FIGHTING A MAN-EATING SHARK
It was some time before the boys heard about old John Gomez; but the
tales that were current from Mobile to Key West would fill a book.
According to one story, he was the only surviving member of a pirate
crew—one of the many that formerly cruised about in the waters of the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The crew of this ship had a
disagreement about the division of the spoils, and a great fight
followed. All but Gomez were slain, and though he was badly wounded, he
hid the great treasure which was in his hands, and so carefully that no
one had ever been able to learn its whereabouts. The old man had never
alluded to the subject; and it was feared that his secret might die with
him. Some said that the young woman the boys saw with the old man was a
relative, others declared that she was merely a guard stationed to
secure the secret should the centenarian by any chance let it drop
unawares. Gomez’s general appearance did not a little to give credence
to these stories; his looks were certainly of the piratical order—a
lean, sallow face, keen, piercing black eyes, gold rings in his ears,
and a watchfulness that never wearied, were characteristics which he had
in common with light-fingered gentlemen of seafaring tastes.
Over a year later, the boys read a newspaper clipping describing his
death. He was drowned while sailing alone in his sloop on the open Gulf.
But they never heard that any of the treasure was ever found.
For several days the voyagers travelled among the Ten Thousand Islands,
winding in and out through the labyrinthine channels. It was a journey
full of incident. Islands of every size and shape—green islands and
islands bare of verdure—crowded the sea.
A whole week passed, and the boys did not see the least sign of a white
man. Every vessel of sufficient size stood out into the Gulf to avoid
the winding passages. They ran across several Seminole Indians, tall,
splendid fellows, who considered the coils of bright-colored cloth on
their heads sufficient covering for the whole body.
At last they sighted Cape Sable, and they knew that with a favorable
wind the “Gazelle” would soon be ploughing the waters of the Atlantic
Ocean.
Off Cape Sable the “Gazelle” ran into a fleet of fishing boats, and for
an hour the boys and the men of the fishing boats swapped yarns; then
they busied themselves laying in a stock of cocoanuts against future
need.
It was a straight run from Cape Sable to Grassy Key, one of the long
chain of islands which drip off the end of the Florida peninsula. At
last, only the narrow island lay between the “Gazelle” and the Atlantic
Ocean. The great body of salt water Kenneth and his crew had so
perseveringly fought to gain was almost in sight, and the deeper note of
its thundering surf could at times be plainly heard. What might befall
them on the greater tide they knew not, but with undaunted courage all
were impatient to venture, and to learn.
The “Gazelle” reached her secure anchorage just as the storm, which had
been threatening several days, broke with terrible fury. Sheltered as
they were, the joy of the boys at reaching the last obstacle to their
way to the Atlantic, gave place to awe as they heard the roar of the
wind and felt the shock of the beating surf on the coral shores outside.
For three days a heavy wind prevailed—too strong to allow of the
“Gazelle” venturing out. In fact, the seas had been swept free of all
craft as if by a gigantic broom. Then the boys were forced to live on an
almost purely vegetable diet of cocoanuts and oatmeal—a liberal supply
of weevils in the last constituting the only foreign element in the
otherwise strictly vegetable nature of the food. At the end of the three
days, the wind subsided enough to allow the yacht to crawl out of her
hole, and with wings spread wide, she entered the dangerous passage that
led to the almost limitless waste of waters of the grand old ocean.
It was a proud moment for Kenneth when his yacht sailed out on the broad
Atlantic—pride in his boat, pride in the crew, and a pardonable
satisfaction with his own good work.
“All hail to Old Ocean!” shouted the crew as the “Gazelle,” with a shake
that was like the toss of the head, bounded into the embrace of the
Atlantic’s long billows.
“Well, we did it!” cried the mate exultingly. “Sailed to the ocean.”
“And we will sail back, too,” added Frank.
“But we have a trick or two to turn yet.” Kenneth foresaw experiences
before them during the long coast-wise trip.
The voyage up the Hawk Channel to Miami, on Biscayne Bay, seemed long
only because of their short supply of food; and when they anchored off
that southernmost town on the mainland of Florida, they were ready to
tackle anything in the shape of eatables except oatmeal and cocoanuts.
