And taking a strand of the long moss he sc.r.a.ped the greenish gray outside off, leaving a black strand like a horse hair.

"There," he said, "Sam told me once that it's the soft outside part that holds water, while the inside is dry almost always. Now why can't we sc.r.a.pe the outside off of a great deal of moss and have the dry inside ready for Sam to sleep on when he comes back? It'll surprise him and he'll be glad too. He never cared for himself much, but he'll be glad to see that we care for him."

The plan pleased little Judie wonderfully well. She was always delighted to do anything for Sam, and now that she was uneasy about him, and kept thinking of him as dead or dying or sick somewhere, and could hardly keep her tears back, nothing could have pleased her so well as to work for his comfort. Tom and Joe went out after dark, and brought in a large lot of moss, and the next morning all went to work, Judie made very little progress with her sc.r.a.ping, but she kept steadily at it, and it served its purpose in making her less miserable than before. The days pa.s.sed more rapidly to Tom and Joe, too, and the whole party grew more cheerful under the influence of work. It was now ten days, however, since Sam had gone away, and his non-appearance was really alarming.

When work stopped for the night, the thought of Sam was uppermost in the minds of all three, and for the first time they talked freely of the matter.

Tom was disposed to cheer himself by cheering the others, and so he explained:

"It's about forty-five miles to where Fort Mims stood, so Sam told me, and he said he might go nearly that far, if he didn't see Indians. If he went only thirty-five miles it would take him four or five nights; say five nights, and five more to come back would make ten. But may be his foot got sore, or Indians got in the way, and so it has taken him longer than he thought. I don't think we ought to be uneasy even if he should stay two weeks in all."

That was all very well as a theory, and true enough too, but Tom was uneasy, nevertheless, and so were Joe and Judie. The worst of it was that none of them could hide the fact. The eleventh day came, and with it came an excitement. Tom was the first to wake, and without waiting for the others, he proceeded to make his breakfast off an ear of raw corn, which was almost hard enough to grind, and altogether too hard to be eaten as green corn at any well-regulated table. Tom ate it, however, having nothing better, and when Judie waked he offered her a softer ear, which he had carefully selected and laid aside. Judie tried but couldn't eat it. She was faint and almost sick, and found it impossible to swallow the raw corn.

"Poor little sister," said Tom. "If I had any fire I'd roast a potato for you to-day anyhow, but the fire's all out and I can't."

"Mas' Tom!" said Joe, "I'll tell you what! I dun see a heap o' fox grapes down dar by de creek, an' I'se gwine to git some for Miss Judie quicker'n you kin count ten." And so saying Joe ran first to the look-out, to make a preliminary reconnoissance. The boys rarely ever left the trees during the daytime, and when they did so they were careful first to satisfy themselves that there were no savages in the neighborhood. The creek, of which Joe spoke, emptied into the river a short distance above the root fortress, and, along its banks was a dense ma.s.s of undergrowth, which skirted the river below, all the way to the drift-pile. Joe had seen the grapes from the look-out, and had planned an excursion after them. He could follow the river bank to the creek, keeping in the bushes and moving cautiously, and if any Indians should appear he could retreat in the same way, without discovery. Tired of raw corn and sweet potatoes, the grapes had tempted him sorely, and it only needed Judie's longing for a change of diet to induce him, to make this foraging expedition.

CHAPTER X.

FIGHTING FIRE.

