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THE CAMP-FIRES

OF THE EVERGLADES

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THE CAMP-FIRES

OF THE

EVERGLADES

OB

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH

BY

CHAKLES E. WHITEHEAD

EDINBUEGH: DAVID DOUGLAS
1891

. •• • • *

i4^^

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,

WITH FEELINGS OF THE PROFOUNDEST

RESPECT AND VENERATION

TO THE

BIG BEAE OF THE WAKASSARE RIVER,

AND THE

FBIENDS WHO WERE IN AT

HIS DEATH.

a 2

i5i66038

PREFACE

Some of the Sketches contained in this volume were con-
tributed by the Author to the journal The Spirit of the Times ;
some have since been floating about in other papers; while
others were also published in New York in 1860, under the title
of " Wild S;ports in the South." So much it seems necessary to
say, lest the reader should regard these " twice-told tales " as lack-
ing in originality.

Nothing more is claimed for this volume than that it contains
reminiscences of an actual hunt, and some adventures in the penin-
sula of Florida that happened many years ago, and counterparts of
tales, some of them then told and since remembered, some of them
fancied, such as frontier hunters tell when assembled at night
around their camp-fires.

The Author does not ask that each story shall be regarded as
having occurred literally as written ; but he believes the spirit of
the tales, the portraits of the frontier characters, the description of
natural scenery, and the fragments of Indian history, to be correct.
Much of the Indian history may be found in TJie Exiles of Florida,
a historical work written by Joshua E. Gidding, and published in
1858. The basis of the Florida Pocahontas is recorded in the
history of Garcilasso de la Vega, one of the early Spanish
chroniclers.

The Author has carefully striven not to offend the keen observa-
tion and long experience of his hunting comrades at the South,
whose eyes will scrutinise these pages, by any allusion to natural
history which is not exactly true. As years go by nature and out-
of-door life seem more and more attractive, and even the memory

viii PREFACE

of the woods and waters is the sweetest of the author's possessions.
Trusting that others may enjoy these recollections half as much
as he has enjoyed the experience, he offers them to the public.

The sketch of the Leap of the Tarpon is from an instan-
taneous photograph taken by Otis A. Mygatt, Esq., an experienced
fisherman. That of the Manatee, at page 219, is from the pencil
of Mr. Wycliffe Taylor, London, drawn from nature, and for the
full-page illustrations the author is indebted to Messrs. Poore,
Freuzeny, Deming, and Sheppard.

THE AUTHOR
June 1, 1891.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

PAGE

I. TUEKET-HUNTING, . . . .

1

II. The Camp Fire, . . . .

9

III. A Bear in the Camp, .

23

IV. The Dangers of Fire-hunting,

30

V. The Plantation House of " Far Away,"

87

VI. The Panther's Cub,

47

VII. The Deer Hunt,

55

VIII. The Fireside at " Far Awat,"

68

IX. The Still Hunt,

76

X. The Florida Pocahontas,

93

XI. The Florida Pocahontas — continued, .

104

XII. The Battue on Bonda Ket,

115

XIII. The History of an Old Friend,

129

XIV. The Drowned Lands, .

137

XV. The Skin of the Tiger-Cat,

158

XVI. Supper, .....

162

XVII. Home Again, ....

174

XVIII. The Burial, ....

188

XIX. Indian History, ....

194

XX. A Bear in Difficulty, .

200

XXI. Turtle-spearing,

206

XXII. Tarpon-fishing,

211

XXIII. How WE CONQUERED HaLLEOK TuSTENUGGBB,

220

XXrV. The " Painter " in the Pig Pen,

231

XXV. The Sand-Hill Crane, .

241

CONTENTS

XXVI. Poke receives a Cur'osity and tells a Yarn,
XXVII. Woodland Choruses,
XXVIIL Life in the Lighthouse,

XXIX. Tracking the Enemy,
XXX. Smoking out the Enemy,

XXXL Besieging the Light-house,
XXXII. Mike and Tiger- Tail play Chess,

PAOE

246

257
265
268
276
283
291

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

BoNDA Ejby — Moonlight Scene,

Breaking up Camp, . . by H. R. Poore,

The Hunters' Camp Fire,

The Bear at Bat,

Negro Quarters,

The Panther's Cub,

The Deer Hunt,

A Wild Shot,

The Florida Pocahontas,

The Drowned Lands, .

Among the Wild Ducks,

The Leap op the Tarpon
{Photograph from life), .

Watching the Manatee,
Old Spanish Church of St.

by P. Frenzeny,
by H. R. Poore,
by P. Frenzeny,
by P. Frenzeny,
by P. Frenzeny,
by H. R. Poore,
by E. W. Deming,

by P. Frenzeny,
by P. Frenzeny,

Frontispiece

face page

10

»

14

j»

28

j>

38

»

52

• j>

64

• i>

90

»

104

»>

144

»>

154

• »>

212

• >»

216

> by P. Frenzeny (from a Photograph), 270

Augustine (since burned).
Departure op the Tribe, . by E. W. Deming,
The Last Climb, . . . by W. L. Sheppard,

284
288

It* The Vignettes in the text are the rude efforts of the author.

WILD SPORTS m THE SOUTH.

CHAPTER I.

TUKKEY-HUNTING.

" 0 flourish, hidden deep in fern,

Old oak I love thee well, *, ,

A thousand thauks for what I learn,
And what remains to tell."

Tenntsok.

A GOODLY sight is a tree ! Its trunk, supporting a thousand
branches that interweave the blue air with their tracery ; lithe to
the wind, stubborn to the storm, the pillars bend but do not
break, in the leafy aisles of Pan's cathedral. Its roots, far-reaching,
with tiny fibres probe the earth for moisture, and send the life-
blood through the arteries to the fragrant blossoms and the topmost
leaves that " clap their little hands in glee with one continuous
sound." To its shadow not only the beasts of the field come for
shelter, but millions of insects seek a home under the folds of its
bark, or weave their cradles in its rocking boughs. On its
branches the birds build their nests, and in its hollows the
squirrel and the hooting-owl conceal their young, and the wild bee
stores its sweets, while both day and night the buds breathe their
perfume, and the wind, the leaves, and its feathered guests, chant
an anthem of praise.

How it doth delight the heart to look down the forest, where
trees of every form stand in countless numbers, and their shade,
with its twilight, makes a new climate, where new flora gem the
sheltered earth, where parasite plants and vines festoon the trees,

A

8 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

building borridors gay with flowers, or purple with clustered fruit
where the moss takes the place of grass, and the last year's leaves
fill the hollows, where the wUd bird and game make their home,
and gambol in the unrestrained indulgence of natural instincts !
To this scene add the brook filled with leaves, the open river
tenanted with aquatic birds, and making vistas in the woods, and,
lastly, the deep blue of the sea, fringed with the white of the
breakers, and complaining of its limits, and you will have the view
that is to be met in the woods of the Florida peninsula.

" There simmer first unfaulds her robes,
And there the langest tarries,"

bringing in her train the fragrance of the earth, with the colours
of the sky, de< Mng her tallest trees with flowers proportioned to
their grandeur. There the lakes and rivers are broad, and teem
•With curious animal life, and the birds of the air are painted with
blue and crimson. There the queen lily rides the lagoon, curtained
with drooping moss from the live oaks, and there the earth is so
prolific of her fruits that there is abundance for all the crowded
forest. No single life is forgotten, and the minute insect that
feeds on the pollen of the tiger lily, lives as abundantly as the
alligator that takes his toll from the whole animal creation.

Thus from year to year have the seasons come and gone ;
animal and vegetable life has reached its limit of years, has fallen
and decayed, and wealth that would have enriched a nation has
only formed the subsoil for another age, and none had seen the
wonders of that inner forest that was barred by nature and the
Seminole from the civilised world.

Under such a wood, near where the Stinhatchee River empties
into the Gulf of Mexico, at Deadman's Bay, a hunter's camp
was pitched years ago. Hunters and negroes were all stUl
buried in dreams, and the weary hounds lay stretched around
indiscriminately among the sleepers. No tent was raised, for the
elements required none, though a screen of boughs had been built
as a break-wind, and to keep the reflected heat near the fire.
Here and there were scattered accoutrements, or the relics of the
last night's meal, feathers of birds, skins of beasts, antlers of deer.

TURKEY-HUNTING. 3

The serried leaf of the palmetto fringed us around like a hedge,
and above us spread the tassels of the pine-trees just discernible
against the morning sky. Once in a while a bird twittered in the
trees, now and then a sound like dropping rain was heard, where
some animal shook the dew-laden branches. All else was still,
save the quiet murmur of the sea on the beach, some little distance
off Its low roar lulled the sleepers ; but the thought of game
moving in the early hours awakened me, and, taking my rifle, I
sauntered down the bank of the river. The air was clear and
cool, and all nature seemed to be coming forth to salute the day.
The quail whistled in the distance, and a mocking-bird on the
summit of a pepperidge tree poured out his volume of song. The
grey and fox squirrels leaped from bough to bough, or half descend-
ing the great trunks of the oak-trees, challenged with pert gestures
the passers-by. Long trains of cormorants sailed overhead to their
feeding grounds, and with measured beat the ibis and heron were
slowly passing seaward. Flocks of ducks were feeding on the
margins of the river, and the various tribes of woodpeckers, jays,
and hawks, flitting among the trees; but none of these excited
attention : they were rather the constant sights that one sees with-
out regarding. At length the gobble of a turkey came faintly on
the air. I have heard that sound often before, but one can never
listen to its first clear note without a flutter of delight, that I
verily believe is greater than that of its sweetheart, as she listens
from the jungle to this the loud love-call of her mate. It
apparently does not strike the ear, but the heart, and then tingles
outward through every nerve. There may be something in this of
early association, but it is one of the pleasantest that a man has in
this world, and which so often makes him rich when he has never
a sou. I stopped short and listened for a repetition of the sound,
to tell from what direction it came, and also for any answer that
might come back, as by directing my course toward the latter I
could intercept the cock when he should take his course. The
hundred little beings that talked around me in their various
tongues were all speaking. Yet I could hear no cluck of hen, or
responsive gobble of the younger cocks of the brood. Again the
call was repeated. First a low chuckle, and then the rich guttural

4 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

vowels poured out in a hurried volume. It domineers over every
other sound by reason of its peculiarity. There is no manner of
representing it in language, though the negroes have a song that
ends in a turkey chorus, which might be written thus : — Chug-u-
logga, chug-u-logga, chug-u-logga-chug. In the liquid negro patois
it is not dissimilar. Having taken the bearings of the turkey by
his sound, and estimated his distance, I ran on ahead, during a
time equal to the interval between his calls, and then stopped and
listened. In a moment the caU sounded through the woods near
me. I walked carefully forward, awhile sheltering myself behind
clumps of alders and trunks of trees, and then waited and watched
attentively. Again the note sounded, but it seemed in the air. I
cast my eye upward, and there, perched on the dead and topmost
boughs of a sycamore, from whence he could overlook the sur-
rounding forest, stood my friend. His erect and slender form was
drawn up to its full height, his little head turned quickly to the
right and the left as he surveyed the forest below him, lit up by
the same early sun that was burnishing his own glossy breast. I
could imagine the view he was eyeing, and it must have been the
conscious pride of a chieftain viewing his native heaths and hills
that drew his form to such stately proportions. From where he
sat he overlooked river and lake, broad lagoon, and hundreds of
low-lying islands ; he saw savannahs covered with reeds and osiers,
and shady with tapering canes, where bred the crab, and trailed
the snail and centipede ; he heard the pattering rain of pecan and
of beech-nuts on the upland, and saw the pawpaw bear its luscious
fruit ; shady glens invited to repose, and in fancy's eye his lazy
harem lay beneath those trees, shuffling with their wings the
white sand of the hummocks that bounded the sea. All this he
saw, and then swelling his throat, he sent forth his call, herald of
the morn, and gathering-cry of his clan.

Eaising my rifle I took aim and fired. A half-uttered gobble
was suppressed, and spreading his wings he sailed away in a
slanting direction. " Missed," I ejaculated, as I saw him skating
along like a hawk. Just then, without an indication, he rolled
over in the air and came crashing through the boughs of the pine
trees to the earth.

TURKEY-HUNTING. 5

I ran to my prize. His heavy beard and long spurs showed him
to be an old gobbler, probably one of those lonely birds that,
expatriating themselves from their flocks, wander about in self-
doomed celibacy. Throwing my game over my shoulders, I re-
turned to camp and to breakfast, well contented with my success.

If the reader is desirous of knowing what is a wild turkey, by
turning to Audubon's, Wilson's, or Bonaparte's Ornithology he
will discover it to be of the gallinaceous order, with conical papilla
on the forehead, neck corrugated, beset with cavernous caruncles,
frontal caruncle blue and red, and with scutellate toes, scabrous
above and papillae beneath, etc. After pondering on this descrip-
tion he may suspect that his ideas on the subject may be rather
confused, and doubt if he would be able to sketch the bird from
the description given.

Let him imagine a full-grown black turkey-cock of the
domestic species, with a much smaller head, made shy and
cautious in its movements, restless with its head and neck, high
stepping over obstacles with its red, bare, sinewy legs, and erect,
slender, and game-like in its bearing. Its eye is full and soft,
with a hazel iris. The wild turkey is to its barnyard kinsman
what the racehorse is to the carthorse. See him in the early morn
as he stands on some elevation and welcomes the dawn, and
announces to his family his movements for the day. His scarlet
wattles lie, pendent on a neck that one moment curves like a
swan's and in another is erect like a crane's ; his comb is a soldier's
plume ; his eye is full and hazel black, gleaming with something
of a human look from his shapely head, which is covered by the
wrinkles of skin and a few scattered hairs, and tinged with blue
and red. His neck swells very gradually to his body, and is
burnished with a gloss of bronze and gold, that varies with every
light. There is no pomposity or clumsiness about his air ; on the
contrary, his whole manners are those of an accomplished gal-
lant.

See him among the hens. Their gentle looks are on him, and
they follow his unspoken directions with perfect readiness. They
ramble hither and thither as fancy leads them beneath the wild
plum-trees, picking the stray fruit that has ripened before its

6 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

season and fallen to the ground, or a russet persimmon or a
choice pecan-nut shaken down by last night's wind. Their leader
casts his eye from side to side, scanning everything that moves.
Now a caressing love-note is uttered to his favourite hen ; then,
drawing himself to his full height, he gives a glance of scrutiny
into the woods ahead of him, where the slim pine-trees open an
extended vision. Passing a rotten stump, with a stroke of his
leg and claws he tears down the rotten bark. A half inclination
of the head defers to the nearest hen a curd-white grub that has
rolled out from the wood, and with a low cluck of acknowledg-
ment she picks it up. Now with one foot half raised, he searches
for the cause of a sudden noise. Ah ! it was only that opossum,
and the turkeys care little for him when they are in a flock
together, and now in passing he leaps up and catches a beetle that
was crawling in a bush above him, now a may-apple, then a spider
or plethoric tadpole stranded in the hollow of the receding waters,
are all appropriated. At length they reach the banks of a river ;
there is a little hurry among the young hens. They don't like
large streams : there are alligators and garfish in the water, and
wild-cats and eagles prowling around the banks, yet the river is to
be crossed, and they are not half so good at flying as they are at
running. Indeed they would walk round the head of it, had they
not learned that all Florida rivers connect, in some way, one with
another. As it is, they walk up and down a little while on the
high bank, clucking and purring, with an occasional pick at some
misplaced feather, just as an old lady smooths down her apron
before expressing any decided opinion. The cock may occasion-
ally spread his fan if the sun shines brightly where he stands, and
utter his loud thrumming sounds like the roll of a drum. He has
eyed for some minutes a low-limbed juniper-tree, standing near,
and presently, after much examination, flits into it. Up go the
hens in succession, and from the juniper they all fly to the upper
limbs of a dead cotton- wood standing hard by. There is a con-
tinuation of the duckings and notes of preparation, and then with
the gobbler in the van, they launch themselves out in the air, and
with broad extended pinions float in a slanting direction across the
river, landing on the opposite side, at the edge of the underbrush,

TURKEY-HUNTING. 7

and are immediately lost to view. If the cock sees danger he
lowers his body to the height of a chicken's, and, followed by his
harem, runs through the brush, with a speed and silentness that
renders pursuit futile unless by a fast and trained turkey-dog.

I remember a pretty incident in connection with a turkey hen
demonstrating a knowledge of character on her part.

I had taken my stand on the end of St. Rosas Island, off
Pensacola, to watch for deer that the hounds were driving. After
my arrival a turkey hen came skimming to the ground, and
presently walked toward a knoll of grass a few yards from my
place of concealment. Her anxious look and her feigned attitude
of indifference immediately showed that she was near her nest, and
taking a pocket spy -glass I carried with me to watch the water
channels, I presently saw her settle herself down among some low
willows, until nothing but her head appeared.

Shortly afterward a fox came by, and coming across the trail
of the turkey he turned short about, and throwing up his sharp
nose, scented the different spears of grass the bird had touched,
and then taking up her trail, commenced following it slowly and
cautiously toward where she was sitting. With noiseless foot and
undulating body he wound along in the trail, when suddenly, to
my surprise, I saw the turkey hen leave her willow clump, and
returning on her own trail, walk directly toward the fox. She
picked hither and thither, in a nonchalant manner, and when
within some ten or fifteen yards of her enemy, who had crouched
in the sparse grass when he first saw her coming, she diverged
slowly to the right, and the fox, as she turned aside, recommenced
his crawlings, keeping his eye on the bird and leaving the trail he
had been previously following. In this way they progressed some
hundred yards in a direction contrary to her nest, when coming
near a low tree, with a soft chuckle, which seemed to say, as plain
as accent could make it, " What a fool you are ! " she flitted up in
the tree.

The fox being then on open ground, at once knew himself dis-
covered, and rising from his crouching position, after one or two
longing looks, and a whimper of disappointment, trotted over the
sandhills, and was lost to sight.

8 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

The wild turkey is trapped under a crib made of cross sticks,
with a ditch dug under one side. A string of grain is laid for
some distance, coming down under the ditch and into the crib.
The turkeys with their heads down, eagerly picking up the grain,
walk down the ditch and into the crib. The grain finished they
lift their heads. Finding themselves confined, they are frightened,
and never lower their heads again, and never find their way out
To ensure success, the woodwork of the crib must be open work,
and the tuikey is always seeking to escape through the openings at
the top, and never looks at the hole by which it entered.

CHAPTEK 11.

THE CAMP FIRE.

" Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the grey alligator slide
Into the still bayou."

Longfellow.

" Turkey -BUZZARD ? " sarcastically cried my friend and hunting
comrade, Poke, as, returning to camp, I laid my game down, and
seated myself by the blanket that was serving for a table, and
around which Poke, the hunter Mike, and the two negro boys were
busy at their breakfast.

" Spring turkey ? " inquired Mike, in. delicate allusion to the
age of my bird.

It was generally the habit of the party to quiz each other at
every success, and even mishaps were treated as sources of amuse-
ment.

" Da is har nufif to pizen all Ploridy," said Scipio Africanus,
raising the long tassel of beard hanging at the turkey's breast.

" Pooh ! " said Poke, " I don't believe in that nonsense ; it
wouldn't kill a cat."

" Jis you try him, da 's all ; ya cut em up fine, and put um in
de grog or de bread, and you 's done for. Din't ole Ma'm Lize,
on de Eobinson place, take off Maussa Eobinson? She be real
nigger witch ! Ole man, he took sick, and all ee doctors in
S wanna couldn't cure him all winter; spring cum, he die ob
turkey beard. Dat 's Gospel ! "

"You nigga mussen come cooking 'fore our fire, or we be
habin' turkey beard too," retorts Caesar, as with his black mus-
cular arms, bare to the shoulder, he elbowed his darky brother
aside to put a dish of meat before the party.

10 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

The sight of the smoking food brought every man's thoughts
and fingers to the subject before him. The huge roll of cookery
smelled good, but was by no means comely to look at. As layer
after layer of green leaves were pulled off, there presently rolled
out what might have been a pig in civilised life, but which we
immediately recognised as an opossum. His skin and hair
adhered to the wrappings that had been bound around him, and
which kept hijn from the ashes and the burning coals, and nothing
now remained but the steamy fat little carcass that would have
made a vegetarian forego his creed. Added to this there was a
venison steak and some corn-bread, and Poke had a canteen of
whisky hid away (the sensual dog !), and we feasted like kings, or
rather as kings are supposed to feast, with great good-humour and
monstrous appetites, which kings rarely have. Each one pulled at
the 'possum, or cut strips from the venison, as he liked, and as
fast as one cake was eaten, another would be ready on the stone
in front of the fire. Beyond the circle sat the hounds, awaiting,
with plaintive attitude, the stray bits that were tossed them from
time to time ; and joke, and tales, and future plans, were one by
one rehearsed with laugh and hopeful wishes.

Poke was a jolly fellow. A critical judge of character might
have said he was a little lazy, but none of us were critical, and
who could blame a man who never lost his temper ? His face was
like an orange, so full and gentle, and the soft flaxen curls that
clustered tight around his head were like a child's. A shrewd
observer, he never saw a leaf changing colour but he inquired the
reason, and with his gentle air read human character with facility.
He seemed to know everything, medicine, and the arts, and the
commonest little handicraft, and the greatest human theories, and
he would discourse up to his waist in a miry slough upon the
beauties of some aquatic plant as gracefully as in a parlour on the
colour of a painting. His acquaintances called him Doctor, for he
had studied medicine at Paris; the newspapers call him the
Honourable Mr. Pollock, for he had once been appointed bearer
of despatches to Eussia ; we called him Poke. Poke was short in
stature, and ready to talk. In this respect he was the counter-
part of Mike, or Michael Hone, or Mike the Spook, as he was

THE CAMP FIEE. 11

termed by different classes of people. Mike was gaunt, though
not over tall, slow in his motions, and very quiet in whatever he
did. There was no pretension or ostentation about him, and so
far did he carry this negative virtue, that he never mentioned
himself if he could avoid it, and no one could tell his intentions
or anticipate his motives until the act was done. A leather dress,
and a leather cap, the same coloured shoes and belt, with a blue
flannel shirt, buttoned in front by two polished alligator's teeth,
was the invariable costume of the hunter. Once he had a cabin
at Tampa, where he would come and go with such uncertainty
that he obtained the name of Mike the Spook. Thence, at even-
ing, when the settlers with anxious eye regarded the forest that
environed them, dreading the whoop of the Seminole on every
wind, Mike would flit into the shadow, and be gone a month or
more, appearing again on the limits of the peninsula at Fort
Dallas. The great interior wilderness was his home, and in its
solitudes he had acquired his taciturnity. His voice was low
and musical. He might not speak for hours, the indication of his
finger and the expression of his countenance being sufficient for
all ordinary language, yet when he did, his tone was as effective
as a command. The villagers at Micanopy called him Injun
Mike, and said they never saw him come or go but in a storm,
and they, hunters as they were, seemed afraid of his strong will
and arm.

Mike acted as our guide. He had undertaken it partly from a
liking for me, and partly, as I suspected, from mere curiosity to
see the Doctor and myself in the woods, for he would sometimes
sit by the hour in his silent way, watching our motions and con-
versation. He never added a word, but if his opinion was asked,
and the subject one that had been in the range of his observation,
he answered the querist in the simplest manner. There he sat by
the fire that morning ; I remember him as if painted before me.
His mahogany face wrinkled in kindly lines, and his chin covered
by a long, thin beard. He was smoking in the Spanish fashion,
rolling cigarettes from dried leaves across his knees, and his
quizzical eye wandered over us with a considering look, as though
we were children. A big black and dun hound, with a melan-

12 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

choly face, stood beside him ; it was said either of them could
track a bear by the scent. He had acquired the Indian habit of
inhaling smoke for some minutes, and then driving it out of his
mouth and nostrils in dense volumes, as a whale fills his lungs
with water, and then spouts it into the air.

The negroes, Scipio and Caesar, regarded him with feelings of
respectful veneration. He excelled them in all their own handi-
craft. He knew every tree in the woods, and its uses ; the habitJs
of wild game, vegetable poisons, and the best manner of cooking ;
he could swim, ride, hunt, and shoot better than they. He had a
close acquaintance with the Indians, and, the boys said, with the
devil, and therefore there was a superstitious awe in regard to him,
that was exhibited to no one else.

Besides the two negro men, we had two half-grown negro boys,
whose arcadian simplicity of attire befitted the primeval woods.
They were sleek and merry, worked when they were watched, and
slept under one blanket, with their heads covered and their legs
bare. They were called the Cherubs.

Besides the human members of our party, there were a dozen
dogs of high and low degree. Mike had two ; they were long-
eared, sad-looking hounds, with melancholy eyes. The negroes
had four or five. The Doctor had one, Wag by name. If he
should be regarded through the Doctor's eyes, he was a Gelert in
courage, of the sagacity of a fox. But any one else in speaking of
him would have called him a rusty mongrel, with an elfish dis-
position for mischief.

It is beyond the scope of this story to describe the toils and
successes of each day in the campaign which had commenced that
morning. Scenes of hourly interest to the actor, and adventures
which to the hunter and naturalist would be beyond expression
exciting, might be dull to the reader. Therefore, in a long
winter's trip, that extended from the Suwanee Eiver almost to
Okechobee Lake, I can only recall those scenes that remained
most strongly in mind after the lapse of months, and which some-
times, when the brain is most active, will reappear in dreams,
with the wash of waves and the music of hounds, and the frantic
rush of the chase. Yet there are many little minutiae of an ex-

THE CAMP FIRE. 13

tended hunt to explain, as they form the regular duties of camp
Hfe.

After the breakfast has been despatched, the one sauce-pan, one
soup-kettle, one coffee-pot, and four tin coffee-cups, and tin plates,
are neatly cleaned, the two little vagabond horses are caught and
led up with leading ropes around their necks. They are vicious,
ragged-looking little beasts, but invaluable as pack-horses. On
their backs we strap a couple of blankets folded in half • over that
a little open framework, in which, and to which we may fasten
anything that is to be carried. This novel pack-saddle resembles
a kitchen chair turned upside down. In it is put the little box
containing our salt, pepper, vinegar, cloves, lard, all little matters,
but of great use — we familiarly called the box "the kitchen";
a sack of onions, one of bacon, a small keg of powder, a bag of
shot, another of bullets, caps, needles, thread, scissors, etc., then a
joint of venison, or a turkey, or any article of food, the Doctor's
trophies, skins of birds, skulls of animals, or strange flowers or
sketch-books. Then the coffee-pot, frying-pan, etc., are hung on
the perpendicular legs of the saddle, two axes are strapped to the
sides, and the ponies move off" after making two or three malicious
kicks at the dogs and bystanders. Mike leads the van with a cat-
like motion, his long rifle lying on his arm, and followed by his
dog. The negroes and the ponies bring up the rear. We passed
for the most of our time through an open pine-country with a
sandy soil. Here and there a grove of closer vegetation could be
seen, and now and then a pool of water, surrounded by oaks and
cypress, but generally the long vistas of slender trees would only
be interrupted by some climbing plant, or the high knolls that
traversed the country, following the general course of the drainage
of the water. We only made one march a day of about six hours,
and then selecting some spot for the beauty of its location, or the
abundance of its game, pitched our camp, built our fire, turned out
our ponies, and made ourselves as much at home as though we
never expected to change. There were many days that we never
broke camp, for the great abundance of game would entice us to
stay, and then our resting-place gradually assumed a comfortable
appearance. A tent of boughs carpeted with skins, a substantial

U WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

fire, a well-stored larder, a pine slab table, and the Doctor, half
reclining, smoking his pipe, and watching the frying joint, lest
Wag should steal it, formed an agreeable picture of contentment
in low life, and made one marvel how few are the necessaries in
this world essential to happiness.

Several times we had our privacy intruded upon by our rustic
neighbours during our absence, and once in a way that ruffled our
good-humour. The camp had been left at early morning as usual,
and from the ridgepole of our tent was suspended a sandhill crane,
recently killed, and waiting for a cooking. In returning, toward
the dusk of the evening, the negroes had separated to drive in the
ponies, and the Doctor was leading the van, and talking of hia
bird, the sandhill crane, which at that season of the year was fat
and delicate. The fire had gone almost out as we came up to the
tent, but by its light we could see the little matters around in their
usual condition. The Doctor laid down his gun against a tree,
and, stooping down, walked into the tent. At that instant there
was an aspirated growl. Poke was hurled over on his back, amid a
cloud of feathers, and a big wild-cat came dashing out over his
prostrate body.

" Oh ! ah ! " sputtered the Doctor. " Catch him ! stop him !
The wretch has eaten my crane ! "

The dogs yelped; a flying shot was fired, and with two or
three rapid bounds the cat leaped up into a huge magnolia tree
growing hard by, and with a corkscrew motion was soon lost to
sight in the dense foliage that extended far above the level of the
surrounding trees.

On entering the cabin, I found Poke disconsolately sitting on
his blanket, with the head and bill of the crane in his hand, the
sole relic the cat had left him for his supper.

It was a pleasant hour in the old woods when our day's travel
was ended, we had pitched our tent and drawn up around our
gipsy camp while the huge fire flickered and crackled and lit up
the green dome of the woods. The tree trunks, for a long distance
around, were lighted into rugged distinctness, and behind them
remained the wall of shadow. The evening meal was eaten. The

THE OAMP FIRE. 15

negroes had curled themselves to sleep, and the rest of the hunters,
settling themselves down to the easiest positions they could invent,
drew forth their pipes, the universal solace to the wanderer. The
dogs still mumbled their bones around the fire, with an occasional
wrangle over some breach of canine etiquette, and the two ponies
appeared once dn a while, when the flame blazed brightly, munch-
ing the wild grass that grew around.

It was the hour for meditation, and the mind, composed by the
fatigues of the day, the glowing light, and the soft climate,
wandered back through misty years. My cheek felt the free wind
of the north ; my eyes filled with moisture ; I thought of home,
and then I heard " zee-zee-zee-zip ! " Ah, misery ! what a
mosquito ! And there is another — has been sitting on my cheek
for ten minutes and I didn't see it. And now that I am listening
I hear them on every side zee-zee-zeeing all around me, and every
moment taking a nip. Oh, I see how it is ! I forgot to light my
pipe. There are Poke and Mike in undisturbed dreams of tobacco
and glory, smiling faintly at my convulsive slaps. Now my pipe
is lighted — no more nips ; blessed pipe ! Why are mosquitoes
created ; and what do they feed on when they can't get blood ?
Please answer me an oft-repeated thought, sage frequenters in
southern swamps.

Do you know what an alligator is ? " drawled out the Doctor,
after he saw me fairly roused to the comfort of the pipe.

" No ; do you ? " I replied.

" Not precisely, but I came very near knowing to-day. I was
stooping to gather a strange flower on the bank of the river, when
the earth caved in with me, and let me down with a fearful thump
upon an old alligator that was sunning himself beneath. He gave
a snort and plunged into the river, and if he was half as frightened
as I, he will never come ashore again."

" Pooh, man ! why didn't you take him by the legs and lay
him over on his back ? "

" Oh, I hadn't the time ; he wouldn't wait."

" Doctor Poke was up the bank before the alligator could see
him," said Mike, in a low quizzical voice.

" Oh Poke ! for shame, to decline a fair fight ! " said I.

16 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Who wants to fight with such a huge dragon ? Not you, I
warrant ! "

" Whar your pup alligators ? " said Mike to the Doctor.
" Bless me, I forgot them ! " exclaimed the Doctor, diving his
hands up to his elbows in his capacious pockets. Out came bits
of thread, seeds of plants, little tin boxes, claws of birds, and
finally two or three young alligators, about the size and shape of
small daggers. They were of a mottled chocolate and yellow
colour, and feeling the genial effect of the fire, commenced
scrambling around like tortoises. The Doctor, with a hand on
each knee, regarded them with unfeigned delight, and Mike,
between his puffs of tobacco, looked on the scene with a quirk in
his cheek.

"Reptilia, Loricata, oviparous, amphibious," enunciated the
Doctor.

Just then one of the little animals inserted his nose under
Ceesar's neck, as he lay snoring by the fire, and commenced
wriggling himself into the woolly retreat.

" Bress de Lord ! " shouted Caesar, springing to his feet ; " whas
am dat yer pizen little varmint — what fur yer cum here, hey ? "

Seeing our laughter he shook himself, and going to the other
side of the fire rolled up again like a ball, pulling his blanket over
his head, and went to sleep as soundly as before.

" Do you see that alligator's tail ? " said the Doctor, as he
pointed with the mouth-piece of his pipe at the caudal extremity
of one of the little brutes as it lay on the warm sand. I admitted
that I did, because I saw the Doctor was in a humour to talk, and
I did not want to contradict him.

" Now teU me why it is that this animal should have such a
big tail for so smaU a body, when any one knows he can't wag it
with any pleasure ? "
" Couldn't say. Poke."
" Can't you imagine, then ? "
" Ornament," I blandly suggested.

" Ornament, indeed ! Now, I have been studying these mam-
malia to-day. Mike and I went down Black Bayou after bear
tracks, and I saw he was going farther than I fancied, so I sat

THE CAMP FIRE. 17

down to watch the alligators lying on the opposite bank. I then
noticed that an alligator, when he came to the bank and heard the
others grunting in the reeds, climbed up as far as he could go with
his short legs, and then bending his tail under him, against the
beach, by that means, with a single jerk, threw himself up on the
bank. Now, therefore, as these animals live chiefly on streams
with low perpendicular banks, as they, by this example, do mount
the bank with the assistance of their tail, and as nothing was
made for naught, ergo, their tails were made to climb banks with."

"As these animals frequently scratch themselves with their
hind feet, and as nothing was made for naught, ergo, their hind
feet were made to scratch themselves with."

" That is sheer malevolence," retorted Poke. " You try to
take away my cane and don't offer another."

" I did. I consider the tail an ornament, of as much use as
the tail of a mouse or a turkey gobbler."

" And why should so cruel a monster, hidden in these solitudes,
have his person decorated ? "

" And why should the flowers bloom in the ever-glades with
the same glory of colour as they do in the Tuilleries gardens ? "

" There you go again. You are never kept down to the prac-
tical bearings of nature. I warrant you that these negro boys
would coincide with me, and give the true reason. Csesar ! Caesar !
you sleepy-head. Explain to us the use of the alligator's tail."

" Wha 's dat, maussa ? "

" What does the alligator do with his tail ? "

" Suck um in de winter."

" You fool — you know better than that."

" Da' so fur true, maussa. Mars' Poke, nebber see picanirmy
'gator in de egg, just gwine to hatch, hey? Den he see little
'gator wid his tail in his mouf, and when he cum out de egg den
he take tail out of he mouf and eat hop-toads, and debil-bugs,
and sich Hke, till winter cum on, and den he curl up in de mud
and suck tail again till hot wedder."

" There, Doctor, you have it, an explanation by a child of
nature ! I hope you are content."

" Caesar, you 're a fool ! " said the Doctor sententiously.

B

18 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Caese ain't fool nudder," interposed Scipio, raising his curly
head from behind his comraxie. " Ef he don't pickle young 'gators,
he sees 'em and knows sum'en or nudder."

This retort was hailed with a volley of applause, and even Mike
smiled at the Doctor's discomfiture.

Scip, evidently elated with his success, continued : " I knows
'gator from time I picaninny. I knows 'gator tail 's good to eat.
Course he suck 'em. 'Gator 's science varmint, und when he roars
in de spring-time he knows what he roarin' 'bout ; ain't no fool,
nudder, and makes speech wiser 'n the judge in 'lection times."

" What does he say, Scip ? "

" Mauss ask ole Aunty Foko what he say. She 's got witch
roots, and she knows how to talk 'gator. She stay out aU night
in Oke'fnokee swamp, 'gator neber so much as looks to her. She
tell me what 'gator say to his picaninnies."

"Don't maussa, ketch me tellin* 'bout 'gator and dem little
'gators layin' da wid ears wide open. 'Morrow mornin' they '11 be
in the ribber, und ole 'gators know all 'bout me."

" Well, we will stop that, by carrying them away." So the
little eavesdroppers were taken by the tails and dropped into the
nearest watercourse, and the superstitious negro looked all about
him with suspicious glance, rolled over to a more comfortable
attitude, and commenced his story :

" Yer see Aunty Foko's Guinea nigger, cum ober from Cuba,
but after her boy ben sold away she don' work no more, and tuck
to de swamp. She be older 'n Caesar an' me, boff togedder, and
her hair a'mos' white. She know de pizen roots, and she know
all de woods, an' day an' night be all de same to her ; an' she know
medicine to trow huntin' dogs off de track, an' nobody kin ketch
her. An' she tell dia child aU de 'gator say, an' so I knows.
'Gator lay he eggs in de sand, and den when dey hatch out some
blEizin' hot day little 'gators cut streeks fur de water right off; da 's
all seen of 'em till night. Night cum, an' ole 'gator dat keep watch
crawl on de sand-bank, an' he find little 'gators all hatch out. Den
he turn round and commence to croak little : nuflBn pays no 'tention
to 'im. He croak little louder, nuffin come ; den he stand up on
he toes and he roar like all natur. It makes de water bile.

THE CAMP FIRK 19

Toreckly young 'gators cum, an' ole marm 'gator cum, an' dey all
stand dere togedder, an' ef de moon is shinen it 's real savage fur
to see 'em. An' de ole 'gator he takes de chair, an' he tell 'em, and
dis jes what he tell 'em, I knows it 's so, and so does Aunty Foko :

" * You chillen, yer great fools ! you tink you sumt'in an' you
aint nuttin. You live half de time on land, t' udder half time in
bayou, an' so you ben't smart in nudder. You be so loggish-like
in de water yer can't ketch fishes, and yer got such little legs on
land yer can't come up to nuttin. Now yer must larn, and when
you 've larnt den you '11 know sumpsin. And I 'm gwine to give
you a teacher, and he 's de possum.'

" When de ole 'gator says dis all de chillen dey larf, for dey
knows what possum is, for dey seed 'em a pokin' long the b'yous,
and dey 's clined to de pinion dat possum 's a fool. But de ole
'gator growls 'em down an' den he say —

" * Possum, he great animal ; not kase he fast, for he bery slow ;
not kase he strong and kin fight, for he bery weak ; but kase he 's
sly. Ef he sees anytin' cumin he make b'lieve sleep an' ketch 'em.
Ef he 's get ketched heself, he make b'lieve dead, an' dey lets him
go. Now ye all play possum.'

" Den ole 'gator send all de picaninnies back in de water an'
dey grow bery smart. An' dey learn to lay in de hog parf for
sumsin to cum long nice, an' den gobble 'em up. An' dey roll in
de mud till gets all kivered, an' den cum outen in de sun to get
dry, an' nobody take 'em for 'gator, an' would cum an' sit right
down on 'em, an' den he grab 'em. An' after a while he gets so
he lays side to de water, little piece back along de hog parf, an'
when anyting cum along de bank, he hit him a slap wi' his tail an'
knock 'em in de water, and den he slide in after an' eat 'em up,
an' de only ting he won't hurt 'tall is de possum. Possum nebber
gits ketched 'tall, an' dat am a fac."

Before the negro's fable had ended, one by one his auditors'
pipes had gone out. The fire had burned low, and shadows, not
parlour shadows, but huge ghostly shadows, went and came among
the forest aisles as the fire flickered high and low. In Scipio's
legend I remembered my first experience with alligators, and as it
is of a kin with the legend I will describe it :

80 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

I was visiting a friend some years ago "who lived on one of the
many banks of the Alabama on the Gulf coast, and whose plantation
was intersected by several little creeks. One of these inlets was
quite near the house, and the morning after my arrival, while
dressing at my window, I saw a large alligator crawl out of the
water and settle himself down on the grassy bank on the other
side of this creek. Between the house and the creek was a rice
field, and the rice bank built along this inlet intercepted all view
except from the upper part of the house, so I would have an easy
approach.

I seized my double-barrel shot gun, loaded with the heaviest
shot I could find in my room, descended the stairs, and made my
way across the rice-field to the rice bank, and there lay my prize
on the other side of the narrow creek, wholly unconscious of his
fate. He was a huge beast, with scales glistening in the rising
sun, and his big yellow eye shining like a golden pippin. After a
moment's survey, and a mental congratulation that there was a
creek separating me from the monster, I took aim at the largest
part of his body and fired. I heard a splash in the water, and
when the smoke cleared away the waves showed me the spot
where my friend had disappeared, and after waiting some time to
see if he would float ashore dead, I gave it up and went back. As
I entered the house a dozen grinning rows of teeth appeared at
the kitchen window, where the negroes were enjoying the spectacle
of my skill in hunting.

At breakfast my friends questioned me about my shot, which
they had evidently heard of from the servants, and I learned, for
the first time, that I could only kill the alligator with a ball, and
even with that it was no certain matter. I also was informed that
this particular alligator had frequented that spot for several years,
and was well known on the plantation by the name of John BulL
The next morning as I rose I incontinently cast my eye over
to the bayou, and there, in the full enjoyment of the glories of the
sunrise, lay my yesterday's acquaintance. It did not take me
three minutes to get into my clothes and down to the rice bank.
I saw the grinning waiters at the door, but I did not care, for I
was armed with a rifle and sure of my game. I took a rest on the

THE CAMP FIRE. 21

high bank, and sighting for a big chocolate spot on his side, I fired
away. A wheeze, like a plethoric alderman, came from across the
creek, and with a mighty splash the animal slid into the river, and
the dark waters closed over him, I knew I had not missed him,
but, as he did not rise, I supposed him dead at the bottom.

" Well, Charlie, my boy, how 's the shooting to-day ? " was the
hearty salutation of my host as I took my seat at breakfast.
A suppressed giggle, behind me, informed me that the negroes
were enjoying the joke, and I had to explain by assuring my
friend that the alligator was dead at the bottom of the river.

" How 's that, Johnson ? Do you think you can find his body ? "
said my friend to his huntsman, as he came in to get his orders for
the day.

" Find his body, sah ? Yes, sah, easy nuff find his body, sah ;
he body crawled up on de bank before de gememan dun gwine in
de house, sah."

Every one laughed, and I did not forget the mishap until
I became engaged in shooting, in which we spent the day. The
next day was a repetition of precisely the same farce, except
that the conduct of the servants became quite extraordinary,
laughing outright, as I went across the rice-field, and the little
nigs came out of the cabins in crowds, and crowed with delight.

" Well, Charlie, my boy, how 's the shooting to-day ? " became
a stereotype question at the table, and " tough as an alligator,
hey ? " one of the commonest comparisons.

At last my patience and visit were finished together, and as I
was being pulled out to meet the Mobile steamer in my friend's
canoe, manned by eight as good oarsmen as ever pulled a blade, in
passing by the head of the creek a heavy splash was heard in the
water, and my friend whispered to me, loud enough to create a
chuckle among the boatmen, " There 's your target, you have left
behind."

The alligator builds a nest of broken sticks and reeds of
a conical shape, and about three feet above the water. It resembles
in appearance a musk-rat house, and is anchored in the shallow
water of the swamp. The eggs are pure white, elongated, and of
equal size at both ends. They are distributed all through the

22

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

nest, sometimes to the number of an hundred. The heat en-
gendered by the sun, and by fermentation, hatches out the young,
■which are about six inches in length, and when hatched they
immediately take refuge in the shallow waters. When young they
are prettily barred in yellow and chocolate colours, and provide for
themselves the moment they are hatched ; and the mother, who
during incubation constantly lies by the nest, then leaves it and
seeks other enjoyments.

On Sapelo Island one winter day the negroes were draining a
pond when they found an alligator ten feet in length, buried in
the mud, hybernating. They hitched a log chain around his tail,
and, fastening the other end to the traces of a team of mules that
was employed in the work, drew the animal out of his retreat, and
proposed to pull him up to the house. The friction of the warm
sand revived him, and he spread out his feet and commenced to
pull in the other direction. The mules turned their heads to see
what stopped their progress. They gave but one look at their
load, then jumped as only a mule can ; the traces broke, and
the mules ran one way to their home, while the alligator ran the
other way to his home in the bayou.

• ^/"i\

CHAPTER III.

A BEAR IN THE CAMP.

I'll pitch my tent on dis camp ground

A few days, and a few days,
Till I give old Cuflf anudder round,
A few days, and a few days,

Wake, snakes, day am breaking,

Neobo Ballads.

After one or two days of quiet southward travel, sometimes verging
toward the seaside, sometimes turning into the back country, we
came one day on the banks of the Wakassare River, a deep, black
stream that empties into the Gulf. No fording-place being near,
we halted preparatory to crossing the river — an everyday exploit
in travelling a new country, traversed by sluggish streams.

Picture to the eye of fancy a camp, with all its accessories of
rustic comfort, its bright fire, its feeding ponies, called "Marsh
Tackies," dogs, and hunters under the pine woods. Before it, a
close hummock of tangled vines, and tall trees bordering the bank
of the river, and the long vines pendent from the branches.
Beyond this leafy barrier, turbid with the gleanings of swamps,
with whirl and glassy eddy, the dark tide of the river moves
onward to the sea, trailing with it the floating skirts of moss that
cling to the trees. On the far side a dense canebrake arises from
the low bank, from whose fastnesses, as the shadows settled on the
view, came forth the quacking of ducks and the booming of
bittern.

On such a scene we looked one afternoon, and forthwith began
our preparations for crossing. Selecting from the fallen pine-trees
one or two logs of medium size, we cut them in uniform lengths,
and dragged them to the water's edge, where they were bound
in couples with grape-vine withes. After having made several

24 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

couples, they were gently launched over the drifting wood and
tangled roots that cluttered up the side of the river, and were all
connected together with a rope, and then tied to a tree. This was
our ark, and on it were placed, first of all, the powder and other
ammunition, and Mike, as captain, and a negro as crew, each
armed with a long pole and a rude paddle, began the first trip.
First fastening the end of a long rope to a tree on the shore from
whence they started, they poled out until the depth of the water
prevented them from touching the bottom, and then with the
paddle slowly worked their way to the opposite bank. Then com-
menced the difficulty. The tall canes grew down into the water,
and presented a barrier to the entrance of so obtuse a vehicle as a
raft ; and though they might be pushed aside sufficiently to effect
an entrance, they would spring up on every side, and hedge the
pioneers in an enclosure as tight as a bird cage. To meet this
difficulty, Mike sat down on the bow of the raft, and with a
hatchet cut away the reeds, as the negro poled the raft, until a
narrow lane was cut through to terra firma, and the men landed
with the munitions. Here selecting a sturdy cabbage palmetto,
they fastened the other end of the rope securely, thus making a
taut line entirely across the river, and throwing away both poles
and paddle, by means of the rope pulled back to the shore from
which they started.

Next came the ponies' turn, and with much coaxing, and some
pushing and pulling, one of their equine highnesses was brought
on board the raft and pulled to the other shore, where, when he
was loosened, he quickly disappeared in the reeds. Sometimes we
made him swim by the side of the raft, but it was a dangerous
attempt in large rivers on account of the alligators that were
tempted to nibble at the legs so invitingly paddling above them.

The third trip brought the other pony, who, by his obstinacy,
came near breaking up the raft ; and, finally, I rowed over with
the balance of the camp equipage and the dogs, that had to be tied
up at the beginning of the operations, to prevent them swimming,
which, had they attempted, they would certainly have been lost by
the rapaciousness of the alligators, that even in the early fall were
still very active in all the rivers.

A BEAR IN THE OAMP. 25

Lastly the raft was sent back empty, with Scipio to unfasten
the end of the rope. He, after casting off the rope, pulkd himself
leisurely ashore with the slack line, and taking off the rope that
had been used in the construction of the raft, he followed us back
from the river to where we had pitched our camp for the night,
after clearing away the fallen leaves and sticks that there should
be no harbour for snakes.

While coming through the canebrake, Mike, with an indication
of his finger, and a quiet smile, pointed out the plantigrade track
of a bear impressed in the soft mud ; his huge paw left a print
as though a man had walked by on his knees. The Doctor stepped
around his mark rather suspiciously, and, I noticed, looked back
at it as though suspecting his bearship might retrace his steps.
The dogs were still tied, and they threw up their noses and whined,
but it was too near night, and we would not let them loose. The
marsh was aHve with ducks, and the white egret, with his long
crest, arose near us with a croak of surprise. Indeed, the whole
bottom was trodden up with the tracks of deer, turkey, and the
smaller game that find refuge in these close coverts.

After making our camp, and as the darkness drew its curtains
around us, shutting in the bright firelight, and shutting out the
void of darkness beyond, all the natives of the forest and river
lifted up their voices in concert. Each bird or beast that dwelt
in these heavy brakes uttered his individual note, and while smok-
ing one's pipe, lying by the fire, the mind amused itself listening to
the confused cries, and distinguishing them one from the other.
The ducks quacked and fluttered in the marsh, the raccoon's plain-
tive call sounded its decrescendo from the wood, the honk of the
heron, the shrill clatter of the rail, the mournful howl of the wolf,
ascended in turn, or in a confused medley, now low, now high, as
the wind rose or fell, and all up and down the river the bellowing
of the alligator domineered over other cries with its huge volume
of noise. Then there were other sounds that played low accom-
paniments to the bass of the river. The occasional twitter of a
bird, the drops of the chinquapen nut, the patter of the dew fall-
ing from the trees, and the rustle of the leaves, all joined in the
nocturnal anthem, and entered into our souls by the Wakassare

26 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

with the mysterious lulling influence with which nature affects us,
when, in camp, the mind is left open to its whisperings.

The day dawned reluctantly, the morning after our crossing, and
so slowly the light broke through the mist that environed the
camp, that it was more like moonshine than daylight. Drip, drip,
pattered the gathering moisture from the cypress trees into the
pools beneath. The osier-grass bent down, heavy with the dew,
the fems were matted to the earth, and the glassy leaves of the
magnolia glinted with a double lustre of sheen and water. " Like
a sea fog landward bound," the warm fog shut us in, as did a few
hours before, the darkness. The voices of the night were hushed
with the dawning, and all animal life was motionless, save where,
now and then, from the invisible heights of the tree-tops, some
moving animal would shake down showers of drops.

One by one the negroes came to life, and yawning and mutter-
ing gathered together the remains of the fire. The Doctor raised
himself on his elbow, and benignantly surveyed the dull circuit of
a dozen yards that the mist left open to his vision. The dogs
snuffed the air wistfully, looked into the trees, and sauntered out
into the mist, looming as large as the ponies as soon as they gained
a little distance. In a moment a sharp yelp was heard from one
of the smaller dogs. Again, after a pause, another, then a pro-
longed " yeough " from an old hound.

" Whas dat air ! " said Scipio, raising his curly pate from the
coals that he was vigorously trying to blow into a blaze.

" Nebber you attendsiate to de dogs, you lazy nigger; you cook,"
retorted his comrade, and Scipio renewed his pufl&ng.

" Geow-ou-ou-ou ! " roared out all the dogs in chorus, with a
burst of clamour that awakened the sleepers, and before any one
could get to his feet a huge black bear, that appeared as big as a
bull, dashed out of the fog, followed by all the dogs in full cry,
right through the camp, scattering the fire, overthrowing Scipio in
the ashes, scaring the ponies from their tethers, and leaving the
Doctor sprawling on his back.

"Bress de Lord!" shouted the negro, scrambling out of the
coals ; " did de Lord ebber see like o' dat ? "

" Tally-ho ! " echoed the Doctor, hurriedly snatching an axe.

A BEAR IN THE CAMP. 27

" After him ! " shouted Mike, and with cheer and cry every
soul dashed out in pursuit, and the camp that stood so pictur-
esquely still in its first awakening, after the one rude rush of the
chase was left deserted, while we followed the trail and cry of the
hounds.

The game, immediately after crossing the camp, turned toward
the river, and entered the dense canebrake that fringed the shore
for some miles, and hunters and negroes followed helter-skelter,
now over grassy holes, now over slippery trunks of fallen trees
that had been floated by the water, and left to moulder green in
the damp. One moment held back by a vine, at another so
crowded by the reeds as to be obliged to lean down and run like
a rail. One moment the crashing of reeds and baying of the
hounds were close to us ; then again they would gain on us ; but
far or near, we went plunging and rushing forward with a sense of
intentness that gave no thought to anything but the chase. Soon
we became separated ; one man, plunged into a slough to his waist,
was left to extricate himself ; another was turned here, another
there, by intervening obstacles, and presently I was left alone,
following always the sound before me, that wound hither and
thither among the reeds, now pausing as if at bay, and then rush-
ing on to the right or the left, as the hunted animal was assailed
by the dogs coming up from either side.

Shortly there was a pause, and the prolonged " Oo-oo-o ! " of
the hounds told the bear was at bay, and hastening in the direction,
I came into a close thicket of canes that had sprung up as thick
as wheat from the rich bottom land.

I could hear the bear, before I came to him, snorting and
champing with rage, and as I entered his covert, I saw him on his
haunches, with his back against a bank, his eyes red, his mouth
open, shedding foam as he surveyed the dogs that were ranged in
a semicircle around him, panting with rage, and bearing marks of
his claws that had evidently taught them discretion.

But the greatest mark of respect was presented in the person of
the Doctor. He sat directly in front of the bear, and scarcely six
steps off; his feet were half buried in the mud, and he was seated
on the same easy cushion. His coat and vest were wide open, his

28 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

hat was gone, his curly hair hung matted with sweat and dew, and
his axe was held in both hands directly in front of him, the handle
sticking in the ground, and the blade pointing directly to the bear.
If the bear's tongue was lolling, so was the Doctor's ; if Bruin dis-
liked his position, the Doctor appeared more than uncomfortable
in his. In his huriy he had tumbled down over the bank directly
in front of the quarry, and what with the chase, and the fright of
this fearful juxtaposition, the bear was in the better position of the
two. The Doctor with his axe presented, and the bear rampant,
with his fore-paws just touching the toes of his hind ones as they
projected up in front of him, resembled much some old coat of arms.

" Hurrah ! " I called ; " have at him ! "

" Eh — eh," said the Doctor, all out of breath ; " shoot him — eh
— eh — quick — eh ! "

I levelled my gun, and pulled the trigger, and a dull snap
followed ; the bear shook his head. Another snap, and another —
my gun was wet with the dew.

The bear thus insulted gave a low growl, and a quick toss to
his sharp nose. The dogs, construing this a challenge, and em-
boldened by our presence, rushed forward, and the huge brute,
with a skill that was incomprehensible, would box them oflf with
his fore-paws. One would be sent with a slap a dozen paces in
the air; another w^ould get a long cut from the bear's sharp
claws, as he sat up like a boxer knocking over chUdren with a
mischievous playfulness that seemed more like fun than malice.
"Wag was there, as pert as the best hound in the brake, yelping,
running, biting, and making much noise, and yet keeping out of
danger. At length his turn came; a well-directed blow of that
big black paw sent him curled up like a kitten, and as senseless
as a rag, into his master's arms.

Poor Doctor ! this seemed to awaken him, and springing to his
feet he aimed a blow at the bear's head, that, had it taken effect,
would have cloven him in two, but a scarcely perceptible motion
of the same black paw sent the axe flying away among the canes,
while the Doctor, from the parrying of the blow, came over on
his face, and the bear, with a growl and crash, rushed off again
followed by the yelling pack.

A BEAR IN THE CAMP.

29

The Doctor, gathering himself together, picked up his axe, and
listened with me to the lessening crash of the chase as it turned
down the river, cry of dog, and crackle of brush, and now and then
the whoop of the negroes, who had apparently come up with the
chase. At length another pause, and then the peculiar notes of
the hounds, and the calls of the negroes, told us the bear was again
at bay, and, having recovered our breath, we started to overtake it.

As we came in view of the spot selected by Bruin for his fight,
we saw all the dogs gathered about the base of a tree, the elder
ones squatted on their haunches, and the younger ones jumping up
and snapping their teeth at the bear, who was comfortably seated
on a huge limb, balancing himself with the skill of a dancer and
the burlesque gravity of a comedian. The most urbane simplicity
marked his countenance ; he seemed of a character that would not
have harmed a child, and if I had not seen him a few minutes
before boxing the dogs with such vindictive vigour, I would have
been willing to have climbed the tree and put my arms around his
neck. He looked down at us condescendingly, now and then
winking his eye blandly, and then with a dexterous use of his paw,
he scratched his side, or rubbed his nose, when the flies tickled him.

Presently Mike came up, with his rifle on his arm. A glance
up in the tree, and he quietly took his seat on a log, remarking, as
he did so, " He bear."

" Oh ! what a murderous animal ! " said the Doctor. " Look at
my dog there ; how he has treated him."

A rifle shot, and Bruin fell inert to the ground, while all the
pack rushed in to insult him.

CHAPTER IV.

THE DANGERS OF FIRE-ITONTING.

" The pass was steep and ragged,
The wolves they howled and whined ;
But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass
And left the wolves behind."

Maoaulat.

We had moved our camp to the neighbourhood of a settler's
plantation, one of the few in this part of the world.

" Mike, what kind of night would this be for fire-shooting ? "
said the Doctor to that meditative Nimrod, who was busy sewing
up a moccasin by the light of the camp-fire, after a week of travel.

" So, so," replied Mike, without looking up.

" I am going, I think."

No answer. Mike put on the mended moccasin, and drew off
the other.

" Do you think we can kill anything ? "

" S'pose," replied Mike.

" Come, Charlie, let us try it for a little while." t

This was all a ruse on the part of Poke, in order to make Mike
think our great hunt was an unpremeditated affair, and thereby
increase the glory of killing so much game. It had been arranged
between us during the day, that we should try fire-hunting that
night. It promised to be a cloudy night, which was of great
advantage, as it prevented the game from seeing anything of the
hunters, and at the same time rendered their eyes more reflective
when exposed to the torch-light We had even gone so far as to
make our pitch-pine torches, and the whole preparation was com-
plete. It was a party of two — the Doctor and myself. There
would be rather more interest in getting the game alone; and
beside that, Mike's opinion on fire-shooting was well known, and

THE DANGERS OF FIRE-HUNTING. 31

we knew he would not go with us — so constant a hunter scorned
so primitive a snare as the one we proposed. The negroes we did
not want, for the fewer in a party the better. So, one of us taking
a gun, and the other carrying a torch, we left the camp.

The boys were chuckling together as they watched us go, the
dogs howled because they could not go with us, and Mike gave
one of his expressive coughs, that said as plainly as words, " Now
for it."

I We were soon outside of the glare of the camp-fire, the little
creek was crossed, and our torch flashed brightly on the taper
trunks of the pine-trees, the climbing vines, and the broad-leafed
plants that grew by the pools of water. There was no wind, and
walking in the pine woods, there was no sound. Once in a long
while, a crane, disturbed in his wanderings, would be seen stalking
away, with his red head high in air, like a sentry on duty ; or the
sudden motion of the underbrush would tell us that some one of
the many little harlequins of the wood, that gambol most when
men do sleep, had fled from this unusual spectacle of a moving
light. But no deer rewarded our search ; no bear showed us his
heavy coat.

" Faith," said the Doctor, " this romantic promenade is getting
somewhat long."

" Think of the deer, one buck will well pay us."

" Fudge ! if there was no one to laugh at us, I would have
turned back long ago. Give me the gun, and you take the light."

Accordingly we changed positions — I going ahead, carrying the
torch before me, in such a manner that it would throw the light
ahead as much as possible, and none on our persons, and the
Doctor received the gun, and took my place directly behind and
shaded by my person. The night had become still darker, and a
misty rain commenced falling. We had left the pine woods, after
walking a couple of miles, and had come into a grove of lower
timber. The long moss drooped in curtains, the odour of magnolias
burdened the air, and every minute a denser copse would force us
to turn aside from our route.

" Hush ! " whispered the Doctor suddenly, with a spasmodic
pull at my coat tail, " there 's a deer."

32 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

I was just wondering at this absence of deer, and could not
account for it, as it was a rare thing to go a mile in Florida without
seeing one.

" Where ? " I whispered ; " I don't see it."

"Hush! it has gone now; but we will see it in a moment
again."

"We advanced on tiptoe, both in body and expectation.

" There ! there ! " said the Doctor, pointing with his finger a
little distance to the left ; but the luminous spot was gone before
I hardly got my eye on it.

We were in the very place for deer. A heavy windfall lay
ahead of us, and the mingled trunks and twisted branches looked
like the chevaux defrise to some great encampment. The flicker-
ing light made the shadows move back and forth with a spectral
effect, as though dancing, and the hush of the forest was unbroken
by any sound. Every moment, I expected to see again the two
phosphorescent stars that indicate the deer's eyes, and then the
true shot would bring us the prize for our labour. It seemed a
long time in coming again.

"That deer must be very shy," whispered the Doctor, just above
his breath.

The next time, I saw it first. It was some distance ahead, and
there were two ; but before I could point them out to my comrade,
they had disappeared. Presently, we saw it on one side of us.

"Charlie, that's a wiU-o'-the-wisp," said Poke, in rather a
subdued tone, "or the devil; who ever heard of a deer going
around so ? "

" He is exami^ng you to see what manner of man you are."

" Perchance it is some spirit of a departed buck, leading us a
wild chase to destroy us."

" There it is, right behind me, as I live ! " ejaculated the
Doctor, in evident trepidation.

Sure enough, as I turned my head, I saw the two blue lights
that indicate the reflecting lenses of the eye. The Doctor was
taking aim, but I noticed it was not very steady. He pulled the
trigger — a dull snap announced a miss-fire. He pulled the other
trigger — it snapped in the same way. The gun was wet with rain.

THE DANGERS OF FIRE-HUNTING. 38

" Was anything ever so provoking ! " said Poke, as the eyes
vanished in the darkness.

" If it is the devil, he will have you now."

" How can you talk so ? " said the Doctor, with a strong accent
on the " can,"

" There is your deer, Poke, in the windfall," said I, as I caught
sight of the eyes moving rapidly along near the mass of timber
that lay heaped and knotted together.

" That 's no deer," said Poke ; " no cloven-foot could ever go
over that windfall that way. I would rather see the night hunts-
man of the Hartz Mountains than see those eyes again." As he
was speaking, I saw in the inky darkness ahead of us another pair
of eyes, and two or three pairs on the left. The truth flashed
on me. The scarcity of the deer, the proximity of the windfall,
the restlessness of those baleful eyes, all gave me the clew — the
wolves were around us.

A word to Poke, and the affair was explained, and we stood
still for consultation. We tried new caps on our gun ; but it was
of no use, the cones were saturated with water. We turned to-
ward the camp, but in our confusion we forgot the direction. To
heighten the misery of the scene, our torch was almost burnt out
— let that die, and the rest could be easily divined.

We were standing, at the time, under a grove of small pecan
trees, and at that instant a low snort was heard from the shadow
near us, like the cough of a dog.

Poke did not say a word ; but, dropping the gun, and seizing
a limb of one of the trees over his head, with an agility for which
I had never given him the least credit, elevated himself to the
crotch, about ten feet from the ground.

I did not want to do anything of the kind, of course not ; I
would rather have placed my back against a tree, and won a
glorious death in battle against my numerous foes ; but, alack ! for
a bad example, I dropped the torch, that broke in pieces in falling,
and, clasping the nearest tree, which happened to be a medium-
sized gum-tree, soon scrambled up to a place of safety. Lucky
was it for me that I had that torch in my hand, for when it fell
it lay scattered around the base of the tree, still flickering and

c

34 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

flashing in the darkness, and the animals that had surrounded us,

as they saw their prey escaping, rushed forward with an angry

noise ; they saw the glowing embers, and held back just long

enough to permit my escape. As I drew myself up on the first

limb, a rush of gratitude passed over my soul, and my feelings

were as warm as a child's. Nothing could be seen, for the sombre

forest shut out the little light there was in the atmosphere, but I

heard the pattering of feet beneath my fortress, like falling rain.

Back and forward they came and went, and snorting sounds and

champing teeth made the black night alive with imaginary shapes.

I wondered how it fared with the Doctor, yet dared not call, for

the uncertainty was less fearful than the reality might be. I

pictured him fallen, dragged back from his half-attained refuge,

and divided among the hungry pack ; and the very noises below

might be the mumbling of his bones,

" While their white tusks cmnched o'er his whiter skull,
As it slipp'd through their jaws when their edge grew dull."

At length I summoned courage, and called " Poke ! "

"Hulloa!" was the response — more grateful to my ear than
any sound in the world.

" How are you, my boy ? " I called again.

"Safe, thank the Lord!"

" What a disgraceful situation to be in, and how are we to get
out of it?"

" I will be grateful if I can only keep in it ; for this tree is so
small, that the wolves can almost reach me when they jump ; and,
as I climbed up, one caught my coat-tail, and tore it entirely off."

" Climb up higher, then."

" I can't ; the tree is so small that, when I get any higher, it
bends over, and lets me down — oh dear ! "

" Haven't you your pistol with you ? Try and shoot one, and
it may frighten them."

" Oh, dear, no ; there are hundreds of them. Just look at
them below ! "

I looked down, and surely I could see a drove of them. They
were evidently the grey wolf, for, in spite of the darkness, I could
detect their motions from their light coats.

