THE CAPTURE OF THE MANATEE
The manatee hunt began as soon as the venison had been cured. The
boys explored the waters about their camp, making each day a longer
trip and taking careful note of all the waters they explored. They
usually hunted through the forenoon, and after dinner Ned mapped out
the course they had taken while Dick took a walk with the shot-gun
and picked up an Indian hen, or limp-kin, or a brace of ducks for
supper. Within a week Ned had made a good working chart of the
country about them, both land and water, and the boys had come to
know their surroundings as if they had been born among them. Nearly
every day they found and chased a manatee. Sometimes they found
three or four in a day, but the creatures always swam faster than
their pursuers and were still frisky when the boys were worn to
frazzles.
One morning a big manatee which they were chasing happened to come
up beside the canoe to breathe, when Ned splashed it with his paddle
and drove it under water before it could catch its breath. The
sea-cow had to come up again in a few seconds and was once more
driven below the surface by Ned. Almost instantly the creature
lifted its head so far above the surface that Ned dropped his paddle
and seized the soft nose of the manatee with both hands.
"Look out!" yelled Dick, but he was the one to have looked out. For,
as the sea-cow threw down its head and tail, Ned was dragged out of
the canoe onto his upward-arching back. Then the animal's back was
curved downward and the flat tail thrown violently upward into the
air. As the stern of the canoe was over the tail and Dick was in the
stern of the canoe, both boy and canoe went suddenly in the air with
a few barrels of water over and around them. When Dick came to the
surface he saw his companion being savagely tossed about by an angry
monster that seemed to be holding him between his jaws. Dick was
terribly frightened and swam as swiftly as possible to Ned's help,
but before he could reach him the boy had been tossed aside and the
manatee had disappeared.
"Are you hurt?" said Dick, as soon as he got enough breath to speak.
"Course not! Manatees are harmless. Told you so before. But, say,
Dicky boy, why didn't you get there a minute sooner and grab a
flipper? He'd be our manatee now, if you had."
"More likely he'd have had us, Neddy. You didn't see what he did to
me with just one slap of his tail."
The boys collected their paddles and swam with the canoe to shoal
water, where they lifted it, poured out the water and got aboard.
On their next hunt the boys put a number of chunks of wood in the
canoe and when a manatee was started they paddled quietly and tried
not to frighten the creature by going too near it at first. Then Ned
took in his paddle and armed himself with chunks of wood, while Dick
paddled toward the quarry. When the sea-cow lifted its nose out of
water, for air, it was hit or splashed by a chunk. The frightened
animal dove quickly, but came up again almost immediately for the
air it had to have. Another chunk hit its nose, but, confused and
half strangled, the manatee hardly moved until Dick had driven the
canoe beside it and Ned had landed on its back. Ned failed to grasp
the creature's nose with his right hand, but caught the manatee by
the flipper with his left and clung to it, although tossed off of
the back of the animal. But Dick was in the river a second after his
companion and was clutching the right flipper of the manatee with
one hand and reaching for its nose with the other. The sea-cow threw
its tail high in the air, then lashing it downward, plunged,
head-foremost, deep in the water. The boys went under but hung on to
the flippers, and Dick got a grip on the creature's nose. Both of
the boys were expert swimmers and divers, and were prepared to stay
under water as much as a minute rather than release their quarry,
but within half that time the animal wanted to breathe and rose to
the surface. After that the boys had little trouble, and the
manatee, which was a small one, became almost tame. They swam with
it to a shoal place where, standing in water a little more than
waist deep, they petted and soothed their prize until it seemed
quite friendly. Suddenly, Dick exclaimed:
"What's become of the canoe? I capsized it when I went overboard and
haven't thought of it since."
"I'd forgotten it, too. It must have floated with the tide a good
ways down the river by this time. I'll swim down stream and hunt it
up, if you will stay here and take care of the manatee, unless you
think we had better turn it loose and both go for the canoe. We will
be in a bad fix if we lose it. If you can take care of the manatee I
can find the canoe." And Ned swam away down the river.
Helped by the current he had swum a mile when the stream spread out
into a bay that was a mile long and nearly as wide, which was filled
with eel-grass and covered with moss. He soon found one of the
paddles, but in getting it became entangled in the long grass, until
he was in great danger of drowning. By lying lengthways on the
paddle, keeping his legs extended and swimming with long over-hand
strokes, he got out of the tangle. He had been pretty well
frightened, and swimming to the shore, climbed up on some mangrove
roots. After looking for a long time, Ned made out the bow of the
submerged little canoe sticking out from a bunch of moss in the
eel-grass. It was about an eighth of a mile away and he started for
it, swimming along the edge of the field of grass, but sheering away
constantly, as the treacherous current seemed striving to sweep him
within the clinging clutch of the swaying blades of the rope-like
grass.
