Shame, thought I, that our National Bird, secure from discovery at Washington, should be practising this thoroughly un-American might-makes-right business! Yet through my being came a sympathetic whisper. I had never felt it while in contact with other people, but here I was stripped as a savage—alone with the woods and the ocean. If the Florida peninsula had been formed when my ancestors went naked, one of them might have loitered near this very spot, and I smiled as I wondered if he, too, had been planning to carry off some female from her watchful tribe!
It was good to be in the wilderness, good to be savage, good to be unclothed beneath God's high heaven and know that by my muscle and my cunning I was king. No ordinary king who went about with a jeweled crown upon his head could ever feel this exuberance of being, and in pure delight I plunged into the water.
Out, out and out I swam, joyously diving for handsfull of shells that I held aloft as a pagan offering to the gods. I put in bursts of speed, then rested on my back upon the cradling waves, watching the streaks of feathery clouds that stretched across the sky—streamers, flying far behind the tempest. And then, with tingling blood, I would flip my body and swim down, down for more shells. I was King of the great out-of-doors; a reincarnated primordial monster, holding high carnival with the elements!
Smilax, having come in search of me and seeing my head far from shore, followed at once. It was then, as he approached, that I received my first disillusionment of being king by the right of muscle, because he sped through the water as an oiled torpedo, putting to shame my skill that had been somewhat thought of in the Athletic Club tank at home. Almost immediately followed my second jolt, as he glanced over his shoulder, saying:
"Lookout, maybe whole lot shark!"
King or no king, I went shoreward like a scared cat. Anyone could have had my crown then for the mere trouble of picking it up. Curiously, there flashed into my mind a game I used to play as a youngster: What-Would-You-Rather-Be-Eaten-Up-By! We boys would pompously answer lions, puffing ourselves out bravely and pretending we didn't care, but I remembered one little girl who aroused our contemptuous laughter by answering "goldfish." And now, after all these years, for the first time I found myself marveling at her sagacity. Indeed, she was off and on in my thoughts until I had clothed myself in dry garments and partaken of a grown man's breakfast; after which I dropped into a state of retrospective contentment, divided between the annoyances that beset kings, Azurian princesses, and the culinary skill of Smilax.
That ebony giant of strength was not aware of my mission here, nor, indeed, of anything that had passed aboard the Whim, so when he had cleaned the dishes I lit my pipe and called to him. It seemed but fair that he should know the dangers of our expedition before joining it. His perception was quicker than his speech, and more than once he anticipated my narrative with some word suitable to its climax.
"We get lady," he said, at last.
"After a while," I corrected. "Just now we're to see where she is, how she's guarded, and how many guards there are. But we're not to start anything till the others get back. You don't happen to know this country, I suppose?"
"Not right here; but two day walk there," he pointed a little east of north, "yes, good. Mother live with Seminole one time, over there."