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[Illustration: SUMNER AT HOME. (Page 18)]
CANOEMATES
A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades
by
KIRK MUNROE
Author of
"The Flamingo Feather" "Derrick Sterling"
"Dorymates" "Campmates" etc.
Illustrated
[Illustration]
New York
Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square
1893
Copyright, 1892, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IN THE FAR SOUTH 1
II. THREE CANOES, AND THE FATE OF ONE 8
III. SUMNER RECEIVES A SECOND OFFER 18
IV. TEACHING A THIEF A LESSON 26
V. THE GREAT FLORIDA REEF 33
VI. PINEAPPLES AND SPONGES 41
VII. MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CANOES 49
VIII. LIFE ON THE LONELY ISLAND 57
IX. THE NOCTURNAL VISITOR 64
X. WHOSE ARE THEY? AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM? 73
XI. SUMNER DRIFTS AWAY ON A RAFT 80
XII. PICKED UP IN THE GULF STREAM 89
XIII. A MYSTERY OF THE REEF 96
XIV. WORTH AND QUORUM ARE MISSING 105
XV. WORTH AND QUORUM IN SEARCH OF SUMNER 112
XVI. A NIGHT IN ALLIGATOR LIGHT 121
XVII. AN ENTERTAINMENT ON THE KEY 128
XVIII. OFF FOR THE EVERGLADES 137
XIX. THE CANOES ARE AGAIN LOST, AND AGAIN FOUND 145
XX. THE PSYCHE AS A LIFE-BOAT 153
XXI. SUMNER'S SELF-SACRIFICE 160
XXII. GOOD-BYE TO THE TRANSIT 168
XXIII. WORTH MEETS A PANTHER 175
XXIV. RATTLESNAKES AND RIFLE-SHOTS 184
XXV. WORTH'S LONELY NIGHT-WATCH 192
XXVI. THE FLORIDA EVERGLADES 201
XXVII. A PREHISTORIC EVERGLADE MOUND 209
XXVIII. WHAT BECAME OF QUORUM AND THE CANOES 218
XXIX. A VERY SERIOUS PREDICAMENT 226
XXX. QUORUM AS AN AMBASSADOR 234
XXXI. A CLOSELY GUARDED CAMP 242
XXXII. CROSSING THE 'GLADES WITHOUT SEEING THEM 250
XXXIII. AN ADVENTUROUS DEER-HUNT 258
XXXIV. HEMMED IN BY A FOREST FIRE 266
XXXV. THE BOYS IN A SEMINOLE CAMP 275
XXXVI. ONE OF THE RAREST ANIMALS IN THE WORLD 284
XXXVII. FISHING FOR SHARKS 292
XXXVIII. LITTLE KO-WIK-A SAILS OUT TO SEA 301
XXXIX. A BLACK SQUALL AND THE STRANDED STEAMER 308
XL. THE HAPPY ENDING OF THE CRUISE 317
ILLUSTRATIONS.
