after standing for a few moments to take a last look at the steamer, which was now rapidly making her way southward, our party prepared to take up the shortest line of march for the indian river.
the boys slung their overcoats and valises over their shoulders, and these, with their water-canteens and provisions, made for each of them a pretty good load. but adam had a still heavier burden, for he carried the roll of tarpaulin in addition to his other traps.
“i am not captain,” said adam, addressing chap, “but i’ll go ahead, for i’ll be able to find my way over to the river better than you will.”
“all right,” said chap. “adam was the first man, and you can take the lead. but i am captain, for all that, and i expect to be obeyed.”
[39]“expect away,” said phil; “it’ll keep your mind busy, and stop you from making plans for blowing us all up north in one bang.”
“silence!” cried chap. “forward, march!”
the way from the beach back to the river was a very hard one, and a good deal longer than adam had expected it to be.
for a time they walked over loose, soft sand, which was piled into little hills by the wind, then they came to a thick growth of palmetto-trees, the ground being covered with underbrush of the most disagreeable kind, consisting mainly of a low bush, called the “saw-palmetto,” which was made up of leaves three or four feet long, with sharp teeth at each edge.
a variety of tangled vines, concealing rotten palmetto stumps, of all sizes, helped to make the walking exceedingly difficult. but some man or animal had been that way before, and through the almost undistinguishable path, which adam seemed to scent out, rather than to see, the party slowly made its way.
when at last they reached the river, the boys gave a great shout, but adam merely grinned, and looked anxiously up and down.
the broad, smooth waters of the indian river spread before the delighted eyes of our young friends. large birds were flying through the air. at a little distance hundreds of ducks were swimming[40] on the water. the low shores were green and beautiful. but what adam looked for was not there.
as far as the eye could reach—and as the river here bent away from them on either hand, they could see the bank on which they stood for a long distance up and down—not a house, or clearing, or sign of human habitation, could be seen, and on the river there was not a sail or boat.
“i haven’t struck just the place i want to get to,” said adam, “for the house i’m after is just above this bend where the river turns due north agen; but then it couldn’t be expected i’d pick out the very place i wanted when i was on board a steamer nearly a mile from shore. if i could ’a’ seen the river, i’d been all right, but beaches is pretty much alike.”
“i think you did very well,” said phil, “to get so near the place. the end of that bend can’t be so very far away.”
“it wouldn’t be much of a walk,” said adam, “if there was a good beach at the side of the river. there’s a sandy shore on the other side, as you can see, but that’s no good to us. along here, for pretty much the whole bend, you see the trees and underbrush grow right down to the water, and it would be wadin’ and sloppin’, as well as scratchin’.”
[41]“we might keep farther in shore,” said chap, “where we could find dry walking.”
“it would be dry enough, but it would be mighty slow,” said adam. “the best and quickest thing we can do is to get right back to the beach. there we’ll find good, hard walkin’, and we can tramp along lively till we calkilate we’re about opposite john brewer’s place, and then we can push through agen to the river.”
“i guess that’s about the best thing to do,” said phil, “for it will give us less of this horrid jungle-scratching than trying to push right straight along through the woods.”
“all right!” cried chap. “backward! march!”
and again, with adam at the head, the party pushed through the strip of woods which separated the river from the ocean-beach. the march along the sand was easy enough, but it seemed very long.
“why, i thought,” cried chap, “that it was only a little way to the end of that bend!”
“it’s further than it looks,” said adam. “i’ve got a pretty good notion how fur we ought to walk before we strike across; but it won’t be long before we try the woods agen.”
in about ten minutes, adam turned, and led the way toward the river. the strip of land was much narrower here than where they had crossed it before, and after a short season of scrambling and[42] scratching and pushing over ground where it seemed as if no one had ever passed before, the river was reached. here was a broad strip of clean sand lying between the woods and the water’s edge, but there was no house in sight.
“isn’t this the end of the bend?” asked phœnix.
“yes, it’s the end of the bend,” said adam, looking about him; “but it’s the wrong bend. i know the place now just as well as if i’d been born here. you see the river makes another bend up there, don’t you? it’s a good while since i’ve been here, and i never came to the place by the way of the sea. the house we’re after is up there. there’s no mistake this time.”
“but that must be ever so far away!” said phil, dolefully. “the beginning of that bend is more than a mile off, i should say.”
“yes, it’s a good piece off,” said adam, “and i don’t believe we’d better try to make it to-night. the best thing we can do is to camp just here.”
at this the boys gave a cheer.
“that’s splendid!” said chap. “i’d rather camp out than go to fifty houses!”
and, casting his traps on the ground, he called on all hands to go and put up the tent.
“you needn’t be in such a hurry about the tent,” said adam. “that’s the easiest thing we have to do. after awhile me and one of you will[43] fix up the tarpaulin between a couple of trees back here, and as it isn’t likely to rain, that’ll be all the shelter we’ll want. but the first thing to do is to get supper. have any of you got fishin’-lines?”
each of the boys declared he had one, and started to get it out of his valise.
“two’ll be enough,” said adam. “one of you might stay and help me with the fire and things, while the other two go and fish.”
phœnix agreed to stay and help adam, while phil and chap got out their lines.
“i was afraid your hooks wouldn’t be big enough,” said adam, taking up their lines; “but this is a regular deep-sea tackle.”
“yes; my uncle gave us the lines,” said phil. “he thought we might get some fishing down at the breakwater.”
“well, all you got to do,” said adam, “is to go down to the beach and throw out your lines as fur as they will go. we’ll have to bait at first with a little piece of meat from the rations the captain gave us. of course, you needn’t fish if you don’t want to. we’ve got enough to eat, but i thought it would seem more to you like real campin’ out if we had a mess of nice hot fish for supper.”