Before proceeding to relate the incidents which follows, it is necessary to explain a little more fully the arrangement of the root fortress and the drift-pile. The two trees, which were enormous ones, had originally grown as close together as they could, and their roots had interlaced beneath the soil. The sand in which they grew having been gradually washed away, their great ma.s.ses of roots were exposed for about fifteen feet below the original level of the soil and as they spread out they made two circles (one running a foot or two into the other), of about twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring freshets, and as it had lodged against the trees it lay only on their upper side, where it was piled up into a perpendicular wall nearly twenty feet high. Thence it stretched away up the river for a hundred yards or more. Now the only entrance big enough to admit a person into the root fortress was on the side next to the drift, and it opened only into an alley-way which the boys had partly found and partly made through the drift. This alley-way led past several little aisles running out to the right and left for a dozen yards or so,--aisles formed by the irregular piling of the logs on top of each other. In the fortress there were a dozen places at least, where the big roots were sufficiently wide apart to admit a grown man easily, but the boys had left the smaller roots which covered these gaps undisturbed, and cut only the one entrance. After cutting that on the side next the hammock, they had moved some of the drift so as to close up the sides of the entrance and make it open only into the alley-way. All this had been done under Sam's supervision, and as a result of his prudence and fore thought.

Joe had been gone nearly half an hour when he burst suddenly into the chamber in which the others were. His hands were full of the wild grapes, but of those he was evidently not thinking. His face was of that peculiar hue which black faces a.s.sume when if they were white faces they would grow pale; and his lips, usually red, were of an ashy brown. His eyes were of the shape of saucers, and seemed not much smaller. He gasped for breath in an alarming way, and Tom saw that the poor fellow was frightened almost out of his wits.

"What's the matter Joe? Tell me quick," said the younger boy.

"O Mas' Tom, we'se dun surrounded. I was jest a-gittin' de grapes when I seed a'most a thousand Injuns a-comin,' an' I dun run my life a'most out a-gittin' here. Dey did not see me, but I seed dem, an' I tell you dey's de biggest Injuns you ever did see. I 'clar dey's mos' as tall as trees."

"How many of 'em are there, Joe?" asked Tom standing up.

"I couldn't count 'em e'zactly, Mas' Tom, but I reckon dey's not less'n a thousand of 'em,--maybe two thousan' for all I know."

"Where are they, and what were they doing?" asked Tom; but before Joe could answer, the voices of the Indians themselves indicated their whereabouts, and Tom discerned that they were disagreeably close to his elbow.

Seeking a place in which to cook their breakfast the savages had selected the corner formed by the root fortress and the drift-pile as a proper place for a fire, and were now breaking up sticks with which to start one. They were just outside the fortress, and either of the boys could have touched them by pushing his arm out between the roots. Tom motioned the others to keep absolutely silent, and going a little way into the hammock, through the pa.s.sage way he managed to find a place from which he could see the intruders. He soon discovered that Joe's account of them was slightly exaggerated in two important particulars.

They were only ordinary Indians, neither larger nor smaller than grown Indians usually are, and instead of a thousand there were but three of them in all.

But three fully grown Indians were enough to justify a good deal of apprehension, and if they should discover the party in the tree, Tom knew very well they would make very short work of their destruction. He crept back to the tree therefore and again cautioned Joe and Judie, in a whisper, not to speak or make any other noise. Then he returned to his place of observation and watched the Indians. They soon made a crackling fire and proceeded to broil some game they had killed, this and the eating which followed occupied perhaps an hour, during which Tom made frequent journeys to the little room, nominally for the purpose of cautioning the others to keep still, but really to work off some portion of his uneasiness, which was growing with every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at once. He was afraid, too, that some slight noise inside the fortress might catch the uncommonly quick ears of the Indians.