When Ned got opposite the canoe he found that it was forty feet
within the field of grass. He dreaded to put himself again within
that deadly grasp, but the thought of Dick waiting for him, alone
with that strange beast, nerved him to make the plunge. Again he lay
on the paddle, keeping his feet quiet and making his way slowly with
his hands toward the canoe. At last he reached the craft, but could
do nothing with it. He could not pull it and it refused to be
pushed. He could touch the bottom with his feet, but it was of soft
mud and the thick grass tangled him worse than ever. He got into the
canoe and lay on his back under the thwarts, with only part of his
head out of water. By rocking the canoe, with a short, jerky motion,
he got rid of some of the water and finished the bailing with his
hat. It was not easy to paddle out through the grass and moss to the
open water, but Ned accomplished it. Standing up in the canoe, he
searched for the other paddle and soon saw and recovered it. He had
now more than a mile to paddle against a tide that was still strong,
and he saw, to his alarm, that it was nearly sunset. It was about
midday when they tackled the manatee, and Dick must have been alone
with it for a good many hours. Ned was so anxious that he paddled
furiously and was glad enough when he found Dick standing in water
shoulder deep, hanging on to the flipper of the manatee, and
occasionally patting its nose with his hand.
[Illustration: "HE FOUND DICK STANDING IN WATER SHOULDER DEEP,
HANGING ON TO THE FLIPPER OF THE MANATEE"]
"Oh, Ned! I'm glad to see you," was Dick's greeting to his chum. "A
hundred times, I've almost let this beast go so that I could swim
down the river and look for you. If I hadn't heard you coming a few
minutes ago I'd have been off by now, anyhow."
"What could you have done, swimming down a big river like this, in
the dark?"
"What could I have done here, or back in camp, without you, Ned?"
Ned gave an amusing account of his adventures and made fun of his
fears.
"Now tell me what happened to you, in those long hours. Did you get
scared, too, Dick?"
"Most of my scare was about you, though I did have one or two little
troubles of my own. For a good while after you swam away the baby
behaved like a cherub. He let me put my arm around him, as far as it
would go, and when I rubbed his soft mouth with my hand he seemed to
like it. Then, suddenly he lashed out with his tail, threw me off my
feet and carried me out into deep water. I don't quite know how I
managed to turn him around and get back with him into shoal water. I
know I was under water a good deal and got very much out of breath.
I guess, though, from the grip I kept on that baby's nose, that he
was short of wind himself. Anyhow, when we got back and I let go,
he lifted his head out of water and sniffed and snorted like a cow
with the consumption. Then, just as I was feeling pretty good and
thinking what a nice nurse for a manatee baby I was and what an easy
job it seemed, I got a terrible jar.
"Something punched me gently in the back, and when I turned my head
I saw a monster that must have been twelve feet long, and weighed a
ton or two. It was Baby's ma! She poked her nose all over him and
even rubbed it against my arm, which was around him, but I never
flinched, though there ought to be some stronger word than scared to
fully express my feelings, when I felt that big mouth against my
arm. The great manatee mother didn't seem to mind me a bit, as she
swam around us two or three times, but I squirmed a good deal when
that tremendous tail, which was moving so slowly, came opposite me,
and I wondered if it was going to mash me as flat as a sheet of
paper, or only knock me over the tops of the mangroves. But that
scare was nothing to the next one. After Ma Manatee had gone, Baby
and I had a quiet hour or so and I was getting pretty tired and
beginning to worry a lot about you, when something happened to set
me to worrying about myself. This is a big, deep river, and there
was enough going on to amuse me, dolphins, turtles and tarpon coming
up to blow as they passed and small fish jumping out of the water
most of the time.