THE DANGERS OF FIRE-HUNTING. 36

Poke suggested they were phantom wolves, and declared they
were all white.

All the fearful stories I had ever read came coursing through
my brain. I saw snow-buried huts snuffed out and ravished by
these prowlers, and heard the shriek of the child, thrown from the
sleigh by its fear-maddened mother, and many an old dream
re-shaped in my mind the terrors of nights of fever. Were we to
be tired out by their devilish patience ? Was one gang to relieve
another, until we wearily fell into their hot tainted jaws, to be
turned into woK meat ?

I shouted in the hope that some one might hear me ; but what
good to shout in that midnight forest ? I heard a voice — it was
Poke saying his prayers. I listened devoutly, but could offer none
myself.

When he had finished, I called to him. He answered faintly —

" What is it ? speak quickly ; I can't hold on much longer."

" Fire your pistol ; do try, it may bring some help, even if it
does not kill."

" I will try," answered Poke.

There was a momentary pause, and then the sharp crack of a
pistol was followed by the singing of a bullet close by my ear. By
the flash, I saw Poke, hatless, and almost coatless, hanging on to
the topmost branch of a young pecan, that bent with him like an
orange-tree under a heavy load of fruit. With the report of the
pistol, there was a scramble among the voracious crew at our feet ;
but they did not go away permanently, and were back in a
moment.

" Fire the other barrel, dear Poke, but try and fire it the other
way — point it down."

Bang ! sounded the pistol, and I heard a thump on the ground,
as the poor fellow threw away the now useless weapon,

" Hold on. Poke ; take heart, my dear boy."

" Oh, it is easy enough to say take heart, but when the tree
bends a little more than usual, I am within a foot of these hell-
hounds. Oh, dear ! "

At this moment I thought I saw a light flashing through the
foliage. A moment more, I was sure of it.

36 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Poke, Poke, they are coming — some one is coming."

" Where — where ! Oh, dear, I can't turn my head, lest I slip
off."

" There they come ; I see them — three torches, and men and
dogs."

" God bless them ! " I heard Poke say faintly.

I was afraid he was fainting. " Hold on. Poke," I said, and
screaming to the men, I called them to hurry. On they came, at
a run. I recognised them as they came up with their torches
flashing through the woods ; they were Jackson and his men. He
had been in our camp only the day previous, and told us he had
a sheep farm in this neighbourhood. " Quick, this way," I
shouted—" the wolves ! the wolves ! " He answered me. How
blessed a thing was the sound of a human voice in our necessity !
They came under the tree we were in.

" Hulloa there ! where are you ? where are the wolves ? " he
shouted in his stentorian tones.

"Dare's de sheep I's bin himtin' all dis bressed night,"
exclaimed a negro who accompanied Jackson on his search.

I looked around, and there was Jackson's flock of sheep,
staring blandly at us up in the trees, and at their master, by turn.
It had been their eyes we had seen in the darkness.

And there was Jackson see-sawing on a fallen tree — hiccough-
ing, and laughing and crying by turns — and there were the negroes,
and they called in the sheep, " Ho ! ho ! ho ! Oh laws a maussy,
did I ever — ho ! ho ! ho ! ho ! — wolves, oh laws a maussy ! "

Poke slid down the tree he was in, picking up his coat-tail,
that had been torn off by a broken limb in his hurried ascent,
sighing :

" O that I had the wings of a dove ! "

CHAPTEK V.

THE PLANTATION HOUSE OF "FAR AWAY."

" Ofttimes, in travelling through the west,
The stranger finds a Hoosher's nest :
In other words, a Buck-eye cabin
Just big enough to hold Queen Mab in."

Jackson, the cattle-raiser, whose timely arrival had driven away
the phantom wolves, was a fair example of many a planter. He
was tall and slim in figure, sauntering in gait, wearing a black
moustache, and hair so long as to be confined behind his ears.
His hazel eyes were large and expressive, flashing with excite-
ment, or quizzical with mirth, his face was sallow, his lips thin
and stained with tobacco, his dress loose, and extravagant in colour
when he was where he could select it. His manners were courtly
and a little ornate. He was wealthy, after his kind ; that is to say,
he had dogs and horses without number, and " men-servants and
maid-servants were born in his house," and he owned, by inherit-
ance, acres of land enough to have made him a duke in Ehineland ;
and yet for ready money he was poor as Peter the Hermit. Debts
he had many, but they did not depress him ; friends by hundreds,
each ready to be his security for a million, yet could not have
loaned him a hundred dollars in a month. He lived in a low,
badly-built, wind-cracked, fenceless, vineless, paintless mansion
in the Pine Lands, yet the proudest chief of the McGregors could
not have equalled the courteous manner with which he welcomed
the stranger to his home, and made him his friend. No matter
for the rickety table ; he scorned to mend it, and no one saw its
defects, it was so well presided over. He never alluded to the
food he asked you to eat, and you never saw it was only pork,
sweet potatoes, and corn bread. He was bountiful with wine,
when he had it, and with whisky at all times, lavish of command,

38 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

and never by any possibility did any labour that could be either
deferred or avoided. Yet, for all that, he was an ardent hunter.
Strange to say, lazy people love to fish or hunt, and Andrew
Oglethorpe Jackson loved the latter. Nor bush, nor savannah, nor
river, nor heat, nor rain deterred him. He would ride where
mortal man could ride, just for the fun of the hunt. So we camped
by the side of his house, in compliance with an invitation from
the proprietor, to spend a few days with him in pursuit of the
chase.

Jackson's palace was of one story and two wings, and the
whole building was raised from the ground about three feet by
means of wooden posts, which left a pleasant abiding-place beneath
for broods of young negroes that constantly lay in this novel
kennel, looking out like young puppies. The cypress grass grew
sparsely in the white sandy soil around the house and its few
out-buildings. Fences there were none, but the overshadowing
live oaks, with their trailing moss, gave an air of grace to the
establishment that man never attempted to improve. Some
hundred yards from the house were the negro quarters. Small
one-room cabins, with a piazza extending across the whole front,
and open underneath. A few fowls lay in the shade with a dozen
negro children, and the old negroes filled the porch, looking happy
and free, though they were all slaves.

" HuUoa ! " cheered the lord of the manor, as we drew up to
the house a few days after our misadventure with the sheep ;
" Glad to see you at Far Away. The door is never shut, and the
bottle never corked, and we will make you at home for a year and
a day. You Tom ! Cuff! You Cuff! Hannibal ! here, run caU the
boys to take the horses and tie up the hounds. Eun, all of you !
Fine day this for hunting. Bring out some glasses, Melissa!
Dogs can nose well to-day. Lively there ! "Well, bring some tin
cups, if there are no glasses, you lazy huzzy I Let me get off my
wet boots. Here, George Washington, puU off these boots."

The negro boy turned his back to his master, and spreading his
legs apart, prepared to seize the boots between his knees in the
usual country fashion.

" Liff up your foot, maussa."

THE PLANTATION HOUSE OF " FAR AWAY." 39

" Lift it up yourself, you lazy nigger," replied the master.

The negroes ran, our dogs howled acquaintance with the dogs
of the place, the little nigs looked on from every out-of-the-way
corner, and with shout, and laugh, and much confusion, we soon
had our tent pitched by the spring, the ponies tethered, and every-
thing well regulated about us. Then came a good dinner, cooked
in one of the little disconnected kitchens so favoured by the true
darky cook, who, when not engaged in stirring the pepper pot or
turning the corn-bread, stands in her red bandana in the doorway,
with her arms akimbo, looming as large as the wonderful fat
woman in the Museum. We brought game, and Jackson had
cooks,' and we all dined well, and then a glass of good old peach
brandy from his own still carried our minds to other lands, and
sent our tongues travelling all around the world for adventures.

It was dark as we finished the bottle, and Jackson unlocked his
closet for another. I believe that wine-closet was the only thing
that was locked on the place. The negroes had crawled out of
their curious retreats, and were lying around in groups. The
sheep-drivers had come in from the folds, and the tinkling of tiny
bells announced that the sheep and cows were penned for the
night. The camp-fire was lit, pipes were smoking, Jackson was
sitting against one of the pack-saddles, and his daughter was
reclining against his knees. His daughter was a brunette of
sixteen, and her mother was dead, it was said, many years ago.

" He was a gentleman," said Jackson, pursuing a description
he had been giving of some one living on the coast. " He never
took an insult, and never gave one, sir ; what more could be said
of any man ? "

" And he guv dis chile a dollar Christmas day — course he 's a
gememan," struck in Hoppin Lem, the planter's favourite servant,
who, squatted on his haunches a few yards behind his master,
drank in all the conversation, and joined in the laugh, with the
low " yah-e — ah-ah-ee ! " of the negro.

" Hold your tongue, you black rascal ! " said his master.

" Was it not he who shot young Travers in a duel at the Mobile
races ? " asked the Doctor.

" Of course it was, sir ; and did it as bravely as any man ever

40 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

did. Yet that duel ruined him ; he has been a broken-down man
ever since."

" How is that ? "

" Why, you see, sir, they had a dispute about the winning
horse. He said that Centipede came in first, and Travers replied
that if he had not staked so much money on Centipede he would
have seen straighter. This was a 'reflection on his honour, sir, that
no one was expected to stand. No, sir, he couldn't stand it. He
challenged Travers, and Travers fell at the first fire. It wouldn't
have been so bad, but Travers' old mother got wind of the duel
from some of those Puritan meddlers, and came riding down to
the field with her grey hair all streaming, and when she saw her
son dead she cursed him. I wasn't there, but those that were
there said it was a tough thing to see. He never got over it, sir.
It was a windy afternoon, about sunset, when the duel occurred,
and to the present time, when there comes up a hard wind about
that time of day, the poor fellow rides off as if the devil was after
him, and will not speak to man or beast."

" What a diseased mind a man must have to fight a duel ! " said
the Doctor.

" How can he help it, sir — is he going to have his honour
impugned, his character insulted ? He would fall so low that no
one would speak to him."

" But he does not mend his character by killing a friend, and
haunting his conscience ? "

" That is an accident inseparable from society. There are
certain wrongs which the pistol alone will redress, and the duel
puts the feeble gentleman on an equality with the greatest bully."

" No," said the Doctor, his impassible nature gradually warming,
" it lowers the gentleman to a bully. If he gets shot, his honour dies
with him ; if he kills, he is a broken man — either way the wrong
is doubled ; and it is, after all, the bully that supports the insti-
tution."

" No, sir; it is the gentleman that supports the system, and is
supported by it. What else gives the navy and army its character
and holds it together, sir — what protects the weak, and cows the
labouring poor whose strength would make him over-reaching —

THE PLANTATION HOUSE OF " FAR AWAY." 41

what gives a tone to the gallantry of the South, sir, but a power
that punishes insult ? "

" And murders its own children ! " added the Doctor.

" Murder ! do you call it murder, sir ? My own father was
shot in a duel, but he died like a man. Where's the poltroon
that don't resent an injury ? — as he lives, I 'd spit on him. There
is not a girl in Florida that would dance with Alexander Pell
after he got slapped in the face without killing the man that struck
him. Is a man a dog, that he should suffer this ? "

Jackson's manner was wild, and he gesticulated with his long
arms like a phantom. The Doctor's blue eye was kindling in the
fire-light. We looked for a war of words that might even amount
to a specimen of the battle they were discussing, when the Doctor,
with one of his usual strong transitions, cut off the discussion with
a favourite couplet :

" A wink to a blind horse is as good as a nod ;
Your faithful servant, Ollapod."

Jackson turned his flashing eyes on the Doctor, his lids slightly
contracted like a man in doubt as to another's meaning ; it was
evident he was reading the Doctor, and the bland face turned
toward him was like an open page with blue marginal illumination.

" Where do you reside, Doctor Pollock ? " he asked, after a
moment's pause, and in the indifferent tone assumed by the Doctor.

" I was bom in Virginia, and inherited a plantation of a
hundred negroes," replied the Doctor, answering the planter's
thoughts, and not his question.

A long pause followed. We watched the light wood crackle,
and the big particles of fire climbing up into the canopy of woods
on the current of hot air, reflecting brief circles of light on the
foliage above, and then going out in blackness. The Doctor
resumed his pipe. Mike pondered, cross-legged, puffing at his
cigarettes, and the boys talked among themselves in under-tones.

" This won't do, gentlemen ! Mike, hand me that bottle,"
called out Jackson, rousing himself. " One drink all around, and
now for to-morrow's hunt. What shall it be, deer or turkey ? "

'• Or sheep ? "

" That 's a shame, Mike ! " laughed Jackson.

48 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

"Don't let him quiz you on that mishap, gentlemen; older
hunters than you have fared as badly. Did you ever hear of my
blunder in fire-hunting ? "

Of course we had not.

" Then I 'U tell it to you."

JACKSON'S STORY OF A FIRE-HUNT.*

" It came about this way. I was up country looking around
for a good two-year-old to run at Charleston races, when I met my
old comrade, Stockton. We had been chums together at Princeton,
as thick as two cats in a bag, sometimes studying, sometimes court-
ing, and then we were good friends. When we had nothing else
to do we quarrelled ; it is a sure sign of a good friend when he
loves you enough to quarrel with you. Strangers don't care a
picayune, and won't quarrel about you any way. Stockton had
settled down to a sober life, owned a pew in the church, and as
many little carroty-haired tokens as you could stand up endwise in
a ten-acre lot. / was — well, about the same sort of fellow as when
a boy, only the devil had covered me up with his wicked ways.

" The first thing after seeing Stockton that was proposed was
a fire-hunt, and a fire-hunt it was. Dark still night — you could
hear a peeper squeak a mile ofif, and run your nose against a cotton
bale without seeing it. * Just the night,' said Stockton. ' Just the
night,' says L * Come, Jake,' says he to his son, a boy about
sixteen, long and lank like his father, and always ready to poke
away fyom home. Accordingly, all things ready, we trailed ofiF
into the woods, and took a course along the sea-side, thinking to
find more deer.

" I led the way with the frying-pan on my shoulder, keeping
the fire in it well up with pitch-pine knots, Stockton right behind
with his rifle, and Jake keeping within sight in the rear. We had
gone about a mile or so and the pan began to grow heavy, when I
suddenly felt Stockton's hand on my shoulder, compelling me to
stop, and then the crack of his rifle from under my arm told me
that he had fired at a deer that I had not seen. * That deer shone

^ For this tale I am indebted to the graceful pen of my friend, Goillermo.

THE PLANTATION HOUSE OF " FAR AWAY." 43

up bright anyhow/ he said, in a low self-satisfied tone, as he pro-
ceeded to load his gun, * only to get blown out.'

" * Hadn't you better secure your game before loading ? '

"'Ha! ha!' said he, 'that fellow will not leave there until
there is another set of legs under him. But come, I 'm ready.'

" So saying, we started in the direction of our prize ; when, to
our no little joy and surprise, we beheld another blue light appa-
rently just beyond the spot where lay our fallen deer. Stockton
again fired, and out went the light.

" ' I first shot the doe,' he remarked, while deliberately loading
his rifle, ' and the buck would not leave her.'

" Again we started, but had not taken a dozen steps, when lo !
and behold, another eye appeared.

" ' It 's deuced strange,' said Stockton quickly, as he raised his
gun to his shoulder, ' that I have seen hut one eye each time.'

" ' Perhaps they have all accidentally been standing sidewise
to you,' I replied.

" ' Side or front,' he answered, * I '11 black that fellow's eye for
him.' Crack went the rifle, and down went the eye. We had
now arrived at the place where we supposed the first deer to have
fallen, and made search for it, but nowhere was the game to be
found.

" Turning from the place, imagine our surprise at again behold-
ing that single fiery ball glaring upon us with the same identical
motion of the others. Stockton mechanically raised his rifle, but
paused as he did so. As for me, nothing prevented my throwing
down the fire-pan and giving ' leg-bail ' but the disagreeable cer-
tainty of not being able to retrace my steps. I ran back in
memory to childhood's hours, and recalled the old nursery tales
I had heard of bears, lions, and hobgoblins, until I was satisfied
beyond a doubt that Stockton had been shooting at the devil !
I was, however, aroused from my reverie by his exclaiming, ' Ha !
I am a pretty fool. Something is the matter with my rifle, and
I 've been shooting all this time at the same deer ! Here, give me
yours.' I did so, but could not help thinking that the deer was a
greater fool by far if he had stood to so many shots.

" The eye was now hid behind some bushes, but soon appeared

44 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

again, when Stockton, after a long and deliberate aim, discharged
his piece. The eye immediately disappeared, and he turned
toward me, triumphantly nodding his head and exclaiming —

" * He '11 not show that infernal eye of his again, I guess, for
I put that ball square into it,'

" I made no reply, but the term ' inf&nvaX eye * seemed to me
to be very appropriate. I had now placed the 'pan' upon the
ground, and was arranging the fire, when Stockton uttered a sup-
pressed exclamation of surprise and disappointment, which caused
me to look up. Down went the fire, gun, and everything else ;
my mouth gradually opened until my dinner was perceptible, and
I felt satisfied, from the progress my hair was making, that I
should soon be relieved of my hat, for there was that little ball of
fire moving very slowly with the same singular motions of the
others.

" * Stockton,' whispered I, as soon as my feelings would permit
me, ' we are a set of jackasses, for as certain as fate, we have been
chasing the devil to-night.'

"He turned toward me with a half comical, half inquisitive
look, and finally remarked —

" ' Well, hang me if you 're not complimentary, very. No,
that is not the devil, but I am very well satisfied the devU is in
me. Here, take this rifle, and when he again shows his eye do
you let him have it I '11 hold the light.'

" I could not refuse, and so I took the gun, and was slowly
and reluctantly raising it to my shoulder, when a noise behind me
attracted my attention, and looking around, I perceived Jake con-
ducting in a most discreditable manner, twisting and squirming
and holding on to his stomach as if he had the colic, and all the
while making a noise like choking.

"'I wish you would be kind enough to stop that infernal
clatter!' said Stockton sharply, and adding immediately, 'There
he is — now give it to him — right in the eye.'

" I was again raising the rifle to my shoulder, but was a second
time deterred from my purpose by a peal or yeU of laughter, from
Jake, sufficient to have frightened every deer within ten miles of
us. For Stockton and myself, however, there was no such thing

THE PLANTATION HOUSE OF " FAR AWAY." 46

as laugh, but, on the contrary, we were both rather inclined to
raise a row than be laughed at, and Stockton, grasping his son by
the shoulder, in a passion exclaimed —

" * What the devil is all this tomfoolery about ? Say ! Tell me
this instant, sir, or I '11 " boot " you clear home.'

" * Ha ! ha ! 0 Lordy ! ha ! ha ! Amelia Lighthouse ! 0
Lordy ! Did I ever ? Five miles — ough — my poor sides ! '

" My curiosity was now excited to the utmost, and I turned to
Stockton for an explanation. I shall not attempt to describe the
expression of his countenance. Mirth and anger were never so
well mingled before.

" * Jackson,' said he, finally, ' we are a pair of asses, and have
been shooting at the revolving light on the Amelia Lighthouse,
five miles off l'

" Then suddenly dropping the fire-pan, he ran to where his son
was kicking and screaming about on the ground. He picked him
up by the coat collar, shaking him into silence, and then said,
* Now look here, if you say one word about this at home, as sure
as I 'm your father, you shall never fire a gun as long as you live.' "

As the laughter and comments on Jackson's story subsided,
one of the negro boys said —

" Wish maussa hunt dat air varmint wha 's a takin* off de
lambs so ; 'specs as him hab no lamb 'tall soon."

" Lost any to-day ? "

" 'Spec a los' two, and two afore yesterday, and gwine to lose
two dis night, kase all sheep come in quick, bein' wild : shore
sign dat."

" What is it, do you think ? "

" Painter, for true ! I 'se seen his tracks ! "

" Why don't you let your boys sleep by the sheep-pen ? " I
asked of Jackson.

** I am afraid, sir, I would have to pen them in," he replied ;
" and then, if it was a panther, he might take the negro, and he is
worth more than the sheep."

" Then why don't you shoot the beast ? "

" I have hunted her till I am tired, and it only ends in her

46 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

killing my dogs, and keeping out of shot herself. She will get
tired here by and by, and then will go further down the coast.
She has raised a young one here this season, for in the summer
one of the boys, while coming up the river in a canoe, saw her
swimming across with her kitten in her mouth. He could have
come up with her then, but she growled so fiercely that he was
afraid, and made a fool of himself."

" 'Specs anybody make a fool of hisself, when painter want to
climb in de boat!" replied a self-conscious voice in the back-
ground.

"We had Mike here last year to hunt the same panther,
I think, but I believe he got whipped ; at all events, he went out
one day, and didn't come back since."

" Mike smiled his peculiar smile, which meant, like the Germans'
' Yah wohl,' anything, according to the speaker's intent, but said
not a word.

" Tell us of that hunt, old father of Diana," said the Doctor.

"Where, sir, is my panther skin you promised?" asked
Jackson.

"Painter is an oncommon onsartin varmint," was Mike's
musing reply, as he put his brawny arms around his knees, and
rocked himself backward and forward like a China Mandarin.

" I should think that he was onkimin sartin, for he comes here
regularly once a year."

" Wall, you see. Colonel, this war the way I was done fur that
time, and when yer heem it, you '11 say that it was skeery, and no
mistake."

" A story — a story ! " exclaimed Miss Jackson. I leaned for-
ward to see the speaker, and he began his tale.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PANTHER S CUB.

Marcus. I have dogs, my lord,
Will rouse the proudest panther in the chase,
And climb the highest promontory top.

"Well, it was airly mornin' when I started out after that air
painter. Small sign I had to steer by, only the hearin' tell that
there was a painter 'bout. But it had been showering o'ernight,
and so trailin' was easy enough, and yer could see every stalk of
grass that had been shook, let alone the tracks a varmint the size
of a painter would leave. I tuck down to Spring Creek, and
followed it e'enmost to the barrens that stretch toward the salt
water; then I fetched a turn north, and struck inter the big
swamp that comes out of the Suwanee. Here I saw an aU-fired
big bar's track, and slathers of deer, and a show of gobblers, but
no painter whatsumever. Got a gobbler and tuck breakfast, and
then kept on. Struck the branches of the St. John that arternoon.
Good painter ground here, tearin' big swamp, and all-fired high
cottonwoods and sycamores. No signs, and my dog was gin out,
so we shantied under a grape-vine waitin' for daylight. Heerd a
painter holler in the night, but knowed it was a young one by the
voice, and it was off the wrong way. Mornin' come, and I got
around through little Ammaninac Swamp, and by night time had
come purty near whar I fust started from, having made a purty
tolerable circle, and nairy a painter. Sez I, ' Those cusses at the
sheep-farm have been foolin' me, and tuck wild-cat for painter.'

" So arter soundin' around to see where the buildin's lay, and
whar the sheep-pen was, Yowler and I lay down together, and
were doin' some tall sleepin', when I heerd a soft kind o' cr)ring
down the woods. I knowed it in a minnit; it war the same

48 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

painter — he hadn't been outside of my circle at all, the dratted
cuss ! He had just been a layin'-to for another haul on the sheep-
pen, and so I hadn't struck his trail. I kept quiet, thinkin' he
would come up toward the improvements, and I could tickle him,
but he reether seemed to move off. Arter a while I heerd him
purrin' lik, and then I knew he had something to eat — fawn, like
'nough, or some small animal. This guv me a mean opinion of
this painter, for your rael snortin' big fellars don't stoop to small
fry, but live on deer, sheep, hogs, or sich like. Wall, mornin' come
on, and when it bruck enough to see a meetin'-house, I pushed on,
but the painter had moved off. I found a sheepskin all rolled up,
and I knew then why he had been purring. The painter had
caught a sheep on the range some time in the day, and not eaten
it, so he didn't have need for more fodder all night. I found the
trail, and then sez I, ' Now, Mr. Painter, we '11 see who 's best at
welkin'.' Yowler tuck the trail, and along we bowled for about
an hour, when all of a sudden I heerd Yowler, who was some ways
ahead, stop his yelpin', and back he come, with somethin' arter
him, tight as he could buckle. As they come up I let drive at
what was arter him kind o' promiscuously, for it wasn't fairly
dawn yet. The shot hit, I knew, for the varmint held up, and
then ran off.

" ' Now,' says I ter myself, ' isn't a painter a mighty onsartin
varmint? Here is one that gets wounded, and yet don't pitch
inter a feller. Who 'd ha' looked for sich a coward in a painter ? '
Then, after loadin', I put on Yowler again, and we bowled along,
not quite so lively as afore, for Yowler was a leetle kind o' shy,
but still we did some pretty loud goin'.

" ' Whar 's that air painter ?' sez I to myself ; ' did any painter
ever run so far before ? ' It come on to be light, and I could see the
trail, and it was an all-fired big trail. Presently it got into a cane-
brake, and then tuck a turn. Yowler guv tongue. I could hear
the canes rattle as he jumped, but the painter broke out on the fur
side, and made a bee-line agin right straight for the Ouithlacouchee.
" When we got to the river it was noon. I looked down the
bank, and saw the tracks along in the mud where the varmint had
been lookin' for a good place to cross. Presently I could see where

THE PANTHER'S CUB. 49

he had laid down in the mud, and then for the fust time I saw it
was a she-painter with sucking young ones. As near as I could
make out by the marks in the mud she had two cubs lugging at
her, the rest of her tits being of no account. Then the track went
in a little further under some alders, and there she had laid down
agin, this time on her side, and, Jehosaphat ! thar by her side, as
clare as daylight, was a dozen little tracks of a cub she had been
a-carryin' in her mouth all that way. She had tuck to these
bushes to give it some milk, and was goin' with it into the big
swamps t'other side of the river. It was all as clare as if a school-
master had writ. That war the reason why the she-painter didn't
come on to fight when I fired at her ; she wanted to git her pups
clare from the dog ; that 's the natur of a painter, and an oncommin
considerin' natur it is, too. My 'pinion of that painter rose some.
Arter the trail left the alder bushes, it went right into the river.

" I soon found a log big enough for me and Yowler, and, puttin*
the dog on one eend on 't, so as to save him from the alligators, I
slung my rifle on my back, and paddled across. I soon found the
trail, and went jogging along pretty slow, for it was a tough kind
of swamp, when in a minute or so I heerd Yowler burst out in a
clear yell. I knowed he seed the painter, and I hurried on as well
as I could, but, Jimminy Peters ! that painter, when he made a
jump across the fallen logs, went as fur in one minute as I in ten.
I soon come to where I heerd the dog break out so, and I seed
somethin' kind o' curious. The old tracks went straight on south,
but there were a set of new tracks that came right back on top
the old ones, and just where the dog had come up they had turned
off to the east.

" ' Wall, that 's queer ! " sez I to myself. ' If that 's the same
varmint, she 's what I 'm arter, and if she aint she 's just as good,
for I calkelate that one painter is just as good as another, providin'
allers she 's as big.' So I cheered on Yowler, and we went on the
side track. Now over logs, then in a mucky place, and now
through the water, that dog and I stuck to that painter like two
wood-ticks. Arter going a little to the east the track went back
to the river, and went across about a mile above where it had
crossed before. ' Wall, that 's queer,' sez I to myself. There 's

D

60 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

somethia' onnateral in that painter. She won't tree, and she goes
in a straight line to t'other eend of creation, and now she 's going
back agin. "Wall, here goes,' sez I, and I took another log and
ferried back agin to the north shore. There was the trail as clare
as mud, and big as an alligator's. Up the bank and away inter the
woods we went. There 's no sucking of cubs now. Yowler ia a
hurryin' her along a leetle too fast for any sich family doin's. So
on we went right north. * Jerusalem ! ' sez I to myself, ' keep on
this way, old steamboat, much longer, and you '11 be back where
you started from, and I '11 drive you into Colonel Jackson's pen,
and shut the door on you ! '

" 'Bout by the Black Mud Creek there 's a flat of land that had
been overflowed and had dried off, and as we come here I seed the
painter had jumped through, and every time she had jumped she
had come up to her belly in the mud, and once or twice had come
BO low that her neck and chin had sunk in the mud. Thinks I,
that must put the cub under in the mud, yet I don't see the marks
of the little rat.

" Jist then we got through the creek, and I seed whare the
old painter had lain down on the bank with her side to the
river.

" Thar were her tracks as clare as Gospel, but whar was the
cub ? The cub was gone ! Whar had it gwine to ? It was clare
it hadn't gwine anywhare that Yowler and I had been ; it had been
left on the fur side of the Ouithlacouchee. It tuck just a minute
of thinkin*, and it was all clare. The bee-line she had made, the
two full tits, the bee-line back agin; what a cursed fool I was
not to have seen through it afore I had come so fur !

" The painter had littered two cubs somewhar near whar I had
seen her in the mornin' ; she had been chased, and knew the parts
was onsafe ; she had made up her mind to carry her cubs into the
Ouithlacouchee swamp, and had started with one when Yowler
struck her trail. That was the reason she sent Yowler back ; that
was the reason she wouldn't tree ; and jist keepin' in sound of the
dog's yelp, had gone right to the swamp, hid her cub, come back
on her back track to ketch the dog and lead him away, till she
could go back fur t'other cub, bein sartin' that the hound and his

THE PANTHER'S OUB. 61

fool of a master were away from her cub, and were chasin' her
about.

"Soon as I had reasoned this out I called Yowler in, and
turnin' about, struck for that ere swamp straight. Yowler come
on behind, and about two hours afore sunset I struck the river,
ferried across, took up the old trail in the swamp, and was busy
pickiu' it out over logs and under vines whar the moss grew so
thick it didn't leave room for a track. The scent was cold, and
Yowler could jist ketch it, but what with puttin' our two noses
together we fetched up in a big windfall, and jist in the snarl of
trees, whar the splinters and branches, and growin' vines was the
wickedest, there was a little bed of strips of bark and leaves, and
the young painter cub was curled up, dreamin' of supper-time.
He was about as big as two tomcats tied together by the tails, and
his natur', when I come to prick him up, was not quite so sweet.
He meowed, and sneezed, and about chawed up my coat-sleeve
afore I could bag him, which I did by takin' off my huntin' coat,
jammin' his head into one of the sleeves, and buttonin' and tyin'
him in bag like.

"When I got all this done, I thought of the old painter, and
what" she would say to me when she come home with her t'other
young 'un. The more I calkelated, the more it seemed onpleasant,
for though the varmint was so perlite when she was outwittin'
me, I reckoned that she wouldn't be so much so when the boot
got on t'other leg. Fust I thought I would get out of that air
windfall, and wait for the old lady on the bank of the river, what
we could have a clare field, fur I knew it was sartin she would be
arter me, and I 'd a leetle reether the fight wouldn't be fit out in
that swamp. So I put out for the river, and when I got thar took
a clare spot, and puttin' the cub down for the stakes, sat down to
wait fur the other party.

" The wind was still, and I could hear around a considerable
distance. A few big frogs, and once in a while an alligator, let on
for music in the river. Now and then an owl hooted in the bottom
land, and the cranes goin' out to sea were honkin' away overhead,
but I couldn't hear any painter, and accordin' to my calkelations
there would be some howlin' when she cum home and found her

62 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

pappoose bagged. Yowler began to get restless, and watched the
swamp as if he knowed what was coinin'. The woods begun to
get blacker, the sun had gone down, and some black clouds bellowed
overhead. It looked like a squall

" ' Why don't she cum ? ' sez I to myself ; ' or maybe she 's sich
a knowin' varmint she 's waitin' for night, to chaw me up com-
pletely.' Once I thought I seen her eyes in the edge of the bushes,
but it turned out to be some rotten fire- wood. ' Jerusalem ! ' sez
I, ' why don't she cum ! ' It got to be so dark I couldn't see the
sights on my rifle, and I thought it all over to myself. I own up
I felt kind a mean like. This stealin' young cubs out of their
nests is onnateral, any way. It is good enough for an Injin, but 's
not Christian-like. I could see that old painter comin' home, with
her second cub in her mouth. I could tell jist how she felt
I could see her big nostril open when she smelt my tracks about
her nest ; and when she saw her cub was gone, Lord ! what a ciy
she would give. I 'd given a bearskin to put that cub back, and
then have fit it out with a clare conscience. But 'twas no use
a-talkin' ; it couldn't be done, nohow. All that 's left when the
deal is made is to stand up to yer hand. ' But,' thinks I to my-
self, * ef it *8 right to shoot the old painter, it is right to ketch her
kitten.' That's the natur of man; ef they do anything wrong
they reason to themselves to make it right.

" ' Jerusalem ! ' sez I, as it got blacker and the fire-flies cum
about, * why don't she cum ? * Jist then, in lookin' around me, I
sees a light shine on the other shore a little way below. I knew
right off it was an Injin camp, and reckoned it was part of Tiger
Tail's band, that had cum up from below. Nasty varmints that
band was — worse en painters any day. Howsumever, Injins or no
Injins, they will help fight the painter ; so I rolled a drift-log into
the water, and once more paddled over the river. I looked behind
once or twice to see if the painter wasn't a comin' over, too, and
climbin' on the log behind me, but it was only the mullet jumpin'
in the river, and so I got over with the cub all right, and put right
down the bank for the camp. Yer better believe I didn't let grass
grow under me. As I cum up to the fire-light, I saw who the
Injins were ; they were friendly enough that summer, but mighty

ty,^3t \y^'-wjL?i'j^^g0^i/ jg^N^-'^'^tefea'jS^ ■

'.a^

THE PANTHER'S CUB. 53

mean cusses, and had served me many a dirty trick. Their camp
was just in the edge of the timber, and the squaws were cooking
supper in a pot, while about a dozen men sat around in a ring,
lookin' on and suckin' their thumbs, wrapped up in their blankets,
just as if it was cold. As I cum up, I looked back on my track,
and whar the sandy bank lay agin the water, whar it war bright-
ened up by the sunset, I see the she-painter cumin' like greased
lightnin'.

" I walked composed-like and slow into the Injin camp, and
right through the ring, puttin' the painter cub, all rolled up in the
coat, down in the middle, and then goin' to the fur side, set down
as far off as convenient.

" ' Injin Mike is welcome,' said a young man, who I made out
by his paint to be Tiger Tail's son, wavin' his hand like to me,
and keepin' his eye inquirin' like on my coat, that was a wrigglin'
about on the ground.

" * Injin Mike is a hunter, and he brings a hunter's gift,' sez I,
slow-like, and speakin' Injin ; ' he was afeerd his Injin brother
would be in want of some game.'

" I knew this would rile 'em some, for Tiger Tail was allers a
big hunter, and he didn't like me, for I could take the feather out
of his hair any day. I war goin' on to say more, but I didn't have
time, fur jist then I heard a thump in the bushes, and the she-
painter cum in as ef she was flyin' j ears back, eyes like candles —
she was some. She tuck the young chief before she landed with
a sort o' flyin' box with her paw, and he never riz hair arterwards,
for she tuck scalp and all.

" The lousy devils rolled over like prairie dogs — the pot upsot,
the coals flew around, the squaws yelled, the dogs pitched in, and
afore any one could get out his knife, that painter did some tall
tearin'. They rolled over and over, yellin', bitin', swearin' ; some
got hit fur the painter, fur they couldn't see whar to strike, and
thar was no room for shootin'. Lord, Colonel, it would hur done
you good to have seen that air scrimmage. I got behind a tree
and larfed 'till it hurt, and when I see they had well-nigh fit out
Yowler and me, thinkin' they might blame us, stepped out and I
hain't seen them Injins, nur that air painter since, though I 've

54

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

heer'en tell that Tiger Tail ware lookin' for me about the Mecaco
this summer."

" And if he catches you, you will not be able to raise hair
either," said Jackson.

" Ef he does," answered Mike, laughing.

" But what became of the other sucking cub after the Indians
had killed its mother and brother ? "

" I went back arter it that veiy same night, and found it jist
whar the she-painter had left it when she tuck my trail. It was
a-meowin' away in the woods all alone, and I felt kind a sorry for
it, and carried it into the Fort at Tampa Bay and guv it to the
Colonel thar, whar it growed up, and got so big and sassy that it
licked the hull fort one day and then cleared."

CHAPTER VII.

THE DEER HUNT.

"A hundred dogs bayed deep and strong,
Clattered a hundred steeds adong."

Scott.

The light broke early on the planter's shackley house, and the
smouldering brands of our camp-fire, the morning after Mike's
panther story. It may not have been early, though our late hours
of the evening before made it seem so to me, and I silently banned
the sleepless hound and " the cock's shrill clarion, and the echoing
horn," which ushered in the light, and drew us to our feet, yawning
and drinking in the misty sights and sounds. Away up on the
top of a live oak-tree a mocking-bird was gushing over in song.
Sometimes trilling a few notes, descending an octave it would
laugh and cry. Then it would sound the call of the quail twice
repeated, and then tinkling, laughing, gurgling, it poured out the very
music of mirth. Too happy to sit stiU it fluttered up in the air a
dozen feet or more, trilling its merriest lay, then, descending again
to the branch from whence it rose, it syllabled love's deepest tones.
The sheep and cattle were crowding out of the pens, and
spreading over the open woods. The horses were whinnying for
their food. Our boys were lighting a fire, and preparing meat,
singing and laughing. There were calls to negroes with fancy
names, and shouted answers ; guns were discharged and reloaded,
and saddles examined ; a dozen things were wanted that could not
be found, or when found were not in a condition to be used. The
little nigs were running to the spring for water, or to the shed for
com, or around the grounds, merely for the fun of running and
shouting. They were all dressed alike, in long, brown cotton
shirts, so one sex could not be distinguished from the other.

56 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

Aunty Blaze, after seeing the table was spread, and the meat
cooked, brought out an immense corn-cake, on a wooden turner,
and with a commendable feeling of pride threw it down on the
table, right side up, steaming hot, and brown as rosewood. Turn-
ing to go, she stumbles against a little black girl coming with the
sugar-bowl; a smart slap applied with the cake-turner propels the
child forward a yard, and elicits a yell of disapprobation, and the
sugar-bowl is dropped to the floor.

The Doctor loads his double-barrelled gun, and explains its
new-fashioned lock to Miss Jackson, who comes out arrayed in a
tight-fitting cap and bodice, and her eyes lit up with the anticipa-
tion of the chase. Mike slowly and methodically wipes out his
rifle with dry flax, and every moment is seen eating some hidden
remains of last night's meal, which he has stowed away on his
person, and which are to form more than half his breakfast. We
eat our huiTied meal — it might be called a passover, as no one
takes time to sit — and then ride oflf down the woods.

Jackson and Mike are leading the van, Lou and the Doctor
still side by side, and there goes a negro on a marsh tackey, the
pony of the south, and there a neighbour that has come over for
the hunt, mounted on a vicious mare as thin as a crane. The
hounds, of a dozen different colours and sizes, go along in couples,
led by the negroes on foot, and on ahead to a given rendezvous
shuffles Pompey Duffield, the oldest negro on the place, driving
a mule laden with two baskets of provisions intended for the
dinner of the party, and the mist comes up from the river in golden
clouds, for the sun is just rising. Down along the bank we went
with call and laughter, and the bittern arose from the sedge with
a guttural cry, and the alligator sank into the water with a heavy
splash, as our cavalcade moved onward to the lower pine lands
that skirted the big swamp. The trees were all white pine ; there
was no underbrush, and we could see down the long arcades they
formed for nearly a mile. Now and then a flaunting flower would
rear its crimson cheek to the wind, or a vine could be seen clasp-
ing a trunk, and drooping from branch to branch in long festoons,
but generally the ground was covered only with the yellow siftings
of the pine, and free from all vegetation. The horses trod without

THE DEER HUNT. 57

a sound, and, save now and then a fox-squirrel, we met no animal
life, until we came to the hummocks, and drew together to give
general directions for commencing the chase, the manner of which
is necessary to explain. »

A hummock is>a thicket often covering but an acre or two of
land, and sometimes presenting an extent of several miles. The
one now in view covered about thirty acres, and half a mile farther
down the woods, we could see another. It lay in a low swale of
land, and in it the haw, the alder, and willow, grew into a tangled
copse, studded with the red leaves of the pinckneya, while above
them all, a hundred feet or more, the ash and gum-trees reared
their long arms, and the magnolia opened its blossoms to the
upper air. It was an admirable spot for game, with succulent
grass and flags, and a dusky shade that was but little penetrated
by the sun.

" You stay here. Doctor Pollock," said Jackson, as we rode up ;
" and mind your eyes, sir."

The Doctor drew himself up with a doubtful air, as if uncer-
tain whether minding his eyes referred to the uses he had just
been putting those organs to in watching Miss Jackson's face, or
whether it referred to watchfulness in the future ; so he answered
at random, "All right, sir !"

" And you, sir," he continued, turning to me, " take your place
two gun-shots off on that side, keeping always within five or six
rods of the swamp. And you," turning to the neighbour that had
joined us, " go on next ; and you, Lou, come with Mike and me."

And away they cantered, with the dogs, around the other side
of the swamp, dropping one or two negroes, as they passed, to
guard some particular point of the hummock, and in this way we
enclosed two sides of the swamp with a cordon of hunters stationed
just so far apart that if a deer came out, one or the other of the
hunters in waiting was certain of a shot. On the further side, and
the only portion of the swamp that we were unable to surround,
the drivers were to enter with the hounds, and the deer would not
be likely to make his escape in that direction. The deer in
Florida and the other southern states are the ordinary Virginia
deer, but of small size, the bucks weighing an average of an hundred

68 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

pounds, while in the northern states they grow to an average of
double that weight.

The last I saw of Jackson he was winding around the swamp
with Mike, having left his daughter on a little knoll that com-
manded a fair view of the hummock, and where her bright bay
horse and little figure stood out in relief against the dark pines
beyond. The Doctor I could not see, but my negro, Scipio, stood
between us, and only a short distance from me, and perfect still-
ness reigned over pine woods and hummocks. Moment after
moment slipped away, but we could hear nothing, save the impa-
tient champing of my horse. Away down the woods a fox-squirrel
flirted his broad tail as he chased his comrade up a tree, or a
painted woodpecker passed by in undulating sweeps as silently as
a moth. At length a distant call, so faint it just reached me, but
I recognised it as the driver cheering the hounds as he cast them
off. Now for it. Another pause. The cry was repeated, and with
it the low yelp of a dog, then another, and then a ringing shot away
down the wbods. My horse pricked his ears, and Scipio mounted
a fallen tree the better to survey the scene. No cheering shout
announced the death of the deer, though the dogs stopped yelping.

At this moment I heard in the bushes the rapid bound of some
animal; it came nearer and nearer. From the higher ground
where I stood \ could see over the bushes a pair of antlers, and
I supposed it to be the same deer that had been fired at down the
swamp. I dismounted to take surer aim. How my heart beat in
unison with the bounding of his feet, while every sense converged
into the coming of his presence ! But, alas ! he did not come out
by me, but between me and the Doctor, and very near to him.
Pang! pang! I heard his rifle, and immediately the deer turned
in again, just keeping the edge of the bushes, and showing his
back at every jump. As he passed me, I took aim, and when his
flag showed over the grass, I fired, but the deer only moved with
an accelerated speed down past the next stand, and receiving a
shot there, and two from Miss Jackson, rushed back into the
swamp from whence he came. The dogs, with the firing, broke
out into a louder chorus. I heard Jackson's horn nearer and
nearer ; he was following up the dogs, keeping in the open woods,

THE DEER HUNT. 5»

while Mike was doing the same on the other side. All at once
the hounds broke out with a louder yell, and at the same moment
a buck broke cover again in front of me, accompanied by two
does, one on either side. I had just loaded, and had my foot in
the stirrup, when, without changing position, I fired at the stag's
shoulder. I missed my mark, but shot one of the does, that
tumbled down in the grass. The buck and the other doe once
more turned back, and, coursed down the edge of the hummock
toward Poke, who fired his barrel again, and this time, with some
correctness, for the buck dropped his tail for an instant with an
uneasy motion, when, raising it again, he turned back, followed by
Poke, on horseback, directly past my stand. I fired my second
barrel without effect, and then, not able to resist the contagion of
the chase, spurred my horse after the flying animals. Away they
went down the little swale that led toward Lou Jackson's stand.
One hound after another, as he came out of the rushes, caught
sight of the deer, and joined in the chase with a double note.
Pang ! came a shot from my left, missed clear, and the hunter,
not stopping to load, joined the chase. Now for it, Miss Jackson !
I saw her raise her gun, her father was close behind, riding hard
to get to her, and away down the woods I could see Mike trying
to head off the chase, his long hair streaming behind him like a
woman's. A puff of smoke, and a report — the buck staggered, but
still ran, drawing in behind him, in one yelling, shouting, crashing
train, every man, horse, and dog in the woods.

"You hit him, Lou. Tally-ho ! Hi on ! hi ! Hurrah ! Faster !
There 's Tip, and there 's Slasher ! Go it. Music ! Golly ! maussa,
gib him fits !" were the cries that were intelligible in the medley
of sound, until the yelling of the dogs and the trampling of the
horses drowned all words. The horses, as wild in their ardour as
their riders, needed no rein. The buck led the way directly for
another hummock about three miles away, and which was now
within sight ; his flight was straight and well sustained, though
now and then a spot of blood on the leaves showed he was wounded.
The dogs were toiling on behind, not two yards away, and close
behind the dogs came all the hunters, the Doctor, riding the fastest
horse, taking the lead. As we approached the hummock, the pine

00 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

trees grew closer together, and while going between two of them
the Doctor was caught by his gun, which he held crosswise before
him on the saddle, and was swept off his horse to the ground.
"There's a ten strike!" called out Jackson, as we rushed by.
Closer stiU we came to the deer, every dog stretched to his utmost
length, every rider bending to his horse's mane; Mike was just
raising his rifle to his shoulder to shoot, when without a sign the
big buck fell head first to the ground, and rolled over and over
with the impetus of the chase. His heart had broken in the
desperate burst just within reach of his lair, in whose close covert
the doe, with one long bound, was lost. Up came the dogs and
horses so fast they ran over the game, and crowded and
jostled together as they pulled up, as a wave that meets a rock on
the sandy beach. Then there was dismounting, and whipping off
the dogs, and a search for the wounds in our quarry. Two buck-
shot, in the thick part of the neck from behind, came from the
Doctor's second barrel

" Where is the Doctor ? here is his horse. Oh ! there he comes
limping along rather sore with his fall." A laugh and a sly joke
were all the consolation we had to offer him. Two more buck-
shot in the right side, close together ; that is Lou Jackson's shot.
They were the only ones of the party using shot guns. None of
the shots were heavy enough to kill the deer, though altogether
they had broken him down in the chase. We wound a horn to
tell the drivers we left behind our whereabouts, and putting the
buck on one of the negroes' horses, and coupling the dogs to keep
them from entering the swamp, we turned back the way we
came.

"Now for the does we left behind," said Jackson. "How
many were there, sir ?"

" I saw two bucks and four does," said the Doctor.

" Fudge ! those were the same deer we have been chasing, only
your people turned them back into the hummock two or three
times without killing them."

" I killed one," said I.

"Where is it?"

" It fell in the bushes."

THE DEER HUNT. 61

" Eeckon you did not hit her."

" You had better believe it ; I can show you the place where
she fell."

" That isn't what we want. Where is the place that she is
now, can you tell that ? I fired at a doe, too, but a long way oflf,
and she probably is where yours is."

" Doctor, how 's your back ?"

" He he ! golly mighty ! he quit de saddle mighty smart dat
time !" remarked Caesar.

As we rode up to the hummock where we had started the
game, I found the place where I had shot the doe, but she was not
there, though the negroes said she had fallen.

" Throw off a dog, then," said Jackson.

" Let Music try," said his daughter ; and accordingly Music
was loosened and sent in the grass. Music was a young hound,
spotted white and black, like a coach-dog, and with such silky
ears they felt like a satin robe in your hand. She was led to the
place where the deer had fallen, and taking its track with a
plaintive whimper, commenced unwinding it from among the
bushes and reeds. Presently a louder effort warned us to beware,
and cantering apart a little, so as to be able to see all around the
hummock, Mike's grey eye caught a sight of the doe trying to steal
out of the bushes. A clear ringing shot was followed by a quick
leap, and she fell dead.

We laid them side by side, the stately buck and his gentle
consort. The dew of the morning was still glittering on their
hides — their eyes were as bright and as full as in life. I wondered
if Miss Jackson felt any pity for them, as she saw the dogs licking
the blood that flowed from their throats.

One of the negroes dismounting from his pony, we put the
two deer in place, and tying their feet beneath the belly of the
struggling horse, had them sent to the place where we were to
meet for dinner,

" Now one more hunt before dinner. Where shall we go, boys ?"

"Saw de ole white buck fur sartin, dis day, maussa!" said the
planter's head negro, coming up.

" Where did you see him ?"

«8 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Down by de run, ober dere," said the negro, pointing with his
finger ; " his tracks fresh as dis niggah's,"

" You mean you saw his tracks ? "

" Yes a maussa."

" How does he know that it is a buck ?" I asked.

" How fur to know he 's a buck ? Haint chased dat air deers'
s'often fur nuttin'; 'spect I be'ent a dun gone fool!" replied
Jumping Lem, with some asperity.

" Wall, if that ere is the buck that run in this range last winter,
I kinder guess ye '11 all have to rub your legs with bar's grease to
ketch him," added Mike.

" Don't you think we can shoot him, Mike ?" asked Lou Jackson.

" No, young woman, I don't ; thar are too many here to make
certain of any deer. "When a man wants a deer bad, he goes alone
and keeps his mouth shut."

As we rode over to inspect the tracks, I learned, partly from
the exclamations of the negroes, and partly from Jackson's account,
that this buck passed the winters in the pine woods, retiring, when
the mosquitoes become thick in the spring, to the cool swamps of
the Ouithlacouchee. It has been so often hunted, and was so
successful in escaping, that it became well known at the Jackson
plantation, and was the object of a covert superstition to all the
negroes, which mysterious fear rather aided his escape, for when
the boys saw it coming they became so frightened, they could not
hit forty paces off.

On reaching the run that Lem had mentioned, we readily found
the tracks, and all drew up to examine them. The presentation of
some unknown bone to a company of savans, or the appearance of
a new bonnet at a country sewing society, occasions not more
curiosity and sage comment than does the discovery of a new track
in the woods. One mentions its size, another recognises old
peculiarities or marks, another says it was the foot of a male
animal, another that it was fat in flesh, and another that it was
going on an easy trot, and not disturbed, and what is stranger still,
from the small data of four marks in the damp soil, all these facts
arrived at are the results of careful observation, and seldom
incorrect.

THE DEER HUNT. 68

According to the congress now assembled, this buck was the
old white buck, so called from an unusually white coat, and had
gone at a gentle gait into the Black Jack hummock, which lay two
miles farther on, and before which we presently arrived. It was
about half a mile in length by three quarters broad, and was filled,
like the other swamp holes, with long grass, bushes, and vines,
from which rose several tall trees of those species that spring in
swamps and savannahs, and at its upper end th^e grew a close
thicket of black jack trees. In such spots the does dropped their
fawns, and young and old sheltered themselves here for their noon-
day rest.

Once more the members of the chase separated to take com-
manding positions, overlooking the edges of the thicket. We were
cautioned against shooting at anything that might come out, until
we were certain the white buck was not there. Once more Mike
and Jackson disappeared, and with them the hounds, already
snuffing the air from the swamp, and tugging at their leashes to
get away, and the forest was still.

In a short time we could hear the cheers of the negroes, and
the thrashing of the bushes as they struggled forward in the
tangled underbrush. At this instant a doe, followed by a fawn
almost grown, came to the edge of the bushes. She looked up and
down for an instant, her large ears turning this way and that,
when, not seeing any one, she came out on a lope, and passing close
by me, ran down the woods, making for the river. I had my gun
to my shoulder, but remembering the white buck, withheld my
fire, lest the bigger game should follow the course of the doe and
find me with an empty gun. Yeow-ow-ow came from the hum-
mock ; that was Music's voice — her tone was like a bugle's. Then
two or three whimpering notes from other hounds.

" Wha's dat air a bobbin' in yer bushes ?" asked Scipio, stand-
ing near me and eagerly trying to overlook the grassy valley. " A
cat — a cat!" he shouted, "sure as gun," and a handsome specimen
of the wild cat or lesser lynx sprung out of the bushes, and then
seeing Scipio, darted back again to cover. " Golly mighty, wouldn't
dat cat get shook up — yah — ha, yah — ha — he !"

Now the hounds broke out in chorus, with a multitudinous cry

M WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

that babbled in the bushes and wailed in the air, as though the
echoes caught the sound and mellowed it down to a continuous
accord. Scipio felt the contagion, and dancing up and down,
relieved himself as follows : —

" Dar dey come ! dar dey come ! Bress de Lord ! don't dey skin
'em — dat beats dis chile ; hy ah ha, hy ah ha ! — go it, Music ! "

The dogs had come half way down the cover, when a buck and
doe broke out together. He did not appear to be of unusual size ;
but I could not wait any longer, and fired. He fell and rose again,
running over the brow of a little hill with his tail down ; here he
drew the fire of my neighbour on the right, and fell to rise no more.
The doe halted a moment where her comrade fell, as if waiting
for him to rise, when away down the woods a rifle rung its sharp
crack and she fell like a clod almost on the body of her mate. I
knew Mike's rifle by the effect, even if I did not know its
sound.

The hounds came closer; we could see the grass and bushes
moving where they were winding about, and now and then their
sickle-shaped tails above the weeds. The clamour increased, the
dogs were almost through, and yet no white buck to correspond
with the negro's description of the big buck they had so often
hunted. At this instant I saw rise up from the very edge of the
bushes, a buck, that from his stately size I at once recognised to
be the big buck. He had evidently been watching the preparations
for the hunt, and selecting the time our guns were discharged, he
rushed out between me and one of the negroes, and, without
regarding either, flew down the open pine woods at a gallop.
Hardly had he cleared the valley, when I heard Jackson shouting,
and saw him riding hard toward my stand ; but the dogs coming
out and taking the deer's track with loud clamour, prevented my
hearing. I sprang into my saddle, and went flying alongside of
the hounds, with the air soughing through my hair, and the deer
in view a hundred yards ahead. In a moment or two Lou Jackson
and the Doctor were in sight, their horses skimming the open
woods like birds. Then came the sorrel mare, and next Scipio on
the pony, and then in the distance Jackson and Mike, with all the
negroes that were mounted. Faster, still faster, heart and sense

THE DEER HUNT. 66

fixed on that flyiug buck, and the trees merged together in a mass
as we swept among them. Whoop ! why cannot a man cheer
louder ; why cannot a horse fly faster when a deer is in view ?
There is a crash and a flash of dirt and sticks ; the sorrel has gone
down, and her rider rolled over and over, and far ahead of his
steed. There is no time to see if he can get up again. Hurrah !
there is a hummock ! See Tiger and Bess turn to the left ! They
know the buck will not run through it, and they turn aside to cut
the radius of the arc he is about to make. He sees the plan and
accelerates his speed. His horns are lying on his back, his nose
in air ; he is stretching away at his highest speed, and whenever a
bush intercepts his flight, he leaps it with a bound that must give
him a bird's-eye view of his pursuers.

Far ahead of the deer grew a close swamp, and from the
straight line the deer was making we knew he was looking to it
for refuge. Behind, I heard Jackson calling to us, but who could
stop to listen with such a buck in view ? On we went, the dogs
still nearer the deer, and Tiger almost within reach of his haimches.
Lou Jackson held one rein in each hand, her eyes fixed on the
chase, and her hair flying loose behind her. There goes the deer
in the bushes ; he touched a log here and a bog there, and along he
went like a rope-dancer. Tally ho ! On went the dogs, when, to
my surprise. Tiger disappeared from view, and in a second of time
the whole pack were floundering in the morass. " Hold hard ! " I
heard again from behind. " Hold hard. Miss Jackson ! " I screamed,
as the truth flashed on me. " The quicksands ! " Too late ; her
horse was wild with the chase, and she could not hold him. He
made one or two desperate leaps as he found himself floundering,
and in a second of time was half ingulfed in the mud. His rider
still held the reins and kept her seat on the struggling horse. The
Doctor was in equal plight, while his frightened beast pawed the
air in its attempts to regain a footing. My horse, more used to
such ground, turned short around when he felt it quaking, throw-
ing me in the edge of the mud like a clown in a circus. Up came
Mike as fast as he could ride, and Jackson behind him.

Mike threw himself from his horse, and while the others were
cutting sticks to throw to the ingulfed riders, ran out by quick

E

66 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

jumps to the log over which the deer had run, and then cutting off
with his knife a grape-vine that had climbed a neighbouring tree,
he wound it around his arm and swung himself out toward Miss
Jackson. The first swing did not send him far enough, but putting
his foot against the trunk, as his rope oscillated, he swung out to
where the young girl lay up to her arm-pits, and rapidly sinking
in the sands, and putting his hand under her arm began slowly to
draw her from her perilous position. When she was entirely above
the surface, he swung the vine sufficiently to carry his charge to
the root of the tree, from whence it was easy to reach the shore.
I would have given a year of life to get such a look of thanks from
a lady I know as the breathless girl gave Mike — the ugly scamp !
The Doctor's turn came next, and then the horses, until finally,
after two or three hours of hard work, we were all once more in
the saddle, and some of us looking more like scavengers than
gallant hunters under the greenwood tree.

" S'pose you tink dat white buck 's de debbil for true now,
hey ? " said Scipio, as he was tightening my girths.

" No, I don't ; why do you ask ? "

" Kase I 'se not sartin the niggahs here'bouts knows heaps, and
dey sez dey ain't agwine to hunt dat buck nohow, and I spec as
how I wouldn't nudder. 'Spec as how sumthin' wuss en what
we 's seen '11 come out o' dat eer chase yit. I 'se not scared, but
dat is very 'plexing."

The day was wearing away fast, and, sending one of the boys
for the two deer last killed, we all turned toward the place ap-
pointed for our meeting, where after a few minutes' riding a blue
smoke column arose among the trees, and the distant gleam of
water announced a dinner and a rest — two pleasant things, whose
worth is only known to those who have laboured well. From our
diniug-place, a bend of the river showed us two vistas down the
ancient woods, and the broad sheet of water, half in shadow half
in sunshine, was broken by the flocks of ducks that were coasting
along its banks. The trees that fringed the shore were covered
with immense creeping vines, that clasped the trunks and sus-
pended themselves from the branches. Down by the water's edge,
the aster reared its purple head, and the love-vine wove its

THE DEER HUNT.

67

orange thread like a net over many a rank grove of water-plants.
The opposite shore was lower than the bank on which we were
standing, and the eye took in miles of cane-brake and forest,
unbroken by any sign of human labour.

"Look at those turkey-buzzards, Doctor," said Miss Jackson,
pointing to two birds that, with matchless grace, were floating in
slow circles high in the air. " I would like to see the view they
are taking in at this moment."

" So would I ; they are eagles in the air, and crows on the
ground," replied the Doctor. "They seem never to move their
wings, and yet how powerfully they fly, while they watch every
motion that is going on in the woods below them."

"Dinnah's ready, gemens and ladies," called out Pompey
Duffield, with a marked accent on the avd, while Jackson's horn
played the stave of a march that made the dogs howl, and we
turned away from the bank to the dinner that was spread out on
the grass. There was cold wild turkey, and ham, hot coffee, corn-
bread and bacon. It wouldn't have been a Florida dinner without
the corn-bread and bacon.

After dinner came the pipes and a long talk, and then as the
sun went down, tracking the woods with his sanguine trail, we
packed up our game, one deer to each pony, and, with Pompey
Duffield taking the lead, filed off through the shadowy woods
for the plantation.

CHAPTEK VIIL

THE FIRESIDE AT "FAR AWAY."
" 'Tis home where'er the heart is."

Lou Jackson was not a beautiful girl — much less did she deserve
the title of pretty. Her eyes and hair were both good, though the
coarse and irregular eyebrow gave a masculine cast to her regard.
Her nose was short, her mouth almost a line, and her complexion,
naturally dark, was further injured by the dry climate that made
it colourless. The prevailing pose of her features was thoughtful,
at times almost stem, yet once in a long while the lines of her
mouth would curve, her cheek slightly dimple, and her eye would
flash out a look of recognition and sympathy, the more gentle for
being rare.

She had received the ordinary course of education as practised
among American girls. A little geography, a little history, a little
of the natural sciences, a little of two or three modern languages,
and a little of two or three dead ones ; a little music, painting,
polite literature, mathematics, crocheting, moral philosophy, and
dancing — all in homoeopathic courses ; and then was launched out
into that practical world where one lesson learned in life's school
outweighs the teachings of years.

From the fashionable school she stepped to the monotony of
an interior plantation life. No musical instruments, no foreign
friends, no foreign books to read, even could she read them, where
everything was simple in action, and the bare bosom of the world,
with its vegetation, minerals, and animal abundance, was open all
around her, and the springs of domestic life, its great needs and
small attainments, its social loves and hates, were before her.
Then came the question, " What is my place, and can I fill it ? If
I claim to be a lady and a wife of rank, I have no beauty, and

THE FIRESIDE AT " FAR AWAY." 69

cannot attain it. If to be a literary woman, I have not sufficient
education. If a mere waif floating on the stream of life, the very-
animals on the banks are better than I." She reached out for any-
thing she could do, and turned for some recourse against that
nothingness that swallowed her up.

At length, one day, the first time coming abroad after an illness,
her mind drank in that confused blending of sound, colour, motion,
and fragrance, that is so pervading in the early spring, and which
affects the nerves after illness with so acute a pain. The buds
seemed expanding with an inherent instinct, the birds seemed
arranging their social affairs with a high intelligence, which had
never struck her before. There was a relation of one to another,
a connection to herself, and an apparentness of creation by that
Higher Eelative, that had just raised her from her feeble bed, that
seemed never so plain or so beautiful as now. The more she
pondered and examined, the greater seemed the field of thought.
She was not idle now. Body and mind grew strong together.
No one slighted her homely face in the fields, and with what aid
from books that could be had, she wandered forth a thinking,
happy, labouring, achieving student. At last a field was before
her ; how strange, it had been under her eyes from childhood !

The fire was kindled in the planter's house, for it was a chilly
night ; the rain commenced to fall after our return from the hunt,
and from the pitch-pine branches " the light fell off in hoary flakes,"
painting bright the heavy furniture of the room, and belching from
the chimney above the house, as from a smelting furnace. The
room was adorned with implements of the chase, antlers, and rude
stores of goods, and yet there were marks of a gentler taste in an
engraving primitively framed, stuffed birds, and gracefully-disposed
Indian weapons, decorated the walls. The interior of the mansion
was more comfortable than its rough and dismantled exterior pro-
mised ; and from its lonely situation, over sixty miles from any
town and more than a dozen from any house, it had been appro-
priately named " Far Away." The door stood open, the negroes sat
on the sill, drinking in the conversation and laughing at every
joke, while within, Lou Jackson, her father, and his guests, sat or
reclined around the room as best they could find places.

70 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Golly, Maussa, dat air buck 's a grave-digger ! Da 's de same
deer for sartin dat Blossom fired at two year agwine Christmas
comin', when his gun bus'. Das de same deer dat ripped up
Snorter and Grip, de best dogs in dis county, and now wha s dat
air he 's gone dun dis day ? He run Miss Lou's horse whare we
like not see 'im till day o' judgment."

" Lem, you fool," called out Jackson, "hold your tongue ; you
will get all the boys on the place to be as great cowards as you
are.

" I 'se no coward, you knows dat 's well 's anybody, Mars Jack-
son. Ef de Lord want a brave man, de Lord gonter call Lem ; but
I 'se seen a buck run o' nights in de range, and he feet struck fire,
and when I sees dat I comes in, and so 'd you. Mars Jackson."

" What for gwine contrariwise to de Lord ? " said an old negress,
whose white head was obtruding in at the doorway.

"De Lord send de debil and de debil come. Dare's Mars
Wilson's Ebo Jane, a rael little drum-cuss of a nigger woman ; no
genouwine religion 'bout her, and jist afore she die dere, by de
door dat look toward de piney wood, an old buck — oh, golly,
Maussa ! look in at her ! She guv one call and die, and de buck
go away on de parf to de woods. I seed dat wid dese yeer eyes,
an' it make dis eer hair of mine stan' straight up."

On looking at the crisp, curling locks alluded to, no surer proof
of a miracle was required than the fact that they could be made
straight, for they were kinked into little cocoons of yellow white
over the big, black face and staring eyes. As this inspired fact
was related, the negroes, with their credulous susceptibility, edged
closer in the open doorway to be fully within the circle of fire-
light, and even Lem had pulled in his legs from the outside of
the open window, where he was sitting, and turned his body fire-
ward.

As I looked at the bank of faces at the door, I noticed a feeling
of horror dash over their countenances that was singular to behold ;
following their dilated eyes, I saw them all fixed on Jumping
Lem as he sat in the window, though from my position I could see
nothing about him to excite the feeling. Mike kicked my foot,
and I saw his eye, with a laugh in the comer of it, turned to where

THE FIRESIDE AT " FAR AWAY." 71

Lem was sitting. I leaned forward, and in the darkness beyond,
only partially lighted up by the fire, the head and antlers of a
large deer appeared.

