Chapter 16

CAPTAIN SAM PLAYS THE PART OF A SKIPPER.

The launching of the boat was easy enough, and she rode beautifully on the water. To test her capacity to remain right side up, Sam put the boys one by one on her gunwale, and found that their combined weight, thrown as far as possible to one side, was barely sufficient to make her take water.

The stores were stowed carefully in the bow and stern; rough seats were fitted in after the manner of a boat's thwarts, but not fastened. They were left moveable for the purpose of making it possible for several of the boys to lie down in the bottom of the boat at once. There was no rudder as yet, although it was Sam's purpose to fix one to the stern as soon as possible, and also to make a mast when they should get to Pensacola, where a sail could be procured. For the present two long poles and some rough paddles were their propelling power.

"When we get out into the river," said Sam, "she will float pretty rapidly on the high water, and we need only use the paddles to give her steerage, and to paddle her out of eddies."

"What are the poles for?" asked Tom.

"To push her in shoal water, for one thing," answered Sam, "and to fend off of banks and trees."

A large quantity of the long gray moss of the swamps was stored in the bottom for bedding purposes, and the boat was ready for her passengers. One by one they took their places, Sam in the bow, and the voyage down the creek began. This stream was very crooked, and many fallen trees interrupted its course, so that it was very difficult to navigate it with so long a boat. In addition to this, the river had risen much faster than the creek, and the back water had entirely destroyed the creek's current, so that the boat must be pushed and paddled every inch of the way.

Nearly the entire day was consumed in getting to the river, five miles away from the starting place, and as the afternoon waned the boys grew tired, while Jake Elliott began to manifest his old disposition to criticise Sam's plans.

"May be we'll make five mile a day, an' may be we wont," he said. "We'll git to Pensacola in six or eight weeks, I s'pose, if we don't starve by the way, an' _if_ this water runs that way."

"Very well," said Sam, "the longer we are on the route the better it will please you, Jake."

"Why?"

"Because you don't want to get there at all. But we'll be there sooner than you think?"

"How long do you reckon it will take us, Sam?" asked Billy.

"I don't know, because I don't know how long we'll be getting out of this creek."

"Well, I mean after we get into the river."

"About a day and a half," replied Sam, "possibly less."

"You don't mean it?"

"Don't I? What do I mean, then?"

"How far is it?"

"Less than a hundred miles."

"Well, we can't go a hundred miles in a day and a half."

"Can't we? I think we can. We'll run day and night, you know, and the current, at this stage of the water, can't be much less than five miles an hour. Four miles an hour will take us ninety-six miles in twenty-four hours."

"Hurrah for Captain Sam!" shouted Sid Russell, "Yonder's the river, an' she's a runnin' like a mill tail, too."

Sid was standing up, and his great length lifted his head high enough to permit him to see the rapidly running stream long before any one else did. The rest strained their eyes, or rather their necks trying to catch a glimpse of the stream, but the undergrowth of the swamp lay between them and the sight. Sid's announcement put new energy into them, however, and they plied their paddles vigorously for ten minutes, when, with a sudden swing around a last curve of the creek, Sam brought his boat fairly out into the river, and turned her head down stream. The river was full to its banks, and in places it had already overflowed. The current was so strong that the mouth of the creek, out of which they had come, was out of sight in a very few minutes. Work with the paddles was suspended, Sam only dipping his into the water occasionally for the purpose of keeping the boat straight in mid-channel. The river was full of drift-wood, some of it consisting of large logs and uprooted trees, and night was already falling. Jake Elliott now spoke again.

"We ain't a goin' to try to run in the dark in all this 'ere drift, are we?" he asked.

"I can't say that we are," replied Sam.

"Why, you're not going to stop for the night, are you, Sam?" asked Billy Bowlegs, who was enjoying the boat ride greatly.

"Certainly not," replied Sam.

"Why, you said you was, jist a minute ago," muttered Jake Elliott.

"Oh, no! I didn't," said Sam, whose patience had been sorely taxed already by Jake's persistent disposition to find fault.

"What did you say, then?" asked that worthy.

"Merely that we're not going to try to run in the dark to-night."

"Well, you're a goin' to stop then?"

"No, I am not."

"I see how dat is," said Joe, suddenly catching an idea.

"Well, explain it to Jake, then," said Sam laughing.

"W'y, Mas' Jake, don't you see de moon's gwine to shine bright as day, an' so dey ain't a gwine to be no dark to-night."

"That's it, Joe," replied Sam, "but if there was no moon I'd still go on. The drift isn't in the least dangerous."

"Why not, Sam?" asked Tom.

"Well, in the first place, it wouldn't be very easy to knock a hole in such a boat as this anyhow, and as we're only floating, we go exactly with the drift nearest us; we go faster than the drift in by the shore there, because we're in the strongest part of the current, but the drift nearest us is in the same current, and moves as fast as we do, or pretty nearly so. My paddling adds something to our speed, but not much. I only paddle enough to keep the boat straight in the channel. If we were to stop against the bank, and fasten the boat there, the drift would bump us pretty badly, but it can do us no harm so long as we float along with it."

