The men, who lay smoking on the furs inside the huts, or stretched in comfortable attitudes on the ground outside, were tall, clean-limbed, athletic-looking fellows clad in turbans of bright colors, gay calico shirts, and moccasins of deerskin; the women wore immense necklaces of beads, calico jackets, and long skirts, but were barefooted and bareheaded; and the children were clad precisely like their elders, with the exception of the turbans, which are denied to the boys and young men until they reach the age of warriors. Besides the Indians, Quorum saw that the camp was occupied by numbers of fowls, dogs, and small black pigs, that roamed through it at will. Everybody and everything in it, animals as well as humans, looked contented and well fed.
At length Quorum's smoke was finished, and he knocked the ashes from his pipe. As if this were a signal, the Indian men laid aside their pipes, and it was evident that the time for talking had arrived.
Chapter XXIX.
A VERY SERIOUS PREDICAMENT.
The four explorers left on the mound island were very far from spending so pleasant an evening as that enjoyed by Quorum in the Seminole village. They were full of anxiety both as to his fate and their own. In some respects their position was not so bad as if they had been cast away on a desert island in the ocean, while in others it was worse. In the latter case they might hope to sight and signal some passing vessel, but here there was no chance for anything of that kind. At the best, they would not see anything except Indian canoes, and, under the circumstances, they could have little hope of obtaining aid from these.
Their revolvers were still loaded, and they had between them half a dozen cartridges for their guns, but thus far they had discovered no traces of game on the island. They would not lack for fresh-water, but with only a single bag of biscuit, the food question was likely to become a serious one within a short time. They had no knowledge of any white settlements within less than a hundred miles of where they were. These could only be reached by wading and swimming through the trackless 'Glades and bewildering cypress swamps. Undoubtedly some of the 'Glade islands were occupied by Indians, but they might explore as many of these as their strength would permit them to reach without finding one thus inhabited. Their situation was certainly a most perplexing one, and as they sat around a fire, eating a scanty supper of hardtack and discussing their prospects, these appeared gloomy in the extreme.
Still, the Lieutenant well knew that he must, if possible, keep up the spirits of his little party, and that the worst thing they could do was to take a hopeless view of the situation. So he said:
"Well, boys, though we seem to be in a nasty predicament, it might be a great deal worse, and we have still many things to be thankful for. I once drifted for a week in an open boat in the middle of the South Pacific. There were seven of us, and only one man of the party had the faith and courage to continue cheerful and hopeful through it all. On the very day that we swallowed our last drop of water, and while the rest of us were lying despairingly in the bottom of the boat, he sat up on watch, and finally discovered the trading schooner that picked us up."
"I," said Sumner, "do not feel nearly so badly now as I did when drifting out to sea in the dark on that wretched raft a couple of weeks ago. I expected every minute to be washed off and be snapped up by sharks; but, after all, the loneliness was the worst part of it."
"Right you are, Mr. Sumner," said the sailor. "A man can stand a heap of suffering along with others, that would throw him on his beam ends in no time if he was compelled to navigate by himself. I mind one time that I was lost in a fog, in a dory, on the Grand Banks. As we had grub and water in the boat, I didn't worry much, till my dorymate fell overboard and got drownded. The weight of his 'ilers and rubber boots sunk him like a shot. After that I wellnigh went crazy with the loneliness. I couldn't seem to eat or drink; and though I was picked up the very next day, that one night of loneliness seemed like a year of torment. Oh yes, sir, men can save themselves in company, when they won't lift a hand if left alone."