SAM'S FORTRESS.
Sam's companions kept perfectly still. Their reverence for Sam had grown
with every foot of their travels, and their confidence in his ability to
get out of any difficulty, and ultimately to accomplish his purposes in
the face of any obstacle, was now quite unbounded. And so, when he told
them it was impossible to reach the fort and that he wanted to think,
they patiently awaited the results of his thinking, confident that he
would presently hit upon precisely the right thing to do.
After a while he raised his head from his hands and said:
"Come on, we must get clear away from here before morning;" but he said
not a word about where he was going. His course was now nearly
south-east, and just as the day was breaking he stopped and said:
"There is the river at last. Now let's go to sleep."
They obeyed him unquestioningly, though they had not the faintest idea
where they were or what river it was which he had seen a little way
ahead. When Sam waked it was nearly noon, and he ate a little of the
palmetto cabbage left in his pockets, while the others slept. His face
was very pale, however, and he sat very still until his companions
aroused themselves. Then he explained.
"When I found that we could not get to Fort Glass, the question was,
where should we go? Fort Stoddart is probably surrounded by Indians too,
and so the only thing to do was to make our way down through the Tensaw
Country to Mobile; but that is about eighty or a hundred miles away, and
the fact is I am a little sick from my wound. My foot and leg are all
swelled up, and I've been having a fever, so that I can't travel much
further. It seemed to me that the best thing to do, under the
circumstances, was to find a good hiding-place where it will be easy to
get something to eat, and to stay there till I get better, or something
turns up, and so I thought of the Alabama River as the very best place,
because mussels and things of that kind are better than sweet potatoes,
and here we are; now the next thing is to find a hiding-place, and I
think I know where one is. It has a spring by it, too, which is a good
thing, for drinking this swamp and creek water will make us all sick. I
was all through here on a camp-hunt once, and I remember a place on the
other side of the river where two big hollow trees stand right together
on top of a sort of bluff. About fifty yards further down the river
there is a spring, just under the bluff. We must find the place if we
can, to-night, and to do it we must first get across the river. It's so
low now we can easily wade it, I think, and Judie can be pushed across
on a log."
As soon as night fell the plan was put into execution. The river was
extremely low at the time, and Sam was confident that by choosing a wide
place for their crossing, they could wade the stream easily; but lest
there might be a channel too deep for that, he fastened four logs
together with grapevines, and putting Judie on this raft bade the two
boys tow it over, telling them that if they should find the water too
deep for wading at any point, they could easily support themselves by
clinging to the logs. They had no difficulty, however, and were soon on
the east bank of the stream. Sam's task was a much harder one. The
current was very rapid and the bottom too soft for the easy use of his
crutch, while his strength was almost gone. His spirit sustained him,
however, and after a while he reached the shore. When all were landed,
the search began for the hiding-place Sam had described. It proved to be
more than a mile higher up the river, and when they found it, the day
was breaking. The trees were not hollow, as Sam had supposed. The river
bank in that place is in three terraces, and the two great trees stood
almost alone on the second one of these. The sandy soil had been
gradually washed out from under the great trunks, so that the trees
proper began about fifteen feet from the ground, the space below being
occupied by a great net-work of exposed roots, some of them a foot or
two in thickness, and others varying in size all the way down to mere
threads. The freshets which had washed the earth away from the roots,
had piled a great mass of drift-wood against one side of them. Sam made
a careful examination of the place, and then all went to work. The two
boys so disposed some of the drift-wood as to make a sort of covered
passage from the edge of the bank to the two trees whose roots were
interlaced with each other. Sam cut away some of the roots with his
jackknife so as to make an entrance, and once inside the circle of outer
roots, he was not long in making a roomy hiding-place for the whole
party, immediately under the great trees.
[Illustration: JUDIE ON THE RAFT.]
"We can enlarge our house with our knives whenever we choose," he said,
"and if we stay here long enough, we must make Judie a room for herself
under the other tree, with a passage leading from this into it."
Sam said this to avoid saying something which would have alarmed and
distressed the others. In truth he knew himself to be really ill, and
believed that he would be much worse before being any better. For this
reason he knew they must have more room than the present hiding-place
afforded, and it was his plan to cut another room under the other tree,
with a very narrow passage between. "Then," thought he, "if the Indians
find us here, as I am afraid they will, they will find only poor sick
Sam here in the outer room, and won't think of hunting further." Sam
thought he was going to die at any rate, and his only care now was to
save the lives of the others. He had made them gather some mussels at
the river, and some green corn in a neighboring field, and he now said
to the two boys, "These things must be cooked. It will not do for you to
eat them raw any longer. They aren't wholesome that way, and so I've
been thinking of a plan for cooking them. The spring is down under the
lower bluff, and a fire down there won't make much smoke above the upper
banks. We must make one out of drift-wood, but we mustn't use any pine.
