“I do believe we have!” Joe exclaimed. “Yes, I hear the bees now. I didn’t know what that humming could be.”
“Yes-suh, dis shorely is dat Old Dick’s cabin,” Sam assured them. “I remembers now dey said he lived way down in dis yere River Island.”
“Why on earth didn’t you tell me sooner? I asked you about it long ago!” cried Joe.
“Didn’t remember ’bout it dat time. But, Mr. Joe, we don’t wanter fool with no bees now, not whilst we’re huntin’ dat rosin.”
“The bees might be worth as much as the rosin,” said Bob. “What do you think they’d be worth if we had them up North, Sam?”
“Dunno what they’d be worth up Norf,” said the negro, “but down yere where dey is, dey’re worth jes’ mighty near nothin’.”
“I guess that’s so,” Bob admitted, “but if they were in Canada I’d expect to make a thousand dollars out of them next summer.”
Sam laughed loudly, taking this to be a joke.
“The question is, how many gums are there?” said Joe.
It was impossible to tell. The blackberry-canes screened the ancient apiary, and only dimly could be seen the shapes of the gums, swamped by the undergrowth. Some of the gums were doubtless dead, but from the numbers of homing bees in the air Bob declared that there must be dozens of live ones, at any rate.
“We’ll have to clear away all this jungle before we can tell anything about it really,” he continued. “We’ll have to have something to cut the blackberries away, and we’d need veils and smoke, too. These wild bees are going to be cross, sure.”
He looked about as if he thought of starting operations immediately, but at that very moment sounded, faint and far off through the trees, the report of a gunshot.
Sam stiffened up to attention like some alarmed wild animal, rolling his eyes in the direction of the sound. Both the white boys stood for a full half-minute, intently listening, but no other shot came.
“That was our fellows!” Joe muttered.
“But it was far away,” said his cousin. “All of a mile, I should think.”
“Yes, and away over past the old channel,” said Joe. “Down in the very district we were exploring. If we’d kept on, we might have run right into them. Well, we can’t do anything to-night; and they’re likely tied up for the night too. I expect that was Blue Bob shooting a wild duck for supper.”
The shot had put the bees out of their heads, recalling the more immediate purpose. It was getting too late to investigate the bees, too; they were ceasing to fly, and a dull, steady roar resounded from the recesses of the blackberries, telling Bob’s experienced ear that there were strong colonies in there that had had a good day.
The sun was shining red behind the trees now, and in an hour it would be dark. The question of a camp-ground was an urgent one, and they went in to look at the possibilities of the old cabin. Bob stopped just inside, sniffing.
“Smells like a beehive in here,” he remarked.
There was indeed an unmistakable odor of honey and beeswax in the air, and with a cry of astonishment Sam pointed at a recess between the wall and the roof. There hung a great mass of brown honeycomb, covered with crawling bees.
They had an exit to the open air through a wide crack in the wall, and two or three of them took wing and buzzed threateningly about the intruders. Sam hastily retreated.
“A swarm must have hived itself here and built its combs right on the boards,” said Bob, examining the mass cautiously. “By the dark color of the wax, they’ve been here more than one season. When Old Dick moved out the bees moved in, it seems. I suppose they’d stand the winter all right in this country, but they wouldn’t last long in such a place up North.”
“Well, we can’t sleep in this shanty, anyway,” said Joe with decision. “I draw the line at camping in a beehive.”
“They might bother us some, and very likely there are more nests like this in the place,” Bob admitted. “We’ll find a place outside.”
“We’ll go up by the spring,” said Joe. “Sam, hunt up some dry wood and get a fire going. We’ll unpack the grub.”
There was a certain risk in lighting a fire, but Sam built it in a little hollow on the side of the slope, and screened it further with branches, so that the glow could not be seen far. Bob had brought a quantity of raw pork—the comestible that came nearest to his hand at his hurried departure—and Sam sliced it and set the slices up on little sticks to broil. He also made a short circuit of the camp and gathered a quantity of pepper-grass for salad; they had still some cornbread and sweet-potatoes, and there was plenty of good spring water. It was not a bad meal, they all agreed; and being extremely tired, they all stretched themselves on the soft ground after eating.
Lying at a little distance, Sam crooned some wordless African melody half under his breath. Bob talked with his cousin for a few minutes, and then began to breathe heavily, but Joe lay sleepless for a long time. It was a hot, close night, and even on the high ground the mosquitoes hummed in multitudes. He shuddered to think what their numbers must be down in the bayous. He wondered if the river pirates became eventually immune to their stings.
