Chapter 6

DICK'S HUNT FOR HIS CHUM

An hour's paddling brought Dick and Johnny to the mouth of Turner's River, up which they headed the canoe. A strong tide setting up the river nearly doubled their speed.

"Lucky for us that the tide is running our way," said Dick.

"Not much luck about it. Mr. Streeter knew about the tide. That's why he hurried us off 'fore dinner. Tide'll be other way this evenin'," replied Johnny.

"Isn't Mr. Streeter a brick?"

"He's all that. Lots o' people 'd have hard times 'f he moved away. He helps th' Injuns, too, when they're in hard luck."

The first fork in the river was a mile from its mouth and Dick, who was steering, took the right branch, which led southeast, although it was much the smaller stream. At the next parting of the stream one branch led to the east and the other due south. Fortunately Johnny knew which fork to take, and for a mile or two there was no trouble. Then the river opened out into a broad shallow bay, filled with little keys, but nothing to tell Dick which way to steer. He tried to keep to a southeast course, but ran into shallows which soon ended in a pocket from which they had to back out. Often they followed a good channel for a mile, only to have it end in an oyster reef, and again they had to turn back. A pair of dolphins lifted their heads above the surface in front of the canoe and with a sniff of fright started away across the bay like an express train. They were great creatures, nearly nine feet long, and were followed in their flight by a baby dolphin less than half their size, which rose within reach of Dick's paddle, sniffed impertinently in his face and skittered away after his mother as fast as he could wiggle his funny flat tail.

"Better foller them porpoises," said Johnny; "they know the channel."

The dolphin is so uniformly miscalled porpoise, on the west coast and everywhere else, that the creature will soon come to think that it really is a porpoise.

Dick followed the dolphins as long as he could see them and was led into a deep channel which opened out into a series of broad bays through which they paddled until, among the sunken lands of the flooded mangrove keys, they came upon a shell mound, the site of an old abandoned plantation. Dick's aching muscles and Johnny's clamorous stomach had long been pleading for a rest, and the boys landed on the mound for a picnic dinner. They opened a box which Mrs. Streeter had given them as they started from her home, and found a bountiful lunch of cold venison, baked sweet potatoes, boiled eggs, bread, butter, orange marmalade and two pineapples.

"Gee!" said Dick. "Are we going to live this way, Johnny?" but Johnny only grinned.

After the boys had eaten, as only boys can eat, they crawled through the vines and among the thorns of the overgrown plantation. They found stalks of sugar-cane and bunches of bananas; wide-spreading guava and lime trees, loaded with fruit; and tall Avocado pear trees from which hung purpling globes of that great, creamy, most delicious fruit, commonly called alligator pear. They filled with fruit the shirts they wore, till they bulged like St. Nicholas, and made many trips between the trees and their canoe. As Dick was standing beside a lime tree, he heard a sound near him like the whirring of a big locust. Dick had never before heard the angry jarring of the rattles of the great king of snakes, but he didn't need to be told the meaning of the blood-curdling sound, which seemed to come from all directions at once. He gazed about him for a moment, with every muscle tense, until he caught sight of the head of the reptile waving slowly to and fro above the irregular coils of his body. The snake seemed to be within striking distance and the unnerved boy sprang suddenly away from it, landing among the thorn-bearing branches of a big lime tree. Dick soon recovered his nerve, and hunting up a big stick, went cautiously in search of the reptile, which he found still coiled. He broke the creature's back with his first blow and had struck several more when Johnny came crawling through the undergrowth, and called out:

"Want to save his skin?"

"Sure," replied Dick, who hadn't thought of it before.

"Then don't smash him any more and I'll show you how to round-skin him. He's dead enough, now. A feller from New York showed me how. He skinned 'em for a livin'. Birds, too. Said he'd give me ten dollars if I'd get him the skin of one of these fork-tailed kites. He wanted the nest and eggs, too. Say, but he could skin things. Skin a bird without losin' a feather or gettin' a drop o' blood on it. Said the best way to skin snakes was 'fore they was dead."

As Johnny began cutting the skin free from the jaws of the reptile, the long, needle-like fangs dripped yellow venom and Dick, looking on with a white face, half whispered:

"Suppose you happened to touch those fangs?"