For many, many days the boys had not been able to send word to their
people in far off Michigan; nor had _they_ heard from home. At Miami a
big batch of mail awaited them; and they at once satisfied a hunger for
home news and civilized food. Day by day the boys had added to their
letters, until Uncle Sam received almost as much mail matter as he had
brought.
For two days the boys enjoyed the comfort of a safe anchorage in a port,
and all hands got a good rest, many good feeds, and a good hair-cut
apiece. When their unkempt shaggy locks were shorn, the places protected
from the sun showed white in contrast to their tanned skins.
“Arthur, you look like Barnum’s piebald boy,” said Frank, pointing a
derisive finger at him.
“Well, you look as if you needed a good scrub. You started all right,
apparently, but you must have got tired.”
“Every man his own hair brush,” said Ransom, running his fingers
appreciatively through his stiff, closely cropped hair. “If I could only
reach my feet with my head I would always have a shine.”
“That’s all right; you can reach mine,” and Arthur put up his foot to
prove it.
The fame of the young sailors and their staunch craft had preceded them,
so they made many friends in the far Southern town, and spent the days
very pleasantly. The place was a great shipping point for
pineapples—crates of the spiky fruit being shipped by the thousands to
Northern cities; and now, for once in their lives, the boys had their
fill of them—great, juicy, luscious things ripened in their own warm,
native sun.
In spite of all these enticements, Kenneth and his crew were eager to
begin their long cruise up the coast, and in spite, also, of many
invitations to stay, they weighed anchor and got under way the second
day after they had entered the famous harbor. The bay, though large, was
full of bars, and these and great masses of seaweed made it difficult to
keep to the deep water.
A fine breeze was blowing, and the “Gazelle,” her booms well to port,
sailed off handsomely. Her crew, rested, well fed, and at peace with
all, were in high spirits, and proud of the fine appearance their yacht
made. Kenneth at the stick, Frank tending sheets, Arthur below making
all snug for the coming tussle with old ocean—all were in high feather.
The “Gazelle” was sailing her best, skimming over the water at good
speed, like a graceful gull, when suddenly she struck bottom, and
stopped with a jar. There she stuck, all sail spread and every stitch
drawing, but as hard on the bar as though she had been rooted to it.
This was too common an experience to give the boys any uneasiness, but
the delay was vexatious, and they tried every means that experience
suggested to shove her into deep water. The tide was falling, and they
soon saw that there was nothing to do but wait until it changed to
flood, and released them. A long day of waiting was before them, and
since with the falling water the yacht careened more and more, there was
no comfort in staying aboard of her.
“What’s the matter with a swim?” Frank suggested.
“I’ll beat you in,” Kenneth responded.
In a trice, all three were overboard.
Farther on the bar was entirely bare, and a smooth, hard sand beach was
left. One side sloped suddenly into deep water, and made a splendid
diving place.
For an hour, the three swam in the warm salt sea, and then Ken and
Arthur, growing a little weary of the sport, went on shore and lay
basking on the beach. Frank, however, not satisfied, continued to float
about.
Arthur and Kenneth talked comfortably for some time, then, becoming
interested, fell into a lively discussion, which Arthur suddenly
interrupted with, “Why, look at Frank. What in the world is the matter
with him?”
“Oh, he’s just fooling. Splashing around for exercise,” Kenneth answered
indifferently.
It was Frank’s peculiar motions that had attracted Arthur’s attention.
He swam around in circles, then he stopped and splashed and made a great
to-do. After that, he swam ahead for a little, only to stop and begin
all over again his previous absurd tactics.
“He’s not fooling, Ken; something is the matter with him. Perhaps he has
got cramp.” Just as Arthur stopped speaking, Frank seemed to regain his
senses, and swam straight ahead in an entirely rational and dignified,
if somewhat speedy, fashion.
Then, all of a sudden, he began to lash about with arms and legs anew.