The moon, nearly at its full, was rising now, and very soon the river became a picture. Running rapidly, bank full, with tall trees bending over and throwing their shadows across it, with here and there a fragment of a moon glade on the water, while the dense undergrowth of the woods, lying in shadow, gave the stream a margin of inky blackness on each side,--it was a scene to stimulate the imaginations of the group of healthy boys who sat in the boat gliding silently but swiftly down the river.

Hour after hour they sped on, not a boy among them in the least disposed to avail himself of Sam's permission to lie down for a nap on the moss in the bottom of the boat. Every bend of the river gave them a new picture to look at, and finally Sam had to use authority to make the boys lie down.

"We must all sleep some," he said, "for to-morrow the sun will shine too strong for sleeping, and we've done a hard day's work. It will be now about seven or eight hours until sunrise, and there are just seven of us. It will take half an hour for the rest of you to get to sleep, and so I'll run the boat for an hour and a half. Then I'll wake Billy, and he can run it an hour. Then Joe must take the paddle,--his name is Butler, you see,--and so on in alphabetical order, each of you taking charge for an hour. If anything happens,--if you get into an eddy, or for any other reason find yourselves in doubt about anything, wake me at once. Now go to sleep."

Sam took the first watch, because he wished to see, before going to sleep, that everything was likely to go well. Then he waked Billy Bowlegs, and, surrendering the paddle to him, went to sleep.

There was no noise to disturb any one, and all the boys slept soundly, none of them more soundly than Sam, who had worked especially hard during the day, and had had a weight of responsibility upon him during the difficult voyage down the creek. He was quietly sleeping some hours later when suddenly the boat was sharply jarred, and turned very nearly on her side, while the water could be heard surging around her bow and stern.

Sam was on his feet in a moment, and the other boys sprang up quickly.

"Who's at the oar?" cried Sam, "and what's the matter?"

"We've got tangled in the drift, just as I told you we would," answered Jake Elliott from the bow, where he sat, paddle in hand, he being on watch at the time.

"Just as you meant that we should," answered Sam. "You've deliberately paddled us out of the current into a drift hammock, you sneaking scoundrel," continued Sam, now thoroughly angry, seizing Jake by the shoulders, and throwing him violently into the bottom of the boat. "I have a notion to give you a good thrashing right here, or to set you ashore and go on without you."

"Do it, Captain! Do it! He deserves it," cried the boys, but Sam had made up his mind not to give way to his temper, however provoking Jake's conduct might be, and as soon as he could master himself, he renewed his resolution, which had been broken only in the moment of sudden awakening.

The boat was not damaged in the least, but her position was a difficult one from which to extricate her. She lay on the upper side of a pile of drift which had lodged against some trees, and a floating tree had swept down against her side, pinning her to the hammock, as such drift piles are called in the South. The work of freeing her required all of Sam's judgment, as well as all the boys' strength, but within half an hour, or a little more, the boat was again in the stream.

"Now," said Sam, speaking very calmly, "we've lost a good deal of sleep and must make it up. Jake Elliott, you will take the paddle again, and keep it till sunrise."

"Well, but what if he runs us into another snarl?" asked Sid Russell, uneasily.

"He won't make any more mistakes," replied Sam.

"How can you be sure of that?" queried Tom.

"Because I have whispered in his ear," said Sam.

What Sam had whispered in Jake's ear was this:--

"_If any further accidents happen to-night, I'll put you ashore in the swamp, and leave you there. I mean it._"

He did mean it, and Jake was convinced of the fact. He knew very well, too, that if he should be left there in the swamp, with all the creeks out of their banks, the chances were a thousand to one against his success in getting back to civilization again. Sam's threat was a harsh one, but nothing less harsh would have answered his purpose, and he knew very well that Jake would not dare to incur the threatened penalty.

The boys slept again, and soundly. The night waned and day dawned, and still the current carried them forward. They breakfasted in the boat, first stripping to the waist and sluicing their heads, necks, arms and chests with water. Breakfast was scarcely over when the boat shot out of the Nepalgah into the Connecuh river, whereat the boys gave a cheer. About noon they entered the Escambia river, and their speed slackened. Here they had met the influence of the tide which checked the force of the current, and their progress grew steadily slower, until Sam directed the use of the paddles. They had long since left the drift wood behind, lodged along the banks, and they had now a broader and straighter stream than before, although it was still not very broad nor very straight. Two boys paddled at a time, one upon each side, while a third steered, and by relieving each other occasionally they maintained a very good rate of speed.

The moon was well up into the sky again when the river spread out into Escambia bay, and the boat was moored with a grape vine, in a little cove on one of the small islands in the upper end of the bay, about fifteen miles above Pensacola. The boys leaped upon land again gladly. Their voyage had been made successfully, and they were at last in the neighborhood of the danger they had set out to encounter, and the duty they had undertaken to do.