Aaron in the Wildwoods

by Joel Chandler Harris

He found that the middle of the swamp was comparatively dry. Huge poplar-trees stood ranged about, the largest he had ever seen. In the midst of a group of trees he found one that was hollow, and in this hollow he found the smouldering embers of a fire. But for the strange silence that surrounded him he would have given a whoop of triumph; but he restrained himself. Bee-hunter that he was, he took his coat from his shoulders and tied it around a small slim sapling standing near the big poplar where he had found the fire. It was his way when he found a bee-tree. It was a sort of guide. In returning he would take the general direction, and then hunt about until he found his coat; and it was much easier to find a tree tagged with a coat than it was to find one not similarly marked.

Thus, instead of whooping triumphantly, Ben Gadsby simply tied his coat about the nearest sapling, nodding his head significantly as he did so. He had unearthed the secret and unraveled the mystery, and now he would go and call in such of the neighbors as were near at hand and show them what a simple thing the great mystery was. He knew that he had found the hiding-place of Aaron, the runaway. So he fixed his "landmark," and started out of the swamp with a lighter heart than he had when he came in.

To make sure of his latitude and longitude, he turned in his tracks when he had gone a little distance and looked for the tree on which he had tied his coat. But it was not to be seen. He re-traced his steps, trying to find his coat. Looking about him cautiously, he saw the garment after a while, but it was in an entirely different direction from what he supposed it would be. It was tied to a sapling, and the sapling was near a big poplar. To satisfy himself, he returned to make a closer examination. Sure enough, there was the coat, but the poplar close by was not a hollow poplar, nor was it as large as the tree in which Ben Gadsby had found the smouldering embers of a fire.

He sat on the trunk of a fallen tree and scratched his head, and discussed the matter in his mind the best he could. Finally he concluded that it would be a very easy matter, after he found his coat again, to find the hollow poplar. So he started home again. But he had not gone far when he turned around to take another view of his coat.

It had disappeared. Ben Gadsby looked carefully around, and then a feeling of terror crept over his whole body—a feeling that nearly paralyzed his limbs. He tried to overcome this feeling, and did so to a certain degree. He plucked up sufficient courage to return and try to find his coat; but the task was indeed bewildering. He thought he had never seen so many large poplars with small slim saplings standing near them, and then he began to wander around almost aimlessly.

IV.

Suddenly he heard a scream that almost paralyzed him—a scream that was followed by the sound of a struggle going on in the thick undergrowth close at hand. He could see the muddy water splash above the bushes, and he could hear fierce growlings and gruntings. Before he could make up his mind what to do, a gigantic mulatto, with torn clothes and staring eyes, rushed out of the swamp and came rushing by, closely pursued by a big white boar with open mouth and fierce cries. The white boar was right at the mulatto's heels, and his yellow tusks gleamed viciously as he ran with open mouth. Pursuer and pursued disappeared in the bushes with a splash and a crash, and then all was as still as before. In fact, the silence seemed profounder for this uncanny and appalling disturbance. It was so unnatural that half a minute after it happened Ben Gadsby was not certain whether it had occurred at all. He was a pretty bold youth, having been used to the woods and fields all his life, but he had now beheld a spectacle so out of the ordinary, and of so startling a character, that he made haste to get out of the swamp as fast as his legs, weakened by fear, would carry him.

More than once, as he made his way out of the swamp, he paused to listen; and it seemed that each time he paused an owl, or some other bird of noiseless wing, made a sudden swoop at his head. Beyond the exclamation he made when this happened the silence was unbroken. This experience was unusual enough to hasten his steps, even if he had had no other motive for haste.