Sometimes, when I think of it, I wonder if that chap is running yet; but I guess he brought up somewhere, for we heard soon afterwards that there was a great gathering of the negroes, and that one of their speakers had seen a couple of monsters rising out of the waters of the St. John’s, commanding him to tell the people the world was coming to an end.
SUDDEN AND UNACCOUNTABLE.
“Now that was rather lively, hey?” mused the captain; “but I’m sorry we scared him so. I wonder what’s in his boat? We’re pirates now, to all intents and purposes, and may as well take our plunder. A bag of potatoes—no, oranges, just what I wanted. No wonder he ran so—he’s been into one of the groves over there. I wonder if it’s stealing to steal from a thief? Let’s have some supper. I nearly forgot about supper.”
A loose plank was taken from the dug-out, and out of the wonderful depths of Baby Mine emerged the following items:
- A quart bottle of cold coffee,
- A can of condensed milk,
- Some loaf-sugar,
- A tin box of cheese,
- Four biscuits,
- A pot of marmalade,
- Some chipped beef,
- A half-dozen boiled eggs,
- Pickles, pepper and salt,
- Spoons,
- Knives,
- Tin cups,
- Etc.
“The company will please sit down, and excuse the holes in the cloth, and not put their elbows on the table,” said the jolly captain, as he held the coffee over the lamp while I ‘set’ the table.
“Now, here we go! What an appetite I’ve got! Don’t lean back in your chair, my boy, one of the legs is gone; you might upset. I wish that chap had stayed. He might have taken tea with us, at least. Halloo! I’ve struck bottom. We’re right in shore. I guess the tide’s about ebb!” and so the merry fellow rattled on, taking a look at his watch, which hung upon some peg in the cabin of Baby Mine.
What a surpassingly beautiful place we had drifted into! A cove, surrounded upon three sides by great water oaks that bent their long arms down towards the tide, draped in sad but rich festoons of gray Spanish moss. The pale forms of dead cypress trees, swathed in wild grape-vines, leaned over, and fragrant magnolia branches mingled their dark and glossy leaves through all the fairy tracery of branch and palm, displayed like dark embroidery against the moonlit heavens. How I wished the boys could be there to see us now!
