The very smell of the stuff sickened the boys, who waved it away as politely as they could. Their refusal did not ruffle the moonshiner, who drained the pannikin off himself with evident relish although the portion he had poured out had been intended to suffice the entire quartette of boys. “Black Bart,” too, had a little fallen off in the estimation of the moonshiners because he also refused to touch their product. They shook their heads over his negative reply to an invitation to drink as men who regret the downfall of a once upright man.
While the boys were wandering about the camp their attention was attracted to a bottle suspended to a pole outside the hut of one of the moonshiners. It was swathed in ribbons and bits of bright tin and seemed to be regarded as some sort of a costly ornament. This was partly explained by the fact that the wife of the owner of the hut was an Indian woman and was the person who had ornamented the bottle for “big medicine.” But a closer scrutiny revealed to the boys a rolled piece of paper inside it on which there was some faint writing. As it seemed to be in English their curiosity was therefore considerably aroused.
They questioned the woman closely about it. At first they could get no satisfactory replies. At length, however, after Frank had given her a bright silver dollar—she refused a paper one—the squaw became more talkative.
“Um-him come from o-tee (islands) long time go.” She pointed to the westward.
“The islands round Cape Sable?” asked Frank.
She seemed to understand, for she nodded.
“My man find him—he float,” she grunted.
“Boys, this bottle was found afloat. This may be a message from some poor fellow who is cast away on the Ten Thousand Islands,” exclaimed Frank.
The others looked skeptical.
“Most of these bottle messages are fakes anyhow,” said Billy, with an air of finality. But Frank was not satisfied. He questioned the woman at greater length. After a long, patient interrogation he found that her husband, who was absent from the camp, had been delivering a consignment of moonshine to a camp of Seminoles in the wildest part of the ’glades and had found the bottle off the mouth of the Shark River. It had a tiny bit of red flannel tied round its neck as if to attract attention to it. This decided Frank. No joker would have gone to that trouble.