SUMNER AT HOME _Frontispiece._
"WITH THE NEXT SEND OF THE SEA THE
CANVAS CANOE WAS CRUSHED BENEATH
THE PONDEROUS BOWS" _Facing p._ 18
"HE RETURNED TO THE BUOY, ON WHICH
THE RECENT FUGITIVE WAS NOW SITTING" " 30
THE "CUPID" AND "PSYCHE" START ON
THEIR CRUISE " 32
TORCH-FISHING FOR MULLET " 40
THE CANOES ARE GONE " 48
"'SOME ONE WAS TRYING TO PULL MY GUN AWAY'" " 64
"THE LATTER WAS ROLLING ON THE GROUND
AT THE FOOT OF A COCOANUT-TREE" " 68
A GREAT DISCOVERY " 78
QUORUM IS HAPPY " 84
"TWO PAIRS OF POWERFUL ARMS DRAGGED
HIM INTO THE BOAT" " 94
"AS HE STEPPED ASHORE A PLEASANT-FACED
YOUNG MAN ADVANCED TO MEET HIM" " 108
QUORUM RESIGNS HIMSELF TO FATE " 126
QUORUM DANCES A BREAK-DOWN " 136
"HE FOUND RUST NORRIS CROUCHING IN THE
LEE OF THE LITTLE DECK-HOUSE" " 158
REPAIRING THE "PUNKIN SEED" " 168
"A VOLLEY OF RIFLE-SHOTS FLASHED AND
ROARED FROM THE FOREST" " 188
"ROUGH-LOOKING CHARACTERS, WHOM HE
AT ONCE RECOGNIZED AS SOUTH FLORIDA
COWBOYS" " 200
"HIS WRISTS WERE UNBOUND, AND THE
CLOTH THAT ENVELOPED HIS HEAD WAS
SNATCHED FROM IT" " 220
"DIRECTLY AFTERWARDS A CANOE APPEARED
AT THE OPENING IN THE BUSHES" " 240
"THEY WERE SUDDENLY CONFRONTED BY
AN INDIAN ARMED WITH A RIFLE" " 248
"THE ORDEAL OF FIRE LASTED BUT A MINUTE" " 272
SUMNER AND WORTH IN THE SEMINOLE CAMP " 282
SUMNER RESCUES KO-WIK-A " 310
"THE SURPRISE AND DELIGHT OF THE TWO
GENTLEMEN CAN BETTER BE IMAGINED
THAN DESCRIBED" " 322
_CANOEMATES._
_A Story of the Everglades._
CHAPTER I.
IN THE FAR SOUTH.
"Really, mother, it doesn't seem as though I could stand it any
longer! Life in this place isn't worth living, especially when it's a
life of poverty, and what people call 'genteel poverty,' as ours is.
Our struggle is for bare existence, and there doesn't seem to be any
future to it. If you'd only let me go to New York, I'm sure I could do
something there that was worth the doing, but I can't do anything here,
and I'd almost rather die than live here any longer!" With this Sumner
Rankin flung himself into a chair, and his flushed face was as heavily
clouded as though life held nothing of hope or happiness for him.
"Why, my dear boy," exclaimed his mother, standing beside him and
smoothing his tumbled brown curls with her cool hands, "what is the
matter? I never knew you to speak so bitterly before."
Mrs. Rankin still looked so young and pretty that she might almost be
taken for an elder sister of the handsome, seventeen-year-old boy over
whom she now bent so tenderly.
To the casual observer the Rankins' home was a very pleasant one. It
was a pretty, broad-verandaed cottage nestled in the shadows of a clump
of towering cocoanut palms, on the far southern island of Key West.
It stood on the outskirts of the town, and so close to the beach that
the warm waters of the Mexican Gulf rippling on the coral rocks behind
it made a ceaseless melody for its inmates. Jasmine-vines clambered
over it, glossy-leaved myrtles, a hedge of night-blooming cereus and
other sweet-scented tropical shrubs perfumed the air about it. Through
these, looking out from the shaded coolness of the verandas, the eye
caught fascinating glimpses of blue waters with white sails constantly
passing, and stately men-of-war swinging idly at their moorings. It
looked an ideal home; but even in this tropical Eden there was one very
large serpent, besides several that were smaller though almost equally
annoying. The big one was poverty, and it held the Rankins in its
dread embrace as though with no intention of relaxing it.
Mrs. Rankin was the widow of a naval officer who had been stationed
at Key West a few years before. He had sent his wife and only child
north to escape a dreadful summer of yellow-fever, while he had stayed
and died at his post. Shortly before his death Commander Rankin,
believing that Key West property was about to increase rapidly in
value, had invested all that he had in the little jasmine-clad cottage,
expecting to be able to sell it at a handsome profit when his term of
service at that station should expire. Thus it was all that remained
to his family, and to this haven Mrs. Rankin, sad-eyed and wellnigh
broken-hearted, had returned with her boy. The fever had caused real
estate to become of so little value that there was no chance of selling
the cottage; so they were forced to live in it, and the widow eked out
her scanty pension by letting such rooms as she could spare to lodgers.