"Ain't a-goin' to touch 'em. Wish I had my pliers here, to pull 'em out. You oughter save 'em, and the skull, too. The feller I was tellin' yer about always did."

"I don't want them; makes me sick to look at them," said Dick, who looked mightily relieved when, the head having been skinned, it was cut off and thrown into the bay. After that he became interested and helped Johnny with his work until he held in his hand the beautiful skin of a diamondback rattlesnake, over six feet long.

In the afternoon the boys entered a big bay that seemed to have no other outlet. They followed its shore for an hour, exploring every little bay that looked big enough to hide the smallest creek. They sounded the depth of the water with their paddles and traced a little channel to a clump of bushes that overhung the water from the shore. Johnny pulled the bow of the canoe under the overhanging branches and found a little creek through which the water was flowing. They dragged the canoe into the stream and found water deep enough to float it, but branches and vines obstructed them above, while logs and snags troubled them below. They used their knives and the axe more than they did their paddles. At times they lay down in the canoe and dragged it under branches and at others got overboard, and standing in water and mud, lifted it over logs. They were in the deep gloom of a jungle from which the thick growth above shut out nearly all the light. As they pushed the canoe forward, unseen vines seized their throats in a garroting clutch, while solid masses of spider-webs stuck to their faces and spiders the size of a saucer ran over them. As Johnny sat in the bow, he collected the most spiders, since Dick only got those which his companion managed to dodge, but then Johnny was used to the critters and didn't mind them, while Dick wasn't, and did.

"What kind of snakes are these swimming round my legs?" asked Dick, as he stood nearly waist-deep in mud and water and helped lift the canoe over the biggest log they had struck.

"Speckle-belly moccasins. Mustn't get scared o' them, if you're goin' to hunt in this country. They ain't likely to bite if yer don't step on 'em and they won't kill yer, nohow," said Johnny.

The stream was so crooked that the boys had to travel three miles to gain one and as the troubles in their path seemed to increase they talked of turning back. But as it was already too late to get out of the creek before dark, they decided to keep on. As it was, darkness overtook them while they were yet in the creek. Among their stores was a lantern, by the light of which they progressed for a little while, when Johnny proposed making camp.

"But we can't camp here. I'm not a merman, to sleep in the water," said Dick.

"You can stretch out in the canoe, if we tie it so it won't tip over, and I'll build a brush bed good enough for me in ten minutes," said Johnny, who took the axe, and cut a short pole, which he rested on the branches of two trees which grew side by side, so that the stick lay parallel to a fallen tree trunk which lay about five feet distant. Then he cut a number of inch saplings into six-foot lengths, with which he made a platform from the pole to the tree, and spreading his blanket on this elastic couch announced that his bed was ready. The boys made a hearty supper from the fragments that were left from the bountiful provision that Mrs. Streeter had made for their dinner. Dick's bed in the canoe was probably softer than Johnny's bed, but he didn't sleep as well. The sides of his canoe were only five inches above the water which contained the moccasins, and Dick was sure he could feel their tongues touch his face as the reptiles searched for a soft place to strike. Then the snarling from a tree beside him would have been less terrifying if he had known that instead of being, as he supposed, two wildcats quarreling for the first bite at him, it was merely a friendly family discussion between two 'coons.

Things looked more cheerful by daylight, and when Johnny asked whether they should go on or turn back, Dick replied:

"Go on just as long as the creek runs." But the creek became choked with brush and turned back on its course, until Johnny said:

"If this crik gits any crookeder it'll fetch us back home."

The boys had to cut away two trees which had fallen across the creek where the growth was so thick that to cut a path around would have been more work than to clear away the logs. The trees were large, their axe a little one, and when the boys came to three trees lying near together across the stream Dick was so dismayed that he said to Johnny:

"Let's get back out of this creek. We must be on the wrong track, Mr. Streeter said Indians and hunters got through this country, but they never got through this way. What do you think?"

"Hate to go back, but s'pose we've got ter."

Dick's spirits ran low during the return trip through the creek. They were going in the wrong direction, and each hour was taking him farther away from where he supposed Ned was. Many times he wished they had kept on and fought their way through the creek. After reaching the bay they had left the day before they turned to the east and north as they followed labyrinthic channels that led around big and little keys in that part of the ten times Ten Thousand Islands. The work became confusing, the waterways they followed led them toward every point in the compass. Sometimes a narrowing stream made them think they had struck a creek which flowed from the mainland, but always it opened into some small bay filled with little keys. Late in the afternoon they found a point of land high enough for a camp, where they spent the night. After they had eaten their supper, Dick said:

"Johnny, do you know where we are?"

