The Young Marooners on the Florida Coast

by F. R. Goulding

An additional visit enabled Robert to determine that the hour of their coming was early in the morning; and this being the only other circumstance wanting to fix the time of his own coming to meet them, he used that opportunity to arrange to his fancy the place of his concealment. The trench was on a line with two short hedges of bamboo brier, diverging from each other in the shape of the letter V, having a place of egress at the angle. He closed the mouth of the V by planting a blind of evergreens, high as his head, and very close at the bottom; and as it was probable that he should be compelled to remain some hours in concealment, he made a seat, and opened through the blind a hole for observation.

On the following morning he was up and moving at the peep of day. Mary prepared him a cup of coffee, and by the time that there was light sufficient to follow the blazed track he was on the way. His course lay eastward, and through the opening branches glowed that beautiful star which he had often admired, Venus, the gem of the morning, "flaming upon the forehead of the dawn."

Frank begged hard to be allowed to go too, his confidence in Robert's woodsmanship having been greatly increased by the recent success; but Harold decided against him. He said that in turkey shooting the fewer persons there were present the better; that Robert himself must keep still as a mouse, and that well trained as Mum was, it would be better even for him to be left behind. Robert therefore departed alone, putting into his pocket a small volume of Shakespeare, to aid in whiling away the slow hours of his solitary watch.

On arriving at the spot his first act was to see that the bait was yet untouched. He took his seat, and continued for a long time peeping through the port hole, and listening with an attention so acute that he could hear the rush of his own blood along the throbbing arteries. But as the minutes passed, and no change occurred, not even the chirp of a bird or the bark of a squirrel enlivening the grim solitude, his excitement gradually gave way to weariness. He leaned his gun against the wall of vines, and drew out his book. It was the first volume, containing that magnificent drama, "The Tempest." He read rapidly the familiar scenes describing Ariel, the light, invisible spirit, and Caliban, the hideous son of the old hag, and Prospero, with his beautiful daughter, and the dripping refugees from the sea, and became so deeply absorbed as perfectly to forget where he was, until a slight rustling behind a briery thicket near the bait aroused his attention. Whatever the animal might have been, its step was very stealthy, and evidently approaching. Laying down the book, and grasping his gun, he peeped cautiously around; nothing was visible. Soon he heard a rattling upon the ground of falling fragments, as if from some animal climbing a tree, and a grating sound like that of bark which is grasped and crushed.

"I wonder what that can be?" he mentally soliloquized. "Perhaps a large fox-squirrel climbing after acorns--but no, there is too much bark falling for that. It must be a squirrel barking a dead limb for worms. That's it! O, yes, that's it."

But it was no squirrel, and had Robert been more of a woodsman he would not have returned so quietly to his reading. Indeed, he had become more deeply interested in his book than in his business, and was glad of any excuse that allowed him to return to Prospero and the shipwrecked crew. He read a few pages more, and stopping to connect in his mind the disjointed parts of the story, his eye rested upon what appeared to be the bushy tail of a very large squirrel, lying upon a limb of the tree that overhung the bait.

"I knew it was a squirrel," said he to himself; "but he is a bouncer! How long his tail is! and how it moves from side to side like a cat's, when it sees a bird or a mouse that it is trying to catch. I wish I could see his body, but it is hidden by that bunch of leaves."

His imagination was so powerfully impressed with the graphic scenery of "The Tempest," that he could scarcely think of anything else. The idea in his mind at that moment was the ludicrous scene in which the drunken Stephano comes upon the queer bundle, made up of Caliban and Trinculo, lying head to head under the same frock, and appearing to his unsteady eyes like a monster with two pairs of legs at each end. As Robert looked into the tree, he almost laughed to catch himself fancying that he saw Caliban's head lying on the same limb on which lay the squirrel's tail, and staring at him with its two great eyes. Indeed he did see something. There was a veritable head resting there, and two great eyeballs were glaring upon him, and nothing but the irresistible influence of the scenes he had read deceived him for a moment with the idea that it was Caliban's.

A second and steady look would probably have revealed the truth; but for this he had not time. The welcome "twit! twit!" of the expected game caused him to look through his port hole, and a large turkey cock, accompanied by four hens, ran directly to the trench, and began to eat as fast as they could pick up the grains. Robert cautiously slipped his gun through the port hole, and took deliberate aim, confident that he could kill the five at one shot. But hesitating a moment whether he should commit such wholesale destruction, when they were already so well supplied with fresh meat, his gun made a slight noise against the leaves, which attracted the attention of the turkeys, and caused the hens to dart away. The gobbler, being the leader and protector of the party, stood his ground courageously, stretching his long neck full four feet high, looking in every direction, and then coming cautiously towards the blind to reconnoitre.

Robert had gained experience from his still hunting; and in this conjuncture stood perfectly motionless, keeping his gun as immovable as the stiff branch of a dry tree. The bird was deceived. It returned quietly to the trench, and commenced feeding. Robert waited in the hope that it would be joined by another; but no other coming, he fired while it was picking up the last few grains, and killed it. The moment of pulling the trigger, he heard a rustle of leaves in the tree above the turkey, and the moment after the report of his gun a heavy fall upon the ground. As he rushed from his concealment to seize the fallen game, he was horrified to see an enormous beast of the cat kind, crushing the head of the bird in its mouth, while its paw pinioned the fluttering wings. It was a panther. It had crawled into the tree while Robert was reading. It was its tail he had mistaken for a squirrel's, and its head he had fancied was Caliban's. For half an hour it had been glaring upon him with its big eyeballs, waiting until he should pass near enough to be pounced upon.