That smokes too much. The fire must be made in the daytime, because at
night it would be seen too far. You boys must do the cooking, while I
keep a look-out for Indians, and if any come within sight you can both
get in here before they discover you, or if they do see you, they can't
find you after you run away from the fire, and they will look for you
out in the woods somewhere. Nobody would think of looking here. Now let
me tell you how to cook the things. I was at a 'clam bake' in New
England once, and I know how to make these mussels and corn taste well.
You must dig a sort of fireplace in the sand bank and build your fire in
there. When it burns away until you have a good bank of coals, you must
put down on them a layer of the corn, in the shuck, then a layer of
mussels, then a layer of corn, and finally cover them all up with coals
and hot ashes, and leave them there for an hour or two, when they will
be cooked beautifully."
"But Mas' Sam," said Joe.
"Well, what is it, Joe?"
"How's we gwine to git de fire?"
"Well, how do you think, Joe?"
"I 'clare I dunno, Mas' Sam, 'thout you got some flints an' punk in your
pockets."
"No, I have no flints and no punk, Joe, but I'm going to get you some
fire when the sun gets straight overhead."
"Is you gwine to git it from de sun, Mas' Sam?"
"Yes."
"What wid, Mas' Sam?"
"With water, Joe."
"Wid water, Mas' Sam! You'se foolin'. How you gwine to git fire wid
water, _I'd_ like to know."
"Well, wait and see. I'm not fooling."
To tell the truth, Tom was quite as much at a loss as Joe was, to know
how Sam could get fire with water; but his confidence in his "big
brother," as he called Sam, was too perfect to admit of a doubt or a
question. As for Judie, she would hardly have raised her eyebrows if Sam
had burned water, or whittled it into dolls' heads before her eyes. She
believed in Sam absolutely, and supposed, as a matter of course, that he
knew everything and could do anything he liked. But Joe was not yet
satisfied that water could be made to assist in the kindling of a fire.
He said nothing more, however, but carefully watched all of Sam's
preparations.
That young gentleman began by tearing a strip of cotton cloth from his
shirt, and picking it to pieces. He then gathered from the drift-wood a
number of dry sticks, and broke and split them up very fine.
"We must have a few splinters of light-wood," he said; "but after the
fire is once started, we mustn't put any more pine on."
So saying, he split off a few splinters from a piece of rich heart-pine,
which Southern people call "light-wood," because the negroes use it
instead of lamps or candles.
"Come now," said Sam, "its nearly noon, and I think I can get fire for
you. Go up on top of the drift-pile, Tom, and look out for Indians. If
you don't see any we can all go down to the spring together long enough
to start a fire. Then I must come back to Judie, and I'll keep a
look-out for Indians while you and Joe get the corn on. When you get it
on, come back here and wait until it has time to cook. Stop a minute,
Tom. Let's understand each other. If the one on the look-out sees
Indians, he must let the others know; but it won't do to holler. Let me
see. Can you whistle like a kildee, Tom?"
"Yes, or like any other bird."
"Can you, Joe?"
"I reckon I _kin_, Mas' Sam," said Joe, who, to prove his powers
straightway gave a shrill kildee whistle, which nearly deafened them
all.
"There, that'll do, Joe. Well, let's understand then, that if anyone of
us sees Indians, he must whistle like a kildee. If the Indians hear it
they'll think nothing of it."
Tom went to the look-out, and seeing no savages anywhere, returned, and
the whole party, little Judie excepted, proceeded to the spring. Sam
then laid his sticks down in a pile, and taking out his watch removed
the crystal. This he filled with clear water from the spring, and
holding it over the cotton ravellings, moved it up and down until the
sunlight, passing through it, gathered itself into a small bright spot
on the cotton. Joe, eager to see, thrust his head over Sam's shoulder,
and directly between the glass and the sun.
"Take your head away, Joe, or I'll have to draw the fire right through
it," said Sam, laughing.