"Nope; bin goin' 'round so fast I've got dizzy."

"You mean we are lost?"

"Yep; but that's nothin' s' long's we don't stay lost."

"What shall we do, and where shall we go?"

"Go anywhere, only stick to it. Got ter do sumpthin; fresh water's 'most gone. Reckon we'd better go 'bout sou'west. We kin find a river that'll take us t' the coast, 'nd I kin find a way that'll take us where you wanter go."

An hour's paddling brought the boys to a bay in which were several pretty keys, on one of which Dick saw a number of beautiful white birds.

"What are those?" he asked.

"Egrets," said Johnny. "Want ter shoot 'em?"

"Of course not," replied Dick. "It's against the law, and wicked, besides. They are the loveliest birds there are and never ought to be killed just for fun."

"We never kill 'em for fun. Only tourists do that. If you Northern fellers didn't pay us ter git plumes we'd never kill 'em. D'ye remember that key over there?"

"No. What about it?"

"See that crik by the palmetter 'nd the big stump? Know it now?"

"What! Isn't that the creek we slept in night before last?"

"Sure! 'nd that's where we wanter go now. Them trees that we stopped fer was cut by our fellers to keep off the Lossman River plume hunters. We've got ter cut 'em out, er git 'round 'em if 't takes a week."

"How about water?"

"Find it t'other side o' the crik. I'd rather go without than go back t' anybody's house fer it."

"But that old shack where we killed the rattler isn't far off, and I saw a water-barrel under the caves."

"So did I, 'nd a possum floatin' in it, too. That's why I didn't fill up there. We'll go slow on what we got 'nd do without a day 'r two, 'nd we'll find some by then if we stick t' anything."

"We're going to stick to things hereafter, Johnny. It was plumb foolish to lay down just because a tree got in our way, and it was my fault, too. It isn't going to happen again, though. Let's get through that creek to-night, if we have to work by the light of the lantern."

"Ain't you 'fraid o' the snakes?" said Johnny.

"No. I'm too ashamed of myself for backing out of that creek to be afraid of anything, except doing it again."

When the boys got back to the trees which lay across the creek, they took turns with the little axe, which was not much heavier than a hatchet, until they had cleared an opening for the canoe. They found other trees in their way, but they kept on. Once they unloaded the canoe on stumps and logs until they could lift it over a log that lay so deep in the water that it was hard to cut. Five minutes later, and within a hundred yards of where they had turned back on the previous day, the boys reached the end of the creek, where it opened into a bay which seemed to Dick as beautiful as a dream. It was dotted with little islands, on some of which were picturesque groups of palmettos, and on others big trees filled with white-plumaged birds. Two black dots on the surface of the water a hundred yards from the canoe moved slowly across its bow. Johnny stopped paddling and said:

"There's a 'gator. D'ye want him?"

"I don't see him."

"See them two black knobs on the water? The little one's his nose 'nd the big one's his eye. He's turnin' 'round 'nd showin' both eyes, now. Shoot him in the eye if yer want t' kill him. It'll take some time t' skin him, though, 'nd mebbe ye're in a hurry to get along."

"I sure am," replied Dick, and as the paddles dipped together in the water, the alligator, suspicious of them, slowly sank from their sight.

At the end of the bay the boys found a deep, narrow river with a current which Dick supposed was tidal, but which Johnny thought came from the Glades. Dick tasted the water and was surprised to find that instead of being salt it had the sweetish taste of merely brackish water. There were birds of many kinds in the trees on the banks of the river, and as the boys paddled against the current Johnny saw a brace of ducks swimming ahead of the canoe. He took in his paddle and picked up the shotgun, which, with much forethought, he had placed beside himself in the canoe before starting out. Dick paddled very slowly and quietly toward the ducks until they were within easy range. Johnny had been told that if he wanted to be a real sportsman he must never fire at birds with a shotgun unless they were flying. So he waited until the ducks rose before firing at them. The next instant a bird fell heavily on the water a few yards ahead of the canoe.

