worse every minute. The bees were suspicious, irritable from the
continual jar and movement of the last two days; they had gathered no
honey; and now they found sweet spilled on the ground and the air
reeking with the smell of honey and wax. It completed their
demoralization. Not quite sure where the honey was, they were already
sniffing at one another’s hives, trying to force an entrance, trying
to rob. Little yellow knots of fighting bees rolled on the planking,
trying desperately to sting one another.
“The whole outfit’s going to go wild in a few minutes,” Bob muttered
in Joe’s ear. “There’s going to be a robbing riot.”
Joe did not have experience enough to appreciate the force of this.
Few things are more downright terrifying than one of these wars in a
large bee-yard, when the whole apiary runs amuck. Every colony is at
once robbing and endeavoring to rob; every one is fighting every
other, and the bees grow so infuriated that they will attack
everything within their range, will fly into fire, will sting even the
wood of the hives. Men and animals have been killed by being caught in
such an affray. Such disturbances seldom happen, and never under good
management; but here everything was set exactly right for the worst
sort of outbreak.
The river pirates had each been stung several times, and had ceased to
laugh. They had retreated up toward their houseboat; they had lighted
pipes, and were trying to keep the bees off with great clouds of
smoke, waiting vainly for the insects to grow quieter. A swirl of
darting bees hung over the raft; the pile of cut-out combs ashore was
completely hidden by the crawling, fighting insects.
“How’ll this end?” Joe whispered to Bob. “Looks as if they’d eat each
other up.”
“So they will. Nothing but night’ll stop it now, and by that time half
the outfit’ll be dead,” returned Bob anxiously.
Joe scrutinized the scene carefully once more.
“I believe I can cut that raft loose,” he said. “There’s current to
drift it right out into the river.”
The stump to which the raft was tied was on this side of the bayou.
The pirates were on the other side, and had retreated a hundred feet
to get away from the bees. More important still, their guns appeared
to be all in their rowboat, at a still greater distance. Perhaps they
carried revolvers. He would have to risk that.
“Golly! Them bees’ll shore sting you to death if you goes out yander,
Mr. Joe!” Sam muttered aghast; but Joe began to worm himself forward
through the flat, rustling leaves of the palmetto.
The mooring stump was not more than fifty feet away, and he kept close
down under the thick cover. The attention of the enemy was entirely
taken up with the bees just then, and the bees themselves did not
notice him until he came close to the end of the raft. Then he was
suddenly stung on the hand, and again on the back of the neck; two or
three insects zipped like small bullets against his hat; but he
heroically refrained from even squirming.
He reached the stump, which grew out of a tangle of small shrubbery,
and he lay low behind this screen while he felt for his knife. The
mooring rope was just above his head, obviously bearing a heavy
strain. A sharp blade would part it almost at a touch, but Joe could
not find his knife. He searched all his pockets. It was not there. His
heart sank like lead as he realized that he must either have lost it
or left it on the raft.
He hated to crawl back; he was doubtful of being able to get back
unobserved. Crouching there, he looked up longingly at the rope almost
above his head. He could hardly untie the knot; he would be shot down
long before he could loosen it; but he noticed all at once that the
pine stub was “fat.” Purple splinters, crystalline with rosin, hung
from it. They would burn like candles. He felt for a match, struck it,
reached up, and set the lowest splinter ablaze.
He had to rise half upright to do it, and he expected to be
challenged, to be fired at. But the pirates were so much occupied with
the bees that they failed to notice his momentary rising and dropping
again. The resinous splinters flared, hissing and smoking; fire shot
up over the old stump as if it were soaked in kerosene. Then there was
a sudden shout from Blue Bob.
“Look yander! That thar stump’s afire!”
He started forward, and then struck back, awed by the furious cloud of
flying bees. That hesitation lost his chance. The rope was already
smoldering. The loop parted, smoking. The slack dropped into the
water, and with a jerk the big raft began to drift.
Joe was squirming back as fast as possible toward his friends, too
fast for caution, for he heard one of the river-men shout in a
startled voice:
“What’s that movin’ yander?” and then a roar of wrath from the captain
and a tremendous oath.
“Look out! That raft’s broke loose.”
Reckless of the bees, all three men plunged forward to secure it; but
with a startling unexpectedness Bob’s rifle banged twice from his
ambush. Mud spurted into the air, kicked up by the bullets striking at
the robbers’ feet, and then Bob jumped up with rifle ready to fire
again.
“Stand where you are!” he cried. “Next time I’ll shoot to hit
somebody.”
“That’s the stuff! Hold ’em there!” Joe yelled, and he jumped up and
ran to secure his own rifle where he had left it.
The river pirates had stopped in dead astonishment, facing the two
leveled weapons across the bayou. Between the antagonists the raft
went drifting ponderously out, surrounded by a roar and swirl of angry
bees. Bees zipped into the boys’ faces, but they were too strung up
just then to notice an odd sting. The pirates, closer to the raft,
were more hotly attacked. Candler flapped in the air with his felt hat
and then made a dive backward.