All these were dangers well worth considering; but now a new, and much greater danger began to show itself. The drift was largely composed of light wood, and from his hiding-place Tom could see that the fire built by the trees had communicated itself to the hammock, and that the flames were rapidly spreading. The danger now was that the fire would burn into the alley-way and so cut off retreat from the fortress, and if so those inside would be burned alive. Quitting his place of observation therefore, he established himself as a sentry in the alley-way, having determined, if the fire should approach the pa.s.sage, to take Joe and Judie out of the fortress and into one of the aisles near the farther edge of the drift-pile. Having begun to plan he saw all the possibilities of the case and tried to provide for all. He knew that if the wind should drive the flames into the drift the whole pile would be destroyed in a very brief time, but in that case, he reasoned, the black smoke of the resinous pine would make it impossible for the Indians to see very far in that direction, and so he resolved, if the worst came, to lead his companions out of the upper end of the hammock, into the bushes and so escape to the creek, where he hoped to find a hiding-place of some sort. He had got this far in his planning when he heard Judie cough, and stepping quickly into the room found it full of smoke. Seeing that to stay there was to suffocate, he beckoned his companions to follow, and stepping lightly they pa.s.sed down the alley-way and sat down in one of the aisles, behind a great sycamore log which ran across the pile. Peeping over this log Tom saw the three Indians shoulder their guns and walk away. He ran at once to the look-out, and though the smoke almost blinded him he observed all their movements. He wanted them away speedily, so that he and Joe might extinguish the fire if that were still possible, and as every minute served to increase the difficulty and lessen the chances of doing so, the loitering of the savages seemed interminable. They stopped first to drink at the spring. Then they amused themselves by throwing sticks, and pebbles and sh.e.l.ls at a turtle which was sunning himself on a log in the stream. Then they stopped to examine the track of a turkey or of some animal, in the sand, and it really seemed to Tom that they did not mean to go away at all.

All things have an end, however, and even the stay of disagreeable visitors cannot last always. The three savages finally disappeared a mile down the river, and Tom, after scanning the surrounding country and satisfying himself that there were no others in the immediate neighborhood, hurried to the place where Joe and Judie were hidden.

"They've gone at least," he said, "and now Joe, we must put this fire out, if we can. Judie, you stay here, and if you find the smoke bothers you, go further down the alley that way. Don't try to stay if the smoke comes."

How to stop the fire was the problem. Fortunately there was very little wind, and what there was blew chiefly from up the river. The flames had spread over a considerable s.p.a.ce, however, and the boys had hardly anything with which to work.

They carried water in their hats from the river, which was only a few yards away, now that it had risen to the bottom of the second bank.

This was altogether too slow a way of working, however, and the fire was visibly gaining on the boys. But, slow as this process was, it served to teach Tom a lesson or rather to remind him of one he had learned and forgotten. He found that a hatful of water thrown on the bottom of the fire did more good than two hatfuls thrown on top, and he remembered that when the soot in the chimney at home caught fire once, his father would not allow anybody to pour water down the chimney, but stood himself by the fireplace throwing a little water, not up the chimney but, on the blazing fire below. This water, turned into steam, went up the chimney and soon extinguished the fire there. In the same way Tom now discovered that when he threw a hatful of water on a burning log at the bottom of the pile it had a perceptible effect all the way to the top. Thinking of the chimney fire he remembered also that his father had said at the time that a plank laid over the top of a burning chimney, or a screen fastened over the fireplace would stop the burning of the soot by stopping the air, and so smothering the fire. This suggested a new plan of operations for present use. The long gray moss grew in great abundance all around the place, and gathering this he dipped it in the river and then threw it on top of the fire. A bunch of the moss held greatly more water than his hat, and it served also to smother the fire.

He and Joe repeated the operation, putting some of the moss on top and some against the sides of the burning pile of timber. The steam from these perceptibly checked the burning, and an hour's work covered the fire almost entirely up, so far at least as the exposed side of the drift-pile was concerned. But just as they were disposed to congratulate themselves upon their success in subduing the flames, they discovered that while they had been smothering the fire on one side it had been burning freely further in. The openness of the hammock gave free access to the air from the other side, and just beyond the line of moss they saw a blaze licking its tongue out from below. They were tired out, already, and this added discouragement to weariness. Little Judie, although the boys had urged her to remain quiet, had been hard at work bringing moss to them, insisting upon her right to work as well as they. She had discovered too that the sand, just below the surface was wet, and that this served almost as good a purpose as the moss itself when thrown on the fire. The poor little girl was utterly tired out at last, however, and when the fire seemed to be subsiding, she had yielded to Tom's entreaties, and going into the drift-pile had laid down to rest. Now that all their work promised to accomplish nothing, the boys were vexed with themselves for having permitted the frail little girl to wear herself out in so fruitless a task. This, with their disappointment, served to make them utterly wretched.

