CHAPTER XV.
AN ISLAND MYSTERY.
It was an exhilarating sensation, this of being afloat on their own keels and gliding easily among sights so strange and new. On every yellow sand-spit alligators lay sunning themselves and slid into the water with lazy splashes as the expedition shot round points onto them. Sometimes they didn’t even trouble to do this but lay blinking at the canoes as much as to say:
“Hurry up by, and let us get to sleep again.”
“What if they should take it into their heads to attack us?” asked Lathrop of Pork Chops. The boy’s face paled as sometimes the old black, with deliberate defiance as it seemed, steered so close to the alligator bars that the boy could have put out a hand and touched the backs of the monsters.
“Don’ you give ye’self no fuss ’bout dem ’gators ’tacking us, Marse Lathrop,” the old man reassured him, “why, ef I het one ob dem varmints a slap wid dis yar paddle he’d skedaddle so quick yo couldn’ see his trail for hurry—yes, sah.”
The first night’s halt was made at a beautiful little island overgrown thickly with palmetto, bay, water-oak, wild-fig, mastic and other timber. Through the amber water that surrounded it fish of a dozen varieties glided through the brilliantly colored water-grasses, that waved in as great luxuriance as the land-growth. While Pork Chops built a fire and busied himself with getting supper Frank and Harry sat apart and discussed their plans. They intended to select the first available place for the setting up of the Golden Eagle II, and then do a little scouting by aeroplane. Frank knew from report that scattered through the wilderness of the Everglades there are numerous hammocks or small hills, in some cases quite considerable mounds, that would make ideal sites for a central camp. It was not much use speculating on any further method of procedure, however, till they were actually in the Everglades.
While the boys had been busying themselves in this way Ben Stubbs had taken a rifle and strolled off into the jungle in search of one of the wild turkeys whose loud “Keouk-keouks” had apprised him that the bronze beauties were plentiful in the brush. Lathrop and Billy Barnes went fishing with improvised hooks and lines made of stout thread from their toilet-bags.
The two anglers were shouting with delight over a huge reddish colored fish that Lathrop had hooked and drawn to shore, after a struggle in which it seemed that his line must part or he go overboard, when Ben Stubbs returned from his hunting expedition. He carried with him a fine big gobbler that must have weighed fully twenty pounds. While they were all gathered about the beautiful bird admiring the rich, coppery gloss of its feathers, Lathrop, who had been busy disentangling his line from a low-growing bush, gave a sudden yell.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Frank.
The boy came running toward him. His face was white and he held out his right hand for their inspection. On the thumb were two tiny bluish punctures.