CHAPTER XVI.

THE FRIENDLY SEMINOLES.

About noon of the next day they arrived at the Seminole town which was their destination.

As they approached the village, which was located on a broad triangle of land slightly higher than the surrounding expanses, they noticed a little wharf along one side, and close to this wharf a number of canoes of different sizes. Standing in one of these canoes, a large one, was an Indian, who was working hard with a curious piece of mechanism. It was a sheet of tin roofing about three feet square, into which holes had been driven, with the rough side up like a nutmeg grater. Across this sheet, back and forth, the Indian was violently rubbing the roots of the coonti plant.

“What on earth is he making?” asked Billy.

“Starch,” replied Mark promptly. “The Indians eat coonti starch like pudding, and it tastes mighty good, when you’re hungry. I’ve been told that it’s very nourishing and healthful, but I’ve never eaten much of it.”

Having landed, the party stood watching the starch-maker, while the two guides made the canoes fast to the wharf. Then Dave and Jim led the way in search of friends in the village.

A few braves were standing around, gazing at the young strangers, or now and then exchanging a few mumbled words of greeting with Jim and Dave, whom they addressed by their true Seminole names. All the other men of the little village were absent, perhaps out fishing or hunting.

Not a woman or a child was in sight; they had run away to hide behind trees or within their palmetto huts. It was only when they were assured that the visitors were of the most friendly nature that they came out, eying the strangers curiously and distrustfully. One small boy whom Jim called to him was disposed to be friendly with Billy, who bought of him a bow and arrows. Norton had brought several boxes of colored beads, and he scattered handfuls of these among the children, who scrambled and scampered away for them in every direction with joyous cries.

After a while the hunters began to return in canoes, singly or in twos or threes. Beyond greeting the two guides briefly, they paid very little attention to the strangers, but continued their occupations serenely undisturbed.

On a platform close to the water’s edge, two Indians were skinning some freshly killed otters. In a hut nearby, an old man, a silversmith, was making earrings and crescents of hammered silver. Further on, an Indian boy was hollowing out a log for a canoe; and three squaws were drawing water from a spring on the island, using big gourds to carry it.

Old canoe trails led from this island in all directions through the salt marshes, and the boys would have greatly enjoyed following a few of them, had time permitted. But the hours were flying, and soon the scouts would have to return to the settlement where Captain Vinton and the _Arrow_ awaited them.

Accordingly they left the main part of the Seminole camp, and retracing their steps to the crude little wharf, embarked once more in their canoes. The friendly Seminoles gathered in a body on the wharf, to see them off; and soon the two canoes were headed down stream, following very nearly the same course over which they had come.

By dint of hard and rapid poling, the guides managed to reach the lean-to island before nightfall. Aided by the slow currents of the water trails, travel down stream was more rapid than it had been; nevertheless, it was a thoroughly tired and sleepy company of explorers who rolled into their sleeping-bags in the shelter of the lean-to that night.

Next morning, however, all were early astir, for Dave had suggested an alligator hunt. After breakfast they started off in the canoes, resolving to run up any small creeks they might find in search of these reptiles.

It was still very early. A light mist was rising from the countless acres of saw-grass, and the sun was shining through a veil of fleecy clouds. Slowly, almost noiselessly, the canoes glided along the water-courses, while their eager occupants hardly dared to speak, lest breaking the vast silence should alarm the hidden game.

The canoes were moving slowly around a point of land, when Dave, raising his hand, whispered:

“See big one—over there.”

At a distance the object which he pointed out appeared to be the trunk of a fallen tree, half in water, half on the mud bank of the stream. It was motionless, and they stared at it without recognizing its shape and color. Expecting to see the glossy black back of an alligator, they observed that this creature was of an ashen gray, the color of an old sun-dried stump.

“Where? What is it?” whispered Chester.

“S-sh!” came the low, sibilant warning from Dave. “Heap big ’gator,—_aal-pa-tah_. You not want to wake him, scare him.”