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE WILDERNESS.

When Sam went over the cliff, he thought of poor little Judie, and Tom and Joe, and, for their sake more than his own, took every precaution which might give him an additional chance of life. He knew that he should fall into the creek, and that the blow, when he struck the water, would be a very severe one. If he could keep his horse under him all the way, however, the animal and not he would be the chief sufferer. Fearing that the horse would hesitate at the cliff, blunder, and throw him a somersault, perhaps falling on him, he held the beast's head high and urged him forward at full speed, and so, as we have seen, the horse's back was almost level as he leaped from the top of the bank. Sam had no saddle or stirrups in which to become entangled, and as the horse struck the water fairly, the blow was not nearly so severe a shock to the boy as he had expected. Both went under the water, but rising again in a moment Sam slid off the animal's back, to give the poor fellow a better chance of escape by swimming. Striking out boldly Sam reached the bank and crawling up looked for his horse. The poor beast was evidently too severely hurt to swim with ease, and so he drifted away, Sam running along the bank, calling and encouraging him. He struck the sh.o.r.e at last, and Sam examining him found that while he was stunned and bruised no serious damage had been done.

"Poor fellow," he said, stroking the colt's head, "you cannot serve me any further in this swamp, but you saved my life and I'm glad you're not killed anyhow."

Then taking the bridle off, he turned the horse loose, to graze and browse at will in the dense growth of the swamp.

Sam was feverish still, and very weak, but his anxiety to reach the root fortress again was an overmastering impulse. He had lost his bearings in the mad chase, and the sky was so overcast that he could make no use of the sun as a guide. He knew that his course lay nearly northward, and it was his purpose to travel only at night, as before; but unless he could get out of the swamp during the day, and ascertain in what direction he must travel, he could not go on during the night at all. If it should clear off by evening, the pole star would show him his way, but there was no promise of a clearing away. He must find the course during the day, and he set about it at once, after examining his salt bag which he had put around his body, under his shirt, on the night on which he got it. The salt was saturated with water, and Sam's first impulse was to wring it out; but it occurred to him that the water he should squeeze out of it would be salt water, or in other words, that some of the salt would come away with the water and be lost. If he let it dry gradually, however, all the salt would remain, and he determined to let it dry, carrying it, with that in view, over his shoulder. How to find out which way was north was the question, and it puzzled him sorely. He knew the general course of all the creeks in that part of the country, but as they wind about in every direction it was impossible to get any information out of the one he was near. It was his habit, when he wanted to solve any difficult problem, to sit down and think of it in all its bearings, and a very excellent habit that is too. Nearly half our blunders, all through life, might be avoided if we would think carefully before acting; and nearly half the useful things we know, have been found out simply by somebody's thinking. Sam sat down on a log and said to himself;--

"Now if there is anything in the woods which always or nearly always points in any one direction, I can find it by looking. Then I can find out which way it points, by remembering how the woods look around home, where I know the points of the compa.s.s."

This was an excellent beginning, and Sam straightway began looking for something which should guide him. A patch of sunflowers grew by the creek, and he had heard that they always turn their heads to the sun, but upon examining them, he found some of them turned one way and some another, so that they were of no use whatever. Presently he observed some beautiful green moss growing at the root and for a good many feet up the trunk of a tree, and looking around he saw that the moss at the roots of all the trees grew only or chiefly on one side, and that the covered side was the same with all of them. Here was a uniform habit of vegetation, and Sam knew enough to know that such a habit was not likely to be confined to one particular locality. He began thinking of the woods around home, and especially of a clump of trees in the yard at his father's house, the moss-covered roots of which were Judie's favorite playing place. This moss, he remembered, was nearly all on the north side of the trees, whose southern roots were bare. All the other mossy trees he could remember taught the same lesson, namely, that the green moss which grows around the bases of trees, grows chiefly on the north side. He had no doubt that the law was a general, if not a universal one, and as the mossy trees were very numerous, he had a guide easily followed. Striking out northwardly, therefore, he travelled several miles before stopping, coming then to a suitable resting-place he lay down to gather strength for the night's journey. When night came, however, it had been raining for some hours, and in addition to the darkness of a rainy night in a swamp, Sam found the soft alluvial soil so saturated with water that he sank almost to his knees at every step.

