Joe did not have experience enough to appreciate the force of this. Few things are more downright terrifying than one of these wars in a large bee-yard, when the whole apiary runs amuck. Every colony is at once robbing and endeavoring to rob; every one is fighting every other, and the bees grow so infuriated that they will attack everything within their range, will fly into fire, will sting even the wood of the hives. Men and animals have been killed by being caught in such an affray. Such disturbances seldom happen, and never under good management; but here everything was set exactly right for the worst sort of outbreak.
The river pirates had each been stung several times, and had ceased to laugh. They had retreated up toward their houseboat; they had lighted pipes, and were trying to keep the bees off with great clouds of smoke, waiting vainly for the insects to grow quieter. A swirl of darting bees hung over the raft; the pile of cut-out combs ashore was completely hidden by the crawling, fighting insects.
“How’ll this end?” Joe whispered to Bob. “Looks as if they’d eat each other up.”
“So they will. Nothing but night’ll stop it now, and by that time half the outfit’ll be dead,” returned Bob anxiously.
Joe scrutinized the scene carefully once more.
“I believe I can cut that raft loose,” he said. “There’s current to drift it right out into the river.”
The stump to which the raft was tied was on this side of the bayou. The pirates were on the other side, and had retreated a hundred feet to get away from the bees. More important still, their guns appeared to be all in their rowboat, at a still greater distance. Perhaps they carried revolvers. He would have to risk that.
“Golly! Them bees’ll shore sting you to death if you goes out yander, Mr. Joe!” Sam muttered aghast; but Joe began to worm himself forward through the flat, rustling leaves of the palmetto.
The mooring stump was not more than fifty feet away, and he kept close down under the thick cover. The attention of the enemy was entirely taken up with the bees just then, and the bees themselves did not notice him until he came close to the end of the raft. Then he was suddenly stung on the hand, and again on the back of the neck; two or three insects zipped like small bullets against his hat; but he heroically refrained from even squirming.
He reached the stump, which grew out of a tangle of small shrubbery, and he lay low behind this screen while he felt for his knife. The mooring rope was just above his head, obviously bearing a heavy strain. A sharp blade would part it almost at a touch, but Joe could not find his knife. He searched all his pockets. It was not there. His heart sank like lead as he realized that he must either have lost it or left it on the raft.