He got up and went quietly to the top of the ridge to see if there was any distant camp-fire visible. Not a spark was in sight, and a white mist lay low and thick over the swamps. Somewhere far away he heard the sudden, sharp shriek of a wildcat. Owls hooted hollowly; bats flitted silently about; the air was full of winged insects, whizzing, humming, buzzing. He felt less uneasiness about the proximity of the houseboat, for the darkness and the river fog would conceal one party as well as the other. He returned to the dying fire and lay down again, hugging his rifle. He wondered for some time if one of them should not stand guard, but while he was considering it he fell asleep.
He wakened again several times during that night; but at last he opened his eyes to find the east reddening, and the earth silvery with the dew. Mist lay over the swamps, and a belt of mist marked the course of the river. Bob and Sam were still asleep, but they awoke at his movements, and the negro rebuilt the fire. It was desirable to have the fire out before the mist cleared to make smoke visible, and they hastened to broil the rest of the pork, and also roasted the eggs for an emergency luncheon.
“How about the bees?” said Bob when they had finished breakfast and put out the fire.
“Dis no time to fool with no bees!” Sam expostulated; but the boys walked down to look at the cabin again. It was too early for the bees to be flying much; only an occasional insect shot out from the thicket, heading toward the swamps where the titi was still blooming. Passing around the cabin, they pushed through the thickets of gallberry and scrub-oak, and presently found themselves close to a broad, deep bayou, flowing with a tolerably strong current between firm banks.
“I declare!” Joe exclaimed. “This must lead out to the river, and it can’t be more than a few hundred yards, either. I wish we had time to find out.”
“If we only had the canoe here!” Bob regretted. “Well, we’ll know how to find the place again.”
“If we ever come back.”
“Oh, I’m coming back,” declared Bob with determination. “I’m going to have those bees, in spite of all the river pirates.”
The swamps were too dense to think of exploring the bayou to its mouth, and it would not have been worth while, for there was no doubt that it must flow into the main channel of the Alabama. After fixing the landmarks in their memory, they went back, picked up their supplies, and started for the canoe again, to continue the hunt, with a much more definite idea now in what direction to steer.
Going down from the ridges they found the night fog still lying thickly, and their back trail was not so easy to pick out through the dense, wet undergrowth. They lost it; they found it again in soft ground, but they had to retrace their steps many times, and it must have been a full hour before they found their last nights’ footprints sunk deep in the sloughs of the lower ground, and came to the spot where they had left the canoe. Sam, who was leading as tracker, stopped with a cry of dismay.
“De canoe’s gone!”
“What?” Joe exclaimed. “Impossible! This can’t be the right place.”
“Yes-suh, dis de right place, shore ’nough. Here our tracks. See, yander’s de big log where de moccasin slided out. Dere’s de place where you sunk in.”
“Yes, here’s where we left it,” said Bob. “But look here, Joe! What are these tracks? None of us made these!”
“Dat’s shorely so. Somebody’s done come an’ stole our boat!” Sam exclaimed.
There were indeed fresh tracks in the wet ground, tracks fresher than the ones they had made last night. They were deep marks of heavy boots, stamped deep into the mud, so confused that it was hard to say if more than one person had made them. But they had been made by none of the boys’ party, and it was certain that some one had come through the swamp, cut the canoe loose, and paddled away in it.
“We’re in a pickle now!” Bob ejaculated. “What are we going to do?”
“I dunno,” said Sam. “Course, with your guns an’ my fish-hooks we kin live on dis island long’s we like—live good too, yes-suh. Or we might mebbe swim de old channel an’ git ’cross to where somebody lives.”
“Can’t we trail that thief’s back track and see where he came from?” Joe suggested.
“Good idea!” cried Bob. “He must have come from his camp, or from the houseboat, that’s certain. Very likely he’s paddled back there. Maybe we’ll find the rosin there, too.”
“Mebbe find more’n we kin swaller,” said Sam; but they started at once to follow the trail back. The marks were plain enough, for the men—there certainly appeared more than one—had tramped recklessly through mud and water. The boys followed them through a swamp, across a creek, over a dry ridge, and then down again into a partly overflowed area, where the water stood among dead timber, tall grass, and piles of rotting logs.
As they came up a moccasin squirmed away into the mud. It looked a dangerous place in more ways than one. Joe almost flinched as he remembered his former experience with the bog, but they equipped themselves with stout sticks to feel the way or kill snakes, and waded in. The water proved scarcely knee-deep after all, and they were nearly across when Bob stepped unexpectedly into a deep hole of mud and water.
He might have gone down almost out of sight, if Sam had not clutched him by the collar and dragged him forward. Joe also seized his arm; it was hard to free his feet from the tenacious mud, but Bob at last got his arms around a cypress knee, and by pulling all at once they hauled him free.