Finding it impossible to go on he stopped again on the highest and dryest piece of ground he could find, and prepared to spend the night there. Cutting down a number of thick-leaved bushes he arranged them against a fallen tree, as a shelter.

He had been lying down but a short time when he discovered that pretty nearly all the rain that fell on his bush roof found its way through in great drops from the leaves. It then occurred to him that he had erred in placing the bushes with their tops up. This indeed, made them mere catchers and conductors of water to the s.p.a.ce they covered. Turning them, so that their drooping leaves pointed downward, he was not long in making a really comfortable shelter, through which very little water could find its way.

Towards morning he waked and found himself lying in water. He could see nothing in the darkness, but supposed that the rain had in some way made a pool where he was lying. On coming out from his tent, however, he found matters much worse than he had thought. In whatever direction he looked he could see nothing but water, and he knew what the trouble was.

The rain had been very heavy all along the creek, and the stream having very little fall had spread out over the whole surface of the swamp.

There was nothing to do except wait for daylight, and he climbed upon the trunk of the fallen tree to get out of the water while he waited.

The rain had ceased to fall, and he had therefore no reason to fear any great increase in the depth of the surrounding water.

When morning came, Sam found that he was not the only occupant of the fallen tree. A fine large opossum had taken refuge in one of the upper branches, and Sam used his rifle to good purpose in bringing him down.

He was still suffering somewhat from the fever, though the excitement of his recent ride had done much to relieve him, as anything which occupies one's mind is apt to do in fevers of that sort, but he was nevertheless extremely hungry, not having tasted food of any kind for nearly two days, and having previously lived for a long time, as we know, upon an insufficient and not very wholesome diet. He was delighted therefore to get a fat young opossum for breakfast. The next thing was to cook it.

Sam was in no danger here from Indians, who were not likely to be in such a swamp at any time, and were certainly not then, when the swamp was full of water. He had no objection therefore to a fire, but where and how to build one he was at some loss to determine. Looking carefully around he discovered that in falling the great sycamore tree on which he stood had thrown up a large mound of earth at its roots, as big trees in blowing down nearly always do. This mound was well above the water, even at its base, and here Sam determined to roast his opossum. He first dug a hole in the ground, making it about two feet long, one foot wide and eighteen inches deep. This was to be his fireplace and oven. He next collected dry bark from the under side of the fallen tree, and by breaking off its dead and well-seasoned limbs secured several large armfuls of wood. Then taking from his leathern bullet-pouch a piece of greased rag, kept there to wrap bullets in before ramming them in the barrel, he placed it in the "pan" of his rifle. Does the reader know what the "pan" of a rifle is? If not he knows nothing of flintlock guns, and I must explain. Before the invention of percussion caps, guns were provided with a little groove-shaped trough by the side of the powder chamber. From this "pan" as it was called, a little hole led into the charge. Over the pan fitted a piece of steel on a hinge, so that it could be opened and shut at pleasure. This piece of steel, after covering the pan, extended diagonally upward, and its surface was roughened like the face of a file. When the rifleman had loaded his gun he opened the pan, poured in a little powder and closed it again. In the hammer was a piece of flint, and when the trigger was pulled the flint came down with great force into the pan, sc.r.a.ping the roughened steel as it came, and raising the pan cover on its hinge. It thus deposited a shower of sparks in the pan, set fire to the powder there and through it to the charge in the gun.