Lem had not seen the apparition, but continued : " Down on de
Waccassasee dare 's a deer-parf made by dat air same buck, and
when de dogs cum dere, dey down tail an' take de back track,
howlin' all de time as if dey "

At this instant one of the protruding tines of the deer's horns
touched the earnest story-teller on the shoulder. He looked
around, and caught sight of the spectre at his side. He gave a
shriek, and darted toward the door ; the negroes, frightened more
by his fears than what they saw, came crowding in and blocked
up the door, when Lem jumped into the middle of the circle by
the fire, crouching at his master's feet, and crying, " Oh, Golly !
Maussa ! Lord a massa, dare h' is ! dare h' is ! "

The spectre head continued to advance into the room, when
one of the horns, touching the side of the window, it fell down
from the pole on which it was stuck, and lay on the floor. It was
the head of the buck we had shot that morning.

" That is my deer's head," said Miss Jackson. " I was having
it stuffed."

" That 's that are boy Scip's doin's ; he 's a queer critter,"
laughed Mike.

" Get up, Lem, and tell us something more about that buck,"
said Jackson.

Lem sprung to his feet, and, amid the jeers of his comrades —
who laughed at him all the harder because they were frightened
themselves — rushed out of the cabin, and we heard him run-
ning around the house in pursuit of the inventor of the ghost,
giving vent, as he ran, to divers threats, which had the effect of
rendering Scipio invisible for the rest of the night.

Mike picked up the fallen deer's head and examined it closely.

"Why, Lou, child, I never heard of your dressing animals,"
said Jackson.

" Nor I, father, until to-day."

" What are you going to do with it ? "

" Make it as correct as I can, and then hang it over the front

72 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

door until I can make a better one. The ornament is the Doctor's
idea."

" The head is as correctly dressed as it can be," said the Doctor.
" Don't you think so, Mike ? "

" Wall — no, I don't," answered the literal hunter.

" What is it that is wrong, Mike ? It must be in the setting
it up, for you cleaned it for me yourself."

"It moit be one, and it moit be the t'other; but I guess it's
some of both. Yer see the hair ain't over slick — that 's my fault.
Wall, arter that yer 've got the eyes a lookin' for'ard, and the head
well up, ain't that so ? "

" Yes," said Miss Jackson, leaning forward.

" Wall, then," continued her instructor, taking the deer's head
on his knee and illustrating his position with his fingers, " he 's a
makin' out somethin' ahead of him, and he '11 have his ears for'ard
to help him, one on 'em anyhow."

"That's true," replied the pupil, with a glance of pleasure,
taking the deer's head in her hand and pulling out the wires by
which the ears were supported.

" That 's the natur' of a deer. I one'st went to Charleston and
seed more lies than you could shake a stick at, and one was a
stuffed deer a-fecdin' with his flag straight up. Wall, ef that didn't
make me sick. Sez I to the show-man, ' Mister, I 'd jist like to
tie you to a deer's tail in Floridy to show you how they carry their
tails ; dod rot me if I wouldn't ! ' "

" Ha ha ! that is not as bad as my friend the Doctor," I said.

" You had better stop before you go any further, I warn you,"
interrupted the Doctor.

" You must know," I continued, " the Doctor, early one morn-
ing in Pensacola, saw two deer feeding in the garrison garden on
the old Commodore's pea vines. So he ran down, and imagining
that they had come in through the open gate and could not sur-
mount the high picket that surrounded the garden, carefully closed
the gate. Then, with his gun in hand, he ran in to call the
Commodore to inquire whether he preferred them dead or aUve ;
but when he returned the deer were half way to the Perdido
River."

THE FIRESIDE AT " FAR AWAY." 73

" Oh, that is too bad, Doctor ! " cried Jackson, as the negroes
shouted with fun.

" No, no," said the Doctor, laughing away, " that is not all of
the story. My friend here was there, too, peeping through the
palisades over his rifle, when I shut the gate. It was his proposi-
tion that I should go in for the Commodore, and as I came back,
I heard a cap snap, his gun had missed fire while endeavouring to
kill one of the deer, while I was gone."

The mirth that followed this apocryphal story was like nothing
but the laughter that hails some unusual feat of the Polichinelle,
before the gaping circle of children and nurses in the gardens of
Paris, and it gradually subsided, lingering longest farthest from
the door, where the negro boys could roll over on their backs
without restraint, and laugh themselves quiet, and then to return
for a fresh draught of fun.

" To come back to your deer's head," I said to Miss Jackson,
after the laugh had subsided, " where did you procure the glass
eyes ? "

" Oh, father supplies them with his broken bottles ; the shoulder
of the bottle makes an eye, only a little too flat."

" And the birds on the wall are dressed by you ? "

" Yes, all of them."

"And they are truer to natur' 'an a picter," added Mike
approvingly.

" Where did you get your . taste for such matters, Miss
Jackson ? "

" I think I must have got it from associating with them, to the
exclusion of other society. We lead a lonely life here in the pine
woods, sometimes, and I believe that when one has many gifts he
does not gain from them all as much as he does from one well
studied."

" Where did you get your original plan, your first lesson in
taxidermy ? " said the Doctor ; " for I have studied the art, and it
seems to me that I have never dressed a bird as well as some you
have here."

" I never had any lesson, save what I have read. Once, when
first attempting it, I sent to Savannah and bought a stufied bird

74 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

/ which I pulled in pieces to find the secret. But the trae teacher
is patience. Try again every time you fail."

" They have kept well for so warm a climate."

"That's a woman's secret," said Jackson. "Lou bakes her
birds in the oven."

" I '11 tell you a joke," said Miss Jackson, " about baking birds.
One day there was a bird pie in the oven, the pride of our new
cook, and on looking at it, I found it done, and the fire low
enough to dry some birds I had just set up. Accordingly, I stood
them in the oven all covered with white strings, in front of the
pie. When dinner was ready, Dinah went for the pie, but pre-
sently came running back, calling out, ' As sure as I 's 'live,
missus, dem birds is out ob de pie, or else dere ghosts am standin'
dere in dere grave-clo'se. Oh Lor', help us ! ' "

" What do you do when you are where you cannot have the
use of an oven ? "

" Oh, I do the best I can ; use pepper-grass, dry them in the
sun, and then let them slide."

" How pleasant it is to have a copy of nature's works by your
side, so well prepared that it reminds you of the original bird,"
remarked the Doctor, laying back on a wooden bench, looking at
the hawks over head, and swinging his feet back and forward
under his lounge.

"Yes," answered Miss Jackson, "and to study the positions
and manners of the birds and quadrupeds, so that you can copy
in your subject the true position and figure, and not burlesque
them. So, sometimes, what would be thrown from father's game-
bag to the cook to be plucked, or, more likely still, cast away as
worthless, with a little care and study resumes its old shape, takes
again its natural pose, flashes its eye, and remains ' a joy for ever.' "

As Miss Jackson talked, her grey eye kindled, and a blush
brightened either cheek. The Doctor raised himself gradually to
a sitting position, then to his feet, and then he walked across the
floor, saying, in his clear hearty tone : " Give me your hand, Lou
Jackson ! who cares which comes first, the love of nature or the
mind, to appreciate her, the one is sure to produce the other."

" Wal that 's so," said Mike.

THE FIRESIDE AT "FAR AWAY."

76

The evening promised a rainy day for the morrow, and there-
fore it was arranged that Mike and I should have a still hunt
while Jackson would ride down to the coast to see to some stores
that had been promised to be landed at a given point by a boat
from St. Mark's.

" I think I will stay home to-morrow and set up some birds,"
said the Doctor.

" You had better let 'em slide, Poke," I remarked in a low tone.

"Never you mind," answered the Doctor, with a low laugh.
" A man 's a man for a' that and a' that."

The negroes were turned out of the cabin, the fire was covered,
and in three minutes, oblivious of rain or deer, all were in the
" land o' dreams."

CHAPTER IX.

THE STILL HUNT.

L' Aurora paraissait a peine,
Quand dani la brume k Thorizon
Je I'ai TQ nntrant de la plaine
Tout cbutgb de aa venaiaon.
Bedreasant aa large empaumure
H H'est airiti par troia fois
Puis il a longi la bordura
^coutant I'eau tomber sous boia.

As the first light struggled through the clouds and the tassels of
the pines overhead, Mike and I alone, with our breakfasts in our
hands, were winding our way through the forest.

We trudged on as best we might over the rolling knolls of
sand, laced by the long, tough roots of the palmetto, across hollows
choked with grass and vines, and down and up the quaggy sloughs
that the waters had made while seeking their level in the Ouithla-
couchee. The tough little ponies scampered along on the level
land, and where it was muddy Mike would slide to his feet and
cheer them on with whoop and hulloa, until they ran up the banks
as fast as they jumped down. The rain had ceased, yet it was not
clear, and the drops hung on all the bushes, or showered down on
us from above as we struck the young timber.

Having reached a point of land in the bend of the river, the
ponies were unsaddled, their halters were tied to their knees so
that they could not run, though giving them ample liberty to
graze, and left behind with an injunction to " Stay thar, yer sarcy
critters."

Again the word was forward. Mike led the way on a long
stride, his rifle lying in the hollow of his left arm, and his body
bending and oscillating to conform to the inequalities of the
ground. As he walked he turned hither and thither, taking in

THE STILL HUNT. 77

with his eye everything in the forest. At times, he would pick up
a leaf here and there, giving it a glance, and cast it down again.
Where the river bent, and we came where we could see around the
elbow, his walk was slow, and his foot came down like a cat's ;
when he was in the hollow he ran, and almost halted as he rose
the succeeding knoll, and could take a view beyond.

As we walked, he pointed to a place in the sod, looking at me
with that communicative glance that said, " There is something
pleasant." On looking carefully, I could just see a mark where
the grass was thin, but a mark it was, and nothing more ; it might
be a natural discoloration, or the result of one of the thousand
motions constantly occurring in a forest.

" What is it ? " I asked.

Mike picked up a broad leaf, one of those growing in a dank
place, and handed it to me. The leaf was cut almost in the shape
of the letter V.

" What does that mean — a deer's track ? "

Mike nodded.

" How long ago was that track made ? "

" Two minutes — 'bout."

My looks must have expressed doubt, for Mike replied : " Look
here, now, leaves don't tell lies in the piney woods, though I 've
heern tell they do in books. D' ye see that juice comin' out of
that leaf thar jist whar the deer's huff cut it ? "

" Well ? "

" D' yer think them air leetle drops has been more 'an a week
formin' when they're growin' bigger as ye look, and haint run
together yet ? Tear another leaf, don't it come jist as fast ? Ain't
that as plain as a bar up a gum-tree ? He 's a sockdologer of a
buck, too ! "

" Now, Mike, lo6k here. I will believe what you say about the
time, but don't say what you don't know. You can have every-
thing your own way here, but there is no means in the world of
telling this deer to have been a buck, so you need not say so till
we see it."

" Wall, now," said Mike, setting down the breech of his heavy
rifle on the ground, and leaning his chin on the muzzle, while he

78 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

looked at me with an expression of pity ; " wall, now, ef I had a
young 'un, and he couldn't tell that he was a scandalous big buck,
walking alone slowly like out to the feedin' grounds, ef I wouldn't
claw his back with a wildcat, I would. Now, jist look a here,
there *s one track by the lance leaf."

" Yes."

" Here 's the t'other on the same side, and here 's the t'other,
and here 's the t'other. Wall, that shows he 's a walkin', don't it ? "

«Ye-e-s."

" Thar he 's nibbled off that young tree, hain't he ? "

A small birch sprout, of about a foot in height, was stripped of
its leaves and bark.

" Ye-e-s."

" Wall, that shows he was feedin* slowly, and wam't the least-
wise anxious, and by the way the tracks pint I calkerlate he 's ofiF
for the meadows."

" Well, but how do you know it was not a doe ? "

" 'Cause he writ it up on that pine-tree on ahead, where the
tracks are thick at the bottom. Now look on the bark about six
feet up, and tell me what rubbed that bark off ef it wam't that
buck's horns — and you better believe it was a whopper ; no small
buck kin scratch up thar."

I thought a moment, and then the only wonder to me seemed
why it needed an explanation At all, it was so clear.

" Whare has he gone ? Thare 's a meadow across here chock
fall of sweet grass and lily pads, and I reckon he 's thar, and
slathers more."

A few minutes' walk, and we came on to the verge of a natural
meadow, bounded on every side by the forest, and yet smooth and
waving as a field of grain or a level prairie. Here and there
a water-oak reared itself from the grass, twisting its great limbs
on every side, shading the sward below, and supporting wreaths
of mistletoe vines covered with waxen berries. But all else was
one free rustling field, grazed by the deer alone, and mowed only
by the winter fires or the hurricane. Over the gi-ass could be seen
the marsh hawk wheeling along the level in long slanting curves,
while in the distance, where a tall tree leaned over the eddies

THE STILL HUNT. 79

of the river, a solitary cormorant watched his primeval realm,
where

" Unheeded spreads the blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee,
Unheeded falls along the flood
The desolate and aged tree. "

This was a great pasture for the deer, and ever since the
creation hundreds had spent the nights here, retiring with the
heat of the sun to the closer cover of the pines.

" I haint seen that air buck's tracks agin," said Mike ; " I rather
think he haint got in yet. We '11 go a leetle further on to this
ridge; he will likely come down that way, I reckon. Come,
Yowler ; " and taking the long ear of his dog in his hand to pre-
vent him taking to the meadow, we ran on to the ridge. By the
side of the ridge we found quite a well-beaten deer path leading
through an opening in the fringe of trees that surrounded the
meadow, and through this, from time immemorial, doubtless, the
great horned herds had wound their way in and out at their
pleasure. Here, too, were found tracks of wild hogs, and Mike
pointed out to me a broad footprint of the cougar or panther that
had been made only the night before.

It was agreed that I should lie here concealed behind some
branches with my eye on the path leading from the woods, while
Mike should go around in the woods and see what had become of
the buck. In a moment he was gone, and I was left lying on my
breast, with my rifle ready cocked before me, watching the lonely
path that led into the forest.

As soon as Mike was out of sight I began to feel that loneliness
and shadowy presence that is often with one when in a great forest,
particularly if unaccustomed to its solitude. The stillness, the
majesty of the woods, the strange insects crawling about, the
flickering light that complexes the eye, the heart counting the
time with heavy throbs, the apprehension of making a noise, all
press on the senses with a bewildering power. I felt this, and
longed for the deer or Mike, I cared but little which. I sighted
my rifle, and tried to determine from which way the deer would
first come, feeling certain he was mine if he appeared.

80 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

As I thus lay putting propositions to myself, I heard a loud
snort or whistle directly behind me. I turned hastily, and away
bounded a buck that had been standing apparently within ten feet
of me. How I apostrophised my carelessness, and watched the
waving grass as he wound among the meadow paths far away on
the plains !

Again I watched, and this time more successfully, for over the
knoll I could see a pair of horns coming slowly forward, though
the deer was still out of sight. They advanced like a rower in a
boat, with measured but irregular speed, and once in a while
stopped altogether. Then my heart beat like a drum, but when
the horns advanced again I felt more composed. At length the
head appeared above the brow of the hiU, then the shoulders, then
the full length and height of the animal ; there was no more
doubt — it was the sockdolager of a buck described by Mike. When
it reached the hill it seemed to halt for a survey, and viewed the
whole extent of the woods and savannah. Trees, and waters, and
waving grass, tbe cool retreats of low hanging bushes, all appeared
to his eye like the pleasant meadows to the monarch bull, when,
released from his winter's stall, he looks over the farm in the
spring. All kinds of nervous apprehensions arose in my mind.
I feared lest he might turn back, and almost called out in my
anxiety. I dreaded lest he should see me, and crouched to the
earth to prevent it Presently, apparently satisfied with his exam-
ination, he marched down the hill to where I lay in ambush. His
head high up, his great horns back, his step like the step of a race-
horse, he looked like a marching king. I could not see any part
of his body but his breast, and did not like to take a front shot,
but waited until he should present some other view. But the
stag did not intend to turn aside; he saw his feeding ground
beyond, green with the succulent herbage of the lowlands, where
his mates had awaited him all the night, and he walked right
onward. Now he was too near to shoot. What should I do?
If he sees me, he will dash off, giving me the worst possible shot.
My heart beat so I could not lay on my side, but raising my gun
gently on my left elbow, I depressed the breech, and without
taking sight, when the deer was almost over me, pulled the trigger

THE STILL HUNT. 81

With the report of my gun the frightened animal sprang into the
air as though he had been blown up by a mine, and then dashed
off into the woods. He flew over the hills, and just as I had given
him up for lost I heard the clear ring of a rifle in the direction he
had gone. It was Mike's ; I knew its voice. What a load fell oJBf
my mind — the deer was ours !

On reaching the place from whence the shot came, I found
Mike loading his rifle, and the deer with his antlers ploughed into
the ground by the force of his running fall, and his throat cut.
On looking for my shot I readily found it in the breast, and the
ball had gone through the thick part of the neck without doing
much damage. Mike's had struck him in the head.

Selecting two small trees that grew from the same root, we
lifted our quarry up until his horns caught in the angle, and his
body hung down with his back to the tree. Mike then cut the
skin in a line from the throat to the tail, and also a transverse
line down each foreleg, and drew the entrails. Then loosening the
neck from the skin, he cut the neck from the head at the first
joint, and pulled the fore shoulders directly out of the skin. Then
cutting off the fore shoulders, the loin and the hind-quarters were
left hanging by the horns. The shoulders were thrown aside,
while the hind-quarters were neatly rolled in the skin with the
branching horns, and hung on a sapling to await the time of our
return at night.

Our original plan had been to drive the deer from off the
meadows with the dog, we standing at the runways, thus getting
very fair shots on the open plain, but by reason of the advanced
hour of the day it seemed doubtful if this plan would succeed ;
however, we resolved to try it. Selecting two paths, apparently
much frequented by the deer, and in some places worn into
channels, we sent Yowler off to hunt. The old dog seemed to
know his duty weU, for he hied away vidth a look at his master,
and we could occasionally see him, where the grass was thin,
making long casts, and occasionally his mellow voice would be
borne in faint from the distance.

Mike was stationed not far away, and looking across the grass
I could see him leaning against a tree surveying the scene before

F

8S WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

US. Afar down in the horizon a gang of deer headed by two bucks
was going out of the meadow by some other path on a long lope.
I pointed them out with my arm, and a nod from Mike sliowed
me he saw the game and understood my gesture. There go two
herons, blue and grey, flapping up from the grass, and turning
their heads first on one side and then on the other ; the dog must
be in that neighbourhood and have sprung tliem, though we cannot
see him for the grass.

There comes a deer ; he is close by before one can see he is
started — a young buck with spike horns. How fast he comes !
once in a while jumping high above the grass to view his pursuer.
Mike has disappeared behind the tree against which he was lean-
ing. I wonder which path the deer will take. I raise my rifle ;
no, he is running for Mike. He comes now fast, and close behind
him is yelping the hound! he is within shot of Mike, running
right for his stand. Spang ! rings the rifle ; the deer jumps,
staggers, halts, and falls. Well done, old Red Beard! next to
shooting game one's-self, the best thing is to see it well shot by
some one else.

Yowler is caught by his master, and sent back on the meadows.
Hardly had he gone out of sight before I heard his yelp again,
and a great rustle and shaking of some reeds that grew a hundred
rods in front of me. There it is ! one, two, three deer — and there
goes another — and here comes a third party ! The firing has
alarmed them, and they are off with a snort and a whistle, each his
own way. One has turned this way ; no, he has gone toward the
river. There is another ; he is coming this way, surely ; yes, here
he comes, head up, horns back — a noble fellow. " Dear me ! "
I ejaculated, " this is like shooting deer in a park." As I crouched
low in the narrow pass I was occupying, with a dense thorn
thicket on either hand, and the grass growing in front of me suffi-
ciently high to conceal me from view, I heard the grass rattle
furiously, and out dashed an old boar, seeming in a desperate
hurry ; he ran close by me, giving a malicious lunge with his
snout at me in passing ; I sprung aside in time to avoid the com-
pliment, and gazed after his retreating form with feelings of great
indignation. The Spaniards of the coast had turned out some hogs

THE STILL HUNT. 83

in this neighbourhood in previous years, and their offspring,
increasing with great prolificness, had become as savage as the
boars of the Black Forest.

Before I had recovered my composure, another hog and a sow
came rushing past, grunting and tearing along, followed by a whole
herd of young, that thrashed down the grass, and jammed past me
in their haste ; as the last one came, I lost all patience, and fired.
The crowd was too thick to miss, and I had the satisfaction of
seeing one tumble over on its back. But my satisfaction was
short-lived when there swept by me a beautiful deer on a long
lope, and running as if playing with its pursuer. He came so near
me I could almost have hit him with my gun, and did not see me
until directly abreast; he then rushed onward with a terrified
leap, and was immediately lost to view. At this instant I heard
Mike fire a shot, but could not see what he had killed.

When the dog came in, which he did in a moment, on the trail
of the deer that had passed me, he seemed much worried, and laid
down close at my feet and refused to go out again. I could not
account for his behaviour, but, not seeing any more deer on the
meadow, I took him by the ear and walked around to where Mike
had taken his stand, and where he was busy taking off the skins of
the two deer he had shot.

" "What did you shoot at ? " he inquired, as I came up.

" A young hog ! " and then I told him how the drove had
rushed upon me, led by the vicious old boar, until in desperation
I had made bacon of one, and so lost my chance at the deer.

" Some takes kindly to pork," replied Mike, " and when hard
up I can worry down a leetle roast pig myself — but I don't keer
fur 'em for steady fodder. Howsumever, they like 'em at the
house."

So taking up the two saddles of venison, we hung them in the
woods by the side of the other, and went down to get my porker,
but, alas ! like the old lady in the nursery rhymes, when I came
back my porker was gone.

" I am sure he was dead," I replied to Mike's quizzical smile.
" He lay there at that spot, and I had my feet on him while I
loaded my rifle. There 's the blood on the grass now."

84 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" What dniv the hogs out so fast — was Yowler arter *em ? "

" No, they seemed to come alone, and Yowler skulked down,
trembling, just as he is doing now."

Mike glanced at the dog, and then leaned down until his face
almost came against the sod, when, drawing himself partially up,
he said, " We 'd better make tracks out of this corner ; there ain't
room enough for a free fight heyar." ,

"To fight what?"

" Painter," he replied.

I looked at the speaker, but there was not the least bit of
joking in his face.

"How do you know that it is a panther?" said I, in a half
whisper, the skim on my head contracting in spite of myself at the
idea of the animal having been there where I stood only five
minutes before in such fancied security.

"Wall, I know it in two ways," said Mike, in his natural
hearty tone, but without raising himself from his stooping posture,
and slowly bringing his rifle to a level, " and one 's 'bout 's good as
the t'other. In the fust place, thar 's the mark of his foot on the
grass ; and in the next place, thar 's the old sarpent himself under
them air bushes."

I leaned down and followed the direction of Mike's eye under
the bushes, and tnily there was the panther crouched ,under some
wild plum-trees not forty yards off from where we stood. He was
in a sitting posture, and one arm was stretched out and placed on
the body of the hog that laid beside hiuL There was something
handsome in that position of easy grace, with the careless claim of
ownership that he extended over his prize. I caught his yellow
eye, and could scarcely remove my own from the fascination of its
glance. He had the air of a sentinel challenging us strangers, and
I, for one, felt like an intruder, and had a mental desire of apolo-
gising, taking off my hat, and retiring.

"Jist keep steady-like," said Mike, in his usual slow tone.
" Don't move fast, but step a leetle away from me, and ef I miss
him he will come out, and then you try."

As he finished speaking, his rifle was at his shoulder, and the
clear report of the piece was followed by a rushing bound as the

THE STILL HUNT. 8ft

animal came out. Mike drew his knife, but it was useless ; the
panther spent his life in that prodigious leap, and lay dead on the
grass. The rifle ball had gone through his brain.

"Ha!" said Mike, with a prolonged accent and strong out-
breathing that showed the force of his feelings. Then, leaning
down and laying his hand on the tawny face of his fallen foe, he
caressed him as he would have done a child, smoothing his cheek
and lifting his paw, and speaking to him in the proud yet tender
way he would have spoken to his sweetheart. " And ye be a
purty critter ; yer eyes has babies in 'em. My beauty, didn't you
know me when you squatted thar ? I 've knowed you, pet, I
reckon, when yer were quite a youngster. I 've seen you sleepin'
on my coat like any cat. I 've watched you almost ever since, and
heerd of all yer doin's. Yer forgot me, but I didn't forgit you, no
how at all, little yaller back, and now yer dead, poor thing. Wall,
wall, we '11 all come to that soon, only let 's have our traps packed
and ready. I wish Lou Jackson could see you where you 're
layin'."

When this funeral address was ended, we dragged the body out
of the bushes into a more open place, to take off the skin. The
shooting of deer was an every-day work, and they were skinned in
a minute ; but the death of a panther, and the taking off his robe,
is an incident that calls forth the keenest pleasure in the hunter,
and only he can understand the accent of pride with which Mike
at length held up in both hands the huge tawny skin, with its
pendent claws and cat-like head, saying, " Ain't that a bed for a
king ? " When he had completed this work, noon had long since
passed away, and we looked around for a spot to dine.

Near where we had hung our first deer, on the sloping side of
a clay bank, a spring of water rose from the earth, " and a clearer
one never was seen," which, filling a natural basin among the roots
of the trees that overhung it, poured down the hill in a trickling
rivulet, and joined by other smaller springs, sought its level on
the great savannah, where its course could be traced by the eye
for a mile or more by the line of joint grass and flags that took
root in its waters. By this spring we carried our three saddles of
venison, our hog, and our panther skin, and sat ourselves down to

88 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

dinner. Not a grand dinner of cold fowl and claret, sandwiches and
cakes, with which upon the Scottish moors the sportsmen regale their
inner man, but a dinner that consisted simply of a large square of
corn-bread, and an equally large square of venison steak, but so
hungry were we that no rich repast, even though spread at Verey's,
at Paris, would have been more highly honoured, and surely no table,
even on the Santa Lucia, with the broad bay of Naples, and the
flaming spire of Vesuvius before the door, could have been spread
in a more graceful place, or with a more characteiistic view. The
deep well-spring with its seething sands at the bottom churned
into a constant motion, the trees that for ages had guarded that
source, the rippling murmur of the brook, the soughing of the pine
leaves, the broad perspective of meadow, with the distant belt of
river beyond, so far away that its gleam was like the horizon, the
nearer scamper of the squirrel, or the flap of the heron's wing as
disturbed by our presence he rose from the flags, all gave a land-
scape to the eye, or a sense of solitude to the mind, and occupied
us in contemplation for an hour or more after the dinner was
ended.

"Do you think you ever saw that panther before to-day ?" I
asked of Mike, as I tossed him over the tobacco-pouch.

" I 'm not over sartin, but I reether spect. Yer see thar ain't
many on 'em heyar bout, and it was jist two years ago when that
ere painter cub I guv Colonel Brown, at Tampa, vamosed, and then
he was two years old. This one, you see, would be nigh on to
four, and that would jist make it" A long puff or two followed
from his short pipe, when he said in a musing manner, " That air
cub left bekase of a fight he got in with a soldier at the fort Yer
see he guv the soldier a slap, when the soldier struck him with his
bay 'nit, and then the painter jist chawed him up and sloped.
Wall, now look a heyar, do you see that mark on his cheek ?"
There was a triangular scar on the animal's cheek, just under the
eye. " That, I calkelate, is that ere bay'nit dig. This is the last
o' that settlement. Grey Wolf's band got the old painter, and the
cub I left thar in my coat, so I 've heern ; the t'other cub, the one
I toted to Tampa Bay, is this heyar, and that 's all the painters
thar is round these diggins."

THE STILL HUNT. 87

I
Without precisely understanding the reasoning by which Mike

arrived at this last affirmation concerning a wood that apparently

might contain a thousand such animals without any one being

aware of it, I could not help smiling at the particularity of his

genealogy.

" Thar 's somewhar here about another varmint, and a purtier
one yet, though tain't of much account as a fighter. I 've seen his
tracks and have promised his skin to Lou Jackson, and ef he ain't
a ghost 1 11 git him some day, though I 've been a month tryin' to
find him."

" What is the animal ?"

" Tiger cat ; a rael likely little critter ; yaller with black dabs.
I reckon he 's 'bout the size of a small hound."

" You were in a hurry to make your promises. How do you
know you can get it ?"

" Because Lou Jackson wants it," replied Mike, with the assur-
ance of a man that had never failed in any thing he desired with
his whole mind.

" How long have you known Lou Jackson ? "

" Goin' on to three years."

" Where did they come from ? "

" Oh, Jackson had a big plantation on the upper coast some-
where nor'east ; but I 've heern say he lost his crops and got in
debt, and fit a duel, and then cum heyar, and built this house, and
called it ' Far Awa'.' "

" I thought you had known his family longer, you seem such a
friend of Miss Lou."

" I have known them only three years ; and some folks you
know soon, and Lou Jackson is one of them kind,"

" She is a pleasant girl."

" Yes, I can say that. Thar 's nobody in Floridy that can say
so much, and be so sparin' of words. She 's always the same ; she
makes it light all about the Ouithlacouchee when it 's black dark
everywhere else, she 's so happy like. Even the In j ins, when they
come there, draw in their claws and act genteel, and that 's oncom-
min for an Injin."

" They are very much exposed, living here so far from protec-

88 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

tion, and bands of these Indians roving about, and sometimes
Jackson himself away."

" No ; he don't leave often unless she goes with him ; but many
a night I 've kept round that house when nobody knowed it, jist
to know that she was sleepin', when these cusses has been about."

" What did she say to you when she heard of your watchful-
ness ?"

" How would she know ? Do you think / would tell her sich
like stufif? It's natural enough that I should watch fur her.
Wall — wall — thar are piles o' painters in this State purty as this
one, but there ain't no woman that is as handsome as Lou Jack-
son. That's so?"

" Do you know anything about the duel that CJolonel Jackson
fought ? "

" I 've heem tell that it was a hard go ; they fired one at the
t'other till the Colonel bored his man, and then he lamt it was all
a mistake, and they needn't have fit at all ; but who the man was,
or what they fit about, I don't know. Whar 's the terbacker ? "

I passed the pouch of squirrel-skin over to the hunter, and
filling his pipe again, he relapsed into a musing silence, while I
watched the lengthening shadows, and thought over the strange
life at Far Away, the moody, reckless, proud planter, and the
gentle though strange tastes of the daughter. What a wasting,
sensitive, weary heart he seemed to carry, joyous only by turns,
and then boisterously gay ! What a cheering controlling presence,
hers, so earnest and frank, yet all the while so lively and self-
willed ! And the house itself was a perfect mixture of roughness
and grace, the life within contrasting with its appearance, as did
the fancy of its name with the rudeness of its exterior. No news
of the world, no society, no lover, no music, the literature of the
most meagre kind, and yet the whole family instinct was graceful
and thoughtful, and like to no western farm that ever yet was
seen.

As I thus ran on, I noticed the sun was low in the west.

" It will be dark soon."

" I reckon," said Mike, in his usual manner.

" But we can't stay out here all night."

THE STILL HUNT. 89

" I 've lain by this spring right often, but I s'pose we may as
well go now ; you go ketch the ponies, and I '11 get their pelter
ready."

I accordingly went after the ponies, which were found near
where we had hoppled them. As I rode back I saw a single buck
feeding in the open woods, but stopping to attempt a shot, he ran
off in the direction that we had come in the morning. On return-
ing to the spring, Mike had the game already bound, and balanced
so as to hang over the ponies. The hog balanced two saddles of
venison, and the panther's skin another saddle. After loading the
ponies we started toward home, Mike promising to get the buck I
had seen when I went for the ponies. I showed him the place
where the deer had been feeding when I first saw him, and the
direction he had taken.

" Wall, that 'U do," he said ; " he 's so much nigher home."

In a few minutes after, as we mounted a hill, we saw the deer
in the distance again, and as we came in view he looked at us for
a moment, and then gently trotted on, and some small galls or
swamp holes intervening, was soon lost to sight.

" Thar, he '11 do now. Take your pony by the bridle, and
follow fast right for that gall."

We came within a hundred yards of the brake, and then hop-
pling the ponies, ran on to the edge of the bushes, that afforded a
good cover. Having reached this, we passed carefully through,
looking out toward the open land beyond in hopes to see the buck
within shot, but, alas ! he was too wise for that, and had only
stopped when fully beyond the reach of harm from the thicket
close behind. Near by, a turkey-hen was leading a large brood
of young ones, nearly full grown, clucking and hopping along, and
running hither and thither in the pursuit of spiders and lizards,
that showed she was utterly unconscious of her dangerous
neighbours.

" Now we '11 have to crawl for it," said Mike.

" Then the sooner we begin, the sooner we get within shot,"
said I, moving forward.

" Stop," whispered Mike ; " wait till those turkeys get away.
If the deer sees them run away in a hurry he '11 make tracks too,

90 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

for he knows thar is somethiiig wrong hereabout, and having seen
us once, he '11 know it 's us."

So we waited patiently until the turkey brood had sauntered
down the woods, and then emerged from our place of concealment
Mike ran ahead in a stooping posture, and I followed close behind,
running when he ran, and halting when he stopped. The first run
we made was comparatively easy, for an immense pine-tree, made
doubly large by a large grape-vine that wound around it and hung
in clusters by its trunk, fully concealed our approacL Here we
took another survey of the ground and the game, and then, when
a tree intervened between us and the head of the deer, which stood
with his side toward us, we ran forward again until the deer
wagged his tail, when we halted, in whatever position we might be.

It may be necessary to explain, for the benefit of those who
have never learned the fact from deer-stalking, that a deer feeds
and watches at irregular intervals, and that always a second before
raising his head, either to walk forward, or to cast a glance of
watchfulness around him, he gives his white tail a quick whisk
or two. The knowledge of this simple and peculiar habit is of
immense use to the still-hunter, who is thus forewarned when to
advance, and when to lie stilL

Thus by quick and short advances we approached to within a
very long shot of our deer. My heart was beating thick and fast,
and the sweat of great mental excitement stood in drops on my
face, and rolled in my eyes, causing me to wipe them with my
sleeve every minute.

" Now," whispered Mike, " ef yer want to try him, yer must
crawl alone while I wait ; we can't get any nearer together, but
mind his tail."

So Mike laid still behind the weeds that were sheltering us,
while I went on alone. Horatius advancing before the Eoman
army to defend the bridge, could not have felt more keenly the
prominence of his position under the eyes of all Rome, than I did
as I stalked forward, under the keen eye of Mike the Spook, to
shoot that deer. First I had a little shrub between me and the
buck, and about twenty feet ahead ; to this I advanced safely. As
I arrived, the deer whisked his tail and looked round. Waiting a

THE STILL HUNT. 91

moment, to my great discomfiture he turned his face toward me,
and then commenced eating again. This was a state of affairs that
I had not anticipated, for it shut me out from a view of that
barometer tail. However, I calculated the time' during which he
would probably feed, and made a short advance. The deer now
turned quarteringly toward me, and, taking advantage of this
change, with my eye fixed upon him, I was hastily advancing,
when something disturbed the animal before his usual time. I
laid down flat on the grass, with my rifle before me, as the buck,
now within shot, raised his crowned head, and took a long and
deliberate survey of the ground. There seemed to be some latent
suspicion in his mind, for, though not seeing me, he yet looked all
around him several times, and then over me, and. finally com-
menced walking directly toward me. I slowly elevated my rifle
on my left hand, my elbow all the while on the ground. The piece
reached its level — my heart beat as though it was tugging with the
blood that flowed through it — the deer was at a close shot, and all
the time coming nearer, yet I could not aim correctly. Still on he
came toward me, his ears turned back and forth, his head stretch-
ing forward, his nose dilating as he snuffed the air, and his eyes
seeming to look me through. I summoned my courage, and held
my breath ; every sense seemed to pause while I sighted for the
white breast not forty yards off. Dear me ! the gun was not
cocked. A pause was required for this, and I became more
nervous than ever. I aimed again. A brief instant — it seemed
an age between my pulling the trigger and the discharge of the
piece — when the clear crack of the rifle sounded, and the deer,
wheeling around, flew away " as if the wolves of the Apennines
were aU upon his track."

I looked around for Mike ; there he lay in the weeds, and on
the end of his ramrod he had been waving a little red rag that had
attracted the attention of the buck, and lured him on to his
dangerous position. I saw the deer for a mile down the open
woods flitting past the trees, and I knew I had made a clear miss.
On coming up to Mike his dry smile glowed in the corners of his
eye as he asked me, " Did yer hit him ? "

Without answering the question, I asked him why he did not

92

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

shoot, as the buck was clearly within shot for him as well as
myself.

" We 've got our pile of deer's meat, and 'nu£F is 'nuff, and
what 's the use a wastin' ? "

So we went back for our ponies, and again started for home,
where we arrived late in the evening, to find the big fires blazing,
and a supper waiting our coming. How pleasant the cabin looked,
from the damp darkness without !

"And Bweet the music of the step
That meets you at the door."

CHAPTEK X

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS.

"Their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore."

SlQOUENBT.

The evening meal was ended; the planter's family and the
hunters were circled around the fire, weary with the day's fatigues
and enjoying rest as none but the weary may. Pipes and home-
made cigars were lit, and the negroes crowded the doorway, while,
as in many a hunting-lodge before,

' ' The stag-hounds, weary with the chase,
Lay stretched upon the rushy floor,
And urged in dreams the forest race
From Teviot Stone to Eskdale Moor."

" Now for a story, Mike," said Miss Jackson.

" No, 'taint my turn. Doctor, slide along with a yam."

" No, no ; stories are dealt Kke cards, always to the left. It is
your turn, Jackson."

" Well, sir, what shaU it be ? — anything from a fight to a foot-
race."

" Let my lady name the subject," I suggested.

" Tell us a tale of woman*; we have the chase in reality every
day."

" As you will — woman for ever. Throw on another log, boys."

The fire belched up a million sparks to the dark sky. The
flames started out afresh, and Jackson, putting his pipe in its
buckskin cover, and drawing himself up by his elbows to the
convenient support of a log, where he could face the whole of
his auditors, in a deep voice, and with occasional gesture, as he

94 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

warmed with his theme, spoke in the following most romantic and
poetical style : —

" Three times, since the Spaniard came to this country, has a
century rolled over the Floridas, each time burying a generation
of oaks, that mature and fall once in a hundred years, each time
obliterating three generations of man — more transient than the
trees of the hummocks.

" Now, the land is a common everyday reality. The planter
eats his corn-bread in his cabin ; the negro toils at his daily task ;
the Indian hunts in the pine-land, at peace with the settler ; and
if there is anything of the romance of life in the land, it is to be
found in the tropical vegetation, and the life of the everglade, and
not in the noble daring of maa

" Then, in the Floridas, there was romance in thought and
action — romance in history and in fiction, in dress, in races, and
the love of man and woman, and all the world was tame when
compared with this El Dorado. Here was the warrior's field ; here
the adventurer's goal, and hither came the poet to sing of Eden.
Here landed the courtly cavaliers of the most chivalrous nation of
the earth. In an age of discovery, when all the world was intoxi-
cated by those vistas of wealth and novelty that the Genoese
opened to the ardent, no one Arcadian land loomed from the
waters of the Occident, so clad in purple, so vocal with music, so
voluptuous with beauty, as this so-called " Island of Florida."

" Its discovery was wrought by, and illustrates the romance of
the age. Ponce de Leon was a hidalgo of Spain — noble, accom-
plished, and renowned. With grey hairs had come honours and
high command in the Indian Islands, when the tales of his
mistress, a Carib girl, told him of a spring whose waters would
bring back the fire of youth, and renew his wasted years. This
fountain was situated on the coast of the gi-eat Mexican Gulf,
where the oak, when dropping into the sea, is transformed into
coral groves, its pendent moss waves beneath the waters changed
into sea-fans, while, mirrored in the sea, the scarlet flamingoes
reflect the colours of Paradise.

"The old knight sailed with his cavaliers in search of this
fountain, and landed among the mangroves of the western coast.

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 96

on Easter-day or day of flowers of the year 1512, and thence
baptized the newly discovered land by the name of Florida. Not
finding the fabled waters, the Quixotic knight and his followers
succumbed to those years they sought to reverse, leaving a heritage
of poetry and fiction to the coast they discovered, as rich as the
tales of the Genii to Araby the Blest. They died by shipwreck
and wars ; or, if the legends of those seas may be believed, they
still live among the coral reefs and keys that girdle the coast, and
there, having at last found that fountain of perpetual youth,
wander where the coral bowers make forests of beauty — where
the sands are strewed with gems, and the summer never wanes.
It is said to be a comely sight to the diver there, when the waters
are clear, to see the Castilian knights, in their armour and their
trailing plumes, loitering with the Indian girls of long ago under
the pink shadow of the coral."

" What a ripper ! " ejaculated Mike.

"An untimely remark, sir," replied Jackson, turning to the
hunter, with a solemn wave of the hand, "and it savours of unbelief."

" Wall ! the Gulf is a mighty safe place to yarn about — for nobody
knows enough to know nothin' about it — that 's sartin. Pile on."

Thus enjoined, Jackson, after a glance at his daughter Louisa's
wondering eyes, continued as follows : —

" Following fast in the wake of the explorer, came noble and
vassal, for fame, or greed, or heroic quest. Velasquez, De Guerray,
Narvaez, succeeded each other as conquerors or visitors to the
newly discovered land.

"Pamphilo de Narvaez was no mere adventurer. To family
honours and name he added the higher title of a fame won on the
battle-field, and wealth and love added their charms to bind him
to ease. But he also had heard of that fabled spring, and from
the esplanade of his home in Cuba had seen the evening sky
refulgent with what was said to be the reflection of the gold of
the Floridas; and so, when the wind came fresh from the east-
ward, the morning-star saw his black-eyed lady watching from
her balcony the lessening galleys that were bearing away her chief
and four hundred men. _

" After seven days of favouring winds, Narvaez landed on the

96 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

western shore of the peninsula, near where the Mecaco Eiver
empties into Charlotte Bay, and forthwith the bands of armed
men, with their standards and their horses, landed on the beach,
and took possession of the land in the name of Spain. A curious
spectacle did the adventurers present. There were the chiefs,
with their haughty mien, and Moorish war-horses, the soldier with
his pike and lance — the blue-steel cuirass, the chain shirt, and
Toledo blade — all contrasted with that tropical country of birds
and flowers, and the gentle mien of the Indians that welcomed
them. Around their leader were gathered chiefs of noble name :
Cobecca de Vacca, the treasurer ; Quesada, from his stately house
in Cordova ; and La Manca, the most gallant gentleman of Castile.
There came, also, priests to cure the souls of the benighted —
hooded priests, whose convent stood high on the hills of Sierra
de Diego, and boys to swing the incense at the altars ; and hounds
in couples nosing the scented air with their tawny muzzles. All
the paraphernalia of war, and the emblems of religion, or wild
sports, swept by Gaspiralla Island, and with the sound of the
trumpet and the horn landed on the main land.

"But a short history remains to be told. Treachery to the
natives aroused revenge. The arrow soughed on every wind,
hostile bands disputed every stream. One battle followed another.
The troops were divided in different bodies, under different leaders,
and fought their way northward, until all but fifteen of that
hopeful army found a grave, either on the field of battle or the
quicksand swamps. Fifteen, under the command of De Vacca,
coasted the Gulf, and gained a shelter in the Mexican colonies.
But one man, a common soldier named Ortez, escaped the others'
doom. Being left ^wounded on a battle-field, he watched his
opportunity, and, as night covered the shattered dead and trodden
field, he crept down to the water's edge, guided by the splash of
the sea. Here, finding a canoe of the natives, he hastUy gathered
some fruit to support him on his voyage, and setting a sail, was
soon beyond pursuit. He coasted down the shore, only landing
at night to gather the turtles' and birds' eggs that were abundant
on all the islands, until he reached Cuba, and saw once more the
towers of a Spanish town.

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 97

" A sad day it was in St, Jago de Cuba, when Ortez came back
with that Indian boat, and the grim tale of disaster. Solemn-mov-
ing men, cloaked to the chin, in spite of the tropical air, clustered
together in the Plaza. Lustrous eyes were dim with tears, and
duennas hurried hither and yonder to gather some scrap of hope
for mistresses whose young love was buried in the buzzard's maw.

"Ortez was summoned to the presence of Narvaez's widow,
In a few moments he had entered the quadrangular stone court,
and stood in a room where the light came in through latticed
windows, and the air was cool with the splash of waters, whose
music brought back to his memories the houses of Seville. The
stately dame of the lost knight sat on a cushion by the window.
Her eyes were hollow with watching and grief, and her voice was
deep and low. Behind her sat her daughter, with a black veil
shrouding her face. The soldier, leaning on his sword, at her
word of command, told the story of their cruise, of their landing
and bitter war. He narrated how, one by one, the leaders found
inglorious deaths by disease, by heat, by arrows, or flood or
quicksand, and how presently they had none to command but
De Vacca.

" ' But your chief — your chief, man ! Where did he fall — how
did he die — did you kill the foeman that struck him, and honour
his corpse as a king's ? ' demanded the woman.

" ' De Narvaez did not die by my side, or I would have revenged
him ; nor was his body buried by our band.'

" ' Where did he die — ^how — when ? Speak faster, man.'

" ' I don't know how he died. They say he died like a hero ;
and when attacking a fort at Apalachi, with his good sword
cleared a road so far into the stockade, that his men could not get
to him, and there he remained and fell.'

" ' And where were you, did you leave your chief, heathen
Moor ? '

" ' No ; would I come back to Cuba had I done that ? I was
not with Narvaez's band; they had separated before into five parties.'

" ' Who was with my husband ? '

" ' They are aU dead that saw him fall, or prisoners among the

Indians.'

G

98 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" ' There were Spanish prisoners among the Indians, then ? '

" ' Yes, they seized three or four ; but we counted them dead,
for they never kept Spanish prisoners.'

" ' What, then, did they do with them ? '

"The soldier replied not in words, but taking his unkempt
locks in one hand, with the edge of the other he made a circle
around his head, and then with the first hand gave a twist, and a
wave that was horribly significant of the scalping process, that had
then but just come to the ears of the Spaniard, and possessed, to
his mind, the double terror of mystery.

" A groan and a long pause followed this pantomime.

" ' Soldier,' said the lady, ' he was your chief, you left him in a
hostile country ; you do not know his fate — will not honour, a
soldier's name, tempt you to return, and seek to bring some tidings
of his death ? '

" * Ha ! where is the honour to all my comrades who are buried
in those woods ? There is no honour there.'

" ' Where is your religion, man ? You swore on the cross in
our Holy Mother Church to defend your liege and propagate your
faith.'

" ' By my Lady, I kept my oath ; but where there is no
standard, and even the priest is slaughtered by the savages, there
is no piety in staying.*

" * Have you ever loved since you left the Tagus ? '

" The soldier's eye glanced quick at the lady's, but he did not
answer, and the young girl peered from her veil beside her mother,
on the comely form of the soldier.

" ' Ortez, I will give you the fairest girl in all the colonies if
you will do this one thing for me.*

" ' I can't. What is love worth if you cannot enjoy it ? I have
been a true soldier in many a war ; but this is no war. We have
lost our ship, our lives, our horses, our chief, everything is gone of
that array, and never a real have we won to repay us all What,
then, could / do alone V

" * Soldier, you are a poor man now, are you not ? '

" ' As poor as a muleteer.'

" ' Do this for me, and I will make you rich.'

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 99

" The lady's eye was on the adventurer, and noted his look.

" * Do this for me. I will send you with a pinnace, I will name
you a lieutenant before you go, and when you return, I will pay
you here in this chamber two hundred ounces of gold. Stay here
now as you are, and you remain the bankrupt soldier, pointed out
as the man who left Narvaez in Florida.'

" Steadily Ortez weighed in his mind his chances of life, and
the golden sum that was as sure to him on the promise of that
woman as though belted at his waist. His eye looked at the soft
light that came in at the window, and the spattering fountain in
the court below, vacantly, while one could. count a score ; and
then, turning to the widow, he said —

" ' I will go,' adding, with Spanish grace, ' and may our Lady
Mother keep you well till my return.'

" In a few days the adventurer was again in the Mexican
Gulf, steering for the battle-fields where he had left his
chief. He sailed among islands covered with mangroves, and
pillared on coral, touching at every prominent point, and thread-
ing the broad lagoons where the sea-ferns spread their palms to
the light of the upper air. When opportunities offered, he landed
on the shore, and tried, by presents and gentle words, to gain from
the natives the information he desired, but they remembered
the fierce forays of Velasquez and Narvaez, and only treated
to betray. He was induced one day by the Apalaches to visit
the shore, and was at once seized; and being recognised as
one of Narvaez's band, was condemned to death. His frightened
comrades having lost their guide, made haste to weigh anchor, and
sailed away to Cuba, glad to escape from the terrors of that
Stygian shore.

"Ortez was a true Spaniard, His haughty mien, dark hair
and^eye, his active strength and bronzed face, all spoke the soldier
of fortune, and impressed the feebler natives with a respect in
spite of their hatred. His dress, in the fashion of the day, of
embroidered velvet and lace, gave him the appearance, to their
eyes, of a chief of rank, and they rejoiced that they could punish
their Spanish foes by the sacrifice of one of their great men, and
led him, bound, to the village of the Apalachean Cacique. This

100 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

town was situated, as near as the old histories of those days can
inform us, on one of the many islands that crowd the mouth of the
Apalachicola river. It is the more difficult to designate the spot,
because, from the currents of the river, new islands are formed
and the old ones are buried in the lapse of time, and the whole
character of the timber has been changed. Where now groves of
stunted pine surmount the sandy ridges, and the swamp poplar
and the rank titi cover the piles of driftwood that lodge on the
upper end of the islands, there formerly stood the life-oak, the
gum, the maple, and the pawpaw, while the deer grass beneath
was pui-ple with its fragile flowers, and the blossoms of the running
gourds that the natives loved to cultivate.

" Ortez was rowed in a canoe among many an island covered
with this rich vegetation, and dotted by the rush-thatched cottages
of the people. He saw stockade forts built of reeds frowning
down in mimic pomp on the waters that had never bristled with
more dangerous arms than the tomahawk and the arrow. He
heard the shrill sound of clarionets and horns, and saw waving
standards of gaudy fathers. The women that rowed the boat in
which he was bound were dressed in the simple robe that befitted
the summer land. Their linen, or sea-grass kilts, were trimmed
with feathers or furs, and sea-shells ornamented their hair and
ankles. Their olive-coloured limbs, unshackled by dress, were as
graceful in form as the children that played on the sand ; and the
men in the stern of the barge, though warriors, all had that gentle
manner and expression that belongs to the natives of southern
climes.

" On arriving at the village, the prisoner was led to the Indian
chief and his council, before the public lodge of the village.
There was short discussion as to the punishment, and no remarks
were made by the prisoner at the bar why sentence should not be
passed, for, in sooth, he could not say a word in any tongue they
could understand. An Indian communicated to him, by a symbolic
motion of shooting with an arrow, that his death was appointed ;
and then, pointing to the setting sun, and describing a semi-circle
with his hand, assigned the time for the morrow morning at sun-
rise. The prisoner was led away, little noting the laugh of the

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTA^. ^ lOi

Indian child that pointed him out to his comrade "at' play',' lit'tfe'
heeding the wondering eyes of the Indian girls that followed his
steps ; for his thoughts were where the Alcanadre river was leap-
ing his native hills of Arragon, and the castanets clacked to the
dancer's tread under the walls of his home in Huesca.

" But there were others at the village who did not join in the
verdict of the chiefs. Those simple hearts, whose love and faith
in the forest, or the town, all the wide world over, makes the sun-
shine to man's gloom, the hope to passion's rigour, had seen the
stranger, had sorrowed for him, and had longed to save him. First
among them all was the daughter of the chief. Availing herself
of her rank, she had stood without the ring when Ortez was under
examination. She had seen his melancholy attitude, and met the
fiery glance of his Spanish eye. She had marked his slashed
doublet, and the graceful embroideries of his vest. His heavy
moustache was different from the smooth-faced warriors of her
tribe, and his form, by their lithe figures, towered like King
Eichard's at Askelon. Her uncovered bosom throbbed beneath
the necklace of coral, her deep eyes were vacant with thought.
Yahchilane was in love; and the object of her love was the
Spanish soldier that was to die at sunrise."

"That's not nateral at all; an Injin woman is a leetle wuss
nor an Injin man, and is allers down on a prisoner."

" You, Mike ! " said Louisa Jackson, with a hushing gesture of
her hand ; and the hunter relapsed into silence, and sat as before,
listening to the story, and rolling backward and forward, with his
arms clasped around his knee.

" It was the old story of Pocahontas anticipated among a gentler
people, and Yahchilane did not need to throw herself under the
war-club to gain the prisoner's pardon. She came, when the moon
was up, to her father's house, and with her came one of the young
girls of the tribe, the friend of the chieftain's daughter. They
brought a roll of cloth, finely woven from the inner bark of trees ;
they brought tatooed gourds, filled with the precious stones that
Indians prize so well, and wampum belts of amber-coloured shells
they brought their gayest kirtles of the skins of the merganser and
wood-duck ; and the moccasin, deftly sewed with the porcupine's

, ,, 102 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

quills ; and when t"he old man, the chief of the Apalaches, sat at
his door-sill, and the next eldest chief beside him, Yahchilane and
her maiden threw all these things at his feet. Then stripping
from her head the long white feathers of the egret that shaded her
neck, and unwinding from her waist the cocoa-fibred skirt, she
tossed them on the pile and sat down in the sand, saying —

" ' Yahchilane is sick, and will need these things no more — she
is ready to go with the dead that go to-morrow morning.'

" The old chief sat silently looking at his daughter ; but he
understood her not.

" ' Where will the Young Swan go to-morrow morn ; and why
is she ill ? '

" ' She sees a great man, with eyes like an eagle's, and hair like
a bear's — with a mantle of moleskin and gold, and a silent tongue
— he is alone and a stranger — and to-morrow he dies; and
Yahchilane would rather hunt with him in the Happy Land than
stay here alone.'

" When the old chief heard this, he knew what the offering
meant ; for it was all of his daughter's goods, and all that she and
her maidens had woven through the year. He knew how fast love
comes under a tropical sky, where the blood is hot, and how far
the wild feeling would carry an Indian girl. He remembered the
days when Yahchilane's mother was a maiden ; and he turned
away to his brother chieftains, and left his daughter still bent on
the sands.

" At a summons hastily sent, the warriors came again together,
and sat as before around the door of their chief. They kindled a
fire, and the flames flashed red over many a reed-covered house —
over the pickets and lagoons, and the still bowed figure of the girl
None looked at the chiefs daughter, though all saw her sitting, and
wist wliy she remained ; and then they talked long and slowly, and
from mouth to mouth passed the pipe, fringed with eagle feathers
and the long beard of the turkey-cock. Hardly would it have
fared with the Spaniard if they had confined themselves to his
deserts — for the cruel wars of Narvaez were fresh in their minds,
and they remembered Anta, and how their kinsmen had fallen
there under the arquebus and the long Spanish blade ; but when

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS.

103

they frowned and looked down, they still saw the young girl in
her beseeching posture, divested of her robes, with her face in her
hands ; and their hearts failed them, and they consented. The
council again broke up, and the old chief, raising his daughter
there under the palm-trees, gave her the life of her captive.

" Wlien the morrow's sun glinted athwart the persimmons and
sycamores, Ortez was again brought before the counciL But how
different the scene ! His eye was bright and hopeful — his step as
proud as a Don ; and in every corner and on every face, fell his
glance in pleasure and in love. How had he learned the change
in his fate ? Who could tell him that he had been pardoned, when
none in all the land spoke a word of his tongue ? When he was
led before the council, Yahchilane stood beside her father arrayed
in her brightest dress. Ortez walked to her, and raising her hand
to his lips with the dignity of a cavalier, kissed it and drew her to
his side — she was already his wife. And all the chiefs, the women
and children, understood that mute ceremony ; and they clapped
their hands and shouted unintelligible words, and Ortez and his
yoimg bride were the fairest and bravest for many years of all the
Apalacheans."

" Pooty poor kind o' marryin', that," quoth Mike.

" Better than yours, for you don't marry at all," retorted Poke.

CJIAPTER XL

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS-«mf(«t<«f.

" Entre le ciel qui brflle, ct la mer qui moutonne
Au somnolent soleU d'un midi monotone,
Tn songes, 0 g^erri^re sux vieuz conquistadorB."

Db Hbbkda.

" Among races but little advanced from a state of nature, no human
quality excites greater reverence than personal bravery, and Ortez
inheriting this power as a natural birthright, soon sat in the first
ranks among his adopted people. He had to throw aside his
arquebus for lack of powder ; but acquired the art of shooting the
bow, and flinging the metal ball, with as much accuracy as his
instructors. He still retained his basket-hilted sword and his
shirt of link mail ; and in the different wars of the tribe there was
none who could strike a surer blow, or stand longer in the breach,
or was greater feared for his prowess than the adopted Spaniard,
who rose to. the position of second chief of the nation, passing
those who were immeasurably above him when he began his race.
Some were proud of his young renown ; but others, as in every
land, imputed their own subordinate position to the honours
showered on his head, and were proportionately jealous. But
honour or jealousy made no difference in the love of his wife — the
same passionate kiss greeted the soldier if he came back honoured
or suspected. It was a woman's love, and it flickered not ; and
when angry voices told of Spanish aggressions and coming wars,
and pointed to him, she merely said, ' He is not a Spaniard, he is
my love.'

" There had been a fierce battle fought between the Yupaha
tribes and the Apalaches, in which the latter had returned with
not their usual success, bringing home with them the bodies of
many of their warriors. They came to the village with all the

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 106

insignia of woe, beating of drums, formed of the sections of hollow
trees covered with deer skins, and the mournful blast of their
conch-shell trumpets.

" Wealuste, the great black water chief, had been killed, and
they placed him on the shore, with his arrows and his quiver, his
knife and his eagles' plumes, and a goodly store of chinquapin nuts
and maize, to support him on that long journey to the Happy
Hunting-ground that he was to make in darkness and alone. His
body was sewed in deerskins, pictured with the scenes of his life,
and then placed in a wooden canoe formed from a cypress log.
This canoe was fixed on upright posts, and the warrior was left to
float away, as a chief should go, to the silent realm. But for forty
days and forty nights, or for one whole moon, the corpse was to
be watched by comrades of equal rank with the deceased, so that
neither beast nor bird disturbed the dead. This is a part of the
simple faith of the tribe; and they affirm that after decay has
taken the body, the departed chief is safe beyond earthly harm.

"Ortez was the first in order that had assigned to him this
honourable duty, and in the early part of a summer eve he took his
post by the dead man. The sun laid down in his golden bed in
the western waters, and the stars one by one stepped to their
places in the sky, as the watcher paced to and fro by the side of
the scaffolding where the dead chief slept. He heard the distant
wailing of music from the village, and the nearer hooting of the
owls, and the honking of the herons from the wood. He saw the
pawpaw wave its purple bells between him and the sky, and the
green balls of the buttonwood looked like the olives on the hills
of his native land. But it was not of the storied peaks of Spain
the soldier was then thinking — nor was he listening to the twitter-
ing of the birds in the reeds. He was watching the path that led
toward the village, and his heart was beating thick with the
anticipation of meeting some one that was fairer than the pawpaw
bell, and dearer than the towers of his native town. He listens
on his beat with one foot raised — he turns his ear aside, and his
thin nostril quivers like that of a horse. He hears a splash in the
water — it was not the grey duck. A canoe touches the shore, and
a girl steps out on the strand. Her luminous eye is half veiled

106 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH,

by its lashes — her limbs are trembling with delight. She falls
into the arms of Ortez, and after an instant of fainting embrace,
they turn aside into the ilex groves that fringe the bank of the
lagoon.

" ' Ortez, does not honour call thee to the dead man's side ?
Ortez, does not thy wife's low voice, that saved thee once, beseech
thee now ? '

" Ha ! who hears voices pleading in the mad tumultuous hours
of night — thought comes with the bare-faced mom. The glare of
the torrid day is for rest, and penance, and prayers ; and the
tropical night is passion's own holiday, when love and hate roll
like the sea."

"Hold there, and turn down a leaf," called out the Doctor.
" That 's pure error. It is the day that is made for action, ambi-
tion and hope — pride and quick deeds come with the sunshine.
Then man does his works for good or evil ; but when the day is
gone, the grey of twilight, the hush of voice, and emblematic sleep,
bring thought and repentance. Man's good spirit comes to him
then, and whispers of errors done, and cools his ambition ; and, if
he is a true man, he says his prayers, and "

" Goes to bed," laughed Jackson. " That 's all very nice for a
man who lives in a land where water freezes after dark, and nobody
but a bear can keep out at nights without the ague. That is not
the way the hot blood rolls in the Creole veins ; nor was it the
way that the Spanish soldier reasoned with the Indian girl
Where was I ? "

" Ortez had just met the Indian girL"

" Ah ! yes ; Jumper-boy, give me a light."

Taking the stick from the hand of his negro, he lit his pipe,
and resumed the story.

" That young Indian girl had left the village, as quietly as the
dew, her moccasin had made no foot-fall on the path, and her
paddle scarce splashed the lagoon. When she met her lover, their
voices were as low as the eddy of the wave in the river ; and when
she parted, and took her course back to the village, though her
speed was slow, and her stroke was languid and uneven, yet stiU,
her boat passed like a shadow beneath the low, arching titi boughs,

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 107

and the hanging folds of the Spanish moss. But, for all this, an
eye was on her in the darkness, and an ear heard her very breath-
ings, and when she landed, and her bark canoe was hidden in the
joint-grass, she passed so near Yahchilane that the tails of fox-
squirrels, that fringed her kirtle, touched the shoulder of the
young wife.

" The girl, once in the path toward the village, walked swifter
still, now and then pausing to listen, when in the deeper shadows.
On her route, she crossed a dense grove of wild plum-trees, where
the scarlet fruit dotted the ground, and the low-reaching branches
made a shadow as dark as a stormy night. When in the centre
of the grove she started, uttering a quick, aspirated sound, for a
hand was laid on her shoulder, from behind. She turned, but
could not see who it was, the grove was so obscure.

" ' Who is it ? ' she demanded, in a low voice.

" * An eagle who had a mate,' said Yahchilane, in a voice so
quick and fierce that the young girl could not recognise it, though
she cowered from the threatening shadow and rasping voice that
continued. * And who are you ? The wild cat that killed him.'

" Nothing more was said, though the ground doves that roosted
in the grove flew frightened away. If any more there was, the
lamentations from the town, and the beating drum, prevented it
from being heard. And then, down among the mourners, with her
proud head at its uttermost height, and her black eye flashing
fire, strode the chieftain's daughter. Old chiefs lay there with
their lips in the dust, but hers were as proud as a conqueror's ; the
women of the tribe were there, with distorted faces, beating with
hollow canes the war-drums of the Apalaches ; the conch shells
uttered their loudest wail, and maidens sat, in their shame, un-
covered in the sand; but with no semblance of sorrow on her
sovereign face, Yahchilane walked among the bonfires that lighted
all the town, and across the council-lawn, and went into her
father's house.

"The next morning, when the young girls of the village, in
laughing troops, with palmetto baskets, wound down the path to
gather fruit for their simple meal, they found one of their number
dead in the grove. A knife of fish-bone, with a carved handle.

108 WIIJ) SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

was driven in her breast, so deep that the point came out behind,
between her shoulders.

" Hardly had the news been told, before a young warrior came
rushing into town with a tale, whose horror exceeded even the
crime of murder.

" It appeared that the relief-guard that went out early in the
morning to take the place of Ortez, at the tomb of the dead
chieftain, found the Spaniard absent from his post. On coming to
the scaffolding they discovered the canoe overturned, and the body
of Wealuste dragged out and mutilated by some wild beast.
Depth of all disgrace ! the face that had fronted a hundred battles
had been mutilated by a carrion wolf. Where was now the soul
of the chieftain in the shadowy land? What great doom was
hovering over his people for this neglect ?

" As the warriors wondered and mourned, and hastily gathered
up the body of their dead, Ortez was seen coming back from the
woods, dragging the body of a huge black wolf. The animal, while
making off with its prey, had been pursued by the soldier,
wounded with an an-ow, and killed with a dagger, after severely
tearing the arm of his antagonist. Ortez could give no explana-
tion of how the animal had succeeded in mounting the scaffold,
unobserved, or what he himself was doing during the scene of
sacrilege. The fault was fearful, and the Spaniard was bound and
dragged back to the village. Again he was the outcast criminal,
chained and reviled. Now, all the suspicious spirits that mis-
trusted his prosperity gloated over his fall, and reviled him. They
called up every misdeed that had come to their knowledge. They
cited his Spanish origin ; and reasoned, that because he was one of
their natural enemies, the comrade of Narvaez, and the country-
man of Velasquez, therefore he had permitted this unpardonable
sin, and brought down the anger of the Great Spirit on the tribe.