They got across the bog without further mishap, but Bob was scared and shaken, and he had to sit down to recover himself. He was covered with mud; his rifle was mired also, and he had to take it to pieces, wipe the action dry, and fill the magazine afresh.
Then, when they were ready to go on, they found that they had lost the trail. Nowhere on that side of the bog could they find any tracks.
In hopes of striking the trail again they decided to fetch a circle all around the morass, but this device failed. Perhaps the tracks of the thieves had disappeared in the half-liquid mud. Perhaps the men had taken pains to pick their way on pieces of fallen timber. They struck a still wider circle without any more success, and they had to steer so crooked a course through the swamp that when they thought themselves back at the starting-point they failed to find the flowed tract they had crossed.
“Lost—there’s no doubt about it!” exclaimed Bob, halting.
All the swamp looked queer and strange about them. They had not been at that place before. The trees were so dense that they could hardly see the sky, but the sun looked somewhat out of place.
“I dunno where we is,” said Sam. “But I knows where de old channel is. I kin go straight there, yes-suh.”
They debated for some minutes, and then started to find the old channel to make a fresh start. Sam started with a great deal of confidence, but within fifteen minutes they came to a slough of what seemed bottomless mud. Stiff-leaved palmetto grew on hard spots, mixed with small, dense titi shrubbery, and red-tipped cypress knees thrust themselves out of the morass, like strange fungi. Half-sunken fallen trees lay all over the surface, offering a possible way across; and for a hundred yards they scrambled through this nauseous jungle, clinging to the shrubs and jumping from log to log. But the farther they went the worse the traveling seemed to get.
“We’ll have to give this up,” said Joe at last. “Let’s try to get back to high ground and get our bearings again.”
But it was as hard now to get back as to go forward, and they were so shut in by the swamp that they had very little idea in which direction the high ground lay. Almost at random, they made an angle to the right. They no longer knew whether they were going toward the river or away from it. The swamp had them trapped. Mosquitoes hung about them in clouds. They were wet and mud-covered and scratched with thorns, and the continual sudden dart and wriggle of a moccasin snake every few minutes kept them in a state of nervous tension. A moccasin’s bite is not usually fatal, but it is very sickening, and it would have been no joke for one of them to have been bitten while they were snared in the labyrinth. They had almost reached the point of exhaustion and despair when they came to a really dry spot, like an island in the swamp, grown over thickly with palmetto; and here they stopped to rest.
The sun still appeared somewhat out of place in the heavens, but from its height the day must be getting toward noon. Sam volunteered to climb the highest tree within reach and reconnoiter. He came down reporting that the ground seemed to rise not very far away to the left, and they started forward again. The maze of marsh and jungle continued. Twice they had to wade thigh-deep across bayous—or perhaps the same bayou—and they were all losing faith in the new course, when they came out upon the shore of a deep stream perhaps twenty feet wide, heavily overshadowed with trees.
“Surely this isn’t the channel,” said Bob.
“Too narrow, I think,” said Joe doubtfully. There was a fairly strong current running, however, which indicated that the stream at any rate communicated with one of the great channels. There was comparatively solid ground along the shore, and they walked up the stream a little way, when Sam suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.
“Mr. Joe!” he whispered, “I smells rosin!”
They all stopped and sniffed also, but neither Bob nor Joe could detect anything. Sam was positive, however, and they cautiously proceeded a few yards farther. Here a heavy screen of rattan vine and honeysuckle drooped so heavily over the bayou that they could see no farther.
“Now you-all smell!” said Sam triumphantly.
This time Joe did detect the unmistakable odor of scorched rosin, the pervading odor at the turpentine-camp. It seemed to come from right ahead.
“If it’s rosin, it’s likely to be the rosin thieves too,” Bob muttered.
But there was no sound, except the gurgle of the water flowing under the drooping creepers that dipped in the current. Directly before them the tangle of jungle on the shore was impassable. With extreme caution, they made a little detour, crawling through the green thicket. The smell of burnt rosin was sharp enough now; then Joe, who was leading, suddenly held back a warning hand, and dropped flat.
For a good half-minute they all lay motionless; then Bob crawled up beside Joe to look. He was at the edge of the thicket. Beyond them lay the black houseboat, tied to a tree in the bayou, half-concealed by the streamers of vines and moss that swung from all the branches overhead. There was a little space of high and dry shore beside it, and two heavy planks ran as a gangway from the boat to the land. On the shore was a great iron kettle set up on stones, with dead ashes under it. Several barrels stood about; the ground was covered with lumps of rosin and rosin-soaked burlap cloths, and the smell was strong enough now.
“We’ve landed ’em!” Bob whispered in the ear of his cousin, who nodded with a grin.
Nothing was to be seen of the pirates. The boys lay hidden for a long time, watching and listening, but nothing stirred about the place. The houseboat swung and strained at her mooring-rope; the current gurgled along her side. If her crew were aboard they must be all asleep.
