CHAPTER VI.
OUR FRIENDS, THE GORDONS.
READER, are you tired of Godfrey Evans and his dismal surroundings? If you are, let us go up to General Gordon’s, where we shall be sure of a hearty welcome and more agreeable companionship.
The house in which the general and his family now live does not look much like the noble mansion they called home a few years ago; but it is very neat and comfortable, and there is always room enough under its hospitable roof to accommodate visitors, who are greeted and entertained in good old southern style. It stands on the spot where the old house stood, and in the midst of extensive grounds, which a few years ago looked like a tropical garden. They still retain some of their old-time beauty, but yet wear an air of neglect; and many of the rare and valuable plants, which Mrs. Gordon and her daughters took so much pride in cultivating and protecting from the fury of the winter rains and sleets, have perished for want of care, and have not been replaced. On one side the grounds slope down to the shores of Diamond lake—a little sheet of water about four miles long and half a mile wide, surrounded on three sides by a dense forest of tall trees, so heavily draped with climbing plants, mosses and grape-vines, that to a person seated in a boat in the middle of the lake, it would seem to be almost impenetrable.
This lake is not like our northern lakes. The gravelly beach is wanting, and so are the black bass, the pickerel and other fine game fish that we find in our waters. The shores are low and muddy, the banks are thickly lined with snags, stumps and trees, and a northern boy would look twice at the dark, slimy water before he would think of going in bathing there. If he made up his mind to venture, he might think better of it if, while he was looking around for a log to put his clothes on, he should discover a large moccasin curled up in the edge of the water, and closely watching all his movements. Are these snakes poisonous? Ask Don and Bert what they think about it. They will tell you that one day last August, while they were sitting on the little wooden wharf, which juts out into the lake below the summer house, bobbing for sun-fish, they happened to look into the water a little way from the shore, and saw what appeared to be the head and neck of a goose moving rapidly along. But they knew it was not that, for summer is not the time for waterfowl down here, and besides a goose does not swim with his body submerged. It was a moccasin, and he was directing his course toward a log which lay in the water about twenty yards from the wharf. The boys knew he was a big one, or he could not have held his head so high above the water; but they were amazed at the sight of the bulk he presented to view when, reaching the log, he drew himself upon it, and stretched out flat preparatory to taking his afternoon nap. The longer the boys looked at him, the more their astonishment increased; and at last Don quietly laid down his fish-pole, and requesting his brother to keep an eye on the reptile, arose and stole off to the house. When he returned he carried a light breech-loading shot gun in his hands—one of those weapons that “break in two in the middle.” Both barrels were loaded, and Don had two more cartridges in his pocket for use in case the first should not prove effectual.
The moccasin lay in such a position that Don could not see his head; so he took a hasty aim at the thickest part of his body, and fired both barrels in quick succession. He was so surprised at the effect of his shot that he did not think of the cartridges he had in his pocket. The moccasin was not killed, but he was so badly wounded that he could not get off the log.
“The end his head was on was lively enough,” Don afterward told his father, “and whirled around at a great rate; but the end his tail was on seemed to be completely paralyzed, for it did not move at all.” He made the most desperate efforts to crawl off into the water, and failing in that, turned and bit himself twice, and a moment afterward was dead.
Don leaned on his breech-loader and looked at his brother. “That settles two things, Bert,” said he. “One is that we have all been mistaken in supposing that moccasins are not poisonous; and the second is, that one must not put implicit faith in everything he sees in books. Only yesterday I was reading in my natural history that a scorpion, ‘if surrounded by a circle of fire so that it cannot escape, will turn and sting itself through the head, this being the only companion of man in suicide.’ This little incident proves that man has other companions in suicide, doesn’t it?”
Besides these disagreeable and dangerous inhabitants of the lake, there are others in the shape of alligator-gars and turtles. The latter have bills like parrots, and grow so large and heavy that it takes two men to lift one of them. A gar is a long, slender fish, and but for its color, might be taken for a gigantic pickerel. It is sometimes found eight feet in length. People say they are harmless, but a timid person would not care to trust one too far after looking at its mouthful of teeth.
The boys have two canoes and one sail-boat in the lake. The boat was built in St. Louis, and a steamer brought it to the landing, where Don and Bert took charge of it and navigated it to the wharf by way of the Pass, which connects the lake with the river. This Pass was for a long time blocked up by a levee to keep the waters of the river from overflowing the low lands about the lake. During the war it was cut by the Union forces, and the gunboats came down through the lake and entered Coldwater and Tallahatchee rivers, in the effort to get behind the strong fortifications at Haines’s Bluff.