" Justice is not slow of foot among simple people, and that
evening, while the young mistress of the soldier was wrapped in
fawn skins, and sewed in palmetto leaves for her long sleep, her
lover was brought to trial before the chiefs of the village.

" The fire of loblolly pine climbed up in the air, and lit the
scene with the whiteness of noon. The bamboo and grass cot-

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 109

tages; the overshadowing palms, with their colossal trunks and
spike-leafed crowns ; the solemn circle of chiefs, and the back-
ground of women and young boys, formed a picture glowing with
the colours of Kubens.

" Ortez stood in the centre, bound to a stake. He appeared
the same man as three years before, when he stood in the self-same
place. He wore the same steel shirt, the same fierce look of pride ;
and from his ragged arm, the blood, unnoticed, dropped slowly on
the ground.

" The warrioi*s smoked long and silently ; and when they had
done, and the pipe had been laid down before the cacique, they
spoke their views with the gravity of Eoman Fathers.

"When all had finished, Ortez replied. His words — in the
Apalachean tongue — were broken, though his voice was deep and
clear. He recounted his deeds, and alluded to his offence in com-
parison; but the oldest men shook their heads, for the soldier
never gave any reason for his neglect, or told whether he was
absent or asleep, or how that shameful fate came to pass.

"He alluded to his wife, calling her by name, when a step
without the ring drew all eyes in that direction. Yahchilane
stood in front of her husband, as beautiful as a panther. She
tore off from her shoulder an embroidered sash, which is worn by
the married women of the tribe to support their infants at their
back, and which is the distinguishing badge of the matron among
the Apalacheans, and tossing it in the circle, it fell at the feet of
her husband. She never said a word, but her steady eye was on
the Spaniard, and it did not fail in its effect, for a tremor passed
over his frame, so that the links in his mail rattled together ; and
all the chiefs and all the tribe knew that Yahchilane renounced
her husband.

" There was no more doubt in the council. Ortez was con-
demned to death at daylight, and was led away to confinement,

" The council fire had burned low in the village, and the few
smouldering brands gleamed among the ashes, or sputtered brief
jets of flame and smoke, like the smouldering passions that tossed
the sleepers strewn around in the open cabins, still dreaming of
the stirring events of the day. The sentinels by the fort walked

no WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

backward and forward, or leaned on their lances tipped with the
spikes of deer's horn, tasting in anticipation the savage pleasures
of the execution of the coming mom. The young moon had set,
and millions of frogs and peepers in the marsh tilled the air with
their shrill calls, and forewarned the rain that was coming up with
the easterly wind. Masses of damp fog rolled in from the sea, and
left the palisades of the fort, and the zizania grass that grew from
the water at its side, wet with their soggy breath. It was drawing
toward morning.

" Within the adobe cell of the fort the condemned man sat on
the ground ; and if a man's mind is ever occupied with his coming
destiny, his must have pictured the approaching execution, of
which he was to be the victim. The stake and the fagot, the
red-hot brand, the pricking reed, the scalping-knife, the gauntlet,
the jeer and the death-song, had all been familiar to him in his
short episode of Indian life. If the southern savage was of gentler
mien and comelier appearance ; if his women were fairer in face,
and more lustrous in eye, than their more northern tribes, they
were in no wise inferior in their ferocity of punishment to their
prisoners. Even the Spanish Inquisition was not more refined in
cruelty. Well might Ortez ponder his death, and mumble long-
forgotten fragments of Latin prayers.

" There was another in the Indian town, who kept vigil that
night.

" Yahchilane, the daughter of the cacique, who had been loved
by many in her tribe before the hated name of Spain was heard —
she who had saved the prisoner's life — who had taken him from
death to be her lord and chief in the land — who had cradled his
head on her bosom — who had borne him sons — who had been
deceived and slighted — who had risen in her wrongs, and con-
demned to death the mistress and the husband — she, the fierce,
proud, vindictive heart, and woman withal, through the mooulight
and the fog, roamed and wrestled with her inner self. There was
no prouder blood from Natchez to Honda Keys ; and for four-
and-twenty hours it had coursed through her veins like rivers of
fire. Had she met her husband and the native girl together, she
would have slain them both. When she saw his blood flowing

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. Ill

from his wounded arm in the council ring, she sorrowed only that
she had not made the wound from which it flowed. Had the
council acquitted the prisoner she would have tracked him like a
hound ; and now her wild delight made her fevered step carry her
to and fro, like the panther that sweeps his tail while watching to
leap. Down by the fort she went, and away on the point, wading
into the watergrass, until she seemed like the Naiad that lives
under the sea. Then she walked back again with a long, elastic
step, eyeing the palisades and the sentinels, her kirtle draggled by
the dew, the long plumes in her hair broken on her shoulders, and
her symmetrical limbs cut by. the sword grass. Another turn
would take her to the lagoon, where she had watched her hus-
band's trysting, and then again she flitted through the plum-trees,
where still a dark stain lay on the grass. So back and forth stalks
a tiger-cat, when the spring water intrudes on the island where she
has dropped her young.

" The night gradually passed away. The big wave that the
Southern tribe declares comes landward when the god of night
turns to go back in the sea, had broken along the shore with a
hollow roar, and the marsh rosemary had turned its petals to the
east to await the rising sun.

" Yahchilane noted these tokens of the hours. She had taught
them all to Ortez, and they had heeded them many a night when
fishing in the lagoons. He had narrated for her the legends of
Spain, and the wild Moorish pranks that haunted the old towers of
his native town, when the chimes told midnight. She had plumed
for him his arrows, and softened his tongue to the liquid accents
of her language ; and he in exchange had sung her fairy tales, and
drawn on the sand the outlines of great houses and sailing ships.
He was a handsome man. How his moustache curled over his
chain mail ! How he took the arrows and gave the blows in
battle ! How proud she had been at village galas ! How sad at
distant forays ! How her heart had yearned to him in that second
love, when his child had tugged at her breast, and they three had
laughed together !

" Sad thoughts these to the bitter woman, and she stopped in
her walk, and leaned against the palm-trees.

112 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Yell, and curse, and seething iron probed in the quivering
muscles, while the naked wretch feels the licking flame.

" Ha ! had he not slept in her arms many a night and day ?
And up and on dashes the tortured wife, balancing her hate, that
was of her race, with her heart, that was of her common mother-
hood. And the hours waned, and sick and hot the wind came in,
and the odour of the honeysuckle and the water-lily were oppres-
sive to the senses.

" Chatte Echo, the Red Deer, was a young chief of the Apa-
laches, of a noble name and tried courage. In Chatte Echo's
cabin hung the skins of ten panthers, and behind his house
stretched a field of maize and melons that was smaller in size
than none but the cacique's. This warrior had loved Yahchilane ;
but when Ortez came to Apalache, his suit was discarded ; and
ever since then he had remained unmated. He had always been
an enemy to Ortez, and was now one of the sentinels that watched
over him in prison. Posted on the side toward the sea, from the
low rampart where he stood he could look out on the water and
down into the inner fort where Ortez sat. A proud man was he
that night, and none in all the band would guard the prisoner surer.
As he was leaning on his spear and thinking of his revenge, a
canoe floated up from the water, and among the bending reeds. It
came so whist the sentinel did not hear it, and the fog was so
heavy he did not see it until it touched the wall, and an Indian
woman stepped on to the parapet. Chatte Echo would have
struck at her with his spear, but she seized his arm, and, bringing
her face close to his, he recognised Yahchilane.

" A moment's pause followed this strange interview. She
seemed to be studying him ; and he was wondering at her. Had
she attempted force, he would have called ; but her pleading look
kept him silent. A little of the old love seemed softening his eye,
and the touch of her hand thrilled his arm.

" ' Chatte Echo, you have my husband here, let him go.' Her
voice was low and inquiring,

" ' Sooner a wild cat when I had my arrow drawn to shoot,'
replied the warrior in a bitter tone.

" ' He shall flee us, and will trouble you no more.'

THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS. 113

" ' He can trouble me no more than a few hours if he stays.'

" ' You refuse me this, and you will be my enemy.'

" * I am your enemy now/ said the warrior gloomily.

" ' No, Chatte Echo ; you are my friend,' whispered the Indian
woman, in her lowest tone, laying her arm on his shoulder.

" The chief's voice trembled, as he replied : ' Where will be
your friendship when you get your lover back ?'

" ' Ha ! he is no lover to me !' said the woman, in her quick,
fierce mood. ' Listen, boy ; that brave is a wolf — ^yet he must not
die — I do not love him — he is no more of mine — let him go, and
he will flee, and — Chatte Echo, I will love you. Eefuse me this,
and I will hate you. No one will know it — he will take that canoe,
and go without a trace, and the dawn will find him leagues away.
Say it quickly, chief ; for the air is grey, and the gulls are going
seaward.'

" There was a hesitation in the warrior's eye, and doubt and
hope, love and hate, chased each other over his tawny face like
the fog-clouds that were scudding by.

" How will I know your face will be the same to-morrow ? ' he
inquired doubtingly ; * the doe may flee with the buck.'

" ' Keep me here — take me now — I am yours, Chatte Echo ! '

" The wild light lit up the coal-black eyes of the brave, and
the prisoner was free. Ortez silently hurried out of his cell, and
stepped on the low rampart, saved once more. He saw his wife,
and recognised her as the means of his deliverance, and, with the
quick perception of a reckless adventurer, accepted the chance
without a word. He stood in the canoe, with the paddle in his
hand, and awaited, as for his wife to enter with him, while the
young chief stood by her side at the water's edge. She leaned
down to speak to her husband, and her voice, necessarily law, was
so distinct that not a word was lost.

" ' Sail south to Macaco's land in the Great Bay — stop not for
your life, and tell Macaco who sent you.' Then, in a lower and a
harsher tone, she continued : ' The canoe you are in carried your
mistress to see you at the grave last night. She is dead now —
stabbed while her lips were yet wet with your kisses. Go, hound
of a Spaniard, or I may stab you too.' The last words were fairly

114

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

hissed by the woman, the old tide of hate welling high and fast as
she saw the Spaniard safe again. Ortez's countenance blanched
under the swarth of years. Chatte Echo gave the light canoe an
impetus with his foot, and shoved it out into the lagoon. Her
eyes followed the spot where it disappeared, her outstretched arm
trembled, she staggered and fell into the arms of the young chief,
who carried her into the fort. He had won her."

" I don't like that story, father ; it gives a low ideal of woman."

" But, child, remember it is savage woman that I tell of ; you
can't paint a crow green."

" How much is true ? " asked the literal Doctor.

" Is it not all written," answered the narrator, " in the faithful
annals of Q-arcilasso de la Vega ? "

CHAPTER XII.

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY.

"The stout Earl of Northumberland
A vow to God did make.
His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summer days to take."

Chevy Chasb.

As the Ouithlacouchee River emerges from the bayous, lakes,
swamps, and drowned lands, which it has drained for many a
square league, and reaches the salt water, it widens its bed, and,
harassed by the heavy beat of the sea, deposits its accumulation of
vegetable matter with the sands of the ocean in little islands, that
are presently covered with the rankest vegetation. There grows
the cane like a gigantic grass, and the cabbage palmetto there
rears its huge, twisting, bayonet-bristling trunk like the fanciful
verdure of Utopian land. Sometimes these islands are based on
the conglomerate shells, and are as stable as the main land, but
again they are the mere accumulations of floating vegetable
matter, rank weeds, and decaying rafts of trees, lashed together by
sea-weeds and clamping vines, and resembling those floating gardens
that the ingenious Celestials moor in the rivers of China. The
aquatic plants and nameless vines cover them with festoons, and
a large shoot striking down in the water anchors the raft, which
will float hither and thither by the wind, closing or opening
some water passage, to the great discomfiture of the bewildered
explorer.

Beyond these ranker islets, and acting as outer piers or break-
waters to the stiU inner bays, lie other islands in long coral reefs,
covered by sea grass and a smaller growth of trees, and washed on
their outer sides by the surf of the Gulf. All of them aboimd in

116 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

game of every kind, the fame of which led our party of hunters
with our hosts for a few days' hunting and sporting, bringing
tents, dogs, and servants enough to beat up all the woods on the
Gulf Coast. These species of hunts are frequent in the Southern
States, where time is not regarded with the monetary eye to value
with which it is measured in Doctor Franklin's proverbs, and
where an ample range of unclaimed ground is open to all that
choose to come and enjoy it. Such hunts are called marooning,
and we were marooners as soon as we had reached the low sandy
shore of Bonda Key, and pitched the two white tents that formed
our travelling homes.

One hut was occupied by Poke, Jackson, and myself, the other
by Lou Jackson and her girl Rosa, a bright negress of the same
age as her mistress, and around the big fire a large row of screens
of blankets or evergreen branches sheltered the dozen negroes that
constituted our party. As to Mike, he always preferred to carry
up his canoe, and elevating the side next the fire on a stick, would
crawl under it and sleep like an alligator.

In many respects our camp was more orderly than the planta-
tion house we had left. There were no sheep to tinkle and bleat
away the hours of the night, reminding you of your bed in the
Tyrolean ch&let, with all the herds stabled beneath you. There
were no young negroes constantly disputing or tumbling under
your feet ; there was no Aunty Blase tyrannising over your culin-
ary department, and ordering around all the boys within reach.
But we still had one nuisance, in the shape of dogs —

" Both mongrel puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree " —

melodious hounds that bayed at the moon ; sullen dogs that
snapped at your heels ; insinuating dogs that crept under your
tent and into your arms when you are half asleep ; spiteful dogs,
with their voices attuned to the sharpest chords, " fit for treason,
stratagems, and spoils." All this mongrel herd had been kept in
peace at home ; some were quartered away from the house, some
were chained, and others meditative or sleepy. But here, as sure
as pleasant harmonies came over the soul, and the hush of sleep
fell on the camp, and the loudest sound abroad was the squeaking

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY. 117

bat and droning sea, some canine tyrant would infringe the
etiquette of the brotherhood, and immediately there would break
out a fiendish turmoil of snarls, yells, bays, howls, growls, and
yelps, intermingled with the babble of the negroes' voices and the
whacking of sticks, and when fully awake, and you had seized
your gun, or a paddle, determined on deeds of revenge, peace
would be declared in a loud voice ; in some such phrase as —

"Ketch you yowlin' again. Tink I'se got a stick here for
nuttin', eh ? "

Bonda Key was perchance half a mile in width at its widest
part, and three miles in length, where we were encamped. The
thickest growth of trees and shrubbery stood at our end, and near
the outer side was a long pool of water, formed by the sea throw-
ing up a bank of sand and leaving this isolated pond. The nearest
land adjoining this island was at the two ends, the sides being
bounded without by the open ocean, and within by the sheltered
bay, which, dotted with islands of different sizes, extended to the
broad mouth of the river and to the mainland.

Thus much for the geography of our temporary home ; as to its
geology, it might be said to be, in the words of Mike, " sand-some ;"
its botany was represented by sword-grass, palmetto, sea-wrack,
some wild plums, and a few water-oaks and pines ; by the pond
the reeds and joint-grass grew very closely, and in the centre we
could see a close tangle of vegetation, that would defy the best
hunter in the land to crawl through. As to its conchology, I can
only say it produced excellent clams, and a kind of conch shell,
that Scipio manufactured into a species of annoyance called a
dinner-horn, and which, when blown, made all the dogs on the
island howl. As to its zoology, man seemed absent, and every
other created thing had its representative, particularly those classes
that preyed on man, which seemed the more voracious from bemg
so seldom gratified by visitors.

I am thus particular as to the peculiarities of this place, that
the battue we adopted the morning after our arrival may be under-
stood. On our arrival in the evening, the hounds had all been
tied to prevent them coursing over the island, and the negroes
had been restricted to a narrow range in the collection of firewood

118 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

and fish, so that nothing should be done to disturb the game that
might be on the island.

The next morning, as we came out from our tents with the
first grey light, the wind was still coming in from the land, laden
with the flavour of marsh and magnolia ; the negroes were poking
together the half-burned brands, and preparing the breakfast in
haste, or rather all the haste a negro ever assumes, and I plunged
into the sea with the happy anticipation of a grand hunt, and all
aglow to hear the first cry and ringing shot of the battue.

" Good-morning to you, Miss Jackson ; you look like Diana
this morning, in your canvas jacket and gown."

"And you like a shipwrecked mariner, with your dripping
locks, and jacket on your ann."

"Where's Mike?"

" Mars Mike 's agwone ofif he shell on he back, like a gopher,"
said Scipio.

" There he comes ; he has been around the head."

" How are you. Poke ? "

" O — ho — hum — oh — ho — heo-o — hum ! " yawned the Doctor,
rubbing his eyes, as he staggered out of the tenfc.

" How are you ? " I reiterated.

" Oh, ho ! — there *s one of those dogs named Music, I believe.
I 'd have his name changed after to-night I didn't get a wink
o' sleep."

" Hulloa, gentlemen, a pleasant day to you ! " said Jackson,
just protruding his head from the canvas. " You boys, hurry
there with breakfast!" and with this general order, the head
disappeared.

" Oh, oh ! dear me ! Break — breakfast — on thy cold, grey
stones, oh ! oh ! sea — and I would that my tongue could
utter"

" Pete, you boy ! pour some water on the Doctor to wake
him ; he 's dreaming yet"

" You, Sam ! tie up that Black Bess ; she will be clean gone
presently. Where is Sumpter ? "

" Mars Jackson, Pomp say you 's agwine to leflf him shoot a
gun to-day ? "

THE BATTUE ON BOND A KEY. 119

" Go along with you ! "

" Yah ! yah ! yah ! I knowed de niggah lie ! "

As the noise and hurry progressed, breakfast began to smoke
on the fire, the boats were launched, and in a few minutes every-
thing was ready for the chase, while a hearty breakfast of venison
and fish was spread before us, and the sun arose in the woods on
the shore, and his level beams trailed the smoking water, and
painted the tops of the taller island trees with golden tassels.

The hunt was arranged by the dogs being led to the end of the
island, not far from where we' were camped, and thrown off, and
all the party were to follow, as they came up, either on foot or in
boats. One boat was to keep on each side of the island, close
enough in-shore to shoot any game that might take to the beach ;
the rest of the hunters, with all the negroes, were to follow the
dogs, and, keeping at equal distances apart, and to beat down the
island, and thus drive before them everything that would run. As
the chase progressed, it would come to the narrower portion of
the island, and thus the men would come closer together just at
the time when the game would be most anxious to turn back,
so that they could form a barrier through which nothing could
return.

After all had reached the point agreed upon, and taken their
stations, Mike harangued them, telling what should be done. Lou
Jackson was in one boat, with Eosa to paddle; the Doctor in
another, to guard the other side, and all the rest were to follow the
hounds. Scipio had been sent at starting to the other end of the
island, in a canoe, to lie close to the nearest shore, to head off
anything that should attempt to cross to the main.

" Now remember ! " said Poke to Jackson, just as the hounds
were being loosened.

" What ? "

" Thirty centuries look down upon you from those gum-trees."

" Shough ! Go ahead all ! " shouted Jackson, " and don't you
boys bother the rabbits."

The hounds were cast off, and with their noses high in air
coursed into the underbrush, and with yelp and cry the boisterous
crew of coon-dogs and half-breeds rushed in their wake, while the

120 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

negroes, each armed with a big cudgel and a heavy knife, with
which to clear the vines, dashed off, yelping very much after the
manner of their dogs, cheering on their particular favourites
with endearing cries, and all were soon scattered out of sight
in the dense undergrowth that succeeded the sandy ridges and
level grass of the coast. From time to time, we could hear
their shouting, and the crashing that was caused by their pro-
gress, and when within sound, many a rough joke and laugh came
down the line.

I was nearest the inner channel, and close to the beach.
Jackson was next to me, then Mike and the negroes all beyond, and
toward the open sea. At first we could not see each other except
at intervals where the woods opened, but as we advanced we came
into a less tangled ground, and we could maintain a connected
vision entirely across from one to another.

" Thar 's deer," said Jackson, as we crossed the fresh tracks of
one. "And thar 's Beauty," continued he ; " do you hear her ? "

" No, I cannot tell one from another ; they are all yelping, each
on a different track."

A loud burst of voices from the negroes proclaimed something
started.

"What's that, Mike?"

" Coon," answered Mike.

" No — thunder ! it 's a cat ; see it come."

Grimalkin, however, did not like such a multitude of foes, and
turning to the right, shot in under the underbush ahead of us,
while two of the younger dogs came full cry on her heels.

" There 's a coon — two of them ! " I shouted.

" Out of the frying-pan into the fire, I think," said Jackson, as
they ran into the same thicket the cat had taken to.

Here the bushes became so thick that I had to take my hunt-
ing-knife to cut my way and free my legs from the close binding
of tenacious green vines that seemed stronger than packthread
We could hear the dogs on either side yelping and scudding hither
and yon, and I at once saw the advantage of the mongrel pack we
were using. They wound in and out of every corner, and under
every fallen leaf where a hare could lie, yelping as poor puss

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY. 121

started from her form, and only following her a few steps to pursue
their researches in another cover.

Slowly we progressed, and after about two hours of labour had
come down one half of the island, and had drawn so near together
we could see each other. On calling down the line we had
reported two deer as having been seen, and " some coon," with such
a strong accent on the some, that we were inclined to think that
this particular game was very plentiful. Indeed, Scipio was seen
with two hanging to his girdle. I could see, from time to time,
Miss Lou's boat paddled by Kosa, and the young lady seated in
the bow.

" What 's that ahead ? " shouted Jackson.

" Can't say, though it looks black," I replied, as some indistinct
body rushed out from under some grape-vines, shaking down the
fruit in showers.

" Yeow ! yeow ! — oohow ! " chimed in two or three dogs in
chorus, on some new and fresh scent, and Wag, who had been
keeping very near me, dashed off to see.

" There 's a buck, — look out ! " said Jackson, firing.

" Never riz a hair ! " called Mike, as the deer crashed on.

" Big buck ! big buck ! " called out the negroes beyond.

" Spang ! "

" There goes Lou's gun," said Jackson. " What is she shooting?
can you see ? "

" Yes, a young buck."

" It 's getting lively, Jackson."

" Wait a little, there 's game here ! Hear the boys sing."

The lively chant of the negroes sounded in the clear air,
accompanied by the crashing of their sticks :

** Wake 'cm up dare !

Waugh and a waugh da !
Git out possum !
Waugh da dey ! "

" Da she goes," called a negro, as something bounded out of
the bushes.

"What's that?"

" Big buck, sail got horns like a dead tree."

122 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" There 's that cat again ! "

Sure enough, the cat came spitting along, and dashed up a tree,
sending down the bark in showers on the dogs that were close
after her.

" Drap, you hussy ! " said Mike, following her zig-zag course
up the pine-tree with his rifle ; and as she paused he sent a ball
through her head, whizzing her down with a whirling motion as
though she had been swung down by her tail.

" Git out, you dogs ! Clare away, that 's my cat ! " he shouted,
cuffing the dog aside, and taking possession of his prize.

" Kehunck ! Kehunck ! " There goes a blue heron, fanning the
air with measured stroke. See him sail He got up so slowly
that one of the dogs jumped up at his long dangling legs.

" There go three deer altogether."

" Don't shoot the does, thar 's no use," called out Mike.

There was only one buck, and three shots rang so close together
we could not tell the report, but the buck fell over among his
wives, who leaped ahead, sadly frightened. Mike cut his throat,
and left his cat beside him to keep him company.

" There 's that varmint again," shouted Jackson ; " it 's a
panther ! "

" Whar 's a painter 1 " asked Mike.

" On ahead ; we 've seen him twice."

I heard the Doctor's voice from the other side of the island,
and the quick repeated report of his double-barrel. Then a shot
on our left.

" That 's Lou again ; push down to the beach there, will you ? "

I came through the young willows that shut out the view,
when I saw Lou gesticulating and pointing ahead, at the same
time she was loading. I tried to see what it was, but could not,
on account of the intervening bushes. She hurriedly rammed
down the wad of shot with which she was provided, sewed up in
muslin, and taking aim, fired again.

" A wolf ! — look out — he is turning in the bushes."

I ran back just in time to see the animal attempting to sneak
back, when, seeing me, he turned ahead, and ran on so quickly I
could not shoot, though I saw by his track he was wounded.

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY. 123

At the place we had now reached, the island was not more than
a quarter of a mile in width. The trees had ceased to grow, and
only a few copses of willow were found in the hollow between
the ridges, and the tall grass that lined the pond. We could see
the negroes away hither and thither, chasing the swamp raccoons
that seemed to overrun the island, and striking at the hares that
dodged hither and thither, and, escaping the men, were sure to
run directly in the mouths of the dogs.

Ahead of us we could see the deer coursing over the knolls,
hard pushed by the dogs, that had separated, and were each hunting
on his own hook.

" There 's Yowler and Music. Here they come — they are after
the wolf. Hi, dogs ! hi, dogs ! " shouted Jackson, running to a knoll
where he could overlook the chase.

The negroes yelled as they caught sight of the game and the
wolf, availing himself of every copse and hollow, ran on, hard
pushed by the dogs, and dodging on every side to avoid his
numerous foes. Whenever he entered a thicket he remained there
until the dogs were about entering the other side ; then he dashed
away with an angry snap of his jaws that sounded like the ring of
metal. As he approached the farther shore, the Doctor saluted
him with a double shot that stung him badly. He passed down
the line of negroes, but their shouting and dancing deteiTed him
from attempting to break their array.

" Now, Mike ! "

" No, no ; it is your turn ; I 've had a cat."

"Take him, Charlie!"

I levelled my rifle, and as he ran I fired. At the report he
rolled over and over like a ball.

" Well done ! " shouted Lou Jackson.

I thought him quite dead, but when the dogs came up where
he fell, he turned around on his haunches and snapped at his
pursuers with such effect that the foremost lost a piece from his
shoulder as broad as my palm, leaving a ghastly wound. The dog
turned away, yelling with pain. Wag, who was always in every
scrape, received another nip, sufficient to put him on the sick list
for the rest of the day, and doubtless some of the other dogs

124 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

would have been hurt, had not Mike fired and killed the wounded
animal as the hounds came crowding up.

" Cat ! cat ! " " Yow ! yow ! " " Hit urn a dip ! " " Ough !
ough ! " were the sounds that came on the right, as a big cat broke
away down the beach. The Doctor was just landing from his
boat, and had a fair chance, as the animal was close by. The shot
wounded the furious beast, so that it became completely confused,
and, being hard pressed by the dogs, it took refuge in the only
tnmk it could see, which happened to be the high curve of the
Doctor's cypress canoe, just landing end-on to the beach. In rushed
the dogs after the animal, crowding the boat, knocking about the
paddles, and forcing the Doctor up on the thwarts. The fierce
animal fought with desperation against the crowd of pursuers,
thrashing around the Doctor's legs, and tilting the boat from one
side to the other, till it finally upset, and dogs, and oars, cat, and
hunter, were all thrown into the water together. It only needed a
moment of open field, and the dogs, smarting with their scratches,
tore the cat almost in pieces, and left the cat-skin, as one of the
boys remarked who had run down to help the Doctor, " 'bout
chawed up."

Jackson and I did not like to leave our places to help in the
fray, though we assisted all we could by laughing, and Miss
Jackson called out, after vainly trying to peer over the land, to
know what the matter was.

I explained how the Doctor had presided over the fight.

" The Colossus of Rhodes ! " she answered back.

" I won't stand for a Colossus again," he replied, shoving ofif
his boat, and resuming his paddle ; " that miserable cat has
scratched my legs bare ! "

As our line advanced we could see the end of the island that
ran out in a long narrow bar. Hundreds of gulls and black-headed
terns, with snow-white breasts, disturbed from the sands, were
screaming over us, and curlews and plover wheeled in circles,
uttering their plaintive cries. Crowds of merganser ducks that
were sitting on the shingle, basking in the sun, rushed out to sea,
piling up the water in front of them, and small birds took flight
to the neighbouring islands, or flew high in the air to regain their

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY. 126

accustomed haunts in the thickets. As some great seine that has
enclosed a broad bay, at last contracts its semicircle toward the
beach, exposing to the light the flashing fishes that in vain attempt
to leap its cords, while the gulls and fish-hawks wait above, so our
line closed up, the prey rushed hither and thither, the black heads
of the negroes above the grass, like the floats on the net, bobbed up
and down, and with shout and cry, the terrified animals made their
last leaps and tricks for their lives.

The first thing that broke our line was a doe, with a fawn
nearly grown. The doe was let past, but one of the negroes caught
the fawn as it attempted to run by, and with a blow of his knife
across the back of its neck felled it to the ground, before a voice
could be raised to stop him. Then a doe was pulled down by the
hounds, and a dozen dogs piled up over it, very brave when its
resistance was overcome.

"There go two deer to the water; see the boats pull after
them — the Doctor, and Lou, and Scipio in his canoe."

" Whoop ! see the turkeys — I '11 have a gobbler ! " I said, firing
at their leader, who spread out his wings and settled down into
the grass, while the hens scattered in every direction, some taking
wing and flying off to the mainland.

" Thar 's a bear!"

"Where?"

" In those thorn-bushes."

" I don't see him."

At this moment, Scipio, who had been paddling after the deer,
turned his canoe landward, shouting, " A bear ! A bear ! " and the
dogs, that had been scattered about in the underbrush, made a
fresh clamour, and rushed into the thorn-trees, from whence they
came howling back, some of them with blood running from their
shoulders.

" Who saw it ? "

" I saw it," said the Doctor, hurrying in from his canoe at the
first intimation of a bear, as did both of the other boats, letting the
deer escape ; " I know it was a bear."

" Fire your gun at him."

Lem was lying down flat on his face, trying to peep under the

126 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

bushes, when the Doctor, at the suggestion, fired into the thicket.
At the report of his gun, out rushed the animal, stung, probably,
by the shot. So quick was his charge, that Lem did not have
time to get out of the way, and was run over by the brute, as,
dashing right through the midst of us, he hied away for the woods
from which we had just come. There were too many crowded
around, when he first came forth, to make it at all safe to shoot,
and the moment he gained a little distance, his round stem pre-
sented a target as little vulnerable as the rump of a rhinoceros,
as he ran with a lumbering gait, but with great speed, for his old
haunts. But the hounds were soon after him, and as they came
up they ran alongside, snapping at him without stopping him;
then the smaller dogs came to their assistance, and seizing him
behind, forced him to bay, which he did by standing on his hind
legs, and making sweeps with his front paws at his pursuers. It
was an amusing sight to see the dogs run, but still more so to see
the negroes madly excited about the danger of their favourite
curs, and yet cheering them on with cries, and grotesque denuncia-
tions and warnings.

« Now for it ! Whose shot is it ?"

" Let the Doctor try."

" I ain't loaded ; wait a minute."

" Ho ! ho ! that 's a good one ! Jackson, shoot"

Without a word of parley, Jackson fired, and struck the mark,
as we could see, for the animal flinched, and attempted to run, but
there were too many dogs, and they brought him to bay again
after running a dozen yards. I fired, and so did Mike, both
together. The huge brute turned the way we stood, his eye
gleamed a fierce glance of revenge, his jaw fell open, showing his
long rows of white teeth, and then he sunk down a lifeless lump
amid the ring of dogs.

" That air is rael murder ! " said Mike.

As the heat of the chase subsided in my veins, I felt as if
Mike's remark was true.

" Four hunters, twelve men, and forty dogs, against one bear ! "
called out Lou Jackson, who had been a spectator of the chase
from her boat.

THE BATTUE ON BONDA KEY. 127

"I plead guilty to tyrannical oppression," said the Doctor;
" deal gently with me."

" I fine you all one bear's skin, to be paid into the Court," she
replied.

Bruin was dragged down to the beach, under the shade of a
tree, and the men were sent back for the rest of the game that lay
scattered about the route of our chase wherever they had fallen.
On putting them altogether in a row, it was counted : one bear,
one wolf, two wildcats, four deer, one wild turkey, one sand-hill
crane, seven raccoons, and hares without number.

"Not a bad day's sport!" ejaculated the Doctor, standing
with his feet wide apart, and his hands in the side-pockets of his
shooting-jacket.

" How many did you shoot. Poke ? "

" I think I shot all of them, for I fired at everything, only
may be I did not kill ; but I contend the sport is as good if you
get the shots."

" What did you kill at your first shot, Lou ? " inquired Jackson.
"That young buck. Don't you see my buckshot? they are
scattered over a hand's-breadth of distance."

" I fired at some ducks, getting up out of the pond," said the
Doctor.

" What kind of ducks ? "

" There 's one of them," he replied, tugging at a mallard drake
he had stowed in his pocket.

" Ha ! I am glad to see that ; he is one of the first of the winter
migration. Wait for the big flights, and we will see sport. Come,
boys, off with that wolf's skin, we don't want his carcass at the
camp, and so with the bear, too, I reckon,"

But the negroes pleaded for the bear's meat, and it was con-
cluded to carry him to camp. So the boats were pulled up opposite
the place where the game was lying ; and while a couple of the
negroes were skinning the gaunt-looking brutes the rest loaded the
two canoes with the game, and when the wolf was disrobed, two
negroes taking their places in the stern of each boat, gaily started
on their return. We all followed the canoes, taking the line of
the beach, laughing at the different accounts of the day's adven-

128

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

tures, and the droll remarks of the men, who were in the greatest
glee at the success of the hunt. The shore birds were running
before us, or wheeling over our heads, and Lou Jackson was telling
their names, and how their coming marked the progress of the
year. The sands were hard and level, just rippled by the sea.
The day was waning in that clearness of atmosphere and stillness
of decay that marks the early fall, ere a leaf has dried enough to
rustle. Mike's ugly face seemed to draw a reflection from the
season ; Poke's laugh was as musical as the waters, and, wearied
with the day's exertion, I scarcely knew how pleasantly the
moments were falling, until now, when looking them over through
the telescope of years.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE HISTORY OF AN OLD FRIEND.

" The poor make no new friends,
But, oh they love the better
The few our Father sends."

Ladt Dupferin.

The night had drawn its curtains when we reached our bivouac,
but the fire made it day between the two white tents, where our
supper was spread, and where, when supper was done, we stretched
ourselves in dreamy mood, watching the embers glow and listening
to the tale go round. It was my turn to teU a story, but being of
a philosophical frame of mind I narrated a history, and was about
to preface it with a few deprecatory remarks, when one of my
auditors rudely cut me short by saying —

" Bang away ; never mind the priming."

The following was the tale I told — It is the history of an
OLD friend : —

There are some persons in this world of ours that are in-
correctly estimated. They are not the talking people that boast
themselves into our notice, nor the silent people that, with an air
of profundity, impress us with their powers, while they repress all
of ours. They are not the showy people, whose dress and equipage,
house, wife, and watering-place dazzle us, nor the men in great
places in the nation, nor the very pious men. They, perchance,
are very plain folk, and don't obtrude. They are composed in
manner, and simple in their words. You will not hear anything
very bad of them, unless some fashionable person says it in her
manner rather than her words, when alluding to them. If you
know them, and you can't know them in a day, you will like
them for ever.

Such characters are sometimes found in society, in the full

I

130 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

sweep of restless, flattering, envious fashion, just endured, half
forgotten, sometimes in literary life, sometimes toiling in some
hard handicraft, where the gains they make are applied to those
they love, sometimes in the wood, or by the sea-side village.

The friend of whom I am about to speak, and who belongs to
this class, is oftenest seen by lakes, or the slow-moving streams of
the woods. I deem it my duty, for many a lesson taught by
him, and hours of quiet companionship, to speak in his behalf a
kindly word, and save him and his family, as far as in me lies,
from that unmerited neglect which seems to be the fate of the
humble and the unobtrusive.

The friend to whom I allude is the Muskrat. Let no one
smile at the name, or mock

" The short and simple annals of the poor."

B^s coat may not be of as many colours as a courtier's, but it
covers a kindlier heart ; his house may not be of as stately propor-
tions as a banker's, but it shelters a more tranquil souL Writers
may have slighted him, schoolboys may have pelted him, poets
left his name unsung, and the boor may have sought to deride him
by naming him Musquash and other opprobrious titles ; but this
is not the first time in the annals of the world a similar fate has
overtaken modest worth. Pass by their crude opinions, and let us
visit my friend.

Down by many a softly-purling brook, whose sinuosities have
unearthed the gnarled roots of oaks and hickories, and where the
school-boy hastes from tasks to find a shady nooning, the Muskrat
builds his nest. His selection of a home shows bis cultivated
taste, and gives a lesson to the more unobservant rustic. By the
cloudy water that lies in the canals, that lead beneath the oaks,
you may know his retreat. There he rests, while the day is warm,
in the quiet enjoyment of his domestic pleasures, safe from pur-
suit in the winding galleries of his earthen fortress, but,

'* When the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame,
And a' the world to sleep are gane,"

when the moonshine falls on bridge and reeds, and twinkling stars
are floating on the water, then this gentle friend comes forth to

THE HISTORY OF AN OLD FRIEND. 131

view. You see him, with his keen eye and grave countenance,
draw himself upon a root, and with careful fingers arrange his
dress, wash his face, and smooth his whiskers. By his side sits a
little picture of his sire — a tiny counterpart, that is destined one
day to take his place among the reeds and by the bridge, and rear
the mimic dome upon the lake. After the parent has completed
his toilet he gives one or two caressing touches to that of his young
heir. A moment more they sit, eyeing the bubbles or floating nuts
descending the stream, or watching, their faces reflected in the
moonlight waters. Who can say that they do not appreciate the
beauty of the night, or the soft murmuring music of the woods, or
the fragrance of the air, laden with the odour of calamus buds and
the breath of the birch and sassafras? Presently, diving down
together, they disappear under the water, from whence, after a
moment, they reappear, each with several muscles clasped to his
breast by his fore paws, and, resuming their seats on the roots,
they eat their food with the readiness of squirrels, casting the
shells down at their feet, which fall on the pile of pearly bivalves
that adorn the entrance to their home. Another pause follows,
while they look up and down the brook.

Are they not comely in their dark-brown coat and black feet ?
Does not their soft hair, that sheds the water, and the strong flat
tail that steers their course, befit well their pursuits? Do not
their manners well become their place ? Is it not true they are
free from cares and inordinate greed — that they know their simple
duties and enjoy them ?

You say they are idle ? Wait till you have seen their whole
Ufe.

Presently the father swims off on the water and across the
brook. We may not see him go, for only his head is above the
surface, and his tail floats like a rudder. By the wake in the
water we may tell his course long after his round head is lost to
view, and his child is following him close behind. They are
bound for the low reeds on the other shore. There the calamus
lifts its waving wands and spicy buds, while beyond the water-
pad's broad leaf floats on the surface, and their white and yellow
lilies stud the waters, and from the sandy edge of the channel the

182 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

osier's round tapering wand, the bayonet flags and the sedge grass
appear above the tide and point the way the current flows. This
is the playground of our friend. You may see him here when the
moon is full, pulling the roots of the lilies, or the long eel-grass
that is growing beneath. You can hear his quick splasli and dive,
and, by the rattle of the cat-tails and the shaking out of their floss,
you know he is chasing off the wild duck's brood that intrude on his
gardens. On the shore his paths are running hither and thither,
wherever a better grass can be found, or the seeds of grain that have
come down with the freshets have taken root, and on these grounds
which he is often compelled to cross, a deep hole is dug down to
the water, and connects with the brook, through which he will take
refuge if disturbed. At length, when the morning star shines dead,
and the cock's loud clarion comes from the farm, the provident
botanist bears away for his home, with his arms full of grass and
roots to lay up for a day of need. <

It often occurs that my friend has selected for liis residence,
being allured by the wild beauty of the scene, some lake whose
shores do not present suitable accommodations for shelter. Either
they are so rocky as not to be pierced, or they are so low as to be
liable to be submerged with the spring rains. No more discrim-
inating judge of the security of such shores can be found than my
friend. No scenery fitness will tempt him. If there is any
liability of danger on shore he goes out to the centre of the lake,
or to a point in the lake from which he can readily obtain good
grass, and there he builds himself a house. Sometimes he takes
the end of a half -submerged log as a proper foundation. At other
times the bottom of the pond, and yet again he will take a mass of
weeds as an anchor, and construct on this slight support a house
that is to last for years. His bricks are eel-grass and twigs ; his
mortar is mud and clay ; he is his own architect, labourer, builder,
contractor, and upholsterer. Gradually the house progresses, with-
out shaped like a dome, and within divided into many chambers.
The door is beneath the waters, and so nothing but a diver can
enter it, and being built on the open water, and at a distance from
shore, nothing will attack it from above. It is formed and
fashioned with a precision that no science can excel In and

THE HISTORY OF AN OLD FRIEND. 133

out is the strong eel-grass woven, and the clay that covers the
walls is patted down with many a thwack from his paw until it is
as smooth as a plaster wall. At length winter comes and bridges
the lake, and makes an easy access to the house for the wolf and
the bear. How is the Muskrat to save himself from their snuffing
nose and strong claws ? The careful student of nature swims the
first freezing night by the side of his house, and ever and anon
with his tail spatters the water over the dome, until finally the
house is massed in ice so thick that none but the summer can
break it. Within, in liis goodly chamber, lined with the river
grass, the plumage of ducks, and the soft floss of the silkweed, my
friend lies with his wife, safe from enemies, from want, and from
cold, and reads me a lesson of skill and providence I have not yet
followed.

In some lakes a hundred of these little domes appear rising
about three feet from the water, and resembling an Indian village.
When the nights are still in autumn, the inhabitants of this
modern Venice will be found floating about on the lake, chasing
each other around the houses, or playing tag on the open water.
They lie on the surface, with their tails slightly arched, which is
a sign of watchfulness, and by a quick motion will disappear so
suddenly that even the hunter's shot is ineffectual to stop them.
One old beadle will now and then be seen mounting one of the
houses, and with an august dignity survey the surrounding shores
and when well satisfied, will dive down so softly as not to leave
a ripple; but if, perchance, he should see some cause of alarm,
he leaps back with an angry plash, and the whole tribe disappear
in an instant. Should you be tempted to fire a gun at some
impudent member of the colony, before the bright flash has faded
along the shore, every one will have disappeared from view. You
may wait hours for another shot, and though the pond is full of
them, you will never see one. Once in a while an old sentinel
will float to the surface, and the point of his nose, about the size
of a chestnut, will be exposed, while he breathes and takes a view,
and after a moment of watchfulness, it will be so quietly with-
drawn that even if you see it you will not suspect it to be one of
your prey.

134 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

A long time ago — I remember the woods and watei*9 were very
bright in colour then, for I was a boy — there lived a bachelor
Muskrat in a small pond not far from my home. After watching
him some evenings, I set a trap to catch him, baited with a rosy
Spitzenberg. Early in the morning I was at the pond ; the trap
was sprung, and peering into it through a small hole bored in the
end, I saw crouched in the corner an animal with long whiskers
and bright eyes, that appeared to my happy vision as big as a
polar bear, but by the musky smell I knew it was my friend the
Muskrat. If the woods and waters were bright the night before,
they glowed with fire now, and the sun rose in the east. I carried
my prize home in the trap, and tying a string to his leg, after get-
ting somewhat bitten in the operation, secured him in the shed,
and tried to tame him, but quite unsuccessfully. He refused to
eat apples or cake, though always ready for a piece of my finger.
When I could watch my captive no longer, I went to bed to dream
of him, while he, cutting the string with his sharp incisors, gnawed
a hole in the door of the shed, and made his escape. I followed
his track the next day in the light snow that lay on the ground,
and it led in a straight line to the pond from whence he came. I
set my trap again, but though I tempted him with the rosiest
of apples, he never was induced to enter. At this time the pond
in which he resided froze over, and gave me an opportunity of
getting out to the centre, where he had built for himself a dome
as classically correct as the Pantheon. I confided my secret to a
comrade, and we consulted an old work on the Northwest Fur
Trade, and there learned the Indian manner of catching these
animals. We accordingly provided ourselves with a small net,
and going down to the pond with a pickaxe, when school was out,
we commenced a regular siege. First we cut four holes in the ice,
at opposite sides of, and close by the house ; then with bent sticks
pushed the corners of the net through the holes, and my comrade
fastened them at the four comers, thus stretching the net beneath
the house in such a manner as to prevent the animal diving down
in the water. By the time this advance had been effected it began
to grow dark, so I hastily with my pickaxe cut a hole in the top
of the house and looked in. There was nothing there but the

THE HISTORY OF AN OLD FRIEND. 136

materials for a warm bed, that had been occupied not long since.
I pulled away the partition that divided the interior, but could see
nothing. I put my hand in to feel, and was rewarded with a gripe
from an admirable set of incisors that have left their impress on
my hand to this day, and pulling out my arm, I pulled out my
captive of the night before, who immediately, amid the laughter of
my unsympathising friend, scampered to the shore, where the ice
had left an open margin of water, and dived beyond pursuit.

This bold burglary on our part evidently caused alarm and
uncertainty in the mind of the proprietor of the house. For the
next morning, when I returned with an eel-spear, intent on
warlike deeds, I found that, after putting a few armfuls of mud on
the broken dome, his ratship had changed his mind, and, leaving
the house altogether, had made his exodus to a safer land, under
the waters of a neighbouring stream, to which I followed his trail,
and where I trust he still lives, undisturbed by marauding boys.

The Muskrat is no noisy roisterer. His ways are gentleness,
and he only frequents the most placid scenes. He abhors the
noisy rapids of the river, the clank of the wheel, or the fashionable
highway, but where the stream has the softest tone, where the
birch droops lowest, where the leaves in autumn lay in yellow and
crimson wreaths upon the eddy, and the fish-hawk from his
eminence can scarcely see the perch that turns his golden bars to
the sunlight, so hid in foliage moves the water, there my friend
finds a favourite bank, and may be seen, even in the day-time,
plying his busy feet, or mounting some stone or slanting root
to view the disrobing year.

To this unfrequented place, when troubled by the cares that
oppress, or those greater cares that may oppress, I often come to
hold counsel with my friend. I hear the waters croon, the leaves
whisper, the wood-thrush warble his low chant, and I forget
to listen to that inner voice complaining. I see the bold plunge
of the kingfisher diving for his prey; bright eyes are peering
at me from bush and hole, cautiously at first, familiarly afterward ;
the leafy vault above me dazzles the eye with a confused motion of
waning, glimmering brightness, and catches of sunshine come and
go athwart the foam and on the flowers, and I do not see the cold

136

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

hard laces that were staring at me but now. I drink the water, I
smell the odour of the moss, I lean my face against the cool beech
trunk ; every sense is drinking in the religion of nature, and the
soul, forgetting itself, goes up in the million-coloured, million-
formed works of creation, through their instincts, their changes,
and their birth, to that pervading Essence that made them all and
guides them all, and placed me among them aU — a very little thing
in this wonderful place. And then comes forth the Muskrat ;
he swims out to an apple tossed into the stream, and, smell-
ing it an instant, takes it in his mouth, and bears it away to
yonder stone. He sees you now ; a moment's pause ; he is watch-
ing you; perchance he sees that softening heart that has come
over you with the teachings of the hour, and does not fear you.
He goes on munching his apple, while his whiskers move up and
down with every movement of his grave cheek. His keen eyes
wink with satisfaction. When he has finished his meal he passes
his hand over his face, and dresses his robe a moment He looks
up the stream and down, but there is nothing there save a flock of
wood-duck, halting for a day on their southern migration. He
looks at you ; do you see his contentment, his happy face, his
honest ways — enough of labour to provide him a home — enough
of leisure to learn the world his God has made ? He moves into
the water, and, bowing low his head to his now cheerful friend, he
bids the day and you good-night.

When I had finished my history, I looked around upon my
auditors, and found they were all asleep.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DROWNED LANDS.

" Seekest thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean's side ?

««««««

"And soon thy toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,
And scream among thy fellows — reeds shall bend
Soon o'er thy sheltered nest."

Bryant.

For some time past, on the mainland, we had been noticing the
signs of the departing year, and at Bonda Key these indications
became more marked and numerous. The air had not lost its
balsam or the leaf its colour, yet there were other shadows on
nature's dial slighter in appearance, but as true in reality. The
ear missed the whir in the evening air of those summer insects,
whose short lives had already terminated. The eye saw a clear-
ness in the atmosphere that brought objects several miles distant
apparently near at hand, and sometimes elevated them above the
horizon. Some birds that wore in summer the livery of the rain-
bow had apparelled themselves in plainer garments, and from day
to day new arrivals among migratory tribes of the air would recall
the mind to those northern hills where the jagged pine and
lichened rock were already grey with the first flurry of snow. We
were all standing one morning at the " creak o' day," on the island,
watching the first effects of the sun before its rising, and noting
the little indications of the progress nature had made during the
night. Thus travellers at sea will come forth early in the morn-
ing, and for a few minutes scan the ocean and ship, and note
the bearings and the winds before they turn to the regular thoughts
and occupations of the day.

138 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" See those ducks coming ?" said Jackson.

" Where ? "

" Close by the mainland, sir, low down."

" Yes ! they are coming this way, too."

" Teal," said Mike.

" How do you know that, Mike ? have you seen that flock
before ? " asked the Doctor.

"By their flyin'; you couldn't throw a picayune edgeways
through the flock."

The compact body of birds that seemed when first in view a
fleck on the red sky, gradually extended in size until they swept
high over our heads, with a sound like a strong wind in a pine
wood, keeping well toward the outer side of the island.

" Jist think of them air critters bein' hatched among the ice-
bergs ! "

" But think of their all going back again next spring to the
very spot they were bom," replied Miss Jackson.

"I trust they all won't get the chance," said the Doctor, looking
the way they went with covetous eyes.

" Wall, that 's easy enough done with the chance they 've got
stuck up higher en a meetin' house, a-prospectin' over the country ;
they 'd be booby birds to forgit their own trail The rub was to
'eve done it the fust time, when it was all strange like."

" They are always piloted by some old bird that has been here
before, I think," said Miss Jackson.

" How do you know that, Miss Wiseacre ? "

" By seeing the flock come straight to some favourite feeding-
ground, where they will always alight at nearly the same time
every year. Now, had there been no old bird piloting them, they
would have alit in open water, and found the feeding ground sub-
sequently."

" I shot in a flock ones't in the spring-time and winged a young
mallard duck," said Mike, pushing up his cap from his face, and
spreading his arms out on the muzzle of his rifle. " I tuck the
thing hum and penned it up with the tame ducks, and so I kept it
all summer. When fall cum the diver ducks kim fust, and then a
purty considerable show of teal, but he didn't scrape his foot to

THE DROWNED LANDS. 139

them or say a word. But airly one mornin' I heerd that duck
settin' down by the bayou, quackin' away as ef he had the pip in
his gizzard (there comes a row o' widgeon now). Wall, I couldn't
see what 'twas that bothered him. I looked all around ; et was
comin' on mornin' like, and things out was quiet, and every minit
or so he 'd set up on end, and stickin' his bill up like a musket,
would quack three or four times. As T looked I seen a tearin' big
flock of mallards cum from the north, high up ; they bore around
when they got over the cabin, and presently landed down by the
side of the wounded duck, and sich a goin' on and duckin' of heads
and gabblin' you never heered in all your born days. It was all
as plain as a bear's track. The wounded duck was waitin' for its
friends ; it knowed jist when it was time fur 'em to come to the
very minit, and sot out there to stop them."

" And I presume the noises they made were mutual inquiries
after friends and the compliments of the season," said the Doctor.

" Asking if there had been much ice in Baffin's Bay the past
year," suggested Lou Jackson.

" There comes another flock," said Jackson, pointing to the
horizon.

" Blue bills, there 's a grist of 'em," said Mike.

" See how they swerve one way or another ! Look how fast
they grow in size ! There must be ten thousand in that flock !
All night they have been travelling and yet not weary ! " exclaimed
Miss Jackson as the flock came pressing on in a huge irregular
shadow, soughing like the wind, and keeping straight south.

" Oh, you beauties ! " ejaculated the Doctor, looking up at the
passing mass of intelligent life overhead, with his mouth wide
open and his body gradually leaning back to permit him to see as
they passed, until his round little figure nearly lost its balance.

" Thou shalt not covet, Doctor."

" Mike, can we get some of them ? "

" Reckon."

" I think there are a good many on the Drowned Lands," said
Jackson ; " they have been coming on pretty thick, lately."

" Let 's try them. I don't think the Doctor will look earth-
ward again, unless it is to shoot ducks."

140 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

A laugh followed, and the party being of one accord, it was
arranged that we should spend the rest of the day in the marshes
taking a supply of food to last till night. So we walked back to
camp, Miss Jackson and the Doctor chatting away about some
theory of the Doctor's upon the cause of the variation of the
plumage of birds, which, like most theories, was aU wrong. The
moment our intentions for the day were announced the camp was
in a hurry ; the idlers bestirred themselves ; guns were examined ;
boats made ready ; ammunition bags, that had not been used in a
year, were overhauled and filled ; and at length, when the sun
arose, our breakfast was ended, and four boats were all equipped
and manned with two negroes each, ready for the sportsmen.
The boats were dug-out canoes, made by the negroes from
cypress logs, but their graceful shape and high sharp bow and
stem made them resemble the Indian bark canoe, or the Canadian
pirogue. Mike had his neatly arranged, and a soft tanned deer-
skin was spread in the stern. The negroes, with their sinewy
arms and breasts bare, sat at the oars; they were the hand-
somest negroes on the Jackson place, but would generally run
away to the woods when their master was oflf ; so to obtain some
use out of them they were always taken along on the marooning
excursions. The boats lay with their sterns on the beach, waiting
for Miss Jackson. Her father took his seat and pushed off,
calling out as he went —

" Come, Lou, hurry up ! Who will you ride with ?"

She stepped down to the water's edge and into the Doctor's
boat. Push off! Away they go, moving on the water like
shadows, so little ripple do they leave behind. The shore recedes,
the camp-fire smoke lessens ; Rose can just be seen by the beach
with her hands on her hips, watching the lessening fleet ; the
hounds' complainings come fainter and fainter ; islands are passed ;
new vistas open to the eye with semi-tropical vegetation ; gaudy
birds on the sandy points ; low swathing mist in patches on the
water, and no wind to drift it away How luxuriantly calm ! The
land seems all afloat !

Jackson was in the lead, and we all followed in a line after
him. Presently Mike's boat shoots ahead, a feather of spray at its

THE DROWNED LANDS. 141

prow, and the sweat guttering on the foreheads of the oarsmen.
Yowler's head was lying over the edge of the canoe. Mike had a
paddle in his hand, steering, and I saw the deer-skin that decorated
the seat had been left behind.

" Where away ? " called out Jackson, resting on his oars, as we
rounded a point where numerous openings and bays came to view,
and the boats glided together.

" Any way is beautiful enough," answered the Doctor, in the
highest tone of enjoyment, chanting away snatches of songs, and
Lou Jackson joining the chorus.

" Hyah, you Scip, you pull a baby oar."

" Git out a de way dat air clam-boat ! "

" Row, brothers row,
The stream runs fast. "

" That song isn't true in fact or music either. Doctor."

" There goes Mike ; he will show us '.the way."

" The old rat, he has stolen the march ! Give way, boys ! All
together ! " and the boats filing off followed in the wake of Mike,
who was making for a level shore about two miles ahead, where
the bushes grew so dense you could scarcely see the land. As we
approached, we could see no passage beyond, and even Mike
seemed uncertain, for he steered along the beach a hundred yards
distant, examining carefully the bushes that grew close to the
water, coloured with red hawberries, and spiked with cactus.
Presently the prow of the hunter's canoe was turned shoreward ;
ours followed the leader. The boatmen bent to their work and the
boats flew.

" Trail yer oars ! " called out Mike.

The negroes threw their oars from the rowlocks, letting them
float by the side of the boat. Mike's canoe dashed into the bushes
and disappeared. Ours followed one after the other, and when we
lifted our heads from the crouching position we were compelled to
assume, the boats all lay floating together on a large lake com-
pletely land-locked, and cluttered up with reedy islands and bogs
of coarse grass, with here and there an osier nodding among lily
pads or floating scum.

142 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

With the first exclamation of delight there was a rush in the
water at our side, and a couple of wood-ducks, that had been under
the edge of the bushes, took wing so near us we could see their
scarlet eyes and hear their piping cry ; at the same instant came
the pleasant and long remembered quack ! quack ! quack ! of the
black duck, as a dozen of these clergy of the marshes beat upward
from the grass at our unexpected coming.

Two guns fired at the wood-ducks ; but as usual when in a
hurry, there was not a bird killed, though a dozen or more arose
from neighbouring shelters at the cannonade, and after one or two
circuits settled down in the grass beyond.

" 0 Doctor, how could you miss that beautiful drake ! I will
shoot the next one myself," said Miss Jackson.

" You see," replied the Doctor, rather humbly, " they were too
near when I first fired."

" And when you next fired, they were too far away," said Miss
Jackson.

" You need not say anything," said the Doctor. " Why didn't
you kill some of those black ducks ? "

" Gun huug fire."

" Pooh ! what nonsense ! "

" Come, no recriminations, load up ! "

" How shall we shoot ? "

" Each boat is to paddle its own way through the reeds, and
shoot what rises, and so we will get a good many passing shots
overhead. That 's so, isn't it, Mike ? "

" I reckon."

" How will we come together again ? "

"Thar's an island clare up to the eend of this water,
and it's got one cabbage-tree on it, I reether think the biggest
cabbage-tree north of Tampa Bay. We might come together
thar."

" Amen ! " said the Doctor. " Now let 's start. I am on warlike
deeds intent."

" Quack ! quack ! quack ! " sounded close by us, and one of
those wayward ducks that sometimes, against all rules, skulks
behind his comrades, got up near us. The Doctor was standing

THE DROWNED LANDS. 143

up at the time, said fired, but from the rocking of the unsteady
canoe he missed, as before.

" What a shame, Doctor ! I shall not ride with you."

" Try him, some one."

" He 's too far away ! " said Jackson, with his gun half way to
his shoulder.

" Shoot him, Mike 1 " said Miss Jackson, turning to where the
hunter sat in his canoe.

Mike passed the back of his hand quickly across his forehead,
as he was wont sometimes to do when in earnest, and raised his
rifle to his shoulder. A second of pause, and the crack of the
piece sounded. The duck had arisen perpendicularly until it had
reached a height that gave it free passage over the reeds, and then
taking its direction, was bearing away in a straight line, gradually
decreasing in size as its velocity increased. At the report of
Mike's rifle it fell over and over, striking the water with a splash,
while in the air where it was flying one or two feathers floated
away on the wind.

" "Well done, that ! " cried Jackson.

Lou said nothing, but her kindling eye rested on the marks-
man, while a smile lit her whole face, and the party separated for
the hunt.

The Drowned Lands were formed by the sea banking up with
a sandbar the outlet of a stream that ran through a low country.
This natural dam flooded the lowlands on either side for several
miles, and the soil being sandy, with a slight deposit of alluvial
matter from the descending fresh waters, many varieties of grass
and aquatic plants sprang up, and formed attractive food for the
myriads of water-fowl that here passed the winters. Patches of
cane grew on the marshy land not yet covered with water. Osiers
and rushes sprung from the shallow water, and a long grass, with
a tassel like the onion, opened its crown and scattered its oily
seeds over the water. Now and then a floating log, or some still
living bulb that had come down the stream had taken root in the
shallows, and formed an island, on which rose one or two trees,
and a rank vegetation of vines and grass. On the dead upper
limbs of these trees the ahnega and other species of cormorants

144 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

could be seen all the day patiently watching for their prey in the
shallows. Fancy could not picture a more suitable home for the
water-fowl, whose food was abundant in the matted grass and
succulent weeds, and who hid in bending rushes for better shelter
from the northerly winds.

Up this extended marsh our boats gently floated, each one
following the openings that seemed best, and diverging so as to
form an extended front. The negroes shipped their long oars, and
used only the paddle, in order to move with greater stillness, and
to pass through the narrow openings. As we advanced, I soon
lost sight of the other boats, but from time to time could tell their
position from'the report of their guns and the rising of the ducks
they disturbed. I had changed positions with the men, taking the
bow of the boat, and letting them paddle in the stem.

" Dar, Maussa, black duck ! " whispered Scipio, after we had
paddled a short distance, changing with a wave of his paddle the
direction of the canoe, and pointing it toward a mass of reeds that
lay twisted and broken together, as though some wind had twisted
them off half way up.

I pointed my hand inquiringly to the reeds. Scipio nodded,
and the boat floated noiselessly as a fish. We were close by them
and no sign of the game, save a feather or two on the water. The
neighbouring tufts of grass shut out the wind, and it was warm
and still, like summer in the grassy bower, while bright little fish
darted aside on either bow of the boat. Then came a flopping
sound, a rattle of the reeds, and the brazen cry that so many
thousand times, in a thousand hearts, has sent the blood leaping
with its memory-haunted tone, "Qua-ack! qua-ack! quack!" Some
notes in this world are clearer, and some more rhythmic, but there
are few that when repeated wiU so picture to the mind, in the
twinkling of an eye, the extended reach of sedge, the downy reeds,
glassy water, and young hopes, with which it is so associated.

With the alarm-cry two ducks broke forth, scattering the floss
of the cat-tails in clouds about them, their long necks stretching
out as though straining to be away. I aimed at the drake as he
poised himself to bear away, and with the report of the piece he
fell, head and wings pendent, with a splash on the water — a dead

THE DROWNED LANDS. 146

shot, I knew by the way he came down. The duck had gained
some distance by tliis time, going straight away. No fear of her
escape; the success of my first shot gave me confidence, and I
knew the power of the little Mullen gun I held at my shoulder.
Canny John Mullen, in his grim little smithy in Ann Street,
working away with his brogue and cunning hand — how often I
have thanked him when he never knew it ! " Quack ! quack ! "
The sound was faint from the distance when I fired, but the duck
rolled over and over, with its wings spinning, till it was lost to
sight.

" Yah 1 ha ! ya ! Maussa ; good shot. Did you ebber 1 Well,
now, I gives up — dat beats dis child ! "

We paddled on, and found the first duck dead, and the second
with both wings broken, and easily secured. While loading, four
ducks came flying over from the direction of the other boats. I
hastily poured in some loose shot, and crouching down in the
canoe, capped my gun, while I watched the birds approach, and
when they were so near I could see the mottling on their breasts,
arose suddenly to my feet. Scared by my sudden appearance,
they breasted the air, swerving off to the right and left. Ho !
what fair shots ! I could have killed them with a pistol. The first
barrel brought two, the second, one, and the other bird departed
sadly frightened.

Thus we passed on, getting fair shots every fifty yards at small
bunches of ducks that arose from the little lagoons, and an
occasional long shot at some passing bird that had been frightened
from his proper feeding-ground by the incursion of the hunters.
The difficult shot was the one where the bird came directly
toward you, and twenty yards or so overhead. The sportsman must
then take his aim on the duck, and when it is within distance, jerk
the gun forward and fire blindly. At the instant of firing the
bird is not seen ; no matter, practice makes perfect, and this is the
killing shot. Another plan is to let the bird pass, and then shoot.
This plan enables the marksman to see the bird at the instant of
firing, as his aim is then under the bird. Either plan is good if
it gets the bird.

At the same time that the game was abundant, the scenery

K

146 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

tlirough which its pursuit was leading us was strikingly peculiar.
The level waste of sedge extended beyond the vision, waving in
the wind. The constant opening and closing of watery passages,
the little reed-locked lakes, the tortuous coui-se we were obliged to
follow, the sameness of the grouping of the reeds and little islets,
repeated over and over again till the mind was all afloat as to
locality and distance ; the weird trees with their dead and naked
arms, and the occasional mass of broken reeds and matted drift-
wood that in the summer had formed the alligator's lair, all con-
tributed to impress the mind with a feeling of strangeness and
solitude. The wild birds, too, were unwont€dly familiar in their
demeanour. Mai-sh hens ran over the drifts before the boat, and
gulls came screaming around us.

About three miles from where we had entered the Drowned
Lands, we came to the edge of open water, and found a large lake.
Before entering it, a glance ahead showed the farther end of the
pond literally covered with ducks. It was impossible, being on
the same level, to tell how many there were, but there seemed
acres of them. A hurried council was called to decide how they
were best approached, and after two or three plans had been pro-
posed, it was settled that we should try and paddle around on the
farther side of the pond so as to be near the flock, and then take
our chances of their coming over us, as they probably might when
alarmed by the firing in the other boats. So with much care as to
the noise we might make, and some self-control in not firing at
single ducks that would rise close by us, we ultimately got around
the flock, so as to place them between us and the other boats. We
pulled our canoe into the thickest of the grass that completely
sheltered us, and from where I sat I could see the ducks lying on
the open water, moving hither and thither, and diving down for
the eel-grass below the surface. We recognised them as the same
flock of teal that came over at the early dawn. It was a beautiful
thing to see so much graceful life so bountifully supplied and
protected by its own instincts in the solitude.