"Mercy, Mas' Sam, don't do dat. I'se 'feard o' your witches' ways,
anyhow," said Joe, drawing back. The glass was again put in position
and the spot of bright sunlight reappeared. Presently a little cloud of
smoke rose, and a moment afterwards, the cotton was fairly afire. It was
not difficult now to get the light-wood and dry sticks to blazing, and a
good fire was soon secured.
"Now boys," said Sam, "I'll go back to the drift-pile and keep a
look-out. If you hear the kildee call, run in as quickly as you can.
When you get the corn and mussels on, and covered up, come back at
once."
No Indians showing themselves anywhere in the neighborhood, the boys got
their dinner on or rather _in_ the fire, and then returned to the root
cavern to await the completion of the cooking process. When they were
all safely stowed away in their places, Tom gave voice to the curiosity
with which he was almost bursting.
"Sam," he said, "how did you do that?"
"How did I do what, Tom?"
"How did you make the sun set the cotton on fire?"
"I don't know whether I can make you understand it or not," said Sam,
"but I'll try. You know light always goes in straight lines, if left to
itself, don't you?"
"No, I didn't know that!
"Yes you did, only you never thought of it. If you want to keep light
out of your eyes, you always put your hand between them and the light,
because you know the light goes straight and so will not go around your
hand."
"Yes, that's true, and when I want to make a shadow anywhere, I put
something right before the light."
"Certainly. Well, the rays of the sun all come to us straight, and side
by side. They are pretty hot, but not hot enough to set fire to anything
that way. But if you can gather a good many of these rays together and
make them all shine on one little spot, they will set fire to whatever
they fall on. Now a piece of glass or any other thing that you can see
through easily,--that is, any _transparent_ thing, lets the sunlight
through it, and if it is flat on both sides, it doesn't change the
directions of the rays. But if both sides are rounded out, or if one
side is rounded out and the other side is flat, it turns all the rays a
little, and brings them right together in a point not far from the
glass. If the sides are hollowed _in_ instead of bulging out, the rays
scatter, and if one side bulges out and the other bulges in, as they do
in a watch crystal, one side scatters and the other side collects the
rays, and so it is the same as if the glass had been perfectly flat, one
side undoes the other's work. Now I have no glass which bulges out on
both sides, and none that bulges out on one side and is flat on the
other, but my watch crystal bulges out on one side and in on the other.
But when I filled it with water, the water being as clear as the glass,
it made it flat on top and bulging underneath, and so it gathered the
sun's rays together in the light spot you saw, and set fire to the
cotton."
"Yes, but why did you have to wait till noon?" asked Tom.
"Because the glass must be held right across the rays of light, and as I
couldn't turn the crystal to either side without spilling the water, I
had to use it at noon, when the sun was almost exactly overhead, and its
rays came nearly straight down. If I had had a glass rounded out on both
sides I could have got fire any time after the sun was well up in the
sky. Now let me tell you what they call all these different kinds of
glasses. One that is flat on one side and bulges out on the other is
called a _convex lens_; if it bulges out on both sides it is a _double
convex lens_; if it is hollowed in on one side and flat on the other it
is a _concave lens_; if hollowed in on both sides we call it a _double
concave lens_; and when it is hollowed in on one side and bulged out on
the other, as any watch crystal does, it is a _concave convex lens_."
"Where did you learn all that, Sam?" asked Tom.
"I learned part of it with father's spectacles, and part out of a book
father lent me when I asked him why I couldn't make the bright, hot spot
with a pair of near-sighted glasses that I found in one of mother's old
work boxes. You see, when people begin to get old, their eyes flatten a
little, and so everything they look at seems to be shaved off. They see
well enough at a distance, but can't see small things close to them."
"Is that the reason pa always looks over his spectacles when he looks at
me?" asked Judie.
"Yes, little woman. He can't see to read without his glasses, but he
can see you across the room without them, well enough. Well, to remedy
this defect, old people wear spectacles with double convex lenses in
them. But near-sighted people have exactly the opposite trouble. They
can't see things except by bringing them near their eyes, because their
eyes are not flat enough, and so their spectacles are made with double
concave lenses. When I asked father about it, he gave me a book that
explained it all, and that is where I learned the little I know about
it."
"The _little_! I'd like to know what you call a good deal," said Tom. "I
never saw anybody that knew half as much as you do."
"That is only because we live in a new country, Tom, where there are no
very well educated people, and because you don't know how much there is
to learn in the world. If these Indians ever get quiet, I hope to learn
a good deal more every year than I know now. But it's time to see about
our mussel bake. Run to the look-out, Tom, and then we can all go down
and bring up the dinner."