“Huh!” grunted Jim. “No ’gator.”

“What? That old log is a——”

“Crocodile!”

Even as he spoke, Jim lowered his pole and took a paddle, with which he guided the dug-out forward without noise or splash. Dave followed his example. Together, almost side by side, the canoes with their breathless crews approached the crocodile. But unfortunately, as the hideous creature was to leeward of the canoes, there was no way for them to get the wind of it; and this fact accounted for a sudden startled movement of the beast. It turned its head, opened its huge jaws with a curious loud hiss, and then, straightening itself halfway on its short legs, began to slide backward into the water.

However, at the very instant that it began to move,—and it moved with astonishing rapidity, for so ungainly a brute,—a sharp sound broke the silence. Jim’s rifle spoke, and the report rang out startlingly.

With a gentle slide, the huge reptile had disappeared into the water. Anxiously they waited for him to rise to the surface again and show whether he had been fatally wounded. Jim could not tell whether or not his shot had taken effect.

But he was not kept long in doubt. After a few minutes, the water was violently churned by the dying struggles of the crocodile, and the canoes, tossing up and down on the wavelets, were nearly upset more than once. Perilous moments for the hunters! Had either of the canoes, or both, “turned turtle,” the vicious and frantic reptile might have avenged its own death!

Instead, it presently lay inert and lifeless in the shallower part of the stream, whence Jim, springing out of the canoe, dragged the heavy body ashore and began at once to skin it, assisted by Dave.

There were many miles still to be traveled, and so Norton decided not to spend any more time in that locality, but to return to the river station by nightfall, if possible.

“Cap’n Vinton will think we’re lost, strayed, or stolen, never coming back to civilization,” he said laughingly.

“I almost wish we were!” said Hugh with a sigh. “I love the wilds. I’d like to spend a whole year down here among the Glades, if I could. Wouldn’t you, Bill?”

“You bet!—if there was some reason, some purpose in our doing it,” Billy answered. “I’d get tired of just loafing, though.”

“So would I.”

“I know you would.”

“Well, _I_ wouldn’t!” declared Alec, smiling. “Hunting, fishing, exploring, taking photos—that would be enough for me.”

“I guess you’d change your mind, Alec, before long,” said Norton. “At any rate, we must return to civilization now. I dare say your parents will be anxious for a telegram from us within a day or two, assuring them that we’re all well. Remember, it’s many days since you last wrote about your adventures, and they’ll want to know that we’re not shipwrecked, lost at sea, or adrift in the Glades.”

“Oh, they’ll soon have all the news.”

“Besides, we’ve a long cruise up the coast, back to Santario, still ahead of us,” continued Roy Norton. “And Mark is looking forward to seeing his family and friends at Red Key.”

There was a brief silence. The Seminole guides had resumed their poling, keeping the canoes almost abreast. A light breeze, warm and pungent with the tang of the marshes and the scent of scrubby pines, passed over the ocean of grass.

Chester broke the silence. “It’s been a great trip,” he said with quiet enthusiasm. “We’ve all enjoyed it immensely. I wish those fellows at Red Key could have come along with us; they’d have liked the run.”

“I guess they have plenty of adventures,” Billy added. “I’ll never forget our experiences at Red Key and later at the lighthouse.”

Hugh agreed with this statement. Somehow, he felt that the slight part he and his comrades had played in sharing the labors of those brave surfmen and guardians of the coast would linger in his memory longer than any other experience of their visit. It meant to them all much more than their brief sojourn at the Seminole village, with the stalwart braves returning from the chase, the squaws busying themselves with household cares, the romping children, the air of contented aloofness that pervaded the scene.

“Yes, it’s been a great trip.” He echoed Chet’s words with sincerity.

“It’s not over yet, thank fortune!” said Chester.

“It has hardly begun!” Alec rejoined briskly.

And, as later events showed, he was a true prophet; for the boys were destined to add many further adventures to their list of exploits before they returned to Santario and to Alec’s home.

These adventures will be related in “The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty.”

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)