Away down the marsh came the frequent boom ! boom ! of my
comrades' guns, but it did not seem to interfere with the comfort
of the ducks, who still fed on, though keeping out of shot from

THE DROWNED LANDS. 147

where I sat. Soon the report of the guns coming nearer caused
the ducks to crowd together with all their heads up. There was
a long pause, and then a negro's voice sounded close by : " Mars
Jackson, mark ! " followed by the clear ringing of a double shot,
and at the sound up went my flock of ducks. Three or four arose
first, and then the whole mass cleared the water ; and the beating
of their wings on the surface was like a long-continued roll of
thunder. I had no conception, before they rose, of their multitude.
It seemed as if they could be counted by tens of thousands.
When they had attained a sufficient height to overlook the
meadow, they wheeled like the line of an army, and apparently
catching sight of the other boats, came with the bright linings of
their wings turned to the sunlight, and their countless pinions,
hurtling through the air directly over the place where we were
concealed. I had given Scipio, as a reward of merit, the musket I
had brought with me, directing him to take his own time, and fire
as he chose. He, however, could not wait for the best shot, but
fired as one wing of the army wheeled over us. The aim was not
a bad one, for a dozen ducks fell at the shot, and several more at
intervals came slanting down from the flock. The efiect of this
unexpected attack drove the wing of the flock into the main body,
clustering them together in a compact mass, when I fired both
barrels. My stronger shooting gun bored a hole through the black
mass, and twenty-seven ducks fell on the open water, and two or
three went down aslant into the reeds. Three and a half dozen
ducks was the contribution that one flock made to our booty. I
still looked longingly after them as they went floating around the
horizon, like banks of minute flies that wave at midsummer from
prominent points on the shores of great lakes, undulating with
the wind. But they passed away in the dim horizon, probably
being unwilling to make another trial of the Drowned Lands.

"Hulloah!"

" Hulloah ! "

" How many birds ? "

" Ah ! plenty. Talk of hunting ! " said the Doctor, " this is my
hunter's paradise. A good boat to row you, and boys to pick up
the game ; no running yourself out of breath, or heavy pack on

148 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

your back ! " And the speaker took off his slouched hat, and
rubbed his curly hair and shiny face with his handkerchief till it
was all a-glow.

" How many ducks, Miss Jackson 1 "

" Oh ! ten for me, I believe ; but they are beauties. Paddle up
closer, boys, and let us see."

" HuUoah ! where did you get all those 1 Great is Diana, but
that is a pretty sight ! " exclaimed the Doctor, leaning over to look
at our ducks, that were neatly piled up on one of the seats, with
their breasts up, and their heads hanging one way.

" These are out of the flock we saw come over to-day."

"I thought so; they just got up here, didn't they? It was a
noble flock, blue-wings, all of them, not a green-wing among them."

" Oh ! there are your ducks. Why, you only have ten alto-
gether. Where are those you shot, Doctor ? "

" Oh ! I didn't care to shoot. Miss Lou, here, is a pupil of mine,
and I like to let her try."

A suppressed nasal explosion from one of the boys in the
Doctor's canoe informed me, if I had needed the information, that
the Doctor was not a very true hand with the ducks, and that the
lady was doing all the work.

" Well, there is the Palm Tree Island, I presume, not a great
way ahead. Is it time for lunch ? "

" Yes, I think so," said Miss Jackson, " if appetite is any test."

"Try some cold tea/' said I, extending the bottle of that
refreshing hunter's beverage.

" Ah ! " said she, after a long drink, " that is a spring in the
desert."

"Let me try a little of that spring in the desert," said the
Doctor.

" Not till you tell me one thing," said I, getting possession of
my bottle. " How many shots have you missed ? "

" Will you give me the tea, then ? "

"Yes."

" Ten ! Give us the tea."

" Ha ! ha ! you are looking at Miss Jackson when you should
be at the ducks."

THE DROWNED LANDS. 149

The boys took the direction of the palm-tree, and we paddled
on together, getting up two or three birds. It was a pretty thing
to see Lou Jackson shoot. She had a light double-barrelled gun,
the same one she had used on the deer-hunt, and when the duck
beat up to the level of the tall grass and poised for his flight, she
fired with such accuracy that the bird generally fell in a shower of
feathers, amid the Doctor's laughter and merry jokes. He did not
pretend to shoot unless there were three or four ducks rising
together, and then he generally followed their flight, with his gun
to his shoulder, until, when a long way off, he would finally say,
" Too far," and taking his gun down again, give a sigh of relief,
and look around for some more game. On reaching the little
island we found Mike was there before us, and the negroes had
landed the provisions and prepared our simple meal. Yowler sat
on the narrow beach, evidently more melancholy than usual at the
unaccustomed nature of the sport, and seemed reflecting upon the
worthlessness of birds as compared with deer and panthers. Wag
ran around the limited extent of land several times without any-
thing but a solitary snipe that went " eskapeing " away, and then
returned, to worry Yowler. Jackson soon came in with a couple
of score of ducks, and we learned from him that the great body of
the winter ducks had not yet come on. There were no geese or
brant, and no red head, and he said, what was easily credible, that
late in the year a good sportsman could kill four hundred ducks a
day.

" But I will tell you what it is, I have seen English snipe flying
over, and as we go home we will try some of those low islands out-
side, and get a dozen."

" Much walking ? " suggested the Doctor.

" No ; you can shoot from the boat."

" I believe I am somewhat of a shot on English snipe," said the
Doctor. " I remember once killing a dozen."

"You didn't have Lou Jackson in the boat with you?" I
replied.

" No ; something a great deal worse — ^you were with me."

" No, never — not when you killed a dozen English snipe."

" Yes, I shot them all at one shot on the beach."

160 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Fudge ! those were yellow-leg snipe."

" Maybe they were, but they were just as good."

" Doctor, try a piece of hot veuison steak, or some cold bar ? "

" No bear for me ; I would be thinking all the time about his
ugly teeth when he was shot."

" It is not his teeth, but my own, I am afraid of," said Miss
Jackson, laughing; "give me some corn-bread, if you please,
Mike."

" What are we to do with all these ducks ? " said the Doctor ;
" we can never eat them."

" Youm ? " asked Mika

A laugh.

" No, ours ; those defunct, and those that are to be."

"Never fear, a camp of fourteen people requires something
more than Indian com."

" What are you toasting there before the fire, Mike 1 "

" Breast of crane."

" Let me try a piece ? " asked Lou.

" Sartin ; it 's better en deer's meat," he replied, handing over
a strip on the end of his toasting-stick.

" See de ducks ! " exclaimed the negroes, less busy than we
with their dinner, as a long train of ducks came floating over, pen-
cilling the clear sky.

" Those are widgeon," said Jackson.

" How can you tell so far off, father ? "

" By the shape of the flock, I think ; I can hardly tell how.
They would be black duck, if they were not lighter in complexion.
Am I not right, Mike ? "

" Reckon," replied Mike, following the passing cloud with his
eye till they faded away, and then continued musingly : " Some
takes kindly to that kind o' lamin'. Some kin tell what kind o'
duck is comin' by the sound he makes beatin' the air. Thar was
Picardo, Picardo Duck Legs he was called, because he had bow
legs. Wall, that man lived in his canoe, and he could tell what a
duck was a-goin' to do jist by the waggin' of his tail. He had
lived on duck-meat so long he could smell a duck like a pinter
dog. Thar 's the natur' o' man ; when God gives him a callin' he 's

THE DROWNED LANDS. 161

bound to go it, or be a lazy cuss ever arterwards. Duck Legs was
no a'count on shore, but it lamt a man somethin' to paddle a canoe
with him."

" Come, boys," said Jackson, lighting his cigar, " it 's high noon
now, and there are seven miles from here to the open water, and
seven more to Bonda Key, and two dozen snipe to kill on the
way."

" And some more duck before we leave here," said the Doctor.

" Mind your bearings now, or we will get lost here. There is
no palm-tree to row back to."

"Take the range of this palm-tree, and sunset; purty good
marks, both on 'em," said Mike.

"All aboard!" cries the Doctor. "Push off!" and away the
three boats went, leaving Mike watching our departure, smoking
away at his cigarette, seemingly as unconscious as his hound that
sat beside him.

There were some good shots made, as we returned, at the
various bunches of ducks that were hid away in the close coverts
of the reeds, Lou Jackson, in particular, firing well, although her
gun was so light that the game though hit sometimes refused to
come down. We were a good deal together, as we were paddling
more to return than to get game, and only shot those birds we saw
on our way. Once, while paddling fast, a wood-duck drake arose
from an open pool, uttering his wheezing cry of " Oh hee ! Oh
hee ! " as he stretched away. Lou fired, and at the shot he
staggered and sunk for a moment, while a dozen feathers floated
away, and then he rose again.

" Stop ! stop ! " she cried, as I raised my gun to shoot, " I hit
him! I hit him!"

But the duck didn't fall, and continued his flight until lost in
the distance.

" Oh, what a fool I was ! I forgot all about I had another
barrel ! And why didn't I let you shoot ? But I thought, to be
sure, he would fall."

" Why didn't you shoot. Doctor ? " I asked.

" Oh, I thought he would fall, too."

To kill ducks well, a twelve-bore gun should be loaded with

162 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

four and a half drachma of powder to one ounce of shot. The
general mistake is too much shot for the powder.

Sometimes we would come across a floating log surrounded by-
feathers, and worn smooth by the tread of the wood- ducks that
would sit here half the day pluming themselves by the mirror of
the water. The hazel-breasted drakes here displayed their Tyrian
plumage and elegant shapes to their dove-eyed consorts, and
scolded away the little bitterns that alone could compare in beauty
to themselves, and who alike with them inhabited these great
morasses. "We sometimes would float on one of those happy
families, dozing away the sunny hours, and they would arise, when
we were close upon them, in the greatest disorder. The ringing
of a half dozen shots, the fall of the game, the shout and laugh,
would end the scene, and break upon the stillness of the solitude
with a burst of fun and activity all the wilder for being so rarely
heard in the marshes.

We had almost reached the confine of the open water, when
Jackson fired at a black duck flying overhead, and it fell in the
water, wing-broken, and immediately dived. He commenced, with
the assistance of the Doctor's boat, to look for the game, probing
with his paddle the bunches of floating sedge near by, while I,
lying a little farther off, was watching their search. While thus
engaged, I happened to notice under the water a duck swimming
toward the surface; it was the wounded duck trying to escape.
Then his bill protruded from the water, the duck in the meantime
keeping his head and body completely hidden. I leaned over my
boat and caught the nose of the cunning fellow, bringing him
above water amid the shouts of the negroes who witnessed the
duck's ingenious trick.

Being joined by Mike, who had turned aside to get some roots
with which to colour deer-skins, we all passed through the narrow
outlet of the marsh, and turned toward the low islands, where it
was said we could find snipe.

"Round that grape-vine point!" called out Jackson, as the
headlands we had passed in the morning again opened to our
view.

The paddles had been exchanged for oars, and with long,

THE DROWNED LANDS. 153

measured strokes, keeping time to the song of the oarsmen, the
lithe boats skimmed the water toward the low islands Jackson had
indicated to us. On reaching the shore we found the land was
marshy and wet, and about half the area overgrown with flags,
now blown down by the fall winds.

"Not a bad place, is it?" said Jackson, looking around the
island.

" By no means ; see these little red-scummed puddles, and bare
spots of mud ; they 'd make a snipe's bill water."

" Escape ! Escape ! " shrieked a snipe, as he sprung into the air
a few yards in front of us, tacking from side to side, and settling
again on the further side of a little pond.

" There, I told you so ! Hold on now till I draw my duck-
shot. Lou, are you ready ? "

" Keady as I will be. I am going to rely on the Doctor."

" I will take a little fine shot, then, number ten. I follow your
lead, Jackson."

" Mike, are you ready ? "

" Yes, I reckon, 'bout, though I don't see nothin' to shoot here."

" You just keep even, and we will see plenty to shoot. Send
out your dog. Doctor."

" Hi on. Wag ! Hi on ! " but Wag seemed to suspect some trick
under such unaccustomed attention, and skulked behind his master.
The first step ahead sprung another snipe, and, being intent on the
game, I shot it as it balanced.

" HuUoah ! give a fellow time," said the Doctor.

" That bird flew right in the way of the shot ! " said Mike, his
eye kindling, and his mouth expressing doubt and curiosity.

" Have you ever killed a snipe, Lou ? " said I, the formality of
the family name having been gradually dropped on all sides as
the freedom of our hunting excursions brought us into closer
intimacy.

*' Yes, two ; I never had much opportunity for such game, and
never learned to shoot them on the wing."

" Now is your chance, then ; there goes a shot ! "
Two barrels were discharged, one by Jackson, and one by the
Doctor, but the birds went ofi".

164 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" There, I know I can do as well as that," remarked Miss Jack-
son, looking at the bird skimming over the ground.

" I 'm sure you kin," said Mike.

" Escape ! " " Escape ! " " Escape ! " croaked out three birds,
as they launched away from before us. Miss Jackson fired a
double shot, and one bird fell

" Well done, that ! "

" Escape ! " croaked another bird, as it rose on our left among
some flags. Mike, who had been watching the hunt with great
interest, ejaculated, "Wall, I'll take a turn now!" and, aiming
with his rifle, fired. The bird fell as if knocked by a ball-bat, and
Mike on going up to it said, as he lifted it up by its wings,
" Knocked into a grease-spot !"

There was a universal laugh at the quaint figure of the hunter,
in his buckskin suit, and the air of derision with which he picked
up his fragment of a bird, and held it at arm's length.

" Wall, ef any body had told me that I would have ever gone
a-birdin' with this ere old rifle, I would hev told that body he was
a fool!"

Wag seemed to have got somewhat in the mood of hunting
around, inspired by our shouts and firing, and ran about hither
and yon, springing the birds up before us like a cocking spaniel.

"There!" called out the Doctor, as the dog got up another
bird, " I told you that dog had a great deal of intelligence ; this is
the very first time, would you believe it, he has ever been hunted
over snipe."

" I can certainly credit it, sir," answered Jackson drily, as he
capped his gun.

Away went another snipe, right before the Doctor, who banged
away with both barrels, and brought down the bird.

"Escape!" "Escape!" said two more snipe, flushing right by
the Doctor. Bang ! bang ! sounded Jackson's gun and they both
fell at the shot.

" Hold hard there, don't shoot over me that way ; just think, I
can't dodge!" cried the Doctor, waving his hand energetically
toward us, as he sunk in a quagmire.

"That proves your valour in the face of danger. There's

THE DROWNED LANDS. 166

Scipio with a log. Now, altogether — that 's it ! Why, Doctor, you
look as though you had high top-boots on ! "

Never mind, it is clean mud," he replied good-humouredly.

" Now we are all ready, let us form in a line, and beat down the
island regularly," said Jackson, the ardour of the hunt awakening
him from much of his listlessness. "Fall in, boys; one of you
walk between each of the hunters."

The long, irregular line being formed, it stretched nearly across
the island, and we advanced, sinking in the soft mud occasionally,
but oftener finding a sandy bottom, with pools of water. The snipe
were abundant ; we could see them sometimes on the ground in
couples, on which occasions the Doctor would always fire with
pretty certain success. Most frequently they arose singly, uttering
their peculiar harsh cry, and were tumbled over by one or other of
the party before they had gone five yards, amid the shouts and
guffaws of the negroes.

Lou shot well, after a little practice, and she trod over the flags,
with her eye fixed ahead of her, with that earnestness of look that
a person attains never so greatly as when watching for upspringing
game that he feels confident he can hit.

" Mark ! " called Scipio, as a snipe launched in the air from
our feet, the brown and hazel pointings on his back glittering like
soldiers' bayonets at the charge. The first spring he makes seems
to toss him twenty feet in air, and then a pause, as he collects his
wings to strike out on that erratic swinging motion that is his
safety and beauty. He eyes the array of pursuers behind him, and
hears their strange talking; he sees before him his accustomed
haunts and oozy swales, and hears the rustling of the reeds that
shelter his mates. In the pride of swiftness, rings out his exulting
cry, the same that had made vocal the great morasses of the
Coppermine Eiver, where he was nested, and the same by which,
through the ghostly night, in the upper air, from front to rear, had
kept in rank the long flight of his kindred in their semi-annual
migration — " Escape ! "

Pang ! rings the clear shot, and over falls the wild bird among
the sedge.

" Golly ! Missa Lou, yah ! ha ! he dead ! " shouted one of the

166 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

negroes. "Makes dis child piccaninny agin fur to see young
missus wake 'em up so ! " said Big Sara.

"Mark! Mark!" "Escape!" "Escape!" Two more snipe
sprung up, followed by two shots, and they fell ahead of us in the
grass, and then there arose three or four together. The island
seemed to be full of them, and when raised, they would dodge
about in long irregular circles, calling up others from the grass,
until they collected in whisps above us, and bore away to some
adjoining islands.

It was difficult to keep the line regular, for the negroes were
full of excitement in picking up wounded birds, and seeing others
spring beside them. "We needed no dogs, for every bird on the
island was raised, and there was so little heavy grass we lost few
dead ones. Occasionally we would start one of those heavy grey
herons that frequent such marshes, flapping up heavily from the
grass, and casting his keen eye back over his shoulder at the
intruders ; and twice we spnmg that tiny prince of the heron tribe,
the smallest and most beautiful of all the genus Ardea, called the
Least Bittern in the books, but which the people sometimes name
the Tiger Bittern, from his brindled coat and wild eye. We shot
them both, and Lou, wrapping them carefully in her handkerchief
for preserving, stowed them away in one of the pockets of her
hunting-coat.

At last the point of the island was reached, and while the men
were sent back for the boats we sat down on the beach and counted
out thirty-six snipe. Taking some willow switches, we ran them
through their bills, carefully smoothing down their ruffled plumage
and washing off the occasional mud, and made as beautiful six
bunches of game as ever delighted a fowler's eye. Even Mike
consented to praise, with the reserving clause that we had wasted
too much powder and shot on them. How graceful they looked
beside the green-headed mallards and the dusky ducks that were
piled knee-deep in the boats.

"A glorious day well spent," said Jackson, as the island on
which we had been shooting dwindled in the water, red with the
reflection of the sunset, and Bonda Key opened its headland of
stately verdure.

THE DROWNED LANDS.

167

" Ay, it is ! " responded one and all ; and the boats slid along
the glassy waters side by side, the shadows fading and brightening
with the glow of the sky, or the twilight of the shore, as one and
then the other opened in the west. The hunters stretched their
weary limbs in listless attitudes, and their heads swayed to the
springing motion of the oar. JVIiss Jackson sat in the bottom,
trailing her hands in the water on either side of the boat, while
the oarsmen sang, with deep voices and perfect time, the old negro
boat-song :

' ' Gen'ral Jackson mighty man,

Waugh my kingdom, fire away !
Fought on sea, and fought on land,
Waugh my kingdom, fire away ! "

-^

CHAPTER XV.

THE 8KIN OF THE TIGKR-CAT.

" A dragon's tail waa Hayed to warm
A headless maiden's heart."

A NUMBER of days flew by at our island home in the simple
pleasures narrated in our last chapters. The cheering cry of the
hounds as they scoured the islands, the ringing shots in the
marshes, now a long exploration in the canoes through the winding
channels of the archipelago, and again some expedition to the
uttermost keys, where the pelicans dressed themselves on the
sandy points in lines like soldiers ; and strange sea-birds, excited
our wonder and admiration, were the daily amusements of the
party. Once in a while the members of the hunt would branch
off, and while one party pursued the chase, another would make
an excursion to the mainland, or fish in the rivers. The weather
had been constantly clear. One cloudless day would follow an-
other with an exhilarating yet motionless air, that seemed as if
nature had exhausted her prodigality of production, and then,
breathless, had paused to dream.

Once in a while Mike would disappear, and be gone for a day
or a night, but as he never made any remark on what he saw or
did, no one seemed to take any note of his incomings or outgoings.
One evening, after he had returned from one of these lonely ex-
cursions, I was sitting by the willow copse on the shore, casting
with my line into the channel after some large fish I had noticed
were breaking the water near the shore. The negroes were getting
supper ready, and Lou Jackson came walking down to the beach,
where Mike joined her, and they came toward the boats on the
other side of the willows, and so near I could hear their conversa-
tion.

THE SKIN OF THE TIGER-OAT. 109

" Miss Lou, I 've been a-wantin' to see you."

A pause followed.

" That is, you don't see me every day."

" Yes, oil ! yes ; but then it aren't every time that a man wants
to see — 1 mean it aren't — I mean sometimes a man wants mighty
bad to see some 'un, and talk to 'em, an' sometimes I want to see
you more 'an others."

" Well ! " said Miss Jackson, moving on slowly toward the
boat-landing.

" End ef I was the Doctor, I could say anything, and talk right
through a board fence; he's oncommon nice at talkin', he is,"
said Mike, looking earnestly at his partner's face, who looked sea-
ward, but did not reply to this expression of opinion. "Thar's
somethin' I want to say. Miss Lou," continued Mike, " end I 'd a
leetle reether say it to you than to any o' them folks there, for
they wunt believe it, they wunt."

" Well, Mike, what is it ? "

" Wall, it 's this hyur ; you 'd better get yer father to quit that
plantation of his, and move up the country a leetle, or else down
to Tampa, fur things ain't all right 'bout hyur."

" What is there wrong ? "

" Wall, there 's somethin' wrong with them copper-head snakes,
the Injins. Yer can't see it yet, but things ain't right, and yer all
so far away from everybody at the house that no one kin help you.
Yer negroes ain't worth nothin' of any, 'count in case of a scrim-
mage, and yer father ain't over-liked in the swamp. Thar's
nothin' wrong yet, and maybe won't be at all, but they are jist
like painters, and yer don't know where to find 'em."

" Why, what have you seen wrong ? " said the young girl,
stopping by her boat, and looking at Mike inquiringly.

" Nary a thing, only them fellers have been down here, and I
don't like it."

" But they come to the house, why not here ? You are harsh
in your opinion of them."

" 'Cause they have nothin' to call 'em here. They 've been
about without showin' themselves, and that 's suspicious. They
knew we were here, for they can see our trails all about, yet they

160 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

didn't stop, and they tried to leave no trail themselves, and that 's
a bad sign. 'Twunt do any good to say so to your father, but you
kin make him do what 's safe, end so I tell you."

" Thank you, Mike. I believe you know better than any one
about such things, but I do not believe father would leave now, and
I can't make him without a stronger reason than you have given."

" Wall, look out ; and the time to look out is jist when every-
thing is oncommin pleasant, for that 's the blind with these sarpents,
Thar 's somethin' else I want to say. Miss Lou," continued Mike,
after a pause.

Miss Jackson looked at the hunter as though inquiring his
wishes. She leaned against the prow of the canoe that was hauled
up on the beach, but did not say a word.

" Wall, I was goin' to say that — that — wall, thar hain't been
many tiger-cats in Floridy, and ef thar hadn't been any, I reckon
I would hev got that one fur you, fur you know that ef a man — ef
a man likes anybody — as much as "

Mike here made a long pause. Lou Jackson had gathered up
her cloak from the boat that she had apparently come down for,
and turning slowly toward the tents, seemed moving away.

" Don't go yet. Miss Lou," said the hunter beseechingly.

*' I am in a great hurry," said the girl ; which, if so, was the
first time she had been in a hurry since coming to the island.

" Wait one minute," besought Mike, brushing his hand across
his forehead ; " here 's the tiger-cat skin you once said you wanted,"
unfolding, as he spoke, from under his hunting-coat, the flowing
robe of an animal gracefully patched with yellow and black. " It 's
tanned as soft as store-goods," he continued ; " I shot it this day
two weeks, and an Injin woman tanned it for me."

" Thank you, Mike ; that is the prettiest skin I ever saw,"
leaning her face down until it was hidden in the glossy folds of
the robe.

" Wall, it is ; but I wish it was a heap purtier for you."

Miss Jackson moved on toward the camp slowly, but Mike
stood with his hand le«uiing on the prow of the stranded boat. She
had gone a few steps, when, conscious that he was not following,
she said —

THE SKIN OF THE TIGER-CAT. 161

" Come and see how they will admire it at the camp ; that is
the greatest trophy of the year ! "

" No, it isn't no trophy," said Mike, in an extenuating tone, not
moving from his place; "it is the best I had to give you, Lou
Jackson. I 'd give you anything you 'd ask fur." His deep voice
quivered as he spoke.

" Thank you, Mike, thank you ! " said Lou, turning hastily to
the hunter and seizing his hand, " it is everything I want ! " and
then as hastily dropping it, as though frightened at her own eager-
ness, she walked rapidly toward the camp, bearing with her the
skin, and leaving Mike standing by the boat, with his eyes fixed
on her receding figure. His stalwart frame was bent, and with the
breech of his rifle he ground a hole in the heavy sand. A dog,
one of the wandering curs from the camp, coming to the water's
edge, set up a doleful cry near him.

" Shut up, thar, or I '11 send a ball after you, and let the bark
all out the wrong way ! " he said, and tossing his rifle in the hollow
of his arm, strode away down the bay. The words that he had
been pondering over, had remained all unspoken ; the robe that
he had taken, with leagues of walking and weeks of waiting, that
he had ornamented with all the taste of the woods, had only pro-
cured him a moment's gratitude, and the bold heart was frightened
into hesitation and silence by a young girl.

The sun had gone down, the shadows lengthened on the long
sandy reaches ; it grew dark almost in a moment. Mike disap-
peared in the dusk, while from the knoll where the fires were
lighted Lou Jackson was watching the way he went,

CHAPTER XVI.

SUPPER.

" La ddcoQverte d'un mets nouveaa fait plus pour le bonheur du geure humain
que la d^couverte d'nne 6toile." Brillat Savarin.

Who is there, accustomed to American rural scenery, that can-
not remember the summons that calls to dinner at the country
farm ? A stout housewife, when the sun-dial points to noon, walks
out on the lawn, among the inverted milk-pans, where lies the
house-dog stretched under the locust trees, and, turning her face
toward the harvest-field, gives a long winding blast on the horn
that wakes the echoes down the orchard, and over the meadow,
and all along the hills, calling the fanners to their noontide meal.
The watch-dog howls at the summons, and the workmen in the
sultry grain toss their cradles by and turn homeward, the heavy
oxen saunter away in couples, and the horses are unhitched and
fastened in the shade by the trough of com. The farmer, with his
stalwart sons, and " the hands," crowd into the kitchen, with their
necks bare to the pleasant wind, and the sweat of their labours on
their brow. The laugh is light, the words are gentle, for they are
confined to the simple subjects of the crops, the weather, and the
farm news. The goodwife is at the head of the table, and pours
out the tea or milk ; the daughters sit among the men, coming and
going as occasion requires to bring water, or bread, or pie. Their
attire is plain, their manners are simple and frank. Before the
old man there is placed a huge dish of stew ; it is made of potatoes,
carrots, chicken, and large squares of boiled fat pork, and he helps
it out with no niggard hand, and when he has finished his own
portion, he quaffs a huge cup of cider, and leans back in his chair,
with a great sigh of satisfaction, to wait till his youngest daughter,

SUPPER. Its

with brown hair and blue eyes, just opening into womanhood,
brings his pie. The brass candlesticks on the mantel-piece are
filled with asparagus boughs, the oaken floor is polished with
scrubbing, and the tall clock in the passage-way strikes one as the
meal is ended.

There is another dinner scene that may be as often remarked in
America, and equally characteristic of another class of eaters. A
bell rings, or a jangling gong shocks the ear, while five-and-forty
men rush past the waiter that is beating his brazen drum, and sit
down at a long hotel table. On it are spread various small articles
of food or ornament, such as celery, oranges, and figs, which are
immediately seized, and appropriated. Waiters hand every person
a dish of soup, of that consistency that is supposed to be proper to
nourish persons in the last stage of disease. In a moment after
the soup dishes are snatched away, and the guest is informed he
can have his selection from any one of almost every kind of beast
that walks the earth, or fowl that flies the air. Being a temperate
man, he orders roast beef, and in a moment is supplied with a large
slice of overdone, brown roast beef, flooded with a light-coloured
gravy, a small dish of potatoes is slammed on the table beside him,
and a plate of maccaroni. He tries the potatoes, but finds them
watery, and filled with lumps ; the beef — it is tasteless ; the macca-
roni, and streams of water run out of the pendent pipes as from a
disconnected engine hose. The bread is dry and cut in small
oblong pieces. He wonders, and, if he is a stranger, looks at his
neighbours to see what they are eating. The upper end of the
board is occupied by ladies that have effected their entrance by
some side-door, and they are arrayed in the colours of the rainbow,
and seem to be busy talking loudly and looking along the table.
The long rows of gentlemen are busy, without the interchange of a
word, eating rapidly of everything placed before them. While our
guest is remarking these things, his plate is taken away by the
waiter, and he notices the gentlemen are all eating dessert, or leav-
ing the table, having finished their dinner. The waiter asks him
what he will have for dessert. He demands to know what there is
to have. The answer is given so rapidly, it sounds as follows :

" Ap' pi — pi'-p — mi' pi — ca' pi — rat' pi ! "

164 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

The guest gets confused, mildly inquires if they have any fruit.

" Yes, sah. Apple-dumpling, sah."

" Very well ; I will take an apple-dumpling."

" Hard or soft, sah ? " referring to the sauce.

" Oh, soft, of course ; " referring to the dumpling.

The dumpling is dashed down in front of him, as hard as a
cocoa-nut, and flooded in soft sauce, while the waiter disappears
down the table, gathering up the plates with a clatter, and the
room is deserted.

Once more an American table looms up through the mist of
hungry years. A low frame-house, with a porch half covered
with the trailing arms of morning-glories and columbines, stands
on a knoll of a western prairie. That prairie is browsed by deer,
and game birds of the choicest kind feed on it in millions. The
river winds along the valley, teeming with fish, its banks margined
with water-cresses and dock, and shaded with plum-trees and fruit-
bearing vines, while &om his cabin-door the settler can see a
hundred cattle cropping the wild grass.

Noon-time arrives, and the head of the house comes in from
the ploughing to his meal, and finds the same food that was spread
before him at breakfast, and that he will have for his supper, and
has had at all his meals for years past. It consists of tea, Indian
com bread, and fried pork. The pork is cut in small slices, and
fried until quite brown, and the bread is sopped in the gravy.
There is no attempt at grace of service, no white cloth to hide the
table, no dainty pat of butter on a grape leaf, such as tempts the
eyes and palate in the Tyrolean chalet ; but it is the simple medi-
cine to cure a hungry stomach, administered without sweetening.

The refinement of a family is nowhere so quickly seen as at a
table, or selfish instincts become more prominent. There is the
centre of the family after the day's wandering, there its first meet-
ing after a night of f orgetfulness ; there we give hospitality to the
stranger, there the tongue is loosened, the wandering thoughts
called back, and the heart is warmed into expression by generous
wine. The feasts of Lucullus were celebrated for their wit, and
the simple suppers at the Mermaid were the signals for intellectual
tournaments. " He has eaten with me," is the Arab's talisman to

SUPPER. 166

protection, aud the Christian has made a supper the emblem of his
religion. Then what constitutes a supper, the food and its prepara-
tion, apart from its physiological bearings, is worthy of thoughtful
study. Almost every one can remember having eaten of simple
meals that were as good as any king's ; sometimes they were found
at a private table, where white hands that were dear to him have
spread the cloth ; sometimes they have been served in some out-
of-the-way Gallic auberge, when the hungry traveller was even
doubting if in a place so destitute he could find anything to eat ;
and again, it may be, they have been spread in that chief of all
hostelries, that reckless home of self-reliance, the camp beneath
the greenwood tree. Oh, dear beyond all caf^s, and green when
Verey's shall be forgotten, is that spreading blanket-cloth, those
bark platters, and flashing fires, by which so many meals have been
cooked and heartily eaten ! Don't laugh. Epicurean, who reads
these lines in a big city, where for years fancy cooks have manu-^
factured spiced dinners at Midas prices, and do not say it was
only the appetite, and not the dinner that was marvellously good.
Though it is easy to cook when you have skillet and spider, bake
oven and basting spoon, griddle, pan, sauce-dish, pot, skewers,
rotary jacks, and a patent kitchen range, yet still there are more
good meals cooked in this world without them than with them,
and one of these was our last dinner on Bonda Key.

There had been a long hunt tliat had lasted from daybreak
till almost sunset, and we were tired and hungry, and a certain
feeling of approaching separation had come over us that made
exertion necessary, and so we went to work with a will»to cook
a good meal. It is true, our utensils for cooking were few and
simple ; they consisted of one iron kettle, one tin coffee-pot, and
a dozen tin cups and a dozen tin plates — a small batterie de cuisine
for a legitimate cook, but they were ample for us. The fire had
been burning for a week, and thus there were plenty of hard coals.
The material consisted of some Indian meal, bear's meat, venison,
wild ducks, wild turkey, red-fish, turtle eggs, and snipe. The
cooks were Mike, the Doctor, Lou Jackson, and myself; the
scullions were all the negroes of the island.

"Poke, you attend to the birds, will you?" I said, handing

1«6 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

over a bunch of snipe that Rose had just picked as clean as apples
and that were all nicely drawn, and bad their bills stuck in their
breasts as though trjring to plume their lost feathers.

" No, sir" replied the Doptor emphatically ; " any body can
cook snipe, / am going to attend to the side dishes — les erUremets,
vol-au-vents, and the pdt^."

" Nonsense ! there are no side dishes, sir, and plenty of sub-
stantial food that can be roasted," interposed Jackson.

" Yes, yes. Doctor, give us an entremet

" Of candied apple, qaince, and plum, and gourd,
With jellies Boother than the creamy curd."

" Wait a while," said tlie Doctor ; " I will show you a dish that
will make you forget poetry."

As he selected a couple of flat stones, and commenced pound-
ing up some biscuit that were so hard they had been declined by
all the party since the commencement of the hunt.

" You, Sam, bring me a fork," said Jackson, as he approached
the fire with a square of the loin of bear's meat nicely cut for
roasting. The fork was produced, which was a stout branch of
green wood, and carefuUy pushed into the sand at such an inclina-
tion that the meat would be between the fire and the wood ; the
roasting piece was carefully impaled thereon, and in a little while
was liissing away before the heat as musically as if in a Dutch
oven.

A red snapper of ten pounds weight that one of the boys had
caught in the bay was drawn and wrapped up in green leaves, leav-
ing the scales on, and carefully deposited in a hole in the ground
under the fire, and the hot ashes were drawn over it. Mike had,
in the meanwhile, plucked a pair of young mallard ducks, fastening
their wings to their bodies with little sassafras skewers so they
should not get burned, and tying them by their legs to long
strings, hung them near the fire on high sticks. They looked like
bales of cotton, or like horses when they are suspended by tackles
to be hoisted on shipboard. The strings being then tightly twisted
gave a rotary motion to the birds that presented every side equally
to the fire, and prevented them from burning. A few fragrant

SUPPER. 167

leaves, and a dozen oysters being stuffed in each one, answered in
the place of dressing.

Lou Jackson prepared the corn-bread cake called pone as only
a South-woman can, and it was laid on a flat stone that had been
carefuUy selected, and had served for this purpose for several
previous dinners, and it would have been a pleasant amusement to
see the white dough gradually becoming mahogany brown before
the fire, had we not each been busy with the more delicate duties
of the kitchen.

I made the boys cut some long wooden skewers, and Eose
having cut a deer's liver in small square pieces, an inch in diameter,
we impaled a half dozen of these little cubes on each skewer, and
stuck them up before the fire at a safe distance from the coals. A
piece of bear's fat of the same size as the piece of liver was stuck
on the top of each skewer, so that, as the heat of the fire gradually
melted it, the liver was basted by the dropping fat, without any
further attention being needed. Next a redfish, with its scales
left on, but carefully drawn, and wiped dry, was rolled in green
leaves, and buried deep in the hot ashes.

Poke, by this time, had completed his ship-biscuit powder, and
been to the beach with Pompey Duflfield Sah, from whence he re-
turned with two large bivalve shells, resembling gigantic clam-
shells, which had been left by the waves on the beach, which he
carefully washed, and greased with bear's fat, and then sprinkled
with his ship-biscuit powder.

" That a poultice you are going to have there, Doctor ? " said
Jackson.

"No — gruel," I suggested. Poke maintained a scornful
silence, continuing his labour and making another trip to the
beach with Pompey, from which they came with the tin pan full
of oysters, which he proceeded to divide among his four half shells.
When the shells were full, he sifted the balance of his ship-biscuit
over them, and placed them in front of the fire,

" Scolloped oysters, sir, by the moustache of Soyer ! you 're a
genius," said Jackson.

Lou Jackson made the coffee by boiling the water in the tin
cofifee-pot, and then tying up a sufficient quantity of ground coffee

168 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

in a canvas bag, placed the bag in the pot which was kept simmer-
ing over the coals. Mike had cut several slices of venison, and
laying them across two iron ramrods as a substitute for a gridiron,
was carefully watching them cook, from time to time giving the
ducks a twist, that made them revolve on their gallows like
martyrs suffering two of the extreme penalties of the law at one
time. Jackson set up the snipe as sentinels around one side of
the fire, and the iron pot was hung over the coals, and in it was
placed bits of bear's meat and venison, the breast of cranes, pieces
of ship-biscuit, bits of pork, and all the little odds and ends of
game, which being fit for nothing else, seem especially intended for
making a stew. To this was added a wild pepper or two, and
some green leaves and roots that the negroes had gathered, and
every time the water bubbled a savoury smell issued forth that
made one entertain a more lenient opinion of Esau, in spite of
the thousands of years of misjudgment that have been visited
upon him. And lastly, as a crowning honour to the meal, a
pumpkin was produced ; a real golden pumpkin, with its honest
ochre face wrinkled into lines of swelling rotundity, and suggest-
ing the rows of rustling corn, among which it had obtained its
plethoric shape. The boys had brought it from the plantation in
the boat, and though some might say " there is an article that wiU
bother these improvising cooks," it was hailed with exclamations
of welcome. A plug was cut in its upper side, where the stalk
joined the fruit, and when the piece was taken out it formed a
cover to the interior cavity, to which the short stalk answered for
a handle. The seeds were carefully removed from the interior,
and in their place was poured as much heavy brown sugar as would
fill the cavity ; when the cover was restored to its place, and the
emblem of plenty was seated in front of the coals, its jocund face
reflected the bright flames with a pleasant glow, like that which
shines on the countenance of an old patriarch, when down the
Christmas table peer the bright eyes of long Hues of merry grand-
children. The turkey-hen had been in the meanwhUe transfixed
on a stake, with its maw crammed with chestnuts, and was cluck-
ing its despite against its warm roost, vapouring out its savoury
humours, while Eose was squatted behind it, screening her face

SUPPER. 100

from the fire with one hand and basting the bird with the other as
the fire blistered its tender skin.

" Now for the omelette ! " exclaimed the Doctor, turning away
from a long survey of the various articles of food that girdled the
fire ; " bring me the eggs, Sam."

Sam approached with a grin on his face, and his hat full of soft
shell turtle eggs that had been procured from the sand.

" You 'd better roast them in the hot sand instead of trying to
make omelette," I suggested.

" Or boil them in the stew, sir," said Jackson.

" No, gentlemen, an omelette soufflee I have decided upon. If
you want some in the stew I can spare you six ; don't put them in
till the stew is nearly cooked or they will be as hard as bullets ;
but I am really suffering for an omelette ; and he began breaking
open the little round eggs in one of the tin cups, singing all the
while, with a merry tone —

" Who can help loving the land that has taught us
Six hundred and eighty -five ways to cook eggs. "

When they were all broken he set one of the men at work to

beat them up with a bundle of switches, and turned his attention

to tasting the stew, that was being seasoned from the contents of

the mess-box, and tasted by all the persons who expected to eat

therefrom. Each one gave his opinion, and each one was finally

satisfied ; the Doctor threw in six turtle eggs for my satisfaction,

and allowed an additional pod of red pepper for Jackson's taste

for spices, while a fox squirrel, that is a dry kind of gymnast for

cooking alone, was quartered, and thrown in to complete the mess.

" Round about the caldron go,
In the poison'd entrails throw ; "

began the Doctor in a declaiming voice.

"Hold your tongue, destroyer of appetites!" called out Lou
Jackson ; " don't mix bad ideas with the stew ; that is worse than
putting in tough meat."

" Poetry, ma'am, is never out of place," answered the Doctor,
gesticulating with the forked stick with which he was stirring the
stew. " Poetry is salt to life's omelette ; poetry is the poor man's
gold — the coffee to a dinner. — You, Sam, twist the ducks ; don't

170 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

you see they 've stopped ? — Poetry, ma'am, is suggestive of dinner
and dinner of poetry, for —

" Doctor, your pat^s are burning."

" Dear me, what a miserable operation ! You, Sam, why didn't
you see that coal snap ? "

" Didn't like fur to stop maussa's speechifin'."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Jackson, "you had better get the plates
ready, Scip ; where are the plates ? "

" All here, sah," said Scipio, bringing in a dozen or more pieces
of white birch bark rounded and smoothed with the knife; and
behind him came Caesar with the tin cups brightly scoured. Some
of the men had reared a wooden table when we first came to the
island; this unusual luxury for a camp was elevated about two
feet from the ground, and fonned a convenient centre for the
family that sat around on the sand where fancy dictated. The
plates were arranged on the table, one to each guest, and a pile in
store for other courses, for it was a thing unknown in this camp
of plenty to use a plate the second time.

" Turn the pumpkin, some one ; don't you see it browning ?"

The Doctor paused while measuring a handful of sugar for his
omelette to see the cooking progress. Rose basted the turkey,
ejaculating from time to time, " Gi, he hot I" Mike sat like a Turk
on his crossed legs, gradually withdrawing the venison steak from
the heat, and Jackson, who never gave himself much concern
about the dinners, stood overlooking the coffee-pot. It was a
pleasant dinner in cooking, and when it was announced by universal
acclaim that it was done, we all felt that we had earned our appetites.

First came out the fish from his hot bed, a black steaming
mass, that bore more resemblance to a sacred embalmed crocodile
than to an article of food ; but as one by one the wrappings of
wet rags and green leaves were removed, bringing with them the
skin and scales, and his fishiness was gently rolled over on a piece
of clean birch bark and placed on the table, white, flaky, and
steaming hot, a universal ha ! from the convives heralded the
success of our first course. To talk of boiled fish, where half of
the peculiar flavour of a trout is left in the water, or sole au gratin
that is smothered in sauce and mushrooms, is a mark of gratitude

SUPPER. 171

for past enjoyments ; but if the nostril has ever inhaled the pure
steam, the condensed just liberated essence of a cold-water fish,
baked in the ashes, he will forget those artificial combinations
that have hitherto deceived him, and believe only in the simplest
cooking as the best. The fish was soon disposed of, and Mike
handed over his venison steak, hot and rare, just cooked enough to
make it tender.

" Ah ! Mike, you rascal, it 's not the cooking that makes that
venison so tender, sir; you have had the selection of the whole
deer," said Jackson.

"Would yer have me take the heels ?" asked Mike sarcastically.

And thereupon there arose a great discussion between them as
to the best cut from a deer, as Jackson had some of the old
yeoman's ideas of venery, and Mike was in no wise a stranger to
this, one of the most considered arts of woodcraft.

" Hi, dogs ! " called Lou, as the hounds crowded around her for
the scraps of venison that we had not eaten, and licked the hand
that fed them. " Down, Jip ! back, Boz ! back. Lady ! Bring the
turkey, Kose."

" And the bar," said Mike, tossing his wooden platter into the
fire and taking another.

" And the oysters," said the Doctor.

" And some corn bread," said another.

" Ho ! for a boar's head and a flagon of wine, and we would
make a royal carouse ! " cried Jackson.

" Were we kings, we would not have hunter's appetites," said I.

** And might have the gout," intimated the Doctor.

The turkey was placed on the table, flanked by the piece of
bear's meat, and between them the oysters, and my brochets of
liver. The corn-bread, brown and smoking, was broken up and
piled on the board. And, finally, the tin pan, the only tin pan in
the company, was half filled with the savoury stew, and put under
the Doctor's nose, to his evident satisfaction, and his face broadened
in spite of himself, as the delicate fragrance of venison, eggs, bird,
and bear's fat, mingled with chestnuts and savoury herbs, ascended
to his nostrils.

Hunting-knives were applied with vigour, and, after a short

172 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

' interval of busy silence, there was nothing left on the board but a
portion of Bruin's carcass, the stew, and one half of the turkey-hen,
and these would have stood but little chance, had not there been
the remembrance of the ducks and snipe that were still smiling by
the fire. Tlie stew had been pronounced good, but not as good as
it will be to-morrow morning, for a stew is like wine, and im-
proves by keeping, and a gentle cooking, oft repeated, makes it
more grateful still.

" Now, Doctor, I think the time has come for the game, don't
you?"

" I do. Let the game be served," said he, with a wave of his hand.

" You wiU have to serve it yourself, then," replied Lou. " Rose
is eating among the men ; just hear them laugh ! "

The musical notes of the other party sounded from the fartlier
side of the fire, where they were discoursing huge pieces of venison
and bear's meat with a series of cachinnations that resembled the
morning rejoicings of a gang of turkeys.

" You, Rose ! the cofiFee ! " shouted Lou ; but the girl did not
bear, and Lou had to bring the cofiee herself, with the Doctor and
Mike bearing the ducks and the snipe. The birds were laid out in
state on bark platters, and the cofiee, after first removing the bag
of grounds, was carefully poured out in equal portions, in the five
tin cups that ornamented the table.

There are various kinds of wild ducks, and various sensations
received from eating them. Sometimes they have been tough —
leathery tough, these were the old-wives ; it is generally only the
young wives that buy them; others there are that taste like
mackerel, these are the saw-bills and other fishy ducks ; others
that are dry, like corned boef, these are Pharaoh's lean kine ; others
again that are duck, but ruined in cooking, you would hardly
suspect them, under their stuffing of acrid sage and rancid onion,
to be duck, unless you saw their feet. The best manner of cooking
a duck is to broil it. Large ducks like canvas-backs and red-heads
are usually baked — picked dry, and not washed, a pinch of salt
placed inside to draw out the juices, then baked not more than
twenty minutes. Thus cooked, young fat wild duck of any of the
good varieties is peer to any game that ever feasted a hunter.

SUPPER.

173

Nested in a tussock of grass, on some of the sedgy shores of the
great northern rivers, it there lived on seed and succulent grasses,
and making its first migration southward, it stopped at the wild
rice-fields that fringe the shores of the big lakes at Sodus, or San-
dusky Bay, the Thousand Islands, or the morasses of the Calumet
River, in Indiana, and then for a day or so at the celery beds of
the Chesapeake and Delaware, and then on the rice-fields of the
Caroline or Georgia planter. It is so conditioned that its breast is
flat, and its back is white with underlying fat, and by tlie colour of
its feet you can say it is its first winter out. Treat such a duck
gently, pick dry, and don't wash it Eoast it or broil it rare, and
when it is done, not crisp like a roast pig, but gently done, bear it
away from th^ fire lovingly as the Doctor carried the two that we
had cooked, and flank it with nothing discordant and gross, but with
some game bird, and nothing better than a English snipe, and then
thank the Lord who giveth us our meat in due season, for never
since man had dominion over the fowls of the air has there been
cooked a daintier dish.

As the dinner progressed it had become dark, and then only
the blazing fire lighted the foliage and the rippling beach, and only
the faint call of the raccoon in the woods answered the heron and
the duck in the marsh, and gradually we sank down to our usual
places, talking in a low tone, and casting remarks back into
memory, and away into the future, now telling a tale, now half
singing a song, until we dropped asleep.

" But what of the pumpkin ? " I hear you ask.

Oh ! that we kept for the next day.

CHAPTER XVII.

HOME AGAIN.

" Be thy intent wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will Bpeak to thee."

Hamur.

If the reader will leave for a short time his hunting acquaint-
ances of the Key, and visit another contemporary camp, he can see,
in fancy's eye, one of the chief men that at the date of our story
controlled the destiny of the Floridas.

Halleck Tustenuggee was a Mickasukie chief of much repute, as
well for his bravery and endurance as for his knowledge of the
resources of his native land, his eloquence and his cunning in all
the wiles of Indian diplomacy. Being bom of the Mickasukies, the
original owners of the soil, and being related by marriage to the
principal men of the tribe, he possessed a wide influence that was
sustained by his strength and manliness of person. Gaily coloured
quills were plaited in the straight black hair that fell from the
crown of the head, and his costume was more uniform than that of
the savages of the northern tribes, and resembled the hunting-shirt
of the frontier hunter. He was six feet two inches in height, and
slightly made, with a sullen stolid face, that seemed in repose to
be without intelligence, but which brightened into intensity when
animated. Halleck Tustenuggee's favourite camp was located on
the upper waters of the Ouithlacouchee Eiver, on a live-oak island
that reared itself, the only stable land amid leagues of morass.
Here were erected neatly thatched cabins, and storehouses of food
and ammunition, and here, guarded by the solitude, the quicksand,
the tortuous lagoons, and the scaly reptiles of the swamp, were
always to be found a company of little swarthy imps that played

HOME AGAIN. ITO

*

in the grass, and sober women that sat all the while with their
blankets wrapped around them, as still as the dead monks in the
Piazza Borgonona.

No white man had ever seen this island. The buzzard alone,
from his slow circles in the zenith, had marked the camp smoke,
under the long-hanging moss. Only the panther, from the laby-
rinth of the magnolias, or the alligator under the fallen trees, heard
the children's laugh, or the squaw's song to her swart pappoose.
So the stores of maize and powder were never burned by the
enemy, and the dried and wrinkled scalps that hung to the tent-
poles, some by their silken tresses and some by their short grey
curls, continued to smoke and dry in the fire-light and the sun-
shine, unreclaimed and unavenged.

To explain the unconquerable aversion that has always existed
between the white man and the Indian on the North American
continent needs the description of many aggressions and revenges
that each has inflicted on the most susceptible feelings of the
other. The white man has colonised the lands of the savage by
sufferance, and then, by reason of the necessity of his position, kept
them by force. By superior foresight he has bought their peltry
at trivial prices. He has imported infectious diseases, has cor-
rupted with alcoholic drinks, has cut down preserves of game, has
amassed wealth, and power, and space, while his simpler-minded
neighbour has been stunted under his shadow. All this happens
even when the relations of the two races are amicable, and treaties
are observed with fidelity, and the aborigine knows that, as the
white man prospers he must decrease — that the white man's life
is the red man's death. But the outward peace in a little while
disappears. Some settlers' cattle or negro slaves have disappeared
from the woods, and the Indian is charged with the theft; the
charge is probably true. Some brave, in visiting the settlement,
has been intoxicated, and killed or maimed a white man who has
insulted him. The law claims a compensation. The law is made
by the white man, who regards the Indian with contempt and dis-
like, and the compensation is graded by his judgment, and not
by the meagre wealth of the Indian. Eetaliation follows the dis-
training ; a foray avenges the retaliation ; then a burning vUlage

176 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

and the scalping-knife brightens the night, and brings on a cam-
paign that for years converts the border into a debatable ground,
like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, The white settler, at a
distance from relief, and guarding his cabin only by force of arms,
regards the sullen, wary, crouching foe with a bitter hatred that
he bestows on no other enemy, and his hatred is handed from
father to child, and perpetuated by tradition, picture, and song,
and many a vacant place by the fireside. The chieftain looks back
over a life of battles that were disastrous to him, and that has left
Ms tribe a handful of broken men, and recalls the peace that was
more injurious than war, the worthless bargains, hollow promises,
poisonous gifts, discordant counsels, mock ceremonies, and cloaked
hatred.

Little wonder is it; then, that when some chiefs of shrewder
foresight than others come to power among the Indian tribes, they
form combinations, recount their wrongs, and, urged on by the
national enthusiasm, make a bitter burst for revenge and immor-
tality ! Such a chief was Halleck Tustenugge, and such was the
history of his people ; and the settlers on the Gulf and the verdant
bottoms of the Suwanee remember his last unexpected and bloody
charge, as the fishermen of the Mexican Gulf remember the torna-
does that come out from the south in the middle of the summer
afternoon, wrecking all that was basking in the tropical stillness.

Tustenugge had consulted with all the divisions of the Semi-
noles. Kunners had come and gone, some in canoes and some on
foot, to all the different outlying parties. The women had been
removed to the recesses of the swamps, extra quantities of lead
and powder had been purchased, a census had been made of all
the white inhabitants residing on the debatable land, and the
forces had been appointed, so many braves to each department ; at
the same time no change in the demeanour of the red men marked
their determination ; they came and went the same as before, and
bartered and hunted without a word of mistrust or dislike. The
very day had been fixed, and the hour ; and that night, while the
laugh was so loud by the camp-fire at Bonda Key, and while
soothed by the murmurs of the sea, we passed away to the land of
dreams, the eye of the Indian was on us all the while, and we

HOME AGAIN. 177

knew it not. While we were cooking and eating our meal, and
when we had lain down to sleep, an Indian scout was watching us
from a clump of thickly clustered trees that grew some fifty yards
from our tents. It could not be seen in the shadows, and the land
breeze that blew from us to it prevented the dogs scenting it. No
motion attested weariness, no sound betokened its cat-like arrival.
It was the skeleton at the feast.

As the morning brightened the east, the figure melted away with
the warm colours of the sky, and when Mike left the camp to loiter
around for his usual morning walk he found the dew disturbed on
the grass, and following the slight trail he carried it to the edge of
a bayou, where he noticed the rushes were divided as though they
had been bent by somebody passing through. As he watched
them carefully they still arose, closing more and more of the open-
ing, showing that whatever had disturbed them, had but just de-
parted. The hunter surveyed the whole bay and the opening
bayous, and then followed back the trail to the clump of trees
where the scout had spent the night, and examined the place care-
fully. He then made several casts around the camp, each one of
greater circuit, examining as he went every indication of the
presence, during the night, of any other person, and finally re-
turned with his measured tread, and took his place by the fire.

From the survey he had made, he knew there was but one
Indian on the island ; he knew by the track, the new footmarks
overlapping old ones, that the Indian had come and gone in the
same direction. He knew that he was there to watch the hunting
party, and for no other reason; and by the matted grass in the
thorn-bushes he knew that he had passed the most of the night in
the same place. It was no straggler, for he had an object; no
hunter, for he was without dog or comrade. Whatever Mike's
reflections were, he kept them secret, and smiled at Lou's jests
and chatted as quietly with the Doctor, while he superintended
the loading of the boats for the return trip, as though he had not
left the camp.

The tents were struck and packed, our few skins and trophies
were stowed away in the canoes, and when we had finished a
hearty breakfast, and Eose had cooked sufficient venison and corn-

M

178 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

bread to answer for our dinner, we embarked and started once
again for " Far Away."

Mike had given directions at starting as to the course we were
to take, and himself led the way. This was not the same route we
had taken in coming, but deflected much to the southward. Soon
the islands on which we had passed so many pleasant days were
blue in the distance, and I envied the pelicans that were sitting on
the sandy point, careless denizens of a happy land, to whom time
brought no necessity for change, and who only migrated at their
pleasure, a headland of water-oaks presently shut out our isola-bella,
and the boats wound in among a group of islands that hid us from
any view but those of the shores that immediately surrounded us.
Mike's canoe, that led the way, paused for a moment, and as we
rode abreast he spoke to Jackson, who was with his daughter and
the Doctor, and asked them to row on slowly with the other boats
through the channel that opened ahead, and await his coming in the
first broad piece of water they came to. The boats all passed on,
but Mike, who was paddling alone with Scipio, turned back and ran
ashore on the low island we had just passed and that had shut out
our view of Bonda Key. Landing on the beach, he bade Scipio wait,
while he crossed over the narrow point of the island, and standing
among the heavy moss that reached down from the trees, narrowly
scanned the open water we had crossed. Bonda Key exposed its
full length of blue ; beyond were other lesser sandy keys blinking
in the sunshine; nearer, the low tangled islands upreared their
winter verdure, save when the magnolias or pines interspersed their
green domes, or the gaudy creepers blotched them with scarlet
Long flocks of ducks crept along the horizon, or swam in nearer
clumps ; but it was for none of these the hunter was watching. At
length from behind an island, that had momentarily hid the view,
a canoe, impelled by a single paddler, glided over the water, appa-
rently making for the place where the hunter stood. Mike re-
turned to his canoe, and paddled to the point of the island where
an old tree, undermined by the water, had fallen over with its load
of vines and moss, and then pulled his boat under its shelter until
it was completely invisible from any spot but the water in front.
The canoe that was approaching from beyond soon reached the end

HOME AGAIN. 179

of the island, on the side opposite to the one where Mike was con-
cealed, and a young Seminole stepped to the shore, and crouching
on one knee, cautiously peered around the point. A moment's
survey satisfied him, and returning to his canoe he paddled on as
rapidly as before, and turning the point of the island continued his
course down the channel where our boats had passed, and where
Mike lay concealed. He was dressed in buckskin breeches and
moccasins; a belt supported a heavy hunting-knife, while the
upper part of his body was completely naked. His head was bare,
and a daub of scarlet paint ornamented each cheek and either
breast. His blanket lay beside him, and with his eye fixed on the
winding channel ahead, he was paddling rapidly past, when Mike,
with a muscular push against the overhanging tree, shot out into
the lagoon so far that the two canoes floated almost side by side.
In spite of his training and his stoic blood, the Indian was startled,
evincing his surprise by a quick motion and an aspirated ejacula-
tion, as his hand involuntarily laid hold of his gun. Scipio was
paddling the canoe, and Mike's rifle was lying across his knee,
while with an appearance of most simple assurance, the hunter
said —

" Good-morning, brother, were you looking for me ? "

" No — yes," replied the Indian, too much taken by surprise to
collect his thoughts immediately; "I saw canoes ahead, I like
company."

" My brother been to the Keys hunting ? " continued Mike.

The Indian answered by a nod of assent, — a gesture that he
hoped the hunter would believe.

"And is now going up the river again ? "

" Yes," replied the Indian, willing to favour the first supposition.

" Then we go together," said Mike, propelling his canoe a little
forward in the direction the Indian was going.

" Yes, Indian is tired much rowing, he will not keep you back,"
answered the savage evasively.

The boats now lay side by side, and Mike, with his rifle in his
hand, deliberately stepped from his own canoe to that of the savage,
saying, as he did so, " Ingin Mike will help his brother paddle his
boat if he is tired."

180 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

A keen glance and an impatient look proclaimed how much the
Seminole was averse to this polite offer. His eye roved around the
bayou as though expecting some treachery, and then rested on
Scipio's face and his musket that lay beside him. There seemed to
be no help for him, and if he had any suspicion as to Mike's inten-
tions, he could not confirm them from anything he saw in the sun-
browned face that confronted him. His hand left his gun, and the
ill-assorted couple commenced paddling down the lagoon, while
Scipio followed behind, his white teeth glistening as he laughed at
intervals a low laugh, with a chorus of words and pectoral chuckles.

The surprise of our party was most unqualified as the strange
boat paddled out from the winding lagoon to the open water, and
took its place in the rear of the little squadron. The negroes' eyes
opened with a language of ejaculation that was louder than words,
and Jackson eyed it as a mallard drake would stare at a cormorant
who should dare to sail in among his brood. Nothing, however,
was said to our visitor, though from front to rear were passed many
covert jokes at his expense. "We kept on our course industriously,
and by noon were all in the mouth of the river, and stopped for
our lunch and a little rest on an island, the smallest of a group of
three that lay side by side. Jackson wanted to stop at a larger
island that we had just passed, but Mike said that a little island
with good company was better than a large one with bad company,
and so we complied with his wishes.

The important feature in our lunch was the pumpkin that had
been cooking all the previous night, and that had been carefully
carried in Jackson's canoe. As Kose brought it up from the boat
on her head, the Doctor smiled, I laughed, and Lou looked eagerly
forward, as a child looks at an unopened Christmas box.

" Take off the cover of Pandora's Box, Lou," said the Doctor.

" It won't come ofiF, it 's glued fast," said Lou, tugging at the
stem.

" Give me a chance," said Jackson, aiming a blow at it with
his hunting-knife, which did not produce any impression on the
shining surface.

At length, by the aid of a hatchet, it was split open, and the
interior revealed itself to our admiring eyes. The pumpkin had

HOME AGAIN. 181

baked soft, aud imbibed the sugar melted by the heat, and candied
in irregular shapes, like the interior of a crystallised rock hung
with brilliants. The steam was pendent from the sides in drops,
and a breath of sweets exhaled when opened that carried one's
mind back to the dinner-basket of childhood, and as each one of
the party possessed himself of a piece, and sat munching away, we
must have looked like so many monkeys in a melon patch. Poke
became poetical as usual and repeated Whittier's lines :

*' Oh fruit of loved boyhood! the old days recalling

When wood grapes were purpling, and brown nuts were falling.
When wild ugly faces we carved in its skin
Glaring out through the dark, with a candle within."

Jackson was disgusted with the rhyming. He never had lived
in a land where every corn-field was bright with pumpkins.

An hour's rest and we were again on our course, Mike all the
while in the Indian's canoe, and leading the van. The wild fowl
were numerous along the river, though we did not stop to shoot,
partly because we were loaded with game, and partly because Mike
had requested us not, though he would give no reason, briefly say-
ing in reply to our questions, " It 's a leetle better to travel fast
and hunt slow, than to travel slow and hunt fast." Large flocks
of ducks were all the while being driven ahead of the boats, flying
short distances each time they got up. Flamingoes and cormorants
were winding from point to point, and knee-deep in the tide great
blue herons waded, and snow-white cranes dressed their plumage.
As vista after vista opened around the bends of the river, or up the
lateral lagoons, new forms and colours opened to the eye. There
the stately cypress-trees stood in the water, like the pillars of a
rustic Venice, and the mound-like cones their roots threw up
extended aU across the basin ; while above, the swinging vine had
caught its tendrils in the opposite tree, and thus back and forth
festooned a royal porte-cockhe to the forest mansion. On the other
side a fallen tree shut in a passage and formed foothold for brier
and creeper, and vines that aspired to the highest pinnacles of the
forest and bowed the trees with their embrace. The lunge of the
alligator, the cry of the bittern as ho rose from the reeds, the scream
of the fish-hawk, circling iji the air and chasing the tern, seemed

188 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

fittiug music for the scene, and soothed and interested the mind,
while the low song tlie oarsmen sung did not disturb the wild
inhabitants of the air, or mar the unity of the scene.

Nothing is sweeter than the negro songs, which they sing in
perfect accord and with rich guttural voices, sometimes low and
sometimes swelling full and high with the emotion of the singers.
While rowing they nearly always sang, and one refrain the hearer
will carry in his mind until the dark river is crossed. It ran tlius : —

" Roll, Jordan, roll, roll, Jordan, roll,
I want to go to Heaven when I die

To hear Jordan rolL
Oh ! brothers, you ought to have been dare.
Yes, my Lord ! a-sittin' in the kingdom

To hear Jordan roll"

The river grew familiar, and we recognised remembei-ed trees
and openings, and soon we saw ahead of us the bluff that marked
the landing at " Far Away," and then the logs that formed the rustic
wharf, and then the seat under the oaks, and then we landed once
again on familiar ground ; and leaving the boys to " tote the
plunder," wound our way up the hill toward the house, Jackson
taking the lead. The young Indian seemed to have made up his
mind to accompany us, if not pleasantly, at least without any
manifest reluctance, though I noticed Mike was always by his side.

As we mounted the hill I looked for the flock of sheep that
usually fed on the bluff, but they were not there, though in a
moment we passed one of the wethers dead by the side of the path.
Before I could remark upon this, I heard a cry ahead from Jackson,
and hastening forward we saw the house and the negro cabins were
not there, but a pile of ashes that was drifting hither and yon by
the wind, and a column of smoke that ascended from the ruins
marked the place where they stood. The sheds were burned, and
the sheep pen. The little kitchen, where so many pleasant dinners
had been cooked, was gone. There was no voice or sound, no neigh
of horses, or bark of dogs, or bleat of sheep. The only living thing
there was a group of buzzards that, heavily gorged, flitted up on
the stones that formed the chimney. Looking to where they arose
we saw a naked body, half-eaten and scalped. It was Aunty Blase,

HOME AGAIN. 183

the old cook. Her eyes were protruding, her bare teeth were grin-
ning at the spectator, and by her peeled skull we knew who had
been the visitors at " Far Away."

After the first ciy of horror that escaped Jackson's lips, he
turned around to Mike, and his eyes fell on the Indian prisoner,
who had taken advantage of the surprise of the party to glide
away among the trees.

" Hound of hell !" shouted Jackson, " I know your work," and
he levelled his rifle at the Indian, who was bounding away down
the glade. A mocking cry answered the shot, and the spy disap-
peared in the woods.