His feet and hands flew about like flails, and beat the water into white
foamy lather. The two boys watched the antics of their friend with
growing alarm. All at once they saw something that stirred them to
instant action—the sharp triangle of a shark’s fin cutting through the
water just behind Frank’s wildly waving arms.
* * * * *
The water was delightful, and Frank was not ready to come in when Arthur
and Kenneth had had enough, so he dived over and swam out where the tide
was several times over his head. Once he dived down and tried to reach
bottom, and, as he rose toward the surface, his heart laboring for air,
his face turned up, he saw a sinister shadow slowly swaying in the
yellowish-green water almost above him. For an instant his heart sank,
and cold chills ran up and down his spine. Never had he seen so large a
shark, and for a moment he almost lost his presence of mind. Then, with
a rush, his courage returned, and working arms and legs with frantic
zeal, he shot up to the surface, and began splashing about to frighten
the shark off—a plan that he had heard was sometimes successful. For a
while the man-eater, surprised by these tactics, was held at bay, then,
as Frank grew weary of his efforts and stopped to rest, the monster drew
slowly nearer, and began to turn on his back to allow his long,
under-cut jaw to work.
“He’ll have me in a minute,” thought Frank, and he began a new
movement—turning suddenly, he swam _straight for the shark_, arms and
legs going like miniature paddlewheels. It was a bold move, and life or
death depended on its success or failure. Straight at the ugly, cruel
head he swam, and directly away from shore. For a moment the shark lay
still, its fins slowly waving, its evil eye watching its enemy; the
curved line of the wicked mouth was partly visible. Nearer swam the boy.
Nearer, till he could almost feel the current set in motion from those
powerful fins. “I am a goner, sure,” thought Frank; but he determined to
play the game out to the end, and kept on. Where were Kenneth and
Arthur? Why did they not come to his rescue? he wondered, with a fearful
dread at his heart.
Surely the shark was backing away from his onslaught. In spite of aching
limbs and laboring lungs, the boy increased his efforts, and followed
after the retreating tiger of the sea. He had been struggling for a long
time, and his whole body ached with the exertion; he felt that he could
not keep up much longer. Once, when his mouth was open, gasping for
breath, he had splashed it full of water, and had had to stop a minute
to cough it out. His heart was beating like a trip hammer, and each move
seemed to take the last ounce of his strength.
The boy felt that he must give up, and wondered vaguely if a shark made
quick work of a chap, and what his people at home would think of his
end. Just as he seemed at the very last gasp, he felt the clutch of
Kenneth’s hand on his hair, and the firm grip warm on his bare arm.
Then, half dead with fatigue and dazed with horror, the limp figure was
dragged into the small boat by Kenneth’s sturdy arms.
Feebly, the exhausted boy was able to say: “You came in the nick of
time, old man; I could not have lasted much longer.”
Kenneth answered not a word, but thought with a shudder of how close he
had come to mistaking his friend’s frantic movements for playful antics.
He reached out his hand and grasped the other’s fervently—it was a grip
of thankfulness and affection on both sides.
Though Frank’s escape was narrow, the recovery of his high spirits was
almost immediate, and soon the three friends were running races on the
exposed sand bar as if one of them had never been in peril of his life,
let alone a short hour before.
With the returning tide, the “Gazelle” straightened up, and after a few
strong pulls on the anchor, which had been previously dropped for that
purpose, she slipped off into deep water. It was still early afternoon,
so with an eased sheet and light hearts the “Gazelle” and her gallant
crew passed through the channel, out on the open ocean.
“Look at that old lighthouse; that’s a fine tower, but I don’t see any
signs of a lantern.” Frank pointed to a tall shaft like a great chimney
that rose from a cluster of palm trees. The yacht was slipping past the
long point that forms one of the barriers between the ocean and Biscayne
Bay.
“That must be the old Cape Florida light a fellow in Miami told me
about,” said Ransom, gazing at the tall, graceful tower that pierced the
blue.