During the pleasant winter season she rarely had difficulty in filling
them, but through the long, hot summer months desirable lodgers were
few and far between, and the poverty serpent enfolded them closely.
One of the lesser serpents against which the Rankins had to contend
was the lack of congenial society; for, with the exception of a few
government employés and those whose business compels them to live
there, the population of Key West is composed of spongers and wreckers,
Cuban and negro cigar-makers. Another was the lack of good schools,
and the worst of all was the lack of suitable business openings for
Sumner, or "Summer," as his Chinese nurse had called him when he was
a baby, and as he had been called ever since on account of his bright
face and sunny disposition. He would have loved dearly to go through
the Naval Academy and follow the profession that had been his father's,
but the Rankins had no political influence, and without that there
was no chance. He could not go into a cigar-factory, and though his
boyish love of adventure had led him to take several trips on sponging
vessels, it was not the business for a gentleman.
Born in China, the boy had, with his mother, followed his naval father
to many of the principal ports of the world. Both his father and mother
had devoted all their spare time to his education, and thus he was
well informed in many branches of which the average boy knows little
or nothing. He loved the sea and everything connected with it. From
his babyhood he had played with and sailed boats. Now there was no
better sailor in Key West than he, nor one more at home among the reefs
of those southern waters. He knew the secrets of boat-building from
keel to truck, and from stem to stern, while his favorite employment
was the whittling out of models, the drawing of sail plans, and the
designing of yachts. But nobody wanted yachts in Key West, nor did
its sailors care to have improved models for their fishing-boats or
sponge-vessels. So Sumner was considered a dreamer, and people said he
ought to be doing something besides whittling and idling about home.
The boy thought so himself, but what to do and how to set about it were
problems the attempted solution of which caused him many an unhappy
hour.
On the perfect winter day that he had come home in such a despairing
frame of mind, his own life had just been presented in vivid contrast
to that of another boy who seemed to have the very things that Sumner
most longed for. He had been down to the wharf to see the _Olivette_,
the West Indian fast mail-steamer from Tampa, come in. There he had
been particularly attracted by a boy somewhat younger than himself,
standing with a gentleman, whom Sumner supposed to be his father,
on the after-deck. As the steamer neared the wharf this boy amused
himself by flinging silver coins into the water for the fun of seeing
little negroes dive after them.
"Only think, mother!" exclaimed Sumner in relating this incident,
"he threw money away as I would so many pebbles, and didn't seem to
value it any more. Just imagine a boy having money to waste like that!
And some of those little rascals who dived for it made more in a few
minutes than I have to spend in months."
"But, Sumner," said Mrs. Rankin, gravely, "I hope your unhappiness does
not arise from jealousy of another's prosperity?"
"Yes, it does, mother," replied the boy, honestly; "though it isn't
only because he could throw money away; it is because he has the very
thing that I would rather have than anything else in the world--the
prettiest, daintiest, cedar sailing canoe that ever was built. I never
saw one before, but I've read of them, and studied their plans until I
know all about them. She is as different from my old canvas thing as a
scow is from a yacht."
"But you thought your canvas canoe very nearly perfect when you built
her."
"I know I did, but I have learned better since then, and now it seems
as though I should never care to look at it again."
Yet this same despised canvas canoe, which Sumner had built himself
the year before without ever having seen one, had been considered both
by himself and his friends a masterpiece of naval construction, and he
had cruised in her ever since with great satisfaction.
"You have yet to learn, dear, that it is ever so much harder to be
satisfied with the things we have than to obtain those for which we
long, no matter how far beyond our reach they may seem," said Mrs.
Rankin, gently.
"I suppose it is, mother, and I know it is horrid to come to you
with my miserable complainings; but I wish I had never seen those
canoes--for there were two of them just alike--and I wish wealthy
people wouldn't come to Key West with such things. They don't do us
any good, and only make us feel our poverty the more keenly. Why,
there they are now! Turning in here too! What can they want with us,
I wonder? I won't see them at any rate. I've no more use for wealthy
snobs than they have for me."
So saying, Sumner left the room by a rear door, and the steps of the
approaching visitors sounded on the front veranda.