Sam's object was merely to get fire, however,--not to discharge his rifle,--wherefore, without reloading it, after shooting the opossum, he merely filled the pan with powder, placed the greasy rag in it, and c.o.c.king the gun pulled the trigger. In a moment the rag was burning, and before many minutes had pa.s.sed, Sam had a good fire burning in and over the hole he had dug. He then skinned and dressed the opossum, stopping now and then to replenish the fire and to throw all the live coals into the hole as they formed. Within an hour the hole was full of burning coals, and hot enough, Sam thought, for his purpose. He cut a number of green twigs and collected a quant.i.ty of the long gray moss. He then removed all the fire from the hole, the sides and bottom of which were almost red hot, and pa.s.sing a twig through the opossum, lowered it to the middle of the hole, where the twig rested on ledges provided for that purpose. This brought the dressed animal into the centre of the hole, without permitting it to touch either the sides or the bottom. He then laid twigs across the top of the hole, covered them with moss, and threw nearly a foot of loose earth over the moss. The sides and bottom of the hole, as I have said, were very hot, and Sam's plan was to keep the heat in until it should roast the meat thoroughly. That his plan was a good one, I know from experience, having roasted more than one turkey in that way. It is, in fact, the very best way in which meat of any kind can possibly be roasted at all, as it lets none of the flavor escape in the form of gases.

Sam waited patiently for an hour, when, opening his earth oven, he found his opossum cooked to a rich, crisp brown. He ate a heartier and more wholesome breakfast that morning than he had eaten for weeks, and felt afterwards altogether better and stronger than before. The breakfast would have been an excellent one at any time, as the flesh of the opossum tastes almost exactly like that of a suckling pig, but it was doubly good to the poor half-famished boy. He stowed away the remains of his feast in his coat pockets to be eaten on his way back to the root fortress, resolving to kill some other game on the journey, for the use of the little garrison there. He was now, as he knew, not more than ten or twelve miles from his destination, but it was as yet impossible for him to travel. The swamp was full of cypresses, and it is a peculiar habit of these trees to turn their roots straight upward for any distance, from an inch to many feet, and then to bring them straight down again, making what are called cypress knees. These knees are very sharp on top, and sometimes stand not more than a foot apart. Being of all heights, many of them, as Sam knew, were under water now, and these made travelling impossible, even if there had been no quagmires to fall into, as there were. After studying the situation, Sam determined to remain where he was until the water should subside, and then to travel by daylight, at least until he should be out of the swamp and upon high ground again. The waters of the creek subsided much more slowly than they had risen, and Sam remained at the Sycamore Camp, as he called the place, for four days and nights before he thought travelling again practicable.

He then resumed his march, beset by many difficulties. The ground was muddy everywhere, and impa.s.sably so in some places. There were many ponds and pools left in the swamp, and these had to be avoided, so that night had already come before he found himself fairly out of the swamp and on the bank of the river, about two miles below the root fortress.

He now began to feel all sorts of apprehensions. He had been away eleven days, and he could not help imagining a variety of terrible things which might have happened to his little band during his absence.

Presently he saw a great light up the river, and at once the thought flashed into his mind that the Indians had discovered and butchered the boys and Judie, and were now burning the drift pile.

"I'll hurry on," he said to himself, "and if the Indians are really there, it's time for me to take part in this war. I can keep in the timber and pick off half a dozen of them there in the fire light. Then if they scalp me, I don't care. I'll at least make them suffer for what they've done."

A fierce storm was just breaking,--a storm of the violent and heroic type seen only in tropical and sub-tropical countries, but Sam thought nothing of that. He pushed on almost unconsciously, with no thought except that with his rifle, hidden in the darkness, he could wage one sharp and terrible battle with the murderers of Judie and Tom and Joe, before suffering death at their hands. The lightning struck a tree just ahead of him, but he seemed not to observe the fact. He was going into battle, and what was a thunderbolt more or less at such a time. The rain followed, drenching him instantly, but not dampening his determination in the least.