“That tower has a story to tell. This place was full of Indians, I don’t
know how long ago, and the lighthouse keeper and his assistant, a
colored man, were in mortal terror of them. They thought, however, that
they had a safe refuge, if worse came to worse, in the tower. One day a
big bunch of the red savages came up and, after shooting a while at the
men in the keeper’s house, set it afire. To save themselves from being
roasted alive, the two men took refuge in the lighthouse itself and
climbed up the long, winding flights of wooden stairs to the lantern
room on top. For a time it seemed as if they were safe, but the
ingenious devils soon hit upon the plan of setting fire to the stairs
and platforms inside the tower. The door open at the bottom and top, the
lighthouse became a veritable chimney, and the flames licked up the dry
woodwork in a flash.”
“Gracious! What happened to the men?” Frank interrupted Kenneth to ask.
“When it got too hot inside,” Ransom continued, “and when the platform
they were standing on inside began to smoke, they climbed out on that
narrow little run-around outside; you can see it from here.”
The skipper pointed to the tower and the little balcony running round it
near the top.
“Phew! That would be an unpleasant place to stay with a fire burning in
the tower inside and a lot of savages looking for your gore hanging
’round waiting for you to drop off.”
“But they didn’t drop off,” Kenneth went on to say. “They stuck to the
little balcony till the Indians got tired waiting and began shooting at
them with their bows and arrows. The men lay flat on the boards, as
close to the bricks as they could get, but before long the assistant got
an arrow through his heart and the keeper himself was shot in the
shoulder. The Indians, thinking that both were done for, went away,
leaving the wounded man with the dead one, high up on a lonely tower,
the only means of reaching the ground burned away, without food, and
entirely without shelter.”
“Did he die up there?” both of the other boys inquired at once.
“Almost, but not quite. Some of the settlers near, fearing trouble,
followed the Indians in force, and a daring chap climbed up the charred
stumps of the supports inside the tower, and lowered the body of the
negro and the almost lifeless keeper to the ground.”
“What a story!” Frank shuddered as he looked at the tall shaft.
“But it’s true. The place has never been used since. See, there’s no
sign of life there.”
The boys watched the tower till it sank below the curve of the earth,
and for a long time sat silent, thinking of the keeper’s awful plight.
Rounding Cape Florida, the yacht sailed north along the treacherous East
Coast of Florida. With scarcely any harbor and a strong sea beating
steadily on shore, the boys watched with dread for the “glistening
calm,” when the wind dies out suddenly, leaving a heavy sea setting in
to shore. But luck was with them, and three days after leaving Biscayne
Bay they had reached St. Lucie’s inlet to Indian River, and were
standing off and on before the thundering breakers that guarded the pass
to the calm water beyond.
On the chart, laid out in beautiful lines, clear figures, and delicate
shadings, the course through those raging billows was plain enough to
the haven beyond; but the real look of the place was very different.
“Well, boys, shall we do it?” Kenneth’s mind was already made up, but he
wanted the confirmation of his friends. “It’s win out or bust, you
know.”
“The chart says that there’s water enough. I am willing to risk it.”
Pluck was Frank’s long suit, that was sure.
“Water enough? I should say so.” Arthur gazed at the spouting breakers,
which stormed the beach like ranks of white-plumed warriors. “I am game,
if Ken says so.”
For answer, Kenneth shifted the helm and headed straight for the
seething breakers.
Arthur went forward and clung to the rigging to watch for the channel
marks, while Frank lay aft with the skipper to tend sheets and be handy
for any emergency. The hatches were closed tight and all movable gear
lashed down.
Like a war horse eager for the fray, the “Gazelle” dashed for the first
line of tumbling watery breastworks. Rising like a gull on the uplift of
the first wave, she topped it and swung down into its trough and then up
the slope of the next. Straight as an arrow, steady and sure as the
sweep of a true wind, the yacht slipped over the white crests of the
great waves one after the other, on through the narrow, troubled waters
of the inlet, to the calmer waters of Indian River.
“Say, that was just great,” was Frank’s honest compliment to the boat’s
performance. “I’d like to do that again.” The faces of all three were
damp from the salt spray and shining with exhilaration and enthusiasm.