“Stop it!” Joe yelled. “Stand perfectly still or we’ll shoot.”
Candler stopped. The raft was going out with maddening slowness. It
scarcely seemed to move, and the boys were terribly afraid that it
would go aground before it cleared the creek-mouth. Once it did seem
to touch bottom, but it slid free, and began to smash through the
screen of willows and clinging vines. Its speed increased. The extreme
end was catching the river current.
“Soon as it’s out we’ll bolt for our boat,” said Joe, in a low voice.
But Blue Bob had foreseen the finish.
“Don’t you see that it’s getting away, an’ all our stuff on it?” he
shrieked. “Jump fer the guns, I say. Them kids won’t dare shoot.”
He was not afraid to do what he ordered, and he bolted for the rowboat
where the guns lay, almost as he uttered the last word. Joe yelled
warningly; both the boys fired without effect. Through the smoke Joe
saw the three outlaws tumbling to pick up their weapons.
“Run!” Bob ejaculated.
Sam had already disappeared. The two boys dived back into the
undergrowth and, crouching low, bolted for the river. A burst of
firing broke out behind them. Bullets ripped the bay-leaves and
whacked into the cypress-trunks; but they got to the shore without
being touched. Sam had set the boat afloat and was holding it ready,
wide-eyed with alarm and almost pale through his black.
“Shore to goodness, I thought you-all was killed!” he exclaimed, and
they sent the boat flying out into the river.
As they cleared the shore they saw the end of the raft emerging
majestically from the inlet. It was followed by a cloud of flying
bees. It looked as if every hive on the raft was sending out a swarm.
“Can’t go aboard there!” gasped Bob. “We’d be killed. Across the
river—quick. They won’t dare touch the raft either.”
They doubled over the oars, passing the raft as it came completely out
of the creek and turned down the Alabama current. They drove the boat
hard for the shelter of the other shore, but they were no more than
half-way across when they heard a wild whoop and saw the pirates’ boat
shoot out in pursuit.
Bob had a despairing feeling that all was lost. The glitter of the sun
on the water dazzled him; the strain of the fight and the hard rowing
left him dizzy. Still he pulled automatically till he heard Joe say:
“Slow up. They’re not after us.”
With a gasp of relief Bob rested on his oars, wiped the sweat out of
his half-blinded eyes, and took in the situation. They had nearly
reached the farther shore. The river-men were still keeping to their
own side of the stream, following the raft down, but keeping well back
from it. For the floating apiary presented a formidable spectacle,
which even an experienced bee-keeper would rather have contemplated
from a distance.
The pine hives were black with crawling bees, robbers trying to get
in, and the hive-guards themselves. Overhead a roaring cloud swirled
and drifted. It was plain that the raft needed no defenders now.
“I wouldn’t go aboard it for a bank safe,” said Bob, “not even with a
veil and smoker. But what are those fellows following it up for, do
you suppose?”
“Don’t forget that the boxes full of plunder are there still,” replied
Joe. “The jewelry and jackknives and revolvers that we took out of the
cabin. I expect they want to get them. Maybe they’re still hoping that
the bee’s will quiet down, too.”
The boys let the boat drift, holding it back to keep pace with the
slow raft. So did the outlaws on the opposite side of the water, and
for some time the two boats drifted slowly, watching each other across
the river, but firing no shots, while the tumultuous raft roared and
fought between them.
“What are they doing? They’re fixing something,” Bob exclaimed at
last.
“Fixin’ to make a smudge, I reckon,” said Sam, who had keen eyes.
Two of the men had put their heads together over something, and a
dense smoke suddenly arose. The boat turned toward the raft, rowed
slowly and cautiously, and as it approached the men could be seen to
turn up their collars and pull their hats down over their faces.
Muffled to the eyes, Blue Bob stood up in the bow, holding a tin pan
full of some burning substance that smoked heavily.
“He’s certainly got nerve,” Joe commented. “But he can’t stop that
riot with a pan of smoke.”
Holding the pan before him, Blue Bob leaped on the raft. The bees
drifted momentarily away from the smoke-cloud, but it was not enough
to subdue them, and the outlaw seemed to move in a mist of flying
insects. He kept his head, however, made his way to the box of
plunder, and handed it down into the boat. He had to set the smoke-pan
down to do it, and he must have been fearfully punished, but he stuck
gamely to the task and passed out the second box. His companions in
the boat were less courageous; they squirmed and swore and beat at the
bees around their heads.
Determined to get all he could, the outlaw reached for the boys’ box
of tools and ammunition; and in doing so he contrived to knock off the
cover of the nearest hive. A fresh cloud of doubly maddened bees
boiled up. It was more than the boat’s crew could stand. Frantically
fighting bees, they pushed off, and backed away twenty feet.
“He’ll be stung to death!” Joe ejaculated.
With savage oaths Blue Bob commanded the deserters to come back for
him; but they refused to face the bees again. They yelled to him to
jump and swim. He caught the smoke-pan. It had gone out. He flung it
down and brushed and beat frantically at his face. The boat drifted
farther away, its crew still calling on their chief to jump.