"Sometimes a splash and the scattering of little fish when a big
one got after them startled me for a minute, but I got over minding
it much, when a big, big splash came and there was a long struggle
in the river near me. Perhaps I wouldn't have minded it so much, but
Baby got crazy again and I couldn't soothe him. Next minute I didn't
blame him, for I was 'most crazy myself. Out from all the ruction in
the water, there came, swimming slowly toward us, a great leopard
shark. I knew him from the spots which covered his body, for he was
so near that I could have counted them. He was certainly over ten
feet long and looked as if he had plenty of room in his stomach for
both the baby and me. I remembered that Mr. Streeter had told me
that no shark in this country had ever attacked a human being, so I
braced up a little and pulled that splashing manatee baby out toward
the shark, and I splashed some myself and acted as if I wanted to
eat that Tiger of the Sea. Would you believe it? He was scared silly
and, though I was in a blue funk myself, I laughed so that you might
have heard me if you had been listening. For behind that shark was a
wake such as a big motor boat would have made. After the shark had
gone, I had another worrying fit. You had been gone a long time, and
the thought kept coming to me that you might have met that shark.
Neddy boy, next time you go off alone on a long swim, I'm going with
you. Now what shall we do with the baby? The tide will turn before
long and I s'pose we could get him to camp. He'd go along all
right, but it would be a mile swim, though we could take turns at
it."
"I'd rather swim all the way," said Ned, "than to climb into this
canoe once, from the river. But what's the use? There's no grass at
the camp and the water is too deep for an infant like Baby. Why not
tie him here for to-night? Then to-morrow we will take him down to
that big bay and make a nursery for him in a shallow little cove
that I saw there. It's full of nice manatee grass and we can put
stakes across the mouth, or pasture Baby at the end of a rope. But
what are we going to do with him, after that?"
"Don't borrow trouble, Ned. That question will come up later. The
next thing for us to do is to tie this little beast. So trot out
that harpoon line."
Dick untied the harpoon line, which was kept lashed to a thwart in
the canoe, and, after getting overboard, carefully fastened the
painter of the canoe to a mangrove root. The boys made a harness for
the little manatee of one end of the line, by making one loop around
the body of the baby, just behind his flippers, another around his
tail and then connecting the two. The other end of the harpoon line
was then fastened to a mangrove tree on the bank and the baby was
turned loose. Dick steadied the canoe while Ned climbed aboard, but
when Ned tried to steady it for Dick to get in it, there was a
capsize. Dick apologized for his clumsiness and Ned complained that
he hated to get wet. The next attempt was successful and the boys
were soon eating venison and drinking coffee at their camp. They
were tired and talkative when they lay down for the night, and both
went to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
The boys hurried through their breakfast the next morning, anxious
to see their captive, which they found where they left him, quite
friendly and almost unafraid. Dick took the line in the stern of the
canoe, while Ned paddled from the bow. Baby was tractable and
allowed himself to be towed, even swimming himself. He behaved best
when his head was brought beside the canoe and seemed to like the
petting that Dick gave him. When the baby had been tied in the
little cove that Ned had discovered, in such a way that he could
range over the whole of his nursery, the boys decided not to put a
row of poles across the mouth of it. Dick thought it was too much
work and Ned said it was no use, because Ma Manatee would knock the
whole business over the tree-tops with one gentle little whack of
her tail.
They paddled back to their camp and hunted over the prairies behind
it all the afternoon. Ned shot another buck, this time in a very
boggy swamp. It was not a big buck, but before they got out of the
swamp with it the boys had learned several ways in which a deer
should not be carried. First, one took the carcass by the tail-end
and the other by the head. The middle of the body sagged down in the
mud and pulled the boys after it. Then the creature was slung on a
pole, which they took on their shoulders. This was better, but every
time one stumbled, which was most of the time, both landed in the
bog. Then Ned remembered what all boys should know, and the legs of
the buck were skinned up to the knee joints. With these loose ends
of skin, the legs were so tied together in pairs as to form a loop
through which the arms could be thrust and the whole body of the
deer worn like a coat.
By taking turns at toting the thing, the boys got their venison to
camp without very much trouble. While jerking it they were very glad
to lie around camp and rest, and gossip. But their talk always came
around to one subject--what to do with their captive. Ned wanted to
send him North to some aquarium, but didn't quite see how to do it.
Dick offered to swim him down the rivers to the Gulf of Mexico if
Ned would sail him up the coast to Marco or Myers, for shipment by
water or rail.
"I'm really in earnest about this, Dick, because I know father would
like it so much. He is always looking out for curiosities to send to
museums or his collecting friends, and this would be such a rare
thing."
"Would your father stand for a good big bill to get Baby north?"
"He'd stand for anything! What's in your noddle, Dick?"