As Kenneth was about to drop his anchor, his eye caught sight of a
queer-looking craft that was gliding over the smooth water in the
rapidly-deepening dusk.
“Let’s travel along with our friend over there,” he said, pointing to
the strange vessel. “She may be able to give us some pointers about this
creek.”
The “Gazelle” was the faster sailer, and had just about come abeam of
the stranger, when they heard her anchor go overboard. The yawl’s
mud-hook immediately followed suit. While Frank was getting the supper,
the skipper and his mate rowed over to what proved to be a broad-beamed
sharpie. After hailing, the boys were invited to come aboard by the one
person visible. Climbing a ladder thrown over her square sides, the two
found themselves in a very comfortable cabin lined with shelves, on
which were ranged, in orderly rows, the stock of a well-appointed
grocery store.
The skipper-proprietor was a jovial fellow, having the characteristics
of both of his trades—the trader’s Yankee shrewdness and love of gossip,
combined with the open, hearty, yarn-spinning qualities of the sailor.
He gave Ransom and his friend many useful hints about navigating Indian
River, with every shoal and indentation of which he was familiar, and
ended by selling them quite a stock of provisions. “Combining business
with pleasure,” he said, as he handed Arthur the packages—flour, salt,
sugar, and coffee.
Next morning, the two boats travelled along in company for a time, then,
as the sailor-grocery man stopped to solicit a customer ashore, the
“Gazelle” sped on alone.
Sailing along the queer, elongated, inland bay-like river was not an
unmixed pleasure. A paradise for fishermen it was; also the haunt of
mosquitoes that were provided with bills long and strong enough to
“pierce anything and clinch on the other side.” The crew was compelled
to live in the smoke of burning, half-dried cocoanut husks at times; but
when the captain could stand this no longer, he resorted to an invention
of his own. Wrapping himself in a blanket up to his neck, Kenneth stuck
his head into a large tin cracker box which he had pierced full of holes
and draped with cheese cloth. Though it was like a continuous Turkish
bath in the tropical weather, the skipper declared that it was better to
steam than to be eaten alive.
To compel yachtsmen to make use of their services, the watermen were in
the habit of destroying the channel marks, so our sailors spent much
time sounding out the deep water—a task which the hot sun and the
voracious mosquitoes made far from pleasant.
Mosquito Lagoon is reached from Indian River by what is called Haul Over
Canal, once in good repair, but when the “Gazelle” nosed her way to it
she found that it was half filled with sand, and too shallow to allow
her to pass through.
It was a question whether they would retrace their steps or dredge a
deeper channel through the sixty-foot-wide bar to the short cut.
The discovery of the old blade of a cultivator among the junk of the
ballast helped the boys to decide in favor of dredging a channel. For
two days they worked waist deep in the water, the hot sun beating on
their backs and necks, the mosquitoes humming a merry tune in their
ears, and the stinging “sea nettles” or jelly fish, irritating the skin
of arms and legs. Added to these discomforts was the constant danger of
being stung by the “stingaree,” whose slightest touch means a poisoned
wound and sometimes fearful suffering and death.
But the “Haul Over” was completed at length, and the crew shouted
themselves hoarse when the “Gazelle” floated in the deep water of
Mosquito Lagoon.
Game of all sort abounded in the lagoon. The waters teemed with
brilliantly hued fish. Herons and flamingoes were frequently seen
stalking about at a distance in their ridiculous disjointedly dignified
fashion, while pelicans, their huge pouches distended with fish, were
everywhere.
After leaving New Smyrna, which claims to be the oldest town in the
United States, and proudly shows an old mission to substantiate it, the
yacht reached the outlet to the ocean. An ugly place, through which the
water rushed in never-ceasing fury. Jagged rocks fretted the water into
foam in every direction; and blocking the channel at one side, lay the
boiler of a wrecked steamboat; beyond, the breakers roared as if hungry
for their prey.
On the morning of the Fourth of July, the “Gazelle” slowly approached
the inlet, while her crew prepared for the struggle. With everything
snug, rigging as taut as the nerves of the skipper and his crew, the
gallant little ship swept to the battle.