"Why, that bird fell out of this tree!" said the astonished Dick. "I didn't know you fired up in a tree."

"I didn't," replied Johnny. "That was a water-turkey, and he isn't hurt a bit. They often act so when they're scared. Watch out for him under the bank."

In a minute or two Dick saw a long, snake-like head and neck thrust out of the water by the bank. The head twisted about with a quick, jerky motion till the bird's eyes rested on the canoe, when it disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.

"What became of the ducks?" said Dick.

"Reckon we'll find one of 'em 'round that p'int. The other got away." Johnny was right, and the duck was found just around the point.

At some places the river narrowed into deep creeks and at others broadened out into wide, shallow bays, where the boys were puzzled to find the inlet they wanted. It was nearly noon when they struck a stream of quite a different sort from anything they had previously seen. Its mouth lay between banks that were high for Florida, and through it flowed a stream of crystal-clear water, which, to the great relief and delight of the boys, was fresh as a mountain brook The bed of the stream looked like sand to Dick, but when he thumped it with his paddle he found it was coral rock. Suddenly Johnny called to him:

"Watch out fur the boat," and resting his hands on the sides of the craft leaped into the water without disturbing in the least the balance of the canoe.

As Johnny swam rapidly under water, close to the white coral bottom of the creek, Dick saw that he was chasing a turtle which was skurrying toward the bank for protection. It got there all right, but the bank didn't protect it, and soon Johnny came to the surface hugging to his breast with his left hand a wildly flapping turtle, while with his right he struck out for the canoe. Getting into the canoe would have been a ticklish job, so Johnny handed the turtle to his companion and swam to the bank while Dick followed with the canoe. By the time Johnny had butchered the turtle, Dick had constructed a very creditable camp-fire under a palmetto, in the shade of which the boys rested while they waited for the turtle stew to be ready for them. Their breakfast had been a cold one, consisting entirely of fruit, and they had decided that for dinner they would begin with turtle stew and end with broiled duck. When the stew had been finished, Johnny inquired:

"Want that duck cooked now?"

"No, I don't. If I ate another mouthful I'd bust. Let's have the duck next week."

Yet each of the boys managed to eat about a hatful of wild grapes, which they found growing a short distance from their camp-fire.

Just as the boys were starting out again, Dick saw a turtle, and, laying down his paddle, said:

"Johnny, if you can catch turtles, I can. See me go for that one."

"Hold on," shouted Johnny, as Dick was about to jump overboard. "That's an alligator turtle. Bites worse'n a bulldog, and ain't good fur much t' eat, nohow."

As they kept on up the creek, its banks came nearer together, trees were more numerous, and the bushes thicker. Soon these began to close overhead, while the stream itself broke up into several smaller ones. As these twisted about, forming a labyrinth of little channels bounded by hundreds of tiny keys, all cohered by an interlaced canopy of leaves and branches, Dick wondered if ever they could find their way out. But he had resolved that morning that never again would he turn back in his exploring so long as it was possible to go on. The little streams continued to become smaller and the turns shorter, until to get around the bends the axe was in constant use to clear a path, while the boys waded and often dragged or carried the canoe. It was wearing work, and they frequently sat down to rest. On one of these occasions Johnny inquired:

"How long you want ter keep this up? This ain't the right creek, not the one Mr. Streeter told about."

"I know that. The creek he spoke of must be away south of this, but this will probably take us to the Everglades, or near them. So we had better keep on till the brook gives out and then travel to the east, toting the canoe till we get to the Glades. We may be away north of Osceola's camp, but there will likely be a trail that will help us to find it, and anyhow we will be near the line that Mr. Streeter thinks Ned and the Indian will follow. Don't you like the plan?"

"Me? Sure! I don't want any better fun than t' keep on t' the Atlantic Ocean, only 'fraid it'd be too hard fer you."

Night found the toys in a narrow stream, scarcely more than the width of the canoe, with bushes around them so thick that they found it hard to clear a place big enough to sleep on. They were tired enough to sleep soundly, in spite of the occasional cries of the birds and beasts of the forest.

They made an early start in the morning, and, although the creek was crooked and they had to cut away many small trees, they were encouraged to find the bushes becoming less abundant as the water grew more shallow, and by dark they were on the border of an open prairie, where they made camp for the night.