"Back! back! Look yonder!"
Robert gave one glance, and stepped back into concealment as quickly as if twenty panthers were guarding the prairie. There stood an Indian hut.
The boys gazed at each other in dismay; their hearts beat hard, and their breath grew short. Were there Indians then upon the island, and so near them? What might not have happened to Mary and Frank? But a close scrutiny from their bushy cover enabled them to breathe freely. There was a hut, but it was evidently untenanted; grass grew rank about the doorway, and the roof was falling to decay. It had been deserted for years.
The boys went boldly to it, and entered. Rain from the decayed and falling roof had produced tufts of grass in the mud plaster of the walls. In the centre was a grave, banked with great neatness, and protected by a beautifully arched pen of slender poles. At the door was a hominy mortar, made of a cypress block, slightly dished, and having a narrow, funnel-shaped cavity in its centre. Upon it, with one end resting in a crack of the wall, lay the pestle, shaped like a maul, and bearing the marks of use upon that end which white men would ordinarily regard as the handle. Overhanging the house were three peach trees, and around it the ground was covered with a profusion of gourds of all sizes, from that which is used by many as a pocket powder-flask to that which would hold several gallons. Beyond the house, and on the edge of the prairie, was a close growth of wild plums.
"This place," said Harold, musing, "must have belonged to some old chief. The common people do not live so comfortably. It is likely that he continued here after all others of his tribe had gone; and when he died, his children buried him, and they also went away. Poor fellow! here he lies. He owned a beautiful island, and we are his heirs."
"Peace to his ashes!" ejaculated Robert.
They looked sadly upon the signs of ruin and desolation. It always makes one sad to look upon a spot where our kind have dwelt, and from which they have passed away; it is symbolic of ourselves, and the grief we feel is a mourning over our own decay.
It was now twelve o'clock, and they began to feel the demands of appetite. Harold proposed to search longer, in hope of finding a spring of fresh water. "I am sure," said he, "there must be one hereabouts, and we shall find it exceedingly convenient in our frequent hunts."
They searched for nearly half an hour in vain; and as they were on the point of giving up, Harold called out, "I have found it! Come here, Robert, and see what a beauty!" Robert hastened to the shallow ravine which terminated the eastern end of the prairie. Not two steps below its green margin was a real curiosity of its kind--a rill of clear, cool-looking water, issuing from the hollow base of a large tupelo[#] tree. It was a freak of nature, combining beauty, utility and convenience. The water was as sweet as it was clear.
[#] The black gum of the swamps, having, like all trees that grow in water, a spreading, and generally a hollow base.