" After him ! " called Jackson, starting in pursuit.

" Hold thar, hard ! " exclaimed Mike, springing after the planter
and taking him by the shoulder. " You '11 lose your own har in
thar and won't git his'n. Besides, I 'm of tlie 'pinion that the
sooner we get in fightin' trim the better for us. Them sarpents
has made a clean sweep and thar is nothin' more for 'em to do
here, and so I reckon they 've gone arter us to the Keys."

Mike spoke earnestly, and Jackson stopped and returned to the
rest of the party that by this time had collected together by the
ruins. The negroes were moaning and making a noisy lamentation
over the remains of Aunty Blase, rocking themselves to and fro,
and throwing tlieir hands up and down. The Doctor was examin-
ing the wound on the poor old negress with a professional eye. It
was the first time he had ever had the opportunity to see this style
of dissection, and Lou Jackson sat down on a log and wept as if
her heart would break. Aunty Blase had been a friend of many
years to her, and had baked the cakes at the feasts that yearly
honoured her birth, and many a time had slyly cooked favourite
dishes for her young mistress. It was no wonder then that Lou
felt as though she had lost an aunt in reality, and not merely a
slave.

A short consultation was had. Mike detailed the fact that the
young Indian that had accompanied them back had been watching
their camp last night, and stated his belief that he was there for
the purpose of informing his tribe of our movements and of our
return, in order that they might be prepared to surprise us, either

184 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

at the camp or on our way back ; that his unexpected capture had
delayed the plan, and that there was no time to be lost in getting
into a more open country, if it should appear, as he suspected, that
there was a general rising of the savages along the coast. The
reasoning was so correct that it was immediately adopted, A
shallow grave, hastily dug, preserved the remains of the old cook
from the buzzards, and a short survey and a " huUoo " satisfied us
that the few other people that had been left behind had been
carried off by the savages, and then, with the goods we brought
home, we hurried back to the boats, and in a few minutes were
speeding down the river. No song of oarsmen now ; no laugh or
jest; it was the hurried exodus from impending fate, "and the
boldest held his breath for a time."

Tustenuggee, the Mickasukie chief, now commanding a band of
the Seminoles, at the time of the return of Jackson's family, was
lying with his men in one of the little elevations that raise them-
selves from the swamps, on the upper shore of the Ouithlacouchee,
where he had retired after the sack of the plantation house to wait
for the return of those whose unexpected absence had deprived
him of half his revenge. Among the spoils he had carried away
from the last night's sacking was a case of spirits that had created
a debauch in the savage band, and from the chief to the youngest
warrior they had all succumbed to its influence, and passed the
day in alternate riot and stupor. But when the scout who had
been sent down the river to watch the hunters, and whose fleetness
of foot had saved him from Jackson's vengeance, arrived and told
of the return of the party, the chief was immediately aroused, and
shaking off his sluggishness, hastened to take such steps as were
necessary to secure his prey. Kunners were sent out, some to the
site of the despoiled house, some to the river, and some to the
country lying north of the river, and through which the settler's
family would necessarily have to travel, if it sought to escape by
land to the upper settlements, that at this time were but sparsely
located, in the direction of Pensacola.

Hardly had the different scouts been sent on their errand before
one came hurrying back with the word that the boats were descend-
ing the river again, and, like a pack of dogs on a fresh scent, the

HOME AGAIN. 186

whole band hurried down to where a point ran out into the river.
They leaped from root to root, and crossed the marsh where a hare
would have floundered in the mud; they swung themselves, by
hanging vines, over deep pools of black water, and their tawny
bodies, as lithe as the copper-head snakes that slid from the logs
they trod on, appeared and disappeared through the tangled woods
until they at length reached the point of land around which the
boats were sweeping, impelled by fo\ir oars each, and keeping well
out in the river. Tustenuggee watched the flotilla coming with an
eye that would have transfixed a lonely traveller, so much had it
grown and brightened by excitement. He knew his prey was
escaping, for it would be a long shot to those canoes, and no matter
how strong his own force, he would be unwilling to hazard an open
attack on sixteen men as accustomed to the rifle as those before
him. The Indians were careful not to be seen from the boats, and
crouched down behind any cover they could find, hoping that some
of the canoes might approach near enough to afford them a shot.
But Mike, who led the fugitive fleet, was tod wary for that, but
inclined the boats away from a point that he was conscious might
afibrd a cover to a foe, and nearer the low timber that, growing in
the water, would form but a poor footing for an ambuscade. The
negroes bent to their oars, and the boats skimmed fast, making the
curve in beautiful order, and had entirely passed the point, when
the shrill report of a dozen guns sounded on the stillness of the
forest, and the water near the boats was spattered by the bullets.
Then followed the tremulous, fierce, prolonged war-whoop, and as
it died away, Mike's taunting answer, with a gesture of derision,
came back. Two or three of the savages had not fired with the
rest of the band, but had reserved their shots for a better oppor-
tunity. The opportunity came as the last boat, steered by Jackson
himself, swept down with the tide. He had seen the futility of
the preceding discharge, and regarding the boats as entirely out of
range of the guns, had rather cut the segment of the semicircle
than followed its outer curve. As he came opposite the point two
guns were discharged almost simultaneously, and at the report
Jackson dropped his steering-oar, and raised his hand to his side.
A taunting cry was echoed from the shore, and a number of

186 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

the Indians ran out as far as they might come, mocking the fugi-
tives, and delighted at the apparent effect of their shot. Jackson
raised himself up, staggering, and attempted to bring his rifle to
his shoulder, but could not ; he spoke to Lem, his favourite servant,
who put his arm around him, obedient to his master's command.

" Way enough, boys," he called out in a low voice.

The men paused on their oars, Jackson's lips compressed as the
rifle came to his cheek, and at the sharp report, one of the two
Indians from whom the last shots came, to.ssed his arms in the
air and fell from the bank where he was standing with a splash
into the stream and swirled off with the black water.

" Ha! ha! ye black devils," laughed Jackson, sinking down in the
bottom of the canoe from the arms of the boy that was holding him.

" Oh, mars Andrew, you hurt ; dear maussa, speak, maussa ! "
cried Lem, kneeling over the planter, and unbuttoning his vest.

Tlie wounded man looked fixedly, and a guttural noise came
from his chest at every breath and a perspiration dampened his
iron-grey locks. The boat, \iuheeded, turned and drifted with the
tide, and Mike's canoe, in which Lou Jackson was riding, seeing
something wrong, waited till they came up to them.

" Father," said Lou, as the canoes swung together, speaking in
a low, hurried voice, " I am here, your daughter Lou."

Jackson did not speak, though he looked shoreward with a
wandering eye.

"Dear father! God is good; he will not do this! speak to
me, say it is not so ! "

Jackson's lips moved, we listened, and low and faint, we heard
a nursery prayer :

" Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,"

and then some words indicating that he was thinking of home
and the garden walks. The stern heart was retracing life's steps
again ; it saw its childhood's home on the Altamaha, it heard its
mother's lullaby, the evening prayer, it felt the good-night kiss, and
smiled. The dangers around were forgotten, the war-whoop that
was sounding mockingly along the shore was unheard, Jackson
had retraced life's voyage to its source, and was home again.

HOME AGAIN. 187

We all saw the relaxation of muscle that followed the last
hesitating word, and knew its meaning. Lou sunk back into her
boat vacantly — listlessly staring, without a word or a tear. The
negroes wailed a low cadence of sorrow gazing on their master
with streaming eyes.

" Wall, he 's only got the start of us by a piece, it 's a few
days airlier or later ; but them dogs don't get his hair — that 's a
comfort ; and maybe it '11 do him good to hear my rifle crack, if
he hain't gone far yet — it used to make him smile." And saying
this, Mike levelled his piece at one of the savages on the shore,
who were watching in groups our movements.

At the crack of the heavy piece, that carried a ball farther than
any gun on the coast, an Indian in one of the groups shivered, but
by holding on to a branch above him he saved himself from falling,
though we all saw he was wounded. Mike put his hands to his
mouth and gave the war-whoop, but neither the ring of the rifle
nor the wild cry of battle awoke the dead, and obeying the dictates
of prudence we resumed our oars and hurried out of the river for
the more open channels of the islands.

CHAPTER XVITI.

THE BURIAL.

" Soft was the couch she had made for her lover,
White, white were the sheets and embroidered the cover,
But whiter his sheets and his canopy grander,
And sounder he sleeps where the hill foxes wander."

Camfbeix.

In social life, the love of self and dread of others is not shaken
off' even at the grave. We bury our dead man with pomp and
proper etiquette. There are invitations, and crape, hearse, monu-
ments, and seclusion from society ; even in our death we are
worldly, draping the dead truth and its morals with living fashions.
In the woods death is more direct in approach, and you less able
to shun his company. There is no art to help the stricken, no
luxury for the languid, no shrive for the dying. When the
destroyer has left his mark on your comrade and gone again, the
open eyes gaze at you, the stiff" body is in your arms ; no one
speaks over it ; it preaches in mute language for itself ; there is
no hearse, no mourners, no newspaper article, no hymn ; you and
your friend are alone together.

The night had well set in as we again caught sight of the low
outline of our camping-ground, after the hurried flight from the
river with our sorrowful burden. We lay off" in the open water
until Mike had made an examination of the land to see that there
had been no one there after our departure, and when we saw his
fire-light signal we rowed to the beach and disembarked. The
negroes spoke in whispers, the boats were half unloaded, the guns
carefully examined, and lay ready for use ; the very hounds felt
the blow that had fallen, and crept listlessly to the fire, and laid
down wondering, all save poor old Duke. Duke was a sterling
dbg, though somewhat aged ; his bed for years had been his master's

THE BURIAL. 189

couch, his platter his master's haud; and now he kept by the
blanket that was spread over the stem of one of the canoes, and
licked a white hand that fell from beneath, and at intervals half
whimpered, as does a hound when dreaming of the chase.

Before establishing ourselves for the night, we made a thorough
examination of the island, and posted one of the men on the upper
end to act as sentinel in case any canoes were seen, as they would
necessarily have to approach from that way. Then one tent was
raised for Lou, the smouldering fire was rekindled, being first
sheltered from observation by the tent, and by a screen of bushes,
and we addressed ourselves to sleep, though this was done more to
encourage the men to take some rest than from any desire on the
part of the others for forgetfulness. Some lay down, and soon
were oblivious of all earthly troubles ; others dozed, and started,
and mused by turns ; only Lem, of all the negroes, seemed to keep
fully awake, and his low moanings were pitiable to hear. The
night was still, and the same familiar cries came from the marsh
that we had so often listened to ; but now they had a mocking
sound. The " stars dreamed their path through the sky," and with
the waning moon made a thin light that seemed cold and ghostly,
and a mist arose from the sea — the sure precursor of a storm.

Mike presently left the camp, and walked down by the beach,
and the Doctor and I followed him for the purpose of talking, and
arranging some plan for the morrow.

"Well, Mike, what are we to do with Jackson?" said the
Doctor, after we had taken a long look at each other.

"Thar aren't but one home for him now; but what's to be
done with his darter ? "

" Take her with us," said the Doctor.

" Where shall we take ourselves to ? " I asked.

No one answered, and each looked at Mike as the surest ad-
viser. The hunter sat himself down on the sand cross-legged, in
the Indian fashion, and, after a pause, said —

" It 's clair we aren't wanted hereabout, and it 's mighty onsafe
for the young woman. Thar has been a risin' of the Injins every-
where, and the only safe place for a crowd as big as our own is in
the boats. The Injins wun't fight us by day ; it 's only when they

190 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

ketch us ou the sly, fur they kuow they aren't a match for honest
folks, nohow. Ef it warn't fur this ere young woman, and Rose,
and the boys, we might lay around and rub out some of those
varmints, and like enough get back some of the people they stole
from the house. But it's a mighty onsafe game to play, with a
handful of niggers to bother one, and I reckon we'd best make
tracks."

" But where shall we turn to ? " asked the Doctor, looking
around him.

" Well, ef we go north, it aren't a great way to Lorenzo's clear-
ing, but I kind o' tliink Lorenzo has lost his hayar night 'fore last,
with the rest on 'em. The surest place would be Tampa Bay ;
thar we 'd have the Fort, and from thar Lou Jackson could pass
up to where she would."

" Poor girl ! poor girl ! " said the Doctor. " What is to become
of her? She seems very calm; I was afraid she would feel it
more. She has not shed a tear or made a sob since it happened."

" A hound don't yowl much when he 's hard hurt," replied Mika

" What of the body, Mike ? " I asked. " We must bury it
some time, and where ? "

*• Them sarpents won't let it stay buried long ; they want his
hayar."

" You don't mean to say they would despoil his grave for his
scalp?"

'* I mean they are 'bout among the islands, nosing us out this
minute like wolves."

" 0 Mike ! " said the Doctor, looking around anxiously.

'"Taint likely they'll find us to-night, though they know
pretty much where we be ; but their spies '11 be in all the passes
at light to see where we go, and what we take with us, and they '11
dog us to Tampa, and ef they can't get our hayar, they '11 try to
get his'n. We can't carry him four days' journey to the Fort"

" We could bury him in the sea," said the Doctor, " and there
he would remain undisturbed."

" His darter wouldn't give in to that," said Mike.

" How do you know ? "

" Wall, I reckon."

THE BURIAL. 191

" Then how can we bury him, and when ? "

" The sooner the better," I replied. " Bury him here to-night
— 'twould be least suspected."

" And how hide the grave ? "

" Build the fire over it," said Mike.

And so it was agreed that the burial should be made in the
uight, and that the party should leave before light should expose
their motions to the enemy. I was deputed to acquaint Lou Jack-
son with the plan, and to obtain her approval. I found her in her
tent, that opened to the fire, half lying and half sitting against a
roll of blankets. Her eyes were shut, and she seemed asleep, but
when spoken to she answered without moving. I told her of our
plans for the morrow. She answered in a low distinct tone that
it was all well. I spoke of her father, and that it was necessary to
have a burial so secretly as to preserve the grave from the know-
ledge of the enemy. She consented by a single word of assent in
the same composed manner. I then spoke of its being done im-
mediately, and asked her if she was willing. She turned in her
habitual manner, as though deferring the question to some one
beside her; it was her manner of asking her father that had
always in the family been regarded as a question and answered by
Jackson without a word. Then as if recalling to her mind that
there was no one to respond, she looked around vacantly with a
troubled look, pronouncing the name of Mike.

" Yes, child," said the hunter, bending his frame to the entrance
of the low tent, and replying to the unasked question, " that 's best."
" Very well," she said ; and seeing her indisposed to talk, I left
the tent

In a few minutes the fire was removed from the spot where it
had been burning for so many days, and the pile of ashes pushed
aside. Then with sharp sticks for mattocks, and paddles for
shovels, in a little while we dug a grave in the sandy soil. Four
men took the canoe, covered with the blanket, and guarded by
Duke, and carried it up by the grave. The fire waned and flickered
and the moon was nearly set. The heavy gaily- coloured Indian
blanket was wrapped around the dead man, and his hands were
folded, " as though praying dumbly, over his breast." Nothing was

193 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

said, but the plaintive moans of the negroes and Lem's wailing cry
were the only sounds of sorrow. Lou looked on with eyes wide
staring, and followed every motion of the attendants, but no word
or gesture escaped her. The body was then laid in the grave, and
then followed a pause ; so silently we stood, the very air in the trees
seemed noisy, and the negroes ceased their lamentations and
crowded round Duke, who stood at the end of the grave, looking
sadly in, while his long ears touched the ground. We looked one
at the other for a sign, and the dead man looked up at us from
the grave.

The Doctor spoke with a voice so low, that but for the silence
we could not have heard it : " Dust to dust, ashes to ashes." Then,
as if seeking words to continue the service he could not remember,
he broke forth in that great confession : " I believe in one God, the
Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, in Jesus Christ, His
only Son, our Lord." His voice, that was faltering, grew strong,
the tears that were raining o'er his cheeks grew dry, and the
triumph of his voice, as he proclaimed the resurrection of the
body and the life everlasting, was like the march of a triumphal
chorus, to which all responded. Amen !

Mike stepped into the grave and turned down the blanket over
the face of his friend, our host and comrade, and laid beside him
his hunting-knife and rifle — a kindly care he had learned from his
Indian habits — and then the grave was filled up, all the dirt was
carefully placed back, or thrown in the sea, the ashes drawn to
their place, and the fire rekindled. The boats were reloaded, a
piece of canvas was stretched on poles to imitate a tent, and one
canoe that we did not need was left in plain sight on the beach,
with a log or two half in the water to represent the others. This
ruse was done to attract and occupy the attention of the Indians,
who would be searching for us the next day, and who would thus
be drawn away for a time from our real course. There lacked
about two hours to daylight when we took to the boats and called
away the dogs. They all came but Duke, who still sat by the fire,
until one of the negroes carried him to the boat and placed him in ;
but as we started he jumped out and ran back to the spot where he
had seen his master buried. The negro went back again, but the

^ THE BURIAL. 193

dog resisted and set up one of those long plaintive howls for which
the true deer-hound is so remarkable, and which echoed from shore
to shore like the call of a bugle. Lou was sitting in the boat, but
at the sound of the dog's voice she sprang out, and running back
to the hound, threw herself down on the sand with her arms around
his neck, and broke out convulsively sobbing. It was the first tear
she had shed since her father's death, and the torrent restrained
was the more powerful.

"Oh! Missus! Jesus help us!" moaned Kose, swaying her
head from side to side.

Mike rose up in his boat and, looking seaward, brushed his hand
across his cheek, saying : " Thar aint no show of light yit awhile."

In a little while Lou came back to the boat, leading Duke by
the ear, and having taken her place with the Doctor, the boats
glided off into the darkness and the mist, and, using only the
paddles, passed like phantoms out of sight.

All that night we rowed, and the next day, and availing our-
selves of the smallest of the open islands for resting-places, avoided
surprise.

Whether the Indians ever followed us I know not, or whether
they ever found the grave of the recluse planter by the sea. I
never again visited the island, and the craft and ceaseless vigilance
of our guide carried us safely amid the dangers by storm and war-
fare that constantly surrounded us during the four days that were
occupied in getting to Tampa Bay. In the destruction of "Far
Away " Lou Jackson had lost nearly all the property of every kind
that she owned. Of the twelve negro men that had accompanied
us on the hunt, six only were the property of her father and six
had been hired, and would now have to be returned to their owner
at Pensacola. Lem and Eose, together with five men, would
accompany their young mistress and return from Tampa Bay to
St. Augustine, where her father's relatives resided, by the first vessel
that could be found. This was the meagre plan that she had laid
out for herself, as we sailed down the coast. At length we made
the point of Egmont Island, and entering the broad bay saw once
more the American flag, and stepped ashore in security under the
guns of the Fort.

N

CHAPTER XIX.

INDIAN HISTORY.

*' True they have vices — such are nature's growth.

But only the barbarian's —we have both."

Btron.

When Florida was ceded by Spain to the United States, in the
year 1821, it was inhabited by several powerful tribes of natives.
The Seminoles, residing in the Alachua country, in the centre of
the peninsula, were a branch of the Creek Indians, whose villages
margined the Chattahoochee River, near Columbus, in Georgia, and
the name of Seminole, or Runaway, originated with a secession of
this branch, which occurred at a remote period. Micanopy was
their principal chief. The Tallahassees inhabited the northern and
western portion of the peninsula, their chief town being at Talla-
hassee, the present capital of the state. Thlock-lo-Tustenuggee,
or Tiger Tail, was their head chief.

The Mickasukie tribe, under Ar-pe-ik, or Sam Jones, and sub-
sequently, under an eminent warrior, Halleck Tustenuggee, had
their hunting-grounds on the waters of the Ouithlacouchee, and
the heavy swamps that border it.

South of Lake Okechobee another tribe found a secure home in
the fastnesses of the everglades. They were called Spanish Indians,
and their chief was named Chekika.

The Creeks of Georgia came down to assist their kinsmen in
the wars that ensued, and were led by Octiarche, and subsequently
by that chief whose name has added so much to the romance and
dignity of the Indian character, Osceola. The whole number of
Indians in Florida at this time was estimated at from fifteen
hundred to as many thousands. To this was to be added an equal
number of negro fugitives from the slave states, or the children

INDIAN HISTORY. 196

of free Spanish negroes, all of whom were living with and adopting
the habits of the Indians. So wide the extent of country over
which they roamed, and so inaccessible their villages, that even the
existence of some tribes was unknown until after many years of
warfare. The tribes were different from each other in government
and location, and some of them were hostile to the others.

After the cession of the province by the Spanish, the United
States sought to control the haughty nations that peopled the
newly acquired territory, many of which had never been subject to
Spain, and to induce them to cede their lands and delegate their
government to the Government of the United States, upon the
condition of protection and alKance, To this end three Commis-
sioners were appointed by the United States, at Fort Moultrie,
near St. Augustine, in September 1823, who caused thirty-five of
the principal men of the northern tribes to sign with their marks
a treaty, denominated the treaty of Fort Moultrie. The first article
of this treaty stated that themselves and their tribes have appealed
to the humanity, and thrown themselves on the protection of the
United States, "and do cede all claim to the whole territory of
Florida." The United States Government in its turn agreed to
pay six thousand dollars in goods, and an annual payment of five
thousand dollars.

Immediately upon the execution of this agreement, settlers
poured in and commenced cultivating the lands relinquished by
the Indians, and many quarrels as to the intrusion and the rights
of person and property arose between these two classes, so antagon-
istical in every element of character. Another difficulty arose from
the desire of the whites to recover their negro slaves that had fled
to the Indians and fraternised with them, sometimes inter-marrying
with them, and the government records are full of complaints of
these losses, and the war was largely stimulated on this account.

This difference of feeling led the United States Government to
propose, and carry into effect, in May 1832, a conditional treaty
known as the Payne's Landing Treaty, signed by seventeen chiefs,
whereby the Seminoles agreed to emigrate to the territory of
Arkansas, west of the Mississippi River, providing they should be
satisfied with the country, after first sending some of their chiefs

196 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

to examine the land, and to give up to the white claimants the
negro slaves said to have escaped. Seven chiefs accordingly went,
and in March of the following year, at Fort Gibson in Arkansas,
the seven chiefs ratified the Payne's Landing Treaty, and without
first making a report to their tribes, and thus made the original
treaty irrevocable.

No sooner, however, had the delegation returned, and it was
told to the different tribes of Florida that they had entered into
an agreement to remove, than they, without dissent, repudiated the
treaty, refused to relinquish their native land, or surrender their
negro allies. They haughtily answered the different runners and
Indian agents, commissioned by the whites, and withdrawing to
their villages in the Cypress Swamps and hummocks, prepared to
defend their homes as best they might, according to the ancient
hereditary rules of Indian warfare. At a council summoned by
General Thompson, when Micanopy, Cooacoochee, Alligator, and
other chiefs of high renown were present, Osceola, who was then a
young chief, being caUed upon to answer if he would sign the
treaties, strode up to the table in front of the officers, saying, " The
only way I wiU sign such a treaty is this," and drove his scalping-
knife through the parchment deep into the table, while the con-
ference broke up in confusion. The call to arms sounded through
the land, the Indians pillaged the settler to obtain military weapons,
and burned his cabins, drove ofif the cattle, and waylaid the soldiers,
and the United States Government threw her best armies into
the country, to have them destroyed by the miasma and the
Indian arrow, patiently renewing the losses in the regiments, and
supplying millions of money for a period of over fifteen years. The
amplest supplies were afforded for the prosecution of the war, and
the first soldiers in the country, such as Generals Jackson, Clinch,
Scott, Worth, and Taylor, led the armies.

This was the condition of Florida when, in the latter part of
the winter of 1840 and 1841, we found ourselves involuntar}'
prisoners at Fort Brooke, a low octagon fortress, with a pali-
sade enclosure of sharpened timbers, situated at the end of
Tampa Bay, and that formed the headquarters of the American
army through the many discouraging years of the Seminole

INDIAN HISTORY. 197

war. The temperate climate of the coast, and the command-
ing neighbourhood of the fortress, made it a pleasant and safe
residence from the miasma and disorders of the interior country.
It was also the depot for military stores, the arsenal for
ammunition, and the harbour for the gun-boats. Civilised and
savage warfare here displayed their pomp and colouring in close
relief. The painted savage allies with their wives camped daily
by the walls or traded with the sutler ; the Indian runners,
who alone could thread the inner wilderness, came and went
to distant outposts ; and the little brown canoe of the savage,
so thin in texture that a pin could pierce it, and so light in
mould it left no wake in the water, floated side by side in the
ripples with the heavy gunboat of the soldier that some day was
destined to rake and crush to pieces its slighter opponent — fit
emblems both of the power and feebleness of the people of which
they were respectively the types.

Fort Brooke often contained within its casemented walls other
and greater contrasts, and more stirring emotions than the material
landscape and pageantry of war and race. Here came the young
recruit, emulous of fame, with armour newly dight, and hither
returned from the cypress swamp or pathless everglade the soldier
whose brief campaign sent him home wounded, wasted, broken,
with his weapons untarnished, save by the rust, and his glory
unmade, except by his sufferings. Here fled for shelter the settler's
family from their burning home, the shipwrecked sailor from
pursuing storms, here the Indian chieftain came with his armed
band, wrapped in his wrought mantle and his stoic dignity, to treat
for peace or vindicate his race ; and here the captured warriors in
their damp prison ships shivered in sight of the warm life of their
native forests. Here "talks" were had with the tribes, treaties
signed, expeditions fitted out, forays revenged, and the barbaric life
of the woods mingled and flowed side by side with the more com-
plex forms of civilisation, as the Oswegatchie pushes its black
current into the blue waters of the St. Lawrence.

The war that had been waging for over ten years through the
length and breadth of the peninsula was apparently no nearer its
termination than at any previous period. Small bands of Indians

198 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

had been captured at different times, always by some ruse, and not
by open warfare, and exported by ships to the far West. Several
noted chiefs had been slain, and many villages and corn-fields been
laid waste, but braver warriors seemed to take the place of the old
ones, and new retreats had been found in the more inaccessible
swamps, wherein the Indian woman might nurse her babe and till
her corn-fields, while the braves revenged their losses by some foray
so distant, unexpected, and bloody, as to countervail all rules of
warfare, and render useless all prevention, and impossible all re-
dress. This was not one perpetual war, but a succession of wars,
separated by treaties and truces more or less long, and more or less
faithfully kept. During these truces, sutlers, relying on the pro-
mises of the United States Government, made settlements in the
territory, and with the temerity of the American borderer, pushed
their outermost farms within the lines of the Indian territory.
Sometimes, under favour of a particular Indian chief or band, they
were protected for years, and remained safe while others were
massacred. But at length some wrong done to their people would so
excite the Indians that no individual favour could be a protection,
and the outposts of the settlers were whelmed in flame and blood.

" Far Away " had been an instance of this kind of reliance upon
this uncertain tenure, and its existence had been prolonged by the
hospitality of the planter ; but courtesy could not avail in the hour
of general retribution, and the revenge bred by years of accumu-
lating wrongs swept over the homestead like a spring freshet

In a few days after our arrival, a government vessel, sailing by
way of Key West for St. Augustine, offered Lou Jackson a passage,
with her people, which she accepted, and departed, carrying Duke
with her and most of the negroes, and leaving Mike, Poke, and my-
self, again to our own resources, awaiting some opportunity for the
indulgence of our roving propensities. But roving propensities
were now only to be indulged under military escort, or else at the
risk of our " hayr" as the hunters pronounced it ; so for the first
few weeks we contented ourselves with the curious scenes that
were daily transpiring in the enclosure of the Fort, or the limited
walks directly around the pickets. Occasionally some scout would
come in with the report of a soldier, or a runner, lying dead on

INDIAN HISTORY.

199

some of the routes, and a guard of soldiers would be sent out to
bring in the body, and give it a burial in the little burying-ground
that was located just beyond the picket. The sight of the revolting
exhibition of Indian warfare, however, soon passed by, and we for-
got the terror that environed us in our desire for activity, and the
enjoyment of the chase and the observations of the beauties of
animal and vegetable life so prolifically developed.

It is strange that, when the morning rdveilU of bugle and drum
awoke the loud gobble of the wild turkeys not yet flown from their
roosts on the cottonwood-trees on Hillsboro' Kiver, we could not
resist the call, but would occasionally steal out with our rifles,
"jist to clair out our shootin irons," as Mike said. Day by day
these little excursions extended themselves, and we became so
accustomed to the danger, that, like the villagers that build on the
slopes of Vesuvius, we had forgotten the fires beneath.

CHAPTER XX.

A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY.

" Snout. 0 Bottom ! thou art changed : what do I see on thee t
Bol. What do you see ? yoa see an ass-head of your own, do yon f "

Midscmubu-night's Dream.

One morning Mike and I left the T'ort in our canoes, with
Scipio and Csesar, to look for some game on the islands that were
scattered along the beach in the many indentures of the bay to the
southward of the Fort. An hour or two of paddling brought us
where a low island was fringed with the tangled roots of the black
mangrove. This peculiar tree frequents the salt-water shores, and
springs up from a multitude of roots that raise the trunk of the
tree above the water. The pendent branches then droop until
they touch the water beneath, where, clasped by oysters and other
parasite shell-fish, they are anchored to the earth, and, taking root,
send up many shoots that thus ramify and interlace like miniature
banyan-trees. A large portion of the peninsula of Florida is
fringed by this hardy hedge of vegetation. Behind a border of
this kind we saw the towering forms of some gumbo-limbo-trees,
and the oval leaves of the sea-grape, and, finding an open place
wherein to conceal our boat, landed and commenced to hunt down
the island.

It was early morning, and the dew was still on the grass, and
the mocking-bird had not yet finished his matinal song.

" There 's a dog's track," I said to Mike, directing his attention
to some footprints fairly marked on the sand ; " there may be some
Indians camping here."

"No," said Mike, following the tracks with his eye for a
moment ; " a wolf."

" How do you tell ? "

A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY. 201

"A wolf's got two long fore-toes on each foot, d'ye see?"
pointing to the mark on a piece of clay soil, where the animal had
leaped over a pool of water, leaving a deep scratch on each side
that showed plainly the formation of his foot; "he passed some
time in the night; they are great travellers, they be, and like
enough he's now on Topolika Eiver."

A little creek ran into the island, containing about an inch of
water at low tide, but into which, with the flood-tide, fish were
accustomed to feed, and the shores of this inlet, at its narrowest
part, were strewed with the heads and tails of small fish, such as
the yoimg of bass and redfish, while the whole shore was tracked
with the prints of some animal. We stopped before the signs, and
Scipio, his natural instincts fully alive, exclaimed —

" Gi ! dere be shocks ob coons here o' nights fishin'."

A closer examination satisfied me that such was the case, and
that some raccoons were in the habit of repairing here when the
tide was ebbing, and heading off the fish that had ascended the
stream, to seize them on their return to the sea. Scipio and
Caesar consulted long over the marks, with an air of much import-
ance, and then informed us that such was " de fac'." Moreover,
Scipio assured me that he had seen, on moonlight nights, raccoons
engaged in these industrious pursuits, and standing knee-deep in
the retiring tide, using their broad fore-paws for hands, scoop out
the fish and throw them far up on the beach, while a fellow-fisher
of the same family, wading down the creek from above, with
splash and squeal, would drive the fish into the very paws of their
cunning foe. Caesar indorsed the same story, which I would
readily believe from the nature of the animal, but which I cannot
think that Scip and Caesar ever had the forbearance to watch,
while they had the means of pouncing on the raccoons.

Not far from the creek lay a hollow log that Scipio judged
might be the resort of his friends, the raccoons, and, trimming a
willow stick for a probe, after one or two careful examinations
into the different knot-holes, he began a vigorous series of punches,
while Caesar stood at the end with a club elevated to knock over
the prize. Instead of a raccoon, to our great amusement out slid
a huge rattlesnake, disturbed in his morning nap, and shaking his

202 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

tail with a whirring sound, like a grasshopper's buzz. Over went
Caesar in his haste to get away from his dangerous prize, exclaim-
ing, as he ran —

" Gord a'mighty bress us ! what 's for you call ee coon ? you
purty nigger, dun know snake fur coon ! "

There were no signs of deer on the island, though quantities of
birds of every description, that roosted in the mangrove bushes,
and resorted to the pools and the beaches of the island for food,
and made the bushes laugh with their various notes. The Key
West pigeon was here, with its burnished colours, and the ground
dove, with its plaintive note; the oriole gleamed in the willows
like sunrise, and the mocking-bird so peopled the bowers with his
many-tuned throat that the stranger would believe a hundred
voices were singing at once. When, through vistas of the man-
groves, we caught sight of the sea, the porpoise was rolling in
pursuit of the fish on the bar, and the pelican and cormorant were
following his motions in revolving circles high in the air. All
created things in their multitude of ways were fulfilling their
destiny, and each grade of life, by the other fed, ran its appointed
round to make its part in the measured whole of that great cycle
of animal life, of which man knows but a few members, and whose
rules of revolution seem to his dull vision to be the mere instinct
of appetite.

" Bar ! " said Mike, interrupting my reflections.

"Where?" said I.

" Smell him."

" Nonsense ! "

"Yah! ha! ha! ha!" said Caesar, tugging at the leathern
leash by which he held Mike's hound ; " Yowler smell him too ! "

Mike took the strap in his hands, and we silently followed the
lead of the dog. In a moment we passed a tree that had been
stripped of its bark for a distance of five feet from the ground, and
the bark scattered all about, while the hard inner wood of the tree
was furrowed by the nails of the animaL

" An old He," said Mike.

" How do you know that ? "

" The she ones are 'bout havin' young, and are hid in the big

A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY. 203

swamps," replied Mike; "and he's a fat one; see, his hind-toe
marks don't touch his front ones. If he 'd been a real lean one,
they 'd a well-nigh overlapped."

The marks we saw soon led us to the edge of the bushes, and
then out on the open sands. We followed carefully until a roll of
sand affording a cover we crawled up behind it, and carefully con-
cealing our heads behind bunches of grass that grew scattered
about the summit, beheld our game in the undisturbed pursuit of
his morning avocations. The surf was rolling in, and there were
many things lying about on the sands that had been stranded
by a recent storm : here a tortoise-shell, and there a cocoa-nut, and
farther on a board, and some fragments of a vessel. Bruin was
busy inspecting these flotsam that had drifted into his domain.
He would first look at the article, then smell it, then touch it
with his fore-paw, and then he would deliberately seat himself
in the sand on his broad posteriors, with his hind-legs projecting
in front, and his toes turned up, and, lifting the article under con-
sideration to his mouth, turn his head on one side, and try to crack
it with his teeth. The indescribable air of burlesque gravity with
which this was done was laughable. Added to the individual
awkwardness of the animal was the fact of our unsuspected obser-
vation, and the scene appeared doubly ridiculous ; and when the
negroes chuckled aloud, the bear would only discontinue his
investigations for a moment to take a survey, and then renew them
again. The cocoa-nut he found too hard to bite, and so, after rolling
it over two or three times, threw it into the sea again. Then he
examined a large tortoise-shell, and putting his claws in the side,
with his arms a-kimbo, pryed it open, to find it empty. Next he
picked up an orange, and sitting down as before, ate it with evident
satisfaction, his fore-paws resting during the time of his mastication
on the toes of his hind-paws. Occasionally he would reach around
and scratch himself in the same manner as a negro, whom he
laughably resembled in very many of his manners.

Presently he discovered a small cask, and after applying his
nose to the bunghole to scent the character of its contents set to
work to arrive at the interior. But the half-barrel was strongly
coopered, and in spite of bites, and boxes, and hugs without num-

204 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

ber, it remained intact, though an oily juice ran from the bunghole
and smeared Bruin's paws, who eagerly licked them dry. At
length, by a good deal of biting, he enlarged the bunghole so that
he could get a paw in, and by this means fished out the sweets,
holding the cask up with one ann, and dropping the other into it,
and then into his mouth, like a little negro on a molasses ban*eL
But this mode of getting at the contents did not seem sufficiently
expeditious to little Tommy Homer, who presently getting up on
his feet, inserted his nose in the barrel, and then his head. A
bear's nose is very sharp, and goes through a small place very
easily, but does not have the same facUty for coming out, owing to
the hair and ears being set backward, and the heavy folds of skin
that hang around the neck. In this instance Bruin made the dis-
covery of this difference, and soon gave symptoms that he was fast.
He began to pull back, but as he pulled the barrel came with him,
until he rolled over on his back, pawing ineffectually with his
hands at the convex sides of the barrel, which revolved around his
head as on a pivot, but would not come ofif. Mike smiled out aloud,
and the negro yelled with laughter. The bear, hearing the sound
of our voices, probably increased by the reverberations in the
hollow barrel, took fright and ran for the woods, making directly
to where we were lying, and carrying the cask on his head like a
helmet. We could not have shot at that half-barrel, even had we
been able to fire our guns, which we were not from laughter, and
therefore scattered right and left as the animal rushed up the hill ;
as he crossed the conical peak he lost his foothold, and rolled head
over heels in our midst. Then picking himself up, he started in
the direction he happened to be when he regained his feet, and ran
directly into the sea. This turned him about again, when Yowler,
who had escaped from the negroes, seized him by a leg and forced
him to halt. At this he reared himself on end, and commenced
growling and waving his paws all the time, resembling more a
picture of Bacchus than a wild animal. We ran down to where
he was standing, when Scipio, with a blow of a club over the head,
broke the barrel, scattering the remains of mackerel with which it
had been filled, and released the animal from his confinement, who
rewarded the negro with a blow from his paw that knocked him on

A BEAR IN DIFFICULTY.

205

the sands, when Mike and I, with a simultaneous discharge of our
rifles, laid him lifeless. This was a large bear, and from the abun-
dant mast still hanging in the woods, and from the quantity of
shell-fish on the island, was very fat. We brought our canoe round
to the beach, and in a few hours were again with our trophy safely
back to the Fort.

CHAPTER XXI.

TtJBTLE-SPEARIlfG.

" Man's life is warm, glad, Bad, 'twirt loves and graves,

Boundless in hope, honoured with pangs austere,

Heaven gazing ; and his angel wings he craves ;

The fish is swift, small needing, vague yet clear,

A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapt in round waves.

Quickened with touches of transporting fear."

LnoH Hunt.

Some fishermen coming in reported many turtles in sight ofi
the coast, and we arranged a turtle hunt for the following day. At
early dawn two dug-out canoes with negro boatmen pulled down
the bay to the outer islands. The boats were shapely, the oarsmen
good, the water smooth, and with song and story we sped out to
the islands, and leaving our luncheon and heavy impedimenta on
shore under the shade of a cabbage-palm, we emerged into the
open gulf.

There are several varieties of tortoise in the gulf, the chief
being the loggerhead-turtle, which is the largest in size, the
hawkbill-turtle and the green-turtle. The hawkbill produces
the shell that is so valuable in commerce. The females of each
variety come to the sandy beaches in the night-time, more fre-
quently in moonlight nights, and crawling up above high water-
mark, dig a hole with their hinder flappers a foot deep in the sand,
in which they deposit their eggs twenty to thirty in number, and
covering them with sand, and smoothing down the surface, they
crawl back again to the sea. The same tortoise lays eggs several
times the same season.

Often one sees the easily recognised trail of the turtle with its
equidistant stub foot-tracks in each side, and the mark of the tail
between. By following the trail one soon sees where the shore-

TURTLE-SPEARING. 807

ward journey is ended, and the animal has turned again toward
the sea, and by probing there with a sharp flat stick, can unearth
the whole nest of eggs. The eggs are spherical, and the size of a
guinea-fowl's egg, of a duU white colour, with a soft but tenacious
shell. They are good eating, and when boiled for one minute,
make a charming addition to a soup or a stew. Other hunters
beside men appreciate them, and one often finds the tracks of
raccoons, wild cats, and bears following those of the turtle, and
an empty gathering of egg-shells tells the tale of a stolen supper.

In the spring- tides when the moon is at its full, it is a frequent
sport to lie hidden on the beach, and when a turtle, if found crawl-
ing on shore, to run rapidly to him, and throw him over on his
back, from which position he can rarely recover himself. If he is
a large one it requires the strength of two men to turn him over,
for he violently resists the indignity.

In pleasant weather it is their habit to lie asleep on the surface
of the sea, with their backs and nostrils just above the water,
cradled by the gentle movement of the ocean. Then the fisherman
steals on him with muffled oars. As the boat nears him it moves
slowly in absolute silence. The harpooner stands in the bow of
the boat with his lance-like harpoon in his hand. The point of
the harpoon is a blunt heart-shaped lance-head about two inches
in length with a ring attached to the side near the upper end, and
to this ring a long cord is fastened, which is wound up at the bow
of the boat. This lance-head has a hoUow socket in which is
inserted loosely a light wooden shaft eight feet in length.

When within fifteen feet of the tortoise, the fisherman casts his
lance in such a manner, that it describes a curve in the air, and
comes down perpendicularly on the back of the tortoise with a
thud. The lance-head penetrates through the shell, and its further
progress is stopped by the ring. The tortoise dives, the shaft
floats away, and the strain of the cord comes latterly upon the
lance-head, and therefore does not pull it out. A gentle strain is
put upon it, the boat gradually gets headway towed by the turtle.
As he dives more cord is yielded to him, as he tires and comes to
the surface, the boat pulls up to him — he dives again — another
race and then another — each shorter than the one before — the boat

208 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

pulls closely alongside, and an oarsman catches a flipper, another
oarsman catches another flipper, and the prize is drawn on board
alive, and only slightly injured, and can be transported alive to
market.

With us the sea was large and the tortoises small, and our
eyes were tired with watching. One sleeping turtle was espied,
and we rowed towards him with all the skill we could use. We
fairly crept towards him, and held our breath to lighten the boat.
A little-looking negro man stood on the forward grating. He was
dressed in a pair of pantaloons and a straw hat of other days. His
mahogany skin shone with sweat in the hot sunshine. Another
soft stroke of the oars and the boat would have been within
striking distance, when an oarsman, in his anxiety to witness
the blow, turned his body, making a slight grating noise. The
tortoise raised his head. A wave of his flipper, and he disap-
peared in the blue depths of the sea as quickly as a seal could
have done it.

" Dah ! you — wah fur you dun kum' to sea fur," ejaculated the
lancer, " you tink turtle got no more sense 'en you be ! Eh ? "

It was not an hour before we espied another turtle, and this
time the lancer drove his spear into his back plumb up to the ring,
and diving, the tortoise carried down shaft and alL This was un-
fortunate, as he turned after diving and wound the cord around
the shaft. A moment more he rose near the boat, and seeing
the cord snapped at it, cutting it off as a pair of shears would
have done. It was a large loggerhead-turtle, and their bite is
sharp and vicious, sufficiently so to take off a man's fingers. As
he swirled down under the boat the Doctor cried, "Good-bye,
my friend, I 'd much rather you *d go down there than into this
boat."

We retrieved our shaft, and fitting in another lance-head were
prepared for further warfare. But the wind had freshened, the sea
was ruffled, and we turned homeward setting a little sail that
pushed us along merrily, while now and then a flying fish rose out
of the water, and like a little white bird flitted over the sea for a
hundred yards, and then sank back again into the waves.

TURTLE-SPEARING. 809

On one of the islands covered by mangrove-trees we saw what
appeared trees with snow upon them. As we neared it, we found
it was a pelican's breeding-place, arid the grey pelicans had adopted
it and built their coarse nests in the low trees. Their droppings
made tree and island white as marble, and the dead young and the
wasted fish brought by the old pelicans for food for their young
made the odour intolerable. Many soft, fat, pulpy, downy young,
with mandibles so disproportionately heavy that they could not
lift them horizontally, sat in the nests, or on the sand where they
had tumbled from the nests, and gulls and fish crows had assembled
in crowds to feed on them. The squalling of the gulls and the
ludicrous attitudes of the young birds produced a comical effect.
The mother birds kept high in the air, flying about with distended
pouches waiting to feed their young, and yet shy of their uninvited
spectators.

The two varieties of pelican seem to keep apart. The white
ones in large flocks follow in long parallel lines the schools of small
fish, the hinder birds flitting and tumbling over the front ranks in
pursuit of the fish, scattering the water in spray and making a
turmoil that could be seen for miles away.

The grey pelican pursues his solitary way, flying low over the
water with a pendent bill like a gigantic woodcock. Every few
moments he drops with a splash into the water, seizes the fish, and,
throwing his bill into air, gobbles it down. A little black diver
duck followed him around, and after his plunge swims around him
with great vivacity, picking up the crumbs that fell from the huge
jaws of the great bird. When the pelican arises from the water
the little diver follows him to pursue his chase, like the jackal
that follows the lion.

We saw the anhinga or snake-birds with their long thin necks
and tails sitting on the dead trees, and two men-of-war birds high
in the air veered to the freshening breeze. The anhinga are of
the cormorant family, and seem to swim under water as readily as
on it. Plover of many varieties, and roseate spoon-bills and other
wading birds stood on the sandy spits, and whirled around us as
we reached our island where the luncheon was stored.

o

210

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

A hearty meal gave us contentment, and a long pull to land
delighted the eye as we rowed over fields where

" The sea-flag streams through the silent water,
And the crimson leaf of the dabe is seen
To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter. "

Negro songs, and the setting sun and rising moon, and many a tale
and joke, made the day memorable, but the beautiful tortoise shell
that was to adorn our camp and serve as a punch bowl was never
captured.

CHAPTEE XXIL

TAKPON-FISHING.

' The generous gushing of the springs,
When the angler goes a-troUing ;
The stir of song, and summer wings,
The line which shines, and life which sings ;
Make earth replete with happy things
When the angler goes a-trolling."

T. T. Stoddakt.

" Keep her steady, dod-rot your woolly head," yelled the captain
of the Avenger, as the gallant vessel moved out of Tampa Bay
with the last of the shore wind in the grey of the morning. The
captain hauled the peak of his mainsail taut, looked with a threat-
ening eye at the fluttering jib that was beginning to shake on the
close-hauled course, emptied a soda bottle of whiskey, the last he
would have for many a day, threw the bottle overboard, bit a
large piece off a roll of tobacco of the kind called nigger-head, and
then deposited himself by the tiller elbowing the negro away with-
out a word. He was a bold buccaneer, that captain — that is, in
language. In spirit he was as gentle as a calf. His vessel, a sloop-
rigged centre-board scow, was littered up with barrels, nets, small
boats, and miscellaneous rubbish. The fierce name of the Avenger,
spelled Avengeher, on her stern belied her peaceable errand..
The captain explained the name by saying, " Yer see, my t'other
boat "was clean stole, and I built this 'ere, and named her the
Avenger, fur if ever I ketch that miserable Yank that got away
with the Bosebud — tar and feathers — he'll ketch," — emphasising
the unfinished sentence with a sounding jab with his fist that
would have knocked in the head of a flour-barrel.

In the interim of his pursuit of the thief the captain had
agreed to take us down to Charlotte Harbour, and back again to

212 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

Tampa, so that we might see a new fishing-ground. The^ craft had
six bunks, but we generally slept on deck, and wind and weather
favouring, we found ourselves in two days in Charlotte Harbour,
then an absolutely unsettled country. The great diversity of an
indented shore like this afforded unlimited enjoyment of game and
fish of every description. Not only were there fresh-water rivers
emptying in the bay, but wooded islands and sandy beaches were
full of migratory birds of every kind. Some we knew, many we
could not name. The tropics and the frozen zone seemed to con-
tribute their outpouring of feathered game, while fish were so
abundant, and of such varieties, that every species of sea-bird
seemed to gather there to feed upon them. The waters of the Gulf
of Mexico, discoloured in the northerly portion by the great detritus
of rivers, like the Alabama and the Mississippi, became clearer
nearer the Caribbean Sea, and often we could see skates of great
size wabbling in the water, while the sword-fish with his lance, and
lazy Jew-fish and shark were hourly to be met. Mullet in shoals
bred in the shallows, and as the boat passed by the tangled roots of
the mangroves they would scud out in hundreds. Weak fish, red-
snappers, sheepshead grunters and channel-bass were easily taken.
The pompano also were occasionally hooked, and in the night we
could hear the boom of the drum-fish under the boat. One feels
how little he knows when he sees around him so many families
of the unknown.

There was one fish that most excited our attention ; we had
never before seen it, nor even heard of it, and here it was we
caught our first tarpon.

This fish runs from ten pounds to two hundred, and our
captain assured us he had seen them double that size, but the
captain in regard to fish and women was a gallant liar.

He would have made a good President for that Long Island
Shooting Club, where the members were all liars, and the one who,
at the annual dinner, told the biggest one, was elected President
for the ensuing year. A fisherman desired to join the Club, but
they declined to have him, saying they didn't want professionals.

The tarpon carries a double dorsal fin, the forward rays of
which are long and high like the peak of a lateen sail, and grace-

i

1

Hi'^

#111

t

4».

I

\

TARPON-FISHING. 213

fully cut the surface of the water as the fish goes cruising along,
while the last ray is immensely elongated, reaching backward and
nearly parallel to the body, a graceful ornament or crest. The
ventral fin is similar in shape, but pointing downward. The tarpon
is shaped like a herring, its mouth is cut in from the top of the
head. It has a large, full eye, but its great beauty is in its
burnished silver coat of mail that gleams white as it turns its side
to the sunshine, or leaps from the water when it is hooked. This
beauty of scale gives it its local name of Grande EcailU.

Among the lumber on our deck was a bunch of a dozen green
bamboo poles sixteen feet in length, and cutting ofif the too pliant
tips, and mounting guides of copper wire, and lashing on our reels
with the same, we were soon provided with suitable fishing tackle,
a little rough to the eye, but serviceable as any. Taking each a
canoe with a paddler, we drifted along among the islands in about
ten feet of water, and with a piece of mullet for bait, we cast here
and there, letting the bait sink to the bottom, and then drawing it
slowly upward. Reaching the end of an island that faced the
open water we steadied our boats, and cutting up some mullet,
" chumed " the water with the pieces. This soon brought visitors.
The first was a catfish, a sullen-looking fellow with a mouth like a
half-shut door, and barbed with cord like whiskers. He came up
heavily, and after prying open his mouth with a handspike he
plunged back sullenly in the bay. The next visitor was a channel-
bass. Bright and quick, with a rush and a jump, he brought life
and light to the boats, and was welcomed with a cheer. Away he
sped with forty feet of line, turned a somersault, and flew off in
the opposite direction, and when the weight of the line pulled too
heavily, jumped again to clear it, then came to the boat, and was
nicely gaffed by the negro oarsman. He was a fish of twenty
pounds, with a bronzed back shaded into silvery sides, and two
spots of black appeared one on each side just forward of the tail.
And so the day wore on. Bass, spotted trout, catfish and red-
snapper, in varied order, but the tarpon came not to our hooks.

" If you un's waren't so green you 'd ketch 'em two at eh time ;
them fish kin smell a man what lives on shore, and they steers
right away," said the captain on reaching our boat again.

214 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

The next day, with a new supply of little mullet, and provisions
for staying out all day, we rowed down to one of the little inlets
that are formed by Gasperilla IslaDd. The day was quiet, and
only the faintest breeze ruffled the sea, gulls on the water loomed
large as swans, and the cocoa-nut palms on a distant island stood
up in the sky with the mirage.

" Hi da, maussa, see," whispered my paddler behind me, and
following the direction of his eye, the tall sharp fin of the fish we
were seeking cut slowly this way and that the surface of the water.
Our canoe drifted slowly towards him, and, casting the line, the
bait dropped a dozen feet ahead of the fish. The fish's fin paused
in its motion : I drew the bait towards ma My hand trembling
with excitement doubtless lent naturalness to the motion. The fin
subsided beneath the water, and in an instant the line was seen
running out. I threw back the rod heavily and felt the weight of
the fish, and he, feeling the hook, dashed away with a yell from the
negro behind me. " Yah — ha ! he gume off, and a hook in he mouf
sure." My slim rod bent with the strain, and the canoe followed
rapidly, so that it saved some line. In a moment after the fish
made his first jump. Up like a big plate of silver he shot in the
air, lifting his whole line from the water, and then with a thwack
fell back and started again on his race. How the line thrilled
through the water ! How my heart beat in the race ! Then again
came his leap, not so high this time, and straight away, — a water
spout — a flash of a gun — a spirit — a mirror — aU of these at once !
Back he went into the sea, and my line came in parted ; my
hands fell limp at my side, shame covered me, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep.

"0 Gorra mighty maussa, he's guone !" quoth Jeptha the
boatman.

If it hadn't been for the boatman I would have cried, and when
Poke called from the neighbouring boat, " Whare, oh, whare are
the Hebrew children ? " I was angry.

We caught other tarpon since then, but I am convinced that
there never was one so large, so strong, or with such a resplendent
coat of silver mail ever fast to a fisherman's line since that day.

The tarpon runs up to two hundred pounds in weight. One

TARPON-FISHING. 216

we captured weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, and measured
six feet six inches in length. It may be there are larger ones, but
if so the writer has not met them. In colour it is pearly steel on
the back, but the sides are the most lustrous silver. The scales
are two inches in breadth on the large fish, and are pure silver as a
pearl, and are frequently used as ornaments. Sometimes they are
drilled and sewed on to a belt, making a conspicuous girdle of
studded silver. The beauty of the animal is its vigour and power
in the water, and the daring leaps it makes when hooked, accom-
panying each leap with a shaking motion, which sooner or later
throws the hook out of its mouth.

While we were slowly drifting, my paddler had baited a hook
attached to a cord-like codfish line and it was trolling behind us,
but he caught nothing. Tired of holding it in his hand, he wound
it around one of the thwarts of the boat. Presently the line payed
out rapidly. Before it could be thrown off the thwart it drew taut
and snapped with the sound of a fiddle-string. The negro seized
the line, and hauling it in came to the frayed end, he looked at his
broken line and then across the water the way the fish had gone,
and said with the most melancholy air " Dun gone." An instant
after, the fish, with the broken line still attached, leaped twice
from the water, it seemed a mile away shaking itself to free
the hook, and then we saw it no more. A few moments later
my paddler called " Da he 's hook em," and I saw Poke's canoe
going to sea, as if impelled by a submarine screw. The boatman
held his paddle firmly in the water for a rudder, and the line, where
it came out of the water, cut a furrow of spray. A moment later
the fish broke water with a rush. It jumped five feet clear of the
surface, and the wire snell attached to the hook rattled as the fish
shook himself in the air. It fell back with a splash, the line still
held, and the race began again. Three times in quick succession
it came out of the sea, and once turned a somersault. Then it too
was free, and the idle line came in with a broken hook.

" Have you seen anything of those Hebrew children ?" I called.
No answer. Poke was thinking of his sins. I felt sorry for him,
and said no more. We fished with varying fortune all the day.
Sometimes we had a channel- bass, a most lively and merry leaper,

216 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

and sometimes a caralli, a hard fighter, and once I hooked, but
pulled out from a Jew-fish, about the size of a pork barrel.

It was not until towards evening that we found a better ground
for tarpon. We saw their back fins above the water before we
reached them. A careful approach, a gentle lateral swing of the
rod, and the bait fell some fifty feet from the boat, and between
two fish whose fins we could see above the water. How I held
my breath until I saw the line pay out, and knew the fish had the
bait in its mouth. It made a short run, and then stopped. I
paused and counted eight, and then threw up the tip of my rod
and bore my weight upon it. Away, as if a lance had struck it,
darted the fish, and before the canoe got fully under headway the
fish arose from the water looking as my boatman said, " jis like a
marble headstone." It then turned at right angles and rushed
away, nearly crossing the line of the other fisherman who also was
hooked to a fish. Many times it jumped, fiercely shaking itself,
and even when tired out it tried to leap and was unable. At last
it rolled heavily to the side of the canoe and Jeptha laying down
his paddle drove a spear-head through its spine just back of its
head. It died instantly and with much care we lifted it aboard,
a more precious ingot than was ever dug out of a silver mine.

This was a fish of five feet in length and weighing about ninety
pounds.

Poke had captured his, of a little lesser weiglit, and both of us
tired out with the excitement stretched ourselves in the canoes and
the boatmen rowed us back to the sloop singing —

" In de old swamp, behind de hill,
De night-bird sing hes song,
He singin' — singin' — whip-poor-will,
An' he sing it all night long.

Den hoe de cotton, hoe de cotton,

Hoe de cotton, boys,
Ole maussa listenin' on de hill.
An' he lub to hear dis noise. "

" Ef you 'd like to see a mermaid, woidd yer ? " said the captain
in the morning, as he sat drinking his black coffee out of a tin cup
as black as the coffee.

TARPON-FISHING. 217

' A what!"

" Eh mermaid — er a merman — er a big poUy wog — bigger than
that nigger. Got arms and no legs, and a flopper fur a tail."

" Yes, of course we would," and learning by further questions
that it was a manatee of which he spoke, we were soon under way,
and after an hour's sail our sloop was anchored at the mouth of a
river emptying into the southern end of the bay. It was a sluggish
river of small size, and the tide rose and fell in it as we could see
by the markings on the mangrove bushes that fringed the shore
about three feet.

Taking to our canoes we paddled up the stream with the flood
of the tide for several miles. The river broadened here and there
into lakelets or shallow pools filled with grass of various kinds, and
in one of these pools we saw our first manatee. We were lying
quietly at the point of reeds that fringed the entrance to the lake,
watching some swans that were disporting in the water, when I
heard a noise like a sigh. Looking in the direction from whence
it came, we saw the head of a manatee that had come up to breathe.
Nothing is stranger than its physiognomy. Its muzzle, dark grey,
almost black, seems to be divided perpendicularly into parts like a
rabbit's, with a third part fitting in from below. Each part is
shaped like a pad or a fat pin-cushion filled with black pins, and
the three parts open and shut like valves. When the nozzle is
directed toward one the eyes are not seen, and the animal, having
no visible ears, seems to be all nose.

The skin wrinkles around the neck like the skin on a fur seal
buU, and the little eye is black, and would be unnoticed but for
the wrinkles that surround it. Its tail, shaped like a beaver's,
lies flat with the surface of the water, in order to aid its rising
and diving. Two large flippers are in the place of fore-legs,
each having four little toe-nails upon them, and a large pulpous
almond-shaped tail completes an animal that for lazy, innocent
self-indulgence has no counterpart in nature. Those we saw
were about ten feet in length, and the fishermen say they catch
those that are larger, weighing one thousand pounds. They feed
exclusively on the various grasses that grow in the bottom of the
rivers, chiefly on fitscus vesiculosis. They have thirty-two teeth, all

218 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

of which are molars. Sometimes they descend to the mouths of
the rivers, but never go out into the salt water. They are fresh-
water seals, fat and gentle, slow in their motions, perpetually
gathering grasses with their flippers, and drawing their food into
their mouth with an in-and-out motion of the three lips. They
seem to sleep on the muddy banks in the lake and are quick to
hear or see danger, and their only refuge is in diving through the
dark waters to a distance where they come to the surface among
the weeds and grass to take breath and watch their pursuer.

Their flesh is eatable, and the tail soaked in brine is like the
beaver's tail, considered an article of great luxury in the West Indian
Islands. They are mammals, the female having two breasts just
under the flippers. The fishermen harpoon them for their flesh
and oil, and occasionally one is taken with nets of rope to sell to
museums. But they pine in captivity for their accustomed food,
and rarely live long. They are one of those conspicuous and help-
less races, which, like the moa, the dodo, the great auk, the
mammoth, the Irish elk, the rhytina, and the bison, are destined to
extermination, and presently will only be known by their skeletons.
In the great pools of the everglades, these simple-minded beasts
have found for ages a suitable home, but as population increases,
and the devices of man for destruction are multiplied, they become
extinguished.

Presently the male manatee came to the surface, and, exhaling
its long-contained breath, paused to look around. It did not see
us, or if it did, paid no heed, but munched the grasses that stUl
hung to its mouth and used its flipper to aid it with a ludicrous
resemblance to a negro finishing dinner, and wiping his mouth
with the back of his hand.

As our canoe moved ahead they both disappeared making little
disturbance in the water, and slipping away like a seaL

Continuing up the river we saw another lying with its head
supported on the oozy bank of the river apparently asleep. The
motion of the oars disturbed it, and drawing ofi" a young one, that
was lying near on the bank, with a sweeping motion of its flipper,
the young one disappeared and the mother followed it.

The skin of these animals was of an olive colour getting greyish

TARPON-FISHING.

219

with age, and having a few scattered hairs like the skin of the
hippopotamus. Their gentle ways plead for them, and one of the
sweet remembrances we have of the Florida rivers is that we
never shot at, or attempted to hurt, one of these gentle beasts
during our visit at their homes.

Some years after the time of our story one captured on the
St. John's Eiver visited New York. It was about six feet in length,
and occupied a tank in the public market. It was fed daily on
sea-weed gathered in WeUabout Bay, always taking its food from
the bottom of the tank. Its gentle life ended after three months
of captivity.

A few days later, in a sou-sou'easter, we set sail, and in a day
and a half saw again the flag at Tampa Bay.

CHAPTER XXIII.

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLECK TUSTENUGGEE.

" 'but,' quoth he,

' It was a famous victory.' "

The winter had passed away and spring had come, opening the
pyramid of silver tulip-flowers of the palmetto royal (the yucca
gloriosa of the naturalist), while we were watching a chance to
leave Tampa Bay. One day the commanding officer detailed a
company of men to cross over the peninsula to the forts on the
easterly side for the purpose of keeping open the communication,
and learning the situation of the enemy, as well as of the troops
operating in the interior.

We accepted the chance, and the next day found us with our
packs slung on a mule, two canoes for ferrying across rivers, and a
company of about forty men winding through the pine lands that
lie east of the bay. There had been an old trail cut through,
marked by blazes on the trees in the open woods and here and
there a log felled bridge-like across the creeks that intersected the
swamps ; but the trail was only useful as a guide, although it is
marked on the charts of that day as a military road.

The dear-bought experience of the American troops had not
been profitless, and the company was as well organised as it was
possible to be. The men were frontiersmen, quick in the use of
the rifle, unterrified by the sights and sounds of Indian warfare
and — what was of vital importance — accustomed to the country,
and skilled in woodcraft. They could support themselves, if need
be, in a swamp, or build a town there without foreign assistance.
The rules adopted for crossing the country were as follows : No
more baggage to each man than was absolutely necessary, and this
baggage to consist only of food and ammunition; each man to

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLECK TUSTENUGGEE. 221

cany his own share. One guide was placed ahead of the detach-
ment about three hundred yards ; within sight of him and of the
column, another. These men were the most experienced of the
hunters, and generally one a friendly Indian. To their knowledge
of the geography of the country the party was indebted for the
directness of its route, to their quick eye for its security from
ambush, and to their observation of every passing footstep on the
land, marks of paddles on the shallow bottom of rivers, or the
slimy projecting logs, its acquaintance with the movements of out-
lying parties of Indians, or the recent passage of friend or foe.
How small these signs might be, and yet be detected, how blind
and yet be read, is one of the mysteries of those woods that are
disclosed only to the observant and the practised. Their very
description excites incredulity. The passage of one of these scout-
ing parties through the Indian country was a curious scene, and
impressed one with a feeling of awe. The old tokens by the way,
here a ford named after some bloody massacre, and there a little
log-pen whitened by the bones of those who fell there at bay
together, hemmed in by the pursuing savage, were so frequent and
well-remembered, that the soldier crossed the woods with a cease-
less watchfulness. He travelled all day with his utmost speed,
lest his pursuers might come up on his trail, and at night lay
down in the darkness without his fire, that his covert might not be
disclosed. The celerity of the passage was the safety of the party.
Thus we crossed over to Fort Eraser, on the Hitchipucksasi,
and two days more brought us to Fort Gardiner, on the ford of the
river that connects two of the largest of the lakes of central
Florida, Lake Kississimee and Lake Tohopekaliga. These forts
were nothing more than heavy cabins built of logs, and defended
by palisades, sometimes garrisoned by a company of men, and
sometimes only houses of refuge. The one last named was in the
margin of the cypress swamps, one of those huge shallow tarns,
whose black waters, encumbered by logs and cypress knees, and
encroaching into the dense forest by interminable arms, were more
intricate than the labyrinth of Crete. The Indians excelled in the
navigation of these lakes. Their canoes left no trail, and they
could be hovering about for weeks without the scouts discovering

282 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

their presence. If they wanted to leave, they knew of water con-
nections through to a score of other lakes, or they could flee away
to the south down the Kississimee Eiver, to the great Okechobee
Lake in the everglades.

Some portion of the land around the fort was of the same
nature as that commonly known as everglade. Properly, the ever-
glades are confined to that portion of the peninsula lying between
the uttermost southerly point, Cape Sable and Okechobee Lake,
a space of about two degrees of latitude, though some are found
farther northward.