“He’ll be killed if he doesn’t jump!” Joe exclaimed; and at that
moment his ears caught a distant, approaching “thud-thud,” sounding up
the river. But he did not guess what it was; he did not look that way,
absorbed by the drama in mid-river, till Sam uttered a wild yell:
“Look yander, what’s a-comin’, Mr. Joe. Whoop-ee! Oh, glory!”
A boat was coming around the next bend above, a motor-launch, going
fast, and apparently full of men. With a cry of joy, Joe fired his
rifle in the air. A shot answered it from the boat, and somebody waved
a speck of white among the crew.
“It’s help! It’s friends!” Joe exclaimed. “Carl’s been in time.”
In the uproar of the bees Blue Bob must have heard nothing. But his
comrades in the boat saw and heard the launch immediately. There was a
momentary staring and consultation; then Candler stood up in the boat
and fired two shots into the nearest beehives, and a third bullet at
the boys’ boat. It clipped the water and glanced humming away, and the
pirates rowed breakneck for shore, ran the boat heavily aground, and
plunged into the swamp.
Blue Bob seemed to see the motor-boat then for the first time. He
shouted once after his companions, glanced again up the river, and
then started for the forward end of the raft, almost obscured by the
flying bees. He turned round half-blindly, and seemed to totter.
“He’s badly stung. He’ll go overboard!” Joe exclaimed.
“We must take him off. Maybe he can’t swim,” his cousin agreed, and
they rowed hard toward the raft. But they had not covered half the
distance when the pirate either fell or leaped into the river, and the
yellow water closed over him. The boys drove the boat up to the
outside of the circle of bees, and hung on their oars, waiting for him
to come up. A minute or two passed. The raft floated slowly on.
“I believe he went right under the raft,” Bob muttered.
Finally a battered felt hat drifted out behind the logs, but nothing
more. The boys circled the raft, but there was no sign of the river
pirate.
“Gone to the bottom!” said Joe; and the boys were still rowing about,
rather horror-stricken at their enemy’s sudden end, when the
motor-boat rushed up.
“Too late for the fight?” shouted the young fellow at the wheel, whom
they recognized as having been at Magnolia Landing. Carl was just
behind him; among the others Bob caught sight of the face of Uncle
Louis, and there were three other armed men in the boat.
“Yes, the fighting’s over. Did you come too, Uncle Louis?” cried Joe.
“Why, Alice! What are you doing here?”
Alice, flushed with excitement, was in the stern beside Uncle Louis,
and she was half laughing, and almost crying.
“Oh, boys!” she gasped. “Are you both all right? Of course you knew
I’d come. What’s the matter with the bees?”
“I got this motor-boat and a posse as soon as I could,” said Carl. “We
went down to Old Dick’s place and found you’d gone, and the cabin was
all torn down. Didn’t know what to do; finally guessed you must have
gone down the river somewhere. We heard the shooting away back, and
put on steam. But say, what’s the matter with the apiary? Robbing?”
“Rather!” said Bob. “We’ve got to stop it. That pirate gang got away
into the woods. Any use going after them? And old Blue Bob’s drowned.
Went under the raft and never came up.”
“Well, that’s mighty good riddance,” said Uncle Louis. “That man’s
been a plague all long the river. Not much use trying to catch the
others. We’d never find them in the swamps. We’ll smash their boat,
and maybe they won’t trouble these parts any more.”
“Don’t smash that boat,” said Bob. “Let me make a smoke-boat of it.
We’ve got to subdue those bees right away, or they’ll rob one another
all to pieces.”
On this ingenious suggestion they filled the outlaws’ boat with leaves
and damp wood, and set it on fire. It produced an immense volume of
choking smoke, and, towing it to the windward side of the raft, they
fastened it alongside.
Under that choking smother the war in the air suddenly stopped. The
bees made in a panic for their own hives, and in a few minutes Bob was
able to board the raft. Securing a bee-veil, gloves, and a smoker, he
went up and down the rows, puffing smoke into all the entrances, and
drenching the hives with water.
“That’ll keep ’em quiet for the rest of the day, I think,” he said.
“And we ought to have ’em ashore by to-night.”
They had, in fact, gone below the point on the river where they had
intended to unload the cargo. Two miles still farther down, however,
there was a steamboat landing, a small settlement, and a road that led
out to the railway, five miles to the west. There was scarcely any
danger of a fresh attack by the discomfited pirates, but the
motor-boat stayed with them as they floated down to this point. It was
well that it did so, for it took the united efforts of the six men to
bring the big raft to a halt and moor it at the landing.
When it grew dark they carried the hives ashore. The bees were quiet
enough now, but the raft was littered with pints of dead from the
fighting.
“Got ’em somewhere at last!” said Bob, contemplating the rows of hives
on the river-bank. “It did begin to look as if we never would.”
“They’ve got a thousand miles yet to go,” Alice reminded him. “This
move has only begun.”