Dick in the Everglades

by A. W. Dimock

"Well, Neddy, what have you been doing now, and what are you going to do? Last time I saw you a thousand-pound fish was dropping on your head. Seems as if he hit me, too."

"Going to make a camp for the two of us, feed us, and get us out of the wilderness. That's what I am going to do," replied Ned.

"You'll do it, all right; but what have you got to work with?"

"Pocket-knife and some matches. First thing I'll make a fire to dry you. Then I'll forage. You see, Dick, we've got to stay right here until you get strong enough to travel. I can make a palmetto shack big enough to keep the rain off in half a day. The worst trouble will be fresh water, but I think I can fix that. I know how to get things to eat. I have picked up a couple of old cocoanuts, and I'll bring them to you in an hour full of water. Then to-morrow I will start early and find that old shack where we camped in the graveyard. You remember that old kettle there? Well, I'll bring it here full of fresh water. Then if you don't get well pretty quick I'll leave you plenty to eat and drink and find my way to the coast. I can do it in a day, and have your old friend, who don't believe we know a manatee from a tarpon, up here with his boat the next day sure."

"Don't do it, Neddy. I'd be thinking of a hundred things happening to you, and the night would be pretty lonesome without even Tom."

Ned started away from the river through a wooded swamp, and before he had gone a quarter of a mile struck a prairie on which several deer were feeding. The animals seemed to know that he had no weapon, for they showed no alarm until he had walked some distance toward them. There were a number of small ponds near him, and as Ned approached the nearest one a small alligator slipped from the bank into the water. The boy had provided himself with a short, heavy pole, and he waded fearlessly in after the 'gator; but although the pond was not thirty feet across and he explored every foot of it, he could not find the reptile. He finally came across an opening in the bank, in which he thrust his pole, when it was promptly seized by the alligator. Ned tried to pull the reptile within reach, but when the head came out of the cave it was larger than he had looked for, and before he had made up his mind to tackle it the creature had let go of the pole and gone back in his cave. Then the boy got earnest and determined to have that alligator if he had to crawl into the cave after him. He sharpened a bit of branch that stuck out beside the big end of his pole like the barb of a harpoon, and again thrust it in the cave. Soon he had the reptile fighting mad with his head out of the cave, when he pushed the pole into his open mouth, and catching the barb in the soft skin under the alligator's jaw, just as Dick had done weeks before, hauled him out of the cave and dragged him out on the bank. When a few yards from the pond the reptile broke loose from the barb and started back for the pond. Ned was after him like a tiger and struck two or three smashing blows on the creature's head with his pole, and then, as the reptile neared the water, threw himself on its back and seizing its jaws held them together while he turned the brute on its back. At first the alligator lashed out with its tail, but soon became quiet; and then Ned got out his knife and severed the spine of the reptile.

The water of the pond was so nearly fresh that its taste was only slightly sweetish, and after Ned had drank all he could hold he filled his two cocoanuts for Dick. On his way to camp he hunted up a young palmetto for the bud or cabbage which grew in the top of the tree. The sharp edges of the great, tough leaves tore his flesh as he climbed through them, and it was only after more than an hour of hard work with his knife that he secured the cabbage he was working for. By this time the water he had drunk had oozed out through his pores. He was so parched with thirst that he took a long walk back to the pond and filled up again.

That night Dick and Ned had broiled alligator steak and palmetto cabbage for supper. Both suffered so much for want of water that Ned started out at daylight to find the old abandoned plantation. Dick was pale and his smile so wan that Ned's heart was sore at leaving him. He was too earnest to think of trivial things, and he sloshed through the swamp without thought of the swaying heads of little speckle-bellies in his path, or the great, ugly cotton-mouth moccasins that moved slowly aside as he wallowed through their lairs. He stopped long enough on the border of the prairie to find a club, with which he fiercely pounded to death a rattlesnake, upon whose coils he had nearly stepped when the locust-like warning found its way to his consciousness.

After about three miles of tramping, during which he waded waist-deep across two sloughs, the prairie opened upon familiar ground, and Ned knew that he was opposite the plantation he sought. In the decaying building he found an old bucket that would hold three or four gallons, and a couple of quart cans in which water could be boiled. From a tamarind tree he gathered the half-dried fruit with its sweet acidity, and in the old garden he discovered a few stalks of sugar-cane. He picked up a rusty fish-hook and from an old net got a quantity of string. Then filling his bucket with rain water, he started back to Dick and the camp. The journey was a hard one, and though he refused to drink a drop of the water, half of it was lost on the way. The weight of it pressed him down in the mire of the sloughs until he sank to the armpits as he held the heavy bucket on his head. Dick laughed aloud with joy, even if it was a bit hysterical, when Ned got home to camp.