No language save that of the painter's brush can depict the
desolate immensity of one of these treeless swamps. There league
after league of rank grass waves on every side, unrelieved by hope,
to the explorer, of termination or prospect of change. Here and
there a thick-leafed cactus, or cabbage-palmetto, or a clump of
leafless cypress, grows upward, draped in the moss the dampness
has bred. Fallen trunks of old trees are tangled with palmetto
roots beneath the grass, having drifted in the summer rains from
the place where they grew, or gaunt dead water-oaks hold out
their arms, from which the flesh of leaves has dropped away, or
still clings pendent from the fingers. Strange birds fly over,
screeching in foreign tongues, and trees and reeds show by green
deposit on their sides the difi*erent heights to which the water that
floods the waste had arisen at diflferent times. The rattlesnake and
the water-moccasin are abundant.

In the dry season this broad extent of country is nearly dry.
During the rainy season of spring and summer the water lies over
it in varying depths from two to twenty inches. Through the
grass are seen winding channels made by the prevailing currents
and lagoons, from whose black muddy bottom grow the pond-lily
and floating grasses which intersect the prairie and turn back the
pedestrian. It would seem as if the rolling of the sea had built
an embankment of sand around aU the coast, shutting in this
low-lying tract as does the cushion on a billiard-table, so that it
could be only drained by evaporation, or settling in the shallow
lakes and lagoons.

Through this Stygian pool the haunted Indian doubled and

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLEOK TUSTENUGGEE. 223

wound, or turned to strike the pursuing soldier whose toilsome
march he had been watching for days, or he disappeared into its
mirage with his family, like ghosts, without a trail and beyond all
successful pursuit.

The story of this war has yet to be written. On the one side
were Generals Scott, Clinch, and Worth, names that were dear to
their countrymen, and millions of money, and loving chroniclers
of gallant deeds. They hunted the Indians and their negro allies
with troops, boats and dogs, and renegade spies crueller than the
hounds, entrapped their chiefs at the council board, and broke up
the organisation of their bands. On the other side was a people
deriving their weapons only from their foes, insufficiently provided
and suffering every want. They resisted attack with patriotism,
and battled in swamp, and water, and reedy fastness, for thrice as
many years as the Americans were fighting their War of Inde-
pendence, with no historian to record their protests, their councils,
their sufferings, or heroic deeds. It is well known that Molly
Starks were there at every battle, for their bodies lay on the
field when the fight was done. Bunker Hill was represented in
every cypress gall. The cruel winter at Valley Forge they under-
went, though their torture was the miasma and the heat. Their
capital was burned at Palacklickaha, and their fruitful fields were
destroyed. The old prison-ship lay moored for them in Tampa
Bay, and their highest chiefs were captives in its hold. They had
their Sumpters and Marions in Chekika and Hospetarke, their
Pulaski in Holartoochee, and their Washington in Osceola; and
had their Arnolds been discovered, they would be living still, an
independent peoplo.

If men are to be esteemed for high virtues in proportion to the
obstacles they had to overcome in attaining them, and if the praise
of comparative great deeds is due mostly to those who have from
lower life made themselves eminent, the brave resistance of the
'savage in his swamp is a higher chivalry than the war of a civilised
people, with its wealth of reason and example ; and if it does not
stand on historic page in brighter light, it is because the page is
written by the civilised race more as a defence than a veritable
history.

224 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

One morning as the sentinels around the fort were changed, a
stranger came up to the relief, was recognised, and then sauntered
into the camp, — a huge, rough, talkative fellow, a hunter by trade,
and now following the camp, like many others, half for the fun
and half for the gain, a sort of cousin to Mike, not in blood, but
in position. Mike was a little more gentle and observant, Potter
a little rougher and jollier, more rollicksome, hailing everybody,
singing wherever there was eating and drinking, and running every
danger to be present at a fight. His leathern suit, rifle, and knife,
were the prominent features of his dress, and a keen eye and huge
mouth and limb, the first points noticed in his person.

Mike knew him, and recognised him with a smile and a
question —

" Up ? "

" No, dbwn."

"S'Gustine?"

" Wall, you bet."

" Seen Injins ? "

"Stacks of 'em — slinkiu' about like coots on the S' Johns.
Squaws, too ; somethin's up — reckon they 're agoin* to purr a little ;
sent a letter to the old man. Who's your old man here now?"
continued the hunter, pulling out, as he talked, from his bullet-
pouch at his belt a little roll of birch-bark ; " took 'em an all-fired
time to write it, and had a big pow-wow to read it when wrote.
Scissors ! I saw some good-looking squaws at that camp. Came
as near being tuck that time as ever I did; felt my hayar jist faUin'
off; thought I was wolfs meat that run. Yer see I 'd been dodgin'
tracks all day, so 's to git to this clearin' when night cum on. I
sez to myself, ' Go it, boots !' and made a bee line. Fust thing I
knowed I had walked right into an Injin camp. No fire — fire 'd gone
out — cuss the fire ! Pitched slam-bang over a red-skin asleep, and
in a minnit there was forty atop me. 'Hold up!' sez I; 'I'm
Injin, don't you know me ? I 'm come with a letter from the great
white chief,' and I held up an old bit of paper that Jake had given
me at S' Gustine, with the writin' on about bringing some stores.
They swallered the bait, and I sot there haK an hour readin' off in
Injin the cussedest lot of nonsense you ever heard tell oa Then

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLECK TUSTENUGGEE. 226

they wrote this answer, and I started fur here. Didn't I make
dirt fly for the first ten miles betwixt us ? "

Having rattled off his account of the adventure, that left no
more mark on his danger-loving mind than an every-day encounter
would have done, he tossed his rifle in the hollow of his arm, and
lounged over to the cabin occupied by Colonel Worth.

The missive he delivered was on clear white birch-bark, and
pictured a broken hatchet, and a half-circle of Indians sitting
around a council fire. Being translated, it read : " We have broken
our weapons of war, and are now consulting about peace; only
half our chiefs are here — we are waiting for them at the council."

This message was on a par with many others that were con-
stantly passing between the Indians and white leaders, always on
the part of the Indian procrastinating and guarded.

From Potter we learned many items of news from the east
coast, but none that served to interest us so much as the informa-
tion of Lou Jackson. It seemed that a month before Lou Jackson
had been in St. Augustine, and had embarked in a revenue cutter
to go down the coast with a relative who had been appointed light-
keeper somewhere in the neighbourhood of Key Biscayne.

It seemed strange that after the danger experienced at the
plantation she would so soon go off to an equally exposed and
lonely life. Could she not find a better position than that of a
light-keeper's assistant ? Or did the lonely life it promised agree
with her disposition and her feelings of sadness ?

Mike expressed his feelings, looking southward as if he could
see the light-house, by the words " Wall, wall ! "

However, there was no explanation to be had, and after talking
it over, we turned to the frolic of the camp and the Indian nego-
tiations, which seemed rapidly approaching a definite result.

A few days more at the lakes, and we found ourselves at Fort
King, having accompanied Colonel Worth with a detachment of
troops by the way of Warm Springs, where there was a collection
of Indian chiefs who had come in for a conference.

This was one of the occasions of periodical truce, so common in
this war. Each party was glad of cessation from fight — the soldier
to be relieved from marching and incessant watchfulness, and tiie

P

226 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

Indian to gain time to recruit and purchase a stock of ammunition.
At such times the precinct of a fort was the scene of a pageant.
The chiefs came in under the white flag, without their arms, bring-
ing their wives and children, and pitching their camps right under
the guns of the fort, and the sutlers traded with them as with the
soldiers. These chiefs retained all their stoic dignity of manner
and gaudiness of dress. Regarding themselves as in a measure in
council, they dressed with care, and studied to impose on the
respect of the whites or each other. Some of them were men of
much influence and honour among their own people, nearly all of
them were objects of great curiosity to the troops who had been so
many months in their pursuit, and who connected each of their
names with some bloody massacre, or hard-fought battle.

The leader of the present band was our old friend Halleck
Tustenuggee, who had left the marks of his black fingers at Far
Away on our last visit there. He was standing at the gateway as
we came in, the war-paint washed from his face, and his heavy
black hair drawn back from his head, and plaited down behind
with the feathers of the roseate spoonbill ; a heavy blue blanket
hung from one shoulder, in wliich was wrapped one arm, and the
other hung freely at his side. His bearing was noble, his words
were few, and if there had not been in his eye the glittering cruelty
of his race, something akin to the fascination in the tiger's eye that
stops you as you pass his cage, he would have stood with credit
for a Roman general. His wife and children were with him, and
two subordinate chiefs with their wives. The main body of his
band, twenty-five in number, were a few miles distant, near the
camp at Warm Springs, participating with all the abandon of the
native character in games of ball and quoits, wrestling and dancing.
Nothing was omitted on the part of the officers to make the truce
pleasant. Provisions were distributed and presents made, and,
to crown all, a great feast was prepared, to which all the warriors
were invited. When at the table, at Warm Springs, the command-
ing officer announced to those there gathered that they were
prisoners; the soldiers, already instructed, sprung to their arms,
and the band, that no force could conquer, were bound prisoners
for life.

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLECK TUSTENUGGEE. 227

A messenger was sent from Warm Springs to convey the tidings
of the capture to Colonel Worth, who was entertaining Tustenuggee
and his family at Fort King. The rider came fast through swamp
and woods, for his life would be little worth should the day's pro-
ceeding be known to Tustenuggee, or any outlying Indian, before
he reached a secure shelter. He approached the fort at a moment
when the commander was sounding his Indian guest upon the
ever-recurring subject of their emigration. The officers were seated
in front of their quarters, within the palisades the Indian chiefs
stood before, and the idlers of the camp were gathered around
listening to " the talk."

" A horseman is coming from the south," called out the Doctor,
relieving his pockets of one hand to shade his eyes.

" Come as ef he was sent," remarked Mike.

The sentry challenged, and the rider came in with his report
through the open gateway in the palisades and up to the doorway
where Colonel Worth was sitting, and delivered his missive. Tus-
tenuggee stood before him in his Eoman attitude until the despatch
was read, and watched the while the countenance of the colonel,
but the hard-bearded face gave no sign.

The rider dismounted and stripped his saddle. A brief order
was given by the colonel to the orderly who stood behind him, and
the Indian chief resumed his talk.

" My heart and the hearts of my chiefs are white, not from fear,
but in love. You sent me the flag of the five fingers (white flag,
with white and red hands clasped). I know you want friendship.
I trust you. Tustenuggee is here. Listen, white man ; what he
says is true — listen. Great Spirit; what he says is true. His
answers are the answers of his people. He is chief of the chiefs."

The colonel — " The chief has spoken like a brave man, and his
words in council are like his deeds in battle. We all honour him,
for he will listen to reason. He has lost many men in the wars,
and the rest are weary. But the white soldiers still come, and will
come on for ever. The white man has many soldiers, and many
weapons, and much ammunition. It is not good for the red man
to fight against him, for he will waste away, no matter how brave.
The white man has ofiered his red brothers lands in Arkansas

228 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

many times. Some have gone there — Tustenuggee has refused.
The white man now offers for the last time, and he wants to know
if Tustenuggee will move at once with aU his people."

Said the chief : " Hundreds of winters ago the Great Spirit gave
to us this land, its woods, its waters."

He enunciated emphatically and pointed slowly to the sky
above him, and waved his draped arm around with a slow majesty
peculiar to the oratory of his race.

Old Primus, a snowy -haired Indian, translated into English as
he spoke, and a secretary at the table wrote down the conversation.

" Where was our white brother then ? Where then was that
shadow ? " pointing to the shadow of the flag on the officers' quar-
ters, as it fluttered back and forth on the green sward. " Forty years
ago, God made Tustenuggee. Then our white brothers lived to the
north. Did the Mickasukies war against our white brother, and
ask him to go to Arkansas ? The Mickasukies were big then, the
white man little. The white man was so little he could not do his
own work, but had black man to help him.

"Tustenuggee has always lived here. Tustenuggee's people
always lived here. They loved the soil ; they dropped their seed
here, and their seed has taken root. The roots have gone down far
into the earth. The white man is a great wind. He comes from
where we can't see. He blows against the red tree. If he blows
hard enough the red tree will break down, but the red tree has grown
too long to take root elsewhere. My people are like deer — ^they
have been hunted, and are shy. They start when they hear a
twig break. They hide when it is day. The white man has hunted
them for many winters. He has burned their cabins, he has rooted
up their cornfields. They are sick at heart. The women can find
no covert to bring forth their young. The men dare not light a
council-fire, or come together to talk. The chiefs cannot know the
minds of the people, for they are scattered. Let there be peace. The
red man wiU hide his hatchet, and take his hoe. The white soldier
may go home. Then, when the tribe comes in from the hummocks,
we will talk of moving. Eunners will go to Sam Jones, to Octiarche,
and to Tiger Tail. Our hearts will be open — the sun will shine on
them — ^the smoke of powder shuts out the sun now. When that is

HOW WE CONQUERED HALLECK TUSTENUGGEE. 229

gone we can see clear. Tustenuggee will not promise what ho
cannot perform; Tustenuggee is too great a chief to lie. His
tongue is straight. When peace comes he will see clear. Then
he will read the white chief what is written in the hearts of his
people about moving. Tustenuggee has spoken."

The Indian stepped back, and wrapped his blanket around him.

The colonel arose, and said : *' Halleck Tustenuggee, I read your
thoughts. You have wanted a truce to buy ammunition and
provisions. You would then do as you have done before — take to
the swamps and renew the war. This stratagem is now to be
ended. At Warm Springs, to-day, all your warriors have been
taken prisoners, with their wives and children, and will be sent
forthwith to Arkansas. You and your chief are also prisoners, and
will accompany them."

Tustenuggee looked around him with a quick gesture. The
gate in the palisade fence was drawn, and the soldiers were under
arms. His eye flashed, his breast heaved, and, as his young chief
made a desperate but unavailing attempt to escape by scaling the
palisades, he quietly drew his blanket over his head and sat on the
ground.

No word was said by the bystanders. The intense interest of
the scene chained every tongue. The sentinel stopped on his
round. The soldiers gathered from their avocations. The orders
given by the colonel for the security of his prisoners was delivered
in a low tone, and as they moved away to the guard-house our
hearts seemed to beat again as if after the spectacle of some great
tragedy.

Thus ended the career of this great chief. The woods knew
him no more. His race lost his fiery valour, his vindictive
vengeance, his far-sighted policy, and the influence of his name.
He was one of the most uncompromising foes the white man ever
had, and was only taken by the same means that Osceola had been
before him.

That night, while most of the camp had retired, or were sitting
by the fires that lighted the enclosure, a savage scene was enacted
in the guard-room where the prisoners were confined under a guard
of soldiers. A large fire was lighted and the captives sat around

230

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

it, among them several of the Indians taken at the other camp,
that had been forwarded for security. It appears they had been
canvassing the means by which they had been made captive, and
one of them had intimated that it could only have been effected
by the treachery of their chief.

The words were no sooner out of his mouth than Tustenuggee
was on his feet Bounding over the fire, he struck the bold speaker
in the breast with both feet, then seized him by the throat, and as
those in the yard, attracted by the tumult, reached the window
of the building, they saw him almost strangled in the tiger-like
clutch of the raving chief. Before help could be rendered him,
Tustenuggee had seized the ear of his antagonist between his teeth
and bitten it off, then throwing aside his prey, he ground the ear
between his teeth, and spat the clotted flesh in the faces of the
guard, then, raising his sinewy form to its grandest height, and
waving his arm, he gave the Indian whoop, and called out with a
wild voice twice, *' Halleck Tustenuggee ! Halleck Tustenuggee ! "
and fell back to his seat, trembling with excitement and the rush
of his passions.

The strange accessories of form and colour, the armed guard,
and red fire-light, the savage act of the barbarian, impressed the
scene on our minds ns the act of a demon. It held us enchained,
and we looked on the actor as a caged lion.

On the morrow he and his chiefs were on their way to Tampa
Bay, to be sent by ship to New Orleans, and beyond to the reserva-
tion of the Arkansas.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE " PAINTER " IN THE PIG PEN.

"I was with Hercules and Cadmus, once,
When in a wood of Crete, they bay'd the bear
With hounds of Sparta ; never did I hear
Such gallant chiding."

MIDSUMMEB-mGHT'S DBEAM.

The days were getting rapidly warmer in the interior, cut off
as we were a large portion of the time by the close woods from the
free winds. The ducks had gone to the northward long since, and
with them the snipe and the rail. To take their place, the flowers
were opening to the spring on every side.

Hunters are rarely botanists. Few of their wants are aided
by its science with the exception of the knowledge of the points
of the compass, told by the moss, or an acquaintance with the
texture of different woods, or the medicinal properties of a few
plants. They are equally unused to the description of flowering
plants. The pointed cutting of a deer's hoof on a cactus leaf to
them is a greater study than the most radiant flower that ever
fringed its pulpous leaf. They cannot give technical descriptions,
and but few natural ones. They may not caU the stars by their
names, or classify the active life that peoples every muddy pool,
or makes a decayed tree a miniature world.

Yet, for all this, there is no race on whom the sweet influences
of the Pleiades fall who are more open to their soothing — none to
whose eyes the radiations of the flower afford a keener pleasure
— none to whom the fragrance of the woods opens a more vivid
association, or who are more observantly drinking in, night and
day, those ^sop lessons that man puts into a fable, but that God
talks with in letters of life. The constant observation of what is

232 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

around him makes his recognition quicker ; his natural active life
makes his senses keener, and the soft, damp, fragrant wind that
touches his cheek in passing, may tell him of a change of weather,
of the wet swamp that he is skirting, and may even whisper the
kinds of trees and plants there growing, and whether in bloom or
no ; the plants will tell the soil, and he may know the very animal
life that lives in the woods before him, by what on another cheek
would be a passing wind, and nothing more.

Even the roughest hunters at the Fort would show this obser-
vant taste. Mike had it to a great extent. Potter had it, though
burlesqued by the wild, random manner of an impulsive boy. We
would often get them talking in order to lead them out. Evening
was the ordinary occasion of many tales and practical jokes. The
men would gather around the huge fires, sitting and lying in every
attitude — negro interpreters, Indians and soldiers, the volunteer
hunters, that gained their living by supplying the garrison with
game, and the officers, in uniforms that the swamps had left no
longer uniform or neat. Names well known in the Florida wars
were often there under flags of truca There were Primus and
Gopher John the Indian scouts, and Holatter Mico, the royal
chief, and Vose and Wilcoxson, officers, and Mike, Potter, and a
score of others whose local fame there ran as high as Mardchals of
France, though in a narrower sphere.

There were drinks of government whisky, and smokes from
pipes shorter and blacker than a Killarney man could fix in his
hat-band, and Irish jokes, and yams of monstrous length, that
were roughly criticised or excelled by some other more incredulous
BtilL

Potter gave us one. Seated astride of an empty barrel, with
his rifle across his knees, his buckskin cap pushed back on his head,
his blue flannel shirt-collar rolled back, exposing a breast as broad
and shaggy as a bear's, he told us the following story with gesticula-
tions and amid peals of laughter : —

" Wall, you see how it was. Squire, is this."

The speaker took a long pull at his pipe, gave a hitch to his
suspenders, and then, ejecting the dense smoke in volumes through
his nostrils, commenced his narration.

V

THE "PAINTER" IN THE PIG PEN. 233

THE PANTHER.

" I was livin' that year on the coast, purty nigh St. Augustine.
It was late in the year and the night was oncommon dark — wall,
it was — and the wind roared ugly. Yer could hear the trees
smashin' up in the woods every five minutes when it buckled to a
little extry, and when yer put yer head out o' the door, as I did
once in a bit to see, you couldn't have seen Talyhasse Capitol
House ef you had rubbed your nose agin' it. The big breakers
were poundin' on the bar, and yer could see 'em one by one whare
they struck, for the phosper lit 'em up like blue paint. We had
a screechin' fire in the chimney, and it was right good to look at.
The old woman was a-mending clothes in the corner, and I thought
it war a cussed sight better bein' a home body and turnin' in by
the side of one's own wife than a-roosting all night in the open
range, as I had bin a-doin' for a month back.

" Parson Smith war thar, too "J he had dropped in goin' up to
Pelatky on a revival trip, and seein' the blow comin' on stayed all
night, and he was talkin' religion to Marthy by the fire, drying
himself and convartin' a soul both ter once. Parson Smith was
a likely man and a rael talker. They called him Doctor, and
he wrote his name Eev. Eliakim Smith, M.D. M.D. stood for
Medicine Doctor, though that war somethin' of a lie, for he war a
horse-doctor before he took to religion, and he had a kind of oily
way of rubbin' his hands down his legs as he sat by the fire and
talked away that would take the spavin right out of a woman, and
convart her in two-forty.

"Wall, there he sat a-rubbin' away and watchin' the taters
roastin' in the ashes and the bacon frying in the pan, and talkin'
of Election and Delilah, and them other holy women folks in the
Bible, till I begun to feel holy myself, and thought I was in the
land o' Canaan, when I fancied I heerd a painter screech. I was
to hum in a minnit. * Holy Moses ! ' sez I. The Doctor hadn't
heerd the painter, so he thought I was getting grace, and he right
away buckled into me with all sorts of Bible sayin's, and my wife
jined in, but I just riz up and went to the cabin wall, where there
was a little winder that I had cut to look out toward the woods.

834 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

I pulled out the shutter and put my head through, but yer might
as well have looked into the Kentucky cave, it was so dark. The
wind come in, too, so strong and chill-like, that it made the Doctor
and my old woman draw up a little clusser together. I listened a
while to see if I could make out any signs of the critter, but it war
no use. What between the surf a-hanmierin' on the bar, and the
branches a-crackin' in the woods, and the squalUng of the gulls that
had blowed in from the sea, you couldn't 'a' heerd a neighbour
asking you to take a drink, and I reckon that is what a man hears
quickest. Once in a while one of the big water-oaks would topple
over in the woods. I knowed'it had blovjed over, for it makes such
a smashin' of little branches when a hull tree comes over, and then
a short tug or two as the roots break. Then agin yer could hear
one of them tall pines on the ridge break. There was no give
there ; it would break short ofif with a crack like four or five rifles.
I would have bet I could have told the very trees that snapped, I
knew 'em all so welL Then agin the wind would die away, and
you didn't hear nothin' but the rain.

" ' Jist the night fur them varmints,' says I, drawin' my head
in again ; * they allers come down in a storm, kind of unsuspectin'
like ; that 's their natur'.'

" ' Yes, nothin' so decaitful as the 'Piscopalians,' says the
Doctor.

" ' I knowed what he was after ; the Doctor went tooth and
nail agin the 'Piscopalians, and so did the 'Piscopalians 'gin him.
That 's the natur' of religious people.

" ' No,' sez I, ' it was the painters.'

" ' Painters ! where ? — ^have you seen a painter ? '

" ' No, but I heerd one just now.'

" * You don't mean it,' sez he, and he went right over to his
saddle-bags that was a-lyin' on the bed, and tuck out two of the
longest kind of Spanish pistols, and primed *em up, sayin' all
the while somethin' about how with the jawbone of an ass he had
slain a thousand men.

" I didn't believe the critter, for he was given to blowin' j but
Marthy, she jist swallowed it all like batter-cakes.

" I seen old Boz, who was asleep by the fire a-whimperin' away

THE " PAINTER " IN THE PIG PEN. 235

you know how dogs take on when they 're dreamiu' — raise his

head quick like and make a straight p'int for the t'other eend of
the cabin, whare the logs was a little open like. He stood there
for about a minnit and then came back and laid down agin. I
knew somethin' was up, and that screech I heerd war true music.
The old woman seed the dog, and she broke in with —

" * Yes, that 's so ; when my old man, and the dog, both smell
painter, I knows there is painter. Two dogs don't both make a
false p'int to once.'

" At this Doctor Smith he walks to the door and unlatches it ;
the wind blew it wide open. I saw a pair of long white horns
outside, and that minnit the Doctor gave jist one of the biggest
yells yer ever heerd a wild Injin make ; one of his pistols went
off; I don't know ef he fired it off, or it went off of itself, and the
preacher went over backwards as my yoke of young steers came a-
rushin' right in the cabin. Lord ! yer could 'a' heerd me larf a mile.
"The critters was a-frightened in the storm, and maybe had
smelt the painter, and were mighty glad to get in the house where
the light was ; but they weren't half as frightened as the Doctor
was. He hadn't any more pluck in him than an old hen on a rainy
day ; he was right wilted down, though he tried to show how the
bullock had hit his arm and that had fired the pistol.

"We got the critters out again presently, though they didn't
want to go and I sot a-thinkin' about it, and wonderin' how it was
they were so onusual skeery, and the old woman had fixed the
Doctor somethin' warm, and I hadn't heem any more of the painter
for an hour or more, when all of a sudden, queek, quee-ee-ee-ak, we
heerd the old sow go, and a thumpin' noise, and the cattle bellowed
and run around the house.

' " Thar, I knowed it,' says I, as I grabbed my rifle, upsettin' the
teapot, 'cus the painter, he's got the old sow.'

" Lord, you should ha' seen that cabin empty itself. Boz and
the other dogs first, and then the Doctor and his pistols, and then
the old woman, though she was the smartest man of the lot, fur she
brought out a big pitch pine knot all-afire, to see what we were
goin' after.

" I put right for the pig pen ; that was about eight rods off from

236 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

the house, and where the pigs were a-squealin' bloody murder all
the time. That 's what bothered me. I knew if the painter had
got a pig he must have killed it right ofif, and then he would up
and away with the carcass. That's the natur* of the varmint.
Could it be an old she-painter a-havin' one of her cubs out exer-
cisin' him, and the cub couldn't lug ofif his share of the game !

" We got up to the pen. It was a log-cabin about twelve feet
square, built of heavy logs, jist to stop such doin's as this. The
dogs had their noses to the cracks baying away like all-fired, and
the pigs were a-snortin' and squealing inside; but the strangest
thing was, that the door was tight fast, the chain across it, and the
big oak pin drove in as tight as ever.

" * Whar 's the painter ? ' says the Doctor, as he came sidelin' up,
lookin' behind every stump.

" * That 's jist what I want to know,' says I, as I cum around
the buildin' to look fur his hole, but without findin' it. The pigs
were a-squeaUn' away as if they would split their throats, and the
dogs were a-dancin' and a-howlin'. The old woman was a-sayin'
somethin', but you couldn't hear what it was, for the wind blew as
bad as ever ; it only wanted that cussed painter's screech to make it
all complete ; and jist then, as I am a livin' sinner, the varmint
gave his screech, and it was inside the pen !

" I say. Squire, it would ha' done yer good to have heai-d that
screech, and ha' seen that scrimmage. I 've hearn the varmints
screech many a time when they and I have been in the woods
all alone, but then it was kind a soft-like, as if he was a-doin' it
for his amusement when he was lonely; he puts it then in the
best metre, of course, and it isn't disagreeable, imless he might
be too close to you. But here he didn't smooth it down, his
dander was evidently riz, and he yelled out as if he was filin'
a ninety-horse-power saw with the Eocky Mountains, and wound
up with a spit that jist took the hair ofif a steam whistle. The
young pups drew back a little and howled, and the old dogs went
nearly mad because they couldn't get through the cracks between
the logs.

" The Doctor was fur settin' fire to the cabin and burning him
up. The old woman was fur cuttin' a hole in the door and shootin'

THE "PAINTER" IN THE PIG PEN. 237

him. That was kind of onfair to the varmint, I thought. Sez I,
' I '11 show you a purtier trick than that ; I '11 jist open the door,
and then, Marthy, if you hold the light steady, I '11 take him with
a poke in the ribs that will stop his stealin' my pigs. There is no
miss fire to my gun, and that won't be imposin' on a varmint that 's
down.' I put my hand to the peg that held the chain, when the
Doctor, taking the ends of the logs that stuck out at the corner of
the cabin for a stairs, jist put himself on the top of the pen in a
shake of a deer's tail. I smiled softly to myself, but I didn't say
nothin', for, thinks I to myself, if the varmint does come out here,
and I do miss him, or only wound him, the dogs will be on him
like a shot and then he'll go to tree right on top of the cabin,
that 's sure.

" So I tugged at the peg, and every time the chain rattled, the
Doctor edged back on the top of the cabin, gettin' up to the ridge,
I s'pose, for a sure seat, when all of a sudden he disappeared.
Heavens and yearth! he had come backwards onto the hole the
painter had dug in the roof, and had tumbled in.

" Yer should have heerd that man scream ! The painter wasn't
nothin' to it. Painter might have been some louder, but then it
wasn't so skeery. It fairly made me shaky to hear him. As he
come down to the ground inside, there was such a hustling around
in that little building ! pigs and painter and man, all seemed to be
stirrin' about pretty lively, and to all the other noises the old
woman set up a screechin' that made me more shaky than any-
thing else.

" ' Quick ! ' she hollered, ' pull open the door — quick ! O
Eliakim ! oh dear ! '

" I pulled as hard as I could, but the cussed peg had swelled
with the rain, and yer couldn't budge it, and the chain was the
ox-chain, as went all across the door.

" * Tear it down, you old pirate ! ' says the old woman to me,
and she took hold of it with both hands, but she might as well
have tried to pull down the cabin. And all the time, between the
howlin's of the dogs and the squealin's of the pigs I could hear
the Doctor a-prayin' away one minnit as loud as he could bawl,
and at another minnit callin' to me to come and help him.

238 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" ' Run,' sez I to the old woman, ' run to the house for the axe.'

" Away she started, leaving the torch with me, and she run like
a wild lujin. I kneeled down so as to get on a level with them,
and puttin' the pine knot so it would shine through, I peeped in
at the varmint. Lord ! he was a beauty. Crouched up in the fur
corner of the cabin, he stood with one foot on the wall, ready for a
jump. His glossy bay coat shone like a horse. His eyes looked
like two blue lights out on Florida Keys, and his open mouth all
the time dropped water down on his whitish chest and on his feet.
Once in a while he 'd take a look up at the hole in the roof and lay
down his ears, as if to jump at it, but it was a leetle too high for
him, and he couldn't get room enough to make the leap. Oh, he
was a purty critter. His feelers were as long as a ramrod, and
when he looked up at the roof they lay so far back that they
reached the wrinkle that crossed his shoulders, the only wrinkle
on his body. I wanted to take a shy at him, but it wam't no use,
the cracks were so narrow I couldn't begin to eight over my rifle,
and knowed if I wounded the beast it would be all day with the
Doctor. ' Oh/ thinks I to myself, ' ef I could get my pigs and the
Doctor out, I 'd manage some way so as to take him alive, and
make a spec out of a real live painter. 'Twould be the first ever
seed in Ameriky, I reckon.'

" Just then the Doctor broke out afresh, half a-screechin', half
a-prayin' ; he seemed to be kind o' confessin' to the painter, for he
was goin' over what a sinner he had been, and talking about Daniel
in the lions' den, and the sword of the Lord, and somethin' about
Gideon, and Samson and the young lion, and yer never did hear a
critter get out so much that was pious in so short a time. I think
if I wanted to convart a sinner I 'd shut him up with a painter — I
would.

" Just as he was sayin' somethin' about reposin' on the pro-
tectin' arm, the painter gave a jump for the hole in the roof.

" Jehoshaphat ! what a jump ! he got his fore-claws on to the
shingles, but the shingles guve way and down he cum with a
spiteful screech. With that the pigs rushed round in double quick
time, and Eliakim, forgetting his pray in', hollered for me and
Marthy to come and help him. He was like the old woman who

THE "PAINTER" IN THE PIG PEN. 239

trusted in Providence, when her horse run away till the britchen
broke, and then she guv up.

" Poor fellow, I felt for him ; every time the painter moved, he
and the pigs moved too, and they were hazed around that pig-pen
in double-quick time, for the painter is a restless brute, and can't
abide standin' still.

"Soon the old woman came back with the axe, and I com-
menced cuttin' the peg that held the chain. This riled the painter,
and he commenced runnin' round livelier than ever, and away
went the pigs, gruntin' and squeakin', and away went the Doctor,
runnin' and jumpin' over the dead sow the painter had killed,
prayin' away and callin' to me by turns, ' 0 Potter ! quick — be
merciful to me — a — a — painter 's comin' — as you hope — to — be —
saved — blasted sow — oh, ough— salvation ! "

" A stroke or two of the axe cut off the plug. ' Stand aside,
Marthy,' sez I, as I pulled down the chain and threw open the
door. I had my rifle to my shoulder. The first thing that cum
out was the Doctor ; he nearly ketched the bullet, for I was just
a-pullin' on him when he said somethin' and saved himself ; then
came the painter quicker than greased lightning ; as he struck the
ground outside after his first jump, I pulled on him. The ball
struck him just in the shoulder, breaking one leg ; he fell, but was
on his feet again quicker than wink, and every one of them sixteen
dogs, pups and all, a-top of him.

" Phew ! what a tussel ! ' Go it, pups ! ' sez Marthy, holdin' up
her light. * Go it, yaller-backs.' That old woman was clear grit —
well, she was. Gone now, poor soul ! " and the frontiersman wiped
his eye with the sleeve of his hunting-shirt ; " killed herself larnin'
to read.

" The painter fetched himself up on his hind legs, like a bar,
hissin' all the while. One leg hung down — that was the broken
one — the t'other one he fetched around among the dogs, and knocked
'em over like nine -pins. Old Boz took some of it, and it keeled
him up straight, and then Tinker, and Sumter. I seen 'em getting
cut awful, and so I walked into the muss with the axe. One clip
did the business. It took him just over the ear and druv into the
brain, and I got his skin now, — aint it a beauty ?

240

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Wall, the Doctor was in the house when we cum in with the
painter, and he was still holdin' on to his pistol. He was just used
up, and all my larfin at him, and all Marthy's Schiedam Schnapps
didn't cure him He took the fever and agee and couldn't leave
the house for a week, and when he went he war so weak in the
back that he could hardly sit on his horse.

"He stopped there purty often agin that winter, goin' and
a-c6min', but ef we ever heard anything out doors nights he would
always coax me to go off and see what it weis, but he never left the
house, and was purty sure to lock the door when I was gone, to
keep the varmints from comin' in. That 's the natur' of a doctor."

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SAND-HILL CRANE.

" Fond of the speculative height,
Thither he wings his airy flight,

And thence securely sees
The bustle and the raree-show
That occupy mankind below,

Secure and at his ease. "

COWPER.

The next day we spent on the marshes and sandy reaches, gather-
ing roseate spoonbills, curlew, and plover. Long lines of white
pelicans sat on the islets, and several varieties of shore-hirds ran
along the shallow water feeding on the little white sand-lice that
hopped out of the sand after every receding wave.

Our great find was a flock of sand-hill crane that, unconscious
of the foes that were concealed in the rushes, flew over us, and as
we raised, received the contents of four barrels-, which brought
down five of these great birds as large as an adjutant stork. We
gave them to the Cherubs to tote home, and at night their breasts
served as steaks for supper, tasting and appearing much like veni-
son. This bird migrates from the gulf to Hudson Bay, and, singular
to relate, nests equally well south or north. I recalled a day's
hunt in northern Iowa, near where Spirit Lake spread its several
sheets of water to the autumn sun. It was before visitors were
frequent there, and when hotels were unknown. A friend and I
drove up from our camp at Lost Island Lake, with the dawn yet
invisible, and a mist filling the hollows. The team, after a fast
run, halted on a high prairie hill, and smoking horses and men
paused to reconnoitre. The lakes lay before us, and the slough
stretched away to the east, yellow with rushes and dotted here and
there with big musk-rat houses, while wild rice marked the deeper

Q

242 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

water. In the distance a red light showed where Olsen, the
squatter on section ten, thirty-two, forty, was lighting his fire.

Listen ! You can hear the " qua-a-a-k, qua-a-k, quak " of the
mallard drake, the " eonk " of the goose, and the squeak of the
widgeon. There is another sound, more pervading and more
difficult to locate. It is the guttural roll of the letter R repeated
three times. Some sentinel of the plains is calling grtL-r-r-r-r-ur —
gm-r-r-r-r-r-r-r — gru-r-r-r-r-r-r-r — and another is answering, and
a third from the grassy embrasure of his fort responds, heralding
the sunrise. Yet you cannot see the fort, nor locate it, nor say
whether 'tis near or far. But you feel it is one more new associa-
tion with the prairie, and a call you cannot yet answer. It is the
sand-hill crane grueliTig, to coin a word. It may come from a
mile away, or three miles, so deceptive is the distance, and yet it
peiTades all the air.

When the horses are unhitched and tied to the wheels, and
Billy the driver has wrapped himself in his blanket, and is smok-
ing his pipe with his back against the tongue of the wagon ; when
you and your comrades, incased in india-rubber leggings, are hid
away, one in a blind of sedge, and one on a musk-rat house, with
the oozy waters of the slough half-way up your thighs, taking what
is called "the enjoyment of ducking," perhaps you may see the
cranes come over you, moving their broad wings like geese, and
with their legs stretched out behind them, flying high in the air
to some corn-field or open grass land. You may hold yourself coy,
but they will not come lower, but in a long irregular line, gurgling
their note from front to rear of their cohort, they will take their
course to their well-known feeding ground.

When com or wheat is stacked for the winter they visit the
stacks, and with their strong beaks and legs scatter and waste
more than they eat, until the farmer has to set a guard on his
stacks. In the late autumn they frequent the corn fields, and
placing sentries on the most prominent places, the remainder of
the flock will feed for an hour, when the sentries will be relieved
and other sentries take their places.

Their bright colours, tall forms, and stately walk, make them
conspicuous on the prairies. Their shoulders stand three feet high.

THE SAND-HILL CRANE. MS

their heads two feet higher. The upper part of the body is a light
blue or slate colour, with a line of chestnut where the primary
feathers of their wings show along their sides, the under parts
light grey, their chins white, their legs steel blue. The upper
part of the head is bald and the skin on it rough and red, and, like
a cap of Fez, it surmounts the head, reaching to the lower mandible.
From this red head-dress peers out a hazel eye, noticeably strong
and bright, with a yellow iris. The motion of the bird is vigorous.
If wounded it fights dangerously against dog and man, using its
bill as a lance, and aiming at the eye of its antagonist. The flesh
is dark, like venison, and in the young, delicate for food.

The Indians have a legend, that in early days when the first
crane came to their land he found the eagle there before him,
disputing his way. There was a great fight, and the crane was
struck down to the ground and the eagle took his scalp. The
crane, however, drove his lance-like bill through both the eagle's
thighs. Since then, the crane has always borne his gory head, and
the eagle has, when walking, limped like a deformed beggar.

Sometimes the weary traveller sees on the distant prairie knoll,
a fellow-traveller. Welcome sight ! He turns his horse towards
him. As he nears him, two or three more appear on the knoll,
and the traveller finds it was the crane sentinel watching while
the others slept.

In common with the grouse family, living on prairie land, the
crane dances for amusement. On a bright day, when a dozen are
loitering together, one ancient maiden will apparently lift up her
skirts until she shows the whole length of her spindle shanks, and
then hop on her toes a dozen paces, when, dropping her skirts, she
wiU assume the demure air of a Quakeress. Another will do the
same ; then a red-capped gallant, after a rattle of dry nuts in his
throat, wiU extend his neck, fly up in the air a few feet and come
down, repeating this movement until he advances thirty or forty
yards. And then another and another will lift up their skirts,
and twirl and hop and flit, without rhyme, and with what reason
we know not. Perhaps the stately gallants and dames who per-
formed their minuets a hundred years since could, if living, give
us a reason, for the dances are wondrously alike.

244 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

" Billy," said I to the driver, who was with me watching one of
their hops, " why do they do that ?" (I always make a point of
gleaning knowledge from the natives, they are so familiar with
birds.) " 'Cause they are cranes," quoth Billy.

The sand-hill crane is a land bird. He feeds essentially on
grain and grass roots. Sometimes he takes snakes for variety,
or snails found along the marshes, or a frog, to feed his young.
But he likes best the upland, the breezy hill, and the wide-reach-
ing corn-field, and at night he seeks some shallow lake, where, at a
distance from the shore and prowling enemies, on one foot, alterna-
ting with the other, he will sleep away the darkness.

His nest is built in the deepest sloughs, where acres of reeds
and floating grass make a barrier against his enemies. The nest
is large and rude, and built of broken reeds and rushes, supported
by a log or musk-rat house. The eggs are generally two and very
rarely three. They are yellowish white, rough and punctuated and
patched heavily with dark irregular brown, and are hatched in Juna

The young, at first yellow, leave the nest as soon as hatched.
Presently they become a dun colour, which they retain until
autumn, feeding for a little time in the slough on snails and frogs,
but soon getting out on the unprotected prairie. Cranes fight the
moment they are hatched, the hunters say, and as their bills are
sharp, and strength is great, one is slain, and the surviving Cain is
usually found alone with his two parents. But this is theory, the
singleness of the offspring being more likely due to marsh enemies
of other species. When captured young they are easily domesti-
cated, and come to the call They will make friends with the
house dog. They select some spot on the ground to roost, and
always occupy the identical spot, with the head facing always the
same way. When any one moves in the yard at night, they make
a low grating noise like a challenge, and clatter with their mandi-
bles, then relapse into silence. When troubled, they get angry
and strike viciously with their pointed bills. When spring comes
and their kindred are flying overhead with their old familiar cry,
they will, if unwatched, forget the master's crib, and fly away,
never to be seen more.

Like many birds they acquire, in their wild state, a certain

THE SAND-HILL CRANK S45

knowledge of men and his ways. A man with a team ploughing,
troubles them not. A slow-moving double' wagon is but little
noticed. A man with a gun is a walking terror, recognised across
the township.

The writer once was driving in a double team with a driver
and two sportsmen, when three cranes were seen on a hillside nearly
ahead. Our course was changed so as to pass along the foot of the
hill and a gunshot away, and the horses continued their walk while
the sportsmen sat with their guns in their hands but their faces
turned toward the horses. In this way we drove until opposite the
birds, when they attempted to rise, but necessarily, in rising, had
to face down hill, as they could not rise and surmount the hill
together. Each marksman selected his bird, and we thus secured
all three, although one fell a mile away.

This bird migrates late in the autumn, seeking the Floridas, the
gentler prairies of Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, and reappears in
the latitude of the Great Lakes in May. They are scattered over
the whole continent of North America and are found as abundant
on the Pacific coast as on the prairies of Illinois. They migrate in
large flocks and fly in irregular lines, often so far aloft that they
seem like tiny drifts of smoke which the eye can barely see. Some-
times a snow-white crane is seen among them, and hasty writers
have assumed this to be a bird grown white with age, while, in fact,
it is one of another species.

One other habit of the bird deserves record.

If, on a still October day, in city or on prairie land, you hear
that gurgling cry, so faint that though at first you pause, yet you will
say to yourself " that is only sweet memory," and walk on. It may
be you will catch it again. Stop short, and look the sky all over.
Far up against the blue welkin, so high that you just can see it, you
will find a moving circle, no larger to you than your lady's finger-
ring. You cannot count the number of feathered jewels in that
ring, there may be fifty or more, but you can see it sway, and move,
and slowly float along, dropping as it floats, that grueling cry that
will fall from Heaven right into your heart, telling you that the
cranes are moving south, and that, idling on their way, they have
paused to call to you and make you look Heavenward.

CHAPTER XXVI.

POKE KECEIVES A CUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN.

" Oblivion here thy wisdom is,
Thy thrift the sleep of cares ;
For a proud idleness like this
Crowns all life's mean affairs."

Euxaaoa.

The Indian prisoners had gone with most of the garrison to Tampa
Bay ; the fort looked desolate in contrast with its previous crowd
and excitement, and we were anxious to start for the east coast.

Our party had made preparations to descend the Ochlawaha to
Lake George, and thence down the St. John's, and Mike had em-
ployed his leisure, with our negro boys, Scip and Caesar, in building
two dug-out canoes. These " dug-outs " are cut out of a solid log,
and are often beautifully made with lines like a racing boat In
these our " plunder " was carefully stowed, and with a store of salt
provisions from the fort, one pleasant day we embarked and swept
away down the current

There is something of unusual novelty in descending a Florida
river. An aspect of dreariness that only long habit overcomes,
quiets the tongue and awes the heart. The black turbid river boils
in circular eddies, or spreads in motionless lagoons, far into the
neighbouring woods. The stiff cypress-trees stand naked with
their feet in the water, and knobs like toes rising around from their
roots. Their foliage was the grey Spanish moss that hangs from
every branch in tresses of wondrous length, sometimes reaching
from the upper limbs into the water, and marking the direction of
the current Where the lagoons opened into the river there was
constant doubt as to the course of the channel, for the lagoon might
be broader than the true course, or the latter totally shrouded from

POKE RECEIVES A OUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN. 247

sight by the draping moss or jammed trees. Sometimes the leading
boat would wait for its fellow, calling to it a few feet off to come
through some curtain of vegetation, where it had just found a
passage. There was no animal life here save reptiles, and little
vegetable beauty. It was a waste of water overhung by the dead
growth of ancient times.

Then, too, there was a watchfulness against Indian cunning
that made our passage seem more like a flight than a hunt, and
when some alligator rushed from the bank to the water, the noise
would startle us and bring back the scene when Jackson died on
just such a passage down the Ouithlacouchee. Two or three days
brought us into pleasanter life, and our eyes were greeted with
the open water of Lake George and the varied vegetation of its
low-lying shores.

It was curious to watch Mike make his entry on the lake. As
we approached, our boats came nearer and paddled slower. We
hugged the shore closely, and when the first faint roll of the waves
of the lake came into the river, he motioned us to stay, and ghded
down among the rushes in his own canoe, watching the broad open
water with a keen, careful eye. We slowly came up and followed
him as, parting the reeds, he wound along the shore some quarter
of a mile, till where the grass began to grow tliin. Then beaching
the canoes where they could not be seen from the lake, we unpacked
our provisions, and, seated where we could overlook aU the water,
and yet not be seen, ate our dinner and took our noonday nap.

The propriety of Mike's caution in a little while became
apparent. A canoe came out from one of the outlets of the lake
a mile down, and crossed over to the side where we were sitting.
In it was a single Indian. This was followed at a short distance
by another with three women, and both boats disappeared in a
cove. Had we been on the lake we should have been seen, or had
we continued our course we must have met them.

" What 's that mean, Mike ? "

" Injins."

"Yes; but what are they doing? Is there a tribe of them
here, and are they a war party, or what ? "

" No ; it 's a band ; they 've got their squaws with 'em. They 're

248 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

travellin', fur they paddle, leastwise the squaws do, as ef they were
tired. And there 's more on 'em somewhars, for there 's too many
squaws there fur that one red-skin. Keep quiet and they 'U show
their hand."

Before night three other canoes passed the lake in the same
direction, and turned round the projecting point where they first
disappeared.

The evening came on apace. The sun set — a globe of fire. The
pencillings of red on the lakes shortened ; and then disappeared.
The birds that had fished all day in the shallows settled in the
trees to roost. The earth wrapped itself in darkness as a mantle,
" and left to dews the freshened air."

" Wall," said Mike, after a big yawn, " let 's do somethin*."

" Yes, and that something must be to get out of this place as
soon as possible," quoth the Doctor.

" No ! " replied Mike, with a comical accent.

" It 's very well for you, Mike, who have a gift for Indians, to
hang about them, but I don't think I care to have my ears bitten
off, like Tustenuggee's aid-de-camp."

** We 're all right so long as we squat here, and make no fire, or
any trails, but when we come to go away we may meet more Injins
in the river."

" But the faster we go, the less likelihood of meeting."

" Wall, we will go. — Shut up, Yowler, you dod-rotted dog ! " to
the hound, who was attempting one of his houndish yelps. " But
first I must see who them creeters is, and ef you '11 keep quiet here
awhile, I '11 go look."

So, in spite of the general dissent, Mike took one of the canoes
and disappeared in the darkness, while the negroes crept up close
like monkeys, shivering with fear of the darkness and danger, and
we chatted in low tones of the scene around us. There was a steam
on the water that looked like a gathering fog, and made it dark close
to its surface. The night was hushed, and the heavy booming of
the alligator bull came down the lake like the muffled roar of a lion.

In an hour Mike returned, with his quiet salutation, stepping
ashore and tossing something in the Doctor's lap, saying, " Thar 's
a cur'osity for your c'lection."

POKE RECEIVES A CUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN. 249

The Doctor picked it up, but it was too dark to tell what it
was. It looked like the boy's toy called a sucker, made of a
circular piece of leather, about three inches in diameter, with a
string fastened to it.

"What is it, Mike?"

" Somebody's heyar." »

" A scalp 1"

" Beckon."

" Where did that come from ? It is not a fresh one."

"Stole it from those beggars; too lazy to watch their own
boats ! "

" How many of them are there ? "

" Nine, and five squaws. I stole the only scalp they had, and
jist marked my cross on their canoe with my knife, so they'll
know 'twas me. It's that cussed old Tiger Tail. Drat his red
skin ! won't he swear some to-morrow ! I reckon we 'd better go.
Marbee it wouldn't be safe to be loafin' 'beout here when he finds
his canoe punched and his scalp stole."

No one obeyed this suggestion to depart with more alacrity
than the Doctor, who already felt Tiger Tail's fingers clutching
his own scalp-lock in revenge for the lost one, and a few minutes
found us on the lake pushing fast and silently for the St. John's.

The next morning we learned the cause of the movement of
Tiger Tail's band. The flight of several flocks of water-birds, and
the chattering of the blue jays, gave us warning of the approach of
some stranger, and, taking to the bushes that fringed the banks,
we watched for what would appear. Soon we heard the measured
stroke of oars, and then several Indian and negro scouts in canoes
passed without observing us, and then swept along six barge-loads
of soldiers — a part of the Second Regiment moving up the river
on one of their forays, by which they sought to disturb the
security and destroy the products of their foes. The American
flag was flying at the bow of the leading boat, and the merry
laugh of the men, and the loud joke and call passed from front to
rear showed how inadequate they were to catching their fleeter foes.

"Hulloa!" said Mike, pushing out his canoe from the reeds,
"goin'a-fishin'?"

860 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

This sudden satirical salutation brought the boats to a halt,
and sent half the soldiers searching about for their muskets.

" Where are you from, and where to ?" was the answer of the
officer.

" Oh, cross country, goin* a-pleasurin'," responded Mike.

" Seen any Indian signs ?"

" No signs in partickalar ; stopped at Tiger Tail's camp a piece
back," replied Mike, gradually moving down the river, and away
from the boats.

" That 's the band we are after. How soon do you think we
will come up to them ?" The boats getting further off all the time.

"When the river freezes!" responded Mike, paddling down
stream at full speed. " Ketch a fish-hawk jist as soon," he con-
tinued in an undertone.

The boats had resumed their course, when the officer, who
seemed to know our hunter, hailed us once more.

"HuUoa!"

"HuUoa!" said Mike.

" Come and guide us, and you will be well paid."

"No; you're too many of you, 'taint no use;" and a turn of
the river carried us out of sight.

That night we camped early, secure from annoyance, for the
passage of the troops up the river had, we judged, driven away
any lurking Indians. Indeed, the only band in the St. John's
which we were approaching had been Tiger Tail's, the rest being
occupied with the treaties and negotiations that had been in pro-
gress on the west coast So we kindled our fires and cooked our
meal, and laid down to talk and dreams.

Mike assured us that he had no tales to tell, mumbled about
Tiger Tail, and wondered where he was leading his band, then
ventured some remark about Lou Jackson, hedf to himself and half
to his hound, and then fell asleep. The doctor being called on for
a story, gave us an account of a fire-hunt in the woods of the
Adirondac. As nearly as I can remember, it was as follows. I
can't repeat the words, only the ideas. They were pleasant; he
was a poetical fellow, that Doctor, when it grew late in the
evening.

POKE RECEIVES A OUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN. 261

FiRE-LioHT Hunt.

" Beyond Little Tupper's Lake, some three or four miles further
on in the wilderness, toward the Racquette, lies Little Rock Pond,
a mere dot of glass set in the emerald woods that stretch for miles
away in every direction, unbroken by human thrift and unmarked
by the fruits of that primal curse that caused the thorns and the
thistles to be brought forth. Connecting these two sheets of water
is a narrow stream so insignificant that it joyfully runs its way
nameless and unknown. The hills stand back on firmer bottom,
and the little valley bordering the river is filled with succulent
grass, reeds, swamp alders, and rose-trees that blossom and bud for
the wild game alone. Here Stalknecht and I had a camp and were
spending a month together, keeping house in the only decent
manner there is of living in this free country, where the servants
are all a little better than their masters." (Poke was violently
opposed to Irish servants.)

" Hank, my guide, and I one night paddled our boat up this
stream to its source in Rock Pond, and when darkness had come
we lighted our jack-light, and, setting it in the bow of the boat, he
took his seat in the stern with the paddle, and I mine in the bow
with my double-barrelled rifle, and we commenced to descend the
stream. A jack-light is so arranged that it throws a bright light
in front of the canoe, while it leaves the boat in utter darkness,
and the hunter, thus sitting in obscurity, is enabled to see any-
thing in range of his light with perfect distinctness. So we began
to descend the stream. Our voices, subdued to a whisper, were
presently hushed altogether. Not a sound disturbed the stillness ;
no splash of the paddle in the dexterous hand of the guide ; no
noise of motion ; we floated on the water as the moon floats when
' with white fire ladened ' she sails out into the still night. The
weird trees, naked of leaves and shirted in moss, flashed out in
light, and then fell back in darkness, save when their tops marked
the sky beyond. Bush and flower, reeds pendent with their heavy
seed, and lancifoliate lilies, with their deep blue plumes, lateral
lagoons, gemmed with water-plants and bordered with their
larches, came out into the light, dropped into the darkness, and

252 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

were succeeded by others in clumps and clusters, and festooned
by blackberry vines. Ghostly-looking sights, stumps that had
supernatural shapes, and tombstone trunks, blanched white by
rain, marked the banks.

" Kee-honk ! kee-honk ! screams a blue heron in aspirated accents,
as he springs into the air, fanning the night with his great wings
in measured beats that can be heard long after he is beyond sight.
The musk-rats come out in the circle of light before the boat, in
wonderment at the pale fire that awakens them, and dive beneath
the waters when the boat is on them. The boat swings around in
the turning of the stream, and I see the erect head and large ears
of a deer. It is a doe, for there are no horns. A moment of
pause to be sure that I am right, and the ringing shot awakens
a hundred echoes, and clouds the air with smoke.

" ' Why, ye'nt seen no deer, did yer ? ' asked Hank.

" ' Yes, a doe.'

" A dip of the paddle sends the boat to the shore and then dis-
closes to my mortified gaze the blanched limb of a tree, standing
up in the grass, the veriest spectre of a deer.

" ' Well, your doe is dished now — ha ! ha !' laughs Hank.

" I load my rifle rather humbly. * Heady — push on ! '

" ' Don't you want to see if you hit it ?*

" ' No ; push on, will you ? '

" The boat glided forward again, mile after mile, in the same
spectral journey, as still as the dead. My mind floats along with
the water-bugs that run ahead of me and the shadows. I see
the stars floating in the water, and those overhead likewise, and
many more stars than ever shone in these latitudes. lu fact, I
fell asleep. I don't think I had slept long when I was awakened
by a shrill noise, resembling the letting off of steam from a small
steam-engine when the valve is suddenly opened and as suddenly
closed again. I have heard such noises in a country church be-
fore the commencement of exercises, when some plethoric deacon
blowed his brazen nose,^-only, if anything, the night-bugle was
a little more emphatic, and several times repeated in quick suc-
cession. 'What's that ?' I whispered.

" * Deer,' responded Hank, in a whisper, swinging around the

POKE RECEIVES A CUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN. 263

canoe so that, as the light moved against the woods, the motion
of the boat brought forth two or three more sneezes, and then we
heard a heavy crashing through the bushes as a deer dashed up
the hill, awakening the echoes with his nose, more terrifying than
Bardolph's fiery beak to all the bottom land: for immediately,
from the other side of the brook, another buck took up the cry,
and rushed up the hill to the summit, where he stood some minutes
stamping the ground and startling the darkness with that most
singular of alarums.

" * Two big bucks,' said Hank. * There be'ent much good
huntin' here any longer ; we've got ter get back to the lakes agin,
fur them bucks has called off all the others.'

" ' But it won't do to give it up so. Hank ; we must have a deer,
or we won't go home till morning. Think of the hungry mouths
in camp,'

" ' Wall, I suppose we can try them sand-beaches round on the
south shore. I kinder think the bucks fodder on the sand-beaches
more'n on lily pads this time o' year.'

" So around we went, glaring our Cyclopean eye over the open
lake, and causing the loons to laugh like monkeys. One or two
islands stand out in the open water where the brook makes in, and
we passed around their jutting rocks to the southern shore. The
water began to shoal, and I could see the white sand on the bottom,
from which here and there the osiers reared their taper wands, and,
as the air came wafting from the land, it brought the odour of the
white water-lilies, the queen of all the water flora. Skirting the
osiers we could see the sword-grass growing rank beyond, and
presently we heard a splash in the water. A moment more of
slow drifting motion and we heard the tramp, tramp, of some
animal wading in the water. A little nearer we floated, the rifle
in hand and the senses concentrating on the grassy marsh. A
little nearer, and the eye caught a motion. Brighter grew the
light as the canoe floated up and reddened the grass and reeds,
and we caught, in the darkness ahead, a bright blue light, and then
another, the reflection from the deer's eyes. Then we heard a
suppressed snort. Another push of the paddle, and a deer stood
out in the grass, his head thrown up, and his eyes shedding pale

264 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

light. The boat is directed straight toward him, and the paddler
is as still as a statue. I aimed and iired. From beyond the
smoke I heard the splashing and dashing of water, and a big buck
dashed past me, and then two others, aU rushing ofiF together for a
belt of timber that arose close by us on our right. As they
ascended the bank, I aimed at the hindermost with my remaining
barrel and fired, and at the sharp ring of the rifle he fell back
convulsively dead,

" We hastened to the shore, and, carrying with us the light from
the boat, we found the deer I had first fired at lying with a broken
shoulder, just dead, in the high grass. The second was lying
among the lily pads, where he had fallen, the ball having passed
through the centre of his neck, breaking the spine and killing him
instantly. They were both large bucks of six tines, with their
horns fully grown. It seemed a marvel — something that was as
supernatural as the weird scene around us — to see those two noble
beasts that, a moment before, were the wildest forest things that
range the earth, so still and heavy, in among ^the lilies and the
sword-grass.

" ' WaU, wall, that was purty well done,' said Hank.

" But Hank's praise could not lighten the dull leaden weight of
the stags, nor relieve my mind from the lurking impression that
the coming by night into these solitudes, to shoot down two of the
lords of the soil while at their food, was not the part of a brave
man. But what is the use of moralising ? Some men sin without
thought, others with much; but I opine that the much thought
don't deter from a repetition of the sin.

" With a good deal of labour we hoisted our two deer into the
canoe, and paddled home to the sleeping camp, and then "

" Tuck a drink," said Mike, whom we all thought fast asleep,
from under his arm.

" A drink ! no, sir, I was more intoxicated with my himt than a
gallon of whisky would have made me."

" All who believe Poke's story, signify it by saying I."

" I," said Poke.

" I 'se sure maussa tell fur true 'bout firin' in de stump part,"
suggested Scip.

POKE RECEIVES A CUR'OSITY AND TELLS A YARN. 265

Potter turned to Mike, and while filling his pipe said —

"Yer didn't hear tell of that horse-showman when you was
up to Pensecolee, did yer ? "

" Naary," said Mike.

" His name was D. Villars, ef he didn't lie about it. A thin,
black-eyed, razor-nosed cuss. I want to get track of that fellar."

"What fur?"

*' Wall, he cum it over the boys up there a leetle too strong.
He had a sort of show, and advertised that a horse of his would go
around the ring on the run while a dog was all the time a-sittin' on
his tail. Wall, we all liked horses some, and dogs too, and we all
calkelated we 'd go in fur that show. We pinted up our half dollars,
and said we 'd see him. The grocery was empty that night, and so
ware Gorzalz cock-pit. Jim Lane was thar, and Dusty Jake, one-
eyed Bill from St. Mark's, and Captain Spinks and his gaal Lize —
Lize that used to be maid on the Nancy Belle when she busted —
and a pile of fellars from the coast.

" That chap raked in a jack-pot o' money that night. Wall, he
had a sheepshead-lookin' roan mare with a wicked eye, and a thin
tail. When she showed up, we all said that dog can't sit up on
that air tail, nohow ! The dog cum in too, and this Villars man
raked in the chips from the till into his pocket, and then com-
menced to ride around the ring. He rode, and he rode, and he
rode, till Jake Billins yelled out for the dog to get up. ' Gentlemin,
gentlemin,' said the showman, a-smilin' as a monkey, — * gentlemin,
I beg you will not disturb the ladies.'

" * We've got enough horse now, show us the dog a-sittin' on his
tail,' called out Jake.

" * Gentlemin,' said the showman, ' I always fulfil my promises ;
I 'm a man of my word ; you have seen my horse go round the
ring on a run, and now look there and you see the dog a-sittin' on
his tail.' Sure enough the dog was a-sittin' in the middle of the
ring on his own stumpy little tail There was a yell. ' Gentlemin,
gentlemin ! ' sez the showman, ' respect the ladies,' He couldn't
say more, fur jist then Hell broke loose. The crowd piled over
into that ring like a drove of bufifalo bulls. Sticks flew, pistols
blazed, and the showman on his horse cut out of the back fly of

266

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

the tent that he had left open, and ef he hadn't had a smart beast
under him, he 'd had his neck stretched. I 'spec't he 'a a-runnin'
yit. Lordy, I wish I could ketch him ! "

As no one could suggest any means of finding him, no one
spoke. The fire flickered, the negros laid themselves down with
their heads to the fire and their feet bare. Potter sprawled out on
his back with his fur cap over his face. Every man chose his own
position, and first one, and then another travelled into the land of
forgetfulness : —

" A pleasing land of drowsy bead it was,
Of dreams that were before the half-sbat eye ;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass.
For ever flushing round a summer sky. "

r%

CHAPTER XXVII.

W00DLA2JD CHORUSES.

"In the long nights of winter when the cold north wind doth blow,
And the howling of the wolves is heard amid the snow."

MA.OAULAT.

As we descended the St. John's River, the water views gradually
enlarged and became more characteristic. The wider volume of
water set back the forest to a further distance, and not only
removed all question of Indian bullets, but the change from the
heavy" woods to the open vista made us freer in feelings and more
rapid in our motions. The boats moved faster, and wind and
current in our favour, with trolling lines astern for sea-trout, and
the negroes singing their Methodist air —

" In a few days, and a few days
We 're gwine to glory,
In a few days, "

we rapidly sped northward to our final destination and the scenes
of civilised life.

One day we passed an Indian canoe. Mike said the paddler
was an Indian, though he looked more like a negro, and had a
long talk with him. They used the Indian language and we could
not understand them, though from some names we heard spoken
we judged their conversation went back to Tiger Tail. The Indian,
we thought, once mentioned Jackson, and once gave the native
motion for taking a scalp. After he was gone Mike seemed moody
for a day, and then the meeting with the Indian was forgotten.

The jumping mullet were frequently seen and at night we could
catch them in abundance in our canoes by carrying a torch. They
sprung from the water toward the Light, frequently two or three at

B

S58 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

a time, and fell in the boat, their pearl-coloured scales flashing in
the torchlight. In some places they are called moth-fish, from this
peculiar instinct. In later years the raftsmen on the river availed
themselves of this habit, and placing lights on the sides of their
rafts collected quantities of fish that readily leaped the low edges
of the raft.

The nights were very dark during a portion of the time we
were descending the river, yet as we were in haste to be home, we
kept on our way sometimes till late in the evening, making our
course by the black line of forest that margined the shore. Some
of those nights were exceedingly solemn. The mystery of the
darkness, the splash of the leaping fish, the murmur of frogs and
newts, the rushing wings of the night-birds, and now and then the
heavy bassoon of the alligator, in whose bosom the spring of the
year bad awakened tender recollections of his mate, all added to
the awe and novelty of our voyage.

Sometimes, too, we could hear the plaintive whine of the
panther or the bowlings of wolves, that, scenting us from shore,
challenged our distant passage that left them no bones for their
supper.

These wolves are funny fellows. You would hear one howl
away down the river just audibly above the insect hum. Then an
instant's pause, and another answers from the opposite shore, and
then one close at hand gives a yelpish whine as though he had
been intending to howl, but a bone that he had in his mouth
stopped him, until he laid the bone down and hurriedly had his
howl out. Most of the wolves on the Gulf coast are black. In
the northern part of the continent the grey wolf predominates
and the black are rarely seen.

We pitched a camp one night at dark in a grove of orange trees
a little up from the shore with everything to make us comfortable.
Opossum, venison, fish, and doves were hanging before the fire ;
the night was dry and pleasant, our camp was well located, and we
had every anticipation of a cheerful night, until the Doctor, who
never could resist the chance of throwing a line, must needs hook
a small alligator in the river on his night line. It was all very
easy as long as the animal was in deep water — he was a caught

WOODLAND CHORUSES. S69

fish, — but the moment the Doctor dragged him up to shoal water
where he could obtain a good footing, then the Doctor was caught,
and had either to be pulled in the river or let the line pay out and
the brute get back to four-fathom water.