"It can be done, easy. We're not many miles from the coast, and
I've been wrecked on that coast, Neddy, so I remember it. We will
paddle down this river, and as many more as are necessary, until we
get to the Gulf. Then we'll paddle along the coast to the shack of a
fisherman whom I know. He's got a sloop and all you've got to do is
to offer him enough, to make him hustle around for lumber and make a
water-tight box big enough for Baby to travel in. Then we will help
him get the infant aboard, start him for the railroad and go back to
our hunt. Has your father an agent in Myers who'd take your word for
the bill? Coz if he didn't the account would likely be settled with
a shot-gun."
"Agent? Why, dad will be there himself by that time. And if he
isn't, the agent is there all right, all right. So if your pirate
settles with me with a shot-gun, I'll settle with that agent, same
way."
As soon as the meat was cured, the boys started for the coast in
their canoe. On the way they stopped at the nursery and found Baby
almost glad to see them, and when Ned put half a banana in his
mouth, the little manatee seemed really grateful. Ned even thought
that when he pressed the baby's flipper good-bye, the pressure was
returned, at least that is what he told Dick. The canoeists had
trouble in avoiding the grass and moss of the big bay, but two hours
of paddling carried them to the coast, where a strong on-shore wind
was sending long rollers up on the beach. Dick knew where they
were, and said that they had come down Broad River, and that the
fisherman's ranch was only six or seven miles up the coast.
"We can walk up the beach to it and save time. The water is too
rough for the canoe," said Ned.
"I don't know about that. I've lived on the water some and I've seen
curious things done with canoes. Let's try it."
"Better try the waves with an empty canoe first. Then I'll be with
you."
The canoe was unloaded on a quiet bit of the beach which lay behind
a shoal and the boys by turns got into the canoe and paddled out
among the breakers. Then they went out together and through it all
the canoe rose to the waves like a duck. Then they reloaded their
canoe and started up the beach. At times the wind was stronger and
the waves bigger, but always the canoe rode them with a gait like a
rocking-chair. They paddled easily, "taking the waves on the bias,"
as Dick observed, heading a little off-shore to balance the push of
the wind and the waves.
The fisherman was at home, and Ned soon closed a contract with him
to carry Baby Manatee to Myers at Ned's cost and risk, payment to be
made in Myers by Mr. Barstow or his agent. The man had just got in
some lumber to build a skiff. This would serve to build the box, and
the charge for it would be five dollars. The fisherman said he would
need the help of his son; that the charge for the two would be four
dollars a day, and he "reckoned" it would take eight days, so the
contract was closed for thirty-seven dollars. He was ready to start
right off and catch the evening tide up Broad River.
"Don't you want to make the box first?" said Ned.
"Reckon not. 'Druther see the manatee 'fore I spile good lumber.
Manatees is mighty scurse in this country."
Dick flared up, and said to the fisherman:
"Do you mean that we've been lying about a manatee?"
"Course not, not lyin'; manatee's all right, only you ain't much ust
to 'em and it may be bigger'n you think, 'nd I'd hate to make th'
box too little."
The lumber was taken on board, the canoe unloaded and laid on the
deck of the sloop, the sails reefed and with her skiff drawn close
up under her stern the craft was soon flying down the coast. When
she reached the river the reefs were shaken out and in little more
than an hour anchor was dropped beside the manatee cove. It was
nearly dark and work was to begin the next morning, but all hands
wanted a look at the little manatee. The fisherman and his son went
in their own skiff while Ned and Dick led the way in the canoe.
"Now I'll show you something worth seeing," said Ned, as he took
hold of the end of the line and pulled it all easily in. As Ned sat
looking at the broken end of the line, half stupefied by the
greatness of his surprise, the fisherman laughed and said:
"That sure was worth seem', 'nd I reckon I've saved you five
dollars by not makin' that box till I got here 'nd saw the critter."
"I'll keep the contract. It isn't your fault that the manatee has
got away."
"No, I reckon 'twan't anybody's fault, much. All I want out o' you
is four dollars for one day's work," and the fisherman laughed
again, adding a moment afterward:
"I'm 'most ashamed to take that much, but I reckon the joke's been
wuth it ter you."
Ned paid the four dollars and the boys paddled back to their old
camp for the night. On the way back Ned stopped paddling, and
turning back, said to Dick:
"Did that old fellow mean that he didn't believe we had caught a
manatee at all?"
"If I thought he did, I'd go back and punch his head."
"No, you wouldn't. He isn't to blame. He only thought what everybody
who hears of it and don't know us will think. I hope he won't tell
about it in Myers, so that it will get to Dad's ears."
"I shouldn't think you'd care for that," said Dick.
"Well, Dad enjoys a joke and I would likely hear of 'Ned's manatee'
pretty frequent for some time."