“that’s so!” cried chap; “we wouldn’t think of eating that dry stuff while there’s fish in the river.”
[44]“that is, if we can coax any of the fish out of the river,” remarked phil.
“oh, we’ll do that easy enough,” said chap. “get your bait, and come along.”
the two boys proceeded a short distance from their proposed camping-ground, and having baited their hooks with some fat and rather gristly beef, they proceeded to throw out their lines; but as they were not used to this kind of fishing, neither of them succeeded in getting his line out into deep water.
adam had been watching them, and seeing that they were making out badly, he came down to give them what he called “a start.” he unwound the whole of each line, and carefully laid it in coils on the sand. holding the shore end of the line firmly in his left hand, he swung the hook and heavy lead several times above his head, and let it go. the long line flew out its full length, and the lead and bait plunged into deep water. when each of the lines had been thus put out, he went back to his own work.
it was not long before the boys began to have bites, and in a few minutes chap commenced hauling in his line like a house a-fire. hand-over-hand he grasped and jerked the cord, throwing it wildly to each side of him as he violently pulled it in. in a moment he drew a fish out of the water, and threw it up high on the sand.[45] rushing to it, he picked it up, and held it in the air.
“look at that!” he cried to phil. “a splendid fellow! it must be nearly a foot long.”
phœnix and phil were both interested in the first fish caught in florida waters, and they ran to look at it. adam, also, who was picking up driftwood near by, came to see chap’s prize.
“it will do for bait,” he said, as he took the fish from the hook.
“bait!” cried chap, in amazement. “a big, fat fish like that for bait!”
adam laughed.
“a fish like that isn’t called a big one in these parts, though i s’pose in your waters it would be a pretty good ketch. it’s a mullet, and good enough eatin’, though it isn’t big enough for a meal for us, and i only want to cook one fish.”
“all right!” said chap. “if there are fish big enough for you in this river, i’ll catch them.”
the mullet was killed, and both lines baited with a large piece of its flesh; for it was food much more attractive to the big fish they wanted, adam said, than the cold meat they had used before. phil went farther down the river, and both boys put out their own lines this time, succeeding, after several attempts, in throwing them a considerable distance from the shore.
[46]in less than two minutes chap felt a tug at his line. he gave a pull, and his first impression was that his hook had caught in something at the bottom, but the jerking of his line soon let him know that there was a fish at the other end of it. then he began to haul in; but this hauling in was very different from anything he had been accustomed to.
it took all his strength to pull in the line hand-over-hand, and although he was greatly excited, and worked as fast as he could, it came in but slowly. sometimes the fish pulled back so hard that chap thought he would be dragged into the water himself; but, digging his heels into the sand, he tugged away manfully.
the line was a stout one, but it cut his hands, and his arms began to ache from the unaccustomed exercise. but he kept bravely on until the head and back of a great fish appeared above the surface of the water.
wildly excited, he gave a few mad pulls, and then rushing backward, he hauled high up in the sand a flapping, floundering fish, nearly three feet long. it was a handsome creature, dark on the back, but bright yellow beneath.
for a moment chap gazed on his prize with triumphant delight, and then he gave a shout, which brought phœnix, and soon after, adam.
phœnix was almost as delighted as chap himself.[47] this was something like fishing. he had never seen a fish like this in his life.
“now, then,” cried chap to adam, “what do you say to that? is that fellow big enough for you?”
“yes,” said adam, “it’s big enough, and it’s too big. that’s a cavalio, and people eat them when they can’t get anything else; but its flesh is pretty coarse, and i couldn’t manage to cook a fish that size the way i’m goin’ to do it.”
“you ought to mention the exact size of fish you want,” said chap, in a disappointed tone, “and then, perhaps, a fellow could catch them for you.”
“it is a pity you didn’t get something between the two,” said adam; “but you can’t expect to hit anything right square the first time. but, hello! here comes the quartermaster, and i believe he’s got a blue-fish.”
phil now came running up, carrying a fish nearly as long as his arm. as he came near, he raised the flapping fish, whose tail had been dragging in the sand, and gave a shout; but when he saw the magnificent creature, which was still plunging and rolling at the end of the line which chap held firmly in his hand, his countenance fell.
“what a whopper!” he cried. “why, mine is nothing to it!”
“no,” said adam, “but yours is a blue-fish,[48] and we’ll have him for supper. don’t be cast down, captain; you’ll have plenty of chances yet for blue-fish, bass, and lots of other good fellers. i’ll take the hook out of this young elephant of your’n, as he might snap your fingers, and then we’ll shove him into the water. he looks lively enough to come to all right when he gets into salt water agen, and there’s no use in lettin’ fish die here if you ain’t goin’ to use ’em.”
“all right!” said chap. “i’m captain, and it was my duty to catch the biggest fish, and i’ve done it. and now the quicker we cook this little fellow for supper, the better, for i’m dreadfully hungry.”
the “little fellow,” a fish nearly two feet long, was taken in charge by adam, and carried to the camp-ground, where a large fire was already blazing.
“it was havin’ this paper along,” said adam, “that put it into my head to try baked fish for supper.”
having dressed the fish, adam rolled it in the brown paper, and pushing away a portion of the fire, he scooped out a place in the warm sand and ashes, and covered up the fish therein. then the fire was built up again, and was allowed to blaze away until adam thought his fish was done.
when the brown paper was removed, the skin of the blue-fish came off with it, leaving the white flesh perfectly baked and temptingly hot.
[49]there was salt and pepper among their rations, and with the fish and the bread and butter and biscuits, the boys and adam made a splendid meal, although they had nothing to drink with it but the water from their canteens.
“the way to make a tip-top meal off of fish,” said chap, “is to catch it yourself—or else let some other fellow do it.”