Soon we heard a call for help, and, after a number of facetious
suggestions ofiered and refused, one of the negroes paddled out a
few yards, and, when the animal came up to the surface, put a rifle
to his head and killed him.

The hook was cut out of his mouth, and the body floated down
the river a few yards, and, as we learned in the morning, lodged
against the bank.

The discomfort of the Doctor's fishery now became apparent.
Supper being despatched, every one rolled over, puUing off his
boots for a pillow, or laying his head on his arm. The first
sleeper had just begun to emit a hoarse breathing which a listener
would call a snore, when we heard, " Ah-ha — whoo-a-whoo-oo-oo !"
from a little way down shore. " Bow-ow-ow-owe-owe ! " said
every dog in the camp, in different tones of shrillness, depending
upon the acidity of their tempers. Up on end came every sleeper.

" What 's that ? " queried some one.

" Cuss the wolves ! " quoth Mike.

" Dar's a prime psalm-singer, settin' de tune," added Scip.

" 'Cause he settin' tune, yer mussent kick around like all-afire,"
says Caesar, holding on to his bruised shin.

" Wag, here Wag, don't go there ! " called the Doctor to his
cur, that had not the least intention of venturing beyond the circle
of the firelight.

Everybody turned over ; wolves are never dangerous, unless to
your provisions, and in a moment more there was silence and a
sound of strangulation from the Doctor that foreboded his pro-
foundest sleep, when " Ooh-ooh-ooough," came the old note,
followed by the rush of the dogs and the same series of question-
ings and yawnings and objurgations.

There seemed to be a concert near us ; for the moment one
wolf would get tired, another would take up the refrain until it
was soon apparent that there was no more sleep for that night.

We only took cat naps, eating a little now and then and some-

260 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

times taking a drink, talking, conjuring up all the old stories of
wolves that we had ever heard or read of, good bad and indifferent,
they were all repeated, — wolf had no mercy shown him that night.
If he could have understood our language I am sure he would
have liowled louder in anger at the character we gave him than
ever he did in hunger or melancholy.

Mike's opinion of him was that he was a " dratted mean cuss,
feered to hunt deer alone and fodderin' on his own young ones
when he can't ketch nothin' else."

The negro boys entertained the belief that the luminous appear-
ance from their eyes at night arose from their feasting on the slain
in battle, and a suspicion that they sometimes visited graveyards
for other purposes than pensive meditations.

The Doctor told how that the power of a wolf's jaw was greater
than that of any animal, that it had a power of — I have for-
gotten how many hundred pounds — and something about his facial
muscles that no one understood.

I told the following story of an adventure. It don't seem now
half as natural as when the wolves were howling an accompani-
ment, but it is true, nevertheless.

THE WOLF CHASE.

" During the winter of 1834, being engaged in running a line in
the Aroostook country in the northern part of Maine, I had much
leisure to devote to wild sports. To none of these was I more
passionately addicted than to skating. The deep and sequestered
lakes of this State, frozen by the intense cold of the northern
winter, present a wide field to the lovers of this pastime. Often
would I bind on my skates, and gUde away up the glittering river,
and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed beneath its fetters on
toward the parent ocean, forgetting all the while time and distance
in the luxurious sense of the gliding motion, thinking of nothing
in the easy flight, but rather dreaming as I looked through the
transparent ice at the long weeds and cresses that nodded in the
current beneath and seemed wrestling with the waves to let them
go ; or I would follow on the track of some fox or otter, and run

WOODLAND CHORUSES. Ml

my skate along the mark he had left with his dragging tail until
the trail would enter the woods. Sometimes these excursions
were made by moonlight, and it was on one of these occasions that
I had a rencontre, which even now in a warm climate, and with
kind faces and bright fires around me, I cannot recall without a
nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling.

"I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk,
with the intention of skating a short distance up the Kennebec,
which glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully
clear. A peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud,
and stars twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree
in millions, and the great zone of the milky way and the lucid
planets were all copied in the mirror-like ice, till your foot seemed
treading the jewelled vault of heaven. Your mind would wonder
at the light that came glinting from ice, and snow-wreath, and
incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the broad gleam
of the Kennebec, that like a satin ribbon wound between the dark
forests that bound it. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to
have frozen tree and air, and water, and every living thing that
moved. Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back
from Moccasin Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle
of the ice as I passed over it in my course, seemed to follow the
tide of the river with lightning speed.

" I had gone up the river nearly two miles, when, coming to a
little stream which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore
its course. Fir and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead,
and formed an archway radiant with frost-work. All was dark
within, but I was young and fearless, and as I peered into an
unbroken forest that mirrored itself on the borders of the stream,
I laughed with joyousness, my wild hurrah rang through the silent
woods, and I stood listening to the echo that reverberated again
and again, until all was hushed. I thought how often the Indian
hunter had concealed himself behind these very trees, how often
his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and his wUd
halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from
fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their
hooded state, with ruffled pantalettes and long ear-tabs, debating in

8tt WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and was wondering
if they " for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound
arose ; it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice. It sounded
low and tremulous at first, until it ended in a prolonged yell. I was
appalled. Never before had such a noise met my ears. It seemed
more than mortal, so fierce, and amid such an unbroken solitude,
as if a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Pre-
sently I heard the twigs on shore snap, as if from the tread of some
animal, and the blood rushed back to ray forehead with a bound
that made my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend
with things earthly, and not of spiritual nature; my energies
returned, and I looked around me for some means of escape. The
moon shone through the opening at the mouth of the creek by
which I had entered the forest, and considering this the best course,
I darted toward it like an arrow. 'Twas hardly a hundred yards
distant, and the swallow could scarcely excel my desperate flight ;
yet as I turned my head to the shore, I could see two dark objects
dashing through the underbush at a pace nearly double in speed
to my own. By this great speed, and the short yells which they
occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much
dreaded grey wolf.

" I had never met with these animals, but from the description
given of them, I had but little pleasure in making their acquaint-
ance. Their untamable fierceness and the untiring strength which
seems part of their nature, render them objects of dread to every
benighted traveller.

' With their long gallop, vrhich can tire
The deer-hound's hate, the hunter's fire,*

they pursue their prey — never straying from the track of their
victim — and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped
them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their
prey, and falls a prize to their tireless cunning.

" The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity
of lightning, as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow open-
ing. The outlet was nearly gained ; one second more, and I would
be comparatively safe, when my pursuers appeared on the bank

WOODLAND CHORUSES. SOS

directly above me, which here rose to the height of ten feet. There
was no time for thought, so I bent my head and dashed forward.
The wolves sprang, but miscalculating my speed, sprang behind,
while their intended prey glided out upon the river.

" Nature turned me toward home. The light flakes of snow
spun from the iron of my skates, and I was some distance from
my pursuers, when their fierce howl told me I was still their
fugitive. I did not look back, I did not feel afraid, or sorry, or
glad ; one thought of home, of the bright faces awaiting my return,
of their tears if they should never see me, and then every energy
of body and mind was exerted for escape. I was perfectly at
home on the ice. Many were the days that I spent on my good
skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only
means of safety. Every half minute an alternate yelp from my
fierce attendants made me but too certain that they were in close
pursuit. Nearer and nearer they came ; I heard their feet patter-
ing on the ice — nearer still, until I could feel their breath and
hear their snuffing scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame
was stretched to the utmost tension,

" The trees along the shore seemed to dance in the uncertain
light, and my brain turned with my own breathless speed, yet still
they seemed to aspirate their breath close in my ears, when an
involuntary motion on my part turned me out of my course. The
wolves close behind, unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the
smooth ice, slipped and fell, still going on far ahead ; their tongues
were lolling out, their white tusks glaring from their bloody
mouths, their shaggy breasts were fleeced with foam, and as they
passed me they glared, and howled with fury. The thought
flashed on my mind, that by this means I could avoid them,
viz., by turning aside whenever they came too near; for they,
by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on ice except
on a straight line.

" I immediately acted upon this plan. The wolves having
regained their feet, sprang directly toward me. The race was
renewed for twenty yards up the stream : they were already close
at my back, when I glided round and dashed directly past my
pursuers. A fierce yell greeted my evolution, and the wolves,

164 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

slipping upon their haunches, sailed onward, presenting a perfect
picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly a
hundred yards at each turning. This was repeated two or three
times, every moment the animals getting more excited and baffled.

" At one time, by delaying my turning too long, my antagonists
came so near that they threw the white foam over my dress as
they sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together like the
spring of a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I
tripped on a stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the
story I am now telling would never have been told. I thought all
the chances over ; I knew where they would first take hold of me
if I fell ; I thought how long it would be before I died, and when
there would be a search for the body that would already have its
tomb ; for oh ! how fast man's mind traces out all the dead colours
of death's picture, only those who have been near the grim original
can tell.

" But soon I came opposite the house, and my hounds — I knew
their deep voices — roused by the noise, bayed furiously from the
kennels. I heard their chains rattle ; how I wished they would
break them, and then I would have tried ' turn about is fair play.*
The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped, and
after a moment's consideration turned and fled. I watched them
until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighbouring hill. Then,
taking off my skates, limped up to the house, half cured of romance
in the woods and tired of the name of wolt

" But even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moon-
shine without thinking of that fetid, snuffling breath, and those
fearful things that followed me so closely down the frozen
Kennebec."

As the tale ended, an unseen auditor, who from his covert in
the bushes was indignant at my account of his people, yelped out,
Oo, who-oo, who — 00 — o — ah, aigh.

" Hear the vowels," said the Doctor, " a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes
w and y."

" Drat the cuss ! " quoth Mike, throwing a blazing knot into
the bushes, " has he got no decency ? "

CHAPTER XXVIII.

LIFE IN THE LIGHT-HOUSE.

" The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away
The Light-house lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, a cloud by day.

" The startled waves leap over it ; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain ;
And steadily against its solid form
Press the great shoulders of the hurricane."

Far to the southward of what has been the scene of our story,
forming one of the barriers between the coquina-fringed coast of
Florida and the Atlantic, lies Key Biscayne. Southward still,
innumerable little islands of white shell show their backs above
the tide, and then Key Largo, Indian Key, and Key West, sweep
in a curve around the point of the continent, warding off with
their coral arms the blows of the angry Atlantic, and the soft
allurements of the Gulf Stream. To the westward on the main-
land stretches from ocean to gulf the labyrinth of the everglades.

There were no permanent settlers in this country at this time,
though at Key West was congregated a reckless company of men
whose boats found shelter from the storms among the islands, and
who gained a livelihood from the shipwrecked vessels that
monthly dashed to pieces on the coast. Most of them were
desperate men without families, only cultivating the soil to plant
cocoa and plantain trees, and relying upon the sea for the supply
of the rest of their wants. Their low craft could be seen among
the innumerable reefs at the beginning of every storm, like sea-
gulls foreboding the tempest, and hovering for its waifs.

In the interior of the peninsula the Indian still remained

see WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

secure in his morass, and from Key Biscayne at times his camp-
fires could be seen against the midnight sky.

The only thing that was human on the coast, contrasting with
the cruel shore and the more cruel wreckers, was the light-house
on the Key. The great charity reared itself between the wilder-
ness and the sea, an oriflamme over the strife. It stood on a jut
of beach at the lower end of the island, where the palmetto trees
dried out in the shale, and only the long sword-grass grew around
in scattered spears. A boat with a mast lay on the shingle, and a
log canoe, and close by the light stood a little low white house, with
two square windows and a door toward the sea, and two square
windows and a door toward the bay. A tiny porch covered each
doorway, and the little windows were opened and closed by heav}'
wooden shutters. The only vegetation near the light was one tall,
twisted cocoa-tree, whose frouded leaves were so high in air they
formed no shelter from the sun, but crackled with a shardy sound,
and when the wind blew fresh from sea, from time to time the tree
loosened one of its large cocoa-nuts from its stem, letting it fall
to the ground with the thud of a cannon-ball.

The prospect to the eye from the lantern on the tower was a
weary stretch of sand islands between the sea and the bay, and
beyond the bay the desolation of limitless swamps. Heavy surges
beat on the shore, long hot days made the land glimmer in the
mirage, and the tower and the little house cowered before the
breakers, or danced in the white heat.

Here Lou Jackson had come, and with her father's brother was
living in the house and keeping the light.

It is didicult to explain the motives that in some persons lead
to their course of life. Was it necessity, was it adventure that
brought her here, or was it a secret longing unconfessed to be near
some one of the comrades of our many hunts ?

Lou had a little foot and it was laced over its high arch with
an Indian moccasin. The wrought buckskin became the foot, as
it was tapping the uppermost step in the lantern, while its owner,
witli, her arm on the window-sill, sat looking seaward. Here was
her accustomed seat as the sun fired the everglades at his sitting,
and left the ocean still as a child tired with its romping, and every

LIFE IN THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 867

evening, for the month that she had lived at the Key, found her
in the same spot dreaming away the twilight, and when it was
dark brightening the eyes of the passing mariners with the ex-
pectant flash of the lantern.

The spits of sand that ran up and down along the coast were
margined with little rollers that broke in foam along their seaward
side, and then feU back to renew the attempt, while doe-witches
and sand-pipers with nimble tread pursued them back and forth.
The blue line of the horizon, where it cut the roseate sky, was
marked by the sail of a ship, that Lou was watching. She was
conning over her past few years of life. Figures came up to her
misty eyes, dead friends, and other homes, strong men, and patches
of wood, and camp-fires, and old longings. There were tears in
her eyes, and her foot ceased to tap the iron step, and she leaned
more over her arm and looked harder out to sea. Then appeared
her lonely life, and the wild imaginings and romances it had
created, and her form straightened again. Her short lip curled,
and the tears dried up.

She thought of her kinsfolk in the States, and how with
haughtiness she had thrown back their proffers of assistance. She
thought of her own active life, her self-educated tastes, her superi-
ority to her sex of the same age, not boastingly, but proudly and
justly. Old dreams of romance came over her, dreams that had
been dreamt and re-dreamt, and had awakened old fancies of a
desperate, whole-souled love, proud as her own, that was to meet
her own and make surrender — that was to woo, plead, strive,
and die for her, and be accepted. She thought of Mike, and in
the daring mood she was, the patient, gentle, watchful hunter
was swept away with a rush of scorn. Too timid or care-
less to plead for her, too simple for an ideal, his love was the
likings of a man, but no love for such as her. A man that she
couldn't understand at times, a man that was too cautious to
praise, too weak to dare anything for her, even a refusal — out on
such a man ! The consciousness of a secret liking that had made
her leave Mike so hastily at Bonda Key when he had proffered
the cat-skin, made her pride revolt and her scorning the bitterer.
Then she was too proud to let him come nearer her because she

168

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

was the daughter of a planter and he a vagrant hunter. Now she
was too proud even to think of him, for she was poor, and an
orphan. Yet she could not rid herself of that unconfessed regard.
There were other men that were bolder than he, many more re-
fined. Had this immense world no life and form in it that was
perfect to her ideal ?

"Fool — fool! I am a fool!" she said aloud, springing upon
her feet. Taking a cloth from a locker, she began polishing the
reflectors of the light, whistling between the pauses of her duty.

" Donald, isn't it time to light up ? " presently called her voice
from the gallery of the lantern.

" Yes," answered her uncle from below, scanning the horizon
with a long look to note the gathering shadows.

In a moment more it was dark, and the sailor pacing his watch
on the ship in the offing called from the fore-castle deck to the
mate : " Cape Florida light, sir, on the port bow, ten miles away."

CHAPTER XXIX.

TRACKING THE ENEMY.

" For it is with feelings as with waters —
The shallow murmar, but the deep are dumb."

" Nine Injins and no squaws," quoth Mike, seating himself on one
of the rolling sand-hills that border Indian Eiver, a little south
of Cape Canaveral, after a long examination of the surrounding
shores.

On the same evening that we pitched our camp on the well-
marked trail leading from the St. John's River across to St.
Augustine, Mike had disappeared. He had given no notice of his
intention, unless the purchase of powder and ball from a trader
camping at the same place might have been a notice. The place
where he slept at the fire was vacant, and the dun hound and
heavy rifle had disappeared with their owner.

We were safe from all doubt as to our course, and from aU
danger, for St. Augustine was but sixteen miles away, but we
speculated much on the cause of the sudden flight. Had the
trader or his men given him any bad news ? No, they were only
talking of the wars, of Tiger Tail's forays, and how the troops were
drawing down in concert to destroy the Indians or drive them
southward. We thought at first he had gone over to the town,
but a missing canoe showed he had taken to the water. We
mentally bade him farewell, and started over to St. Augustine,
and were soon pacing its narrow streets, besides the quaint old
Spanish church with its chime of five bells, and the moss-grown
walls of the old fort, builded, as saith its inscription, by Field-
Marshal Don Alonzo Fernando Hereda, of noble fame.

270 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

In three days Mike had retraced the course he had brought us
in descending the river. Over the broad water of Lake Geoi^e,
where the great pearl-shell mussels grow, he passed like a gull
before a northerly wind, holding up his blanket for a sail, and
made the orange tree point where the St. John's enters the lake
from the southward.

Following the St John's beyond Lake Monroe, he passed in
the night, and unobserved, the company of soldiers we met in
descending the river. Their camp-fire was bright on the beach,
and he could hear the sentries challenge as they marched to and
fro under the stately trees, according to what Mike thought their
unnecessarily ostentatious rules of camp government.

" HuUoain' like that in the woods when they ought to be hidin'
away," said he to himself, as he noiselessly floated by ; " that 's all
some folks knows."

Mike was like a good many quiet people — he liked his own
company, and would talk to himself, little by little, in disconnected
sentences, even when he refused to talk to any one else. The
many days he pjtssed alone encouraged the habit.

Thence still up the St. John's, through all its winding course,
he paddled, warily watching the shore and water, and often visiting
either bank to look for signs. Wherever there was a bend in the
river, he kept close to the point around which the curve made,
creeping around so slowly and cautiously that his eye took in all
the reach of the river ahead before he could himself be discovered.
He visited many old Indian camps, wandering around them, look-
ing for little signs indicating the intention their occupants had at
parting. "Wherever there was a trail across the river he seemed
to know or divine it, approached it warily, and only left it after a
careful scrutiny.

When he built a fire to cook his food, it was made back from
the river, and the fire was lit of the driest twigs, so that it raised
no smoke, and at leaving he covered it over with ashes, and
stamped out the mark his rifle had made in the sand. Sometimes
he would not let his dog come ashore, or if he did, carefully rubbed
out the tracks of his feet. He did not travel at night, unless in
the early part of the evening, and never struck a light after dark,

TRACKING THE ENEMY. I7i

but carrying his canoe on shore, filled it with moss, and laid down
in it with his dog at his side.

At the far upper end of the St. John's, after the explorer has
passed through innumerable expansion-like lakes, and crossed the
beautiful waters of Lake Poinsett, he will find the St. John's wind-
ing and twisting, overflowing the prairie here in shallow marshes,
and running off into deep long tributary lagoons, fringed with
canes, reeds, and flags of the most graceful shapes and dense
growth. Some of the canes totter over, leaning their tall tips
against the others for support, and so they reach entirely across
the narrow creeks, shutting out the sun and air, and leaving the
boatman to push his canoe as through a sewer. One such branch
of the St. John's turned eastward and reached nearly to the coast.
This was the course taken by the Indians when making their jour-
neys from the interior to the sea, and it carried them so near
Indian River, a broad inlet of the sea that margins the Atlantic, that
they had but a very short carry to get across. Mike was follow-
ing this outlet. He had seen old fires a day or two back, and
thought them, judging by the brands, about as old as the interval
of time which he had taken to reach there after Tiger Tail had
passed, providing the chief had come this way immediately after
visiting Lake George.

Mike examined the narrow passage up which he was paddling
with the instinct of a tracker without any positive signs, merely
led on by his suspicion. Every scratch on the canes he noticed,
and floating bits of wood he picked up from the water to look at
them, and then toss them back again. WTiere a flag had been
broken, and half withered hung from its stem, he floated past with
upraised paddle, calculating the number of days it would take a
flag to wither that much.

At length a dint in the oozy bank he marked as made by the
blade of a paddle, and marked it so exactly that when he saw
another on the same bank he knew they were the blades of dif-
ferent paddles, and that there were more boats than one that had
recently preceded him. By the inclination of the hole in the mud,
he knew the direction of the stroke, and therefore the way the
paddlers who left the marks were going. When there was an

272 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

opening in the reeds he would raise himself to his feet and look
out on the flatlands, watching the birds to see if they would indi-
cate by their flight or their cries any passers in the desert.

Where the creek ran out, the scout examined warily the land-
ing. There were no marks or signs of any kind. He searched
long and closely, but could see not a token that a footstep had
been there for a month.

" Queer, that ! " he said, and paddling back to an out-of-the-
way elbow, pulled in his canoe in the reeds, and stepped ashore,
leaving his hound tied in the boat. He then crossed over from the
low land to the higher rolling sand of the coast, but found no signs
of passers. Extending his walk a couple of miles down, he came
upon footsteps plainly marked in the sand, going from west to east.
" Ha ! " said he, coming to a halt, and bringing his hand to the
cock of his rifle. His eyes followed the signs back and forth, and
he smiled drily. He felt the compliment to himself, implied in
the pains taken by the savages to conceal their trail.

"Tried to dodge — landed back and walked around. Some-
thin 's up — wouldn't have been so pertickalar ef they'd been
actin' honest."

The hunter followed the trail both back to a branch of the
lagoon, where they had left the ordinary course, and then over the
sands till where the footsteps faded out in the ripples of Indian
River.

" Seven days out, jist ! " said he musingly. " Scratchin' along
fast."

Seating himself on the sandy hillock, among the rough swaying
grass, he mused on the thoughts suggested by the trail, and after
a very long silence again repeated with a sigh, looking southward
— " Nine bucks and no squaws — that means mischief."

He laid off his cap and drew back his matted hair, leaving his
forehead open to the caressing air. " Seven days," he said. " Wall,
seven days are a deal of time, and what 's wrong done, is done bein'
helped. I might as well go over and see. Somehow or 'nother, it
don't seem nateral for that critter to come this way. Ef he 's run-
nin' from the soldiers he 'd gone west ; he knows too much to be
bothered by them. He 's sent off the women folks for no good,

TRACKING THE ENEMY. 873

but it mayn't be he's goin' so far. She'll think I'm 'spectin'
danger when there ain't none.

" Wall, wall, I might as well be down thar. She won't be any
the worse for my bein' nigh her. Poor child, poor child ! And ef
thar's nobody about, why, I can come away again without her
knowin' it. It does a fellar good to know she is near, and maybe
it '11 turn up, as times go she may need me."

That night Mike with his dog slept among some willows,
Idndling his fire from the half-burned brands that had served
before to cook the food and dry the moccasins of the band he was
pursuing. Travelling, as they both were, by canoes, there were no
signs left save where landings had been made to cook or sleep, or
to carry over the little portages, the traversing of which so short-
ened the route between Indian Eiver and Jupiter Inlet. But it
was the knowledge of native character that guided the pursuer.
He could teU on his day's journey just where such a band, im-
pelled by Indian cunning, would land to conceal their fire. Had
they been running carelessly, landing where accident led them,
their course would have been more difficult of detection, but Mike
was tracking them mentally, more by reason than by a trail per-
ceptible to the eye, and as he ran his canoe to the beach, it would
sometimes strike on the very footprints of the savages, and the
hunter would give his satisfied ejaculation of " ha ! " and quietly
sit down to his meal without further examination.

Mike travelled faster than his predecessors. When he carried
his canoe over the portage connecting Jupiter Inlet with the next
creek to the southward, and examined the tracks where they had
not been drifted over with the sand, he smiled, saying — " Gained
a day." Presently his dog dug up from the sand a broken paddle.
Mike patted the hound, and examining the paddle knew why
they had travelled so slowly that day ; and a little search showed
some shavings where a new one had been cut. His suspicions as
to the leadership of the band and the direction they were taking
had become confirmed, little by little, and he now baked his corn-
bread, and rolled himself to sleep on his Spartan couch, satisfied
to a certainty that his journey was not a needless one.

A boat is usually sent by the government, at regular intervals,

8

S74 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

to visit the different light-houses of the United States cosist, and
supply them with stores. Such a visit had just been made to the
light-house at Cape Florida. Two barrels of oil, provisions for the
light-keeper, a little powder and shot, some tools, cordage and
oakum, a few fishing implements, and some books that had been
sent for Lou Jackson, had been delivered and were lying in front
of the little house, and the white sails of the schooner were again
low on the horizon, leaving the light-house keeper and his niece
to another month of solitude.

Lou's uncle was busily engaged storing the goods, some in the
house and some in the light-house, and the girl was in the lantern
with a book on her knees and her eye wandering away along the
reaches of the shore and of the past. The evening was lull, and
even the gulls had settled down on the waters of the bay. Pre-
sently her eye caught a motion from over the palmetto bushes
that i-an down the island, and she watched for the cause. In a
moment she saw a naked Indian creeping over the sands, running
from a clump of bushes to one nearer the house. The fellow's face
was painted vermilion and black, and from his gaudy colour and
crouching motion, looked like a leopard more than a man. Lou
was not so ignorant of Indian ways but that she knew the mean-
ing of the war-paint and the subtle approach that never could
have been seen from below. The blood rushed to her heart with
a bound, and then her thoughts were as cool as before. This had
not been a totally unforeseen contingency, and they had discussed
the course to be followed, and had in a measure prepared for it.
The door of the light-house had been made heavy and strong, and
the arrangements in the upper story had been such that a person
would find it a comparative shelter.

Lou leaned over the rail and called to her uncle in her ordiuaiy
voice, " Uncle ! "

"WeU, child?"

" Look up here, uncle."

The old man leaned over the coil of ropes he had in his hand,
and looked up at the lantern.

" Don't move fast," said she, in a measured voice, " but come
into the tower quietly ; there are Indians in the palmetto bushes."

TRACKING THE ENEMY. 876

The uncle was not capable of self-control. He cast a hasty
look around him, dropped the coil of rope, and ran to the light-
house. It was well for him the door stood open wide, for as he
ran a ringing shot came from the palmettoes, the bullet cutting
his jacket, and another shot from another covert shattered a pane
of glass beside Lou Jackson, and from every side broke out the
war-whoop, while half a dozen savages, whooping with their hands
to their mouths, sprang from the palmetto bushes, and rushed
across the opening to intercept the fugitive.

The old man slipped in, slamming and bolting the heavy door
behind him, and was safe. The savages crowded up against the
doorway, as an angry wave would sometimes do on a stormy night,
and then fell back, baffled for the nonce.

CHAPTER XXX.

SMOKING OUT THE ENEMY.

" The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see ;
The blinding mist came down and hid the land
And never home came she."

KlNQSLBT.

It was evening when Donald Laidlaw, Lou's uncle, effected his
escape into the light-house, and the next morning found the two
prisoners in the upper floor, vainly seeking to spy out their foes,
who had disappeared like the uncouth shapes of a dream. The
prisoners had listened and waited ell night long, but there was no
sound on the air but the low wash of the sea, and nothing could
be discerned from the apertures of the tower save the sand and
the trailing gleam of the lantern on the ocean.

Hour by hour glided by in perfect hush. The cormorants flew
past to their daily fishery, the gulls came in from sea, and the
shore birds ran in and out with the ebbing tide as they were wont
to do. Laidlaw emerged out on the upper floor of the light-house,
and turned out the lamp, cautiously peering about him. He saw
the goods strewn on the sand, just as they had left them, and the
half-open door of the cottage still ajar. He descended again to the
tower and told what he had seen ; but his escape from the enemy
had been so narrow on the previous evening, and Lou's knowledge
of Indian character was so good that they concluded it was far
from safe to venture out of their place of refuge. So they opened
a bag of biscuit and made a frugal meal, from time to time peeping
out of the crevices between the plastering and the floor above, and
then turning again to each other to talk or dream away the day.

SMOKING OUT THE ENEMY. 877

Noon had long passed when they became conscious of some one
calling from below, and saw an Indian standing in front of the
house, waving a white rag, and indicating by his motions a desire
to speak. Laidlaw mounted the steps to the platform on which
the light was placed, and which extended some distance over the
tower, and, moving cautiously to the edge in such a manner that
only his head was exposed to observation from below, called out
to the Indian to inquire his message.

" Indian wants to talk."

" "Well, what is it ? Go on," answered Laidlaw.

"Indian going away — he wants peace. Indian will do no
harm. Give him one blanket and he goes."

" Why did you fire at me last evening ? "

"Indian was wrong — Indian much drink — Indian is sorry.
Give Indian one blanket."

The savage held up one finger to denote the smaUness of his
wants, and his other hand he pressed to his breast. His face was
free of paint, and he carried no arms and spoke very pleasantly,
and with a graceful gesture.

" What shall we do, Louisa ? " asked the uncle, turning around
to the trap-door, through which his niece's head appeared, as she
listened attentively to the conversation.

" Tell him to take the blanket and go. We will see if he will
do it"

Laidlaw told the Indian, who, after a pause, replied : " Indian
can't take blanket — say Indian stole blanket."

" Uncle, it is all a cheat. Look out for them," whispered Lou.

"No, we will not come out to bid you good-bye. Take the
goods you want and be off."

The Indian seemed disappointed, judging from his manner as
he turned on his heel and disappeared in the bushes, while the old
man descended to the securer retreat of the tower.

The light-house in which Lou and her uncle were entrenched
was the ordinary columner-shaped edifice that may be seen at
intervals all along the coast at the present time. It was built of
unhewn stone, to the height of about six feet from the sand, and
then of concrete — a composition of broken shell and mortar — for

«78 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

forty feet more, slightly decreasing in size, until within a few feet
of the top, when it suddenly expanded to receive the bell-shaped
lantern of glass that covered the lamps.

Under this lantern was constructed a stone platform, overla)dng
the tower, and extending out tiU it formed a narrow ledge, and a
single hand-rail ran round its exterior edge, so that the light-keeper
could walk the outside, polish the glasses, and keep undimmed the
light. In the lantern stood the lamps on a pedestal, with their
metal reflectors, a can of oil and a bundle of waste, for polishing.

At the base of the tower, and on the side from the sea, was a
heavy oaken door, entrance to which was gained by a little flight
of stairs, and the door was placed above the stone-work, so as to be
free from any extraordinary tides. On the level with the door in
the tower was a pile of stores of divers kinds, some provisions and
some necessary implements for the station. From this, winding
stairs of wood ran up to the narrow opening that led to the lantern.

When Lou and her uncle took refuge from the savages, they
remained at the bottom of the tower, reclining on the cordage or
bales, save as they were occupied in trying to make discoveries of
the savages through the narrow windows that here and there were
cut, like arrow sHts, into the walls for the purpose of light It was
hither they descended when the unsuccessful Indian diplomatist
departed, and they were left once more to their own anxious ex-
pectations, and to the renewed machinations of their foes.

It was not a great while they had to wait before they heard on
the exterior the guttural voices of the savages, and felt the door
vibrating under their tests of its strength. Presently they heard
heavy blows as though from a stick of timber, and then the sharp
rap of a hatchet. Laidlaw started up, and arming himself with
the only weapon he possessed, an old fowUng-piece, prepared to do
battle, when the door should no longer be a security. Lou
retreated up the steps toward the lantern. But the door was of
live oak, studded with nails, and the Indians did not care to risk
their hatchets on so stern a material, and even the blows of the
timber presently ceased, the assailants finding it difficult to make
their battering ram work effectively from the narrow platform
afforded by the steps on the exterior.

SMOKING OUT THE ENEMY. 279

The prisoners congratulated themselves on their security, and
again seating themselves on the cordage, renewed their council,
and even jested upon the futile attempts of their enemies. An
hour or more had passed away in most perfect quietness, and
saving the occasional visits to the loop-holes of the tower, Lou had
relapsed into a dreamy state of half wakefulness, while her uncle,
with the caution of years, sat close to the door-way with his duck
gun across his knee, and his ear to the crack.

"Don't you smell something strange, uncle?" said the girl,
after a pause.

" No," whispered the old man. " What like ? "

" I thought I smelt wood burning. What is that I see on the
floor?"

Her uncle looked down on what seemed a carpet of lamb's
wool, white and flaky, gradually spreading itself over the floor.
Laidlaw leaned down his face until he could look out through the
crack beneath the door. Then raising up his head suddenly, he
stared at his niece, exclaiming in a whisper — " They have set fire
to the door."

There was a long pause, and the two prisoners gazed at each
other in silence. As they sat they could hear from without the
crackle of the flames as they gathered volume, and then at inter-
vals the whoop of the savages in mocking tones.

The thoughts that chased each other through the minds of the
prisoners were stern and hurried. There was no water or other
means of putting out the fire, and even had there been it was on
the outside of the door and constantly supplied with fuel by the
savages. In a little while the flames became perceptible through
the crevices of the door as the panelling shrunk from the heat.
The knots fell out, and through the openings left they could see
the savages passing and repassing. Lou's mind likened them to
devils in the flame of the pit, and her soul went up in an un-
syllabled prayer for deliverance from a death to which only
the torments of the lost bore any likeness.

Had Laidlaw been a man like the men that the wild scenes of
those days often engendered, he would have been plotting against
the savages, or at least been prepared for this emergency and

280 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

capable of inflicting a salutary revenge ; but he was mild and
gentle, having outlived many of his friends and ambitions ; he
returned to gentle pursuits and dreamy musings to fill his vacant
mind. His only attempt now was a trial of endurance without
any retaliation upon the savages, and laying aside his fowling-
piece he assisted his niece in carrying up to the lantern a few
things that a protracted stay might render necessary. A few bags
of biscuit and boxes of figs, a canvas sail and a rope were brought
up, and two or three glass reflectors of heavy weight and much
value, were lifted up, with great labour, to the topmost platform.

" I have forgotten my gun," said Laidlaw, descending for the
last time the winding steps, blurred with smoke and dusky with
the twilight, while Lou crouched down in the lantern to avoid
being seen from the sands.

" And bring up some tobacco for your pipe, uncle," she called
after him, down the stairs.

" I can't find the guiL Lou, did you see where I put it ? " he
called from below.

" Is it not leaning against the centre post ? " she called.
The answer to her question was sent back up the confined tube
of the tower, multiplied into infinite echoes by the hollow walls,
in an Indian war-whoop.

The savages had efifected an entrance from below. Where was
her uncle ? She listened, but there was no sound of struggle or
pleading, no prayer or groan, only the war-whoop came up in the
darkness, echoing and re-echoing from vermilion-coloured lips and
stony walls. She leaned her head down the trap-door that com-
municated from the lantern to the stairs, calling, " Uncle, dear
uncle, shall I come to you ? " But no voice or sound replied ;
even the Indian yell died away. The fire had burned out, fol-
lowed by a perfect hush, contrasting fearfully with the yeUs and
tumult of a moment before. Lou listened and watched, but the
tower was thick with smoke, and darkness had settled over all
the world. She did not dare to go to the edge of the lantern, for
doubtless the savages were watching her from below. She only
fulfilled her woman's mission, and shutting and bolting the trap-
door waited and hoped.

SMOKING OUT THE ENEMY. 281

The darkness wrapped her as a mantle, not protecting her
but pinionmg her arms in helplessness. It seemed the greater
from the contrast with the beacon light that usually shone
from the lantern brightening even the distant sea. She struck
a match and lit the great lamp of the lantern, and as its flash
broke out on the night her heart grew lighter at its accustomed
cheerfulness. She could once more see the white walls of
her house, and the ranks of marching breakers that knelt
along the beach, discharging their regular volleys of noise
and foam. She laid down on the floor so as to be secure
from any shot from without, and watched the narrow winding
steps of the tower.

Where was her uncle ? There had been no voice or sound of
him since they had parted. There was but one opinion as to his
fate ; she could not think of it, and sternly shut it back lest she
might be totally unnerved.

A few hours sped by, and a motion at the base of the tower
indicated a new attempt on the part of the besiegers. The experi-
ment developed itself in a cloud of smoke that gradually mounted
the tower and found vent through the trap-door. Then a flame
was seen below, and in a moment more the winding stairs were in
a blaze. The fortress they dared not storm, was to be burned out.
The girl looked around her as the smoke accumulated, and opened
the windows and the door that led to the gallery to give it vent.
The flames roared up through the aperture as through a hollow
tree, above which the lantern, like the topmost boughs, came out
against the night sky in bright relief or was wrapped in darkness
as the flame or the smoke successively lighted or enveloped it.
The girl cowered away from the flames as they came up the trap-
door to the fullest extent of the tower. The smoke became denser
and the stone beneath her warm. She wrapped a blanket around
her and kept her face down to the floor. The fresh air that stole
through the broken sash struggled with the smoke that curled
around her. Her ear caught the whoop of the Indians exulting in
their carnival, and an occasional shot that was fired at the lantern,
more in triumph than with the intent to slay. She heard the surf,
and the peevish cries of the sea-birds that circled around the

282

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

unusual light. Her brain reeled with the smoke and she becjame
insensible.

When she recovered her senses the momiug had broken, and
the world with its thousand happy tenants had awakened to the
joys of another day. The slight wooden staircase in the tower had
burned out, leaving the column of stone and mortar with its iron-
ribbed lantern as strong as before. The girl looked down the
column and found herself cut off from the earth. She looked out
on the strand and there was no living being in sight. The lamp
had gone out in the smoke. She looked out for her late enemies,
but could see none. The world below her was beautiful to see,
replete with rolling breakers, shells and sands, flowering palmettoes,
and the long lagoon, with its little island, dreaming a hundred
yards from shore.

CHAPTEE XXXL

BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE.

"And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And Baved from outrage worse than death
The lady of the land."

Coleridge.

There are some positions in which one is thrown so hopeless, and
so complicated in the abundance of their misfortunes, that the
heart gives up resistance and lamentation. Then, after a little,
there arises a pride of superiority, and the heart grows greater
from its conscious scaling of these disasters. They cease to afilict,
and are the sources of a bitter pride.

So from her house of refuge by the sea the mind of the im-
prisoned girl ran over her lonely life, her position of disaster, and
her feebleness against a nation of foes. Her mind recovered its
tone, she became proud of herself, matching her feeble endurance
against war, fire, and the girdling waves. She did not flaunt her
new-found hardihood, but used the arm of the feeble, and kept
concealed in the bottom of the lantern, yet proud of her own
endurance and fortitude. She knew that Indian eyes were on the
tower, and that the bushes, seemingly inhabited only by the
cardinal birds, were sheltering her enemies as weU. She peered
out from the crevices of the tower, watching her foes or the pass-
ing sails that, unconscious of her fate, crept along the horizon, and
the sea, in glassy undulations, murmured to the shore.

As noon rode in the dazzling air and the hollow tower still
stood, blackened by the fire, yet seemingly deserted, the Indians,
satisfied by the death-like stUlness, stole from their hiding-places
to examine their work of destruction. First one crept out, with

184 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

his rifle in his hand, winding around different covers until he
reached the base of the tower, and looked up its lofty cone. The
embers still smouldered in its base, and up the darkened trunk he
could see the square hole that led to the platform, and through it
the blue of the sky. Then another savage came out, and another,
and they gathered together and talked long at the base of the
tower, Lou saw them from where she lay, and could have thrown
her lamp-scissors on their heads, but she kept quiet and concealed.
The savages, tired of their siege, and satisfied that they had de-
stroyed the only occupants of the light-house, collected together
the spoils from the dwelling-house, and putting them in their
canoes prepared to start. Lou watched them eagerly, thinking
she might see her uncle a prisoner among them. She saw the
patchwork coverlet from her bed go down wrapped around a
paiuted chief. She saw some of the little mantle ornaments, her
uncle's large brass compass, the family kettles and pewter plates.
She saw many a little article of grace and comfort, endeared to
her by gift or use, passed through brutal hands and stowed in the
canoes lying in the lagoon, but her uncle was not there. The
faint hope that had arisen in her soul faded away, and the mercury
of her heart fell back with a cold chilL

The Indians paddled off fast, to get to the mainland, for the
weather was changing; a cold wind was blowing, and they pre-
ferred the shelter of the main to their exposed camp on the Key.
In a little while their canoes looked like a train of ducks gliding
over the black waters of the bay, and the curling waves came in
from seaward with a hollow sound, booming out at sea, and hissing
on the sands. Far beyond the regular shore-breakers white
spots on the ocean and curling ridges showed where the coral reefs
reared their backs and made maelstroms of boiling waves tangled
with sea-weed and brightened with foam.

The sun set before its time in clouds. The air was all a haze.
The gulls flew about hither and thither, like bits of white paper
tossed on the winds.

" A hard night at sea," said Lou, gathering herself up and look-
ing roimd her citadel. The wind blew up the trap-door with
spatters of the salt water, and found egress through the shattered

BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE. M5

lantern. She drew some planks over the hole, and after a fashion
stopped the broken windows with pieces of boards or glass. The
activity calmed her mind. She saw she was safe if she could hold
out until some one came to her relief, or untU. the store-ship
returned again. There were a bag of crackers and several cans of
lamp-oil safe from the flames stored in the lantern, but they
formed a meagre diet. She trimmed her lamp as was her wont,
from time to time stopping to watch the rising sea or scan the
distant shore, where the Indians had disappeared. The night was
a severe one for coasting vessels. Many a wreck would strew the
Keys by the morrow, now that the good light was destroyed.
Many a brave ship with its light hearts and cabins full of mirth
would " crash together the keel and the mast, to be tossed up aloft
in the glee of the wave.'" A sense of duty and self-sacrifice came
over her mind, strengthening her to action. "The ships shall
have the benefit of the light as long I am here," spoke the girl ;
and so, when everything was made as secure in the lantern as her
means admitted, she touched the wicks with turpentine, and then
with a match. In an instant, like the electric contagion of a
heroic deed, the bright light flashed over the seething main, in a
train of splendour ; and the mariner, who had been watching for
that light from his reeling deck, saw it and blessed it aloud,
though he wist not the enduring heart that made it burn.

Down among the tangled foliage of one of the islands close
bordering the far shore was crouched a band of Indians. Over
the fire cooked their supper. Their canoes, inverted, lay along the
shore. Tlieir blankets and the plunder of their foray were scat-
tered around them. The dense hedge of palmetto with its fan-
leaves, and the matted cane, bent over them, screening them from
the wind, and though on the pulses of the gale they could hear the
sobbing of the distant sea, they were secure from the tempest and
from want, laughing low with humour, smoking their pipes, drying
their leggings and stretching and basking like cats in the genial
warmth and light of the fire. They too saw the bright flash of
the light-house, as it stepped to its place in the heavens like the
star over the cradle of Bethlehem. With their harshly uttered
accents of surprise, they started to their feet and peered out from

866 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

the foliage on the light they thought had darkened for ever. The
whole temper of their meal was changed, and with diverted
glances and low conference they ate their food and glowered at
the star that shone so placidly in the horizon.

Still another party, besides the sailor on the sea and Indians
at their camp, saw that star take its accustomed place in the dark.

Mike was coming down the same lagoon when the far-floating
specks of the Indian canoes caught his eye and drove him to
cover. He hid his little craft in the palmetto bushes on the land,
and squatting beside it with his hound, the two watched the
savages pass and land on the beach opposite to him. There were
three canoes — that was the same number he had been tracking ;
there were no women with the party — that again tallied; here
were nine men, and there had been nine in Tiger Tail's party.
Had they sacked the light and left with the spoils ? This seemed
to be probable. This would be a likely result, in case the two
inhabitants of the Key were attacked in such a manner that they
could return but a single blow before they were overpowered.

" Or it might turn up," quoth Mike, to himself, " that they
treed more 'n they could ketch, and were goin' off for a time on a
make-believe. Cum back, Yowler ; don't show your ugly mug to
them critters ; they know you better 'n their own squaws."

And the old dog obediently resumed his place at his master'y
side, and the couple quietly watched the open sound that had now
become too rough to cross in a canoe.

" No, 'taint it," continued Mike, to himself. " They 've been
here four or five days. They wouldn't have sot there all that time
and done nothing. Wall, wall, time '11 show."

The hunter nibbled his jerked venison, giving a bit now and
then to his dog, who sat with his head in his master's lap. He
saw the screaming gulls come landward, and the darkness gather
like a pavilion. He saw the light of the Indian fire, and the long
reach of Key Biscayne like a log on the wrathful sea, and the
breakers combing over either end.

When the lantern suddenly looked down at him with its
tranquil eye, he sprang to his feet, exclaiming — " God is good !
God is good to sinful critters. No daylight was ever so pretty to

BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 287

a lonesome bein'. Ha ! they 've got a long pull to make yet,
before tliey can blow out that 'ere light."

When the morning came, Tiger Tail with his band came back
to the island to complete his revenge, but Mike had already gone
down along the lee-shore during the night, and was waiting
for him.

The Indians, well knowing who was in the tower, made no
secret of their approach. They landed just back of the house, and
walked around the tower, and in and out the little building where
Lou had so pleasantly lived. They entered the base of the tower,
looking with eager eyes toward the aperture that led to the lantern.
The sea was still rolling in its heavy billows ; as they toppled over
and danced in foam, the impetus of the waters behind them carried
them up to the base of the tower, when they climbed up like a
sheaf of white feathers, and then raced back down the sands to
gain force for another attempt. The outer side of the tower was
in a measure protected by the surf from the savages, and they con-
fined their attack to that side that looked out toward the little
island in the bay.

In the dwelling-house they found implements to aid them in
their schemes. A beam was brought out and laid endwise against
the tower. On this an Indian walked up and drove a spike into
the plaster wall. He then mounted on the spike, the inclination
of the tower permitting him to lean inward and drive another at
such a height he could just reach it with his hand. With his
hatchet he then cut out a stepping-place for his foot, and mounted
on to the second spike, and then another, until he climbed up to
the overhanging ledge of the tower under the lantern.

Thence throwing down his hatchet to his comrades he gradually
extended one hand ^out until he could feel the edge of the over-
hanging stone-work. Then reaching out the other hand to the
stone-work, and dropping his feet from their support, he swung
out pendent from his hands, and gradually raised himself up until
he could see into the lantern.

Lou had been all this time not unconscious of the plots of her
foes, but she did not dare to overlook the eaves to see what they
were intending, and therefore could not tell precisely how the

888 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

blow was to fall. She lay down on the floor and waited, trusting
to the Providence that had kept her thus far to preserve her to
the end.

While thus waiting and listening, her eyes caught sight of the
head of the savage slowly rising to the level of the platform. The
crest of eagle feathers, the circles of black and vermilion, and the
glaring eye, had something in it of so paralysing a horror that she
only gazed as she would have gazed in the dilating pupils of a
lion, without making a motion of defence.

At this instant there came to the ear of the girl the crack of a
rifle. The surf pounded so heavily on the beach, and the wind
rustled so fiercely througli the palmettoes, and wrestled with the
cocoa-nut tree, that the report of the rifle could just be heard by
the crouching girl in the lantern, and the crowd assembled on the
strand thought the shot came from within the light-house.

But the Indian clinging to the tower sprang half his length
above the ledge by the contraction of his arms alone. He writhed
around so that his back turned toward the wall. His eyes searched
the thickets and the little island that lay near by in the bay. He
attempted to sound the war-cry, but the blood bubbled out of his
mouth, and fell pattering on the astonished staring group below.
One hand fell off from its grasp on the stone coping. He tried to
reach it back again, but it wavered in the air half lifted. His film-
ing eye caught sight of the sea-gulls that, drawn by the strange
sight, balanced in the air above him, uttering their plaintive cries.
He saw in them the spirits of the happy Hunting Grounds pro-
mised by his religion. His body swung around in the wind. The
head fell back, and the fingers slipped their hold, then the limp
corpse fell with a thud on the sands.

During the occurrence the savages stood mute looking on
the unaccountable spectacle. When the body fell to the ground
they paused a little, and then crept up to it, leaning over it
and examining it. One pointed out with his finger the little
blue spot under the arm that a rifle bullet makes. A guttural
"ugh!" proclaimed their assent and surprise. They lifted up
their dead comrade and retired to the dwelling-house, setting him
up against its walls, and held a long consultation. They thought

BESIEGING THE LIGHT-HOUSE. 289

the blow that had killed their comrade had come from the occu-
pant of the light-house, and they watched for a chance to return it.

Lou crept up to the edge of the lantern and peered down
through the crevices. She saw the dead warrior, and the council
of the survivors, and their revengeful glances at the tower. She
looked all around for the source of the rifle-shot, but could see no
living or moving thing. The same crash of waves on the one side,
and the same monotonous line of coast and bay on the other. The
little island stood off the shore, its palmetto bushes rustling and
waving in the wind. The cocoa-nut tree bent and twisted, and
far out at sea, past the Babel of noise and the tumbling waves, a
happy white-sailed ship stood immovably on the horizon, passing
from the north to some summer port of the West Indian islands.

A movement among the Indians announced the termination of
the conference and another attempt on the tower. A young man
came out with his rifle hung over his back with a sling. Like his
predecessor, he was naked to the waist, only dressed in his leathern
breeches, and as he walked he drew off his moccasins. Another
Indian climbed up on the roof of the house, and with his rifle
resting on the chimney seemed to keep guard over the lantern.
The others scattered about with their guns in their hands, each
one in a different direction, thus commanding the tower from all
sides. The young man who had first advanced walked up to the
cocoa-tree, and, keeping on the side farthest from the tower, com-
menced to ascend it.

The beleaguered girl saw at a glance the intent of the savage,
for the tufted head of the tree where hung the huge cocoa-nuts
was nearly on a level with the base of the lantern, and lying as
close as possible, she would not be able entirely to hide herself
from his shot.

She saw him mount slowly up, only his arms and legs exposed
to her view, looking like a bronze serpent enlacing the tree. He
had reached the top of the trunk, the long spinous leaves waved
and tossed their bending fans above him and hid him from her
view. He unslung his rifle from his back. There came a luU in
the wind. The cocoa-tree resumed its upright position. Again
sounded the crack of a rifle — ^it came from the islet in the bay —

T

m»

WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

and the young Indian dropped motionless to the sands beneath,
like the fruit of the tree when fully ripe.

There was no doubt in the minds of the savages now as to
whence came the blow. They had heard the report of the rifle,
and each one sprang off to a cover, and the one behind the
chimney on the house-top jumped from his exposed position with a
celerity that showed more fear than courage. In a moment more
there was not a savage to be seen ; only the two dead bodies lay
on the beach.

CHAPTER XXXII.

MIKE AND TIGER-TAIL PLAY CHESS.

" Falslag^. Tliese nine in buckram that I told thee of, began to give me ground.
Prince Henry. 0 monstrous ! "

King Henbt the Fourth.

There are some peculiarities in the Indian character that resemble
those of a cat. The Indian is patient, and untiring in pursuit of
prey, not seizing it by force but by surprise. He never openly
attacks an equal, but waylays him, nor risks a life to take another,
though the taking of that other may have been his sole occupation
for days. The knowledge of these feline qualities of the savage
gives to some backwoodsmen their great success in Indian war-
fare, and a reputation that, like Coeur de Lion's, is handed down
from generation to generation among nations that never heard of
the great Crusader.

Mike was a philosopher in this lore. A saying of his was, " I
know what an Injin 's up to by his paint," meaning that his war-
paint, his trappings, the arms he carried, the decoration of his
dress, or its freshness, would show the errand on which he was bent.

So when the savages fell back from the tower Mike methodi-
cally loaded his -rifle under the cover of the palmetto-bushes that
covered the little islet, measuring the charge of powder in an
alligator's tooth that hung at his girdle, and trimming off the spare
corners of his greased patch after the ball was fitted as carefully
as though he was shooting for a Christmas turkey, and then taking
out his store of venison from his hunting-shirt, made his morning
meal, as assured of a truce as tliough in his cabin. The islet he
was concealed upon was scarcely twenty yards across, and yet so
luxuriantly had the palmetto overgrown it that no single bit of

89S WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

sand could be seen. It looked like a floating garden. Under the
fan-like leaves of the plants the hunter had made a pathway like
an otter from the farther side to the landward edge, and thence he
looked out on the light, a hundred yards across the open water and
the long extended beach.

No boat could appear on the open water, or any approach be
made to the lighthouse, without its being seen from the island.
Mike knew that the Indians would not expose themselves either
in the one way or the other, although they outnumbered him seven
to one. That they were watching him he was perfectly assured,
and he did not give them the opportunity of seeing him by any
unwary motion. He merely stretched out an arm over the deep
muzzled head of his hound, and waited.

From the other side of the narrow straits the Indians frowned
on the island, consulted together, or passed from clump to clump
to examine it the more closely, carefully screening their bodies
from the hunter, though careless as to all observation from the
light-housa Among them, pre-eminent in gracefulness of figure,
was one who wore on his breast a silver medal, like those given to
Indians of distinction by the government of the United States as
a reward, or inducement to fidelity. He had crawled down almost
to the beach, and from behind some broken timber kept a steadfast
watch of the island. Although they had seen neither the marks-
man, his trail, nor any of his signs, there was no doubt as to whom
the island concealed. Mike's character was too well known to
doubt whose daring act had cost the band two of their warriors.
Even had they not known his intimacy at Far Away, or been
warned by the diamond cut, his well-known monogram, that he had
marked on their canoe. Tiger-Tail would have given his rifle and
squaw for the scalp Mike wore, and yet there slept the scout, almost
in sight of him and his band, and they dared not go and take him.

Had a stranger looked on the scene he would have considered
the beach a desolate ruin, never more to be inhabited. The lonely
tower was blackened and marred, the place was deserted, and the
two dead bodies lay on the sand, watched by the vultures that,
with braced wings, crept in slow circles like motes in the upper
air. The storm of the previous night had passed away.

The descending sun sullenly set in the everglades, the wind

MIKE AND TIGER-TAIL PLAY CHESS. 293

lulled, and a gentle rain fell like a mist. The trees and light-house
loomed large in the obscurity, and the white-reefed breakers on
the reefs, spitting their frothy spume into air, could not be dis-
tinguished in the drifting scud that settled down on the sea. A
tangled path would the ocean be for the ships that night.

Lou Jackson shivered on the stone flooring of the tower. The
meagre diet of biscuit, the drink of rain water lapped up from the
hollows of the stone, the excitement and terror, had begun to work
on her system. Her hand trembled, her eye was sunken and
brilliant, and her mind, excited unduly, ran riot with fancy, and
became morbidly sensitive to the slightest indication of passing
events. She knew that some one was near and had fired on the
Indians. Who, or from where, she had not descried. She could
see the bodies of the two Indians lying on the sands, and others
walking about, and she knew she was still a hunted animal, and,
with the instinct of a quarry, hid as best her reason taught her.

But another thought came to her with the closing day and the
darkening sea. She thought of the happy homes on the open main,
and her mind took in the children's laugh, and the lighted cabin
with its music and books, and the foretop with its hanging sailors
prying about for Cape Florida light. Her own mother went to sea
when Lou was yet a child ; whether she went down crushed under
toppling seas, whether captured by pirates, or whether she still
floated over the waves watching for her native harbour, Lou did
not know, only her feverish mind pictured her leaning over the
taffrail, and saw her pale face looking for shore. When night came
down, trailing her black robes heavy with the sea fog, and shutting
out the earth, the vision came stronger still. Her mother's voice
calling to her in the wind to save her — the sea-bird, " lone watcher
of despair," piped to her in plaintive cries for help. It was the
call of the remembered voice. The feeling was so strong she felt
her mother was careering past the reefs ; she saw the ship among
the spume, and started to save her. She arose from her hard bed,
and taking her scissors and oil can, trimmed the great lamps and
wiped dry the reflectors. She touched the wick with spirits, and
then, striking a match, the fair light flashed out to sea, and the light-
keeper again sank to her hiding-place. The darkness had protected
her while trimming the lamps, and when the light came she sank

294 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

so quickly to the floor, the Indians could as easily have shot one
of the bale-fires that sometimes hung about the tower as her. As
if in answer to her act of devotion a moment after, from so far at
sea it looked like a thread of gold, a rocket went up into the air,
parted its trident rays, and dropped again into darkness.

" Mother, mother ! " called the girl, stretching her hands seaward
toward the signal-light of the ship, " I am here " — but only the
billows thundered back their responses, and her wavering mind
flickered between reason and madness.

When the lamp shone out from the tower, the scout, satisfied
of the safety, as he supposed, of Laidlaw and his niece, carefully
backed out from his concealment, and drawing his canoe from
under the rank foliage, noiselessly embarked and disappeared in
the darkness like a wraith. The fog and darkness concealed his
movements from all observation. He knew that with the darkness
he would be attacked by the savages, and that they would leave
unmolested the tower until he was taken or driven from the
neighbourhood. Having the first move, he moved away like a
knight on the chess-board, with a great zig-zag that carried him
far out into the sound, and then back to where he had seen the
Indian canoes lying during the day-time.

This detour cost him much time, moving with the caution that
he thought necessary. When he had floated into one of the narrow
creeks, or ditches, that ran up into the beach, he left his canoe and
the hound, and crept down the shore to where he had seen the
Indians lauding. Their canoes were gone. " Ha, I know'd it," said
Mike to himself, " they 've given over the fawn and are trailin' the
painter now."

He crept on slowly from bush to bush toward the tower, and
soon came out from the grove to the cleared land, and warily
examined on every side for the rear-guard left by the enemy.
There appeared to be none. *' Seven agin one," said Mike, smiling
to himself, " that's hardly fair play."

Then straightening himself up under some heavy foliage he
looked long up into the lantern. There was no sound or motion
from there, only the light burned on tranquilly, faUing aslant on
the heavy waves that crumbled over and humed up the beach,
simmering with the phosphoric fire that made them blue and white.

MIKE AND TIGER-TAIL PLAY CHESS. IMl

" Wall, wall, them folks are roostin' higher 'en turkey cocks.
I wonder ef I could crawl up thar."

He crept along the house and found it sacked, and finally
reached the foot of the tower. Drawing his hunting-knife he
stepped inside, and felt around with his hands. Nothing but ashes
and cinders met his hand. " Burned out the hollow tree," said he,
and then looking up at the little glimmer of light that came down
through the trap-door, he continued, " but didn't smoke out the
coons."

Turning to go, his foot encountered something soft. He leaned
down and felt it with his hands. It felt like a human body, and a
taint of corruption emanated from it. A fearful idea seized the
hunter ; he grasped the body with both hands and carried it to the
door. There was just light enough to see that it was the body of
a man. The hunter felt the head and it was scalped. He stood
up for a moment and drew a long breath, repeating his favourite
prayer of thanksgiving and praise, " God is good, God is good to
sinful creeturs."

A stranger would have wondered what the man could have
found in the mangled corpse to call forth so fervent an ejaculation
of praise and of joy.

Then carrying back the body and placing it where he found it,
he glided back to the bushes and was soon hid in his canoe under
the mangrove roots that laced and interlaced the crumbling banks.

It was growing toward morning when the hunter saw the
Indians returning. He saw the boats glide past without noise,
seeking their former landing. From where he lay hid he counted
the Indians as they passed — there were but six!

" Whare 's that t'other one 1 " questioned he in a whisper. No
one answered his question, and when the boats were out of sight
Mike shot out into the misty water, and the strong long pushes of
his paddle soon swept his canoe around opposite the island he had
lain on during the day. The light from the lantern guided him so
that he lost no time, and when the little islet could be discerned
he halted, backed out a little, and softly let down a stone anchor
attached to a string to keep his canoe from drifting from its place.
Then throwing off his hunting-shirt, leggings and moccasins, and
armed only with his knife, he cautiously let himself down into the

286 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

water and floated toward the island. As he reached it he slowly
drew himself up out of the water and wormed his way under the
palmetto leaves toward the shoreward end of the island. In a
moment more there was a guttural sound from the darkness, and the
dense foliage was violently agitated as if two bodies were struggling
beneath. The noise could not be heard on the shore for the sound
of the surf. But backward and forward on the islet swayed the
heavy leaves of the sea-rocket that reared its red head among the
palfnettoes, and the hound stretched his head shoreward from the
boat and snuffed the air with quivering nostrils, and his eyes
glowed like a lion's. Presently Mike crawled out again from the
foliage, dragging down to the water's edge the pliant body of an
Indian that he left under the leaves, and then he swam out and
drew up his boat to the island and hid it where it had been before,
under the tangled branches.

Then the red flush came out of the sea, and the morning wind,
and like an army with banners, the great sea fog rolled up its
masses and trailed away over the everglades, leaving the tower,
and the beach, and the tumbling seas, rejoicing in the beauty and
the joy of a Sabbath morning.

In a little while after daylight appeared, the warriors of Tiger
Tail's band showed themselves among the coppices on the beach,
carefully beating up every spot that might afford a cover for the
scent they had spent the night in searching for. They went into
the ruined dwelling, and then into the light-house, and away down
to where the point of land dwindled into the surf, and finally, as
if satisfied with their search and assured of the flight of their foe,
they resumed their positions around the tower, and one of them,
laying his rifle down, prepared to make the ascent of the outer wall
to the light that still burned dimly and fitfully in the lantern, like
the morning star in the sky. The forest matador prepared himself
for his task by laying aside his hunting-shirt that the Seminoles
wore, contrary to the usual habit of dress among native tribes. He
took off the necklace of coins with a pendent crescent of silver
that ornamented his breast. He threw aside his wrought belt
with its bullet-pouch and sheath, and putting his knife between
his teeth, with a cat-like bound ran up the timber that stUl leaned
against the tower, and carefully mounted the first of the iron spikes

MIKE AND TIGER-TAIL PLAY CHESS. Wl

driven into the wall. His tight buckskin leggings were fringed
with blue, his naked chest and arms glistened with sweat and the
sunshine, and with the vermilion-coloured painting on his face and
breast he resembled an ocelot climbing a tree. He found the
ascent easy until he reached the top of the tower, where it curved
out to form the little gallery that ran round the lantern. Here he
paused for a moment, adjusting his feet and inserting a hand in a
crevice of the wall to support him, while he reached out with the
other to fix his hold in the ledge, and here he met the bolt of fate
from Mike's rifle, that, with its ringing knell, proclaimed to the
astonished band that not only was their comrade on the tower
death-stricken, but that necessarily the outpost they had left on
the island in the night had first fallen before the same avenger.

Sometimes, when one is hunting squirrels, and has made his
shot at some determined nut-cracker in a stately hickory, he will
see the wounded animal shiver and drop the unopened nut it held
in its teeth, then move on a little and lay flat on the limb, then one
by one its feet relaxing their hold, until it slips from the cradling
bough, still clinging by one paw, and when that loses its grasp,
catching at a lower branch with the other, while on the forest
leaves, with a slow patter, the red drops fall until the still wrest-
ling animal hurtles from its retreat, crashing through the leaves
to the earth beneath, never more to wake the morning with its
shrill bark.

So the Indian on the tower at the crack of the rifle shivered
and dropped his hunting-knife from between his teeth, and reluc-
tantly quitted his hold and fell to the earth below. His comrades
had already fled to cover, and lying there in the sun he clenched
the sand, gave a convulsive sob, and lay still for ever.

An hour passed by when Mike saw from his concealment the
five Indians that remained crossing the sound in their boats. They
had considered it safest to beat their retreat while they knew
precisely where their foe was intrenched. They carried their dead
with them, save the body of the one lying by Mike on the islet,
and fled in the direction they were taking when the light in the
lantern recalled them to complete their revenge.

. The hunter watched their course until they faded into the

u

S08 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH.

distant shore, and then coming out of his retreat crossed over to
the beach. For the first time since his arrival he seemed in a
hurry. When he hailed the tower and called Lou Jackson by
name his voice trembled, and when no answer came down to
his repeated questions, he threw off his coat and climbed up in
the same way so ineffectually tried by the savages.

Lou heard him call, and recognised his voice. She was lying
on the stone floor, and her mind had returned with the soothing
daylight, yet retained some of its wanderings, and she thought she
was dreaming. The vision was so pleasant to her she held her
breath that it might not go away. Other dreams had come to her
and gone during the night, and left her alone to the terrors of death.
She dreaded lest this one might also go. Presently she heard the
brushing of garments against the outer wall, and the breathing of
some one near her, and then she knew the vision was gone, and
dreaded the spectre form she had before seen rising in the self-same
place. She drew back in fear, and closed her eyes to shut out the
coming Medusa head. She heard a sudden bound, as though some-
thing had swung itself upon the gallery, and then in her vision
came the brown face of Mike the hunter, and she heard his low
voice as he stooped over her, saying, as he lifted her in his arms —
" Lou, child, they haint put out the light yet"
She laid her face against his, and another light, warmer and
brighter than any beacon, dawned in her heart.

PEINTBD BY T. AND A. CONSTABLE, PBINTKBS TO HKR MAJESTY,
AT THE EDINBCBGH UNIVEBSITY PRESS.

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NATURAL HISTORY & 8P0RT

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AUTHOR or " WILD HPORTB IN THE HIOHLAKDH"

^-.J

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1882

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