“I’m going to find out, anyway!” Joe whispered. “If they’re there we must jump on ’em quick, and hold ’em up before they know where they are. But I believe they’re all away.”
He got up and stepped boldly out of the shrubbery, carrying his cocked rifle ready. Bob came after him, and Sam, with a heavy club, followed them both. Joe walked straight to the gangplank and stepped aboard.
The cabin of the boat was cut in two by a sort of hallway, or “dog-trot,” running right across it amidships, and the plank led up to this. Their first step on the gangplank showed something that had before been invisible—a barrel standing in this corridor, whose smears and stains of rosin indicated its contents.
From the “dog-trot” a half-opened door was on each side. Joe put his head into the stern cabin. No one was there. The small room was fitted with four bunks against the wall, filled with dry Spanish moss and some ragged blankets. There were a rough wooden chair, a plank table. A half-full box of shotgun shells, a broken bottle, and a cob pipe lay on the floor. Adjoining this room was a tiny apartment evidently used as a kitchen when weather did not permit of cooking at a fire ashore, for there were a small stove, scattered lumps of wood, a few cooking-utensils, a sack of meal, a suspended ham.
It was pretty certain now that no one was aboard the boat, and the boys looked into the forward cabin with less uneasiness. But at the first glance Bob uttered a loud exclamation. There were four barrels in the room, which, though headed up, showed the hardened rosin oozing from the cracks between the staves.
“Told you-all we’d shore find it!” exclaimed Sam, exultantly. “All dug out an’ melted an’ strained an’ barreled up for us. We shore oughter be ’bleeged to Mr. Blue Bob!”
“Yes, but this isn’t anything,” said Joe. “Where’s the rest of it—the thousand barrels you said we’d get?”
“I declare, I dunno!” Sam confessed. “Mr. Joe, you don’t reckon dey’ve done shipped it to Mobile an’ sold it?”
“I’m afraid that’s just what they’ve done, Sam,” replied Joe, regretfully. “But let’s look ashore a little.”
They landed and examined the impromptu refinery. The impure rosin had evidently been melted up in the big kettle, and there were a big, rough trough, caked with the brown stuff, a wire-cloth strainer, and a quantity of burlap. All these things showed indications of much use.
The barrels on the shore were empty, with the exception of one that was about a third full of hard strained rosin. The kettle was quite cold; everything looked as if it was some time since operations had ceased.
“Afraid we’ve come in just at the end of the job,” said Joe sadly. “Likely it’s as Sam said, they’ve been melting and barreling up all this rosin, and sending it down to Mobile as soon as they had a load. We’re too late.”
Sam groaned loudly at this decision.
“Let’s have another look aboard,” Bob suggested. “Isn’t there a hold or something underneath the deck?”
They went over to the houseboat again very carefully without making any fresh discoveries beyond two rosin-caked shovels, doubtless used in clearing out the “mine.” If there was a space underneath the deck they could not find any way of getting into it; and, in fact, Joe knew that these houseboats seldom have any storage space in the hull.
Giving up hope at last, they paused on the stern deck, where they had finished their search.
“Might as well give it up, I reckon,” said Joe. “But how we’ll get home without our canoe is more than I know.”
“S’posin we turn dis boat loose,” Sam proposed. “We could float right down to Dixie Landin’, an’ dese few barrels of rosin is shorely worth somethin’.”
“No, we don’t want to steal their boat, even if they did steal our canoe,” returned Joe. “And these four barrels of rosin aren’t worth the trouble of—”
He stopped short as a distant sound struck his ear. They had all heard it at once—a dip and splash of paddles from far up the bayou above them.
“Hear dat? Dat’s Blue Bob a-comin’, Mr. Joe!” said Sam in a loud, scared whisper. “Cut dis boat loose, quick!”
“Get ashore!” exclaimed Bob. “They’ll catch us here.”
“Back into the cabin, till we see who they are!” Joe ejaculated.
They stood still, amid these contradictory orders, undecided. The paddles sounded closer, around a bend of the channel. Joe dragged his cousin back inside the cabin door. He had a sudden impulse to rush ashore after all. Then Sam, almost gray with fright, rushed at the mooring-rope and began to saw at it with his knife.
“Hold on, Sam! Stop that!” Joe hissed at him, but the negro had severed the strands. The last of them parted with a jerk, and the released houseboat instantly swung out. The gangplanks splashed into the water. Without any control, the boat reeled across the bayou, half grounded, swung off again and smashed through the curtain of vines that had shielded her anchorage. There was a ripping and crushing of twigs and leaves, and then the branches closed in behind them. They were through and out of sight of pursuit.